Windows or Ubunto? - Page 6

zork · 08-04-09, 07:46 AM

Winduws and Obonto?

Vyper · 08-04-09, 08:52 AM

Originally Posted by zork

Winduws and Obonto?

Lol really? You dug up a topic from 2008 for this?

aceman67 · 08-04-09, 09:33 AM

Originally Posted by Vyper

Lol really? You dug up a topic from 2008 for this?

Its a good topic, worthy of being dug up.

Here's a guide I wrote to Install WoW on Ubuntu, you will need to update the filenames of the Graphics Drivers and other programs (Should they have been updated in the 9 months since I wrote it) when you get to their parts but that's it.

http://www.animeonline.net/f21/insta...w-linux-41199/

The con I have with playing wow on Linux is that you do not take advantage of the graphics power of your machine. I have a reletively high end nVidia card, and most of the features in the video member are either not there, like Anti Aliasing past 4x, Triliner Filtering, and others.

I eventually switched back to Windows only because, well, I got bored of linux, and I wanted to give Windows 7 RC a whirl (Which I have and I love it, and you should all buy windows 7 in october, Micro$haft really did their homework on this one, as the OS is stable and works amazingly well)

p3lim · 08-04-09, 10:33 AM

I have about had it with this windows piece of **** and i though i'd give *nix a try.

Suggestions of distro, and programs that might match the ones i already use?

Notepad ++
Firefox
Miranda (is *nix originally)
Notepad/Wordpad (occationally)
Gimp (also *nix originally)
msysgit (read above comment)
TortoiseSVN
Ventrilo
Spotify
uTorrent
World of Warcraft
Foxit Reader (for pdf files)
FileZilla (ftp client)
Zoom Player (media files like movies etc)

My worst worry is the support for my WoW mouse, which already runs like **** on windows, giving me bluescreens etc.

Also, a cd burning software would be needed.

That should be about it, could start a new topic for this, but this one seemed to fit this post.

Comments required ^_^

xConStruct · 08-04-09, 11:03 AM

My suggestion is Ubuntu (oh wonder). I've started with it and running it since then - But I want to try Debian or Fedora, because I've got some nasty USB write-speed bug in x64 Jaunty ...

I'm rather leaning towards Kubuntu (the KDE-derivative of Ubuntu), because I find the plasma-desktop more appealing ... but I don't want to start a Gnome vs. KDE-flame war here, so just check what you like more. You can install even both desktop environments of them together. This is also true for distros, Linux is the "freedom of choice", so just try out some more

KDE's inbuilt text editor Kate is a great replacement for Notepad++ - syntax-highlighting for more languages you even can think of.
For instant messaging I use Pidgin, seems like it's the most powerful multi-protocol chat client for linux.
Git / SVN are no problem as long as you use them via console.
FileZilla is available for linux and there are PDF-readers in both Gnome and KDE. CD-Burning, too, I think.

To the mouse: I've got an Logitech MX Laser 1000 and Ubuntu recognized all 12 buttons from the beginning on - I just couldn't bind one single button, but I could let it simulate some keyboard-shortcut, so now it's running, too.

Vyper · 08-04-09, 11:07 AM

Originally Posted by aceman67

Its a good topic, worthy of being dug up.

Yes, but I hardly think "Windows or Obonto?" was worth bringing it up for.

Originally Posted by aceman67

Here's a guide I wrote to Install WoW on Ubuntu, you will need to update the filenames of the Graphics Drivers and other programs (Should they have been updated in the 9 months since I wrote it) when you get to their parts but that's it.

http://www.animeonline.net/f21/insta...w-linux-41199/

Interesting... seems harder than it needs to be, but maybe you're dealing with more problems than I had. I was able to install my Nvidia drivers, install the latest wine from the wine repos(http://www.winehq.org/download/deb), and off it went.

Originally Posted by aceman67

The con I have with playing wow on Linux is that you do not take advantage of the graphics power of your machine. I have a reletively high end nVidia card, and most of the features in the video member are either not there, like Anti Aliasing past 4x, Triliner Filtering, and others.

Those work fine for me on my Nvidia 8800gtx... are you sure you have your drivers installed correctly?

Originally Posted by p3lim

I have about had it with this windows piece of **** and i though i'd give *nix a try.

My worst worry is the support for my WoW mouse, which already runs like **** on windows, giving me bluescreens etc.

Also, a cd burning software would be needed.

That should be about it, could start a new topic for this, but this one seemed to fit this post.

Comments required ^_^

Your WoW mouse SHOULD pretty much work out of the box, but I can't promise for certain. Frankly, from what I've read, your better off with a regular mouse though.

