XtraSimplicity

After quite a bit of searching, I came across this:

http://wiki.winehq.org/winetricks

Thus, I have archived it here.

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Getting winetricks

The script is maintained and hosted by DanKegel at http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks. Right-click on that link and use ‘save as’ to save a fresh copy. Or you can get it from the commandline with the command:

wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks

Also, some winetricks “packages” require the cabextract tool to be installed. The cabextract tool is for extracting Microsoft cabinet files, also called .CAB files. Linux users can usually get it via their distribution’s package management system, or visit http://www.cabextract.org.uk/ to download.

Using winetricks

Once you’ve obtained winetricks you can run it simply by typing sh winetricks at the console. If ran without parameters a winetricks displays a GUI with a list of available packages. If you know the name of the package(s) you wish to install, you can append the name(s) to the winetricks command line and it will immediately start the installation process. For example,

sh winetricks corefonts vcrun6

will install both the corefonts and vcrun6 packages.

Options

This script can help you prepare your system for Windows applications
that mistakenly assume all users' systems have all the needed
redistributable runtime libraries or fonts.
Some options require the Linux 'cabextract' program.

Options:
 -q         quiet.  You must have already agreed to the EULAs.
 -v         verbose
 -V         display Version
Packages:
 art2kmin      MS Access 2000 runtime.  License required!
 colorprofile  Standard RGB color profile
 comctl32      MS common controls 5.80
 comctl32.ocx  MS comctl32.ocx and mscomctl.ocx, comctl32 wrappers for VB6
 controlpad    MS ActiveX Control Pad
 corefonts     MS Arial, Courier, Times fonts
 dcom98        MS DCOM, override the Wine implementation
 dirac0.8      the obsolete Dirac 0.8 directshow filter
 directx9      MS DirectX 9 user redistributable
 divx          divx video codec
 dotnet11      MS .NET 1.1 (requires Windows license)
 dotnet20      MS .NET 2.0 (requires Windows license)
 ffdshow       ffdshow video codecs
 flash         Adobe Flash Player ActiveX and firefox plugins
 fm20          MS Forms 2.0 Object Library
 fontfix       Fix bad fonts which cause crash in some apps (e.g. .net).
 gdiplus       MS gdiplus.dll (from powerpoint viewer)
 gecko         The HTML rendering Engine (Mozilla)
 icodecs       Intel Codecs (Indeo)
 jet40         MS Jet 4.0 Service Pack 8
 liberation    Red Hat Liberation fonts (Sans, Serif, Mono)
 mdac25        MS MDAC 2.5: Microsoft ODBC drivers, etc.
 mdac27        MS MDAC 2.7
 mdac28        MS MDAC 2.8
 mfc40         MS mfc40 (Microsoft Foundation Classes from Visual C++ 4)
 mfc42         MS mfc42 (see vcrun6 below)
 mono20        mono-2.0.1
 msi2          MS Installer 2.0
 mshflxgd      MS Hierarchical Flex Grid Control
 msls31        MS Line Services 3.1 (needed by native riched?)
 msmask        MS Masked Edit Control
 msscript      MS Script Control
 msxml3        MS XML version 3
 msxml4        MS XML version 4
 msxml6        MS XML version 6
 ogg           ogg filters/codecs: flac, theora, speex, vorbis, schroedinger
 ole2          MS 16 bit OLE
 pdh           MS pdh.dll (Performance Data Helper)
 quicktime72   Apple Quicktime 7.2
 riched20      MS riched20 and riched32
 riched30      MS riched30
 tahoma        MS Tahoma font (not part of corefonts)
 urlmon        MS urlmon.dll
 vb3run        MS Visual Basic 3 runtime
 vb4run        MS Visual Basic 4 runtime
 vb5run        MS Visual Basic 5 runtime
 vb6run        MS Visual Basic 6 runtime
 vcrun6        MS Visual C++ 6 sp4 libraries (mfc42, msvcp60, msvcrt)
 vcrun2003     MS Visual C++ 2003 libraries (mfc71,msvcp71,msvcr71)
 vcrun2005     MS Visual C++ 2005 libraries (mfc80,msvcp80,msvcr80)
 vcrun2005sp1  MS Visual C++ 2005 sp1 libraries
 vcrun2008     MS Visual C++ 2008 libraries (mfc90,msvcp90,msvcr90)
 vjrun20       MS Visual J# 2.0 libraries (requires dotnet20)
 wininet       MS wininet.dll (requires Windows license)
 wmp9          MS Windows Media Player 9 (requires Windows license)
 wmp10         MS Windows Media Player 10 (requires Windows license)
 wsh56         MS Windows Scripting Host 5.6
 wsh56js       MS Windows scripting 5.6, jscript only, no cscript
 wsh56vb       MS Windows scripting 5.6, vbscript only, no cscript
 xvid          xvid video codec
Apps:
 autohotkey    Autohotkey (open source gui scripting language)
 firefox3      Firefox Version 3
 ie6           Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0
 kde           KDE for Windows installer
 mpc           Media Player Classic
 vlc           VLC media player
Pseudopackages:
 allfonts      All listed fonts (corefonts, tahoma, liberation)
 allcodecs     All listed codecs (xvid, ffdshow, icodecs)
 fakeie6       Set registry to claim IE6sp1 is installed
 native_mdac   Override odbc32 and odbccp32
 native_oleaut32 Override oleaut32
 nt40          Set windows version to nt40
 win98         Set windows version to Windows 98
 win2k         Set windows version to Windows 2000
 winxp         Set windows version to Windows XP
 vista         Set windows version to Windows Vista
 winver=       Set windows version to default (winxp)
 volnum        Rename drive_c to harddiskvolume0 (needed by some installers)
 
