The folks over at WINEHQ are proving themselves to be champs. Dan Kegel posted a couple of replies to my post mentioning WINE directing me to submit (and what to submit) bug reports on those issues that were putting me off using it for “critical” (to me) apps. Actually, it really just comes down to one uber-critical app for me.
And the contributors there have been patient with me as my sleep-deprived, under-caffeinated brain failed to check the docs more carefully for such things as classifications of bug severity and lil notices in emails that say, DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS EMAIL *LOL*. (Of course, a “Normal” bug that chops out major portions of an app’s functionaity doesn’t seem “Normal” to me, but I’m just as WINE user with little no experience in how “Major” bugs affect things. I’m sure I’ll learn. Or not, epending on how many brain cells are left and how much time I have left to learn… But at least one of the developers was kind enough to send me a link to the bug classification list. *DUH* The link was right next to the dropdown list for bug severity classification. Major case of The Stupids here. :-))
I may never have an all-Linux only box, but if the folks at WINEHQ have anything to say about it, it’ll not be because they’ve not moved heaven and earth to make WINE run any(Windows)thing thrown at it.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, several nVidia driver installations later, Ubuntu video is mostly OK. The login box for UN/PW is still about 6″ southeast of my lower righthand corner (out of sight, out of mind?), so I have to just blindly login, but at least my display isn’t limited to 800 X 600 (or worse, 640 X 480, as it was for some time… twice), any more. And now all the eye candy I can stand is mine. Of course, until I get the rest of my memory in, the onboard graphics do cause a huge performance hit on everything else by grabbing as much as half a gig of memory (yes, as much as half a gig! surprised me, too). That makes running WinXPP in VirtualBox something of a challenge, sometimes, but since I’m probably taking that XPP VBox down, soon, no problem, really.
Next lil fun game: installing VMWare and a PCBSD 1.5.1 VM image. Maybe a couple of days from now. Need to sleep sometime, first. *heh*
Speaking of computer thingies, the other day, while driving with my Wonder Woman, I blanked out computing some simple long division in my head. Just *poof!* it was gone! What’s with that? Losing my marbles? I thought one or two beers a day was supposed to stimulate brain cell growth, but maybe all the new cells are just alcoholic.
I think I either need a nap or more coffee. Or both.
Hmmm, rambling much?
Nah, just a wee tad.
More “stream of unconsciousness” conversations with the voices in my head…
Funny thing. While I have done more than a few (approaching “many”) installations of different OSes–mostly various Linux distros, but including lmost every “flavor” of Windows ever cooked and even a coupla BSDs–until I decided to make the move and eliminate Windows entirely from my daily personal computing (which means, “Not at all from my life” *sigh* Oh, well. :-)) did I run into a real bear of a Linux install. Now, I’ll admit, of the “too many to count but less than the numbers of stars in this galaxy” installations of Windoze I’ve done, some have been major pains in the neck. (You can take “pain in the neck” to be a euphemistic reference to an anatomical part further south.) In fact, I have had restore installs of an OEM Windows onto he box the image was originally built for fail and fail catestrophically. (Took several days to repair that Windoze mess!)
So… when I ran across a post in the Ubuntu forums titled “Ubuntu Sucks” by a self-styled “Windows power user” who had utterly failed to get up-to-date nVidia video drivers installed in Ubuntu over the course of three weeks I demurred as politely as possible. Heck, it only took me 3 days to get my nVidia drivers installed. *LOL* I’ve had Windows installs where letting Me$$y$oft update WindowsXP, SP1 to SP2 completely crashed, trashed, folded, spindled and mutilated XP. Bare bones reinstallation of XP, reinstallation of all necessary softwares and restoration of backed up data–almost a whole day’s billable time, for one machine that was trashed by Me$$y$oft itself. So far, the ONE “crash” of an Ubuntu system (from an improperly-posted beta update a couple of years ago) that resulted in a totally trashed GUI was recoverable with ONE command issued at the command line. Five minutes max.
So while I feel for the guy, I have to believe his primary problem is the nut typing at his keyboard. Three weeks and he’s not yet learned how to install a driver he feels he can’t live without? That huge sucking sound? It’s not Ubuntu; it’s air rushing to fill the vaccuum between his ears. I’ve been bemoaning my own thickheadedness of late, but after reading this poor guy’s posts (and no, I’m not linking them; it’s just too sad) I’m beginning to see the advantages to having solid rock between my ears over having a hard vaccuum.
