Linux Sanity

Last week I installed Ubuntu Linux onto my 12 year old nephew’s laptop. He’d pestered me to do it for a while and this time when he came to visit he brought his laptop with him so I could get it working in ways that Windows never could.

He wanted his laptop to work faster than it was with Windows and for all its hardware to work.

Previously, we had to re-install Windows after it had become sluggish through software installation, removal, re-installation… As usual, Windows failed to install some of his laptop’s hardware. Most importantly to my nephew, Windows failed to install his sound card drivers so his game and multimedia usage enjoyment dropped to zero.

He had used Linux on my computer and loved it. His favourite part of Linux is all the free games and the ease with which they are installed. So, back to the beginning point of this article, I had a lovely time installing Linux on his laptop (took an hour to install and 3 days to get his laptop’s WiFi kill switch disabled – I’ll explain how to do that in another post).

So, armed with his new Linux laptop, he logged into his favourite Facebook games and asked me how he could install Cheat Engine.

I explained how to use scanmem and Game Conqueror but neither programs suited his purpose.

So that spurred me to this article – How to Install windows Games and Apps into Linux.

Most Linux users, and I’m guessing you’re one of us, are aware of Wine, the non-emulator that enables Linux users to install Windows software without having to duel boot with Windows. But are you aware of your other options:

I had the pleasure of installing Ubuntu onto two old computers this weekend. One laptop and one desktop. Both resistant to Doctor Dion’s orders.

The Ubuntu graphical installer is poor at detecting and setting up old graphics cards and monitors. It is a strange and frustrating problem because once Ubuntu is installed it detects and configures them effortlessly. The installation issue shows itself through symptoms which include any of the following:

A perpetually blank screen that prevents any set-up questions from being answered
A continuously moving animated gif that suggests “something amazing is about to happen“; which it is – the computer is about to get a boot from its frustrated user!

An error message that reads

vesamenu.c32: attempted DOS system call
boot:

Whatever the symptom, I am sure that it will have prompted you to clean your disc, to clean your disc drive, to re-download your installation iso, to reburn it at increasingly slower speeds, to Google umpteen times with search terms like:

Flash, like it or love it, despite all its security holes and the bugs that cause browsers to crash and computers to freeze, it is an almost compulsory browser plugin for most web surfers. Flash lets web developers build highly creative web sites and add multimedia components like embedded videos and Flash galleries with beautifully animated transitions between images. Web surfers whom wish to view those Flash components must have Adobe’s Flash plugin installed in their browser if they want to see more than blacked out regions of sites that rely on Flash for some of their display. So, as much as I personally hate Flash, I was very surprised to recently learn that Adobe have ceased development of their 64-bit Linux Flash plugin.