Using Bottles, How to best troubleshoot and customize a Bottle when an installer doesn't work?

[seaforthcastle]

Hi I am using Bottles (the flatpack) for some older Windows applications I have and I have to say it works really well. I’m running things that I mainly just want to be able to open old files I have. I should probably report some feedback somewhere on these. I have a question though and maybe someone can point me in the right direction.

I have some older Serif applications, PagePlus X6, X7, and X8, as well as DrawPlus X8, and WebPlus X5. I looked up PagePlus support for WINE and I didn’t find a lot of information about these applications other than that they do not seem to work. I plan to do all new work in Scribus, finding alternatives to windows software, but it would be nice to be able to access old PagePlus files on occasion.

I was thinking about digging a little deeper with regard to the installation within Bottles. I tried the installers for PagePlus for example and was partially rewarded as the installers started but eventually exited with Serif’s installer reporting but without decent information. I was wondering though how to go about troubleshooting a failed installation in Bottles, if there was a list of errors reported so that I could try to learn what the issues were and resolve them.

If anyone has recommendations as to where to read up on this that would be great!

Many thanks!

Greg

[soundofthunder]

There are often converter packs available for many of these older applications, though I’m afraid you will need to do your own leg work, as is said.

You might scour the Adobe, Apple, Corel, Microsoft and Serif sites as they may have them available to download (usually free). There are sometimes similar packs for LibreOffice, which might be another avenue to pursue, possibly negating the need to run the actual programs through virtualisation.

As you can imagine there isn’t a great call for this; I’m unable to point you to specific resources – but others might have a confirmed link or three to offer.

I’ll chime in again if I discover anything useful.

Regards.

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[seaforthcastle]

Thanks for the reply I’ll start my research and see what I can learn. It might prove not to be practical. I was quite encouraged by my experience with Bottles for some older applications I have. I guess the more simple they are the better.

I plan to do any new work in Scribus, Inkscape, GIMP, and Krita so it is really a matter of just moving on. Proprietary file formats are always an issue. If I really had to I could just try a virtual machine or boot into Windows 10 to access Serif’s software. It’s basically just old work of mine I would only occasionally need to access.

Thanks for the information and I’ve got some reading to do. Thank you!

Greg

[soundofthunder]

@seaforthcastle

@seaforthcastle

I plan to do any new work in Scribus, Inkscape, GIMP, and Krita

Consider also KDE’s Digikam (it’s standalone) and XnView MP / AUR.

sudo pacman -S digikam

pamac build xnviewmp

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This topic has been closed due to inactivity, so there’s no need to reply.

Regards.