No cheese needed with this Wine!

April 9, 2008

Posted in: Computers, Linux, Nerdom, Programming, Regular Express

Tags: Adobe, Canonical, Fedora Core, Fireworks, java, laptop, linux, Lotus, Mandrake, Office, RDP, RegEx, release, TortoiseSVN, Ubuntu, Windows, Wine, Zend

Before I lost data, you would have seen a few posts on my favorite flavor of Linux - Ubuntu. I’ve been a casual user since the days of Mandrake 7 and Fedora Core 1. But ever since Canonical Ltd started releasing versions of it, I’ve been hooked.

I tried out all the versions and watched as they’ve progressively gotten better and better. With the release of 7.04 I found it working very well out of the box, so much so I installed it on my laptop and forced my wife to use it (she wasn’t exactly happy about that but got use to it).

But like most OS’s in my house they come and go with a base install of Windows generally dominating the machines. The only real reason is for games. Other than that, Linux (Ubuntu more specifically) works out just fine. Even more so now!

While this isn’t technically specific to the newest release (beta) of Ubuntu 8.04, it’s part of the install and so far almost everything I’ve needed to completely walk away from windows at work is working.Yes, like the title says, this post is about Wine.

Wine is a great program to allow you to install and run some Windows apps inside Linux. For me to completely walk away from windows there were a few I had to have. Once being Adobe Fireworks. Luckily the version I have at work is 8, and I knew version 8 worked with previous versions of wine so it should work with the newest. It wasn’t let down either. It works, it installed and I’ve been using it since. I find only one problem and that’s with some fonts not working correct (as in the bold doesn’t bold) and it looks like it’s a product of Windows ‘95.

I also had been using a program called RegEx Buddy in windows, and have grown to really depend on it. Creating regular expressions isn’t something I can do off the top of my head and really need this program for some of my projects. Well guess what, it works too!

Now I would have loved if my email program had worked, but it doesn’t (Lotus Notes) and it’s not so bad, I have access to a windows box through RDP to check it so that works out. Zend studio is java based and they had a linux installer version which seems to be working fine (though I think I’ve lost some auto completetion). Along the same lines, I got very use to using TortoiseSVN in windows, but found a sweet Nautilus script that acts the same way (except for broswing the repository). It’s all about the right clicks!

Everything else, including Office documents and spread sheets work fine through Open Office, messenger through Pidgin. They even have a version of PGAdminIII for Linux. I’m complete, all while forcing myself to learn more command line terminology.

Maybe, just maybe with a growing number of people seeing just how easy it is to use a Linux box the gaming industry will take note and start developing with Linux in mind, then I could be completely Windows free!

Posted in Computers, Linux, Nerdom, Programming, Regular Express