CAN you run Adobe Photoshop on Linux?

Many Web designers, graphic artists and bloggers might consider the answer to this question crucial when considering a shift from Windows.

After all, while there are many excellent open-source alternatives to common office and multimedia applications, the defacto graphics program on Linux, the unfortunately-named Gimp, hobbles a generation or two behind the market-leading Photoshop, which is available only for Windows and Mac OS X.

Years of speculation and wishful thinking have not yielded a Linux version from Adobe, nor does one look likely to come anytime soon.

As they are often wont to do, users have taken matters into their own hands, using free and open-source software called Wine to run Windows programs – including Photoshop – in Linux.

A group of hackers began the Wine project in 1993 as a way to run Windows 3.1 programs on Linux. Over the years, Wine has been expanded to include programs running under later versions of Windows, including 95, 98, 2000 and XP.

Wine, short for “Wine Is Not an Emulator,” is software that translates Windows commands into their equivalent in Linux or Unix.

While the project is more than a decade old, Wine is still under testing, with the latest beta version being 0.9.18.

“Wine is still under development, and it is not yet suitable for general use,” the official Web site (http://www.winehq.com) says. “Nevertheless, many people find it useful in running a growing number of Windows programs.”

Intrigued by the possibilities, I did some research and found a 2003 article in eWeek about how Walt Disney’s animation unit and two other competing studios jointly funded a project with CodeWeavers, the leading corporate backer of Wine, to develop a solution that would allow them to run Photoshop on Linux.

The project cost Disney less than $15,000, but saved it more than $50,000 a year in Windows licenses, eWeek reported. At the same time, CodeWeavers was able to incorporate the technology into Wine and its commercial version, CrossOver Office.

A quick check with the Wine Web site showed that Photoshop was indeed among the 4,398 Windows applications that would run under Wine.

Setting up Wine and using it isn’t rocket science, but it’s probably complicated enough to intimidate the typical Windows user.

I downloaded Wine (using the Synaptic Package Manager in Ubuntu Linux) then configured it by using the winecfg utility (type “winecfg” in the Terminal command line). Doing this the first time creates a fake “Drive C” in the hidden .wine directory of your home folder. This is where Wine installs all Windows programs.

To install a Windows program, pop in the install CD and type this into the command line:

wine /media/cdrom0/setup.exe

The Windows installer will come up and install the program.
Theoretically, to run the program, you’d type the following:

wine “C:Program FilesAdobePhotoshop 7.0Photoshop.exe”

Sadly, this did not work. Further research showed I needed to tell Wine which dynamic link library or DLL file to use. This line from an Ubuntu forum does the job:

WINEDLLOVERRIDES=wintab32=n wine “C:Program FilesAdobePhotoshop 7.0Photoshop.exe”

To save myself some typing, I created a script that executes the command when I click on an icon.

So how does running Photoshop in Linux measure up?

In general, I was pleasantly surprised by the program’s responsiveness. There was none of the sluggishness that I expected and most of the features I use heavily work.

There are some major caveats, however.

1) Right-click menus do not work. In fact, they can lock up the program. This is a pain, because I’m used to right-clicking on items in the Layers palette to manipulate them. Fortunately, there is a work-around for this, using the menu bar at the top of the window.

2) Resizing the Layers palette will also crash the program.

3) Alt-clicking on an area does not work for the Clone tool. Instead, you must hold down the Shift key while doing the Alt-click.

4) The Tools and other palettes will remain on screen even when you minimize Photoshop.

These are pretty serious problems because you could lose a lot of work. On the other hand, if you’re careful to avoid these pitfalls and save your work periodically, you ought to be able to run Photoshop productively under Linux.

By: Chin Wong

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A good WoW leveling guide used to be pretty hard to find. In reality they were not that hard to find and they provided information that could allow you to level faster. The problem was that they were written guides generally in some type of document form.

This meant you had to either alt+tab in and out of the game to read what to do next or print out hundreds of pages and be able to read along while trying to play WoW. Not much faster and trust me, not much fun either.

