Any fellow Linux users on here?

[Judge]

It may well be the graphics driver and it's associated firmware that's giving you all the dramas. That could also be what's responsible for the crashing when changing icons.

Indeed! That's one major consideration I have about reinstalling Pop!OS without the Nvidia drivers. That apart from not breaking Photoshop 5.5 running in Wine 8.0.2, that it may also stop that horrendous unrecoverable crash from altering icons that preexist in the dock.

Despite all the stress of failure after failure, it has been an interesting learning experience. Though one aspect of it involves just how sophisticated the issue of icons may be. Where it takes more than a single scalable icon to operate successfully in this particular OS. I'm just not sure. But I do know you can globally change all the icons installed as a theme. A few posts back it shows how I successfully replaced all the default icons with Numix icons.

In the back of my mind I am also trying to deal with the reality that the technology will continue to evolve, and likely leave Photoshop 5.5 behind in its wake. I just wish I could understand what Linux Mint is doing to accommodate fools like me. I figure there are probably less then ten people on the planet trying to keep this software running on any platform in 2023!

I created a new .iso file from System 76, to install Pop!OS this time around using open source video drivers. So I should know where I stand with this by the end of the day. But it sure is exasperating for me to continue. Ugh....

 

[Judge]

I've also had problems with precompiled nVidia drivers but had no troubles if I downloaded the source and compiled it myself. This was true for both Ubuntu and Fedora.

Interesting. As well, the recent semi- "open source" Nvidia drivers haven't worked for me at all. But then like the rest of my hardware it's a much older card- an Nvidia Ti1660.

We both know how the inventor of the Linux Kernel feels about Nvidia. Linus Torvald and his middle finger do all the talking when it comes to Nvidia. Where one finger is worth a thousand words. Or expletives.

 

[Outdated]

Interesting. As well, the recent semi- "open source" Nvidia drivers haven't worked for me at all. But then like the rest of my hardware it's a much older card- an Nvidia Ti1660.

The reason the x-org drivers always work is because when a linux distro is put together they gather all the base programs and libraries that they need and tweak them all to fit each other properly.

nVidia try to make a "generic linux" type of driver which isn't really possible, and they always do it using outdated libraries. So quite often if you try to install a procompiled nVidia driver it will want to roll back some of your updated system to satisfy it's own dependencies.

When you download the source code package and compile it yourself the driver gets built using all of your own current libraries.

 

[Judge]

The reason the x-org drivers always work is because when a linux distro is put together they gather all the base programs and libraries that they need and tweak them all to fit each other properly.

Yeah, frankly I can't recall any problems encountered when I ran Xorg drivers. Especially gratifying when Wine works so seamlessly with them as well. Though I know I'm taking some kind of performance hit in the process, though I'm not actually playing any games that would really depend on a high FPS.

I know video played through VLC 3.18 seemed pretty decent. Just hated the Snaps version which doesn't fully accommodate the dark mode. Don't understand why they left it half and half...dark and light. Ugh.

 

[Judge]

Finally. The end of my struggle with Pop!OS22.04. Turns out that System 76's product is not crap. That the real culprit in attempting to run Wine 8.0.2 with a 25 year old Photoshop 5.5 is Nvidia and the drivers offered for my Ti1660 video card. I'm on Pop right now, and everything runs great under the open source Xorg driver.

Gave me time to to reflect on Ubuntu in comparison. I had an initial false impression largely because Ubuntu boots up with the open source driver, allowing you to install a proprietary Nvidia driver later if need be. So I was able to run Photoshop, and thought everything was hunky-dory. Which sadly was not the case.