Thanks for coming by and visiting. It is always a pleasure to read your thoughts. Honestly this post mostly cracked me up so don’t feel bad – lol! I think I need to chill and go have a glass of wine! 🙂
The “Windows power user” you described having a problem with Ubuntu?
Sounds like a PEBKAC error to me… 🙂
Indeed, Perri. I’m a moderately strong “Windows power user” myself (creds, certs, etc.–who cares? It’s all filed under “dung” *heh*), but I knew going in with my first Linux distro that things would be different. Heck, Windows (and even DOS) is much different from 15 years ago. And the DOS/Windows paradigm is different to CP/M and other predecessors.
When I want familiarity in Ubuntu, I just fire up my web browser or Evolution (mostly comparable to Outlook) or Open Office (which I standardiszed twc computers on–except for my Wonder Woman’s notebook–years ago). Once I fire up some standard apps, who can tell the difference (aside from snappier performance and fewer crashes and freezes)?
OK, so there’s no useful Device Manager clone. Seriously. What’s with managing all hardware from the command line? Yeh, yeh, I know there are separate different lil GUIs to handle hardware, but there’s no unified GUI that duplicates, or better improves upon Device Manager. That’s just silly in a distro that touts its ease of installation and use.
But still, it’s tons and tons easier than adding devices in DOS! I guess some “Windows power users” have mental abilities even more strophied than mine have seemed for the past couple of weeks. *heh* I tell ya, though, when it came to the nVidia driver installation Google was my friend. Now, I plan on purchasing another nVidia card *s* to free up system resources and expand my video capabilities, nVidia especially now that I KNOW I can install the drivers.
But seriously, if an installation requires (as did this one) recompiling the kernel in order to make the video work correctly, then while it may be ready for Aunt Tilly to use once it’s fully installed and configured (it is, it is!), it’s not fully Aunt Tilly ready for installation.
I’ll give Ubuntu kudos for ease of installation in one regard, though. Its “wubi” installer–designed to “install” an instance of Ubuntu into a Windows folder–IS Aunt Tilly ready. My Wonder Woman did an unguided wubi instal on her Toshiba laptop and the thing used her Windows config files to locate and install all her hardware. Now, that’s not to shabby.
Of course, it’s a dual boot thing, so that’s something of a turnoff for lotsa folks. Still, cool.
In the final analysis, this is the ONLY “rocky road” Ubuntu installation (heck, Linux or BSD distro installation) I’ve had for a long, long time, and I attribute that to the fact that THIS one has to be as close to perfect as possible–far more so than any Windows installation I’ve done for a long time (save for the comp I have readied for my dad). So, yeh, I’m being perhaps excessively picky about some things (still waffling between KPilot and JPilot for my Palm interface, for example).
Yep, had LOTS screwier Windows installations in the past. Heck, an old DRDOS install once went south on me! (Totally recoverable, of course, but needed a fresh, uncorrupted floppy–one of the originals in a 6-disk set was corrupt! Six disks for a DOS installation? I guess you had to have been recently aquired by Novell to have DOS inflated like that… )
BTW, Perri, I purchased the base unit hardware for this new comp fully intending to make significant upgrades within a short timeframe. Funny thing… the unit’s a “debranded” computer from a major maker (unsold/returned stock, company I bought for bought pallet-loads of the thinsg from the maker and has been selling them–minus OS, drivers, etc.–like hotcakes. Now sold out) that’s been “refurbished”. For “refurbished” read “stripped”. *heh* This unit originally sold with 4GiB of memory, came with iGiB installed–one DIMM. Looked online at seller’s site and found the EXACT DIMM (pulled from “my” computer–or, k, another one :-)) available for under $25. Matches current installed DIMM exactly; same manufacturer, same specs, same product number. While the mobo can accept 4-2GiB DIMMS (for 8GiB total) and I am running a 64-bit OS that can see ’em, I think 4GiB is OK for now. Sure, after system headroom and reserves, I’ll still only get to use a little over 3GiB, but until I run down the place I want to buy my new nVidia-based vidcard (and yes, it’ll have 512MiB of usable memory–which will impact the “headroom” factor but still free up some considerable resources), the 3GiB will make installing virtual machines much, much more comfortable. Oh, right, ordered the additional 3GiB w/o a second thought.