Using Wine: Seterra on Edubunto

Sun May 20 23:25:27 BST 2007

The topic here prompts me to send something I composed a couple of weeks ago
but did not get a chance to edit.  It's kinda long and tells of my wine
experience with a simple educational game.
*  *  *  *

Sorry to be late getting back to you. Maybe someone out there might benefit
from what I did.

Seterra is a free geography game to help you learn basics of country and
city names and the like.  It is simple, but pretty useful for kids and
others.  I wanted to make this windows program work with edubuntu.

Novice as I am it took a bit to figure out the package manager and download
and install the wine after a search for it in the manager.

Actually, the installation went quite smoothly and automatically.

I downloaded the seterra.exe file from download.com and saved it into my
user download folder.

Clicking on the file, the wine took over and the familiar windows-style
install screen opened and I followed the prompts to install the software.

The biggest obstacle for me was to figure out what happened to the seterra
program.  Where did it go?  There was no desktop shortcut and it did not
appear in the list of programs.

I poked around directories and folders until I ended up at my home directory
where I selected the detailed view that shows hidden files.  After all the
usual named files, there were a series of folders and files begining with a
period as in dot (.) such and such.

Yo!  Here is .wine!  Opened, it unfolds just like the c:\ in windows.  In
fact, right here is a c: prompt!  (This fits my vision of windows - just a
little subsection inside my Linux machine, but I digress.)  I went to the
program folder and found a seterra folder.  I clicked on the
seterra.exefile - and it was the working program!  Mission
accomplished!

Minor Problem:  I could not figure out a way to make a direct desktop
shortcut to this program.  My work around was simply to copy the whole
seterra folder onto the desktop where it could be easily opened and the
program started.  This is not tidy, but it's easier to find this way.

Footnote #1.  Some time later, I installed Taxcut software using wine in a
similar manner to the above on a machine with Linux Mint. The process was
automatic.  The program works great.  This time the installation process DID
create a desktop icon automatically.  In windows I rebel when that happens,
since I don't like to use my desktop that way.  But it made it easier to
find and start this program.

Footnote #2.  On yet another machine with Linux Mint I just upgraded to 7.04.
The upgrade process somehow unlinked the wine from recognizing an exe file.
I just right clicked and "open using. . ." and followed the necessary steps
to locate wine.  This enabled wine to pick up on the program and install it
in the expected fashion.

So there you have it.  Thanks for your support.

Lou

On 12/13/06, Lou Synnestvedt <lou.syn at gmail.com > wrote:
>
> Dear Responders,
>
> Thanks for the suggestion about wine.  If I manage to get it working, I
> will report back.
>
> Lou
>
> On 11/30/06, Daniel Hedblom <daniel.hedblom at solleftea.se> wrote:
> >
> > Hi!
> >
> > Seterra works fine in Wine, atleast the more recent ones. I still really
> > think we should all plea for the author to release the code for porting to
> > Linux.
> >
> > On a side note, how do one properly share one wine installation amongst
> > many users? I have tried but never gotten a solution that works smoothly.
> >
> > /daniel
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Daniel Hedblom
> > Systemtekniker
> > Sollefteå Kommun
> > BSF
> > 070-3837244
> > >>> Clay Berlo < clay.berlo at dsbn.edu.on.ca> 06-11-30 18:43 >>>
> > Although I generally don't like to recommend WINE, it is a solution for
> > this particular application.  If you install WINE with settings to share
> > one common installation directory, Seterra will work through the LTSP,
> > apparently without issue.
> >
> > I note that this is free software, so perhaps it would be possible to
> > persuade the author to release the source code (again), so it can be
> > properly ported to Linux?
> >
> > ~Clay
> >
> > On Wed, 2006-29-11 at 13:57 -0500, Lou Synnestvedt wrote:
> >
> > > I would love to have a Seterra-like game to learn geography that is
> > > easy to use for elementary school.  Any ideas that work with edubuntu?
> >
> > > Lou
> >
> >
>

On 5/20/07, edubuntu-users-request at lists.ubuntu.com <
edubuntu-users-request at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> Send edubuntu-users mailing list submissions to
>   . . .
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Using Wine (Bruce Anderson)
>    2. Re: Using Wine (Bryan Quigley)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 19:21:47 -0600
> From: "Bruce Anderson" <bruce.germund at gmail.com>
> Subject: Using Wine
> To: edubuntu-users <edubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Message-ID:
>         <ef43a13c0705191821g1e8b01f0paeb1ca541cb9f837 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Hello
>
> How do I use Wine to install Windows games onto Edubuntu?  I can't find
> any
> help files that tell me what to do, and any internet instructions don't
> seem
> to work.
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 20 May 2007 00:05:00 -0400
> From: "Bryan Quigley" <gquigs at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Using Wine
> To: "Bruce Anderson" <bruce.germund at gmail.com>
> Cc: edubuntu-users <edubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Message-ID:
>         <2e117fdb0705192105p48eac7b3lfa27f7e37637973c at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Wine is installed?
> Run it once from the command line (just "wine"), configure it using
> command
> "winecfg" and then run wine $PathTOProgram or just click exe.
> Check your applications in wine appdb for compatibility
> .http://appdb.winehq.org/
> It really is hit or miss.
> What apps are you trying to install?
>
> On 5/19/07, Bruce Anderson <bruce.germund at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hello
> >
> > How do I use Wine to install Windows games onto Edubuntu?  I can't find
> > any help files that tell me what to do, and any internet instructions
> don't
> > seem to work.
> >
> > --
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> > edubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> > Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
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> >
> >
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