I’ve got everything reinstalled now and aside from virtual Windows being slower, everything is better or the same as how I had it before.
My grammar sucks but that is because I’m tired. So sue me. I actually spent a bit more time setting up Windows than I would have liked. Reason? Apparently Windows XP SP3 doesn’t like the Civilization II installer. And you all know I HAVE to be able to play CivII. The installer doesn’t start right away when clicked, and if it shows up on the screen at all, it progresses very slowly. And usually it crashes and dies before it hits 100%.
I tried many times, because one time I did see it reach 100%. It crashed hard anyway.
So that made me sad. But not for long. I have more computers around me, so a solution wasn’t far away. I first installed it on my new old Windows 98 laptop. That went by really fast, and I now have the game installed on there just fine. But I was used to having the nice big screen to look at, so I gave it a try on my music computer.
That computer can boot into either an Ubuntu or Windows XP partition, but I chose to install it in the virtual Windows XP that I use for editing music in Ubuntu. It’s the same setup there…. Windows XP SP3, so I didn’t expect the installer to work. I was gladly mistaken.
It installed just fine there. Slow too, but it got all the way through on one try and I now have CivII back on a virtual machine on the big screen.
Back to Xubuntu 10.04 now. Of course, I still prefer LXDE, so I’m using that. The LXDE file manager (PCManFM) still has that crippling bug in 10.04 that makes it useless, so I’ve gone ahead and installed Nautilus. I had remembered Nautilus from before as running slower than dried-out molasses on a cold January day outside. But the developers must have tweaked the fuck out of the code, because now it’s only slightly slower than Thunar on this machine. And with all the added features it has over Thunar, I’ll be using it as the main file manager on this computer.
Everything else, except Virtual Windows, seems to be faster and snappier on this computer now. So I’m glad I replaced my old video card. It was probably the source of the not infrequent “freezes” I’d experience, and I think it will be recycled rather than simply thrown out. But I never got much vegetation time, so I’m glad I have tomorrow off. It’s a “Civic Holiday” and I get to have the day off even though I don’t own a Honda Civic!