These days you have the option of getting a good guide for leveling fast in WoW through addon programs that install right into the user interface of the game.

These guides allow for all instruction and quest details as well as a guide arrow to be right inside the game and serve as a direct path to the best questing approaches for power leveling.

Quest helper programs are designed by long time players that have taken the time to map out the most effective questing paths for power leveling any race horde or alliance in World Of Warcraft.

This  means having more time to play battlegrounds, work on your professions or participate in group raids an instances. These WoW leveling guide addons will not only help you level much faster, they also help maximize the limited playing time most of us have to play the game.

So to answer the question of “Are any of these leveling guides true WoW power level guides?” I would say the addon quest helper programs fit the bill closer than anything we have ever seen available. Happy leveling.

By: Steve Phipps

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The Xbox 360 game system has found a permanent place in the entertainment game industry, and has earned an excellent reputation with gamers. The number of Xbox 360 gamers increases steadily from week to week. The popularity of these games has enabled the manufacturers to keep raising prices on the newest releases. In the face of these increasing costs, many avid Xbox 360 gamers have started to burn original Xbox games as backups for their own protection. Other gamers, concerned about how easily their expensive game disks can become damaged, lost, or stolen are learning how to burn original Xbox games simply to protect their initial investment and avoid the cost of replacing these valuable game disks.

In an attempt to prevent such copies from being created, the game manufacturers have added copy protection schemes to their gaming software. The traditional CD and DVD copying software used for music and video files cannot be used to burn original Xbox games. They cannot bypass the copy protection. Fear not, however, good old technological know how has solved the problem for gamers. A number of companies have designed special software that can bypass the game’s copy protection and burn original Xbox games to create backup disks.

This new copying software, regardless of the manufacturer, is easy to use. Once you have acquired and installed the software, it’s simply a matter of inserting the game disk into the computer, which copies it to the hard drive; and subsequently inserting a blank DVD disk to receive the copy from the hard drive for backup. It’s a straightforward process. You simply have to follow the onscreen instructions.

Once you’ve made one copy, you’ll be an expert on how to burn original Xbox games, and can begin to make backup copies of all of your games. Think of the money that you’ll save by not spending it on replacement games. If you store the original game safely away and keep the backup for daily use, you’ll never again need to fret over a scratched or seriously damaged game disk.

Do your homework when deciding which software to buy. Check out the different downloading websites. Get the advice of other gamers who have had experience with both good and bad software. You’re looking for a high-quality software tool that is easy to use, sells for a reasonable price, and comes with thorough step by step instructions.

Losing or destroying one of your valuable Xbox 360 game disks is a gamer’s nightmare. With your new software for burning original Xbox games to backup disks, it’s a bad dream that you’ll never need to experience again.



By: Jack Bush

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Making gold in the World of Warcraft isn’t hard, but you do have to put in a bit of effort, if only in gathering stuff to sell. If you spend some time in the Auction House and learn what stuff should sell for you’ll wind up making a lot more WoW gold that if you don’t.

Tip 1 – First off, you’re going to make three level 1 alts. One will be your main banker and you’ll run it to your favorite capital city, whether Horde or Alliance, then the other two will go to the other capital cities and will simply be buyers. What’ll they buy? Limited items and certain other goodies.

Tip 2 – Any and all sellable stuff (items with white, green, and higher names) found by your main character(s) will be sent to your banker for sale on the Auction House. As your man characters level they’ll come across lots of stuff to send in. They shouldn’t do any selling themselves and they should never visit the AH. All they’ll do it hit the nearest mailbox and send stuff in.

Tip 3 – If you have some gold already send some to your banker and your buyers so they can pay for the auction fees and buy stuff. What stuff? Limited items. If you don’t have the cash then start another character who will be your gatherer (or do it with one of your main characters.) This character will get the mining and skinning skills and work them. Every time you get a 20 stack of skins or ores you’ll send it to your banker to sell. Soon enough you’ll have a little stash of gold to start playing with.

