1. Update the package lists

   Open a terminal window and fetch the latest information about available updates from the remote repositories:

   sudo apt update

2. List packages with available updates

   List every installed package that has a newer version ready to install:

   apt list --upgradable

3. Simulate the update (optional)

   Perform a dry run to see exactly which packages will be upgraded or installed without making any actual system changes:

   sudo apt upgrade -s

4. Apply the updates

   Upgrade all available packages to their latest versions:

   sudo apt upgrade

   To automatically perform distribution upgrades that may add or remove dependencies to complete the update, use sudo apt dist-upgrade or sudo apt full-upgrade instead.

[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu] permanent link

1. Mount the SMB Share on Your Host OS

   Open a terminal window Mount the Windows network share to a local directory on your machine using cifs-utils.

   sudo mkdir -p /mnt/WINSHARE
   sudo mount -t cifs //IP_OR_HOSTNAME/SHARE_NAME /mnt/winshare -o username=USERNAME
   

   Subsitute the name you wish to use for the mount point for WINSHARE, the IP address or hostname for IP_OR_HOSTNAME, the name of the share on the remote computer for SHARE_NAME, and the relevant username for USERNAME. E.g.:

   alice@Wonderland:~$ sudo mkdir -p /mnt/borras_public
   [sudo: authenticate] Password:               
   ailce@Wonderland:~$ sudo mount -t cifs //borras/public /mnt/borras_public -o username=alice
   Password for alice@//borras/public: 
   alice@Wonderland:~$
   

   Verify access by checking if the files appear:

   ls /mnt/winshare

2. Open Wine Configuration

   Launch the Wine configuration utility from the terminal window.

   winecfg

   (If using a specific prefix, issue the command WINEPREFIX=/path/to/prefix winecfg, instead).

3. Add a New Drive Letter

   Select the Drives tab at the top of the winecfg window.

   • Click the Add... button at the bottom.
   • Select an available drive letter (e.g. Z:) from the drop-down menu and click OK.
4. Link the Drive to the Mount Point

   With your new drive letter selected in the list:

   • Locate the Target: input field near the bottom.
   • Enter the path where you mounted the share (e.g., /mnt/winshare) or click Browse... to select it.
   • (Optional) Click Show Advanced and set the drive Type to Network drive.
5. Apply and Test

   To verify the mapping was successful, open Wine's file manager:

   wine winefile

   Your mapped drive letter should now be visible and accessible under My Computer.

[/os/unix/linux/wine] permanent link

You can share a folder on an Ubuntu Linux system with Windows systems using Server Message Block (SMB) by installing Samba, a free and open-source software package. If Samba isn't installed, you can install it as a Debian package with the following commands:

You can verify that the Samba service is running with the command sudo systemctl status smbd; you should see "active (running)".

alice@Wonderland:~$ sudo systemctl status smbd
● smbd.service - Samba SMB Daemon
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/smbd.service; enabled; preset: ena>
     Active: active (running) since Sat 2026-09-12 17:09:53 EDT; 4min 16s ago
 Invocation: 4c72abe09deb445d91cb063be76afc0b
       Docs: man:smbd(8)
             man:samba(7)
             man:smb.conf(5)
   Main PID: 540371 (smbd)
     Status: "smbd: ready to serve connections..."
      Tasks: 3 (limit: 151234)
     Memory: 10M (peak: 11.1M)
        CPU: 161ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/smbd.service
             ├─540371 /usr/sbin/smbd --foreground --no-process-group
             ├─540388 "smbd: notifyd" .
             └─540389 "smbd: cleanupd "

Sep 12 17:09:52 Wonderland systemd[1]: Starting smbd.service - Samba SMB Daemon...
Sep 12 17:09:53 Wonderland update-apparmor-samba-profile[540361]: grep: /etc/appa>
Sep 12 17:09:53 Wonderland update-apparmor-samba-profile[540367]: diff: /etc/appa>
Sep 12 17:09:53 Wonderland systemd[1]: Started smbd.service - Samba SMB Daemon.
alice@Wonderland:~$

Once Samba is installed, you will need to edit the Samba configuration file, smb.conf, to define the shared folder.

