Karmic, Wine, Warcraft III

NOTE: This was a draft post for a long time.  Not sure of what I wrote now or why I never published this post after writing it.

Here are the step that I did to get Warcraft III Frozen Throne working in Ubuntu Karmic 32bit through Wine with support for both battle.net and sound. I am doing this on a fresh install of Ubuntu Karmic (with no updates installed).

1. Install Wine 1.1.38 for Jaunty (because no debs exists for Karmic)


2. Install Warcraft III
   
   
   
   1. Insert the cd (or mount the disk image in my case)
   
   
   2. Right-click the install.exe file and select "Open with Wine Windows Program Loader"
   
   
   3. The Wine Gecko Installer will ask for permission to install a dependency. Click "Install".
      


3. Install The Frozen Throne
   
   
   
   1. Insert the cd (or mount the disk image in my case)
   
   
   2. Right-click the install.exe file and select "Open with Wine Windows Program Loader"


4. Install the Warcraft III (The Frozen Throne) Full 1.24d patch by right-clicking the patch that you download and select "Open with Wine Windows Program Loader"

Associate .tex with Kile

In Ubuntu 12.04 with Unity 2D, one can associate .text files with Kile by following these directions, which were originally written for Gnome 3.

How to install Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin on a Dell Mini 10

This is my guide for how to install Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin on a Dell Mini 10.

NOTE: Now that I am finished, it seems most of my problems are related to Intel's Graphics Media Accelerated 500 (GMA 500 aka Poulsbo) chipset and many solutions are given in or linked from this Ubuntu forum thread.

I installed the 32-bit version (ubuntu-12.04-dvd-i386.iso) since the Intel Atom in my Dell Mini 10 does not support 64-bit.   I recommend downloading the iso via torrent.

I created a USB startup disk.  When booting from the USB, select "Try Ubuntu without isntalling".  When Unity loads, the screen is only half of the vertical length, but the mouse can travel between the two actual halves of the screen and "paint" that half the screen.  The proprietary driver EMGD that I have used successfully in previous versions of Ubuntu does not have a version available for Ubuntu 12.04, but I think the open source driver for Pouslbo, called psb_gfx, will be good enough (which has seen significant improves in the last year).  I will update this post if I encounter any future problems with it.

To temporarily fix this half screen problem log out, click the Ubuntu logo near the password field, select "Unity 2D", and log back in with the username "ubuntu" and a blank password.  If the menu with the "Log Out..." option will not open, try restarting the computer.

My WIFI chipset requires the Boardcom proprietary wireless driver to work.  I choose to install it later.

After installing the boot process may go as follows.  The screen goes purple, then blank, then after a few moments plays the Ubuntu login sound (as described here).  Press ctrl+alt +F1 to go to the text mode login.  After logging in, press ctrl+alt+F7 (or execute service lightdm restart) to start lightdm (the normal login GUI).

I installed all updates, which include a kernel update.

To always get lightdm to appear, I followed these instructions.  For some, these instructions worked.  For more help with graphics because of Intel's GMA500 chipset, start reading this Ubuntu forum thread at the linked page (which is about the day Ubuntu 12.04 was released).

By this point, I no longer get the half screen problem.  Maybe some updates fixed this.

Good luck with your own installation of Ubuntu 12.04.

Linux, Touchpad, Elantech

Since I got my new Dell Mini 10 a few months ago, my touchpad was recognized as a Logitech Wheel Mouse instead of the Elantech touchpad that it really is. As a result, I was not able to change any touchpad related settings (such as tab-to-click).

This all changed yesterday when Florian Ragwitz wrote patches on this bug report and ALLurGroceries helped be figure out how to apply them on this Ubuntu forum thread. Florian's first round of patches fixed this problem for everyone but me. However, a hack was able to fix the problem for me as well. I expect Florian will soon write a proper patch. It seems likely that these patches will land in Linux kernel version 2.6.34, otherwise they will surely make 2.6.35.

Karmic, Video, Blue

When watching videos in Karmic, everything that should have been yellow was blue. To fix this problem, open the Totem Movie Player (Applications -> Sound & Video -> Movie Player), then change the Hue setting to match the Brightness, Contrast, and Saturation settings. These settings can be found in Edit -> Preferences -> Display.

(I found the solution to this problem from this Ubuntu forum thread.)

Karmic, VPN, ItsHidden.com

To use the VPN service provided by ItsHidden.com in Karmic, complete the following steps (one thing changed since Jaunty):

1. Install the PPTP plug-in for Network Manager
   $ sudo apt-get install network-manager-pptp
2. Restart Network Manager
   $ sudo service network-manager restart
3. Create the VPN connection
4. In the "Advanced..." settings, enable "Use Point-to-Point encryption (MPPE)"

The one change is minor. Instead of the command "sudo /etc/init.d/NetworkManager restart" in step 2, it is now "sudo service network-manager restart". Both commands seem to work, but the new command is the preferred method.

(I had a previous post about getting ItsHidden.com to work in Jaunty.)

Karmic, Java

To install Java in Karmic, execute the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts

When you have to accept the licence agreements, use the "Tab" key to cycle through the options and the "Enter" key select an option.

(I got this answer from here.)