Tip 4 – The capital cities each have several vendors with “limited items” for sale. These are the items where only one or two are available at any one time and these are what your buyers will be grabbing. Many of these items will sell for a lot more on the Auction House than what you will pay for them from the Vendor.

The White Wedding Dress, found in Stormwind, is an example. Buy it for a gold, sell it for 10. Only have one up at a time though, because if you post too many dresses you’ll flood the market and kill it. Every once in awhile you’ll find common items which sell for amazingly high prices.

Tip 5 – If you know the prices of any particular niche, “heavy leather” for example, and you see some of these items posted at a really low price, then buy them up. All of them. Then resell those items a few stacks at a time (don’t flood the market.) This applies to any niche. I just bought a blue weapon worth 20 gold for only 80 silver today. I’m reselling it for a nice profit.

Tip 6 – If you see a blue or purple weapon or armor piece that you know is way under-priced consider buying and relisting it at a greatly increased price. Don’t go too high or you won’t sell it. Know the prices things sell for.

Tip 7 – Learn a couple of areas of the Auction House really well, such as ores and skins. Know what typical prices are and how much you’re likely to be able to sell yours for. That way you’ll be able to buy out the low priced stuff and make good estimates of what your stuff should sell for. You’ll also know when to buy out low priced stuff and resell it for a profit.

Bonus tip – Get a copy of the Auctioneer Addon (Google it,) install it, and learn to use it. While not 100% accurate (due to players spoofing prices) it’s pretty darn good and will give you a lot of good pricing info.

Follow the above tips and you’ll be well on your way to making you gold stash, however big it is now, a lot bigger. Good luck!

By: Greg Mee

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Did you know that your very own PS3 is actually more powerful then even the best home computers out on the market today. And more then likely it is two times as powerful as the computer you’re reading this from. We hear so much about home PC’s now having Dual Core technology but the PS3 comes with eight powerful CPU cores that absolutely blow anything out on the market today out of the water. So how can we harness this power and turn our humble PS3 into our very own super computer?

Well luckily for us Sony are way ahead of the pack. They built the PS3 with Linux distro’s in mind. And you can actually install Linux on your PS3 much the same way you would with your home computer. And there is nothing extra needed, no extra gadgets or software to buy, just plug and play essentially. Well… As plug and play as it gets with Linux anyway. The great thing is, is that you do not have to lose what you already have on your PS3. So games, music, anything installed on your hard drive is preserved. The PS3 just turns to dual boot mode much the same as a windows PC. So you can either select to go with your standard PS3 OS to play games, or switch to Linux to use it as a home computer.

Now with so many Linux distributions out there, it’s probably going to be a bit of a hard job to choose the right one right? Well actually, your options are slightly cut down due to the PS3 having too much power. (Yes that’s right, too many cores cause issues!). Most standard Linux distributions like redhat, ubuntu, gnome or kubuntu cannot handle the PS3’s 8 cores natively. Mostly down to home computers never having anything close to 8 processors.

This is where Yellow Dog Linux on PS3 comes to the rescue. Sony, know that people would want to utilize the power of their PS3 into something more then playing First Person Shooters each and every day, commissioned a stripped down Linux distro to be directly developed for the PS3. This means your not just getting a “ported” Linux distro, your actually getting something that was made for the PS3 from day one. Not only does Yellow Dog Linux tick all the boxes for harnessing the power of the PS3, it comes prepackaged with everything that you could possibly ever use on your home computer. These extra include Open Office, Pidgin, Gimp and even Mozilla Firefox.

Installing Yellow Dog Linux On PS3 is actually incredibly easy do don’t be afraid that you are going to “Brick” your console by doing something you shouldn’t. Unlike the PSP, PS3’s were made for this sort of customization. And once again i have to point out, Yellow Dog was directly commissioned for this job so you wont be voiding your warranty by installing Yellow Dog Linux on your PS3.

By: Scott Ace

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