[ More Info ]

[/os/unix/linux/network/samba] permanent link

You can view the drive letter mappings used by a Wine prefix from a command-line interface (CLI) on a Linux system by opening a terminal window and entering the command ls -l ~/wineprefix/dosdevices/ where wineprefix is the relevant Wine prefix. E.g., ls -l ~/.wine-collectorz/dosdevices/, if the Wine prefix is .wine-collectorz. I can limit the output to just drive mappings with ls -l ~/.wine-collectorz/dosdevices | grep "[a-z]:" | grep -E '/dev/|/run/media', which pipes the output of the ls through two grep commands. The first looks for lines that have a drive letter, i.e., one of the lowercase letters a through z followed by a colon, e.g., c:, while the second then looks for those lines that have either "/dev/" or "/run/media" in them.

alice@Wonderland:~$ ls -l ~/.wine-collectorz/dosdevices | grep "[a-z]:" | grep -E '/dev/|/run/media'
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  8 May  4 16:29 d:: -> /dev/sdc
lrwxrwxrwx+1 alice alice  8 May  4 16:29 e:: -> /dev/sr0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  8 May  4 16:29 f:: -> /dev/sdd
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  8 May  4 16:29 g:: -> /dev/sde
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  8 May  4 16:29 h:: -> /dev/sdf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  9 May  4 16:29 i:: -> /dev/sdi1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  8 May  4 16:29 j:: -> /dev/sdg
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  8 May  4 16:29 k:: -> /dev/sdh
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  9 May  4 16:29 l:: -> /dev/sdg1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  8 May  4 16:29 m:: -> /dev/sdi
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice 43 Aug 26 17:47 n: -> /run/media/alice/MS 3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  9 May  4 16:29 n:: -> /dev/sdg2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  8 May  4 16:29 o:: -> /dev/sdj
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice 47 Sep  3 19:49 p: -> /run/media/alice/Nifler
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  9 May  4 16:29 p:: -> /dev/sde1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  9 May  4 16:29 q:: -> /dev/sde2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  9 May  4 16:29 r:: -> /dev/sdc1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice 43 Jun 27 11:29 s: -> /run/media/alice/MS 2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  9 May  4 16:29 s:: -> /dev/sdc2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  9 May  4 16:29 t:: -> /dev/sdj1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  9 May  4 16:29 u:: -> /dev/sdh1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  9 May  4 16:29 v:: -> /dev/sdh2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice 48 Aug 26 17:47 w: -> /run/media/alice/Willow
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  9 May  4 16:29 w:: -> /dev/sdf1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  9 May  4 16:29 x:: -> /dev/sdd1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice 43 Jun 27 11:29 y: -> /run/media/alice/MS 1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 alice alice  9 May  4 16:29 y:: -> /dev/sdd2
alice@Wonderland:~$ 

I can use the lsblk -o name,mountpoint,label,size to see the connection between the device designations and the labels on drives.

alice@Wonderland:~$ lsblk -o name,mountpoint,label,size
NAME                        MOUNTPOINT                         LABEL        SIZE
loop0                       /snap/canonical-livepatch/406                  13.5M
loop1                                                                     201.3M
loop2                       /snap/celluloid/322                            21.9M
loop3                       /snap/cups/1238                                47.9M
loop4                       /snap/bare/5                                      4K
loop5                       /snap/chromium-ffmpeg/112                       8.3M
<text snipped>
sda                                                                          20T
├─sda1                                                                       16M
└─sda2                      /run/media/alice MS 4          20T
sdb                                                                        29.3G
└─sdb1                      /run/media/alice             29.3G
sdc                                                                        14.6T
├─sdc1                                                                      499M
├─sdc2                                                                      128M
├─sdc3                      /run/media/alice Windows     14.5T
└─sdc4                                                         Recovery    74.5G
sdd                                                                          20T
├─sdd1                                                                       16M
└─sdd2                      /run/media/alice MS Working    20T
sde                                                                        14.6T
└─sde1                      /run/media/alice Nifler      14.6T
sdf                                                                         4.5T
└─sdf1                      /run/media/alice Oak          4.5T
sdg                                                                        18.2T
├─sdg1                                                         EFI          200M
└─sdg2                      /run/media/alice MS 3        18.2T
sdh                                                                        25.5T
├─sdh1                                                         EFI          200M
└─sdh2                                                         MS 2        25.5T
sdi                                                                        25.5T
├─sdi1                                                         EFI          200M
└─sdi2                      /run/media/alice MS 1        25.5T
sdk                                                                        18.2T
├─sdk1                                                         EFI          200M
└─sdk2                      /run/media/alice YouTube     18.2T
sr0                                                                         4.1G
nvme0n1                                                                     1.8T
├─nvme0n1p1                 /boot/efi                                         1G
├─nvme0n1p2                 /boot                                             2G
└─nvme0n1p3                                                                 1.8T
  └─dm_crypt-0                                                              1.8T
    └─ubuntu--vg-ubuntu--lv /                                               1.8T
alice@Wonderland:~$

You can use the Wine Configuration Tool for a graphical user interface (GUI) view of drive mappings by using a command like WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.wine-collectorz winecfg.

alice@Wonderland:~$ WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.wine-collectorz winecfg
alice@Wonderland:~$