Tip: Winetricks knows about the WINEPREFIX environment variable.  This is useful for using winetricks on other prefixes  For example,

env WINEPREFIX=~/.winetest winetricks mfc40

installs the mfc40 package for the ~/.winetest prefix.

This is archived from:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9013119&pageNumber=1

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March 16, 2007 (Computerworld) — In a world where there’s too much to do — and too little time to do it in — we’re always looking for shortcuts. So when we stumbled upon a blog entry by Kurt Shintaku over on Windows Live Spaces that promised to let us install Vista from a flash drive instead of an optical disc, there was certainly interest.

Why? Well, if we needed to install Vista on only one computer, it would be a case of “Who cares?” However, running down an aisle of 20 or 50 or 100 PCs with a flash drive in hand, pouring out data at 20MB/sec. – 25MB/sec. sure beats doing the same thing with a disc in hand and an optical drive pumping away at 16MB/sec. – 21MB/sec. Sure, it doesn’t sound like much of a speed boost on paper, but when you start multiplying those small transfer rates by the length of each operation and then the number of repetitions, time can fly or it can crawl. The claim for the flash drive was that it soars, as much as 50% faster in some instances (assuming your PC’s BIOS will let you boot from a USB device in the first place).

If that wasn’t bait enough, fast 4GB flash drives aren’t expensive, they can be recycled as Vista ReadyDrives when you’re done, and best of all, the instructions for transferring our Vista disc to flash looked so easy a caveman could …, well you get the picture. There were only 10 steps:

diskpart

select disk 1

clean

create partition primary

select partition 1

active

format fs=fat32

assign

exit

xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\

All right, you’ve just had a panic attack. What the heck are those? They’re command-line instructions. You need to start things off by clicking your way through Start/All Programs/Accessories/Command Prompt. It sets up a DOS (remember that?) command screen. “Diskpart” starts a scripting subroutine that lets you enter line commands (which are the next eight things in the list), after which you exit the subroutine and use xcopy to transfer the contents of the disc to flash. See? Simple.

All right, it would be if it worked, but try as we might — and we did for hours and hours and hours of iterations — it didn’t. We could manually start the install from the flash drive from a computer that was already up and running, but it wouldn’t boot — and that’s important when you’re beginning with a blank PC.

The situation was very surprising because Ken Shintaku “works for Microsoft as a Principal Technology Specialist in Southern California.” Then we noticed that Ken had stripped some of the front-end stuff from a colleague’s blog and, in that way that technicians can often be careless with simple things, he forgot to mention something his colleague did: You need to do this from a Vista PC.

