RutSum

Installing Apple Safari On Linux (PCLinuxOS)

Apple released a new version of Safari, 3.1, about a week ago. After reading this article on Ars Technia, about the amazing improvement Safari has made over the Beta version it released last year, I really wanted to put my hands on this browser. But people who know me also know that I use only PCLinuxOS as my main operating system, and do not like the idea of booting into Windows XP for trying out a new browser. Though my previous attempts had failed at installing this browser on Linux, I was determined to get through this time, at any cost.

The first step of the installation, was obviously, getting a Windows environment ready (Safari is only for Windows and Mac OS X) to install the application. I did this by installing WINE (short for WINdows Emulator a recursive acronym for Wine Is Not an Emulator), which is included in the PCLinuxOS repositories by default.

$ sudo apt-get install wine

WINE can also be downloaded from the official download website, which offers different binary packages for various operating systems.

After installing WINE, the first thing to do is run winecfg from a terminal or by pressing Alt+F2. In the Wine configuration dialog box, go to the ‘Applications’ tab, and change the ‘Default Settings’ operating system to Windows XP instead of the default Windows 2000.

Now, you have to download the SafariSetup.exe package, i.e. the Safari installation file. You can download it from here.

Now if you just run this setup file using wine, you’ll get an error, related to a core dump or bad archive or “unable to decompress archive” or “corrupt file”. This is because Microsoft fonts are required for the Safari installation, and until the installer doesn’t find it, it doesn’t launch.

To install the Microsoft fonts, you need to install a package that contains the TrueType fonts, which would be found in the non-free section in your repositories. In PCLinuxOS, the package is called webcore-fonts.

$ sudo apt-get install webcore-fonts

These fonts are installed in the directory /usr/share/fonts/webcore. These fonts have now been installed for your Linux system, and will be used if demanded by applications. To get these fonts in WINE, you’ll have to copy them into your WINE fonts directory. You can do this by -

$ cp /usr/share/fonts/webcore/* ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/fonts

Now WINE is ready for installation. To install, just open the setup file using wine.

$ wine ~/Downloads/SafariSetup.exe

This will launch the installer. The installation is same as in Windows, just that you have to remember to uncheck the ”Install Bonjour for Windows” and “Automatically update Safari and other Apple Software.” after accepting the terms and conditions. If you forget to uncheck these, Safari may not run properly. Click on ‘Install’, and that’s it, you’re done!

Here’s a screenshot of Safari in PCLinuxOS with the default WINE settings.

As you will notice, the menu bar is a bit jammed and the close, minimise and maximise buttons are missing. All this is because of an option in the WINE configuration which uses your default Linux window manager with all the WINE appilcations.

To change this, open up winecfg again. In the ‘Graphics’ tab, uncheck the option that says “Allow the window manager to control the windows”. This should make the windows independent of your window manager. A side-effect of this is that the browser will not minimise to your taskbar anymore, it will just become a small icon on the bottom left corner of your desktop. Moreover, as it isn’t a part of your environment anymore, it always stays on top of all applications, and doesn’t even appear in Alt+Tab operations. I DO NOT recommend that you do this until you are an absolute Safari freak and cannot stand seeing Safari without a title bar.

Now that the Safari installation is over, we need to install Flash. To do that, first download Flash for Windows, from the official website. Next, install it just like you installed Safari, run it using wine.

$ wine ~/Downloads/install_flash_player.exe

You will have to close Safari before continuing with the installation, the Flash installer will ask you to do so.

Finally, you have a perfectly working installation of Safari on your Linux installation. Now enjoy!

P.S. - I am currently playing around with Safari on Linux, and will post my experiences with it soon. Keep checking for updates.

If you liked this post, or found it useful, don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feeds. Or you can get my posts delivered to your inbox directly, by subscribing to my feeds by email. Or maybe you'd like to know what we are doing, by looking at our Jaiku badges. But I don't think you would be dumb enough to waste your time and have a look at what randomness I post on Twitter.