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Creating a desktop laucher for Wine programs

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Creating a desktop laucher for Wine programs
« Reply #1 on: October 09, 2018, 08:51:07 AM »
 

Yoru3

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 I recently installed the Wine program, which allows some Windows programs to run under Linux.

 
So far this has been very successful, and much better that I had expected. So good in fact, that I’ve started in earnest to get my main PC off of Windows (7), and have begun to transfer the programs that I want to keep.

 
However, there are a couple of issues regarding the creation of a desktop launcher for each Wine program. The good news is that the main problem is resolvable, in what appears to be an undocumented feature, which perhaps should be part of the GUI.

 
When you right click on the desktop, you are presented with a menu, that includes Create Launcher…

 
Most of these are easy enough to enter, except for two issues.

 
The first is relatively minor. Because the Wine mechanism relies on Windows executables that are hidden under /home/username/.wine they cannot be seen by the Create Launcher GUI. This can be overcome by a copy and paste operation from another window (Menu, Other, Browse C: Drive), which is available after you’ve installed Wine.

 
The second is a bit more problematic if you want to use a custom user created icon, rather than those already on the system.

 
Using a standard system icon is fine, but if you want it to also look the same as it did on the Windows system, you need to create the one that is normally embedded in the Windows .exe file.
See “Creating program icon” below.

 
The problem is that when you try and enter the link to your newly created program icon, there is apparently no way to do so, since a click on “No Icon” in the Icon: section will just bring up the existing system icons.

 
You have to use what appears to be an undocumented feature:
First, after clicking “No Icon” you select “all icons” in the select icons from: section.
Then if you press the down cursor you get a folder/file browser, with which you can navigate and select your created icon.

 
Perhaps in a future release the GUI could include select user defined.

 

 

 
Creating program icon

 
This can be easily done, by extracting it, and converting it to be compatible for use under linux, using the following terminal procedures:
There are no doubt better ways but at least the following works.

 
1) Extract the .ico with
Code: [Select]
wrestool -o . x  WindowsExecutableFile.exeWhich will extract ALL .ico .cur and .bmp files into the current folder. You can be more specific by using more control switches. Normally the one you want is a 32x32 .ico image.
Note: wrestool is part of icoutils, and might need installing with
Code: [Select]
sudo apt-get install icoutils2) Convert the icon with
Code: [Select]
convert ExtractedIcon.ico LinuxIcon.pngWhich by default, if you use a 32x32 input you’ll get a 32x32 output in .png format, but again you can be more specific by using more control switches.
I found it easiest to use a /home/UserName/Temp folder for the terminal operations, and to store the .png icon in homeUserName/Icons

 
 
 
I know you believe you understand what you think I said. But I'm not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant.
:Communication Theory
 

 

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