Try New Technology

Well all is grand with Mint now! I ended up loading my HLSW software into the VirtualBox of Vista since I couldn’t get it to run at all in any form of Wine software. I also went with PuTTY and just let the Windows .EXE run thanks to PlayOnLinux (used to get my Steam on the machine) for all my SSH needs. Last but not least I got my screensaver I love to run – Fireflies – by switching from gnome-screensaver to xscreensaver; which if I wasn’t a Linux Desktop N00B I would have figured out a long time ago by just reading the note after it in the Software Manager (for xscreensaver or standalone – DOH!).

My only problem so far was when switching from gnome-screensaver to xscreensaver I let the machine idle and when I woke it back up – was connected to it via UltraVNC – it never gave me a login prompt so I had to reboot it.

NOTE: Since as of right now I can do 100% of my work on Linux Mint I am mostly done messing around with it, but I would love native (Wine is close enough) support for HLSW and some of my games (League of Legends for one!) so I plan to mess with different Wine options as I have time down the road.

Got everything working much better, except for my Fireflies screen saver which I haven’t even messed with. I really wish I could play my games, but alas I knew that was going to be out of the question, but I can still dream, right?
I had an issue with VNC from my Windows 7 desktop (on the LAN) not working to the Linux Mint (Gnome/Compiz), but I guess it’s an issue with Compiz, so I just went back to metacity for now – though the Compiz stuff was cool and I already miss it! I may go back to Compiz now that I know what the problem is and just not use VNC, but we’ll see.
Also had an issue with getting audio to work without a stutter running Windows Vista inside VirtualBox. To make my audio work in both the host machine (Mint) and the guest (Vista) at the same time I had to set the following:

Host Audio Driver: OSS Audio Driver
Audio Controller: ICH AC97

NOTE: I read that for some people this killed the local host OS audio while VirtualBox guest was running – not the case with me.

So far so good running Linux Mint on my old workstation. I have all my applications running on it except for HLSW which doesn’t have a Linux port and trying to install it via Wine-Doors or PlayOnLinux gives some random functionality so I just have up on it for now (though I’ll keep working at it!). Also dealing with a few bugs with a Linux based screen saver I love, but I’m sure that’s just mostly me being a N00B at this Linux Desktop stuff. Though my biggest disappointment – though it was very much expected – was that I can’t get most of my Windows based games to play on my Linux machine (yeah, yeah they aren’t for work, but why not load then and try it out!)…though Team Fortress 2, Portal, and Half-Life 2 all are ready for install according to my PlayOnLinux app.

Anyways just a few things left to iron out then the apps I must have and can’t port will just have to run from inside of a VirtualBox of Windows Vista.

openSUSE w/ Gnome is proving to responder slower than Windows Vista. Going to give Linux Mint a try and decided which ones is better for me

Got openSUSE working and now it’s time to see if I can get everything I use for business working on it…so far so good though.