DescentBB

I've made a bit of progress with the flash plugin: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/sho ... p?t=124458

Thank you.

I just got Wine to work.

The problems are now as follows:

1: No flash plugin (see previous post)

2: Can I reinstall Windows XP, preserving the registration of Maya, Adobe CS2, and the Vex programming kit

3: When Windows XP setup says that it is detecting hardware information, instead of the screen turning blue and the drivers being loaded, the screen turns black, the hard drive access light goes on, and the computer stops responding.

Thank you.

Are people still watching this thread or am I just beating it with a dead horse?

At this point, there are two big things that need to be fixed pretty soon: the flash plugin (see previous post) and Wine. All attempts to run a Windows program with Wine fail with \"X Error of failed request: GLXBadContext\".

Other than that, there are only minor details left to set up, in the following list:

1: Getting the \"Back\", \"Mail\", \"Calculator\", etc. buttons on the keyboard to work

2a: Accessing the NTFS hard drive and copying the file to Linux

2b: If I can get Wine to work, I will reformat the Windows hard drive and use it as extra space for Linux.

3: Figuring out how to customize the buttons on this nice Logitech G7 mouse

4: Figuring out how to share the printer between Linux and Windows (Both computers are in the \"Signature\" workgroup; when Linux tries to access a browse list of printers from the network, the error message is \"NT_STATUS_ACCESS_DENIED\" and the browse list on Windows does not include the Linux printer)

5: Screensavers requiring OpenGL do not start; there is just a black screen. Even in the preview window, there is nothing

Thank you.

As far as your flash problem is concerned, -lXmu I'm guessing refers to libxmu, so you'll need the development headers for this. In debian-esque distros, the package is called libxmu-dev. But if you really want to play flash files, you're better off just installing Macromedia's flash player.

0 and 5: It looks like there's something wrong with your OpenGL setup. Try running:
LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose glxinfo
What are the errors?

1: Best procedure I've found is go to:
System -> Preferences -> Keyboard. Then go to the layout tab and choose the model that best represents yours. If nothing looks similar, I've found that the \"Microsoft Wireless Multimedia\" keyboard worked best with generic keyboards.
You can then tweak keyboard shortcuts here:
System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts
Also, there's an advanced way of making custom shortcuts with metacity by starting gconf-editor going to:
/apps/metacity/keybinding_commands
and set up any commands.
Then go to /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/ and modifiy the respective run_command_N. This should work for those hexadecimal key scan codes too once you figure out what they are by playing around in that Keyboard Shortcuts thing.

I just got brave and reinstalled Linux, using the 32-bit version instead of the 64-bit version. I'm getting pretty comfortable with reinstalling Linux. Actually, everything seems to work better now. For one thing, the OpenGL screen savers turn on when I test them.

There are still a few things that need to be accomplished:
1: Be able to use the extra buttons on the keyboard and mouse (I will follow Jeff's instructions as soon as possible)

2: I will need to install Nvidia drivers. When I exit X and run the installer, it says that there's no precompiled kernel module, and that the kernel source package is not installed. I figured out that I installed the wrong kernel-devel. I will install the correct kernel-devel and reply with the results, as soon as possible.

3: I will need to get all Windows programs to run, most likely with Wine. I have just installed and played Orion 2! I'll do Descent 3 next. If it doesn't work, I can always go get the Linux version . If I can not achieve this goal, I will need to reinstall Windows XP on the SATA hard drive. However, when Windows setup should start the blue screen and detect hardware, the screen turs black and the hard-drive-access-light turns on. The computer then stays like this. Therefore, I can't reinstall Windows yet.

If I eventually reinstall Windows (without reformatting the hard drive), will programs like Maya and Adobe CS2 stay registered?

I will need to ask the blasted Microsoft Windows questions in this topic now because Microsoft closed the support case.

Thank you.

Negatratoron wrote:If I eventually reinstall Windows (without reformatting the hard drive), will programs like Maya and Adobe CS2 stay registered?

They should stay registered for a simple reinstall (or a repair install) since both methods generally preserve the system registry and user profile data.

Krom wrote:

Negatratoron wrote:If I eventually reinstall Windows (without reformatting the hard drive), will programs like Maya and Adobe CS2 stay registered?

