Tyler McManus .com

So I’m sure that for many of us dual-booting converts stepping into the Linux world, one of the most common obstacles keeping us handcuffed to Windows is World of Warcraft. Well not anymore for me, thank you very much.

I went through many tutorials on how to configure WoW for Ubuntu, but I found the below link to be by far the most helpful AND up-to-date:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WorldofWarcraft

In truth, I did part of this the easy way. Once I had installed wine and configured it, instead of installing each of the disks (WoW + Burning Crusade) from Ubuntu, I just dragged the 10GB installation folder from the Vista side to Wine’s pseudo C drive \ Program Files directory, which by default is located here:

/home/<yourusername>/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/

So that’s much less hassle, and I highly recommend it if at all possible. The other excellent bonus of this method is that I didn’t have to reinstall or mess with any of my addons, of which I have several.

So once all the files were copied over, I followed the instructions from the link above and added this to my Program Files/World of Warcraft/WTF/config.wtf file:

SET gxApi "opengl"

SET ffxDeath "0"

SET ffxGlow "0"

SET SoundOutputSystem "1"

SET SoundBufferSize "150"

And if you want to run WoW in windowed mode, add this as well:

SET gxWindow "1"

I also created the shortcut indicated, and added that to my panel, complete with WoW SVG icon. Nice touch by the editors of ubuntu.com. So now I’m finally up and running with WoW in Ubuntu. One less thing tying me to Windows.

Note: Technically, I had tried this all once before, and it was kind of working, but it was with a lower end graphics card, and though I could log into the game, once in Azeroth, the ground was black everywhere I went, and lighting was all funky whenever I went in doors. Oh, and the text looked like Sanskrit. I probably should have taken a screenshot. So if you call that “working”, then this is old hat. Otherwise, its finally up. May my blades never dull.

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About a week ago, all my .wmv’s, .avi’s, and .mpg’s starting playing only in black and white. I had been messing around with dvd encryption libraries just prior, and thought it might be related but in the end it turned out to be a totem player configuration. The solution is to remove totem’s config folder and let it rebuild as found here.

Step 1. terminal:

$ rm -r ~/.gconf/apps/totem

Step 2. log out and back in again.

And props to ubuntuforums.org once again for sending me in the right direction. Hope this helps someone else.

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i’ve been running ubuntu (7.10) for about a month now, and i dig on it. alot. i’m almost brand new to the linux side of things (i still have my placenta with me), but so far i’m pretty comfortable. i’m currently dual booting with vista (which is what finally pushed me away from windows), and i find that there’s very few things left for which i boot back into windows. so i guess i should thank you windows for turning me onto linux lol. of course, in truth, i’m also grateful to the ubuntu linux community for putting out such an awesome product.

out of the gate, ubuntu covered all my immediate needs with the terminal window and software like firefox (obligatory) and the open office suite, but what really impressed me was up front was synaptic. most every kind of application i’ve needed so far can be fetched from one single package manager which also conveniently handles all the updates for everything i have installed in one sweep. this is very convenient.

some of the other apps i’ve found useful:

instant messaging/chat: pidgin. works great for me as it connects to all the messaging protocols i need (msn, yahoo, irc).

audio player: rhythmbox. some swear by amarok, and while functionally it is nice, i like the basic look and feel of rhythmbox more. i’m a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. though honorable mention here is songbird. i’ll be keeping an eye its development.

video player: mplayer.

firewall: firestarter. though guarddog is nice too.

programming ide: eclipse with the cfeclipse plugin. probably soon to be accompanied by phpeclipse so i can learn php.

other apps i’m interested in, but haven’t yet had the chance to try are gimp (the photoshop equivalent for linux) and digikam (a supposedly decent photo manager).

all in all, linux feels pretty good right now. i dare you to try it.

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