As there is no specific WINE forum, and as I am perhaps a particular use-case, as I need to use WinScriv under WINE — though as a non-techie using the Crossover GUI — on my Mac, I thought I’d start this thread for anyone who’s using WinScriv under Linux to signal my experience.
The motivation is that I’ve just installed WinScriv 1.7.3.0 on my Mac using Crossover 13.2.0.27771, in both a winxp and a win7 bottle. I’ve put initial comments on the
thread, if anyone’s interested. And I would certainly be interested in any comments you may have, though I realise our host interfaces are very different.
First, can you update wine to at least 1.7.whatever? They say it’s unstable, but it’s really not. Plus scrivener works out of the box without overrides. You might have better performance. Granted the last time I’ve tried wine under a Mac was 2008 or so.
Fonts: make sure whatever you need is in the wine font directory (I’ll grab a path name when I’m not on the tablet.) I’ve had issues with wine not using fonts unless they were in that directory.
As I said, although I’m totally at home on a Mac — been Mac-centric for about 25 years! — I’m not actually that geeky. A little while ago I thought I’d use an old 2005 17” MacBook Pro to install Linux to start learning how to use it, but recently it seemed more sensible to sell it, plus another no longer needed first version MacBook Air and my wife’s iMac in part exchange for a newer reconditioned iMac that she can use for video editing. So, learning Linux will have to wait.
So, with Crossover, I’m dependent on the version of WINE that they bake in. I don’t want to, nor really have time to work out how install vanilla WINE. After 25 years, I find the command line somewhat daunting.
But 1.6 seems to work well enough for me — the comments disappearing is new — as for most of my work I use the Mac version. I have to use the Windows version when collaborating with a Windows using friend because of the problem of Chinese coding in RTF between Apple and Microsoft. So as I say, I’m a bit of a weird use-case, but I’m interested to know the experience of anyone else using WINE under whichever host system.
Yeah, you’re in waters I haven’t explored, with specific encoding requirements. The ship of everyone using the same requirements kind of sailed back in the 80’s, I think…
If my father-in-law isn’t using his mac, I can try to poke.
I’d be interested in whatever you find, but don’t give any time to it, as I know you have many other things that should take priority.
Incidentally, when I installed Scriv 1.6 I was running CodeWeavers 12.x, I think, and it wouldn’t run in a win7 bottle. The fact that it does now is cheering as no doubt future Scriv releases will have problems running under XP, so that gives me some future proofing. I might, just for fun, try installing it in a win8 bottle to see what happens. My friend and collaborator has just gone to Reed College — she has become “yet another Portlander" … albeit on a temporary basis — as a Reed Language Scholar, so she is busy settling in over there and I don’t suppose we will be in a collaboration yet a while, so I have time.
I’d be interested in whatever you find, but don’t give any time to it, as I know you have many other things that should take priority.
Incidentally, when I installed Scriv 1.6 I was running CodeWeavers 12.x, I think, and it wouldn’t run in a win7 bottle. The fact that it does now is cheering as no doubt future Scriv releases will have problems running under XP, so that gives me some future proofing. I might, just for fun, try installing it in a win8 bottle to see what happens. My friend and collaborator has just gone to Reed College — she has become “yet another Portlander" … albeit on a temporary basis — as a Reed Language Scholar, so she is busy settling in over there and I don’t suppose we will be in a collaboration yet a while, so I have time.
Here’s a wild-assed guess…try running it as default or XP. The one time I tried as Windows 7, it did some really strange and horrible things to the saves. (Namely, corrputed them.)
Reed College is famous as the alma mater for poets Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen, and also Steve jobs: he learned calligraphy there, which is what provoked him to make good typography so important a part of the Apple ecosystem. Just sayin’. Or typin’.
Yeah, but if the person you need to share documents with isn’t on a mac, you get into strange encoding issues, which I believe is why xianmese is using the windows version under OSX.
Xianmese: have you tried a VM? Bootcamp (or whatever it’s called these days) not an option? WINE on OSX has always been kind of touchy.
Thanks for reminding me. Actually, when I tried installing WinScriv 1.6 under the version of Crossover at that time — 12, I think — in a win7 bottle it wouldn’t even interact with the OS-X file system; it does this time, apparently, so I’ll try with a copy of a project, not the original to see what happens.
Thanks for the suggestion garpu and d~l. Problems: (1) I’m using a late 2010 MacBook Air … lovely machine, but 256 GB SSID with 50 GB of free space which has to be managed by archiving stuff onto an external disk every few months to preserve it — so 40 GB needed for BootCamp (I believe) is not an option — and 2 GB RAM; (2) I have better uses for what money I have than spending it on buying Windows (and perhaps Parallels or whatever*) … if I was going to spend the money, I’d go to my friend Phil in Exeter and get a suitable small, reconditioned Windows laptop of some kind, but that would entail carrying two laptops around!
So for the moment Crossover suits me fine, even with its limitations.
Though I presume Virtual Box is free/donation/shareware.
