The problem that you are hitting is the standard “faking it” issue: eventually something somewhere realizes “you’re faking it” and stops playing nice-nice. Unlike people, compute systems are quick to forget that you faked it last time and will continue to let you fool them next time. Also unlike people, compute systems do not vary their resultant actions based on emotions. Software will never accuse you of not loving it and then stop off in a tirade while blaspheming and disparaging your parentage.
And no, there’s nothing up with me and the boss, but I have witnessed such an event recently.
As to how you can “fake it better” remember that some of us have been running vm on systems older than yours for quite some time. There are ticks you should to make it work. Here you go:
Set your VM to use very little RAM. You won’t really notice, but it lets the host use more RAM.
Use an external HD for the OS space.
Steal an OS from a used laptop by using the HDD in an external enclosure. Look for busted LCD, keyboard, etc.
Using virtual box and the above steps you might have a $us40 investment for an old XP based install. might be worth looking at to make the problem go away.
As to wine… never got it working on any platform at a level that I could live with. Hence my move to VM. My needs my be a bit more stringent, but it’s worth thinking about.
Well, Jaysen, as I have known throughout the years of our acquaintanceship here, your needs are very much more stringent than mine … in a real sense, mine are minimal, so in reality, the biggest frustration for me is the differences in interface between Windows and OSX, especially the shortcuts, though also to some extent the menus. In the other thread, I mentioned the disappearance of annotations in this version, which is a bit more of a problem, but nothing deal-breaking at the moment — and I remember there was a string of posts on disappearing comments re 1.7.2 — as my friend and collaborator has become “yet another Portlander” until May next year — so she may not have so much work for us to work on together.
On Virtual Box and using the drive from a defunct Windows box in a VM, I read the page that d~l linked to above, and it recommends a minimum of 1024 MB of RAM allocated to it, which is a problem when you’ve only got 2 Gigs. I’ve just checked on Crossover + Scrivener with our project open: it’s using 230 odd MB in total out of 1998 MB currently in use. I guess, if you’re running Windows on an external, you wouldn’t need so much RAM, but USB2 as the only connection means it would be slow to snail-pace, I would imagine.
Vendor recommendations are like those of any salesman – they are what they tell you you need not what you “must have” to get the job done. Most of my XP vm are 256M ram. They run fine for small tasks. I do let windows manage the pagefile. I do NOT have scriv running on any of them, but based on what you said, a vm w/ 512M ram would be more than enough.
As to USB2… you won’t notice. 99% of your work will be done in mem and scrivs document management can be leveraged to reduce the disk penalty even further (more small docs over few large docs).
I’m not recommending this for you, just providing some “alternative” options should you decide you want to explore. The linux option is valid, but I would also look at it as a VM not a true dual boot. At least not until you are more comfortable with linux as a platform. Same “reduced spec” concepts apply.
BTW, I run multiple linux VM with 64m ram. these are “purpose built” and not usable for scriv. I’m just making the point that you don’t really need all the resources folks say you need [size=120]IF[/size] you plan things out a bit. But then I’m a bit of a nerd…
No, I don’t, and that was the reason for using WINE.
As I said to garpu earlier, I was going to install Linux — I think it was Kubuntu I downloaded — on a MBP I have since parted with, but before I could work out exactly how to install it other matters got in the way. I still have it, I think it’s the ISO, on an SD card.
Hard disk space is a real issue though. When I have time, I will try installing it on an external but as the only connections are USB 2, as I’ve just said to Jaysen, that might be unusably slow. I once booted this MacBook Air from my bootable back-up … it took at least 15 minutes to boot, as opposed to about 5 seconds off the SSID.
Not an option I’m afraid, as I have said above, as I can’t allocate enough space to the dual boot partition.
As I say, WINE (Crossover) meets my needs at the moment, but I wanted somewhere where the few others like garpu who use Scrivener for Windows under WINE might contribute their experiences. I imagine I’m the only Mac user who does, as the Windows/Linux versions are still catching up with the Mac version, but I only do so because of the Chinese coding problem between Windows and Mac systems.
that was likely less due to usb2 than disk checks. Comparing SSD to USB2 will always be … depressing … but USB 2 is functional for post boot activities. the key is minimal “cruft” in your OS install.
I know, and I’m really grateful, Jaysen. All these suggestions are being read and noted in case I need to find another solution in future. And yes, planning is needed … I remember you used to use a 17”MBP of the same generation as my original one, which could only accept 2G RAM, and you were running a number of VMs on that … but then you are a bit of a nerd, and I am not.
For the moment, the most important comment I’ve got is the one from garpu warning me about using it in a WINE win7 bottle and saves corrupting the project. That’s important.
Sure, such “caparisons are odorous” as Dogberry says (“Much Ado About Nothing”). I try to keep my OS free of cruft. Generally, I close down regularly; each week, I do any file management I need to do then run Cocktail over this machine and then update my bootable back-up using Chronosync.
But would using a VM and booting up Windows or Linux stored on an external disk connected by USB2 not be similarly slow as booting OSX from an external? Just interested …
Depends. heavy kernels with large disk io load efforts… yes. optimized installs… no.
Stupid level of optimization is not using loadable modules and building the kernel with drivers installed (not an option for OSX/windows). you can fit an OS on a 1.4M floppy doing that, but the OS won’t do much.
The key is to not install things you don’t need. Much of what OS boot is doing is scanning hardware and disk looking to match drivers to installed hardware. They “heavy” part is scanning the disk for matching drivers. Linux is a bit more efficient than OSX/windows so it loads faster than either. You can reduce the load time for windows by removing unneeded drivers from the system. This will reduce the OS options, thereby reducing the disk IO durning boot up scans. That is the “big bang for effort” optimization that most folks can do easily. I find that USB2 compares to Firewire800 at about 1.25 speed. Meaning a 1minute f800 disk IO activity will be a 1.25minute on USB2. In my mind very livable.