They should stay registered for a simple reinstall (or a repair install) since both methods generally preserve the system registry and user profile data.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. I once did a "repair install" with an XP disk for a friend and she lost all her music and profile data. The stupid thing deleted her user profile data. I couldn't believe it. All her installed programs were still there though so it wasn't a total loss.

I recently did a repair install on my server, it kept the user profiles and all installed applications, even the service configuration I had set. If this persons profile got zapped, odds are something was corrupted that caused it in the first place. Just a repair install when windows is still working and there are no problems with the file system or registry shouldn't clear any profile data.

Negatratoron wrote: 3: I will need to get all Windows programs to run, most likely with Wine. I have just installed and played Orion 2! I'll do Descent 3 next. If it doesn't work, I can always go get the Linux version .

Good luck finding the Linux version online. If you like, you can read this thread and see that I wrote a how-to for installing the Linux version of D3 with only the Windows install CDs.

Or you can just grab the Linux-specific files and Howto From Here.

By disabling SELinux (which allowed some kind of shared libraries thing, I think) and by following FunkyStickman's impeccable instructions, I was able to both get the OpenGL screensavers to work flawlessly and to play a bit of single player Descent 3. There are still two more problems with Descent 3:

1: There is no sound.
2: When attempting to join a TCP/IP multiplayer game using the TCP/IP screen inside Descent 3, after downloading and analyzing mission data, the screen displays, \"levels don't match\" and returns to the TCP/IP screen.

This is the end of the useful part. Read the rest if you want, but there isn't any useful information. It's just one of many thoughts that I would like to share.

On kids shows, they say, \"If you work hard enough, you can do anything\" and so on, and it seems kind of silly and unreal, but I'm actually starting to believe it. Being 15 years old, I haven't needed to do much hard work (if any), but after all these weeks of troubleshooting, forum-posting, and google-searching, everything is starting to work right. It's not finished yet, but I'm starting to believe that if you work hard enough and never give up, you can accomplish anything. I wonder if that's really true, or if I'm just getting lucky.

Second problem with Descent3 is the well known Linux Checksum bug, read how to fix it here: viewtopic.php?t=9855

[root@localhost descent3]# /usr/local/sbin/d3fixd & ./descent3 -n -c -f -o
[1] 3564
starting Filter
Failed to send netlink message: Connection refused at script/d3fixd.pl line 72.
[1]+ Exit 111 /usr/local/sbin/d3fixd

Descent 3 started properly, but games did not even show up on the TCP/IP screen.

Thank you.

Make sure you have loaded the correct kernel modules, as per Munk's instructions. You should also have Perl installed. Just checking the obvious.

Oh, and as for using your brain and learning how to fix stuff... congrats. You've earned it. This is what Linux is all about: not having Microsoft holding your hand all the time. Kinda makes you feel great, doesn't it?

And as for the sound problem, I'm assumnig it works normally outside of D3, correct? You may want to change your system preferences to use OSS or Alsa instead of Arts or whatever... just try something, and learn in the process! Check the sliders in D3's settings, too.

Cheers.

I didn't notice that I had to load the kernel modules. Now Descent 3 works online, with sound and everything. However, there is a delay of about one second from the time when an event happens to the time when the sound leaves the speakers, whether this event be an after burner, a fusion blast, or a regular old error message during regular, old computer use. Obivously, it would be optimal to eliminate this delay.

Thank you.

Okay, now you're cooking!

The sound delay is caused by the sound system's buffers. Since you're using FC5, you're probably using KDE, right? Run \"kcontrol\" and go to the \"Sound and Multimedia\" panel, then click \"Sound System\". What you want to do is lower the sound buffers until the sound starts skipping some, then bump them back up a little. The more buffers, the smoother the sound, but the longer it takes to play.

When I set the buffers too low, the \"restarting sound server\" window freezes and I need to reboot the computer to make any further changes to the system sound. At the lowest possible setting that doesn't freeze the computer, the delay is still present, and definitely noticable.

By the way, I'm using Enlightened Sound Daemon. When I used Open Sound System, there was no sound whatsoever.

Thank you.