Pedagogical Posturing

I’ve known about this software for years now but never used it and didn’t think of it when I started experimenting with Ubuntu. Instead I’d accepted that certain programs weren’t available for Ubuntu and that I’d just have to live with that. Google’s SketchUp was one such program. I’d been using it at school on the iMacs and on my laptop with Vista but there was no version of the program for Linux. However, after installing the WINE software from WINE HQ, I subsequently downloaded Google’s SketchUp for Windows and got it to run using the Wine program loader. There was no problem at all. Even my Astrology program, Astrolog, that I’d previously only run under Windows, is now running in Ubuntu. I feel stupid that I didn’t realise that I could do this earlier but at least I know now. This is quite a breakthrough.

Not everything works of course. For example, the Spider Solitaire game that ships with Vista doesn’t start up at all. However, the version for XP might work but I can’t access it on the computer I’m currently working on, even though it has a Windows XP partition. This is because last time I was using Windows it shut down without warning. Whenever that happens, Ubuntu is unable to “mount the volume” as it terms it because of the improper shutdown. The same thing happens when a memory stick or memory card is simply pulled out instead of ejected. It’s not possible to subsequently use the storage device in Ubuntu until returning to Windows and ejecting it properly. There’s a way of forcing the volume to mount but it’s a little complicated and I’ve not managed to get it to work yet.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: ubuntu, Window, Wine