Linux

Creativerse on Linux using Wine

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This has took me a little while to get working due to missing fonts etc and Steam and Creativerse not agreeing about them.

Already installed under Wine but text/fonts missing from buttons and other areas in Creativerse using Wine on Linux? No problem.

While there is no official Linux support for Creativerse as yet, it does work well under Wine. So here goes.

install wine-staging, Instructions for various distros here. You could use the Wine supplied by your distro but for better performance I am using wine-staging.

Make sure your windows version is set to Windows XP in the applications tab of winecfg

wine-staging-tb1

install steam using the official windows installer from the Steam website.

install corefonts
winetricks corefonts

Run Steam with the following commands
cd ".wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Steam"
wine Steam.exe -no-cef-sandbox -no-dwrite

change the path on the first line to match where your Wine install of steam is.

install creativerse

Play.

For better performance go to the staging tab in winecfg and enable the first two options.

wine-staging-tb

Notes
Creativerse occasionally bugs out during the initial loading screen. Just fire it up again and all good.
The windows version must be Windows XP for now or Steam wont run.
Don’t forget the corefonts as you won’t get any text on the buttons and messages etc in game.
The -no-cef-sandbox option prevents Steam crashing out due to a Chrome problem.
The -no-dwrite option is needed as without it you will get no text in Steam after installing corefonts.
As you might notice I am using a 64 bit Wine prefix. It works fine in a 32 bit prefix, some might suggest faster and more reliably. Just change the path in the Steam run commands to suit. I don’t really see much difference during testing so rather than messing about with prefixes etc, I stick with the defaults for my OS as long as it works and is playable.

Testing done with:
Linux Mint 18
AMD FX-6350
AMD Radeon HD 6670 / AMD Radeon R7 360
16 GiB DDR-3 1600 RAM Kingston Hyper-V (Blue)
Open Source drivers (out of the box Linux Mint provided)

Creativerse runs and looks great with visual settings at medium but my graphics card is ancient. You should be able to set everything to max on a newer R7 series card. (works fine with everything max on R7 360)

As usual, please use comments and I will try to answer any problems, also any useful hints ‘n tips you send in comments I will add/update this post with full credits.

Enjoy 🙂

[update]testing under newer R7 series video card (30/10/2016)[/update]

Nerdy Mind, Windows 10

Free UPS monitor and graceful shutdown software for Windows 10

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If you are stuck for decent free UPS monitor and graceful shutdown software for Windows 10, or a bit put out by the lack of software or enormous Java apps provided by many UPS manufacturers, you can’t do much better than these two apps.

It does depend on your UPS as to whether these apps will work for you, but they are very small and work fine on my SYNDOME/Mustek Cypress semiconductor USB-Serial UPS running on Windows 10 64 bit.

Winmust
http://winmust.sourceforge.net
Tiny download but nice status display and has shut down options. Very simple program with tiny memory footprint and minimal performance impact.

winmust-screen1

winmust-screen2

 

UPS Assistant
http://foxylab.com/UPSAssistant.php?en
Another tiny download. Does not look as nice but has SMTP/HTTP and LAN network message notifications as well as shutdown options. All the usual information is there. An obvious choice if power event notifications are what your looking for.

ups-assistant

Let me know in the comments if you found any other small free UPS monitoring software and I’ll add them to the list. Also let me know what other makes/models of UPS these programs work on for you.

Gaming, Linux, Nerdy Mind

Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial, AMD, Black or Blank Screen, Steam Will Not Launch

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If your getting black screens on boot with your Ubuntu upgrade to 16.04 (Xenial) then probably ‘upgrade’ is the problem.

From Ubuntu Xenial 16.04 onwards, there is no FGLRX or proprietry driver support for AMD RADEON HD cards.

AMD are now focusing on the open source drivers. If your getting blank or black screen on boot, or other video problems, do a clean install. Do not try to install the proprietry drivers. Everything should be working fine without any messing about.

Steam wont launch? Damn this is still hanging around from 15.01!!

This is a Steam problem. Steam really needs to try keep up with the open source drivers. We simply remove the old libs from Steam so it is forced to use the newer libs.

cd $HOME/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu
mv libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6.bak
cd $HOME/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/amd64/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
mv libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6.bak

Steam will work now 🙂

Linux, Nerdy Mind, Windows 10

NTFS disk corruption, dual boot, linux (ubuntu,mint etc) windows 8, windows 10. Shared disk NTFS.

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After prolonged use by Linux  of a shared NTFS drive in dual boot, Windows will report a corrupt disk, file system.

There is actually nothing wrong. Linux leaves the shared NTFS drive dirty on purpose to avoid file system corruption by windows fastboot.  Over time of dual booting and not fixing then you might get some corruption.

If you have been using linux for a while then dual boot into windows 8 or 10, then do a disk check of your shared NTFS drive.  Disk check will find errors, fix them, usually without any data loss.

You could turn off fastboot in windows to stop this happening. You could also disk check in windows regularly to fix the dirty flags, without disabling fastboot. That is up to you.

Comment if you need more information.

 

BaDbod

Linux, Nerdy Mind, Windows 10

Windows 10, Install error, cannot open device or file, internal error 2755. 110, Shared dual boot, linux windows drive

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MSI installers, failing signed key. No encrypted or compressed temp folders. Windows 10 and a shared drive with Linux?

internal error 2755, 110  ?

If your sharing a NTFS drive with both windows and linux, then you may well lose some permissions on folders in the shared NTFS drive.

Even i f you are not sharing a NTFS drive in a dual boot system with windows 10 and linux yet you have these symptoms..

internal error 2755. 110  or ‘cannot open device or file specified’.

If you have already done the google and noticed you have no encrypted folders or files, then probably your linux  is stripping some permissions from your dual boot shared drive.

Easy fix.

Where you download your files,

  1. Right click your downloads folder and -> properties
  2. Security tab
  3. Advanced
  4. Enable inheritance
  5. Apply

If your more with the security angle,  then  make sure SYSTEM has some access.

 

Easier fix?

Another option is to copy the installer files to your windows boot drive. They will install fine from there without you having to mess with your shared drive permissions.

Nod,

BaDboD