Linux Users: wine 1.4 is released

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Wine 1.4 is now in full release. Its basic decor is Vista, and this means if you install a 32-bit program it will be installed in the windows manner if you are running the 64-bit version of wine. The result is that you now get two program files directories in the pseudo C: drive.

For SimCity 4 deluxe, this is the execution script for software mode on my machine after an install:

#!/bin/bash

date

env WINEPREFIX="/home/john/.wine" \

wine "C:/Program Files (x86)/Maxis/SimCity 4 Deluxe/Apps/SimCity 4.exe" \

-intro:off -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 -d:software \

-CPUcount:1 &>~/sc4.log

date

And here is the hardware mode one.

#!/bin/bash

date

env WINEPREFIX="/home/john/.wine" \

wine "C:/Program Files (x86)/Maxis/SimCity 4 Deluxe/Apps/SimCity 4.exe" \

-intro:off -CustomResolution:enabled -r1920x1080x32 -d:directx \

-CPUcount:1 &>~/sc4.log

date

This is on Ubuntu 12.04 Beta 1, and it is offered as of today as the current version of wine.

Note that the (x86) has a space in front of it.

Just so you all know. Just found this out this afternoon.

[Alejandro24 575]

Is Hot Topic in Linux issues, the most oldest articles about this are around from 4 days ago.

Did you tested it? How is the performance of SC4?

And, How can I update Wine if I'm using the 1.3 version?

Update:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install wine1.3

This code add the version 1.4-rc6, 1.4 official doesn't exists in the repository.

How to compile the tar.bz2 downloaded from the site?

Update 2:

To run that commands in the terminal allows you to see the update of Wine from 1.3-1.4 in the update manager. In the case of Linux Mint, MintUpdate shows it.

  Edited March 12, 2012 by Alejandro24  

[s.i.X 13]

What exactly is the difference between the regular Program Files folder than the x86 Program Files folder?

[Alejandro24 575]

What exactly is the difference between the regular Program Files folder than the x86 Program Files folder?

The folder Program Files is were the 64 bits programs are installed. The folder Program Files x86 is were the 32 bits programs are installed. That's the only one difference.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

To be honest, SimCity 4 runs best on software and drivers from 2003 and 2004. Maxis mentioned the "dirty rect" method that gives SimCity 4 worse performance on modern computers than comparable games made at a later date.

So trying to make SimCity 4 run in a version of Wine that replicates Vista is a rather bad idea.

I have a 2008 era gaming rig (if I had known about PC shopping instead of bookmarking an old article) that I just found out the answer to my problem and need to restart.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

To be honest, SimCity 4 runs best on software and drivers from 2003 and 2004. Maxis mentioned the "dirty rect" method that gives SimCity 4 worse performance on modern computers than comparable games made at a later date.

So trying to make SimCity 4 run in a version of Wine that replicates Vista is a rather bad idea.

I have a 2008 era gaming rig (if I had known about PC shopping instead of bookmarking an old article) that I just found out the answer to my problem and need to restart.

Alejandro, try your update again and see if you can just do this:

sudo apt-get update;sudo apt-get upgrade

You should get 1.4 without any release candidate. If you check the wine site you'll see it is released.

On my machine, I was testing Ubuntu 12.04 Beta 1 and it came from the distro for precise pangolin. I am running 1.4-rc6 on my copy of 11.10. Neither one of them support hardware mode very well. In fact, 1.4 hangs and has to be killed. Both run fine in software rendering. Because 12.04 is a beta, I am not reporting the hardware freeze unless it persists past the 12.04 release.

The problem seems to have something to do with properly handling more than two frame buffers. I get out of graphics memory console comments. I suppose a different GPU might fix this, but I don't want to spend more money on hardware at the moment. The game runs fine with software rendering and the rate is acceptable.

