Linux Corner

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Amico, I've had the Gallium driver loaded since AMD abandoned keeping the regular ATI driver working with the Linux kernel.  It gets better and better.  Abandoning Catalyst and all its friends hasn't hurt one bit.

[eugenio1982 6]

LOL , i knew i was kinda late ....

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Better late than never.  I think AMD has made a rather horrible mistake by abandoning support.  It hardly matters to Linux users but there were some nice features in the Catalyst control system.  It really isn't that hard to write a program that can be compiled optionally for different decors.  It can even be done in assembly now that most machines are using the X86 decor.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

LOL, I just found out that Qiana is a type of fabric (silky polyester-like fabric). I will now search the Internet for a Mint (green) Qiana shirt! If I can find one in my size, I will incorporate it into my Halloween costume.

 

--Ocram

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Would look good with Cinnamon buttons.

[Ionic-Elm 13]

Got a copy of Linux Mint downloading. It'll take 20 minutes to download (despite this mirror being in Detroit which is one state north of me, and close mirrors usually go faster).

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Have fun with Mint.  I tried it about a year ago and came back to Ubuntu.

[Ionic-Elm 13]

Have fun with Mint.  I tried it about a year ago and came back to Ubuntu.

 

Yeah, I hope my PCI Wi-Fi card will work, it's a TP-LINK using ath9k drivers, so it should.

 

It's not here yet though, as I just ordered it off Amazon (including a mouse since my current one thinks 1 click equals many clicks). It'll be here while I'm at work probably.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Don't bet on having the same drivers for anything.  If you are on Windows, you are in for a bit of a shock.  Everything should work though.  Most of the stuff on Mint <- Ubuntu <- Debian.

[Ionic-Elm 13]

Don't bet on having the same drivers for anything.  If you are on Windows, you are in for a bit of a shock.  Everything should work though.  Most of the stuff on Mint <- Ubuntu <- Debian.

 

Debian wiki says ath9k drivers should work out of the box, and I've already looked up what chip TP-LINK uses for this card, but I'll see what I get.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Luck with that.  Remember you are two levels down stream from Debian.

[Alejandro24 575]

Well, a lot of time without visiting ST, and this lovely topic. As my status says, I don't know what is going on in the world, so even I don't have news about Linux world.

But I did something special. Since the partition for Linux in my computer, about 30 GB, become too small I decided to re-format my HD and erase Windows. That's right, now I have a partition of 50GB for Linux and the rest of the HD, 100 GB, is for files. I never felt so free on my computer before... literally.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Well done, Alejandro.  No more expensive license fees to Microshaft.

 

This is my first machine that was purchased totally free of any MS taint.  It has always been completely Linux.  I converted my last machine when Vista came out; long, long ago.

 

It wasn't hard to get a naked machine.  You simply have to find an OEM that has a retail outlet, or who will simply sell or build you a stock machine without the MS OEM package.  I know of at least three in my area of rural Ontario.

[Alejandro24 575]

10 years of Ubuntu: http://netsplit.com/happy-10th-birthday-ubuntu

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Interesting.  I started using Ubuntu around 2007 with 7.04.  It has come a long way since then.

[Alejandro24 575]

Ubuntu 14.10 available now, flavors included.

http://www.webupd8.org/2014/10/ubuntu-1410-available-for-download.html

http://www.webupd8.org/2014/10/ubuntu-flavors-1410-officially-released.html

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Thanks, Alejandro.  Overnight and not overpriced.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Ubuntu 14.10 installed - no problems.

 

If anything, it is slightly faster than 14.04 when launching programs.  A few little outstanding items were repaired.  Haven't had time to check out everything.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

So, along with 14.04, I recently got wine 1.7.31.  Things haven't been quite right lately on either SC4 nor Banished, which are really the only games I play that are not native mode, so I decided to make a new 64-bit wine prefix and install both of them.  With script adjustments and all, it took about an hour, including picking up the latest official version of Banished.

 

Both programs run correctly without any additional libraries or any monkeying around with winetricks.  wine is getting better and better.

 

I originally went through some serious handsprings to run some programs under wine, notably Banished.  However, things seem to have caught up.  I am running an XP 64-bit prefix.  I expect that if I want to run some of the supplementary programs such as the Landscape Designer, I might have to add a couple of libraries.

[Alejandro24 575]

Linux Mint 17.1 codenamed Rebecca were released some days ago, with the now classical presentations of Mint: Cinnamon and MATE, both with 32 and 64 bits.

 

 

There are no signals of KDE and XFCE releases, but I hope that the KDE edition will come with Plasma 5.

[Edman_123 11]

I keep a few systems and VMs on Arch, and have Debian for servers and things I don't want to invest huge amounts of time in every time the Arch guys decide to change the location of a system file or directory.  Awesome is my favorite window manager, though I don't bother with graphics on all my machines.

 

I used to use Wine and similar software to run Windows software, but these days I keep a machine set up to dual-boot with Windows 7 for the rare occasion.  I've sort of lost interest in SimCity 4, 2013, and other Windows games for that reason, because I just don't like using Windows.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

You ought to try the latest wine beta.  Runs SC4 just fine for me on Ubuntu in hardware rendering.

