I was thinking about it, and I'll bet that a lot of Slackware users also own a copy of Windows, one version or the other. If you're like me, that Windows install doesn't get used to much.

There are a lot of things that you can do with those Windows files. I know that you can use the fonts off of your Windows system. You can also copy over the system sounds, if you're fond of them. I'll bet there are a lot of handy things that you can do with the Windows files that you at some point must have paid for but now hardly ever use.

I don't know how to do any of them, but I thought it might be nice if some members here got together and made a single thread showing all the cool stuff that you can do with all of those files. So here that thread is.

Since I don't know how to do any of them myself, I'll post a few questions. Maybe someone can post some HOW-Tos here on these.

How do I use my Windows True-Type fonts in Slackware?
Can I use any of the codecs on my Windows box to play media files on Slackware?
If I want to install WINE, is it a good idea to use the DLLs from my Windows box?


I'm sure that there are a bunch of ideas. I believe that it is legal to use your Windows files however you want (I'm no lawyer, though) since you already paid for those files. I'll bet somebody hasd some great ideas for what you can do with them.

You can do all of that, but I don't know how you'd extract any of that stuff without an explicit table of contents of all those .cab files. I went searching for the fonts on my '98 disk once and couldn't find them before I gave up. It can be done with cabextract, but that was way too much searching for me. I ended up installing the damn thing and taking what I wanted from the install, then wiping it.

I know there's a TrueType Windows font install howtoo somewhere out there, I tried it once -- it was geared towards RPM distros, but i got it to work with little work.

I'll look this one up.

--Shade

Thanks Shade. I really think this could be an interesting thread. My thinking is that most people paid for Windows. There is stuff you can use those Windows files for in Slackware. I have yet to come across a dedicated article on the subject. Maybe this could start something, eh?

I wonder what we can use from our wWindows installs.

Fonts?
Codecs?
Backgrounds?
Sounds?
Libraries (DLLs)?
Something I haven't thought of?

A lot of people are pushing for Linux on the desktop. While many complain that there is no inovation, only imitation, I think that it is pretty cool that a bunch of people getting paid on average $0 have come up with a pretty nice desktop (several, really). Now you've got a big company like Microsoft that I am sure pays some bucks to make sure they come up with good stuff. Most of us have paid to use that good stuff, even though many of us don't use any of what we paid for. I say inovation is sometimes overrated. Windows isn't total crap, no matter what anyone tries to say. The fonts are a good example. They have made some great fonts. I'll bet they paid some bucks for user studies and the like to make sure that they put out good fonts. We already paid for them, let's use them. No need to re-invent the wheel.

Anybody else want to jump on board and post a HOW-TO on how to use soemthing from their Windows install on Slackware?

I hope this thread really takes off!

Fonts: The Font Deuglification Howto may be what Shade is referring to. It only mentions not throwing out the Windows disk, but doesn't show how to. The sound schemes would be a neat one. Codecs and .dlls can be used as wel, and are. You can refer to them with a WINE installation, either byh pointning to the partition where they reside or copying them over to the virtual "C:" drive.

Interesting ideas.

I use Windows TT fonts from my W2k directory. I found step-by step tutorial how to implement them in Slack, but as it was some time ago, I can't give you facts and figures. Googling may be useful anyway (that was the way I found it).
I also have wine installed, trying to use native dlls,which I copied from W2k partition (it is NTFS) to my home directory (it is only way to use them if you have Windows on NTFS partition). But as wine is (God know why) based on W98 (is there anybody still using it?), there are not many applications working that way. But IrfanView works. Probably others too, but don't ask me.
I wonder when wine team is going to switch to better Windows version? And don't try to tell me that W98 is the greatest one...

Its not ther greatest one, but it is, by far, the most popular one. There are a lot of countries that have not even seen a computer with XP on it yet. No, really! - as Fred Langa said (old Winmag editor), anyone who owns a computer is in the top 0.5% of the world as far as wealth is concerned. Yep, its still out there.

The HOWTO I referred to above shows what you already did. Unfortunately, it doesn't show which cab files to extract them from your cd, so you have to have a windows system installed somewhere to do what is needed.





....and, oh yeah. If you want to add fonts at any time, there shouldn't be any reason one couldn't simply copy the font to cd (might fit on a floppy) and transfer it to your linux system. You just have to find the right directory and run fontconfig after (to have the new font "recognized"). Should work for any TTF.

Hi

I have a W@@@s partition; and i copied the TTFs and some video codecs to my Slackware system.

Here is what i did.

-First, i analyzed my /disc/win/wind0ws/fonts . I chose the fonts i liked, and i copied everything to a folder in my user dir. After that i installed the fonts with the KDE font installer (running it as root).

-Second, the video codecs (i am still tweaking this). I went to my /disc/win/wind0ws/system and picked a lot of .dll and .acm and .ax files. I copied them to /usr/lib/win32 . Indeed, there is a package with the codecs ( i don't remember where did i found it), and i had it installed; but still .wmv version 9 didn't work so i installed the w@@s codecs. Now i can see a lot of .wmv videos that i wasn't able to see before (but i still have problems with some mpegs encoded with a strange codec whose filename i still didn't manage to decipher).

I've installed my ttf's from /wind0w$/fonts using the KDE installer.
As for codecs:
All my needs in codec area are furfilled by these packs; you can even find real media and quick time codecs

Good thread... and is wine even worth a chit? Out of curiosity, does anyone here use wine regularly? I have the (luxury?!) of having a windows box in my house, so if I ever need to use it, I can. Although it's quickly becoming a very rare occurrence. As soon as I can get mplayer to stop throwing errors and actually use windows media filetypes, I'll probably sell the computer and set up an old dummy term that uses this box. Or just dump the windows install and run another linux box.

I got my own true type fonts off of my MS works disks (disc 1). I copied them into the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/ directory. I also addded this directory to my FontPath in /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. All works like a charm. You have to run spadmin to run them in OO.org.

When I first posted, I was thinking not about an article, but this sourceforge project:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/corefonts/

It's an rpm source build, but all you really need are the .cab files and cabextract.
Easiest way to install them would be to download the .cab files into a directory, extract them all, and then copy them to somewhere like ~/.fonts
Restart X and you should have access to those new M$ fonts.

--Shade

Fonts file is located in
c:\windows\fonts

1. copy the entire folder or zip it up and bring it into slackware (I hope you know how to do this)

2. move the zip file to /usr/share/fonts
IF /usr/share/fonts does not exist, mkdir /usr/share/fonts

3. unzip mywindozefonts.zip

4. (optional but advisable) mv mywindozefontsdir windozefonts

5. fc-cache

And you will get all your fonts Windoze fonts for all users.

PS: I don't have Windoze system on my machines.

The corefonts project is what i was reeferring to as well. its not just rpm. Most distros have the package in their repositories. Some like Mandrake have it in contrib, while Debian has it in non-free (called msttcorefonts, I believe). the script fetches the cabs and extracts them to the right place for you. No real work at all. You might have to make X aware of where they are by adding their directory to the list in the etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

Yeah, it had been a while since I'd done it.
I just remember the script uses rpm-build to make a package, and then installs the package.

Since no dependencies are filed with slack's installed rpm utility, the script doesn't work, you've got to do it manually.

From what I remember..

--Shade