I ran into some glitches that Ubuntu reported, yet didn't go into detail about. But what was the real issue was that despite getting Photoshop to run under the latest version of Wine (8.0.2) I couldn't for the life of me get the system to acknowledge Photoshop .psd file thumbnails in the Nautilus file manager. The exact same file manager Pop!OS uses! Go figure. Googled all the possible explanations , but ultimately found no solutions. In Pop!OS I had no issues with .PSD thumbnails, other than to make sure I installed Gimp 2.10 first, and then installed Photoshop. Opening up all my .psd files in Gimp first allowed the system to generate the thumbnails I needed. Other formats like .PNG and .JPG showed their respective thumbnails instantly without incident.

I've rationalized that it would be a bad idea to monkey around with the icons again, that caused an unrecoverable crash with Pop!OS22.04. While switching video drivers solved the Photoshop issue with Wine, I'm now guessing that it may well be mutually exclusive to the icon issue. As I used Numix icons as a theme before without incident, I'll probably wait until I find another such theme to switch all the icons, provided it doesn't mess up other icons like those in the file manager. Numix icons looked nice and uniform, but as I mentioned in an earlier post their file manager icons were horrible.

If I didn't know better, I'd say that Adobe is not appreciated any more than Nvidia given their proprietary nature that keeps Linux gurus from fixing their software to optimally run on Linux. Though with the open source driver it allows me to run Photoshop better than even Windows 10.

The only remaining mystery is a big one. That Linux Mint 21.2 runs the latest version of a proprietary Nvidia driver, along with the latest version of Wine. And runs Photoshop without incident. Totally contrary to what Ubuntu and Pop!OS seem to be capable of. Though in retrospect, I can now recall why I earlier had no such issues with Pop!OS. Because I was running an outdated Nvidia Ti650 card with a series "3" proprietary driver. Wine versions 6.0+ worked fine to open Photoshop with that hardware.
So when I upgraded to a Ti1660 video card, the upgrade had no negative effect with Linux Mint 21.2.

I figure I'm still getting the full use of my Nvidia graphics card through Linux Mint 21.2, so running Pop!OS22.04 is no big deal. For the most part I want to use it to play with all the customizationyou can do courtesy of Gnome Shell Extensions. Something that up to now has remained quite limited with Linux Mint 21.2.

I have the distinct impression that if I were to replace my more powerful video card (Ti1660) with my other one (Ti650) everything would work fine and each platform. But then Nvidia itself considers my old Ti650 card to literally be "worthless". So I'll probably keep everything as is for now.

 

[Judge]

I have to laugh at myself. Realizing that for all I've elaborated on this quest, the odds of any of you possessing 25 year old software and attempting to run it adequately on any contemporary platform is probably non-existent for good reason. That ya'll simply aren't crazy as I am.

I admit it, I'm like a dog with a bone when it comes to Photoshop. But then it and Corel Draw were both software packages that at the time I bought with cold, hard cash. Ridiculously expensive back in the mid to late 90s. It's dated, and I can't perform some things that amount to "miracle filters" but it's still handy for most any graphics issue that comes along. I just have to do things the old-fashioned way.

But dayim, I wish I wasn't married to this or any other piece of software that so easily complicates installing them in just about any operating system. So if you really find some ancient 32-bit software you can't live without, know that this is what you will likely have to contend with. Leaving me with the reality that despite some "minor miracles" I've made using a computer I built some 11 years ago, that I really do need to build a new one, and hopefully have far fewer issues than I've had since adopting the use of Linux.

 

[Outdated]

I have to laugh at myself. Realizing that for all I've elaborated on this quest, the odds of any of you possessing 25 year old software and attempting to run it adequately on any contemporary platform is probably non-existent for good reason. That ya'll simply aren't crazy as I am.

You're not alone. For me it's a few favourite old games from the same era.

 

[Judge]

You're not alone. For me it's a few favourite old games from the same era.

If Linux could make 16-bit apps run on a 64-bit platform, I'd need to go out for a smoke.

Oh yeah, I don't smoke. LOL. But the idea of being able to run software from such an earlier era is quite a turn-on for this geek. I have a ton of it I obtained while working as a corporate web designer in the late 90s.