Again there’s a why? Under XP, diskpart doesn’t seem to recognize the flash device as a drive. It will display the device as a volume, but the remaining diskpart commands couldn’t care less about that. Vista, on the other hand, recognizes the flash device as a drive. That’s why we could transfer the contents of the Vista disc under XP, but we couldn’t use the diskpart commands to make it a boot device. Needless to say, our first Vista install was from disc.
And it still didn’t work! You know how it is when you pull a key out of your pocket and it won’t unlock the lock even though you’re positive it’s the correct key. It might be the right key, but if so, it must be the wrong lock. Throwing caution to the wind, we reformatted the flash drive, this time under Vista, and tried again. Still nothing. The diskpart commands weren’t working.

One more time into the breach. Formatted again, we took a look at the screen and saw that Vista recognized the drive as H: when there was no G: drive. It had skipped a letter. That shouldn’t be a big thing. Diskpart commands work with disk numbers, not letters, and they’re assigned consecutively irrespective of the letter assignment. Still, just in case, we took a quick trip into the Control Panel’s Disk Administrative Tools application and changed the drive letter to G:.

Suddenly the skies cleared, the waters parted, and the commands worked flawlessly (almost — Vista automatically reassigned the drive to H: after the “assign” command, and we needed to used that designation when we executed xcopy). The flash drive booted, Vista was installed, and, yes, it was faster than disc. Oh happy day!

But you’re not quite done yet. Although the diskpart commands are very straightforward, they’re also quite generic as shown. Let’s take a last look at the list:

diskpart	starts the “diskpart” scripting subroutine
select disk 1	focus all subsequent commands on a particular disk
clean	clean all configuration information from the disk
create partition primary	create a partition (of type)
select partition 1	move the focus to the partition just created
active	mark the partition as an active boot partition
format fs=fat32	format the partition with a fat32 file system
assign	assign a drive letter to the disk
exit	exit diskpart
xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\	copy all files and directories from one device to another

After you’ve run the DOS command prompt screen and entered the diskpart command, you need to focus the rest of the subroutine commands on the disk you’re about to work with by selecting it. It will probably not be “1″ as shown. In fact, if you use the command as is, you’ll destroy the contents of drive 1, whatever it might be.

To find out where your flash drive resides in the hierarchy, use the “list disk” command. (If you type “help” at the diskpart prompt you’ll see a list of all available commands.) It will display each disk on your computer with its corresponding number. In our case, our Corsair Readout flash drive was shown as “3″ so our select command was actually “select disk 3.” From that point on, any command we issued within diskpart was used on disk 3 without needing to mention it specifically again.

The xcopy command is also device-specific. Our optical drive was actually F: and, as mentioned, the flash drive was H:. (After you exit diskpart and before you use xcopy, you can check with Vista to see what your drive assignments are. The DOS command prompt window will just cycle out of sight as you do, but you can select it again to bring it to the top). Our xcopy command, therefore, looked like this:

xcopy f:\*.* /s/e/f h:\

(If you’re DOS savvy, you’ve probably realized that the /s and /e switches are contradictory. /s copies directories and subdirectories, but not empty ones, while /e copies directories and subdirectories, including empty ones. It didn’t seem to cause a problem, so we let it be. The /f switch displays the full source and destination file names while copying is going on, and a file called install.wim, the actual installation image itself, will seem to take forever to get from disc to flash. Don’t get anxious. Just sweat it out).

When xcopy has completed transferring files, close the command prompt window. That’s it. You’re done. You can boot from the flash drive and do all your installations from there. Now you just have to figure out what you’ll be doing with your free time… (And should you want to use your flash drive as a ReadyDrive when all your installs are completed, you’ll have to reformat it so it’s blank and, once connected to your Vista computer, right-click its icon and set it to work as one from its Properties box).

Hello,

I was wondering how to get the fancy transparent panels and windows in Ubuntu. I eventually found out how to do it, so have written it below
Note: Clicking the images will take you to a bigger copy of the picture

1. If you haven’t already got it installed, download compiz settings manager:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

2. Open Terminal and then type:

ccsm

3. Then click “Opacity, brightness and saturation”

4. Then, under Window specific settings, click new, and type:

dock

and set its value to

70

5. Do the same for popupmenu, dropdownmenu, and tooltip.

So that it looks like this: