Ubuntu Linux

[Cervantes]

I don't think it is, though they've got a little explanation in their defense.

It seems my other option, using the external US Robotics modem, is out: I can't even plug it into my computer!
Maybe I'll try some old internal modems. Though, they might not be PCI...

[Cervantes]

Well, I cheked out Summit Direct, as well as two other smaller computer stores, for hardware modems. The two that did have hardware modems (Summit Direct being one of them) both showed me the AOpen FM56-PX. At Summit Direct, it's $35. To me, that's a good chunk of money, but I think it's worth it. If I can't get connected to the internet on Linux, I'm not going to use linux. And I want to use linux!

[Cervantes]

I haven't got the modem yet.
After searching around the WineHQ site for a bit, I realized that the way to get WINE working is to download it from within Linux. It's not like there's an installer file, or anything along those lines, that I could download in Windows and then access from within Linux. I want to know which programs will work within Linux and which will not, preferably before spending money on that modem. Is there any way to get WINE working without downloading it from within Linux?
-Cervantes

[Hikaru79]

Cervantes wrote:

I haven't got the modem yet.
After searching around the WineHQ site for a bit, I realized that the way to get WINE working is to download it from within Linux. It's not like there's an installer file, or anything along those lines, that I could download in Windows and then access from within Linux. I want to know which programs will work within Linux and which will not, preferably before spending money on that modem. Is there any way to get WINE working without downloading it from within Linux?
-Cervantes

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "download it from within Linux." Certainly, many distribution repositories will contain binaries for WINE, but those are nothing more than pre-compiled versions of the WINE source code that is available for easy download. You CAN download the WINE source code from Windows, and then transfer it over to a Linux machine through a LAN or whatever, and compile it there. You don't *have* to get it from the repository.

As for which programs will work in WINE, not that many. Ask for some examples and I'll let you know. Most notably, almost all games work with Cedega (a WINE offshoot), and WINE itself will work with Microsoft Office, Macromedia Studio, Photoshop 7.0, and others.

[Cervantes]

http://www.winehq.com/site/download-deb
I don't see any link to download it, only stuff to do within Linux.
Cedega, eh? Arrgh, it's commercial.

[Hikaru79]

If you scroll down past the "Linux Binary" category on the download page ( http://www.winehq.com/site/download ) you'll see a heading called "Wine Source Downloads. That's what you want. Here it is directly: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=6241&package_id=77449

Then just download the source and compile it.

As for Cedega... I may... just MAY... have "obtained" a copy of it that you can use. Get me on IRC to reveal to you whether "MAY" is a yes or no, k?

[Cervantes]

Golly, Hikaru, you rock.

[Cervantes]

Okay, I tried installing WINE (using the file I downloaded in Windows), but I failed. I extracted the file (to /home/geoff/WINE -- I really don't know what the various folders are used for, so I just used mine) then read through the first little bit of the README. It said to, in the terminal, run ./tools/wineinstall (and I would be in /home/geoff/WINE/wine-20050111 when I type that command). So I open up the root terminal, do it, and it says something like "You are running this in the root terminal. This is not recommended. Aborting." Damn. So I try it in the user terminal (geoff). I try to cd to /home/geoff/WINE but I can't, access is denied. And I couldn't change the security settings of the folder because I wasn't logged in as root. Why I didn't think to log in as root and change the security settings the log back in as geoff is beyond me, but nevertheless I didn't. Anyways, I'm going to try that soon. I suppose the whole purpose of this post is ask: what are the limits of the user, geoff. I know the root password, so I can open a root terminal. But I can't modify security settings when I'm logged in as geoff. Also, I was under the impression (before I installed Ubuntu) that there was no root user, that the user you created when installing Ubuntu would be, for all intents and purposes, the root user. Yet that's not the case.
-Cervantes

[Hikaru79]

What you heard is correct. do NOT use the root terminal. use the regular console, but whenever you need to do something as root, type 'sudo' before the command (sudo = super user do). For example,

code:

sudo chmod 777 home/geoff/WINE/

If you use sudo with everything, you should never have to touch root terminal or use the root user. This is actually a safer more secure way (apparently) because too many people do too many things as root and end up regretting it.