Comment 21 for bug 84958

@jhansonxi

"Since I'm entirely responsible for the current *.desktop files which dictate where the menu entries landed I think it would help to show my rationale for the placement."

Well, I compliment you for that effort. Some of these links are handy. Unfortunately you forgot one of the most important links: a wine-boot entry!

"But I have found it to be rather critical for migrating my customers over to Linux, especially since most of them are Windows gamers. They can barely handle installing apps on Windows so any additional difficulty (like terminals) isn't going to improve the transition."

For me, this has nothing to do with ideology. I too find it critical to be able to run a windows app in a linux-environemt. I don't want the windows support to take over my default desktop enviroment though.

"I view Wine as an application platform. To me its no different than Mono or Java. "

Since when do Mono or Java install their default file-browser, minesweeper game or registry editor? They don't.
I completely agree with the analogy. I just wish that wine would be more _like_ that. Instead it acts like a desktop-enviroment. But even installing a kde app, doesn't create links to kde-control-center, konqueror and kate by default. That would be insane. Why is it more sane when wine acts like that?

"an icon to remind everyone that it's the "evil" section"

Again, its not about idealogy. Its about wanting to run windows apps, without installing a windows-like desktop envirnoment on top on my gnome-desktop. Also, the requests about icon's have to do with the fact that they currently have no icons. If anything, i would prefer more task-specific icons, rather than just a wine bottle. But any icon is better than no icon. But using the default registry-editor icon for the wine-registry and such seems logical to me. Feel free to go that way!

"want to find their games and they don't care about the underlying system. This is why I set the Wine app categories the way they are."

Ehm, when I install steam.exe on wine, it doesn't go into the games menu. When I install photoshop it doesn't go into the graphics menu. They go into the wine-menu. So there already is a wine-menu. Its just the crap i didn't _choose_ to install (wine minesweeper, wine notepad, wine file browser, etc.) that is spread all over the place. The desktop-environment-like stuff that comes with the support. We want wine-support (including configuration and administraiton, we do not want wine-desktop-environment, with its own filebrowser, games and text-editor)

"I'm all for improving the user experience and I'm not picky as to the exact method of doing it. Fixing Wine File so it's more usable or adding a Windows-like view of the .wine/drive_c to the default file managers both seem like good solutions to me."

Using the ugly wine-file manager makes as much sense as using konqueror to open files that I want to launch with a kde app. None. Nautilus is the default file-manager on gnome, konqueror on KDE. Users don't need to learn different file-managers just because they want to use a mono, java or wine app.

Not even going into the weird situation where somebody tries to open a linux application with the wine-file-manager. It won't work. They get all confused. "By i assigned XMMS to Mp3's .. yet this file-manager tries to open them in windows-media-player." And for the record: nautilus is way more like explorer (esspecially vista's explorer) than wine file-browser is.

I agree that users should be able to easily access their wine c-drive. This is important. But the nautilus bookmarks are THEIRS. Why not just symlink to it, from the home-folder of the user?

That is the correct way. One file-manager, easy access to c-drive. If users go there very often, they are free to create a nautilus/places bookmark like they already do with other popular folders. This does not require terminal or anything. All users create and manager their own bookmarks. Its very intuitive for them.

Just make sure they can _find_ drive-c. Which is why i say: symlink it from the home-folder.

"Maybe the solution is to have the menu entires in a different package with a "recommend" for them on the Wine package."

No we want some menu-entries and we want them in a specific place. Either all wine links should go into the correct category (including custom installed stuff!), or they should all go into the wine menu.

And there shouldn't be links to minesweeper, nor notepad, nor the filebrowser. The configuration tool and the registry editor should still have links though! But not spread around the system. This will confuse users when there already exists a wine menu. This will be the first place they look.

Putting everything in one menu communicates "this administration tools deal with these programs and not with the rest of the system". It has got nothing to do with marking evil sofware as evil.

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Here is my proposol:
  - create a symlink (ln -s "~/WINE Drive" ".wine/drive_c" )
  - remove wine-minesweeper, wine notepad, wine file-browser .deskop files (or put them on hidden by default)
  - move wine registry editor and configuration to Applications -> Wine menu
  - add a wineboot entry to that menu as well
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Thank you for your patience and your efforts. I do hope i've argumented my case clearly and politely this time ;-)