Carl-Daniel wrote:
Sorry if this has been answered before, but is winetricks a newer version of winetools?
No. Winetricks (http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks ) is a single 11KB shell script. It's a tiny command line tool that only knows how to install Microsoft redistributable libraries (and fonts), and set a registry key or two. For instance, if you're trying to install or run an application, but it fails with "import_dll Library MSVBVM60.DLL not found", you can fix it with $ winetricks vbrun60 Or if you're trying to install an app, but it fails with "Sorry, this application requires IE6", you can fix it without really installing IE6 by setting the right registry key. Winetricks makes this easy; just do $ winetricks fakeie6 etc. etc. Essentially, Winetricks just automates things one would normally have to look up in the Wine wiki, and it does it in the simplest possible way.
Winetools ( http://www.von-thadden.de/Joachim/WineTools/ ) can do some of that, but it's really a different beast. It's a set of 150 or so files with a fancy GUI. Each of the files is a recipe for installing a particular Windows application. It is aimed at people who just want to run apps and not understand things. It is bad because, instead of working to improve Wine to make apps easy to install, it papers over the problems.
And then there's Wine-Doors ( http://www.wine-doors.org ), which is like Winetools with delusions of grandeur. They seem to want to reinvent apt-get for no particular reason, and as far as I can tell, they intend to have a central server from which you can download copies of e.g. Photoshop with it. This doesn't seem legal, offhand, but I can't find their mailing list archive to see if anyone has asked them about this fine point.
IMHO both Winetools and Wine Doors are mostly harmful, but they do have a real benefit for users. Winetricks is a bit like the non-harmful 1% of Winetools. If we don't provide something like Winetricks, more people might be driven to Winetools, and it'd be nice to prevent that. - Dan