Below is a description of how I installed Ubuntu 9.04 from scratch and got EVE-Online,
EVEMon, EFT, and Ventrilo working.
System:
Dell XPM M1710.
4GB RAM
Intel 3950 Wireless
Nvidia 7950 GTX 512 MB
New 5400 RPM 250GB Segate HD.
Go to the boot menu (F12 on Dell) and select CD-ROM boot.
Choose your language at the Ubuntu language picker. The second boot option is install. Pick
that. From here, you can probably pick the defaults and end up with a reasonable base
system. I chose to partition my hard drive using the advanced partition option.
My setup:
50GB root ( / ) partition
8GB swap
The rest for /home
After the first reboot, I only showed 3.3 GB of RAM with the generic 64 bit kernel. This was
surprising and a little disappointing. I tried to install and use the server kernel, but the
video drivers won’t work with that kernel, so I’m stuck with losing 700MB RAM. Wifi worked
out of box. I updated the system and attempted to enable the nvidia proprietary drivers.
They didn’t show up in the hardware drivers list until after a reboot, so….
Reboot ubuntu. Go to System/Administration/Hardware Drivers in the main menu. Select the
newest nvidia driver (it should be the “Recommended” driver) and click “Activate”. This wil
require another reboot. After the next reboot, you’ll want to set your resolution. It’s
best to do this as root so the configurator can save the X config file permanently, so run
this:
$ sudo nvidia-settings
Select X Server Display Configuration on the left. Set the resolution to the one desired and
click “Apply”. Click OK to accept the resolution. Then click “Save to X Configuration File”
to make the settings permanent.
Wine which comes with 9.04 is ancient (1.0.1). I compiled the latest as of
now (1.1.20). I had to patch the source to make the 3d models visible in EVE.
1) Spark up a terminal window and run:
$ sudo apt-get build-dep wine
to get the compiler and other stuff needed to compile wine.
2) Get the source from http://winehq.org in the right nav area of the site.
3) untar the source with:
$ tar xf wine-1.1.20.tar.bz2
4) $ cd wine-1.1.20
5) I need the patch from http://bugs.winehq.org/attachment.cgi?id=20412
save it where you untarred your source for wine and run this from the
wine-1.1.20 directory:
$ patch -p1 < ../apocrypha.shaders.1.1.19.patch
6) $ ./configure
7) $ make depend && make
8) $ make install
9) go do something else for a long while.
10)install cabextract:
$ sudo apt-get install cabextract
EFT installs and works out of box.
Ventrilo installs and works out of box.
EVEMon requires dotnet 2. Install that by using winetricks. Get winetricks from
http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks (save page as winetricks).
To run it, do this:
$ sh winetricks
Select core fonts (needed for EVE) and dotnet2. dotnet2 takes a long while to
download and install.
You can now use the offline installer to install EVE. You will lose all of your settings
from windows. I’m sure you can copy the settings folder from a windows partition, but I
didn’t test this.
If you run 2 clients, you’ll want to do some further setup. First, set the graphics in EVE
to windowed mode and at some lower resolution then your whole screen.
Make 2 icons for EVE. The Commands for each should look like this:
env WINEPREFIX=”/home/jjorgens/.wine” wine explorer /desktop=1,1600×1050 “C:\Program Files\CCP\EVE\eve.exe”
env WINEPREFIX=”/home/jjorgens/.wine” wine explorer /desktop=2,1600×1050 “C:\Program Files\CCP\EVE\eve.exe”
Adjust the resolution to be the same as you set in the game. Run one launcher for one account, and the other for the other account.
Strangely, if I run the game with the graphics at full tilt, the laptop will overheat and
shutdown after about 10 minutes of play. After turning the graphics all of the way down,
the game runs fine. I needed to use these low settings for when I am in fleet engagements
anyway, so it’s no loss for me.