Hello everyone from your Italian Stallion.
I'm completely new to Linux - just got installed Fedora, and I am working for my thesis - I need some windows software. I know about this kind of win32 emu called WINE, but I also know that ver. 1.1.23 has got some major prob about installing ms office 2007.
The problem is that If I go typing "yum install wine" I got that version, the 1.1.23! So I have to compile the ver 1.1.26 that I've downloaded as tar.gz and extracted into a folder. The point is: I just installed linux (about 12 hours ago) and I do not know HOW to compile a software. I've been looking for a step by step guide on Fedora but I didn't find. It seems this change from software to software and obviously from OS to OS.
Anyone can help me? Step-by-step please, just like you're teaching your babe walking.

Greetings from the sunny and maphious South Italy ;-)

1. What do you need MS Office 2007 to actually do?? OpenOffice.org is usually pretty good at displaying those documents, and you can submit formatted documents as PDFs.

2. There are compile instructions in the wine folder you just unpacked - go look. Read the instructions, check you have everything.

There are also instructions through the winehq faq
http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#head-7ed3...c5e553dc41817b

There is an installer - use the terminal to cd into the folder you just unpacked and then enter:

./tools/wineinstall

I think openoffice will reach MS OFFICE features in 2020.
I'm gonna look.

Same works the other way around too - which particular features are needed for your thesis?

When I wrote my thesis I used LaTeX - same for papers. Much more powerful than Word for publications.

I see that there are here a lot of linux fundamentalists. But my question was another. I don't want to discuss
on which is better, I need to compile Wine, period. And I don't know how to do that. The "README" was kind of arab to me.

so if i go to the terminal in the directory i've just to write: /tools/wineinstall and that's it?
I 'll try

Done, but when is in "configure" phase, it tells me that i do not have X libraries..
What are they and is there a way to get them with a yum install?

Yep - you use YUM. They will be in X development packages. The documentation should provide a list of the libraries you need, have you read it yet?

The best way to find them is to use a GUI for yum. There are several.
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/sho...ighlight=yumex
http://cobind.com/yumgui.html
http://gnome-yum.sourceforge.net/

yumex should be in the repos.
The gui allows you to search the available software, you are looking for library packages about the X window system. You'll probably want the development versions too.

Also useful...
http://www.fedorafaq.org/
http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mj...a-f11.html#yum

It is not about fundamentalism but best practice for the systems you use.

It is best practice to use the native tools for the job in hand.

One of the advantages of providing support like this is that I am not constrained to the clients description of the job. I get to give you the advice you actually need, even if it is not the advice you want.

If you want the people helping you to stick to your idea of the job, that is called "professional support" and you are expected to pay for it. There is a profession edition of WINE for Office, called "Crossover Office", you should consider that.

In this way we encourage a strong gnu/linux community.

When you describe your task in terms of the tools you are used to, you will end up doing a bad job a lot of the time ... if the tool you know is a hammer, problems all look like nails. One of the major strengths of free software is that it allows you to find solutions in terms of the problems you have rather than having to fit problems to pre-packaged solutions.

There are specific issues using Wine, even when everything works as advertised, particularly with Office. Office documents are a major vector for malware. Wine faithfully reproduces the Windows API, making your linux distro vulnerable to windows viruses. There is also a growing class of crossover malware - which run in wine, but are smart enouh to tell if they are an a linux system and take steps accordingly. It follows that you will have to run AV software as well.

Make sure you read and understand the licence on your edition of Office - I have heard report that some licenses forbid installing to an emulator or non-MS-originating environment.

There is something of a race - usually, by the time wine supports a particular feature of windows software sufficiently to make it useful, you will find that the native version has "caught up". The native versions usually have other advantages which, since you are not used to them, you will be initially unaware of.

No you don't - you have decided that you want to.

There are native tools available to do the jobs you have described. You may have to learn a different way of working but that should not be hard for a student who is writing a thesis.