As for CD burning software, Ubuntu comes with Braseo (I think that's still the default) preinstalled.

p3lim · 08-04-09, 11:53 AM

Thanks for the quick comments

Originally Posted by Cargor

KDE's inbuilt text editor Kate is a great replacement for Notepad++ - syntax-highlighting for more languages you even can think of.

Thing is, Notepad++ has WoW API highlighting (added that myself).
Could just run it through Wine.

Originally Posted by Cargor

For instant messaging I use Pidgin, seems like it's the most powerful multi-protocol chat client for linux.

Miranda is very nice imo, and it has a linux version.

Originally Posted by Cargor

Git / SVN are no problem as long as you use them via console.

I love graphical diffs (gui version of msysgit and the commit diffs in TortoiseSVN), and I can't live without them.

Originally Posted by Cargor

FileZilla is available for linux and there are PDF-readers in both Gnome and KDE. CD-Burning, too, I think.

Thats very nice to hear, less for me to worry about.

Originally Posted by Cargor

To the mouse: I've got an Logitech MX Laser 1000 and Ubuntu recognized all 12 buttons from the beginning on - I just couldn't bind one single button, but I could let it simulate some keyboard-shortcut, so now it's running, too.

That's actually what I've done to my wow mouse aswell

Is this easy to set up?

xConStruct · 08-04-09, 12:39 PM

Originally Posted by p3lim

Thing is, Notepad++ has WoW API highlighting (added that myself).

Wow, that's nice. How did you do that? Parsing WoWWiki? Would like to check out if it's possible for kate, too

Originally Posted by p3lim

I love graphical diffs (gui version of msysgit and the commit diffs in TortoiseSVN), and I can't live without them.

For diff's, there's a KDE application called Kompare (screen). I've used it for viewing the 3.2-diff, should be no problem to foward git/svn-output to it. But there should be also some version-control-GUI's I don't know of.

Originally Posted by p3lim

That's actually what I've done to my wow mouse aswell

Is this easy to set up?

I used an (commandline)-application called xbindkeys for it, should come preinstalled (?). You just need to create a file called ".xbindkeysrc" in your home-directory - for my mouse, I've used:

Code:

"/usr/bin/xvkbd -xsendevent -text "\[u]""
b:10

This basically causes mouse-button 10 to execute the above application - in this case the virtual keyboard with the key "u". Seems like you can also do some timed macros with "xmacro" - or just run any other defined application.

Vyper · 08-04-09, 12:46 PM

Originally Posted by p3lim

I love graphical diffs (gui version of msysgit and the commit diffs in TortoiseSVN), and I can't live without them.

For all the gui love that msysgit gives you, just install the git-gui package.

I'm sure there are similar tools for svn, but I am less familiar with it.

Zyonin · 08-04-09, 02:12 PM

Funny that this thread got dug up as I was just about trash Windows for Ubuntu which since completed and now I just need to tweak to taste (such as getting rid of the orange theme).

What is going to be really "fun" is getting WINE working and getting WoW to get along with it. Fortunately I have a complete WoW install on another partition so I will not have to go through the whole install/patch/gnash teeth process of a typical WoW install.

Vyper · 08-04-09, 03:38 PM

Originally Posted by Lykofos

What is going to be really "fun" is getting WINE working and getting WoW to get along with it. Fortunately I have a complete WoW install on another partition so I will not have to go through the whole install/patch/gnash teeth process of a typical WoW install.

One tip: don't run the version of WINE in the Ubuntu repositories, it's quite old. Instead visit http://www.winehq.org/site/download and grab it for either Ubuntu or Debian (the Ubuntu instructions only cover getting the development version, and the stable Debs will work just fine).

Elpis · 08-04-09, 04:21 PM

I recently installed Linux Mint and love it. It is based on Ubuntu but taken to the next level. I played wow for a bit via wine and it ran smooth unless you had all video on high in wintergrasp in 40 man raid. Mouse isnt smooth due to no hardware support in opengl (for Linux) and that bugged me. Running WoW on Vista now and do everything else on Linux Mint. The main version is Gnome but there are also community editions with Kde, Xfce and fluxbox. Before you install anything, have a look around, download some live-cd's to check if it is what you want and choose your distro. Mint for me all the way, everything worked straight out of the box, including wireless drivers and gfx drivers.

From freedom came elegance

ps. live-cd's for those who dont know what it is....A boot up cd that runs the linux distro without installing anything on your harddrive. Runs in your memory while it is active. It is the full OS but on a cd

Yhor · 08-04-09, 05:22 PM

Originally Posted by zork

Winduws and Obonto?

Yeah, I spelled the name incorrectly (a few times), so what.

