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  • How to use Wine, How to get Gecko to install and work

    From George at Clug@21:1/5 to All on Sun Jun 30 02:20:01 2024
    Hi,


    Does anyone know of really simple but comprehensive instructions on
    how to use and configure Wine, that you can send me links to?


    Does anyone know how to solve the below issue:


    $ wine iexplore
    Could not find Wine Gecko. HTML rendering will be disabled. 010c:err:mshtml:create_document_object Failed to init Gecko, returning CLASS_E_CLASSNOTAVAILABLE



    (Of course in iexplore the web page "https://www.winehq.org/" is
    blank)



    This is just one of many examples of how really don't know how to
    configure Wine once it has been installed, and I have run "wine
    winecfg".


    I have found many people reporting this issue on the Internet, but
    never an answer that resolves the issue for me.



    $ wget
    https://dl.winehq.org/wine/wine-mono/8.0.0/wine-mono-8.0.0-x86.msi
    $ wget
    https://dl.winehq.org/wine/wine-gecko/2.47.4/wine-gecko-2.47.4-x86.msi
    $ wget https://dl.winehq.org/wine/wine-gecko/2.47.4/wine-gecko-2.47.4-x86_64.msi

    $ wine msiexec /i wine-mono-8.0.0-x86.msi  
    $ wine msiexec /i wine-gecko-2.47.4-x86.msi
    $ wine msiexec /i wine-gecko-2.47.4-x864.msi



    $ wine uninstaller --list
    {F220C345-2975-4A47-8686-3F2C41F773B7}|||Wine Gecko (32-bit) {AA28AA7D-CA50-44EB-AF34-7F99E4662CF1}|||Wine Gecko (64-bit) {55B609D4-ABF3-52AF-8723-C81E75B86D50}|||Wine Mono Runtime {9F22663D-4E4B-5B49-A04C-22EDFD519AC5}|||Wine Mono Windows Support



    $ wine iexplore

    Could not find Wine Gecko. HTML rendering will be disabled. 010c:err:mshtml:create_document_object Failed to init Gecko, returning CLASS_E_CLASSNOTAVAILABLE






    George.

    <html>
    <head>
    <style type="text/css">
    body,p,td,div,span{
    font-size:13px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    };
    body p{
    margin:0px;
    }
    </style>
    </head>
    <body><div>Hi,</div><div><br></div><div>Does anyone know of really simple but comprehensive instructions on how to use and configure Wine, that you can send me links to?</div><div><br></div><div>Does anyone know how to solve the below issue:</div><div><
    </div><div><span style="font-family:monospace"><span style="color:#000000;background-color:#ffffff;"> $ wine iexplore
    </span><br>Could not find Wine Gecko. HTML rendering will be disabled. <br>010c:err:mshtml:create_document_object Failed to init Gecko, returning CLASS_E_CLASSNOTAVAILABLE<br>
    </span></div><div><div><br></div><div>(Of course in iexplore the web page "https://www.winehq.org/" is blank)<br></div><div><br></div><div>This is just one of many examples of how really don't know how to configure Wine once it has been installed, and I
    have run "wine winecfg".</div><div><br></div><div>I have found many people reporting this issue on the Internet, but never an answer that resolves the issue for me.<br></div><div><br></div><div>$ wget https://dl.winehq.org/wine/wine-mono/8.0.0/wine-mono-
    8.0.0-x86.msi<br>$ wget https://dl.winehq.org/wine/wine-gecko/2.47.4/wine-gecko-2.47.4-x86.msi<br>$ wget https://dl.winehq.org/wine/wine-gecko/2.47.4/wine-gecko-2.47.4-x86_64.msi<br></div><div><span style="font-family:monospace"><span style="color:#
    000000;background-color:#ffffff;">$ wine msiexec /i wine-mono-8.0.0-x86.msi &nbsp;</span><br>$ wine msiexec /i wine-gecko-2.47.4-x86.msi
    <br>$ wine msiexec /i wine-gecko-2.47.4-x864.msi<br></span></div><div><br></div><div><span style="font-family:monospace"><span style="color:#000000;background-color:#ffffff;">$ wine uninstaller --list
    </span><br>{F220C345-2975-4A47-8686-3F2C41F773B7}|||Wine Gecko (32-bit) <br>{AA28AA7D-CA50-44EB-AF34-7F99E4662CF1}|||Wine Gecko (64-bit) <br>{55B609D4-ABF3-52AF-8723-C81E75B86D50}|||Wine Mono Runtime <br>{9F22663D-4E4B-5B49-A04C-22EDFD519AC5}|||Wine Mono Windows Support<br> </span></div><div><span style="font-family:monospace"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:monospace">$ wine iexplore<br></span></div><div><span style="font-family:monospace">Could not find Wine Gecko. HTML rendering will be disabled.
    <br>010c:err:mshtml:create_document_object Failed to init Gecko, returning CLASS_E_CLASSNOTAVAILABLE<br>
    </span><div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></div><div>George.<br></div><div><br></div><span style="font-family:monospace"><span style="color:#000000;background-color:#ffffff;"> </span></span></div></body></html>

