How to run dos [ent.exe] and [fp8.exe] on Ubuntu?

Question

This old chestnut again!

I'm trying to run Fourmilab's ent.exe and a file compression tool called fp8.exe. These are both DOS command line utilities that I have successfully run on Windows 7. I can't run them properly under Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS.

I have Wine installed and it works with other Windows' stuff. So I click on either fp8 or ent. They both execute and a black terminal window opens. The two packages take command line arguments, and I can see that they are effectively executing without the arguments. I just see the help page for fp8, and a (for simplicity) black screen for ent.

So I fire up DOSBOX, and try to execute them from there. Both programs report "This program cannon be run in DOS mode." Well yes it can, as it does so on Windows, and they run non argumented under Wine. As here:-

How can I run them interactively on a command line so that I can supply various arguments to them? I want to run:-

ent {this file}

ent -b {that file}

fp8 -8 {another}

and so on...

I looked at this similar question, but it was unanswered.

are you sure they are opening with wine, not something else? right click the .exe and select "open with >> wine". If wine gives an error then be sure to move compatibility to DOS via wine configuration — Edgy1, Sep 17 '16 at 00:18
That's a Win32 executable (see their website), so it won't run in dosbox. — chaskes, Sep 17 '16 at 00:23
@chaskes No, it run perfectly in Windows terminal as I've been running it for 2 years prior to ditching Windows. — Paul Uszak, Sep 17 '16 at 00:30
A windows terminal program is not the same as a dos program. — chaskes, Sep 17 '16 at 00:30
@JamesTobin Pretty certain it's running in Wine. Please see edit. — Paul Uszak, Sep 17 '16 at 00:31
@chaskes sorry for getting mixed up and pinging wrong person — Edgy1, Sep 17 '16 at 00:32
@JamesTobin Yes James, I open it via "Open With Wine Windows Program" by right clicking it. On my machine .exe is associated with Wine /Windows anyway so simply double clicking also works. — Paul Uszak, Sep 17 '16 at 00:41
@PaulUszak By the way, it is easy to get `ent` to run natively in Linux without using Wine at all. Where did you get `fp8.exe` from? — edwinksl, Sep 17 '16 at 00:42
@edwinksl from Fourmilab's website, http://www.fourmilab.ch/random — Paul Uszak, Sep 17 '16 at 00:45

Thomas Ward · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-17T15:01:49.517

3

The way would be to specify the full path to the executable and prepending wine before it. Basically using file paths like this with the wine program, on the Terminal / command line:

wine /path/to/executable.exe [argument argument ...] PATH_TO_FILE_TO_USE

Note that not all CLI programs for Windows will correctly run in Wine - Wine may be a compatibility layer but there are many things which will not run under Wine.

This isn't really that hard. The three example commands from above but with Wine formatting and such:

wine /path/to/ent.exe /path/to/{this file}

wine /path/to/ent.exe -b /path/to/{that file}

wine /path/to/fp8.exe -8 /path/to/{another}

edited Sep 17 '16 at 15:01

answered Sep 17 '16 at 00:20

Thomas Ward

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Yes, this works already. But how do I get to supply interactive arguments to them? Is there a way through Wine that arguments can be passed? Is there no way to just fire up ent.exe on a command line and then interact with it? Is this not possible on Linux? – Paul Uszak Sep 17 '16 at 00:44
What do you mean by interactive arguments? the application needs to be written in such a way to prompt and if not then it doesn't have that functionality. Note that since we don't have these executables we can't attest to whether it could or couldn't work, but Wine is not DOS, and doesn't support all the same functionality that Windows would support. – Thomas Ward Sep 17 '16 at 00:45
With reference to my screen grab, how do I enter all the -8 , compress, decompress and filename stuff that you can see on the help page. – Paul Uszak Sep 17 '16 at 00:48
@PaulUszak The same way you would run the command on Windows, just add `wine` before the entire command. It's the same as executing the command on Windows, providing the arguments in the correct location after the path to the executable. – Thomas Ward Sep 17 '16 at 02:56
Duh. I didn't know that Wine ran on the command line. – Paul Uszak Sep 17 '16 at 13:14

How to run dos [ent.exe] and [fp8.exe] on Ubuntu?

1 Answers1