Linux questions

[[AK]The Beast]

I've got an older laptop here running Linux (P3 800, 512MB RAM, Radeon Mobility) and I want to add a few additional functions beyond browsing IMDB and these forums. I've got Wine installed to load some Windows software (Fedora Core 5 with the latest stable Wine binaries). A couple of questions pertaining to Wine:

1. I'm trying to install SlingPlayer (that's the software that goes with a SlingBox) so I can tote sporting events around the house with me. I've found several sets of good instructions, but every time I run the installer, it tells me "SlingPlayer is already running." It's not--I haven't even installed it yet! Has anyone seen this with this or any other app? What did you do to fix it?

2. I found some instructions to install WoW using Wine. They looked pretty daunting and somewhat buggy--is anyone else running WoW under Linux? Was it easy to set up? Was it stable? Did it run at least fair-to-middlin' (even if you had to turn most of the graphic options down/off)?

[[AK]StitchJones]

Wine itself is a great program once you get it stable with your distro of Linux. Based on what i've run into with the Red Hat family, you will run into the most issues with Fedora and Wine. At this point in time Wine shines best on SuSE 9.1 and higher.

3D performance with WoW under wine isn't the greatest in the world, you need to scale back most of the effects based on your video card. If you were running Nvidia you would have a little more flexability in performance. Since your laptop has the ATI chip burned into it, I'm sure you'll be able to make due. Run in window mode no larger then 800x600 and make sure your sound is in software mode with the least amount of channels. This will help on the back end for FPS performance. It's actually amusing with it running, it almost looks like a Nintendo64 game

Beast I'll dig through my bivy of Linux stuff and see if I can come up with some extra notes and stuff for you.

Keep us posted on your progress.