At the moment, I do not recommend 12.04 beta to anyone faint of heart. It will have an error out of the blue occasionally. It was pretty stable most of yesterday, but it is a beta.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

OK, I was posting when I went to look up the year the model of my PC was released when I found out instead the source of the random shutting down issues. FYI, it was made in 2007 or 2006. I now remember buying in in August 2007, if I had asked the representative about the cheapest computer with comparable power, I could have gotten a better one cheaper (my desktop came as a tower alone with a 30% discount at Best Buy). So yeah, the BIOS firmware for the Shroedinger Town Intel Motherboard of the GT5628 had its latest update in 2008. I never updated it until yesterday.

Back on the original point of my post. If you want to run SimCity 4 properly, you want to run it in "native" XP environment. Simcity 4 ran much better on my mother's old XP Office Desktop than my Vista Gaming PC but my mom did not let me bring it with me when we moved (I also left behind a fancy second-hand desk that I was only able to use for less than 1 year before moving--I was really pissed off about moving because it was a huge downgrade). I dismissed that as a Vista problem and played exclusively 3D games on my PC and installing SimCity 4 on my grandmother's XP computer.

So yes, if you want the best Windows emulation, make sure your "wine" can handle both XP and Vista perfectly.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, if you'd ever run it, you'd know that wine is capable of running everything from Windows 95 decor to Windows 2008 Server Rev 2. You simply choose the decor which controls which version of the emulated registry you get. The default is XP, and I just don't change it, because I run mostly legacy programs from the 32-bit time-frame.

Also, if you need windows libraries, you can get them via the extensive and frequently updated winetricks script. For example, you need the run time libraries for C v.6 to run things like the lot editor, and .net framework 1.1 to run the Landscape designer. These are not default, but must be added to the windows environment maintained by wine.

The main point of this thread is the "upgrade" from the old installers to the new one which sets up the two program files directories as C:\Program Files for 64-bit windows apps and C:\Program Files (x86) for 32-bit windows apps. If you simply upgrade from wine 1.3 with installed programs you probably won't notice this. You get it on a new install of an app.

Also, in Linux, if you have a .net-framework app, you have the option to run it under mono. Mono also runs the ECMA standard of such applications.

However, nothing beats running in native mode for getting rid of overhead. If the source of SC4 were available I would surely recompile it into native Linux code and fix the horrible known bugs. After all, the program's kernel must be fairly small because nearly all the tables that drive the program are external data. Removing the DirectX code in favour of the existing (but in need of update) OpenGL code would be the biggest barrier. My GPU supports a wide range of OpenGL commands and interprets them directly.

Maybe one of the reasons that EA is sitting on the code might be that the reaction to the listing would be something like "Is that all???!". Considering that the whole works is nearly all table driven, there might not be much code at all. The .exe alone is 7.5 MB on disk including the security spin-off and the main text plus the run-time libraries. Get rid of the run-time, which in a recompile can be a shared space, and the actual code may be quite small. This code comes from the period that was just beginning to realize that it wasn't necessary to squeeze so hard to keep a program in memory. These days with the big addressing bandwidth, it is hardly a consideration at all.

If I got my hands on the source, I would also spin off everything having to do with My Sims into a separate task, and would not spawn it unless it was actually accessed, which means it would be totally inactive unless turned on because I would change the default to be turned off instead of turned on. This would probably simplify debugging of the main simulator and get rid of most of the CTDs.

  Edited March 14, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[Ocram's Razr 963]

So wine allows you to use the 2003 era DirectX 9 drivers? I ask because the DirectX 9 that comes as a legacy backup on Vista and Windows still uses new drivers and SimCity 4 was optimized for XP computers using the aforementioned "dirty rectangles" and billboards (3D sprites). The new software puts the frame buffer through the CPU instead of the GPU. It is even put in the same thread as the main game, which is one reason why Windows Vista had a hard time with SimCity 4 (most of the reported errors with SimCity 4 on this site are with Vista computers).

So you are saying that you can tell your computer to keep the dirty rectangle frame buffer in the GPU like Windows XP did? If that is so, and I knew about it earlier, I would have jumped on Linux in 2008. I started becoming active here in 2008. It is too late now because my PC is stable and suitable for most "Next Gen" games.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

So wine allows you to use the 2003 era DirectX 9 drivers? I ask because the DirectX 9 that comes as a legacy backup on Vista and Windows still uses new drivers and SimCity 4 was optimized for XP computers using the aforementioned "dirty rectangles" and billboards (3D sprites). The new software puts the frame buffer through the CPU instead of the GPU. It is even put in the same thread as the main game, which is one reason why Windows Vista had a hard time with SimCity 4 (most of the reported errors with SimCity 4 on this site are with Vista computers).