This thread has helped me a lot to get more familiar with things I probably would never have known about otherwise (dual booting programs and the ease of use of Ubuntu once you find a few shortcuts). I hope others have learned as much (probably more) as I have; it's been a great deal of fun and well worth the effort, imo.

My good box is still Windows, for gaming and media. Other programs for tasks and non-gaming are on my older box, running an Ubuntu OS. I found most programs made for *unix are just 'better', for me, compared to similar programs for Windows. I am able to run games with WINE with no problems (although I don't install in the "conventional" manner), with similar performance on an older box (graphics and video seem to be more consistant on my Windows box, and Vent always works there, otherwise...).

I offer my most sincere and sarcastic apology to those I offended by misspelling the name, no offense was meant by it.

p3lim · 08-04-09, 05:57 PM

Originally Posted by Cargor

Wow, that's nice. How did you do that? Parsing WoWWiki? Would like to check out if it's possible for kate, too

_G dump into savedvariables

Jesamyn · 08-04-09, 06:58 PM

Originally Posted by Elpis

I recently installed Linux Mint and love it. It is based on Ubuntu but taken to the next level.

... Mint for me all the way, everything worked straight out of the box, including wireless drivers and gfx drivers.

At this point, I'd totally recommend people start with Mint instead of Ubuntu, and this is why. It's so much more polished and ready to go out of the box. I've seen a lot of reports of it being faster, and so it seemed when I tried it. I even managed to get a friend who was a Fedora fan previously to fall in love with it.

(sidux for me - I'm a minimalist. Wouldn't recommend it to someone new to linux, though.)

utorrent - try deluge

Zoom Player - Sorta depends on what you want to watch. mplayer as a backend plays most stuff. I use it to watch anime. I don't like the interface and pop in smplayer as a frontend for it. There are other frontends as well if you don't like the interface. gxine used to be the only one that supported dvd menus, as I remember. I don't watch dvd's on the computer, so couldn't tell ya.

There is no true Miranda for linux. There was an old port that bundled it with setups to run it through wine. Read here, mainly the last few pages. You can compile it with wine, but it's still Miranda through wine, not a native linux version. It's been stated over and over that they won't make a linux version. There have been several projects started that never really took off. Pidgin or Kopete really are better bets.

As stated, most distros come with something for cd-burning. I'm partial to Brasero, personally.

jadakren · 08-07-09, 09:07 AM

Originally Posted by Jesamyn

As stated, most distros come with something for cd-burning. I'm partial to Brasero, personally.

<3 brasero.

Although with the cd-burner location in nautilus (and it's burn iso to cd options for iso files), i've rarely needed to use it.

right now I'm using windows7 and playing with the powershell, it's a shame the console enviroment isn't as easily intermeshable with the desktop enviroment as it is on linux(no wonder many windows users hate the console).

Zyonin · 08-08-09, 03:58 AM

Originally Posted by Vyper

One tip: don't run the version of WINE in the Ubuntu repositories, it's quite old. Instead visit http://www.winehq.org/site/download and grab it for either Ubuntu or Debian (the Ubuntu instructions only cover getting the development version, and the stable Debs will work just fine).

Well, I have run into a major brick wall with getting WoW to work with WINE, my GFX card.

It seems that my ATI Radeon 9600SE's drivers do a lousy job of rendering 3d models cause WoW to lock up my machine. Further research reveals that the only drivers that support the R300 GPU (as used in the Radeon 9500-9800 series) are older FOSS drivers that do not support 3d models very well. The newer FOSS drivers (the RaedonHD) and ATI's own fgrlx drivers only support R600 and newer GPUs.

In short I am screwed unless I can find an older NVIDIA card (NVIDIA cards are well supported by Linux thanks to NVIDIA working with the FOSS community to build stable FOSS drivers) or I rebuild/replace my machine. The reason why is my mainboard (ASUS K8V Plus), is one of the last generation of mainboards to use the AGP slot for GFX card. Shortly after I purchased my mainboard/CPU/GFX card, mainboards using the then new PCI Experss (PCIe) slot come onto the market. PCIe has pretty much replaced AGP.

Thus I cannot play WoW. Except for that issue, Linux (Ubuntu 9.04) boots up faster and shuts down faster then Windows XP ever did (even with a fresh Windows install). My system generally runs faster and is more stable. On top of that, I don't have a bunch of useless crap (such as Windows Movie Maker or the Windows Tour) installed nor do I have a bunch of useless (for a home user/gamer) services that have been neutered.

If anyone is thinking about installing Linux and then using WINE to play WoW, I would strongly suggest checking your GFX card first.

