Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
===== Sims 2 Crisis
I'm a long-time geek from back in the ‘70s. I loved Unix back then; however I made the bad choice of switching to the newest and greatest thing (DOS). Then mistake two: trying windows. And I kept making that mistake through to Windows XP. Then a friend pointed me to Ubuntu. Heaven! Well, almost. I have a dual-boot system that spends 85% of its time in Ubuntu. Unfortunately, this house is addicted to TheSims2. I've studied up on Wine and playonlinux. I've begged and re-begged for help. I know it's possible, but, so far, no one has shared how to run Sim2 in Ubuntu. Please post a how-to on importing games from Windows.
Rodney J Miller PCA
===== Head In The Clouds
I discovered your magazine over the Christmas vacation while setting up a dual-boot Windows/Mint machine. I have spent many mornings over the last couple of weeks happily rifling through back issues, and coming up to speed on where the Ubuntu Linux community is at after a long break.
Reading your article on SpiderOak in FCM#56 prodded my conscience about backups. We have a blended family (Mint 11 / OS X Lion / Windows 7, Vista, XP), so any cloud solution needed to support a mixed home environment.
Setting up the SpiderOak client on Mint and OS X was straight-foward. Having the ability to access the backup from anywhere is a huge bonus.
Sean Hodges
===== William and Kate
New to Ubuntu Linux about a year ago, I cannot understand the fuss about desktops, GUI nuances, and distribution content choices. Why should anyone object to Unity, since the user can so easily replace it? Why should I care which music player or contact manager comes standard in the distribution, or whether the distribution includes them at all, since I have the Software Center and Synaptic at my finger tips?
My befuddlement is not confined to FCM. Distro dyspepsia and GUI griping dominate reviews of Ubuntu releases from any number of sources.
How about some meaningful discussion for a change, such as citing kernel improvements for stability, or better employment of multi-core processors? What's new amongst the underlying libraries, and what difference does that make? What effect might the latest release have upon the browser war and HTML5? Who is providing superior documentation and support for all of this toothsome FLOSS? Are Prince William and Kate settled in and truly happy together, or are they miserable and merely posing before Britain's expectations?
No wait, scratch that last bit. That's what happens when I listen to the FCM Podcast from here on the left side of the pond. Perhaps Ubuntu banality is good. Perhaps it reflects maturity and utility. Beats broken or missing device drivers, for sure.
Halfnium (in America)
===== WiFi USB Adapter
I recently added a USB wifi adapter to an old desktop PC that has been running Ubuntu since I first scrapped its native WIndows 2000 system when I took ownership of it, used, 5 years ago. It's not a state-of-the-art system, but has been a dependable device for basics, and, until now, was attached to the web via ethernet cable. I decided to try to run it wireless and realized that although there are lots of wonderful machines with wifi or wifi cards installed, that the leap from ethernet to wifi is a challenge, depending on the vintage of the hardware, software, and so forth. I purchased a C. Crane Versa II Wifi USB adapter as it was priced competitively with various USP wifi adapters from many mainstream retail outlets and online vendors whose products are not Linux-friendly. To my surprise, I didn't need to use Wine and the Windows/Mac installation instructions and installation disc included with the adapter. I was able to go wifi after a few false starts (mainly to Ubuntu apps), and eliminating confusion in the configuration files. Apart from the slightly constrained speed of its CPU, this old desktop now works as flawlessly as a three-year old laptop I had screaming along with native wifi and Ubuntu Linux until its motherboard died a few months back.
Long live Linux. Long live Ubuntu. I'm neither a programmer nor a code-monkey/geek. Ubuntu connects yesterday's hardware with today's software in ways that you can only dream of - if that would be useful to you and if you are more savvy than myself in the appropriate areas of hardware/software/code/network, etc, then the sky's the limit.
modyl
===== More KDE Love
Surely Canonical knows by now that not all users have stuck to Gnome as their Desktop of choice, and in fact hadn't done so long before Unity came along. So isn't it about time that they put a bit into helping with the development of the alternatives?
Kubuntu, which I currently use as my own desktop, is still a bit docile, and could do with a bit of a jiggle to get things moving. It is a relatively stable desktop these days, and full credit to the maintainers of it as otherwise where would we be? The unfortunate thing I find with Kubuntu is that it tends to be a bit sluggish in comparison to some of the other KDE distributions.
Unity is too much like Windows, or, for that matter, Apple, in that it is basically “You will do things the Canonical way!” I can see where there will be people who think it is wonderful and mimics their smartphones, whereas everyday PC users don't all want to fit the spec of Smartphone operators.
KDE is one of the alternative options, and the reason I use Kubuntu is that it offers the features of KDE plus it also offers the advantages of a huge Ubuntu base to work with. That is Ubuntu's strength - its huge base of users and software in its repositories. KDE is an excellent desktop, and tends to be overlooked by many new users because of the concerted push for Unity/Gnome.
I am surprised that there hasn't been a concerted push by Enlightment users to design a good Ubuntu-based desktop - just as they have Lubuntu and Xubuntu. Enlightenment is a nice desktop, with a smart modern appearance, but without the quite cumbersome overheads of KDE. I have tried a few different Enlightenment desktops, but the thing that they lack is the Ubuntu repositories and the Ubuntu Forums and the like. It is the forums and repositories that make Ubuntu what it is today.
I have noted that a lot of the previous Ubuntu Gnome users have deserted to Linux Mint - as they like the classical Gnome 2 look and feel. It is the users like myself, who like to be able to tinker just that little bit more, who feel left out.
So how about it, Canonical - how about actively encouraging development of KDE, E17, LDE, in fact, any of the other desktops?
Phil