Just a few minutes ago I was happily browsing the Ubuntu Forums and I stumbled upon a post about getting Ubuntu to run as fast as Arch Linux. In that post, the author mentioned this new (to me) web browser called Swiftfox, and I decided to find out if it was worth a download.
When I visited the Swiftfox website, I figured this was just an optimized build of Mozilla Firefox, but still I decided to give it a go. They have this small installer, that basicaly is just a small bash script, but its oh so very easy to use! You chose a build that suits your specific processor, and it will fetch it for you from the Swiftfox site, install it and add it to the Applications menu in Ubuntu. That's better than building Firefox from source!
Now it was the time to see if the optimization was real. After clicking the icon, almost a second after I had a nice Firefox windows with ALL the extensions loaded and working. It started way faster than the Firefox build that comes bundled with Ubuntu, way way faster.
All in all, I've found something that's even better and faster than the official build of Firefox. Give it a try!
Get Swiftfox!
Friday, October 20, 2006
How to run GTA 3 with Wine
This how-to will walk you through installing Grand Theft Auto 3 on Ubuntu Dapper with Wine version 0.9.9.
This how-to is the result of many hours spent dealing with wine-cvs, the latest stable wine, and the 'standard' wine that Dapper provides in the repositories. I HAD to use the version dapper provides because the newer version wouldn't let me install the game (it crashed), and the cvs version simply did not work.
This is a long process. First, get a Windows machine and install GTA 3 on it. Next go and download the patch to upgrade the game to version 1.1.
Click here to download the patch!
Now, insert the second CD into your drive and open it with windows explorer. Navigate to the 'audio' folder and copy everything that is inside it to C:/Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTAIII/audio/
As you know, wine doesn't have any form of copy protection support built in, so in order to play we need a game 'fix' or 'crack' to disable this copy protection. If this how-to were for Windows machines, then I'd be in trouble, but this is so we can play on Linux. You need to find a decent no-cd crack, but I did the job for you.
Click here to download the no-cd crack!
Unzip the crack. Inside you'll find an unrar_me.rar file. Unrar it (I assume you know how to use WinRar). Now you've got two files: gta3.exe and a text file; ignore the text file. Go to C:/Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTAIII/ and rename gta3.exe (the one in that directory) to gta3.bak. Now copy the cracked gta3.exe to the game directory. Double click it to play, this will create some files and compress the textures for that particular computer. Complete the first mission.
That was the easy part, but now we need the game on Linux. Go to your Linux computer and install wine.
sudo apt-get install wine
This should install wine 0.9.9, the version you need to run the game. Once wine is installed open up a terminal and type winecfg to run wine's configuration utility.
On the Applications tab leave everything as it is, move on to the Graphics tab. In it check the boxes for "Enable desktop double buffering", "Allow the window manager to control the windows", "Emulate a virtual desktop" (set it to 800x600), and "Allow Pixel Shader". On the Direct3D section, set the Vertrex Shader Support to "hardware".
Now move on to the Audio tab. Uncheck any boxes that are checked, then check the box for "ALSA Driver". On the DirectSound section set the Hardware Acceleration to "Emulation" and check the box for "Driver Emulation". After doing this you're finished with wine's setup.
Get your GTA 3 disks out and insert the first CD into your drive (in your Linux computer). Ubuntu will auto-mount it for you in /media/cdrom0, so open up a terminal and change to that directory. Once there type wine Setup.exe to install the game, it should install just fine.
Phew, alright, the game is installed, but you must patch it to version 1.1. Get the patch and save it in /home/your-user-name/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTAIII. Now change into that directory and run the patch with wine gta3patch.exe.
Ok, now get the crack and do the same you did on the windows machine to apply it. Then try and play with wine gta3.exe (while on the game's install directory). You may notice that when the game is compressing the textures, the game will crash, and you won't be able to play it at all.
This is where our Windows instalation comes in. Go to your Windows machine and be ready to burn some cd's or a dvd. You need to transfer ALL of the files installed on the Windows machine to your Linux machine. The files I'm talking about are all the ones in C:/Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTAIII/, so its better to just copy the whole GTAIII directory.
Once you've got the files on some cd's, dvd, or external hard drive go to your Linux machine and rename the GTAIII folder in home/your-user-name/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTAIII to GTA3.
Then do:
mkdir /home/your-user-name/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTAIII
After that you must copy everything in you cd's, dvd, or external hard drive to that directory.
Now go to /home/your-user-name/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTAIII (the directory where you pasted all files from the windows instalation in) and play with wine gta3.exe.
The game should launch and all should be good. Congratulations!!!
Now that the game is running you can do
rm -rvf /home/your-user-name/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTA3
to get rid of those extra files.
Known problems:
This how-to is the result of many hours spent dealing with wine-cvs, the latest stable wine, and the 'standard' wine that Dapper provides in the repositories. I HAD to use the version dapper provides because the newer version wouldn't let me install the game (it crashed), and the cvs version simply did not work.
This is a long process. First, get a Windows machine and install GTA 3 on it. Next go and download the patch to upgrade the game to version 1.1.
