Linux help

Help 1.

If you get an error message when booting up linux telling you that mscorefonts is not installed properly mentioning that the error is permanent try to run this command from the console “sudo dpkg-reconfigure ttf-mscorefonts-installer”. Just let the installer run by choosing “ok” a couple of time without entering anything else and most likely you will get an error message that says that the “user” did not accept the mscorefonts-eula license. That just means that you should reinstall the program from stratch and accept the license this time. You do this by typing “sudo apt-get install –reinstall ttf-mscorefonts-installer”. (The dash before the word “reinstall” is a double dash.) When the program is running use tab to get to “ok” and hit enter. Now the program will reinstall and everything will work. It takes a while to install.

Help 2.
Recently a friend had a technical problem that needed a solution. He uses that abomination known as Steam, which is a store interface for purchasing games. I hate Steam. Just like the Itunes store, it takes over your computer and you have to download and play most games through their launcher and the licensing agreements for their games is nothing less than communistic since you never really own the games you purchase, but instead are “licensed” to use them. And so I hate the thing, but that wasn’t the issue. The issue is that he is using Linux now instead of Windows and while there is a Steam for Linux it does not allow you to download games that don’t run natively in Linux even though the games will run through Linux through DOS Box and/or Wine (which is a sort of Windows emulator). The downloader for steam games was blocking any attempt to download games that my friend had purchased simply because he was not using Windows. Now I could go on about how denying a person access to his own property is theft, but I could simply explain what was done about it.
At first we theorized that downloading the steam.exe which installs steam for Windows and installing it in Wine would do fine. This, we thought, would trick Steam into thinking it was running natively in Windows and allow us to download the games. A simple work around and in that case no harm no foul, right? However this did not work, because while Steam installed correctly in Wine once it was run the buttons and dialogues would not show any text. I could explain why, but basically it’s an issue that some software running through Wine has, and especially Steam. It’s a font issue, which is not uncommon for Wine. And so I tried to install the correct fonts in Wine, but to no avail. Apparently steam has a lot of font issues and you need them all resolved to see anything. They also can’t seem to make up their mind which font is required. Maybe it’s Tahoma, maybe Arial, maybe Marlett, who knows? However the solution was rather simple.
By going to the Ubuntu Software Center and installing a piece of software called “Play on Linux” the problem was resolved. You see, Play on Linux helps to configure and launch Wine applications and one of the things it does very well is resolving font issues. And so that is what was done.
Play on Linux was installed, launched, Steam installed through Play on Linux, and Steam Launched, Games Downloaded fine, and Installed fine, and now Heretic and Hexen run just fine. And so I hope this information helps you to stay out of trouble and stay away from Microsoft and Steam.

Help 3. Mounting ExtFat Drives. If you have an external drive of some sort, like a USB drive, or an extended capacity XC micro SD card, that use the extended capacity fat file system it probably won’t mount on your linux system. But this is easily fixed. Run the terminal command… sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse exfat-utils

If you get an error you might need to run…

sudo add-apt-repository universe

and then…

sudo apt-get update

first, then go ahead and run…

sudo apt-get install exfat-fuse exfat-utils

again.

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