Wouldn’t Mr. X still have the same encoding problems, though? I thought OSX and linux handle such things similarly. (Granted, we’re getting into a subject I know little about.)
To be honest, last time I’ve seen WINE on a mac was when my SO was trying to run a windows game on his old macbook pro. So…4 years ago. It could’ve gotten much better, but it caused a kernel panic then.
I’m not understanding why you’d want to run the Windows version of Scrivener under WINE (Crossover) on a Mac. Why not just use the native Mac version?
Anyway, I haven’t done that exact thing. But I did try the latest Crossover on my Linux Chromebook, and installed Scrivener for Windows on it. It did open and run fine, seemingly. But it was unable to save files where I wanted, so I got rid of it. To be specific, I was trying to save to my Dropbox folder (outside the Crossover/WINE bottle). I didn’t want to be copying files back and forth to the Dropbox folder manually, too much trouble. So I never even tried to save in the bottle. The permissions were fine, so I didn’t understand why it couldn’t save where I wanted? But I just punted and moved on.
Oh I am a Linux expert btw. I’ve been using it daily since 2000 and run multiple Linux cloud servers for clients. But it didn’t make sense to try too hard, when there was a beta for Linux.
The native Linux (beta) version actually seems to work well for me. I’m using the said Dropbox syncing to exchange projects with my Mac Mini running Mac OS X 10.9 without problems.
Special circumstances, Fred. I was, and will be collaborating with a friend over translations from Chinese to English — if you’re interested, see Short story translation — and it’s Chinese that is the problem. Qt, which is what LAP uses in programming the Windows/Linux version, uses one of the legal ways of addressing the upper areas of UTF-8, and X-Code, used by Keith for programming the Mac version, uses the other. Actually, the Mac can read both, but it saves in its version, and if a Scriv project that has been worked on on a Mac is opened on a Windows machine, the result is gibberish. So, as my late 2010 has only a 256GB SSID which is 75% full, I haven’t got the space for a Bootcamp installation of Windows, and I can’t really afford a Windows licence, leave aside the cost of VMWare or Parallels, so Crossover to the rescue.
For everything else, I use the Mac version … I’ve been using it since late 2006/early 2007 — I see I joined the forum in January 2007, so I was already using it then.
That must be a Linux matter, as using a WinXP bottle, I can navigate anywhere to save and open files — our joint project is actually in a shared Cubby. No problem at all there.
OK, that makes sense. I did not realize the two versions handled character sets differently, but that isn’t surprising, since they have to live in the environment where they are run. Good luck :mrgreen:
That would be me. But my setup has been hosed since… the 1.7 update, and the big WINE update that came immediately after. I have since lost track of the latter.
Basically, Scrivener comes up, but receives no inputs. So you are left either killing it with fire (kill -9) or having to reboot your box, depending on if it decides to hang or not.
Subsequent updates of WINE have made this hanging problem less of an issue, but it doesn’t encourage me to play around with it. The automatic upgrade won’t install. The manual upgrade won’t’ install… maybe because it’s WINE?
I should have asked for help sooner.
Yeah, I have a VM (open source variety VM manager) that won’t open a window bigger than 600x800 (or thereabouts) which is less than useful. I like some full screen for doing any editing, and most of the functionality just goes away.
So… is there something I can do? I’ve been halfway tempted to look at OSX emulation. But unless I can get my hands on VM software with more clue when it comes to screen allocation, I doubt there’s much of a point.
Hey, maybe I should try the actual linux version. The PDF reader never did work under WINE. I’m a garden variety linux user, though I have a long history. I have some systems skills, but my knowledge is uneven.
I have a Fedora 20 system running on x86 64. LXDE and KDE handle window management. Wine won’t tell me what it’s version is anymore. It’s called Wine Compholio? Really? They don’t even bother with numbers?
I’m sure Garpu or some of the other linux gurus will come along and help you out. If you’ve read this whole thread, you’ll know I’m the OP and run WINE in the form of CrossOver on a Mac. Although my family and friends think I’m a bit of a geek, I’m not geek enough to want to spend time working out how to install and set up WINE from the base. Although I have to pay a small subscription, CodeWeavers do that for me with CrossOver; it installs like a Mac app and automates setting up bottles and programs within them.
I’ve found using Windows Scrivener 1.6 and 1.7 in a winxp bottle perfectly stable, with only the limitations that are there in Windows Scrivener affecting me. My main problems with it are in fact the interface differences in menus and shortcuts, and no systemwide Chinese dictionary, which I have on my Mac. In fact over the last few months, I found I was using Scriv in a win7 bottle that I thought I had deleted and I have not found any problems.
That said, since the project I share with a Windows using friend is fairly long, fairly complex and has a deadline, I have forked it so I can do my redaction using Mac Scriv.
I’m using CrossOver 13.2, I think, which uses a very recent stable version of WINE but I’m not sure which one. There is a more recent update, but I’m in China at the moment, and I get download errors.
All that said, I’m sure you’ll be able to sort out running Scrivener under WINE, but i n your position I’d use the native Linux port. It seems it is a bit behind the Windows version always as LAP has to find time to make any necessary tweaks to compile it for Linux, while working hard to get the Windows version up to speed with the Mac version, but many have got it running well and are happy using it.
Re-opening this thread folks as something has come up …
Using Windows 1.8.6 under CrossOver 14.1.3, it seems that doing a project search for labels doesn’t find any — a long project in Chinese and English divided paragraph by paragraph, with each labelled appropriately — nothing comes up at all. It works fine on the Mac version.
