<SOLVED> Wine, playonlinux or not worth the hassle?

[mintyer]

Firstly thanks for this, I'm a proud newbie owner of a dual boot win7 and mint mate v19.3 for 4 days now. I've already hosed my system once and had to reinstall - but I'm learning rapidly. I am truly delighted to say that just about everything worked right out of the box for me, all my hardware - even bluetooth and hdmi - work without any configuring or other fuss. Apart from my newbie mistake trying to install ubuntu v19.x apps!!! and a little problem with graphics solved by my first update, everything has gone remarkably well...so far. So truly thanks for all the hard work and providing this for free etc.
My question:
I have one app from windows that I would really like to run on mint if possible. It allows me to manage podcasts and music on older ipods (classics) and androids without need of the horrid itunes. This link https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager. ... n&iId=5519 says version 4.1.21 of my app will work in wine 3.16 staging and gets a "gold" rating, which sounds somewhat promising. I did some searching and found some recommendations for playonlinux which allows one to run apps in various versions of wine. So I installed playonlinux following this guide https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PlayOnLinux, which seemed to work but then when I ran it I got some of errors about missing packages/ dependencies and wine not found.
So then I tried installing wine hoping that would solve it, following this guide https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu but I got a malformed address error or something like that, when I tried to add the ppa - sorry I should have noted all the errors. I then found this guide https://www.tolgabagci.com/en/install-playonlinux/ and tried adding the packages recommended there but I still got the same errors when trying to run playonlinux. So then I got scared I would break something so I reverted back to a snapshot prior to all this and rebooted and thankfully everything seems ok.
I did some more searching and found some differing information on this forum, this one appears to recommend playonlinux viewtopic.php?t=272631 and this one has some good sounding advice for installing POL viewtopic.php?f=47&t=301029&p=1680586&h ... r#p1680586 but this one seems to say that POL is not worth the effort viewtopic.php?t=301056.
So I wonder if anyone has any advice if I should continue trying to install POL and wine and if so how should I do it? Or would I be better off trying to find a linux native app that will do what I want it to - download podcasts, load them on an ipod etc.
If I can somehow perform this task on mint then I think I can truly ditch win7 forever. Otherwise I can always keep my dual boot and use win7 for this task its not a huge issue. It would be great to totally leave windows behind, at least on my home machine.
regards,
M

[racer-x]

My advise? Scrap it! Run Windows in a VM, or continue your dual-boot ritual. I run a VM just for a couple of programs I like. I can make them run under wine (been there, done that), but that would be a bad idea.

[gittiest personITW]

I would think if it is only 1 app you need, it should be easy to find some alternatives you can try out.
google "alternatives to ............."

Try them out, if you like them scrap windows. If you don't, remove them and try another. If you exhaust all the alternatives, then either dual boot or VM sounds the way to go.
WINE will list on their website all the software that runs and to what degree and I'm sure POL also does somewhere - just in case.

[kc1di]

Playonlinux works well with some programs. But you do need to install wine on the system first
Do not follow the WineHQ method as it does not work well on Mint. Instead go to synaptic and install "wine-installer" it will pull all the libs etc you need.
Then run POL and install your program. You can then select the version of wine you want POL to use for your program.
Other than that as has been suggested try to find an alternate linux program that does what you want. Or run windows in a VM or dual boot.

I have one program for which I've never found a sub in linux - Which runs fine in a Virtualbox install of win 7. Good luck.

[Hoser Rob]

The FIRST thing you should know is that handling/syncing/etc iPod/iPhones in Linux is a real bucket of worms. I.e. Apple Linux support is woeful and any solution that works is likely to break after updating at some point.

And running a WIndows program that you like for managing iPods via WIne/POL, assuming it even runs, isn't going to fix that at all. The problem isn't at the app software level. If synching iPods is so important to you, keep the dual boot setup. Perswonally I think Linux beginners are too quick to yank all their Windows. I don't have any but kept it around for years.

Actually, WIne (and POL etc are all WIne underneath) is rubbish,l a stupoid hack that usually fails. ANything rated less than Gold on the WIne app database is not going to work properly.

[pbear]

I tried PlayOnLinux a few times and it never worked for me. Won't help you either if your Windows app isn't in their database. All it is, after all, is a collection of installation scripts. The actual work is being done by Wine.

As for installing Wine, you seem to have found every method except the easy one, which is cleverly hidden in the Mint Release Notes:

Wine 4.0

To install the stable version of WINE from WineHQ, open a terminal and type:

apt install --install-recommends wine-installer

Among other things, this will install wine-desktop-files, which adds menu entries for regedit, your C:\ drive and other items which are missing from upstream WINE.

You can also follow the instructions from WineHQ, install either the stable, staging or devel version of WINE and make sure to have wine-desktop-files installed.

After installation, you need to run Winecfg, which is an app on the Menu which sets up your virtual C: drive, among other things.

[mintyer]

Awesome thanks for all the great advice. Ipod support is important to me as I do a lot of driving and touchscreens are too difficult to operate while driving. I'll have a think about what to do and update here if/ when I do more testing or find a good alternative etc.

[mintyer]

First app I tried https://alternativeto.net/software/clementine/ works!! I downloaded a podcast, plugged in my ipod, it connected, I transferred the podcast and it played perfectly.
Unfortunately it doesnt transfer the podcast into the podcasts folder on the ipod, and there doesnt seem to be any way to tag the track to get it in the right folder. Also it seems a tad buggy, it crashed the first time I tried to delete the podcast from the ipod. But I started it up again and it deleted it no problem.

