bloggingIT

I was playing around with Wine the other day. It’s pretty cool that I can run Dreamweaver and Fireworks on Ubuntu with very few issues now.

One of the problems I did encounter was that the setup program for Dreamweaver wouldn’t run under wine, and the program files had to be copied across to my Linux system from an existing Windows installation.

Once done, it ran with no problems - but I now had to create the icon in the Applications menu.

Creating the menu entry was straightforward enough - I just copied the Fireworks link and edited it to work with Dreamweaver. The problem was that I really wanted the icon to sit nicely.

After scouring a few forums, it turned out that Ubuntu already had a set of programs available in the repositories called icoutils.

After working out what binaries were installed:
dpkg -L icoutils

I played around with some of the tools. I can’t remember exactly what I did, so I’ll just say play with the tools. You can extract ICOs easily from DLLs and executables, and save them as ICO files or other formats.

Once done, I had a pretty Dreamweaver icon that looked better than the Fireworks one that Wine extracted!

What’s even funnier is that to get a tool in Windows to do this kind of thing inevitably lead to using shareware.

After recently installing a bunch of Shuttle SK22G2 systems in a site with Windows Vista loaded, it became clear that there were some minor issues with the systems shutting down. (Hint: They didn’t)

There was an intermittent fault that made them hang on the last phase of shutting down. Frustratingly, there was no evidence to show that this has happened except for the blue LED on the front of the case, and the noise of the fan it the back. To get the machine going - it was either hold the power button in for a few seconds or hit the reset switch.

Vista has come a long way in error reporting from the Windows 9x days. In fact, combined with the internet there are very few unfixable problems of this nature. What really helps us here is the Problem Reports and Solutions utility. This keeps a track of any errors that may have happened, and gives you the details in a (relatively) easy to read format.

What it was telling me, is that the system was crashing with a blue screen. I tried a few solutions, including a far-reaching bluetooth issue.

In the end, the problem turned out to be caused by the ATI drivers. After a couple of weeks, the computers reported that updating the ATI drivers might help, and they did! Hurrah.

Yes, it’s true!

Windows Vista may actually start making use of the 3D effects enjoyed by other operating systems for so long now.

Most notably, the virtual desktop has been toyed around with before in Windows, but it never seems to be executed well. So it seems fitting that there’s a Vista / XP Virtual Desktop Manager open-source project on codeplex. The current version is 0.5, which is a release candidate.

The desktop manager itself works, but isn’t fantastic. It’s still a little buggy and as such, the live updating doesn’t seem to work exactly as advertised. What is more appealing is that the next version is showing promising signs that it may include an Exposé-like feature for task switching. If this can replace or be added onto the rather lame Flip-3D feauture, then that’s even better.

Whatever next? Fast file access in Vista?

Now that MS Office 2007 is doing the rounds, I suppose it’s time to lookat some of its shortcomings.

It has a few when it comes to deployment. The biggest nuisance being deployment.

You have four options:

• Install it on a PC manually (not great)
• Deploy through group policy with no customisations
• Use a deployment system such as SMS
• Use a computer startup script

You may as well just say “no” to the first one. Anything more than a handful of PCs and you have a tedious task.

Group Policy has always been my method of choice. Most of my clients have less than 100 PCs, so Group Policy deployment is ideal. But as pointed out in the list, you cannot customise the installation with any defaults.

SMS is out. It’s not worth explaining to clients why it’s a good idea to buy software that makes my life easier. Even though the effort and management might simplify things somewhat.

So we’re stuck with computer startup scripts. Another method I hate - but if you want to control Office Deployments, then this is the way to do it. Thankfully, Aaron Parker has posted some startup scripts to help with this using the MSP method.

If you are using a network with WSUS, then updates become a non-issue, and I think that the only time to need to redeploy is if you decide to change the application packages that you want. At which point, you could check that executables of the programs exist or record your own registry entries that you can check for.

It’s not a great method (I’ve managed to avoid having to use ANY computer startup scripts in 2000-based networks) - but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work. Especially if you make sure to use the quiet options in the Setup /admin tool.

Office, eh?

Windows Vista. It’s big, bad and insists its new technologies upon unsuspecting users while not actually working quite right.

The Vista Sidebar is one such culprint. Ever since the early previews of Vista (aka Longhorn), there was a giant box hanging around the desktop on the right side that had a giant clock in it.

Of course, that has now become sidebar gadgets - which can live on your desktop.

It’s a poor tradeoff though. We’ve lost Active Desktop.

Foisted upon an unsuspecting user base. Active Desktop was pitched as a portal to an always-on internet with IE4 or Windows 98. The fact that barely anyone had an always-on internet connection seemed irrelevant. But you could put loads of webpages in little windows on your desktop, or just replace your wallpaper with a web page or HTML page.

Until recently, I’ve found this pointless - but for networks running an intranet such as Sharepoint, it’s the perfect solution. A user logs on, and on their desktop appears the site’s intranet. At a single glance you have all the information you need from your intranet. If you click on a click, a new IE window opens, and you carry on from there. Simple, and very effective.

Vista comes along and as surprisingly AD was put into Windows, it was taken away again. Gone forever (probably). Now, considering how much old Windows fluff is still hanging around in Vista (old Font dialog box, anyone?) it seems that this is a bit of an own goal on Microsoft’s front.

The suggestion now is that I have to write desktop gadgets to do the same jobs as a webpage would. And to make matters worse (and here’s the kicker), Desktop Gadgets does not support roaming profiles! So you move from one computer to another, and the sidebar smugly sits there with its clock, photo slideshow and newsfeeder. So even if I did make those gadgets, they would currently be about as much use as a Dell laptop battery.

Fantastic! So for network administrators - there is now no native way to access an intranet or any other application service with a user specifically going there. And I can really see illiterate computer users making sure that they start IE and go to the intranet when they log in. Yeah, right!

Thank you Microsoft, good night!

I’ve become a huge fan of a program called Meld in Linux. It allows me to compare files, folders and even update CVS repositories (in a basic way). It’s cool

Thankfully, there is a very similar program available for Windows and also Open Source called WinMerge. This does pretty much the same thing and works in a very similar way.

It’s great for comparing registry files between different computers and different folder structures.