ATI R500 GPU or older - Windows: If your GFX card is using a pre ATI R600 GPU, then stick with Windows. WoW and any other game that uses 3d models will likely lock up your system.
ATI R600 GPU or better - Linux: If you are running an ATI R600 or better GPU, then you should be (in theory) OK. Since AMD has purchased ATI, Linux support has gotten much better and newer ATI cards will work better with Linux.
NVIDA GPU - Linux: If you have an NVIDIA card you should not have any issues due NVIDIA's support of Linux.

Regarding another poster looking for a video player, I use the default Gnome Movie Player for most videos including many WMV movies. For those who GMV will not play, VLC will take of nicely. The only format I cannot play is any Real Player formats however Helix (Real Player's FOSS branch) will take of that. I only have one Real Player format video (Curse's Blackwing Lair movie), however I never encounter Real Player formated videos anymore so I don't see a need to install Helix.

Pretty much everything else was ready to go "out of the box" I did add Banshee as I like that music player and the non-free Flash player (since much of the video these days is Flash) however in general I was up and going with Linux much faster (about half an hour compared the usual 3 hours it takes to get Windows up, patched and functioning plus protecting against attacks). Updates under Ubuntu is easy and I would imagine any distro based on Ubuntu/Debian (such as Mint) would be similar. My only beef about Ubuntu is it's a bit conservative when it comes to it's packages (such as the version of Firefox available for Ubuntu is the older 3.0). Sure, you can force Ubuntu to use "Pre-released updates" aka backports. This conservatism is likely due in part to the Debian roots of Ubuntu.

Vyper · 08-08-09, 09:58 AM

Originally Posted by Lykofos

In short I am screwed unless I can find an older NVIDIA card (NVIDIA cards are well supported by Linux thanks to NVIDIA working with the FOSS community to build stable FOSS drivers) or I rebuild/replace my machine. The reason why is my mainboard (ASUS K8V Plus), is one of the last generation of mainboards to use the AGP slot for GFX card. Shortly after I purchased my mainboard/CPU/GFX card, mainboards using the then new PCI Experss (PCIe) slot come onto the market. PCIe has pretty much replaced AGP.

Ouch, that is a problem. Yeah, ATI didn't get their act together as far as Linux drivers until late in the game, so it doesn't surprise me that you're having problems with an early ATI card. A quick search on Amazon does show a few AGP Nvidia cards though I'm not sure it'd be worth the money to upgrade/switch just to avoid Windows.

Good choice on motherboard though. I had one of those (well still do but that PC hasn't been booted in months), and was quite happy with it.

Zyonin · 08-08-09, 12:25 PM

Originally Posted by Vyper

Ouch, that is a problem. Yeah, ATI didn't get their act together as far as Linux drivers until late in the game, so it doesn't surprise me that you're having problems with an early ATI card. A quick search on Amazon does show a few AGP Nvidia cards though I'm not sure it'd be worth the money to upgrade/switch just to avoid Windows.

Good choice on motherboard though. I had one of those (well still do but that PC hasn't been booted in months), and was quite happy with it.

Yes, ATI support for Linux has been pretty buggy, likewise Macs have had some problems with their driver though not anywhere near the issues that 'nix users have. One of the nice things about the AMD merger is AMD is very FOSS area and gave ATI a much need kick in the ol' rear end in this area. Thus ATI (now AMD) is more forthcoming with details for both their own fglrx drivers and the FOSS RaedonHD. Too bad though as I am still in a bind.

I had no choice but to convert to Linux as my Windows install bite the big one and my Windows CD is destroyed thanks to my kid (my PC is a homebuilt so the Windows serial number is tied to the now destroyed CD). At least I has planned ahead with my data and kept all the files I want to keep on a separate partition and drive. Plus Ubuntu will read and write to NTFS formatted partitions drives without any issues. Thus it will be easier if I do convert back to a Windows installation after rebuilding/replacing this PC (Windows 7 this time)

The K8V board is an excellent mainboard. Then again, I have never had problems with an ASUS mainboard, generally they are built like tanks (aka the kind that blows up other tanks). Likely if I rebuild this machine or replace it, I will use it's existing parts for a media server or convert into a machine for my kid (again using Linux as the OS). If it was not for the ATI issues, I would be running WoW. At least my Game Card time is up so I am not wasting any money there. Still, I am broke (currently unemployed and the month of August sucks for job hunting!), hopefully this fall, I will have some income coming into the house so I think about building this machine. This time I will again stick with an ASUS main board, but I am going with an NVIDIA based GFX card. My last NVIDIA based card (an now ancient Diamond Viper 770 which used the TNT2 chip) worked for several years (late 1999 to the summer of 2004) when it was replaced by the Radeon board.