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  • From George at Clug@21:1/5 to All on Mon Jul 1 01:30:01 2024
    Richard,

    Thanks for your reply.

    On Sunday, 30-06-2024 at 17:11 Richard wrote:
    Depends on what you are trying to do.

    I am trying to understand how to use Wine so that I can install various Windows programs and have them work.

    With the knowledge I would like to help others who are even less technical than myself, as some people have their favourite Windows program they still want to run.

    For example, I understand that you can test your Wine installation by using iexplore, but this fails to display the page. I see it useful to resolve this issue at this point before trying to install two other actual programs which I would like to install
    but also have blank pages where there is supposed to be text.

    I have not found useful documentation that can get me over the "Could not find Wine Gecko", "Failed to init Gecko" error messages.

    $ wine iexplore
    Could not find Wine Gecko. HTML rendering will be disabled. 010c:err:mshtml:create_document_object Failed to init Gecko, returning CLASS_E_CLASSNOTAVAILABLE

    Another issue I would like to resolve, is it possible to get a rpc service running?. This service is not showing in Task Manager. I assume it is actually possible, but I do know know how and have not succeeded.

    err:ole:start_rpcss Failed to open RpcSs service

    https://www.coretechnologies.com/blog/windows-services/rpcss/

    Maybe some of these OLE messages are related to the RPC service?

    074c:err:mscoree:CLRRuntimeInfo_GetRuntimeDirectory error reading registry key for installroot
    074c:err:ole:apartment_getclassobject DllGetClassObject returned error 0x80040111 for dll L"C:\\windows\\system32\\msimtf.dll"
    074c:err:ole:com_get_class_object no class object {c1ee01f2-b3b6-4a6a-9ddd-e988c088ec82} could be created for context 0x401
    074c:err:ole:apartment_getclassobject DllGetClassObject returned error 0x80040111 for dll L"C:\\windows\\system32\\msimtf.dll"
    074c:err:ole:com_get_class_object no class object {c1ee01f2-b3b6-4a6a-9ddd-e988c088ec82} could be created for context 0x401
    0330:err:rpc:I_RpcReceive we got fault packet with status 0xc004f012 0330:err:rpc:I_RpcReceive we got fault packet with status 0xc004f012 0330:err:rpc:I_RpcReceive we got fault packet with status 0xc004f012

    But in my experience, if you don't
    need to do some heavy work to maybe get something to work,

    Now you have a point there. To be honest, there was only one Windows program I personally wanted to run, and it is non-essential anyway (and it works in Wine without changing the Wine installation).

    PlayOnLinux is running one of the programs I have been testing with, but my thoughts is that if PlayOnLinux can, then so should Wine. I just want to know how to use Wine.


    take a look at
    Bottles [1].

    Mostly I only install software that is available in the Debian or Arch repositories, and I cannot find Bottles in the Debian Repository. I do not use snaps or flatpacks. Maybe I should but I don't.
    Hopefully one day, Bottles will mature to the point it can go through the Debian packaging system. I appreciate Debian's packaging systems.


    It's kinda a GUI for Wine and Proton and seems to have some
    tricks up its sleeves. So take a look at it, maybe it can do everything you are trying to do.

    Best
    Richard

    [1]: https://usebottles.com/

    On Sun, Jun 30, 2024, 06:33 George at Clug <[email protected]> wrote:

    Hi,

    Does anyone know of really simple but comprehensive instructions on how to use and configure Wine, that you can send me links to?

    [...]


    George.




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  • From George at Clug@21:1/5 to All on Mon Jul 1 08:40:01 2024
    On Monday, 01-07-2024 at 15:48 didier gaumet wrote:
    Le 01/07/2024 à 01:24, George at Clug a écrit :
    [...]
    I have not found useful documentation that can get me over the "Could not find Wine Gecko", "Failed to init Gecko" error messages.
    [...]

