SketchUp and Rubies on Linux (yes, it works)

mozzie

OK - have it working with my 82865G Integrated Graphics Controller. In the WINE forums, there was a suggestion that there was an issue with the Intel and ATI OpenGL drivers under DRI and that turning it off would work.
Requires a mod to the xorg.conf file - add the following line under the

Section "Device"
...
Option "DRI" "False"
EndSection

And I now have a non-black screen, and visible drawings. Not tested comprehensively, but will report back.

lewiswadsworth

Mozzie, I'll have to try that as well on the Dell notebook...could you provide a link to the relevant WINE forum threads? Thanks.

EDIT: It worked! ...on a Dell Inspiron XPS P4 3.40 GHz with some nameless ATI Radeon with 256 MB VRam, about four years old. There is a strange white box around the cursor, but otherwise SU looks normal...I won't have a chance to test this with real drawings for a few days, though. (Incidentally, this computer had bad ATI/OpenGL issues running SU on Windows...I've always considered it a piece of junk.)

The toolbar problem seems to be caused by allowing the Window Manager "to control the window" in the Configure WINE control panel. However, unchecking the option can cause worse issues...on my systems, it seems that toolbars that are not docked or pallet windows (like Materials) that were open prior to the WINE configuration change will vanish until the desktop manager is allowed to manage SU again.

mozzie

You probably don't need it now ... but here's the WineHQ reference.
It's the second item in the list, the heading is "Black Screen".

http://appdb.winehq.org/commentview.php?iAppId=1815&iVersionId=6842

The interesting comment there is the last item in the black screen thread.

@unknownuser said:

RE: Black Screen
by Alexander Sabourenkov on Thursday August 7th 2008, 1:21
Ok.

I'll try to track down the source of the problem. Seems likely that it is something missing from both intel and ati open source drivers, but present in non-accelerated driver and proprietary ones (nvidia at least).

I did a little testing. I don't have the white box problem (cursor looks normal).
Onscreen operations seem Ok, but horribly slow (to be expected) as the hardware acceleration is compromised.
Export to 2D graphic (PNG) was unsuccessful.

lewiswadsworth

Thanks, Mozzie. I also could not export to PNG on the old Dell notebook, although JPG worked well. And of course, I lost functionality on other native apps that depended on DRI, like certain screensavers and some of the eyecandy on the Amarok music player.

In the end, it's not worth doing on this particular aging notebook computer...with a fairly big model (which will run just fine on WINE on a computer with an 8-series GeForce), turning on textures and shadows in SU nearly froze the system. And even once I managed to force SU/WINE to quit, the computer was hopelessly sluggish until I restarted it. Oh well. I'm sure on a more modern system with ATI or integrated graphics this will be of great value. But it seems like the NVidia cards are still the best bet for a system to run SU on Wine on Linux without too much functionality loss, assuming one has the option...at least until the poster you quote tracks down the problem.

eter

OK, I was playing around a bit this week and I DO get the display delay thing- specifically, if I reverse a face, it doesn't display as reversed until I try another operation. I'm using an nVidia 6200 with the proprietary drivers that Ubuntu 7.04 installs.

tomasz

Hi,
I have managed to start SU Free on SuSE 11.0 with Wine 1.1.4.
I've got GeForce 6200. It works fine, almost as fast as on Windows
but.. every time I minimize SU window and then open it back I get BugSplat..

SU(Wine) also doesn't refresh the view after selecting a scene. I have to click on the screen to see it changed.

I was really surprised to see SU widow on Linux and to rotate quite complicated models without a problem!

Tomasz

michelinux

have you followed all the steps explained in this tutorial, particularly adapt ruby scripts for unix systems with tofrodos tools and the command dos2unix in correct directories where scripts are?

tomasz

If you mention tutorial below... I haven't spotted it.
http://www.wine-reviews.net/applications/google-sketchup-6-on-linux-and-freebsd-with-wine.html
I have installed Gecko when wine asked first time. My bad.
Will reinstalling help? Will try it.

michelinux

No, I intend the first page of this discussion here.

I've just updated SU to the last release, but I'm noticing the same problems you've described in your post.