What is your thesis area?

If you don't give me any clues to what you don't understand, I cannot help you. That document is perfectly clear to me - but then, I read "kind of arabic" So it follows that I am unlikely to have any intuitive understanding of what you find difficult. You have to explain it to me.

If you've done any tutoring or TA work, then you'll have an idea of what is helpful.

Unfortunately, compiling programs is a technical task which requires the ability to read the technical documentation. When you only need one program, the investment in self-education can be daunting. This is another reason to consider the native tools. You may discover that it is easier to work around their "failings" than trying to get your preferred tool working. Especially under a deadline.

It may even be easier just to use Windows for your thesis.

Once WINE is installed, that is not the end of it. You also have to configure it
Even then, if there are features of Office 2007 unavailable in earlier editions which you must have to complete your thesis (perhaps your thesis is on Office 2007 features?) then it is unlikely that WINE will support them quite the way you are used to. Have you checked?

WINE is best used where there is no way to do the task without it. Which is why it's mostly used for games.

IF you really must compile wine, go grab the most recent wine src rpm in the Fedora repo. Extract it and look at the spec file(the patches will be in there too). The spec file will tell you what libs you will need (a lot of -devel versions), what patches need to be applied, and what tricks were needed to get it to work properly. All that information applies to that specific version of wine but will be a good place to start. Do not expect this to be a trivial matter, if it was the newer version of wine would probably be in the repo.

You may be much better off installing a VM (vmware,etc) with windows on it.

Wine .25 is in the Fedora testing repo.

You could also drop back to the old .18 version(it is still in the repos too).

All of your posts have been great. I've no words for that. Expecially your general suggestions. The reason I got to compile wine is that I'm AMAZED of the power of fedora 11: fast, free, almost bug free. But I've to write my thesis. The main problem is that everyone in the university use office. If I save to office2007 compatible i lose something for sure.
Anyway, I got compiled wine 1.1.26. But Office 2007 crashes at about 25% of installation. Do you think that maybe with that license it won't run?
I've enterprise ed. I've checked on appdb.winehq.com but there are no hints for that. Any ideas?

thank you very much in advance. :-)

Greetings from South Italy
(which is not Italy at all. I mean, it's the real one)

Actually OOo writes quite good DOC files. Have a go.
Only you know what super-features of Word 2007 you absolutely need to use so I cannot comment further on how to retain them without using Word. But see the numbered entries below.

The office 2k crash is probably to do with the installer failing to find something. Make sure you put "unhide" option in the /etc/fstab entry for your optical drive. Make sure that you have configured Wine to your system properly.

The license won't cause a crash - usually - but the license verification may shut it down, if it has one, after the install is complete. Have you read the license to make sure that what you are doing is legal? If you don't check this, you may be exposing your school and yourself to litigation.

Some notes on formats:

1. just because they use office does not mean you have to - they will all have access to acrobat reader too: why not save to PDF? This is something to talk about with your supervisor...

1.5 Thesis submissions are usually required on hardcopy anyway.

2. Even if you save to office 2007 doc formats, that is no guarantee that anyone else will be able to open them to look the same. Especially if you use any of the really advanced features. Why rely on others having the same word settings as you?

2.5 since you risk losing stuff anyway, you have to keep your word documents as simple as possible. For a thesis, this is usually easy.

3. If you absolutely must use doc format - eg. your supervisor says so - you can write the document in what you want and use a tool to format shift it. Google Docs? But, your install is quite new, perhaps you need to run a windows VM, or reinstall to a dual-boot?

[update]
http://www.wine-reviews.net/microsof...all-guide.html
... information is that Office 2007 will not install to wine well anyway. Use crossover games. Even those who have managed find that clippy crashes office, and other things.

http://www.quicktweaks.com/2008/04/0...2007-in-linux/
... shows a nowto - but comments that you may need the winetricks to solve unspecified issues.