Though of course I still have my legacy system right behind me. Windows XP SP3 with all the games of the early 2000s, on a system cut off from the Internet with so many serives turned off to make the most of just 1.5GB of RAM. But the truth is that I hardly ever use it, other than perhaps to play Tiger Woods PGA Golf 2003 on it. Still fun after all these years.

 

[Outdated]

If Linux could make 16-bit apps run on a 64-bit platform, I'd need to go out for a smoke.

Possibly an option you could look at, I recently found a decent PC emulator that runs Win98 really nicely:

https://github.com/86Box/roms/releases/tag/v3.11

 

[Judge]

Possibly an option you could look at, I recently found a decent PC emulator that runs Win98 really nicely:

https://github.com/86Box/roms/releases/tag/v3.11

What video card are using to run that ?

But it can't run 16-bit software, right?

 

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Win98 still had support for 16 bit software, it was still dos based.

The PC emulator emulates quite a wide range of different motherboards and graphics cards, in the image I posted above it's emulating and S3 Virge 375 graphics card.

 

[Judge]

Win98 still had support for 16 bit software, it was still dos based.

The PC emulator emulates quite a wide range of different motherboards and graphics cards, in the image I posted above it's emulating and S3 Virge 375 graphics card.

View attachment 111622

That's quite intriguing! Thanks for posting.

I used to run Win 98SE on my legacy system. But to accommodate both it and Windows XP I had to limit the onboard RAM to only 1GB. And hack some .ini files as even a GB of RAM wasn't native to Windows 98. I preferred to have that extra 512MB of RAM for Windows XP, so I stopped using 98SE altogether. I've read that people could hack 98SE to increase the RAM beyond 1GB, but never figured it out.

 

[Outdated]

That's quite intriguing! Thanks for posting.

Just installing Dos and then installing Win98 was one hell of a nostalgia trip.

 

[Judge]

Just installing Dos and then installing Win98 was one hell of a nostalgia trip.

Technically speaking, does it refer to any one specific version of DOS ?

My favorite was always DOS 5.0. That's nostalgia to me! Back when it was an artform to craft effective autoexec.bat and config.sys files and run Windows 3.1 as a mere GUI rather than as the actual OS.

 

[Outdated]

Technically speaking, does it refer to any one specific version of DOS ?

It emulates the different hardwares only, what you install on that hardware is entirely up to you.

 

[Judge]

My legacy system uses an Nvidia GeForce Ti200 (AGP) . LOL, I thought it was hot stuff back around 2002.

 

[Outdated]

My legacy system uses an Nvidia GeForce Ti200 (AGP) . LOL, I thought it was hot stuff back around 2002.

I still remember how pleased I was with myself when I got to run Tombraider for the first time on a 4 Mb graphics card.

 

[Judge]

I still remember how pleased I was with myself when I got to run Tombraider for the first time on a 4 Mb graphics card.

Games were how I really got into computers . My first game from Egghead Software was LucasArts' "Battle of Britain". Tried to install it and it told me I needed "conventional memory". Had no idea what that meant, but it tweaked my interest because I really wanted to play this game.

And that's how I got where I am today...lol. Always loved that first moment that I properly configured the autoexec.bat and config.sys files to make that program boot up with that conventional memory and more.

Victory!

"What a long, strange trip its been." - Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead

 

[Outdated]

It was exactly the same for me, the computer itself became more fun than the games.

That emulator will let you "build" a wide range of different old computers, so you can have a 386 with 8 Mb of ram if you want.

 

[Outdated]

That emulator will let you "build" a wide range of different old computers, so you can have a 386 with 8 Mb of ram if you want.

My first modern computer was a 386, second hand but it had been beefed up a bit. I could run Xcell spreadsheets because it also had a math coprocessor installed.

And that's where I started down the same path you did. If I wanted to play games I needed a CD player and then I had to learn about batch files. Next came a graphics card and it went on from there.