    Hello,

    disclaimer: I have not used Wine in ages, so I cannot be of real help

    Note, you could tell what Debian distro you are using (12 Bookworm?) and

    Yes, Debian 12, Bookworm. (current stable)

    if you have enabled multiarch support in it.

    yes.

    # dpkg --add-architecture i386 && apt update


    the Debian wiki page about Wine is here:
    https://wiki.debian.org/Wine
    it states that for whatever reason "Windows software may require Mono
    for .NET, and Gecko for any HTML rendering. Debian has disabled these by default and do not provide packages.":
    Windows software may require Mono for .NET, and Gecko for any HTML rendering. Debian has disabled these by default and do not provide
    packages.

    I am now wondering what "is intentionally disabled" might actually mean. I am hoping that it means that Debian's wine will not automatically install Gecko/Mono, and not mean that even if you go ahead and manually install these packages they will not be
    used. But the effect seems to be the later.


    The WineHQ page about Gecko is here:
    https://wiki.winehq.org/Gecko

    Two posts about solving Wine/Gecko problems on Debian Bookworm: https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=154513 https://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?t=38245

    "...this year, running debian 12.2 "bookworm" on the same laptop and using the wine 8.0 delivered with "bookworm" I have been unable to get a working iexplore..."

    "Consider using a sandboxer such as firejail to sandbox wine, such a configuration is outside the scope of this guide. "

    "https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/firejail" - "Firejail is a SUID security sandbox program that reduces the risk of security breaches by restricting the running environment of untrusted applications using Linux namespaces and seccomp-bpf. It allows a
    process and all its descendants to have their own private view of the globally shared kernel resources, such as the network stack, process table, mount table. "

    Implementing Firejail sounds like a good project for later on.

    "You may wish to keep all your games in the same wine prefix, or have each game in its separate wine prefix. If you are using a traditional desktop environment, Wine will create .desktop files that remember the wineprefix for you. "

    Interesting links. And the same issue as I am having. I think I found these while searching for solutions. Sadly "$winetricks ie8" left me with a non=working iexplore.

    As far as I know, I have:

    "I created ~/.cache/wine and put the wine-gecko 2.47.3 msi there: " And added mono too.
    "apt install fonts-wine ttf-mscorefonts-installer"

    At one time I believe I also installed directly from WineHQ repository too, but after not much success, relating to 'no idea what I am doing' as far as setting up an environment for Windows programs, I reverted back to just using Debian's packages.

    https://wiki.winehq.org/Debian

    Well I might as well keep testing and trying... if I have any success, I will post back. Thanks for your comments, it gives me hope to keep working on this.

    George.




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  • From George at Clug@21:1/5 to All on Mon Jul 1 11:20:01 2024
    On Monday, 01-07-2024 at 18:37 Richard wrote:
    This has nothing to do with maturity.

    Thanks for picking that point up. I was not sure how to explain my reasoning. I will try to give a better explanation.

    As a general rule I am willing to accept RPMs, pacman ?? packages, and .debs, when they are from the Distribution's own package libraries, or hardware vendor supported, as otherwise I don't know the people providing the package. I have this strange
    belief that when a developer supplies a package to the Distribution owner for inclusion in their libraries, the Distribution owner does some level of verification/validation that the package plays nicely with the distribution and other applications.
    Maybe even some security checking?

    I wonder if anyone agrees with me, or not?



    Only with the existence of someone
    willing to maintain it - and its dependencies if needed. They don't publish it as anything else than a Flatpak as that's by far the easiest way to make sure it works for everyone, and thus they don't officially support any
    other packaging frameworks. And since they don't just support Wine but also Proton, and games benefit a lot from the latest drivers and libraries, so packaging it for more conservative distros would entirely defeat at least half of its purpose. And I guess Flatpaks isolation from the rest of the system can be helpful in other ways too.

    There seems to be way too many methods of packaging these days.

    I also think there are way too many distributions of Linux too, but if people have the time, I should not rail against them. I prefer to stay with as close to the original source distribution as possible, though I have yet to apply this to compiling from
    Gentoo Linux.

    At one time in my IT career I was involved with package management and installation of software in a corporate environment and still suffer some level of PTSD over a few applications that were problematic. There are times when I definitely would have to
    agree with you "I guess Flatpaks isolation from the rest of the system can be helpful in other ways too", both in terms of security and stability.