[Alejandro24 575]

I like the slide presentation, but there are so many things to talk about it. Personally I like Win7, but this has gone too far.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/09/microsoft-teaches-best-buy-employees-how-to-troll-linux-users/

 

Also, I've been something busy, but I'll try to keep this topic more alive .

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

My only comment is that Microsoft is clearly running scared.

 

As a long time Linux user, mostly with Ubuntu starting in 2007, I've yet to miss anything that Windows might offer.  My system does what I want, when I want, and the updates are not a problem, usually taking less than five minutes and can run in the background.  I have yet to receive an update that disabled my system, which is quite a lot more than Microsoft can say.  Some of their fixes have been downright destructive.

 

The other big problem with Microsoft is bloatware.  The system is unable to self-configure on boot, and changing devices, even with PNP, is a major headache in many cases with them.

 

I recently changed from an Epson printer and Canon scanner to a Canon printer/scanner.  The Ubuntu's kernel had a slight hiccup because it had the Epson printer as a network wide printer, but one action to delete it and replace with the new printer caused the new driver to load, the old driver to be removed, and I didn't have to boot afterwards.  There is currently a problem with Xsane and this very new Canon device, which I hope to sort out shortly.  Considering both the old devices are something like 20 years old, this new printer is amazingly fast for the one time a week a need it.

 

The most annoying fact about the Canon device is that the colour ink cartridge (extra large) cost three dollars more than the printer.

 

So, nothing really new on the Ubuntu front, except that the new version 15.04 is due at the end of next month, so I expect Mint will also follow along about two weeks later.  The magic letter for this release is 'V' I suppose, so I wonder what animal name starts with V.

 

Oh, one more item.  The current version of wine (1.7.38) supports SC4 in DirectX, OpenGL, Software rendering and full screen as well as windowed operation.  There are a few frogs with both DirectX and OpenGL, but not enough to prevent good operation.  Has to do with half-tone puzzle pieces in DirectX, and HD textures in OpenGL (I don't use many).  IMHO HD textures for a 2000s game is an ego trip.

[MandelSoft 2,775]

I have yet to receive an update that disabled my system, which is quite a lot more than Microsoft can say.  Some of their fixes have been downright destructive.

I have disabled updates on my Windows 8.0 system ever since it caused that my PC failed to start up and showed a blank screen... TWICE! I just keep my virus scanner up to date (another thing you don't need when running on Linux systems)

Also, I recently installed an SSD in my laptop with Ubuntu installed on it. It starts up in just under eight seconds. No more need for hybernation mode

[Alejandro24 575]

I have nothing against Windows... unless sometimes is too restrictive. I like WinXP and Win7 as well. But as my professor of partial differential equations said: Windows is only for play videogames... and sometimes I have my doubts on that.

 

On other news: Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet final released: http://www.webupd8.org/2015/03/ubuntu-1504-vivid-vervet-final-beta.html

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Thanks for the link to the beta.  I will wait for the final release, however.  A vervet is a monkey.  I hope this is brighter than the namesake.

 

Windoze is for people who don't have the gumption to stand up to that horrendous license fee.

[Alejandro24 575]

Something weird happens with SC4 with Wine 1.7.34; not sure how it loads the plugins, but I doesn't recognize what is in the folder z__NAM, it doesn't recognize the european textures. Also it doesn't load the plugins after that folder.

I'm now in spring vacations, so I'll keep looking what happens there.

 

Meanwhile, I found this crazy video, I guess it is in chinese:

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

It is the game that does the loading.  I am not having any problems with things not loading properly, but at one time I did.  What I found was that, claims to the contrary there is some kind of limit to the number of open files.  I had one plugin that had a myriad of files from a collection of buildings with all the BAT files.  I had to compress this folder with Files2Dat to get the game to load at all.

 

Check your folders, especially the ones you are having trouble with to make sure all the files are *.dat.  If not, compress them using the Files2DAT program by ilive.

 

Also check the structure of your plugins directory.  If you are using an ext4 file system, you might want to look at e4defrag.  Hardly ever needed, but I use it to check once in a while on volatile directories.  Sometimes you have to run it.  Needs root permission (sudo).  Mostly I just run it in user state just to check the status of the files.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Got an interesting update to Ubuntu today.  A new version of Firefox (37.0.1) and a new system utility called wireshark (new to me, anyway).  Wireshark is capable of monitoring every Internet connection you have and recording each packet to a file that is in a standard format.  It is interactive on set up or can be invoked using CLI options.

 

I realize this is for the use of people running the apache server in multiuser state, but interestingly enough, it doesn't care whether the server is running or not.  It seems to be an ultimate snooping tool, but it has a learning curve I have not yet ascended.

 

OS/X users: Do you have a similar facility?  How about Windoze?

 

I may just go through this learning curve because I've been having connection problems between my ISP and Thunderbird.  I'd like to see the conversation when T-bird is trying to hook up to the POP3 server.  Funny if I could diagnose this when my ISP doesn't seem to be able to do so.  I'll probably have to dig out a copy of the SMTP RFC in order to do this.  Seems the initial conversation to log on fails about 50% of the time.