Snott

Category: Linux

Linux Related stuff, system administration, installation tutorials and more

  • Xfce 4.8 first impressions

    Xfce 4.8 first impressions

    As you may or may not know, Xfce version 4.8 its finally out. This version has a lot of bug fixes as well as new features. Including the long-awaited network browsing support. This feature makes this DE a breeze to explore and connect to samba and Windows shares, add to that the thunar file manager and you get fast (very fast) network browsing.

    You can take a tour of this new version by going here
    Panels in Xfce are one of those things that when you start using them, you can’t imagine your life without them.

    I use docky to manage my applications launchers and windows, but after messing around with the panels for 5 min,
    I noticed that the dock would not be needed for this setup (although I still use it cause I like it a lot). Why? Cause you can set a panel to behave in a “docky” way by setting up launchers and some items like a folder explorer or a clock.

    Having used the GNOME desktop environment for a while now, I have to say I was surprised when I installed Xfce 4.8, load times at login are A LOT faster in Xfce than on GNOME, also, desktop icons, panels and stuff like that load a lot faster than on GNOME. Also, I have some trouble running gnome-do at startup on gnome, for some reason the application wont launch at startup and I have to manually open gnome-do every time I boot my comp, but with Xfce the application loaded no problem.

    Just a quick note here, most people think they can only have one desktop environment on a Linux OS, but that is false, in fact to write this post I installed Xfce onto my laptop which runs Gnome, and I can install KDE if I want also. All DE can coexist in one single computer. Only drawback of having multiple DE is that your application menu gets cluttered because you will have lots of programs.

    Now on to pros and cons:

    Pros

    – Fast

    – Thunar is an amazing File Manager

    -Lots of customization options

    – Lightweight compared to other DE’s

    – You can run Gnome applets via an item called Xfapplet

    Cons

    – Lacks features compared to the other DE’s, of course this is a tradeoff for the speed and size.

    – Not a lot of items to add to the panel

    Here is a screenshot of my current setup with this Desktop Environment, I have a top panel with the application menu, folder explorer and removable drives, among other things. Top left I have an open windows menu. Docky can handle windows fine but if it fails or I want to look at how many windows I have opened I can go there.

    On the bottom is docky with my most frequent applications along with some folders. With this setup the entire screen is free to show the application of my choice full-screen, with no distractions at all and with no space wasted for open windows/notification icons.

     

    My Xfce Desktop
    Click on the image to show full size

     

     

  • Running Dawn of War 2 Retribution on Linux

    Running Dawn of War 2 Retribution on Linux

    This post will be updated constantly until there is a way to play Dawn Of War 2: Retribution on the Linux platform via wine.

    Previous titles of this series where unable to run because of the games running Games For Windows Live, which is totally incompatible with wine. With Retribution dropping GFWL and leaving only steam, there is a pretty good chance the game will work flawlessly.

    Currently the game is in beta state, you can get a beta license to play RIGHT NOW and help develop the game by clicking here

    If you have tried this and have any tips to make the game run, send me an email at admin@snott.net and I will gladly add your tip to this post and give you full credit for it (please include your OS and computer specs), the idea is to compile every bit of info the Linux community has to offer to make this great game run on Linux.

    The machine I will test this in has the following specs:

    – Intel core 2 duo @ 1.3GHz

    – 4GB of RAM

    – Nvidia Geforce G210m 512mb

    – Archlinux 64 bit

    – 300 GB Hard Drive

    First Off you have to install steam, you can do that by following my guide here, If you already have a working steam installation, then just start downloading the game (remember you need the beta key, you can get the beta key by going here, it’s totally free!).

    If you are interested in knowing if the game will work with your Linux machine before going retail this a prefect time to test, because It wont cost you anything to test, when the game goes retail (price will be $30), of course beta will be no more and you will have to pay for the game.

    Also, I will test the game in 2 ways:

    1- Wine

    2- Crossover games (wine commercial version that makes things a lot easier by automating lots of tasks)

    In short, If you are lazy and have the money get Crossover Games, if you like/want to make things by yourself or don’t want to buy anything, go with wine.

    I submitted the application to the crossover application database, as of now it appears known not to work but having the application listed there would be a good boost for everyone searching ways to make this game work.

    As a rule of thumb, if the game works with crossover games, It will work with wine, but wine will need you to configure all settings and install all required dependencies to make the game work.

    I will also post here all of those dependencies If you want to make things different or want to test something.

    At this point, known dependencies are:

    1) Steam (duh!) check the guide to get a working installation of steam, else nothing will work, steam also has some dependencies on its own (like ttf-ms-fonts) so check the guide now and avoid wtf! moments.

    I tried to launch the game and store the output on a log file, here is what I found that can cause problems:

    003d:err:module:load_builtin_dll failed to load .so lib for builtin L”winemp3.acm”: libmpg123.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

    Apparently, the DLL can’t be found hence the game is unable to launch, that was the only error I got from the output, but there is a lot of stuff on the log file, you can check the log file.

    I found some info on this error, wine is trying to load support for mp3 and didn’t find the file, I installed the wmp9 on this prefix/bottle, but the system still complains.

    Here is what should be done to get this error to disappear, straight from wine hq:

    6.11.4. MP3s do not play in Windows Media Player or applications that depend on it

    For MP3 sound to play out of the box in apps that use the WMP engine and codecs, you must have 32-bit libmpg123 installed on your system and Wine must have been compiled with MP3 support.

    For the more technical ones, here is a more complete log (+seh, +trace, +ntdll). Dow2r Run log

    And a big one with +seh, +trace, +ntdll when I click on the game icon and steam isn’t running. DOW2 Retribution complete Log