Click here to download the patch!
Now, insert the second CD into your drive and open it with windows explorer. Navigate to the 'audio' folder and copy everything that is inside it to C:/Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTAIII/audio/
As you know, wine doesn't have any form of copy protection support built in, so in order to play we need a game 'fix' or 'crack' to disable this copy protection. If this how-to were for Windows machines, then I'd be in trouble, but this is so we can play on Linux. You need to find a decent no-cd crack, but I did the job for you.
Click here to download the no-cd crack!
Unzip the crack. Inside you'll find an unrar_me.rar file. Unrar it (I assume you know how to use WinRar). Now you've got two files: gta3.exe and a text file; ignore the text file. Go to C:/Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTAIII/ and rename gta3.exe (the one in that directory) to gta3.bak. Now copy the cracked gta3.exe to the game directory. Double click it to play, this will create some files and compress the textures for that particular computer. Complete the first mission.
That was the easy part, but now we need the game on Linux. Go to your Linux computer and install wine.
sudo apt-get install wine
This should install wine 0.9.9, the version you need to run the game. Once wine is installed open up a terminal and type winecfg to run wine's configuration utility.
On the Applications tab leave everything as it is, move on to the Graphics tab. In it check the boxes for "Enable desktop double buffering", "Allow the window manager to control the windows", "Emulate a virtual desktop" (set it to 800x600), and "Allow Pixel Shader". On the Direct3D section, set the Vertrex Shader Support to "hardware".
Now move on to the Audio tab. Uncheck any boxes that are checked, then check the box for "ALSA Driver". On the DirectSound section set the Hardware Acceleration to "Emulation" and check the box for "Driver Emulation". After doing this you're finished with wine's setup.
Get your GTA 3 disks out and insert the first CD into your drive (in your Linux computer). Ubuntu will auto-mount it for you in /media/cdrom0, so open up a terminal and change to that directory. Once there type wine Setup.exe to install the game, it should install just fine.
Phew, alright, the game is installed, but you must patch it to version 1.1. Get the patch and save it in /home/your-user-name/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTAIII. Now change into that directory and run the patch with wine gta3patch.exe.
Ok, now get the crack and do the same you did on the windows machine to apply it. Then try and play with wine gta3.exe (while on the game's install directory). You may notice that when the game is compressing the textures, the game will crash, and you won't be able to play it at all.
This is where our Windows instalation comes in. Go to your Windows machine and be ready to burn some cd's or a dvd. You need to transfer ALL of the files installed on the Windows machine to your Linux machine. The files I'm talking about are all the ones in C:/Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTAIII/, so its better to just copy the whole GTAIII directory.
Once you've got the files on some cd's, dvd, or external hard drive go to your Linux machine and rename the GTAIII folder in home/your-user-name/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTAIII to GTA3.
Then do:
mkdir /home/your-user-name/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTAIII
After that you must copy everything in you cd's, dvd, or external hard drive to that directory.
Now go to /home/your-user-name/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTAIII (the directory where you pasted all files from the windows instalation in) and play with wine gta3.exe.
The game should launch and all should be good. Congratulations!!!
Now that the game is running you can do
rm -rvf /home/your-user-name/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Rockstar Games/GTA3
to get rid of those extra files.
Known problems:
- The mouse on the menus doesn't work, you must use the keyboard arrows.
- Sound 'lags' a bit, but it doesn't bother at all, its just a second behind of what happens on screen.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
aria2 Packages
Hello good people. Today I built two new packages, one is for ares, a package requiered by the nice p2p/bittorrent/metalink client aria2. Of course, the second package is aria2 itself, which was built on my ubuntu 6.06.1 system.
The aria2 package was built without libgcrypt because I couldn't get it to compile because it didn't find libgpg-error, although it was already installed. This does not mean this package lacks checksum support, as it was built with OpenSSL.
I hope you enjoy the packages!
Download the ares package!
Download the aria2 package!
The aria2 package was built without libgcrypt because I couldn't get it to compile because it didn't find libgpg-error, although it was already installed. This does not mean this package lacks checksum support, as it was built with OpenSSL.
I hope you enjoy the packages!
Download the ares package!
Download the aria2 package!
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
New Transmission Package!
Well, I am no longer using this particular bittorrent client, but I think its still worth building packages for those who are using it, so here is the latest package. This one was built with checkinstall a few minutes ago with the latest svn source (r991 at the moment). I hope you enjoy this one! :D
Download the package!
Download the package!
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Busy as hell
Well, I know there has been a lack of posts these past two weeks. Its just that life caught up with me, and so homework and studying became part of my life yet again. However, only a month remains before I get some much-needed rest. Be patient, more info will come your way.
As a sidenote, here is a screenshot of a programming project some friends and I have been working on. Its a Java game based on the ancient game Mancala, but with tuxes, so its Tuxcala! I hope that it will be published here along with its source code when its ready.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
How to write a good How To
Whether you are trying to contribute to an Open Source project or you want to attract traffic to your blog, How To's can help you. This is a list of things to keep in mind when writing a How To.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
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