New Ubuntu user, read FAQ, need help testing Galactic Civili

Questions about Wine on Linux
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thomasmbrooks
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New Ubuntu user, read FAQ, need help testing Galactic Civili

Post by thomasmbrooks »

1) I read the FAQ. It say use wine 1.4. Synaptic says 1.3 is the latest available. Is this a problem? I have the PPA loaded into synaptic.

2) Database says Galactic Civilizations (2004 game from Stardock) works, but doesn't for me. Of course the last test is about 5 years old. I can get it to install and I can get the program to start running, but after configuring the galaxy things crash. I cannot interpret the information I get from executing

Code: Select all

wine 'C:\GalCiv\galciv.exe'
which does seem to be the command to execute the game. I'm convinced I am missing a debugging trick or command parameter or SOMETHING that would give me some more information. GalCiv is old, but if I can get some help, I'd like to volunteer to keep it operational within wine.

I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 and wine 1.3. Any suggestions?
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dimesio
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Re: New Ubuntu user, read FAQ, need help testing Galactic Ci

Post by dimesio »

thomasmbrooks wrote: I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 and wine 1.3. Any suggestions?
Versions older than 1.4 are no longer supported here. Upgrade.

If your game still doesn't work in 1.4 or later, post terminal output. Make sure you cd to the program directory before running it.
Davvvve
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....

Post by Davvvve »

Have you right click on exefile and check if "mark as exeucble ?
Frédéric Delanoy

New Ubuntu user, read FAQ, need help testing Galactic Civili

Post by Frédéric Delanoy »

On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 06:06, thomasmbrooks <[email protected]> wrote:
1) I read the FAQ. It say use wine 1.4. Synaptic says 1.3 is the latest available. Is this a problem? I have the PPA loaded into synaptic.

2) Database says Galactic Civilizations (2004 game from Stardock) works, but doesn't for me. Of course the last test is about 5 years old. I can get it to install and I can get the program to start running, but after configuring the galaxy things crash. I cannot interpret the information I get from executing
Code:
wine 'C:\GalCiv\galciv.exe'

 which does seem to be the command to execute the game. I'm convinced I am missing a debugging trick or command parameter or SOMETHING that would give me some more information. GalCiv is old, but if I can get some help, I'd like to volunteer to keep it operational within wine.

I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 and wine 1.3. Any suggestions?
wine1.3 is a package name.
Use 'wine --version' to report the actual version (or check the value
under 'Installed Version" or "Latest Version" column in synaptic)
thomasmbrooks
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Post by thomasmbrooks »

Thank you to everyone who responded attempting to help. I discovered several facts which were not clear to me before and might be of use to people having problems in the future. (Maybe some of these belong in the FAQ ?)

1) What Canonical's Synaptic package manager lists as wine-1.3 is actually wine-1.4 (or the wine --version command is lying to me.) Lesson: Trust what wine says about itself, not what the distributor says.

2) Attempting to execute a windows program from the GUI (i.e. right-mouse click on a file and select Open with Wine Windows Program Loader) isn't a very useful way to execute a program, especially if you are just trying it out for the first time.

Wine seems to respond much better if you launch it from the CLI. In the case of Galactic Civilizations, it won't work from the GUI and works fine from the CLI. The suggestion to CD to the directory before running was also news to me. Even discounting the ability to post debugging information to this forum, the CLI is just more likely to work, at least in my limited experience.

3) Wanting an icon I can click on, I use a text editor to create script to launch the program as I would from the CLI, which saves keystrokes and returns the user to the desired simple interface. Just save the script file to your desktop.

4) The execute bit cannot be set on a CD-ROM file. There is probably an appropriate way to do this, perhaps "wine start executable.exe", but my solution was simply to copy the CD to the local filesystem and load it from there. Again, this is a simple solution to what might be a common newbie problem that could be in the FAQ.

There should be (or if there is, I couldn't find it) a basic set of instructions on how a newbie might go about loading a Windows program and running it from his Linux box. I assume the concept of having more people support the database with apps they have tested is desired, so helping them get started is a useful thing in general. Perhaps I will write such a file. Meanwhile I'm going to sign up in the app database as being a tester for GalCiv.
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dimesio
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Post by dimesio »

thomasmbrooks wrote:Thank you to everyone who responded attempting to help. I discovered several facts which were not clear to me before and might be of use to people having problems in the future. (Maybe some of these belong in the FAQ ?)

1) What Canonical's Synaptic package manager lists as wine-1.3 is actually wine-1.4 (or the wine --version command is lying to me.) Lesson: Trust what wine says about itself, not what the distributor says.
http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#head-0bae04b ... acb6f367ff
The information about the wine1.2 misnaming has been there for two years; I just updated it to mention the current problem you identified.
2) Attempting to execute a windows program from the GUI (i.e. right-mouse click on a file and select Open with Wine Windows Program Loader) isn't a very useful way to execute a program, especially if you are just trying it out for the first time.

Wine seems to respond much better if you launch it from the CLI. In the case of Galactic Civilizations, it won't work from the GUI and works fine from the CLI. The suggestion to CD to the directory before running was also news to me. Even discounting the ability to post debugging information to this forum, the CLI is just more likely to work, at least in my limited experience.
http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#run_program
3) Wanting an icon I can click on,
Running the program's installer should create menu items and desktop links for most apps. You should only have to manually create links for apps that don't have installers or ones whose installers don't create menu items in Windows, or if you've disabled winemenubuilder.
4) The execute bit cannot be set on a CD-ROM file. There is probably an appropriate way to do this, perhaps "wine start executable.exe", but my solution was simply to copy the CD to the local filesystem and load it from there. Again, this is a simple solution to what might be a common newbie problem that could be in the FAQ.
http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#head-27c7adc ... 498f585d86
There should be (or if there is, I couldn't find it) a basic set of instructions on how a newbie might go about loading a Windows program and running it from his Linux box.
http://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ
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