SketchUp on a USB chip
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Last week I installed Umbuntu Linux on a 4GB Kingston USB Traveler. No mechanical hardrive involved.
Everything application a normal person could want was automatically installed.
Setting up my desktop, Gmail and Skype was n00b's work. This O/S system is fast.
Got ACad 2000 running under Wine. I was impressed with the stability and wondered why I have been using 2002 as my main cad modeling tool in XP, it has been very flaky with the latest Nvidia XP 8800 drivers lately.
Got Rhino 2.0 working with wine also. 2.0 does just about everything I need Rhino to do.
Finally got SketchUp 6 Free working, about 80%, like with the first 8800 drivers on XP.
This morning I finally got the latest Nvidia Linux drivers working (using Envy).
Holy cow! The 8800GTS is working with ACad 2000 like it is using the Quadro OpenGl drivers. I have never panned, orbited and zoomed so fast with complex solid models.
SketchUp has stopped working, saying it can not find OGL support.
When SU can finally find OGL, I think I will be ready to ditch MicroSoft.
Did I mention FAST? I'm not sure if it is: USB vs SATA, Linux vs Windows or Nvidia vs Nvidia or ACad 2000 vs 2002, but unless I am mistaken, this is a very fast O/S.
There might be other reasons to use an O/S on USB, like security, portability, cost, control, system recovery, etc,
What was a gadget last week is my prefered O/S this week.
Cork[C.S.Cameron]
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Good for you, Cork. This is of great interest to me...I'm running three different PC's on Ubuntu and Xubuntu, in addition to my two Windows machines.
You know, I have had real failure attempting to run Rhino 4 or SketchUp 6 (I don't give a damn about ACAD) on Ubuntu 7.4 under Wine, although I haven't tried the USB option (I have one page on that linked http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ ). Either SU or Rhino would allow me to dispense with Windows entirely, completing my architect's tool set, so would you mind posting an exact version number for Wine?
And did you compile it yourself from the tarball, or did you pull it off the Ubuntu repositories? Also, were you able to get hardware acceleration to work in SU6 at all before it quit?
--Lewis
Note to other Moderators: I think, because this thread is referring to another operating system primarily, that I will leave it on the main Pro User Forum as opposed to placing it in Hardware.
[Lewis Wadsworth] -
Hmmm...just tried this again with the latest Debian package for Wine, and I ended up with the typical SketchUp-without-icons-or-menus-in-three-minutes-crash problem.
And just to see if Envy would do a better job than the Restricted Manager (which installed a driver--but possibly not the best driver--for my Nvidia 7800 GTX right out of the box), I ran it too...it toasted my xorg.conf file. Windows' blue screen of death has nothing on the monster you get if Ubuntu cannot start X. I had to replace the damaged xorg.conf with a backup using the recovery terminal, delete some log file in /var that mysteriously still seem to throw things off (I think it might have been my imagination), restart gdm, turn the Restricted Manager back on, and then edit the xorg.conf file manually to accommodate my WUXGA monitor. There went two hours.
I'll give Rhino 2 a shot some other night.
[Lewis Wadsworth]
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@c.s.cameron said:
Did I mention FAST? I'm not sure if it is: USB vs SATA, Linux vs Windows or Nvidia vs Nvidia or ACad 2000 vs 2002, but unless I am mistaken, this is a very fast O/S.
Generally the USB data transfer speed is much slower than compared to SATA / IDE. I suspect it is the OS that is trimmed nice and lean.
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@unknownuser said:
Did I mention FAST? I'm not sure if it is: USB vs SATA, Linux vs Windows or Nvidia vs Nvidia or ACad 2000 vs 2002, but unless I am mistaken, this is a very fast O/S.
Generally the USB data transfer speed is much slower than compared to SATA / IDE. I suspect it is the OS that is trimmed nice and lean.
You are quite correct, although on a computer with decent amounts of RAM the slowness in my experience (booting Linux from external hard drives through Firewire or from a CD) is during the process of launching the OS. There are Linux distros designed to run entirely in RAM without resort to a storage medium once they are loaded (and I believe most distros put a big chunk of the OS, which is not that big by Windows standards after all, on the RAM anyway), but I think they tend to be more experimental and less aimed at the graphically-inclined user.
Incidentally, (and returning to the topic of graphic drivers for Linux) there's a new fork or version of Ubuntu called Mint (that sounds oddly sleazy to me!) that claims to have advanatages over plain Ubuntu in terms of hardware recognition. None of this really helps me, however, to get SU 6 or any other version of SU running on Linux, though. I'll have to give Rhino another shot...Cork's Rhino 2 was the first "mature" version of that modeler. Industrial designers and naval architects were all over it in a moment.
--Lewis
[Lewis Wadsworth] -
Please keep us up to speed with developments Lewis & co.
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Cork was right, Rhino 2 will run under Wine on Ubuntu Linux! There are a few problems if one turns on OpenGL shading, certain preferences don't seem to hold as they should, checkboxes for some items don't function...and if you turn on one of the Linux 3D window managers the whole thing goes belly up. Buggy, but functional in other words. Now I just have to remember to avoid using the tricks I developed in Rhino 3 and Rhino 4.
I think I still have a SU1 or 2 disk floating around...I should see if those work...
--Lewis
[Lewis Wadsworth)]
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Can't recall if I got Wine from WineHQ or Synaptic.
It's frustrating that Wine comes so close with SU.
I tried installing back to Pre-Google 5. always the same.
Tried disabling OGL from the start but it then just freezes.
Envy, After trying for a week to get Nvidia drivers working for my 8800 GTS and reformatting I learned how to backup my xorg.
Tried Envy again, this time reading the instructions.
Of course I got locked out of X but this time I tried "su envy -t"
This brought up an option menu, I tried No 2, remove Nvidia.
The computer became very active, I was set to reformat again when the Ubuntu desk top popped up asking me to log in, I was so excited I flubbed 3 times.
After using Nvidia settings and getting duel monitors at 1280x1024, I'm glad I persisted.
Last month USB sticks were 4GB Censored to protect your privacy 3-6 MB/s, this month they are 8GB Censored to protect your privacy 35 MB/s, Next month?
Sure SATA might get 300 MB/s but most of my hard drives are ATA at 30 MB/s.
I think most everything happens in ram anyway.
Cork[C.S Cameron]
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Well, thanks for keeping us posted, Cork. I may want to talk with you if I need to get two monitors going on Ubuntu, but I have had much the same experience with every version of SU from 6 to 2 (I think I tossed my SU1 disk). Quite the shame...but, hey, I have Rhino on Linux now, in addition to QCAD, BRL-CAD, Blender, AC3D, and the GIMP. That's almost enough for a small architectural practice, if only I wasn't so addicted to using SU as design tool. And I could wish that Rhino 3 or 4 would work, but apparently the McNeel license manager subprogram finds something indigestible about Linux.
--Lewis
P.S. I thought I should add that, even on Windows, some of these programs will work from a USB drive...I can install Blender, QCAD, and AC3D (Windows versions all) on a flash drive and they seem to run nearly perfectly on whatever Windows computer I plug the drive into. I haven't quite figured out why I want to do this, but it is kind of neat.
[Lewis Wadsworth]
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