Mick

tvcasualty

I've been running SU on ubuntu 8.04 and now 8.10. I've had the black screen problem in version 1.16? of wine, however a day later it updated and the problem went away. I'm now on 1.18, and it still works great. Now all my plugin's work!

originalsurfmex

well, sketchup is actually running faster in linux than it does in vista (with aero off)!! go figure.

however, i can't resize any of my tool windows (model info, component browser, material browser)...any ideas, i couldnt find anything on the web...

(arch linux i686, openbox3)

thomthom

@originalsurfmex said:

well, sketchup is actually running faster in linux than it does in vista (with aero off)!! go figure.

however, i can't resize any of my tool windows (model info, component browser, material browser)...any ideas, i couldnt find anything on the web...

(arch linux i686, openbox3)

Turning off Areo on Vista makes all screen operations slow as all hardware acceleration is gone.

originalsurfmex

true that, sorry about not being more precise...i meant to say turning off all eye candy via those checkboxes - i didnt actually disable aero itself.

still, any ideas about those menu's in linux?

dankegel

For the latest info about Sketchup and Wine, see http://wiki.winehq.org/GoogleSketchup

The resizing bug mentioned above appears to be specific to the OpenBox window manager, and doesn't happen in Gnome. I've filed a bug for it, see http://bugzilla.icculus.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3914

As of wine-1.1.11, Sketchup 7 should work reasonably well if you have a recent Nvidia card, though you may have to set the HW_OK registry entry described in the wiki page above to 1 to get past the "cannot initialize opengl" bug.

originalsurfmex

wow!! thank you bro. ill get changing window managers asap. in the meantime i'll keep an eye on the bug report. (gotta love the open source community)

[edit] fyi: im trying to keep it to a light window manager (even xfce4 is too heavy for me) - so i went with e17 (enlightenment) its allll good now!

jaceguay

Im using skethcup 7 on Ubuntu 8.10 for two weeks now, thanks for this post, the speed it's the same of XP for me, I have a Geoforce 8400 GS. I had to disable the anti-aliasing in the ubuntu NVIDIA X Server Settings and use save to X Configuration File to really disable the AA.
By now there is only two major problens:

I can't get the Shadow window do appear, even by hotkey or the window menu.
The Zoom Window command get the sketchup window to turn black and it doesn't recover, i have to save and open sketchup again.

The other things that happen is that before I export some 2D graphics I have to change the format to bmp and then again to jpg to export right. All of that I can live with, the thing that I really miss is the Thumbnail preview in windows explorer before I open a file.

nikkkko

Hi,

First post in this forum...

I've been running SU for about a year on an Ubuntu distro with whatever wine ver happens to be in the repository. I bought a Dell M1330 laptop specifically for the job, making sure I had NVidia graphics and it very rarely crashes, which, considering I'm using it every day, is pretty satisfying.

However, I recently started needing to produce technical drawings with detailed dimensions information and really need LayOut for this job. Has anyone had any success getting it to run?

lunkwill

I found a workaround to the refresh bug: in another terminal window, I run:

watch -n 0.3 xrefresh -geometry 1x1+500+500

That uses the xrefresh program to create a 1x1 window at 500,500 on the screen every 0.3 seconds. The refresh is enough to make sketchup update itself without totally disrupting the screen.

waffle

I found that this worked, having had OpenGL errors with Sketchup in Wine, changing wine's fake windows registry (type 'wine regedit' into your terminal), navigate towards each of these three. By version 8 I think that the middle one has disappeared, but a combination of changing the others has allowed me to get sketchup to run. I suspect that changing HW_OK to 1 is the main one.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\SketchUp6\GLConfig\Display]
"FIRST_TIME"=dword:00000000
"HW_OK"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\SketchUp6\Google SketchUp TOTD]
"HelpPage"="0"
"ShowOnStartUp"="false"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\SketchUp6\SnappyInstructor]
"Show"="0"

To change the value to the right of the '=' sign, click right in 'wine regedit', modify, type in the value (1 or 0 in these cases)

Don't be afraid to post queries, registration doesn't take long on this forum (i registered just to leave this post)

gonzaloavf

I have just installed SU8 on my Ubuntu 10.04 and couldn't start it with an error message like "can't open OpenGL". In fact nothing to do with rubbies. The only workaround that worked for me was this registry messing. The only key I couldn't find was this TODT. The graphics get a little clampsy some times, but this would happen on XP too.