So you are saying that you can tell your computer to keep the dirty rectangle frame buffer in the GPU like Windows XP did? If that is so, and I knew about it earlier, I would have jumped on Linux in 2008. I started becoming active here in 2008. It is too late now because my PC is stable and suitable for most "Next Gen" games.

Yep. However, SC4 runs on wine 1.4 without any additional software. I haven't tried adding DirectX 9.0c to the library, but I might just to see if it allows hardware rendering to work.

If you want to play with Linux, download and burn a live CD and install it as a dual boot for your system. After you get wine added, you can play SC4 on either machine and do a comparison. You might find some interesting games on Linux you don't have on Windows, and Linux is free, and so are most of the apps.

I went to Linux in 2007 when my system became too small to run Windows newer stuff and I got sick of BSODs. Also, I very much like the idea of free software, community support, and in general a much wider range of apps, software developer tools, and operating options. I got two more years out of my old HP desktop. Then it died of old age. My new machine would quite happily run any version of Windows around right now and probably Windows 8 at least without an upgrade. I object, however, to all of Microsoft's bloatware, to say nothing of all the vaporware they keep pushing.

If you want to play with Linux, try Linux Mint 12 or Ubuntu 11.10 (12.04 will be available April 28th). If you are feeling like testing an operating system, you can get Ubuntu 12.04 beta 1 right now. Unless you are an operating systems type, I don't recommend this. I have 12.04 Beta loaded to play with, but I am talking from 11.10 with the kfce desktop. (GNOME Classic). I am becoming accustomed to the new Unity desktop (GNOME 3), but I can't say this is my idea of how to run a computer. I do a lot through a console window.

I am currently getting myself up to speed on GTK+ 3 graphics programming, and this is quite arcane. However there are tools available that provide an IDE (Anjuta) and GLADE (a windows constructor). For an old dog, this is a rather steep learning curve but fun. GTK stands for GIMP Took Kit, and of course GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. Apparently the real interface here is OpenGL. I am also playing with that, as well. One has to keep busy, no? I make haste, slowly, as the Romans say (festina lente).

  Edited March 14, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

1.4 was actually delivered on Ubuntu 11.10 also, so it should now be available on Mint. In software rendering it runs better than most recent efforts. Still having the same buffer switching problem with hardware rendering.

Still testing the 12.04 beta. Massive updates daily. I gave up on the Ubuntu desktop and loaded the Gnome desktop. In fact, with the kfce desktop as well, I have half a dozen desktop decors to play with.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Um, I would like to know more about Dual booting, I seem to have infected my desktop with some viruses and possibly a trojan horse, possibly from my newest laptop back when it was running windows (the one I installed linux mint). You said that you have a 500 GB hard drive but the majority of it is partitioned for linux. How do you get rid of the excess stuff because I was only able to free up 300GB.

[glazert 89]

Um, I would like to know more about Dual booting, I seem to have infected my desktop with some viruses and possibly a trojan horse, possibly from my newest laptop back when it was running windows (the one I installed linux mint). You said that you have a 500 GB hard drive but the majority of it is partitioned for linux. How do you get rid of the excess stuff because I was only able to free up 300GB.

You certainly don't need to have the majority of a 500GB drive for Linux. I have a 500GB drive on my laptop, and slightly more is allocated to Windows 7 than Mint, simply because that was the default. Linux isn't greedy; you can easily put it on a bootable USB stick.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Um, I would like to know more about Dual booting, I seem to have infected my desktop with some viruses and possibly a trojan horse, possibly from my newest laptop back when it was running windows (the one I installed linux mint). You said that you have a 500 GB hard drive but the majority of it is partitioned for linux. How do you get rid of the excess stuff because I was only able to free up 300GB.