References:

1. How do I list Wine drive letter mappings?
   By: Rovanion
   Date: February 27, 2023
   Stack Exchange - Unix & Linux

Related

1. Creating and using a Wine prefix on an Ubuntu Linux system
   Date: July 31, 2026

[/os/unix/linux/wine] permanent link

You can check specific keys with reg query commands like the ones below, where the Wine prefix is .wine-collectorz, which show the version of Movie Collector, the location of the currently specified database, and the location where backups will be stored.

alice@Wonderland:~$ WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.wine-collectorz wine reg query "HKCU\Software\Collectorz.com\Movie\Version info" /v Version

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Collectorz.com\Movie\Version info
    Version    REG_SZ    23.3.5

alice@Wonderland:~$ WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.wine-collectorz wine reg query "HKCU\Software\Collectorz.com\Movie\Databases" /v CurrentDatabase

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Collectorz.com\Movie\Databases
    CurrentDatabase    REG_SZ    T:\Movie Collector\Movies.mvc

alice@Wonderland:~$ WINEPREFIX=$HOME/.wine-collectorz wine reg query "HKCU\Software\Collectorz.com\Movie\Folders" /v Backup

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Collectorz.com\Movie\Folders
    Backup    REG_SZ    I:\Movie Collector\Backup\

alice@Wonderland:~$ 

References:

1. Collectorz.com® Movie Collector for Windows - Getting Started
   Collectorz.com

Related:

1. Creating and using a Wine prefix on an Ubuntu Linux system
   Date: July 31, 2026
2. Windows Reg Query Command
   Date: October 1, 2016

[/os/unix/linux/wine] permanent link

To create a symbolic link (symlink), aka soft link, on a Linux system, you can use the ln command with the -s option, i.e., ln -s, followed by the target file path and the name you wish to use for the symbolic link. The -s option specifies that the link should be "soft" or symbolic (omitting this creates a hard link). You can view existing symlinks with the ls command with the -l option and then piping the output through the grep command with the -l or --long option to obtain more detailed information. Since the permission string for files or directories will begin with the letter "l", you can limit the output with ls -l | grep "^l". E.g.:

alice@Wonderland@Serenity:~/Documents$ ln -s ~/Pictures/Phone/PXL_20260715_202210365.jpg erin.jpg
alice@Wonderland@Serenity:~/Documents$ ls -l | grep "^l"
lrwxrwxrwx  1 alice@Wonderland domain users@ad.moonwillowwoods.com        75 Aug 14 15:03 erin.jpg -> /home/alice@Wonderland/Pictures/Phone/PXL_20260715_202210365.jpg
alice@Wonderland:~/Documents$

You can link an entire directory with a symlink. E.g., you could point a local logs folder to a folder elsewhere on the system, even one on another drive. E.g., ln -s /var/log/app_logs ./logs.

If you wish to find all of the symlinks in the current directory and all its subdirectories, you can use the command find . -type l. The -type l flag instructs the find command to look just for links. To see the full, absolute path of where a specific link points you can use the readlink command, e.g., readlink -f filename where filename is the name of the symlink. E.g.:

alice@Wonderland:~/Documents$ readlink -f erin.jpg
/home/alice@Wonderland/Pictures/Phone/PXL_20260715_202210365.jpg
alice@Wonderland:~/Documents$ 

You can remove a symlink with the unlink command followed by the symlink name.

alice@Wonderland@Serenity:~/Documents$ unlink erin.jpg
alice@Wonderland:~/Documents$ 

You could also use the rm command. E.g., if you created a symlink named shortcut.txt, you could remove that shortcut with rm shortcut.txt. Never add a trailing slash (/) when removing a directory symlink, or you risk deleting the contents inside the actual target directory.

[/os/unix/linux] permanent link

The Advanced Diary journaling/diary program from CSoftLab stores its license information in the Windows registry at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary. When you install the software, you will have a 30-day trial period and the LicenseCode and LicenseName keys will not have any values set. You can see the values using the Microsoft Windows registry editor regedit.exe.

If you need to view the license information, you can navigate to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary key in the registry using the registry editor or you can open a command prompt window and issue the following reg query commands.

C:\>reg query "HKCU\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary" /v LicenseName

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary
    LicenseName    REG_SZ    John Doe


C:\Users\Lisa>reg query "HKCU\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary" /v LicenseCode

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary
    LicenseCode    REG_SZ    VN37-H79K-28ZZ-XMMUMM9XX9


C:\>

You can extract the information from the registry by right-clicking on the Advanced Diary entry in the registry and choosing Export and then saving the information to a .reg registry file. That will save all of the registry information for Advanced Diary. You can then delete all but the lines that are like the ones below, if you only need the license entries in the registry.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CSoftLab\Advanced Diary]
"LicenseName"="John Doe"
"LicenseCode"="VN37-H79K-28ZZ-XMMUMM9XX9"

You can then import the registry entries after installing Advanced Diary on another system. You can import them by opening the registry editor and choosing Registry and then Import Registry File.

