Kevin Bridges

I needed Ubuntu Linux, Nvidia and Wine to be able to fully leave Microsoft Windows and still play World Of Warcraft. I have a bit more than an average setup with 2 GeoForce 7800GTX SLI cards on an Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe powered by a an AMD 64FX processor. I've been playing with different builds of Linux and various methods to get everything working, but nothing has impressed me or been easy until today. Here's an outline of every step taken to install Linux and start playing World of Warcraft. You can direct question to Slammer on the Undermine server ;-) Download and install Ubuntu 6.10. I chose the 32 bit version instead of the 64 bit version because Adobe are a bunch of n00bs and won't release a 64bit version of Macromedia's Flash. Install Ubuntu. I'd suggest performing manual partitions, but that adds complexity that will not be covered.Startup your machine and login.Install wine by Installing from the WineHQ APT Repository with Synaptic. This is a simple step that will also give you automatic updates to wine.Open a terminal window and type winecfg. This will open a configuration window. Click the audio tab, accept the defaults and hit applyInstall Fonts to /home/kevin/.wine/drive_c/windows/fonts where kevin is replaced with your username . This can be done from your Desktop by using the Places menu at the top of the screen and then choosing Home Folder. Pressing Ctrl+L will open an address bar at the top of the Home Folder. Keep the address that is already filled and type .wine/ then hit enter. From there you can navigate into the drive_c folder followed by windows and then fonts. Copy all of your TrueType fonts to that directory. A great place to get TrueType fonts is the font folder of a windows machine. Install WoW. Double clicking the Installer.exe file lets you know no suitable application can be found. Fix this by right clicking the file and select Open With Other Application... Click on Use a custom command at the bottom of the window.Type in the following including the single quotes: '/usr/bin/wine'Double Click the Installer.exe file and install WoWConfigure WoW by create the file World Of Warcraft/WTF/Config.wtf where World Of Warcraft is where you installed Wow.Add the following lines to that file ... do not include the numbers 1,2,4 etc.SET gxResolution "1280x1024"SET gxRefresh "75"SET gxColorBits "24"SET gxApi "opengl"SET SoundOutputSystem "1"SET SoundBufferSize "150"SET hwDetect "0"Install NVIDIA Drivers.Download your NVIDIA Drivers ... I used these NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8776-pkg1.runOpen a Terminal Window and type the following commandssudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential gcc gcc-3.4 xserver-xorg-devsudo apt-get install sudo apt-get --purge remove linux-restricted-modules-`uname -r` linux-restricted-modules-common nvidia-glx nvidia-settings nvidia-kernel-commonPress CTRL+ALT+F1LoginType the following lines changing /home/kevin to your paths:sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stopsh /home/kevin/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8756-pkg1.run --extract-onlysudo ./nvidia-installer -n -s --x-prefix=/usr/lib/xorg/ --kernel-source-path=/usr/src/linux-headers-`uname -r`sudo nvidia-xconfigsudo /etc/init.d/gdm startLogin in once more.You are techincally done. You can navigate to the wow folder and double click the WoW.exe file to start playing. While downloading the updates, the installer will ask if you would like to download and install the Gecko engine. You can select this if you would like to see the html page of announcements Blizzard displays when you normally start the game.I mentioned earlier that I am running 2 graphics cards and a motherboard capable of running in full SLI mode. The following list outlines steps that were taken to enable SLI.Open a Terminal window and type the following (I choose SLIAA but there are other options available):sudo nvidia-xconfig -sli=SLIAAsudo /etc/init.d/gdm stopsudo /etc/init.d/gdm startYou can verify SLI mode by selecting the desktop menu item Applications >> System Tools >> NVIDIA X Server SettingsSelect OpenGL Settings from the menu on the left.Check Enable Heads-Up-DisplayPlay Wow or type glxgears