Installing Programs On Linux

[Lightstryk]

So i downloaded 'Wine',but for some reason many 'exe.' files wont work unless i download the exe. from my windows onto a flashdrive then run it on Linux. When i just download an install while on Ubuntu and try to run it, many times it says----> "The file '/home/joey/Downloads/SteamInstall.msi' is not marked as executable. If this was downloaded or copied form an untrusted source, it may be dangerous to run. For more details, read about the executable bit."--- This happened with other downloads like UTorrent
and i'd like to know if i could fix this instead of going through the hassle of getting the download file on Windows then running it on Ubuntu.
Thnx alot! :]

[ikonia]

first of all,

wine is not a good tool, despite all the positive hype over it, it's a poor work around for applications, where possible use a Linux friendly varition on the application, eg: if you want utorrent, look around for torrent clients designed for linux.

The executable bit is the same as on any operating system, make sure the file you are trying to execute has permissions for either the user/group/world.

All in all, if you need to use wine, you should just use Windows for the job in hand as that's what it was meant to run on.

[Lightstryk]

Alrite well I checked under Administration and didnt find anything that would prevent me from doing it, how do I get it to let me?
And thnx for the advice about Wine, i'd thought that it was some miracle-worker, but oh well =/

[ikonia]

look at the permissions on the file you want to execute, does it have the execute bit set ?

[alsenior]

right click on file -> properties -> permissions -> check allow executing file as program. should sort you out

[Lightstryk]

Oh yayy thnx :]

[peterb]

As Ikonia (welcome back!) says, it is far better to use an application written for a *nix OS than a windows app running under wine. In many cases the native *nix apps are as good as or better than the Windows equivalents, although they may not have the extensive GUI support. Open office makes an excellent Office application suite, and many internet tools such as torrent, news readers etc are available under *nix. IIRC Opera has torrent support built in - but there are other dedicated torrent tools.

WINE does work - up to a point - but in my experience it is flaky and the results can be unpredictable and as you have discovered, can be disappointing.

[directhex]

(for msi files, use "msiexec /i SteamInstall.msi")

[jim]

Why would you want to force steam to install on Linux anyway? Surely that's just asking for trouble? Are any of the game even going to work?

And IIRC they're *probably* going to release Steam for Linux fairly soon anyway.

[Moby-Dick]

I did once get steam working under wine just as a matter of principle but it wasn't really worth the effort

I dont use linux as a desktop OS (apart from my netbook) , but if I did , I'd keep a windows VM handy for anything that wasn't really linux native.

[directhex]

Steam works okayish with the latest wine (the new UI breaks in not-so-new wine). Games, it's a per-game question

[Lightstryk]

Well Steam works fine for me, just a bit slow.
And where exactly do i look for these *nix apps,
are these the ones that come with Ubuntu?(by default)
And what if I want to find others, where should I look>??

[jim]

Try the package manager for starters. There's loads of Linux specific applications in there that are easy to get hold of. Very easy. Which version of Ubuntu are you using?

The whole point of Linux isn't to run Windows apps through a compatibility layer!

[directhex]

Applications/Ubuntu Software Centre. There are about 30k apps in there.

[peterb]

And if that isn't enough, you can download the source code for many more and compile them to run on your system - but I'd wait a while before you start doing that! All the popular apps will already have been packaged ready to install on the site directhex referenced.

[.walls]

Steam works okayish with the latest wine (the new UI breaks in not-so-new wine). Games, it's a per-game question

Steam works just fine for me (Gentoo x64, multilib). Steam engine games work very well (almost native feel), others not-so-well or not at all: e.g. Stalker SoC needs to run in DX8 mode and Resident Evil 5 doesn't run at all (because "Games for Windows Live" needs .Net 3.5).

A good place to start is to check the winehq database to see how well your game works. Another suggestion would be to check out PlayOnLinux: which is basically a set of scripts for installing various games/apps with a nice, friendly gui.

As for uTorrent, there are plenty of options out there - probably start with what's native for your DE (i.e. GTK for Gnome or QT for KDE): Gnome default is Deluge and the KDE default is KTorrent.

And where exactly do i look for these *nix apps,
are these the ones that come with Ubuntu?(by default)
And what if I want to find others, where should I look>??

Check here or here for linux alternatives to windows apps, otherwise check your distro's repositories for new software (sorry, I cba googling to find out what the gui package manager is for ubuntu). it is usually hugely preferable to use your distro's repositories for new software rather than downloading things from potentially untrusted sources (unless you're downloading source code and can be bothered looking through it).