You certainly don't need to have the majority of a 500GB drive for Linux. I have a 500GB drive on my laptop, and slightly more is allocated to Windows 7 than Mint, simply because that was the default. Linux isn't greedy; you can easily put it on a bootable USB stick.

Remember that I never had Windows on this machine at all. It was naked, so I simply partitioned the drive using the Linux Live CD (for Ubuntu) and just arbitrarily made the split so I could run two versions of Linux. My current system occupancy for Ubuntu 11.10 including about 10 GB of my personal stuff is 29.8 GB and this includes a large suite of development tools and source files. The basic occupancy for a neat Linux with desktop is less than 10GB.

IMHO, doing handsprings to boot from a USB flash drive is a waste of time and effort.

Dual booting is pretty easy. If you install Linux (Mint or Ubuntu) from a live CD/DVD beside a Windows installation, it will give you the choice of laying it up in parallel. If you do this, you get a dual boot system which comes on at boot time with the Grand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) which gives you a choice of which system to boot. You have 10 seconds to make up your mind, but if you want to lolly-gag at the menu, you can just move the cursor down once, and the timer cuts out.

As for getting rid of junk on the disk, you can have a look with the Linux disk utility and decide if you want to repartition part of your space. If you touch an existing partition, though, it will lose all its contents.

Windows NTFS partitions are accessible in read/write mode under Linux (gvfs handles just about anything). You do not have to do anything special to maintain the Linux file system (ext4) because it is pretty much self-cleaning. Just empty your trash once in a while.

To run SC4 under your Linux set up, you will have to download wine and read the documentation. You will also have to install the game using the wine program loader, and copy your SimCity 4 structure onto your Linux space (just replace the one that gets installed). Keep your paws out of the wine "Program Files" areas and you will be fine. Unless you are really good at it, keep out of the registry too. wine will quite happily run regedit. For SC4, set your wine environment to XP (default). SC4 runs cold, but some other related programs need some Windows libraries to be loaded using winetricks.

Before you do anything with operating systems, always be sure you have a backup of your data on something external.

[Alejandro24 575]

The update appears now:

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The update appears now:

Been on Ubuntu 12.04 beta and 11.10 for a couple of weeks now. Mint lags Ubuntu because it is a Ubuntu clone. I find no advantage in Mint if you simply load the GNOME desktop.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I partitioned off 200GB for Linux using GParted and I burned the Linux Mint 64 bit DVD but I was wondering if 200GB was excessive. I have less than 80GB free on my shrunken C drive. I can put more onto the C Drive using GParted but that won't be easy after the installation of Linux Mint.

My computer is now running better now than it has in a long time thanks to safe mode, Sophos, MalwareBytes, Spybot, Windows Defender/Security Essentials, and system restore to March 8. Somehow I messed up MalwareBytes though...

[Alejandro24 575]

After many time without pass here to ST, finally I have time to post something.

Why not to create a single topic for all the Linux issues instead many topics spreaded through the forum? It will make more easy the administration of this kind of themes.

  Edited March 30, 2012 by Alejandro24  

[Alejandro24 575]

I partitioned off 200GB for Linux using GParted and I burned the Linux Mint 64 bit DVD but I was wondering if 200GB was excessive. I have less than 80GB free on my shrunken C drive. I can put more onto the C Drive using GParted but that won't be easy after the installation of Linux Mint.

My computer is now running better now than it has in a long time thanks to safe mode, Sophos, MalwareBytes, Spybot, Windows Defender/Security Essentials, and system restore to March 8. Somehow I messed up MalwareBytes though...

Well, the strategy that I use and I reccomend is this:

• Primary Partitions 80%
  
• Windows Partition, NTFS 20%
  
• Information (I call it Data), NTFS 60%
  
• Extended Partition 20%
  
• Linux, ext4
  
• Swap
  
• Total C: 100%
  

With its details. My netbooks hardisk is of 160 GB:

• Primary Partitions
  
• Windows 7 (OS), NTFS, 45 Gb
  
• Data, NTFS, 75 GB
  
• Extended Partition
  
• Linux Mint, ext4, 32 GB
  
• XBMC, ext4, 3.5 GB
  
• Swap, 4 GB
  
• Total C: 100%
  

  Edited March 30, 2012 by Alejandro24  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Alejandro: What is FAT4? Did you mean ext4?