    So either learn to accept other packaging formats or learn to live with the fact that you may miss out on a lot if you don't invest a lot of time figuring out how to compile the software by hand.

    You are correct, my choice does cause me to live without software that does not supported in Debian's package library. Though I do make a few exceptions.

    I base my decision on a strange notion that Debian packaged software gives a better level of Security, which is likely misguided, but that has been my choice so far.

    I reserve the right to change my decision whenever it suites me, as I am about to try WineHQ's version of Wine. ; )

    Thanks for your reply and for making me explain my current reasoning in a (hopefully) better way.

    George.


    Am Mo., 1. Juli 2024 um 06:13 Uhr schrieb George at Clug < [email protected]>:

    Mostly I only install software that is available in the Debian or Arch repositories, and I cannot find Bottles in the Debian Repository. I do not use snaps or flatpacks. Maybe I should but I don't.
    Hopefully one day, Bottles will mature to the point it can go through the Debian packaging system. I appreciate Debian's packaging systems.



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  • From Stefan Monnier@21:1/5 to All on Mon Jul 1 16:50:01 2024
    As a general rule I am willing to accept RPMs, pacman ?? packages, and
    .debs, when they are from the Distribution's own package libraries, or hardware vendor supported, as otherwise I don't know the people providing
    the package. I have this strange belief that when a developer supplies
    a package to the Distribution owner for inclusion in their libraries, the Distribution owner does some level of verification/validation that the package plays nicely with the distribution and other applications. Maybe
    even some security checking?

    I'm with you, here. AFAIK Debian packaging does not in and of itself
    come with any sort of "security checking", tho. So, if there are
    security benefits (personally, I do believe there are) they are mostly
    indirect result of the packaging process, e.g. in the presence of extra
    eyes, or in the need to investigate the details of the licensing, or the
    need to follow the rules about where files are placed, or in the
    avoidance of vendoring, or in the "slow" pace of stable releases, ...

    For that same reason, I try to stay away from things like Snap/Flatpak
    which seem to be a way to skip all that "process" and run effectively black-boxes, thereby preventing you access to the usual transparency
    benefits of Free Software.

    It's been a long time since I last used Wine (FWIW, it was to run the
    Windows version of Emacs, to try and reproduce a bug locally 🙂), but
    IIUC the software you intend to run via Wine will probably be what I'd
    usually describe as "proprietary crap" a.k.a black boxes, so it seems to
    be one of the cases where the use of Snap/Flatpak should not make things
    much worse.


    Stefan

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  • From [email protected]@21:1/5 to Stefan Monnier on Mon Jul 1 18:40:01 2024
    On Mon, Jul 01, 2024 at 10:45:39AM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
    As a general rule I am willing to accept RPMs, pacman ?? packages, and .debs, when they are from the Distribution's own package libraries, or hardware vendor supported, as otherwise I don't know the people providing the package. I have this strange belief that when a developer supplies
    a package to the Distribution owner for inclusion in their libraries, the Distribution owner does some level of verification/validation that the package plays nicely with the distribution and other applications. Maybe even some security checking?

    I'm with you, here. AFAIK Debian packaging does not in and of itself
    come with any sort of "security checking", tho. So, if there are
    security benefits (personally, I do believe there are) they are mostly indirect result of the packaging process, e.g. in the presence of extra
    eyes, or in the need to investigate the details of the licensing, or the
    need to follow the rules about where files are placed, or in the
    avoidance of vendoring, or in the "slow" pace of stable releases, ...

    I think there is a bit more to it. Imagine now you have 30 flatpaks,
    everyone bringing in its own snowflake version of... uh... libxz [1],
    say, and suddenly there is a backdoor. Sixteen of the startups providing
    the flatpaks have gone bust or were bought up by $BIGCORP.

    Now, what.

    For that same reason, I try to stay away from things like Snap/Flatpak
    which seem to be a way to skip all that "process" and run effectively black-boxes, thereby preventing you access to the usual transparency
    benefits of Free Software.

    That would be my approach too. Of course, $VENDOR offering the thing as
    a .deb is no guarantee either. I know of one which comes with two complete copies of PostgreSQL server, because... why not. So I try to stick to distro-native packages as far as possible.