Note: if you are transferring the registry keys to an installation of Advanced Diary running under Wine on a Linux system, you can run the registry editor provided by Wine by opening a terminal window and then setting the WINEPREFIX environment variable equal to whatever Wine prefix you have set, if you are using one other than the .wine one, and then running wine regedit. E.g.:

$ export WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine-advdiary"
$ wine regedit

If you have saved the registry values to a .reg file, e.g. file.reg, and want to import the values from that file from a command-line interface (CLI), open a command prompt window as an administrator and run reg import "C:\path\to\file.reg". Alternatively, use regedit /s "C:\path\to\file.reg" to import the file silently without a confirmation prompt. To import the registry values from a Windows system into the registry for an instance of Advanced Diary 9.0 running in a Wine prefix named .wine-advdiary on an Ubuntu Linux system, I used the commands below in a terminal window to import a .reg file named AdvancedDiary_LicenseInfo.reg.

$ export WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine-advdiary"$ wine regedit /s "$HOME/Documents/AdvancedDiary_LicenseInfo.reg"
$

After doing so, when I clicked on Help and chose About Advanced Diary, I saw it was registered.

Related articles:

1. Obtaining a command prompt in Windows 11
   Date: August 14, 2023
2. Windows Reg Query Command
   Date: October 1, 2026
3. Checking Microsoft Windows proxy server settings
   Date: January 7, 2015
4. Installing Advanced Diary on a Linux system with Wine
   Date: February 24, 2026
5. Access violation when installing Advanced Diary 9.0 with Wine on a Linux system
   Date: August 4, 2026
6. Advanced Diary Active Database and Backup Registry Values
   Date: July 18, 2026

[/os/unix/linux/wine/AdvDiary] permanent link

I needed to install the Advanced Diary diary/journaling program from CSoftLab on an Ubuntu Unix system. The application is developed only for Microsoft Windows, so to get it to work on an Ubuntu Linux system I used Wine, which is free and open-source software that allows one to run applications developed for the Microsoft Windows operating system (OS) on Linux systems. I started the installation from a terminal window after creating and initializing a Wine prefix for it. But when I clicked on Install, I saw the message "Invalid operation in GDI+ (Code: 2)". When I canceled the installation and closed the window associated with it, I saw an error window stating "The setup files are corrupted. Please obtain a new copy of the program." I had encountered the same "Invalid operation in GDI+ (Code: 2)" problem many months ago (the setup file wasn't actually corrupted, so I could ignore that message) when I installed a previous version of Advanced Diary, version 8.0, on another system using Wine — see Installing Advanced Diary on a Linux system with Wine — and remembered that I had used a shell script then to install additional software for Wine that would alleviate that problem. I needed Winetricks installed, so I verified I had already installed it on this system with the which command (you can install it with sudo apt install winetricks, if it is not installed). I used winetricks to install gdiplus and core fonts for Windows applications. That resolved the problem with the "Invalid operation in GDI+ (Code: 2)", but then I saw a "Access violation at address 75D947DC in module 'qcap.dll'. Read of address 5F505353" message every time I started Advanced Diary.

[ More Info ]

[/os/unix/linux/wine/AdvDiary] permanent link

A Wine prefix is a directory that acts like a separate Windows installation. Each prefix has its own registry, installed programs, libraries, and configuration, providing a way to isolate applications and configure Wine in a way that is optimal for a particular Windows application or set of applications without affecting other Windows applications that you need to run on the system. To create a new Wine prefix, take the following steps:

Create a new Wine prefix

1. Choose a location for the new prefix. For example:

   export WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine-myapp"

2. Initialize the prefix:

   WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.wine-myapp" wineboot

   Wine will create the directory and initialize a fresh Windows environment.

[ More Info ]

[/os/unix/linux/wine] permanent link

To install Discord on an Ubuntu Linux system, you can install it as a Snap package through Ubuntu's App Center.

At the install screen, I saw the message below:

Snaps are confined, as such Discord may be unable to perform some of the tasks it typically does when unconfined. This may result in the system log getting spammed with apparmor errors. Granting access to the system-observe interface when in the snap will enable the features, and thus reduce the logging.

snap connect discord:system-observe

AppArmor is a Linux kernel security module that provides system administrators the capability to restrict the access programs have to the system on which they run.

[ More Info ]

[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu] permanent link