Nithin Kamath's Weblog

Which software comes to you mind when I mention ‘Photo Management’, yes Picasa!. Google has some time back launched Picasa 3.5 for Windows and MacOSx, but apparently due to the low adoption among Linux user they have not launched the ported version for Linux. So does this meant Linux users wont be able to use Picasa3.5? Don’t worry about it, since Google has not ported Picasa to native version we can just get the Windows version and run it under Wine.

But there are other methods as well, like the one I followed where you use the Wine supplied by the earlier install of Picasa. So if you are using the earlier Picasa 3x for Linux version then it is very simple if you have Windows installed in your system. Just follow the steps mentioned below:
[1] Download the latest version of Picasa 3.5 for Windows from the Picasa site.
[2] Install it under Windows,
[3] Issue “gksu nautilus” under terminal or if you are fine with using command prompt then skip this step.
[4] Rename the ‘Picasa3′ folder under ‘/opt/google/picasa/3.0/wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Google/’ to ‘Picasa3_old’.
[5] Copy the contents of the folder ‘Picasa3′ from your windows partition to the path mentioned in point 4. (The location where Picasa3 is installed in windows would probably be installed in ‘C:\Program Files\Google\’, so find where the partition is mounted in Linux, for me it is ‘/media/win_c’)
[6] You are done, enjoy using Picasa3.5 under Linux.

If you do not have Windows, then for step 2, you would have to install ‘Wine’ from your package repository and install Picasa3.5 executable using it. Then for step 4, the location would be ‘/home/YOUR_USER_NAME/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Google/’

Do let me know if you have any doubts using the comments section below.