creating wine shortcuts

You can create by hand a desktop shortcut for your applications installed with wine by following these steps:

1. Open your favourite text editor (gedit, nano, etc.), create a new file with the following content and save it to your Desktop with a name having extension .desktop

   In this example, I've chosen to the name inetexplorer.desktop and saved it to my desktop.

   [Desktop Entry]
   Name=Internet Explorer
   Exec=wine "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"
   Icon=/path/to/iconfile
   Type=Application
   Categories=Wine;
   

   Here, replace the value for Name field with that of the target application's name. (In the example, it's Internet Exolorer.) The value of Exec would be in the format:

   wine "C:\path to the\executable file"
   

   (for CLI application) like say

   wineconsole "C:\path to the\executable file"
   

   (for GUI applications)

   wine "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"
   

   (enclosing the path within double quotes ".. .." is important if the path contain blank spaces.)

   Replace /path/to/iconfile (the value for Icon field) with the path of an icon file (like Icon=/home/username/Pictures/internet-explorer.png) or you can omit this line of entry.

   ^{On the left is a shortcut with icon specified, for the one on right, not.}

2. Turn on the file's execute bit on.

   Graphically you can do it by right clicking the .desktop file, and from the context menu select Properties. In the properties window, select Permission tab, look for a label Execute: and check-mark the check-box next to it so that the shortcut becomes executable.

   ^{selecting property from right-click context menu}

   ^{setting execute permission}

   From terminal, you can do this with:

   chmod +x $USER/Desktop/inetexplorer.desktop
   

   where $USER/Desktop/inetexplorer.desktop should be the absolute path of the desktop shortcut that was created.

I suggest you to use PlayOnLinux, in combination with wine, which offers a clean and user-friendly interface, that let you install and manage windows software and games.

PlayOnLinux is a piece of software which allows you to easily install and use numerous games and apps designed to run with Microsoft® Windows®. Few games are compatible with GNU/Linux at the moment and it certainly is a factor preventing the migration to this system. PlayOnLinux brings a cost-free, accessible and efficient solution to this problem.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of the interesting points to know:

• You don't have to own a Windows® license to use PlayOnLinux.
• PlayOnLinux is based on Wine, and so profits from all its features yet it keeps the user from having to deal with its complexity.
• PlayOnLinux is free software.
• PlayOnLinux uses Bash and Python.

Nevertheless, PlayOnLinux has some bugs, as every piece of software:

• Occasional performance decrease (image may be less fluid and graphics less detailed).
• Not all games are supported. Nevertheless, you can use our manual installation module.

Installation:

1. Simply use Software-Center to install it,
2. or refer to their HP installation info.

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Here is another solution, that uses your Ubuntu OS based system standards.

1. Open Main Menu Application and select New Item button,

2. which will open a Create Launcher window, from where you can use the Browse button, that let you select the path to the .exe (executable) windows application/game.

   • You can also name the new shortcut, add a description and icon to it from there.

You have to escape the white spaces using backslashes (\). Try to specify the command like this:

".../Program\ Files/Adobe/Adobe\ Photoshop\ CS2/..."

Note the \ before spaces.