LInux progrress / can anyone advise me?

[alitalf]

Ubuntu Linux on the Dell laptop is now upgraded - with difficulty, from Dapper Drake to Feisty Fawn. During the first attempted upgrade, it reached the stage where the machine would only boot to the command prompt, and since I didn't have any data stored on the hard disc I just booted to the Feisty Fawn CD and reinstalled completely. Then it worked perfectly well.

Since then I installed VLC media player and installed many libraries so that it will now play dvds. Of course, DVDs try to open in a different media player which then complains that it can'd read that type of media [sulk]. I suppose if I de-installed the default media player then that problem would go away ...

I managed to get the Ubuntu issue of Wine to install, and after a couple of hours of argument got the installer program of my windows cad system (EDWIN32) to run. Unfortunately, the program itself doesn't run - it displays its splash screen for a few milliseconds then quits. The terminal window tells me that there is an unhandled exception: page fault on read error to [some long hex address]. The prog itself is really designed for Win 98 I think, though it runs fine on XP.

Has anyone got any ideas of ways to make this work? I did wonder if it would be worth trying the 30 day evaluation of a commercial version of Wine from Codeweavers, but my guess is that it would give the same error after I slowly and carefully followed the documented install procedure.

I am hoping in the long term to move from Windows to Linux because I don't fancy being obliged to move to Windows Longhorn Vista - which probably would not run the CAD program, or much of the rest of the software I use. Neither do I fancy relying on something that keeps wanting to phone home - in case sometime it has a hissy fit and stops working because it couldn't manage to phone home successfully. Or, will it just stop working as and when Microsoft withdraw support for that operating system? Linux is probably the only way to avoid problems next time I need a new computer.

Comments

[emperor]

ISTR the Wine website having a list of programs that were fully or partially supported - have you checked on there?

Otherwise I can't suggest anything more than emailing one of the wine lists...

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

I checked the Wine HQ website first, then googled for anything about the program I'm using or the error message I got.

The one thing I hadn't done was to send a message to a newsgroup - for some reason that didn't occur to me. I notice that there is a thread with a similar error message, possibly with a different long hex address - but no actual resolution. Now to compose a succinct message about the problem ...

If Wine can run a few more of the programs that don't have a suitable Linux replacement, then I think and hope that more people will make the change over the next few years.

From my perspective the emphasis is all wrong: games and M$ Office appear to be a high priority for Wine, while I want to run a few relatively obscure programs that help me do my work. Open Office is fine for spreadsheets and wordprocessing, but electronics cad software is thin on the ground and can't import data from my existing system. {sigh}

Try using native dcom98

[(Anonymous)]

I couldn't find a trial download of edwin32, but I tried
the trial of edwinxp, and filed a bug for it at winehq:
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8391
The app seemed to work properly if I installed native dcom98
using the commands
wget http://kegel.com/wine/winetricks
sh winetricks dcom98

If that doesn't do it for you, it might still be
worth trying Codeweavers.

Re: Try using native dcom98

[alitalf.livejournal.com]

I tried this, though had to ad the www in the URL, and it changed things in that there was no longer a list of trace about partially implemented functins before the fatal error. However the fatal error was just the same.

I may try Codeweavers if there is no other answer (I did ask a newsgroup)

Thanks for trying