New Blog URL

Hey everyone, We’ve moved the blog to a new URL. To everyone that’s bookmarked this site (all three of you), please update your bookmarks to:

http://linuxgraphics.studiofire.net

Photoshop CS and CS2 under Wine .9.54

Good news everyone! As of Wine .9.54, it is now super easy to get Photoshop CS and CS2 to work under wine. The only catch that I can see is that it appears that before proceeding with the installation, you must install the gecko web rendering engine, or the activation process won’t complete properly (at least it wouldn’t here). I can’t test CS3, though I would expect it not to work (at least not without a lot of hacking). I’ve been running CS2 for a few weeks now, and it seems to be fairly stable. It does, however, appear to be running a bit slow. Give it a shot, and post your comments. Also, don’t forget to thank the wine developers for such a great release!

Wacom Tablet Support under Wine

While searching for the cause of a problem with Wacom tablets and Crossover Linux, I stumbled across how to get tablet support in wine.

Paste the following into a new file, and make it executable (chmod +x [name of file]).

#!/bin/bash
WINEDLLOVERRIDES=wintab32=n

Place the file in your /home/username/bin folder. In gnome, you can add the shell script to your session startup programs, so that it automatically runs everytime you login.

I’m sure there are other ways you could do it so that it automatically runs no matter which window manager you’re using, such as sourcing the file on login, or adding it to your .bash_rc file. Any of the above methods should work.

Happy Photoshopping!

Oblivion on Linux with Wine

I realize that this isn’t exactly related to content creation, but I thought it was worth posting.

I can confirm that The Elder Scrolls : Oblivion works almost flawlessly under Wine.

For more information, click this link to read how to get it running. It’s not difficult, but there are certain steps that must be followed in order to get things running properly.

Oh, and here’s a screenshot to prove that it runs properly:

Running Silo 2 under Linux with Wine

After a long and arduous process on the Silo 3D forums, we managed to get the newest version of my favorite modelling program to run under Linux using wine.

For those of you who haven’t heard about Silo, here’s a quick intoduction. Silo is an advanced modelling and detailing program for windows and OSX. While being advanced in terms of speed and toolset, Silo is incredibly simple to learn and use. It contains only the tools needed for modelling and unwrapping, and lacks unnecessary tools that aren’t needed for these tasks.

For more information on Silo, and to download a demo and see for yourself why I think this program is so great, visit the Nevercenter website.

Now, onto getting it running on Linux…

Video Editing on Linux – Part 1

Drawbacks to Installing Programs on Linux

Most open source applications do not come with an installer of any kind, while almost every commercial application does. Generally, this isn’t really an issue, because you can use your distribution’s package manager to install and remove applications. You will, however, at some point, come across a program that is not packaged for your distro, but is instead provided as source code. Why is this? I can understand that compiling applications from source can be advantageous in certain situations, but in most situations is just not necessary, nor is it preferable. Personally, I try to stay away from compiling programs, as there is too much room for error, and it is a pain in the rear to track down all those dependencies manually.

There is no standard for installing applications, and there are many different package types, which can be confusing for many users. It also means that not all packages can be installed on all systems, which leaves some users out in the cold. It is my belief that if Linux is every really going to hit mainstream, there are many aspects of the operating system that need to be standardized.

Now, on to the article…

Sorry for the delay…

Sorry folks. I’m waiting on my editor friend to finish his reviews before compiling the article together. I wasn’t expecting things to take as long as they are. There’s so many things happening right now, I just haven’t had time to really crack down and start getting things rolling. Stay tuned though, there will be an article up, I’m just not sure how long it will take. I’ll be sure to post any news as it comes down the wire though!

In Depth Review of Open Source Video Editing Software

I’d like to start off by welcoming everyone to this site. As my first task, I’ve decided to do an in-depth series of articles focused around what I consider to be one of Linux’s weakest points, video editing. From consumer level to Professional grade editing suites, this series of articles will delve into the mysterious realm of editing on Linux.