Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Wine Audio Error!

Today I wanted to install Winamp on my Ubuntu Gutsy. For that reason installed 'Wine' (you know the software that lets you run some windows applications on windows). Everything went fine, after that I downloaded the latest version of winamp from the winamp site and installed it by going to the terminal and typing in 'wine '. Again everything went fine. After this I tried to run winamp, this is where I got into trouble, there was no sound. To fix this I tried to play around with the Wine Configuration tool (Applications -> Wine -> Configure Wine). When I went to the 'Audio' tab, that is when I got this error message this post is about i.e. 'Wine Audio Error!'. I googled and googled and then eventually came across a post that solved my problem.

The solution to this problem is as follows:
  • Add the repository to Ubuntu:
    • Open the Terminal (Application -> Accessories -> Terminal)
  • Copy and Paste the following (or type if you feel like it) wget -q http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
  • Once done type in sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/gutsy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list
  • Make sure there are not error messages
  • If you don't have Wine installed yet then type the following into the terminal:
    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install wine
  • If you have Wine already installed then type the following into the terminal:
    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Hope this helps!!

Ubuntu Gutsy - Enabling Compiz on Asus F3sv

A few days ago, I got fed up with Vista on my new Asus F3SV laptop, so I decided on install my favorite linus distro Ubuntu on it. I'll go into details later, for now lets just say that I spend more time restarting the machine then actually working on it.

Anyways, after googling around a bit I found the easiest way possible to Install Ubuntu on the Asus F3SV laptop (I'll be posting steps to do that soon). Once this was done, the first thing I wanted to do was to get the Compiz effect running on the machine. Specially since there was my first machine with a dedicated graphic card (Nvidia 8600 GS 256 MB dedicated). As it turned out it is pretty simple to do once you know what you are doing.

First thing that I do always after installing Ubuntu is to enable the Multiverse repositories and the 'Proprietary drivers for devices' reporsitories. You do that by going into System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager, once synaptic opens up then go to Settings -> Repositories, then under the 'Ubuntu Software' tab select all the repositories apart from 'Source Code'.
















Once this is done, the next step is to go to System -> Preferences -> Appearance. On the screen that opens select the 'Visual Effects' tab and then select the 'Extra' Option. Once you do this Ubuntu will prompt you that 'Restricted Drivers' need to be installed. Just follow the instructions and hopeful, when you are finished following the instructions compiz should be enabled. If for some reason you still have issues, then just log out and then log back in and the it should definitely work. Have fun using Compiz on Ubuntu :D