[mintyer]

Rhythmbox is working quite well, I downloaded a pcast from about 20 diff feeds, all worked perfectly except for one feed which has jpg images along with mp3s, RB downloads the jpg but not the mp3 for some reason. No clue why this feed is different I'll look into it more later. All the pcasts (mp3) that were downloaded all copied into the podcast folder on the ipod perfectly. So I get the blue dot that tells me if I have listened to it yet or not. Exactly what I wanted. The downside is if I try to delete any pcasts on the ipod RB crashes...so close.
Also tried gpodder, which didnt work, apparently is has no ipod support since ages.

[mintyer]

Rhythmbox is still failing to download mp3s from one of my feeds, its a wordpress feed with jpg files and mp3s. RB downloads the jpg but not the mp3. Seems like it would be relatively easy to fix...
I have a total of 24 feeds and RB can download mp3s from all other feeds...except tonight it got halfway thru one download and then failed (for unknown reason) and then it wouldnt re-download the episode - removed and re-added the feed, restarted RB but it wouldnt re-download the episode. I could listen/ download the episode using my browser. So then I found the half downloaded mp3 file and deleted it but RB wouldnt re-download until I restarted RB, but then it failed again...Seems like not very well written error handling.
So given the bugginess of RB and the lack of a way to delete pcasts from my ipod on Mint it looks like I am going to have to keep my win7 dual boot...such a shame.
I'll update this if I come across any other suitable apps to test on mint, but I'm gonna call this solved now - solution is there is no viable solution on linux, I have to keep my dual boot.

[Second Round]

So given the bugginess of RB and the lack of a way to delete pcasts from my ipod on Mint it looks like I am going to have to keep my win7 dual boot...such a shame.
I'll update this if I come across any other suitable apps to test on mint, but I'm gonna call this solved now - solution is there is no viable solution on linux, I have to keep my dual boot.

I'm in a similar boat. Almost 20 podcasts, just set up Linux Mint dual boot with W7, trying to minimize W7 use. I had Mediamonkey working like a well-oiled machine to update my podcasts and sync to my MP3 player (a Sansa Clip Jam, but I've had an ipod shuffle too) for use in the car or elsewhere away from the computer. So far my frustration has been with the tendency of gpodder and other programs to download all episodes of a podcast, or 100+ of them; I'm having a hard time finding an easy way to limit it to just the most recent 1 or 2 episodes. My ideal would be to go from that, and then just have a rolling library of the last 1-2 episodes per podcast, updated on the computer and MP3 player with a click.

I did install Wine as part of my initial LM setup. I had 2 use-cases in mind for Wine, one a longshot (Epson Scan), but the other (Mediamonkey) had some promise - others have reported success. I indeed install mediamonkey and did get it to start getting an episode feed for a couple different podcasts. However, they would not play; the episodes ones in black font would, after a bit of time, turn grey and "disappear" - even though the MP3 was on the computer. I could not get it to work, and uninstalled Wine (that wasn't easy either - had to go to command line to do it, even though that's not how it was installed).

Not that a dual boot is the end of the world but I would rather make a clean break if possible, esp. for podcasts, since I update those daily and rebooting to get into W7 is a bit of a hassle.

[racer-x]

Run a Win7 VM instead. It's a better option than a dual-boot in my opinion. I run a Win10 VM for a couple of must have apps. Once you've set up USB access, you're good to go.

[mintyer]

Run a Win7 VM instead. It's a better option than a dual-boot in my opinion. I run a Win10 VM for a couple of must have apps. Once you've set up USB access, you're good to go.

Thanks for the responses - yes I have been thinking I will give a VM a go, but I'm having other issues with mint, for example I cant get a simple ftp server to work. Its very frustrating trying to find information and troubleshoot. And the man pages appear to be written in a language foreign to me. I'm not sure if I want to invest a lot of time into the VM unless I am more sure I will stick with mint. Plus I'm not sure if I need a windows license to get the VM to work correctly? I'm not keen to invest money into a VM given the dual boot works just fine. I still have my email etc on win7, and wont migrate that (its several GB in size) unless I know I can get rid of win7 for good.
If I do try a VM I will update with my results here.

[Second Round]

Thanks for the responses - yes I have been thinking I will give a VM a go, but I'm having other issues with mint, for example I cant get a simple ftp server to work. Its very frustrating trying to find information and troubleshoot. And the man pages appear to be written in a language foreign to me. I'm not sure if I want to invest a lot of time into the VM unless I am more sure I will stick with mint. Plus I'm not sure if I need a windows license to get the VM to work correctly? I'm not keen to invest money into a VM given the dual boot works just fine. I still have my email etc on win7, and wont migrate that (its several GB in size) unless I know I can get rid of win7 for good.
If I do try a VM I will update with my results here.

I'm new to all this but I think that VirtualBox is free for private non-commercial use. And possibly you could use your existing windows license for the install on the VM (but IDK).

Not sure VM is the way to go for me; I don't have a ton of RAM to spare, and the W7 OS might be pretty insecure (and I'd be using internet connections on it). So I'm going to try to live wholly within Mint, at least, eventually. It may require me to learn to write some scripts, but that's a good generalizable skill anyway.

What email program do you have on your windows machine? I just left Thunderbird, which is technically portable but I don't have high hopes. Last time I moved machines (or OS) I was able to import my old email folders to Thunderbird ... but they were never included in search. Perhaps because they were from a different profile, IDK. Never figured it out. It was hardly better than leaving it all behind. My new email client, Claws, seems to put each email in a separate text file, so that should be easily portable and searchable, should the need arise. Wish I had gone to it earlier.

[Pierre]

interestingly, that MediaMonkey is well rated in ./wine
https://www.codeweavers.com/compatibili ... ediamonkey
that's with the later version, as well.