IrfanView: December 2007 Archives

I've been using IrfanView heavily on my Windows box. And yes, I love it more than ever. I've been using it to process screen grabs (I use the Print Screen key to copy the screen image, then I start the new image in IrfanView, paste it in and crop what I need).

And I love the "create custom selection" feature, which I have preconfigured with the exact pixel dimension I need for one of the images I have to cut regularly. First I size down the image to a little bigger than I want it, then I go to "create custom selection" in the menu, and a box the exact size I want it is superimposed on the image. I can then crop right there, or right-click with the mouse to move the box exactly where I want it.

Now that I have Wine on my Ubuntu 7.04 install (yes, IEs4Linux did work), I need to start trying to run IrfanView under Linux. If it works, I will be a very, very happy camper indeed.

Here's the deal. We've got a Mac at home ... and my two Linux-equipped laptops. This Old PC in the Back Room has no Internet connectivity at present. And the university where Ilene teaches changed their online administrative portal from one that works in Firefox to one that ... does not. It requires Internet Explorer, version 5.5 or greater. That even leaves out the last version of IE that Microsoft deigned to produce for Mac's OS X.

I returned to the easiest way to get Internet Explorer (and the Wine tools required to run it and many other Windows apps). That would be IEs4Linux.

By following the Ubuntu-specific instructions, I was able to get wine, cabextract and all the relevant files to install IE 5.5 and IE 6 on my Gutsy setup. Yep, Gusty is still giving me trouble with any package-management program that isn't apt or Aptitude, but since I have those two at my disposal still, I'm sticking with this install for awhile.

Anyway, even though the process involves changing the repositories in /etc/apt/sources.list, then downloading, unpacking and installing from a tarball, it's all laid out. My advice: go to the page and use copy and past to get the exact code into your terminal window.

There are also distro-specific instructions for: Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, Suse, Mandriva and PCLinuxOS.

In short, if you need IE, this works. And you now have Wine, with which you can experiment with other Windows apps on your Linux box. It's trial and error (mostly error) in my limited experience; for heavy duty use of Wine, I recommend Code Weavers, which costs money but is probably well worth it.

As I've previously written, my first "experiment" will be getting IrfanView running under Linux. Sadly, there is nothing -- NOTHING -- on Linux to equal IrfanView when it comes to image editing -- or at least the kind of image editing I do.