Ocram: 200GB is overkill by a long shot. 50GB would have been plenty, including swap space. However, if you need a lot of file storage ...

My system, including a lot of stuff you won't want is: 30.9GB including all my backups and development software and the source code for Linux.

[Alejandro24 575]

Alejandro: What is FAT4? Did you mean ext4?

Ocram: 200GB is overkill by a long shot. 50GB would have been plenty, including swap space. However, if you need a lot of file storage ...

My system, including a lot of stuff you won't want is: 30.9GB including all my backups and development software and the source code for Linux.

Ups, ext4, sorry for the mistake.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

wine 1.4 is generally available now and is considered to be the default release. A new 1.5.1 is showing up on my distro now, but I am sticking to 1.4 as it does what I want at the moment. Once Ubuntu release 12.04 LTS is official (April 28) I may try the new wine release. At the moment, I am occupied playing with betas of 12.04.

I currently have 11.10, 12.04 Beta 1, and 12.04 Beta 2 loaded and active thanks to GRUB. When I allowed the Beta 2 install to use one of my partitions on my 1TB disk, it grabbed 100GB and placed the data from the partition back in the remaining 100GB without changing the partition signature. Of the 100GB, it has 1GB boot partition, 96 GB for the O/S (far more than it needed), and a swap space. I think the rule is if you get a partition, split it equally unless told otherwise. There were five 200GB partitions on that drive, and now there are four 200's, a 100, and the three mentioned above. This was an exercise in "install beside your existing systems". Worked beautifully.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Update on Wine 1.4 with Ubuntu 12.04. There is a bug in the pulse audio processing that causes SC4 to either hang or crash when you close it out. There is a fix for this in wine 1.5.3 which is available from the winehq site.

Since I always send my console output to a file, I had this problems which shows up as a fixme line, fill up my entire partition with these wine "fixme" annotations, so whatever is going on, it encounters this in some loop or other. Updating to 1.5.3 seems to have fixed this problem.

I think the crash actually occurs in SC4, but wine crashes with a funny exception while trying to write the dump. The result of this is that no SC4 Exception Report is produced.

If you decide to pursue this problem remember to download the wine debugging symbols.

It must be hell for the wine developers trying to keep up. The system is organic and every time you tweak something, something else dies a horrible death.

  Edited May 6, 2012 by A Nonny Moose  

[Ocram's Razr 963]

By the way, what is the optimal way to scan removable storage devices for viruses and malware in linux mint? I tried to clean up Dad's Laptop computer and found nothing with Spybot and Malware Bytes but copying my sister's music to my flash drive then scanning the flash drive on my university laptop (with Sophos and Security Essentials) made my laptop spazz out but it eventually cleaned up a handful of files except one, which I deleted from within Linux, which created a trash bin, which I had to right click delete. I am afraid that something bad will happen if I plug my flash drive into my gaming rig.

  Edited May 6, 2012 by OcramSeattle  

[Alejandro24 575]

Looking in google, I founded interesting articles:

http://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/blog/scan-for-viruses-windows-using-linux-live-cd-usb-0133076/

http://www.ehow.com/how_6072432_check-windows-drive-virus-linux.html

http://ihaveapc.com/2011/07/how-to-install-and-use-avg-antivirus-in-linux-mint-ubuntu/

Search: https://www.google.com.mx/search?num=20&hl=es&newwindow=1&safe=off&site=&source=hp&q=scan+for+virus+in+linux+mint&oq=scan+for+virus+in+linux&aq=1jL&aqi=g-jL2&aql=&gs_l=hp.3.1.0i18i19l2.907.5948.0.7721.23.19.0.2.2.3.460.3490.6j6j4j1j2.19.0...0.0.O7P1l1oE8Yw

I'm not sure of how to do a scan for windows devices from linux, but hope that info will help.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I don't suppose either of you guys have tried CLAM-AV?