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I have been running Linux on many of my work machines lately. One gotcha had been that some applications only worked on Windows and hence I had to dual boot - bouncing back and forth from Windows to Linux as the job at hand required. For example, to update my family history files I use the free PAF (Personal Ancestral File) windows program. Recently I decided to try Wine again (the program, not the beverage, nor the loud annoying sound). Ubuntu Linux provides a version of it for free download and it is supposed to be able to run certain windows programs - including PAF. So from my Linux machine I clicked the menu and chose 'Add/Remove (programs)' and with bright hope typed in 'Wine' in the search box for 'All available programs' and voila! it appeared on my list. I checked the box, downloaded and installed it. Cool BTW: This is the program description it gave: "Wine Windows Emulator Microsoft Windows Compatibility Layer (Binary Emulator and Library) While Wine is usually thought of as a Microsoft Windows emulator, the Wine developers would prefer that users thought of Wine as a Windows compatibility layer for Linux. Wine does not require MS Windows, but it can use native system dll files in place of its own if they are available. This package includes a program loader, which allows unmodified Windows binaries to run under compatible hardware. This package also includes the library that implements the Wine project's free version of the Windows API, allowing successful running of programs ported directly from Windows. Version: 0.9.33-0ubuntu1 (wine)" After the Wine utility program had installed, I got myself to a terminal window by clicking menu -> Accessories -> Terminal and typed 'sudo wineboot'. That initialized the wine system for me. Aside: thereafter typing 'winecfg' displayed the wine settings for me as well. Then using my internet browser (Firefox) I downloaded the (free) PAF program from the familysearch.org website. I clicked on 'Order/Download Products' and then on 'Software Downloads'. PAF 5.2.18 is the latest version. Clicked on 'Personal Ancestral File 5.2.18.0 - Multi-Language (9.7 MB)' to download the PAF program to somewhere I can find it again (eg to the desktop, which on my computer is homerdavies). To install it, again from the terminal window, I typed 'wine "H:homerdaviesPAF5EnglishSetup.exe"' and it just magically installed onto my Linux machine. It even added a desktop icon to run the PAF program and a menu item in Wine -> Programs -> FamilySearch -> PAF 5. Wow. So far everything works as expected. One glitch occurred on one machine where I had to change the default fonts back to english using the PAF Tools -> Preferences -> Fonts screen - which all read in Arabic - I forgot to run wineboot first. Otherwise, yay for WINE. On installing later computers, I should point out that after running Winecfg I had to click on 'Drives' and 'autodetect' to have the Linux locations mapped to Windows drive letters. Then in Terminal, running 'sudo wine PAF5EnglishSetup.exe' started up the PAF installation. This will let me set up loaner computers with all free software for my friends at the Family History Library and environs.

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