About a month ago, I looked into the possibility of a stable yahoo messenger with wine. It was a slow process as I didn't have much spare time to play with. About a week ago, I had a very stable and usable setup with ym8.1 and wanted to get some people who wants ym to join in and try my config. Alas, a few days later, I no longer able to login with ym8.1 even on a windows system. Yahoo has made some changes (I guess it's the protocols) that makes login difficult if not impossible for ym8.
So, I started from scratch and it seems that I have found another config that allows me to use ym9.0 with wine. Almost everything is working except a few stuffs that is not currently supported by wine (most probably) due to core internal stubs.
Stuffs with issues
1. Main Menu bar skinning. Not working (most probably) due to lack of wine internal functions.
2. Alphablending. Also not working due to wine limited support.
Stuffs not tested (yet)
1. webcam
2. chat rooms (it was working in ym8.1. Untested in ym9)
I list here all the necessary steps to have a working ym9 on wine.
Quicksetup for geeks :
1. Install and setup wine
2. Install flash9
3. Setup dll overrides for ym
4. Copy all the required dlls
5. Install and run ym
Detailed setup instructions for lamers (like me) :
1. Install wine. Recent versions will work fine. I'm using wine 1.1.20. Previous version tested to also work was wine 1.1.18.
2. Copy some (useful) fonts to wine folder, ie. Arial, Tahoma, Trebucet, etc.
3. For first time wine setup, run winecfg and setup audio
4. Install flash9 activeX. Use a standalone installer. If you don't know where to get one then ask google. If you're still blurred then get one from oldapps.com/oldversion.com. Don't miss this step as this is REQUIRED for ym.
5. Setup the dll overrides for ym9. Find it in the attached archive below. Either enter them manually or use :
# regedit ym9.reg
6. Get the dlls into windows\system32. You have three choices. One, use winetricks or equivalent to get these dlls. Two, go hunt down your windows CD and copy over the dlls. Three, look through windows updates for the dlls. Full dll list can be found in the attached file.
7. Get a recent version of yahoo messenger 9, ex: ym 9.0.2152. The standalone installer is recommended but the ym9 web installer will also work. Using ym9 web installer will also install flash10 and other stuffs.
8. Open ROX-Filer and look for any .exe in wine (ex: /root/.wine/drive_c/windows/explorer.exe). Right click on it and set run action to 'wine "$@" 2>/dev/null'. This allows you to run any .exe from ROX.
9. Cross all your fingers and click on ym installer.
10. YahooMessenger will run right after installing. Login and say yahoo!
Rgds
Sample screenshots:
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Fullscreen ym main window Fullscreen IMwindow
Q&A
Q1. How to gain access to main menu ?
A1. Click on the desired ym window and press alt key or if you know the menu shortcut then press alt+menu_shortcut (ex: alt+m in main window).
Q2. I get black bar in main window ?
A2. Alphablending not fully working in wine. Set your contacts to compact list.
Q3. I can't move/resize the window ?
A3. Use alt+right_click for jwm and then resize.
Q4. How to display the main menu bar then ?
A4. Ask winehq.org to implement GetMenuBarInfo. I'm lame with C and don't have the luxury (yet) to do this. I've also experimented with the skins but haven't made much progress due to limited time.
Q5. I clicked on one of my contact/friend but no IMwindow appears or only half appears ?
A5. A (wine botched) skinning related issue. Click the window twice on your taskbar to min-max it and it will come out and play nicely.
Q6. How do I close/minimize the IMwindow ?
A6. The (wine botched) skinning makes the hotzones a little off. Move your mouse a little lower to get the min/max/close button highlighted. Using the taskbar also works.
Q7. Are those dlls overrides really necessary ?
A7. Very subjective issue. I use dlls with least dependency with supported functions required by ym9. There's no absolute yes/no here. Anyone is encouraged to find/use dlls after checking its dependency. Wine still has a long way to go in supporting all required windows functions.
Q8. Where can I find these dlls ?
A8. Your windows CD or system ?
Q9. How do I use native browser seamonkey in wine ?
A9. Get the attached natbrowine archive. Put seamonkey.exe in windows folder and add winebrowser.reg to the registry (ie. regedit winebrowser.reg).
Q10. Errr, ym does not run ?
A10. Open a terminal in yahoo! folder and run it manually, ie. wine YahooMessenger.exe .... you'll see where and why it breaks ... That'll keep you entertained ...
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