for the Linux experts, WINE problem

**caravel** · 05-03-2010, 13:27

Well it looks like even the Ubuntuforums Admin is not impressed with the latest "offering": http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1470633

I have been with Ubuntu since day one and this is the first time I have been annoyed to the point of posting a thread like this and it saddens me a lot.

I believe that 10.4 should not have been released. It is not ready , not by a long shot. The version they have released is worse than the Beta.

It's simply canonical being canonical: Releasing software before it's ready. Software that Debian and other distros would not put in a mainstream release until it's been properly tested. This is where the commercially oriented Ubuntu development/release cycle falls down.

**Husar** · 05-03-2010, 15:29

That's interesting, at first I noticed that the new version fixed a few problems and added some good options, but a few minutes ago I had to restart it after booting because it was a bit messed up, icons showing up twice with one non-functional etc. Otherwise it seems to run fine so far now, but then I'm not a professional superduperuser...

**caravel** · 05-03-2010, 19:10

It's what's known as the "Ubuntu: It works for me" fallacy. It's shocking to see the actual board admin fall victim to it, but there you go. The whole idea of "it works for me" is entirely flawed. Let's be honest, none of us keep the same PC forever and none of us use our computer for the same things. So one man's "stable" is another mans:

I believe that 10.4 should not have been released. It is not ready , not by a long shot. The version they have released is worse than the Beta.

Now this chap is a superduperuser, the UF board admin and a long term Ubuntu fanboy, so you really have to ask yourself "what went wrong?" - when he seems to have only just realised this. Yet sadly it does feel as though he gets his just deserts in those responses ("it works for me" etc - "Oh dear lord... my creations are behaving in exactly the way in which I had programmed them... back fiends! STOP I say!... **frantically presses all the buttons on the remote** ). The attitude that the UF staff has fostered comes back to slap him in the face.

IMHO it's utterly naive and unhelpful for an experienced user to adopt the "it works for me" approach when other users are having serious trouble - more disturbing yet is that this is the attitude that has been fostered over at UF in the last few years. There has been no policy put in place against it, like there has against "sudo passwd root" or "gksu nautilus &" (or criticising the staff).

I'm off to feed the camels.

**Husar** · 05-03-2010, 19:56

Well, but it does work for me so far, if it stops working for me I will look for alternatives but until then or until i get a new PC I don't see why I should go through the hassle of setting up another OS today just because other persons have trouble with it? Maybe tomorrow...

**caravel** · 05-05-2010, 21:54

I decided to give RTW another go with Wine 1.1.42. The result is a lot better than the last time I tried it under an earlier version of wine.

The game is actually very playable and stable.

No issues at all with the campaign map. Bump scrolling doesn't work properly (even with the option to prevent the mouse pointer leaving the window enabled), I got around this, in a fashion, by stretching the virtual desktop slightly. - though I use the cursor keys to move around anyway. All that's needed is a virtual desktop setup through winecfg and ensure that both battles and campaign are set to this same resolution in 32 bit colour. (I found that 16 bit crashes the battles)

Battles are ok apart from a few minor glitches. This one was with the higher quality shadows enabled, which don't seem to render properly. Disabling these fixed it.

All in all the battles are fine, though a little bit chuggy when lots of units are on screen and grass needed to be turned off as it caused artifacts. Also the terrain disappears at the start of a battle. Rotating the viewport 360 degrees seems to fix this. Apart from that it's a vast improvement though - and as I said, it's actually playable now.

I haven't tried M2TW yet.

**Tellos Athenaios** · 05-06-2010, 00:24

That's very nice indeed. What kind of hardware + drivers is that on? The only thing I can see is that apparently your CPU is pretty much maxed out at 2.7GHz.

**caravel** · 05-06-2010, 09:15

It's on a fairly humble Athlon 64 X2 (2.7GHz) with 2GB of RAM a Radeon HD 3650 and the latest fglrx. CPU always scales up to maximum clock speed when you launch a game.