Ubuntu – How to connect Picasa 3.9 to the online account

To install Picasa 3.9

1) Install wine and winetricks:
sudo apt-get install wine winetricks

2) Download Picasa 3.9 from google:
cd ~/ && wget http://dl.google.com/picasa/picasa39-setup.exe

3) Install Picasa with wine:

wine ~/picasa39-setup.exe  

To fix login

Now you have Picasa 3.9 installed but there is a problem if you want to login to Google to upload some pictures, so to fix it do this:

4) Install Internet Explorer 6:
env WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.tmp winetricks ie6

You will have to click "Next" and "Accept" in a few windows:

5) Copy the installation into wine folder:
cp -r ~/.tmp/* ~/.wine/

6) Done! Now just open Picasa as any other program:

Open Dash and search for Picasa. Click at the top right corner to login:

Notes:
I) With this method each user will have to run the steps 2 to 5 to get Picasa fully working into his/her user folder. Or ask for he/she to run this once at terminal:

 cd ~/ && wget http://dl.google.com/picasa/picasa39-setup.exe && wine ~/picasa39-setup.exe && env WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.tmp winetricks ie6 && cp -r ~/.tmp/* ~/.wine/    

II) If you are feeling lazy, just paste this at terminal and all the steps above will be done for you (as a user specific installation):

 sudo apt-get install wine winetricks && cd ~/ && wget http://dl.google.com/picasa/picasa39-setup.exe && wine ~/picasa39-setup.exe && env WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=~/.tmp winetricks ie6 && cp -r ~/.tmp/* ~/.wine/  

III) After the step 5, the file "picasa39-setup.exe" can be deleted:
rm ~/picasa39-setup.exe

And also the folder "~/.tmp":
rm ~/.tmp

IV) To uninstall everything:

sudo apt-get remove --purge wine ; sudo apt-get remove --purge winetricks ; sudo apt-get autoremove ; sudo rm /usr/share/applications/Picasa3.desktop ; rm ~/picasa39-setup.exe ; rm -r ~/.tmp ; rm -r ~/.wine ; rm -r ~/.local/share/applications/wine* ; sed -i '/wine/d' ~/.local/share/applications/mimeinfo.cache

Recent Picasa version (maybe also thew older ones, not 100% sure) are using the Quicktime codecs to handle .mov files. That means that if you do not have the plugin installed in your system Picasa wont be able to do anything to those.

Because Ubuntu comes with support for .mov files via GStreamer but that does not mean Wine will take advantage of what Ubuntu can do. They are separate systems.

That means you need to install some sort of codec support to be able to play .mov files inside your Wine system that includes Picasa. For that I recommend to try either any Windows plugin pack that has .mov files or a lite Quicktime alternative (the standard player wont install).

For a plugin pack with .mov support I can recommend the K-Lite Codec Pack since it is know to install and work under Wine and for a Quicktime alternative I recommend QT Lite which is a lite QuickTime implementation.

After you installed any of these 2 inside the same bottle that contains your Picasa install the .mov files will then be supported by Picasa.