Thread: So I decided to install Debian

Ive had Debian 6 installed as my main OS for about a week or so now, and so far the results are not what i expected...

the boot times are awesome, installation of packages via the apt-get function are amazing

and as usual with a Linux product everything runs fine until you hit the Microsoft Wall.. then its a mission to get the windows based program to work (namely games)

wine support Via Wine-HQ is extremely nice however i'm having issues getting certain games to run. trial and error seems to be the key.

although the "Leap" to a Linux OS seemed impossible, its really not that bad.
has the whole "build it your self" feel.

Is anyone else running a Linux box on gu? and if so what is it being used for?

ps. any tips on getting rift working would be a plus

winetricks seems to be your answer WineHQ - Rift Live

why not just dual boot?

Originally Posted by mepm

why not just dual boot?

+1

Avoid Wine and any emulation software package like the plague. There is no way in hell they're going to be able to replicate suttle win32 API behaviour.

Instead install VMware player, and install Windows XP pro and run it in shared mode. This way you can use all your old win32 programs and games.

in other words, use Wine, don't touch VMware - don't go near XP, and DEFINITELY not shared mode.

Originally Posted by Aegis

in other words, use Wine, don't touch VMware - don't go near XP, and DEFINITELY not shared mode.

another reason why "STFU" was invented

Originally Posted by chad

Instead install VMware player, and install Windows XP pro and run it in shared mode. This way you can use all your old win32 programs and games

sounds like a plan, for now ill just keep plotting along and experimenting with Debian.

Originally Posted by dragon xr

Ive had Debian 6 installed as my main OS for about a week or so now, and so far the results are not what i expected...

the boot times are awesome, installation of packages via the apt-get function are amazing

That's why I use it. That alone makes 90% of the software you might want to run a whole lot straightforward and simple to manage than Windows and it's wide myriad of inconsistent installers, and uninstallers that rarely remove everything it dropped. Apt Just Works(tm).

and as usual with a Linux product everything runs fine until you hit the Microsoft Wall.. then its a mission to get the windows based program to work (namely games)

wine support Via Wine-HQ is extremely nice however i'm having issues getting certain games to run. trial and error seems to be the key.

The Wine AppDB is a good starting place, though as you said, trial and error never hurts. PlayOnLinux is a good wine frontend that does most of the heavy lifting for you (like setting up different wine prefixes for each program so if you hose one, you can delete the whole prefix without taking out your other programs, etc).

although the "Leap" to a Linux OS seemed impossible, its really not that bad.
has the whole "build it your self" feel.

Is anyone else running a Linux box on gu? and if so what is it being used for?

I switched to Debian in 1997 when bo was the current release, never looked back. In fact, my original 1997 install has been upgraded repeatedly over the years thanks to apt, and I've simply just moved everything to a new drive and run lilo (before) or grub again now to reinstall the bootloader, and it just gets used to it's new environment. Trickiest upgrade was switching to amd64 from i386 without reinstalling. My day-to-day machine's install has even once lived on a 32-bit machine with 8GB of ram (yea, suck it, 32-bit windows and your 4GB limit).

ps. any tips on getting rift working would be a plus

Not specifically familiar with that game. Try PlayOnLinux and doublecheck the AppDB, some combination of the two might just get it working.

Originally Posted by mepm

why not just dual boot?

Why pay the Microsoft tax if you don't have to?

Originally Posted by chad

Avoid Wine and any emulation software package like the plague. There is no way in hell they're going to be able to replicate suttle win32 API behaviour.

Instead install VMware player, and install Windows XP pro and run it in shared mode. This way you can use all your old win32 programs and games.

Wine isn't an emulator, it's a reimplementation of the win32/64 apis. VMWare is an emulator. You won't ever get native performance out of VMware, and while performance under wine may be hit or miss on software that goes for the obscure, undocumented calls, you'll often get better performance in Wine on Linux than you will in Windows for software that uses OpenGL. AutoCAD and any Grand Theft Auto game are notorious examples of software designed for Windows performing better under Wine.