problems with vmware: which virtual machine is best?

[rocky7x]

Find package wine1.8 and install it. It will uninstall the older versions.

[kdemeoz]

Well, i'm afraid i just don't understand, The Synaptic pic i attached shows that, according to Synaptic, my installed Wine version is already 1.8 [which of course contradicts what Maui seems to think]. Having read your reply, i relaunched Synaptic & marked Wine for reinstallation, then did it, but Maui [per Konsole] continues to say 1.6.2. That contradiction is silly.

Seeking an alternative solution, i went to WineHQ site https://www.winehq.org/download, which says:

Wine Binary Packages
Latest stable release: Wine 2.0
Latest development release: Wine 2.4

...but there is no post-source download available, so i'd have to compile & build it from source-code myself apparently, which for something as complex / interdependent as Wine i find a very unappealing prospect.

Then i looked for their latest stable version with available deb download. That was also basically a waste of time [their links lead me round in circles from page to page then back to the beginning]. There's a PPA mentioned here, https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu, BUT it also says:

WineHQ only builds binary packages for the development and staging branches, ... Binary packages for the stable branch are the responsibility of the distros. If you are looking for an updated stable package, ask your distro where to find it.

...which obviously leads me straight back to Maui, & the inherent version contradiction i've already pointed out.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this contradiction impasse might be my "fault", as i [back in Maui 1, but i carried it forward with each upgrade] have PoL installed so i can run MyPhoneExplorer [the ONLY decent way i've been able to  interact with my Android mobile phone re call logs, SMS records, contacts, in Linux]. Maybe PoL installed Wine 1.6.2? Getting MPE to work originally was very fiddly, so i don't want to blow it all away on a whim. However to test my speculation after this post i shall launch one of my Maui VMs, which do not have PoL installed, check its Wine version... & maybe even try out your procedure there.

[kdemeoz]

Hmmm, now the enigma is wrapped in a conundrum. I launched 2 of my Maui 17.03 VMs. One already has PoL & MPE installed [which i had forgotten about], whilst the other VM is "pure" [no PoL, no Wine].

The 1st one gives the identical Wine version contradiction as my Tower's "real" Maui, per my previous Konsole vs Synaptic pastes. The 2nd one though... now that is just weird...

As i said, it used not to have Wine, so i launched Synaptic, selected Wine [which per my previous pic is stated as v1.8.0], & marked it for installation. It showed me a very long list of all the associated stuff that would also be installed, & deep down in the list was "wine1.6". Huh? The package itself says v1.8.0... I proceeded with the installation, after which i re-ran in Konsole:

Code:

kdemeoz@kdemeoz-VirtualBox:~$ wine --version
wine-1.6.2

This is bonkers.

[rocky7x]

Try this from command line:

Code:

sudo apt-get install wine1.8

[kdemeoz]

Thanks rocky, that did work... but do you know why, until now, Maui [Konsole; wine --version] & Synaptic completely & repeatedly contradicted each other? I don't think i've encountered that before.

The happy news: your procedure is a gem - i now have MS Office 2010 running, as a Proof of Concept, in both those Maui VMs (including the one that still thinks its Wine is 1.6.2, but the Office setup still worked anyway].

I've been testing for a couple of hours [basically since my previous post], & i'm very impressed... compared to my PoL / Office 2010 experience of 2015, your way so far anyway has been completely stable.

There IS one problem though, now, which IS the same as in PoL in 2015... the pgm window [Word / Excel / Ppt] opens up maximised / full-screen, & will not respond to normal manual attempts to resize it/them. I seem only to have 2 choices: work in a maximised window [which i hate, my normal workflow is never like this, but to size the window so i can work in it whilst still seeing various other windows on my desktop (not one on top of another)] OR click the "restore" icon [between the minimise & maximise icons in top rhs corner] which does partly shrink the window but i cannot then move it or drag-size it.

Does this also happen for you? Do you know a solution pls?

[rocky7x]

That issue occurs because of the stupid theming done by M$ in Office. I also have that behavior, but the workaround is very simple:
1. to move the window, as you already found, you cannot click on the title bar and drag - but when you hold Alt+click on the window, the dragging works
2. to resize the window, as you already found, the lower right corner handle doesn't work - but when you right-click the word/excel/whatever task in the task bar at the bottom, then go to More actions and hit Resize, the resize works it's also possible to set this via a hot key so you don't have to repeat Right-click -> More actions -> Resize every time...

Also please be sure to set the riched20.dll as Native in Libraries in winecfg (as I've described in my tutorial), because otherwise Powerpoint doesn't work.

Good luck

[kdemeoz]

Re the moving & resizing -- doh, slaps forehead, why did i overlook that? Tomorrow i shall give it a try. Thanks!

Yes, i definitely did do that ["set the riched20.dll as Native in Libraries in winecfg"], & verified that Ppt works nicely.

Also tomorrow, i might experiment to see if i can upgrade it to sp1 then sp2 [i have both EXEs downloaded & on my hdd for years].

Rocky yet again you've been a tremendous help, i curtsy to you.

I've comprehensively hijacked this thread though, so i wonder if i should start a dedicated new thread just on this topic, copy all the relevant posts from here into it, & ask the Mods to clean up this thread so it's back on the OP's topic?

[kdemeoz]

Hi rocky. Your method continues to go great, here, in my Tower. Tonight i improvised by rationalising that i could extend your method to subsequently install sp2, & that worked flawlessly!

Your workarounds for the sizing & moving are quite pragmatic & usable - it's still rather irritating to have to tiptoe around the pgm windows this way, but on balance this is a tiny price to pay for the huge utility gain of being able to run Office 2010 "natively" directly in my Maui without having the low-level tedium of needing to launch my Win10 VM, or put up with LibreOffice [which i strongly dislike anyway] or even WPS Office [which until you posted this procedure was far & away the least-worst native Linux office suite with closest analogue to MS Office UI & document properties (given i intensively used MS Office for work & home since Office 97'ish, my antipathy to all other office suites i've tried since then is high, for pragmatic not ideological reasons)].

I'm just loving it that now, once more like back in my Windows years, i can scroll up & down my docs automagically via the mouse wheel click function... no longer does that muscle-memory action cause the clipboard to paste, haha.

Thanks once more.

[kdemeoz]

Rocky, do you still have your Office 2010 WinePrefix available, or have you now moved on to only your Office 2013 one? If you do, could you pls test & advise if you also have this minor problem? In Excel, if you have, or create, a chart, eg, a scatter chart, when you point to any individual data point in the chart, do you get the little info balloon that reports the values of that point? In Excel 2010 when run natively within actual Windows, of course the balloon does popup. However in my WinePrefix, there's no balloon. It's not a showstopper for me, but it is a pity, as that's a loss of useful functionality.

[rocky7x]

Hi, I use Office 2010 all the time, because 2013 is slow via wine. As for the popup, I don't have it either, probably a bug...