yes, mr. gates

[ceagle]

Irony.. o' the irony :>

Well before this announcement of the nifty new (and affordable!) MacBookPro Laptops with dual processors
and 128 or 256 video cards... 8> (yum!) ... I had seen the speed (compared to mine) of some programs
running on my friend kevinjdog's awwwwsome new machine... and this started to make me feel a little
behind the times, even though I am loving the shweet service I'm getting from the cool box I bought from
the magnifico makovette *wags*

sooooooo.. I buckled, and looked at the local ad deals ^v^
This had some interesting outcomes, filling the last few days, of which I now writetheth.

Turns out for just over a hundred smackers, you can get a nice not-too-fancy box, with around 2ghz speed!
This means... I finally crossed over into LinuxLand :9 *heh*
yes yep.. I've done some shell stuff over the years, but this is the first I had of my own.

I must say, it's been a gas, for the most part. The version I got with the machine was Debian, and it was
pretty well configured good-to-go, so everything that was setup innit worked grrreat :9

Now, the icky part.
Where to find video cards with Linux drivers so I could get over 32mhz? :/ (the one I got even says it does on the box, but has none on the CDrom or the website!) (ATI card.. bleah.)
Also, a lot of the shell commands I knew didn't seem to work (a few did, but why not them all? arf!!)
I also knew that there are like a half dozen ways to install programs, but only one way seemed to work (shell
script pre-written).
And then the darn Display program would crash here and there when trying to make adjustments.

But getting back to programs...
So here was my personal challenge: get an emulator running so I could try out some speedy MMORPGs like everyon else has for the last few years ^v^

Which leads me to two more issues (which ultimately broke the camel's back... for now at least)
I had known about WINE as an emulator but I hadn't tried it. Turns out a lot of documentation for this game said it
required a combination of a) online account and/or b) Point2Play and/or c) WINE and d) WINEx [at least three of those] to run. later I find that they've been combined into one program called Cedega, which I did get to run!
but... issue #1 How does one run it a second time once it's an installation? That's what I got each subsequent time :/

and issue #2 Why is Linux SO POORLY documented? everywhere!
Where are the technical writers in the Linux world? I don't think they exist!
I.E. On the WINE web page, there is a How To page, which has NOTHING really helpful or practical revealing how to use it! 8| Thank goodness the Cedega worked.. well.. at least once.
And I figured out that I had to MV the windows program to the emulator virtual drive before it could install :> *wags*
And I had to set permission for Cedega before it would run for the first time.
Where are the error reports? Where are the active processes? Where are the executables... why doesn't it put them ALL into /bin/lib/ ? How can one make a shortcut to Xwindows, darn it! (???)

It sure has been fun (I do love the learning), but I really do need to spend some more time with someone who has a system of their own, just to save some time. After all, part of the goal may be learning, but most of it is just to get on with things so that they work, right? *ruffle*
So in other words, back to mac and win for me for now... for a little while at least, just to catch my breath (and some long-lost sleep!) :D

p.s. makovette, you'll love this :> I also learned about that thing where win2k won't let you easily just put your older drives into your upgraded machine... isn't that nice of them? rarrr!

Comments

[sebkha.livejournal.com]

You're not the first person to pose this question. There's someone at my university department whose thesis topic is "Why is open source software so poorly documented?" Apparently it's because there's no personal glory associated with being a technical writer. (There's not much from being a coder either, but people can imagine there is more easily!)

[ekevoo.livejournal.com]

Well, the documentation on Wine is, indeed, very poor because Wine and its derivates are a real mess. I gave up on them trying to run Ragnarok. But on your other questions... Hope I can be of help! ^__^ Mwee! o/

Where are the error reports?
Most likely in /var/log
also, check .xsession-errors in your home directory

Where are the active processes?
Check the manual pages for ps and top. When in Top, press the question mark key for online help. It's not very intuitive, but once you understand it, you can make it rain.

Where are the executables... why doesn't it put them ALL into /bin/lib/ ?
/usr/bin, /bin and so on. Take a look at $PATH (echo $PATH), and try the command which.

They aren't ALL in one place because it depends on the nature of the executables, and because $PATH is there to make it not matter anyway.

The real place for most executalbes is /usr/bin, because these are user-targeted (as opposed to administrator-targeted) executables. Many executables lie in /opt for closed-source linux applications. /bin is for system executables, that are good both for users and for administrators, and /usr/sbin and /sbin is system binaries, which are intended to be run only by root. Pretty much 95% of all linux executables are there. Some deeperly tuned linuces have many executables in /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/sbin.

For more information, se the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.

Additionally, on the machines I don't have root password, I added $HOME/bin to $PATH so that I could have my own installed applications without the need of approval from the network administration. Of course, I had to compile these applications with a special option:
./configure --prefix=$HOME
And that made my home directory look a bit more like /usr and /usr/local, which are the usual prefixes.

How can one make a shortcut to Xwindows, darn it! (???)
I don't understand what you mean... o_O

[featherhawk.livejournal.com]

good luck figuring out your new toy ^_^

[neocanis.livejournal.com]

Wow, sounds like "fun". :<

Good luck*hug* :P