wine-user.pdf feedback - wine-devel

2 Mar 2005


      I think I have the answer why feedback to the wine-user.pdf has so far
been disappointing: It's too well written. No questions to ask, almost.
Actually, probably 90% of users try to get by without reading it. I saw
a posting somwhere today, someone advising someone else about running
the wine install, without mentioning uninstalling any old versions. The
blind leading the blind. You need to put a big README!!!.TXT file
somewhere, where it should say: "You choose: Spend 1 day reading
wine-user.pdf, and another day setting it up; or spend a week trying to
set it up, a month asking questions at the forums, a year in depression,
then finally a day reading wine-user.pdf, and another day setting it
up." But probably, the lucky 10% who read it never have any questions,
so you don't hear from them.
In my case, though, combining a high IQ and being a complete helpless
newbie to Linux, is a powerful combination that produces questions out
of nowhere. In the chapter about installing and un-installing, one small
detail got left out: "How does one KNOW whether wine is installed, and
if so what version it is?" I'm sure it must sound like typical newbie
crap questions to you, but to me it's a solid and tangible one. Well, I
do know that I do have wine installed, because when I installed Fedora
Core 2, I said "install everything". Besides, I tried..
 "wine /mnt/C/windows/notepad.exe" and it worked!!!! :-)  :-)  :-)
But as for the version of wine I have, I have no idea how to find out.
In Windows, I'd check the Add/remove programs, to see if it mentions the
version, or I'd look in the installation folder for a readme.txt file.
In Linux, not so easy: Even after doing a file search for "wine", I
still can't tell what folder it is installed in, if indeed it is
installed in ONE folder, and not many. Looks like many, by the looks of
it... Or at least two: One under /usr/local, which only contains two
files, another for documentation, elsewhere, and I saw a folder
somewhere with alotof.dll.so files.
Anyways, thank you for the great work you've done and are doing. Some
day Historians will remember you like today we remember Leonardo, or
whoever: How Humanity rid itself of a great monopoli threat. As newbie
as I am in Linux, I'm the expert here at work. If I can get our Windows
apps to run on Linux, I might succeed at having the company switch over.
Wish me luck.