The problem that you are hitting is the standard “faking it” issue: eventually something somewhere realizes “you’re faking it” and stops playing nice-nice. Unlike people, compute systems are quick to forget that you faked it last time and will continue to let you fool them next time. Also unlike people, compute systems do not vary their resultant actions based on emotions. Software will never accuse you of not loving it and then stop off in a tirade while blaspheming and disparaging your parentage.
And no, there’s nothing up with me and the boss, but I have witnessed such an event recently.
As to how you can “fake it better” remember that some of us have been running vm on systems older than yours for quite some time. There are ticks you should to make it work. Here you go:
Set your VM to use very little RAM. You won’t really notice, but it lets the host use more RAM.
Use an external HD for the OS space.
Steal an OS from a used laptop by using the HDD in an external enclosure. Look for busted LCD, keyboard, etc.
Using virtual box and the above steps you might have a $us40 investment for an old XP based install. might be worth looking at to make the problem go away.
As to wine… never got it working on any platform at a level that I could live with. Hence my move to VM. My needs my be a bit more stringent, but it’s worth thinking about.
Well, Jaysen, as I have known throughout the years of our acquaintanceship here, your needs are very much more stringent than mine … in a real sense, mine are minimal, so in reality, the biggest frustration for me is the differences in interface between Windows and OSX, especially the shortcuts, though also to some extent the menus. In the other thread, I mentioned the disappearance of annotations in this version, which is a bit more of a problem, but nothing deal-breaking at the moment — and I remember there was a string of posts on disappearing comments re 1.7.2 — as my friend and collaborator has become “yet another Portlander” until May next year — so she may not have so much work for us to work on together.
On Virtual Box and using the drive from a defunct Windows box in a VM, I read the page that d~l linked to above, and it recommends a minimum of 1024 MB of RAM allocated to it, which is a problem when you’ve only got 2 Gigs. I’ve just checked on Crossover + Scrivener with our project open: it’s using 230 odd MB in total out of 1998 MB currently in use. I guess, if you’re running Windows on an external, you wouldn’t need so much RAM, but USB2 as the only connection means it would be slow to snail-pace, I would imagine.
Vendor recommendations are like those of any salesman – they are what they tell you you need not what you “must have” to get the job done. Most of my XP vm are 256M ram. They run fine for small tasks. I do let windows manage the pagefile. I do NOT have scriv running on any of them, but based on what you said, a vm w/ 512M ram would be more than enough.
As to USB2… you won’t notice. 99% of your work will be done in mem and scrivs document management can be leveraged to reduce the disk penalty even further (more small docs over few large docs).
I’m not recommending this for you, just providing some “alternative” options should you decide you want to explore. The linux option is valid, but I would also look at it as a VM not a true dual boot. At least not until you are more comfortable with linux as a platform. Same “reduced spec” concepts apply.
BTW, I run multiple linux VM with 64m ram. these are “purpose built” and not usable for scriv. I’m just making the point that you don’t really need all the resources folks say you need [size=120]IF[/size] you plan things out a bit. But then I’m a bit of a nerd…
No, I don’t, and that was the reason for using WINE.
As I said to garpu earlier, I was going to install Linux — I think it was Kubuntu I downloaded — on a MBP I have since parted with, but before I could work out exactly how to install it other matters got in the way. I still have it, I think it’s the ISO, on an SD card.
Hard disk space is a real issue though. When I have time, I will try installing it on an external but as the only connections are USB 2, as I’ve just said to Jaysen, that might be unusably slow. I once booted this MacBook Air from my bootable back-up … it took at least 15 minutes to boot, as opposed to about 5 seconds off the SSID.
Not an option I’m afraid, as I have said above, as I can’t allocate enough space to the dual boot partition.
As I say, WINE (Crossover) meets my needs at the moment, but I wanted somewhere where the few others like garpu who use Scrivener for Windows under WINE might contribute their experiences. I imagine I’m the only Mac user who does, as the Windows/Linux versions are still catching up with the Mac version, but I only do so because of the Chinese coding problem between Windows and Mac systems.
that was likely less due to usb2 than disk checks. Comparing SSD to USB2 will always be … depressing … but USB 2 is functional for post boot activities. the key is minimal “cruft” in your OS install.
I know, and I’m really grateful, Jaysen. All these suggestions are being read and noted in case I need to find another solution in future. And yes, planning is needed … I remember you used to use a 17”MBP of the same generation as my original one, which could only accept 2G RAM, and you were running a number of VMs on that … but then you are a bit of a nerd, and I am not.
For the moment, the most important comment I’ve got is the one from garpu warning me about using it in a WINE win7 bottle and saves corrupting the project. That’s important.
Sure, such “caparisons are odorous” as Dogberry says (“Much Ado About Nothing”). I try to keep my OS free of cruft. Generally, I close down regularly; each week, I do any file management I need to do then run Cocktail over this machine and then update my bootable back-up using Chronosync.
But would using a VM and booting up Windows or Linux stored on an external disk connected by USB2 not be similarly slow as booting OSX from an external? Just interested …
— as a Reed Language Scholar, so she is busy settling in over there and I don’t suppose we will be in a collaboration yet a while, so I have time.