I installed the beta version of Flash 10 awhile back to fix some crashing/freezing problems in Firefox on my Ubuntu laptop. Everything worked fine until yesterday, when I began having the same problems, so I removed Flash 10 and reinstalled Flash 9. I haven’t had any problems since.

How is it that a piece of software that does work stops working and the old software that didn’t work starts working?  I do not know.

I checked this book out from the library the other day and started reading it last night. I’ve only read two chapters, but I think this is going to have to be a purchase. The author, Carla Schroder, has a very direct, to-the-point way of writing that makes it very easy to follow along. She doesn’t waste time over-explaining topics, but at the same time, she gives enough information to get you going. She also provides references to additional resources in case you want to know more about a particular topic.

As for organization, the book is organized, well, like a cookbook. This makes it an excellent reference if you are looking for how to do something very specific. Just look in the index for your topic, turn to it, and follow the clearly worded instructions. Not looking for anything in particular? I noticed that the book also can be used as a walkthrough for learning various facets of networking with Linux.

Although I’m just getting started with the book, I can already tell that it’s going to be an excellent resource. I’d recommend it to anyone who’s getting started with Linux and wants to get more acquainted with the operating system from a system/network administrator perspective.

I downloaded Diablo II from the Blizzard Store a few weeks ago to use on my laptop that I have Ubuntu installed on. I attempted to install Diablo II with WINE (Windows compatibility for Linux) and I noticed that I could not get past the license agreement. The Accept button was grayed out and would not activate. I googled around, checked UbuntuForums.org, and could not find an answer to the problem. So I gave up and used an XP vm for awhile, which worked fine until I screwed up my XP vm a couple of days ago.

So I tried installing Diablo II with WINE again, and I don’t remember what I saw that tipped me off, but I realized that the License Agreement was trying to use Internet Explorer to render the form…but in WINE, the Mozilla Gecko engine was used instead. So I found some instructions on installing IE6 with WINE (If I can find the page again, I’ll post it) and what do you know, after I did that, Diablo II installed just fine.

Note, this only seems to affect the installers downloaded from the Blizzard Store.

I was trying to get Diablo 2 to run under WINE in Ubuntu, but the version that I downloaded from the Blizzard store wouldn’t install.  I was unable to get past the license agreement because the Agree button was grayed out even after scrolling all the way down the page.  So I instead installed it on an XP guest in Virtual Box.

The only problem I had there was that VirtualBox does not support 3D acceleration, so I was getting a Direct3D error when I tried to play the game. This was solved by opening the Registry Editor, going to:

HKEY_Current_User/Software/Blizzard Entertainment/Diablo II/VideoConfig

and setting the Render value to 0. It opened just fine after that, and ran suprisingly quickly for being run inside a virtual machine.

I’ve never been able to use the Linux driver for my RTL 8185 in Ubuntu.  Instead, I’ve used Ndiswrapper with the Windows XP driver.  It works great.

Here’s the download for the XP driver: rtl8185

Once you have that, you’ll want to install NdisWrapper.  Open a terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9

Once you have ndiswrapper installed, unzip the file you downloaded and change your terminal to that directory.  Then install the drivers with these commands:

sudo ndiswrapper -i net8185.inf

sudo ndiswrapper -m

sudo ndiswrapper -mi

sudo ndiswrapper -ma

sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

At this point, you should be able to use your wireless card.  If you type “ifconfig” in your terminal, you should see “wlan0″ listed.

This has worked every time for me, so I hope it solves any issues you are having with this card too!

EDIT:

If everytime you reboot, you have to run ’sudo modprobe ndiswrapper’ command, try adding ndiswrapper to your  /etc/modules file.

To do that:

Open a terminal and type:

sudo gedit /etc/modules

Add a line and type ndiswrapper

Save and close the file.

Reboot.