Linux Journal 1.1.13: A Time For Productivity

At this time the Linux project has reached a new stage: the system is set up and configured and appears almost entirely stable. So where I go from here, I think, is to use the new Linux PC as a productivity machine for a few weeks and see how it goes, documenting any issues that come up along the way.



The greeter error may or may not be solved; it seems to be so intermittent that I keep thinking I have fixed it. I did a repair on the mpm package and it went away for a while. After it came back I booted in recovery mode and ran a general repair of broken packages... and it went away for a while. Then after it came back again I ran a package update and the error is as of now still gone. The next step will be to switch display drivers, probably, if if comes to that.

Linux Journal 11.1.13: Almost There

I find myself in the unexpected position of having made huge Linux progress since the last post.

• I think that the intermittent broken greeter issue has been fixed. Reinstalling the mpm package seemed to fix it.
• Scribus is installed and seems to work fine. I will need to learn it, but it's not like I was an expert with Microsoft Publisher.
• VirtualBox is running a Windows 7 virtual machine in seamless mode, which is incredibly slick. It will handle any non-game Windows application I might need to run.
• WINE is installed and working. Using it, I can run EverQuest II without any obvious issue, although it could use more of a stress test. Vanguard was less successful and seemed to break the greeter as described above, but I have not yet given up on it.
• There are a few other games I'm going to try to install, notably GW2.  Steam is going to be a question mark for now.
• An attempted install of Campaign Cartographer 3 under WINE appeared to fail... but I can use it nonetheless. A few files will not open without erroring out, but this is nothing new.
• Fractal Terrains installed and runs fine under WINE but did not associate .ftw files with the application. I will need to do this manually.
• WINE is updated and still works.
• Minecraft is set up and runs natively in Linux.
• Using Netflix Desktop (which runs Silverlight under WINE) I can watch Netflix.

 So... yeah. I am not "done," but there has been major progress.

Linux Journal 10.29.13

Since the last post there have been some hurdles. Some stuff got broken and I ended up doing a full clean reinstall, which I debated using Ubuntu for. In the end, though, by carefully reinstalling and keeping track of absolutely everything I'm doing, I have Mint humming so nicely that I'm almost afraid to do anything more for fear of breaking it.

Nevertheless, there is more to be done. The few Windows programs that I need, including some games, will be run for the moment through VirtualBox, which I have not started to set up on this machine yet. Minecraft is already installed to run natively. There is likely to be some legwork involved with graphics drivers. I have some media files that still need to be moved over. A few assorted additional utilities aside, everything else is all set up in Linux.

Linux Journal 10.28.13: The Switch is Made

It took me several days to get all the backups set up to my satisfaction, but I am now running Linux (Mint 15 with Cinnamon 1.8.8+Olivia) on my main PC. This is a permanent development, not a trial... although I may switch versions at some point.

I've also gotten Steam running. This was more or less seamless — although I did create a repository for it. I haven't tried to actually run any games through it yet, though.

What did come up, in the writing of this very post, is how to type special characters in Linux. The emdash or long dash seen in the preceding sentence is one of these. In Windows you hold down the alt key and type the decimal value of the special character — 0151 for the emdash — on the numeric keypad. There are a couple of ways to do it in Linux, but the most straightforward way is to hold down CTRL+SHIFT, then type U plus the character code... but in hexadecimal, not decimal. This means I'll need to re-memorize the codes for the characters I use frequently, but I also have this page for reference.

I do — as of now — still have a Windows 7 partition on this machine. But by default it boots into Mint and I can, and plan to, wipe it out as soon as I can be rid of it.  I have already washed my hands clean of that malodorous load of filth, iTunes.

Linux Journal 10.21.13

This occurred over the weekend. Not sure why I took the shot then, as opposed to when VirtualBox was actually up and running successfully, but such are the perils of photography.

At any rate, this is a major hurdle out of the way in the quest to switch permanently to Linux.

Linux Journal 10.18.13

On the testbed PC, Ubuntu 13.04 is installed. WINE and VirtualBox, Clementine and GIMP are installed, and all tests run OK. Various applications are copied to an external hard disk for additional testing under VirtualBox or WINE. UnbuntuOne, which I plan to use for syncing files up to and down from the cloud, is all set up.

Right now the whole thing is waiting for the rather slow update to 13.10. Note for the future: if I want the current version, install the current version. Or plan on starting the update and then catching a movie or something.

Linux Journal 10.17.13

Cleaning up a copy of Windows to use as an image took more time than I'd expected. Back on track, I've installed Mint... the Cinnamon version. But I then went and manually did the updating and installation of MATE from the command line, just to do it. I haven't gotten any further yet. To be honest I am probably going to switch back to Ubuntu, even even though it really doesn't matter and matters even less when the choice is between these two. But Ubuntu is what I have been using, and generally it has a bit better documentation.

I'll make that call by my next Linux session. Either way, though, the next stop is VirtualBox, which took a little bit of fussing to get running the first time. This time around it shouldn't be an issue.