    But hey. Everyone's entitled to ruin their health howewer they like :)

    Cheers

    [1] Just a random example, of course. And the person who discovered
    that backdoor happens to be Debian maintainer, but hey.
    --
    t

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  • From George at Clug@21:1/5 to All on Mon Jul 1 21:00:01 2024
    To all who replied, Thanks.

    Sadly after further testing I still have very little success with Wine.

    When I installed WineHQ's Wine Installation, Gecko and Mono were able to be installed. I noticed a rpcss.exe (from memory) in Taskmgr. This at least allowed me to display the initial web page in Wine's Iexplore. But sadly it did not help me in
    successfully installing the current Windows versions of Firefox or Chrome, or other programs I was having challenges with.

    I also tried PlayOnLinux without any success.

    The "Time vs ROI" for this endeavour suggests to me, that for now, I should just use Linux native programs.

    Regards,

    George.



    On Monday, 01-07-2024 at 15:48 didier gaumet wrote:
    Le 01/07/2024 à 01:24, George at Clug a écrit :
    [...]
    I have not found useful documentation that can get me over the "Could not find Wine Gecko", "Failed to init Gecko" error messages.
    [...]

    Hello,

    disclaimer: I have not used Wine in ages, so I cannot be of real help

    Note, you could tell what Debian distro you are using (12 Bookworm?) and
    if you have enabled multiarch support in it.

    the Debian wiki page about Wine is here:
    https://wiki.debian.org/Wine
    it states that for whatever reason "Windows software may require Mono
    for .NET, and Gecko for any HTML rendering. Debian has disabled these by default and do not provide packages.":
    Windows software may require Mono for .NET, and Gecko for any HTML rendering. Debian has disabled these by default and do not provide
    packages.

    The WineHQ page about Gecko is here:
    https://wiki.winehq.org/Gecko

    Two posts about solving Wine/Gecko problems on Debian Bookworm: https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=154513 https://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?t=38245



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  • From George at Clug@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jul 2 03:00:01 2024
    Thanks for your reply Jeff,

    On Tuesday, 02-07-2024 at 10:16 Jeffrey Walton wrote:
    On Mon, Jul 1, 2024 at 6:33 PM George at Clug <[email protected]> wrote:

    To all who replied, Thanks.

    Sadly after further testing I still have very little success with Wine.

    When I installed WineHQ's Wine Installation, Gecko and Mono were able to be installed. I noticed a rpcss.exe (from memory) in Taskmgr. This at least allowed me to display the initial web page in Wine's Iexplore. But sadly it did not help me in
    successfully installing the current Windows versions of Firefox or Chrome, or other programs I was having challenges with.

    I also tried PlayOnLinux [for installing Firefox or Chrome] without any success.

    The "Time vs ROI" for this endeavour suggests to me, that for now, I should just use Linux native programs.

    I think this is probably wandering off-topic, but I'll toss it out there...

    When in Rome, do as the Romans do. That means you run Windows programs
    on WIndows VMs, and Linux programs on Linux VMs. Don't try to use Wine
    to run Windows programs on Linux; and don't try to use a POSIX
    subsystem to run Linux programs on WIndows. Mixing and matching is not
    worth the aggravation.

    I had hopes using Wine was easier than I have found it to be. Your comment above has merit.

    There has been so many versions of Windows over the years, so many different programs with specific DLL and API needs. In part, I understand the challenge of having a system emulate another OS.

    I ran dual boot for a time, and I still have one Windows 10 PC for running games but have not used it for some time now, like you suggested, I only run programs that can run on Linux, if they don't run in Linux, I do not use them.

    Others I know would still like to run some particular Windows program.


    You never stated what problem you are trying to solve.

    I wanted to know "how to configure and use Wine to run a Windows program". No specific programs in mind, but MS Office could be an example. I also used Windows versions of Scite, Putty, WinSCP as test examples, only because they are smaller programs and
    I am familiar with using the programs in a Windows environment.

    As Mario pointed, one example would be to have a modern web browser with DRM.

    Many games are only released as Windows programs. Fortunately Steam has achieved amazing results for running Windows games in Linux.

    At this stage I am only testing the concept, to see what is possible, what works, and what does not work. To see what I need to understand so I can configure Wine for any given Windows application.

    I'm guessing
    there's a native Linux replacement for it so you don't need to wine
    and iexplore.

    Iexplore I was referring to, is a program that comes with Wine, for the purposes of testing that your Wine installation has some level of basic working configuration for running Windows programs.


    Jeff


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