This is a test!

[annathepiper]

I'm testing to see how well running the Semagic Livejournal client under Crossover on OS X works. Because I don't miss much about Windows, but I do miss Semagic; the available OS X LJ clients just don't compare.

Test, test, test!

Comments

[shaylith.livejournal.com]

Reading you loud and clear! :D

[annathepiper]

It does seem to work, hurray! Weird problem displaying my userpics, though.

[firni.livejournal.com]

As I agree with you on the OS X clients, what the heck is Crossover?

[annathepiper]

It's an implementation of WINE (are you familiar with that?). The people that make it did this publicity stunt recently handing out free copies of it and Dara and I scarfed it. I'll probably throw them money if it proves useful enough.

Crossover lives here.

[firni.livejournal.com]

Cool, thank you! Looks better than... whatever the name is of that crap you put on your box to run a copy of XP or Vis(BEEP).

[annathepiper]

Parallels?

I'm running that too at the moment, although I may get to downgrade to just having that around in case I need to do actual Windows-based testing on this machine for some reason. Having Crossover seems full of promise, though. It'd be nice to be able to run things without having to launch Parallels.

[firni.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to remember, does OS X still support the OS9 software? I have a bunch of kid software for Mac but it's OS9.

[annathepiper]

Classic mode, which has been how they've been letting people run OS 9 apps on OS X for a while, is apparently not supported any more as of Leopard. It also doesn't work on Intel-based Macs.

But if you have a PowerPC, or if you're running Tiger or older, you could possibly still do it.

Here is the Wikipedia page about it. Note that it also says that you have to have a full install of OS 9 on the system for it to work. It apparently treats it like a VM for purposes of launching OS 9 apps.

[firni.livejournal.com]

Bummer. This is a Power Mac.

Oh well, guess I'll use them on my old G3.

[annathepiper]

Bummer! Ah well!

[hubbit.livejournal.com]

You know what you could do...I think XD

I keep WinXP around just for the rare occasions where I must use it for something, but I keep it in Sun Virtualbox. That way I don't have to lose my linux while working in windows. Of 3.5GB of RAM on my laptop, I keep 1G aside for the windows (and boy does it crave RAM!).

I turned off all fancy screen goodies in windows, preferring to get my graphical jollies through compiz fusion on my Ubuntu. All in all it seems to run very well. And the fun part is, since the virtual guest is inside a linux host, I can nail its outside network access down tight.

BTW...you AND Dara got Crossover? I have refrained from any open expression of distaste for Windows in her presence because I know she's written technical articles for Microsoft. I had no idea she wasn't using it.

[annathepiper]

Um, Dara and I both are former Microsoft employees, but this doesn't mean we expect people to refrain from snarking on Windows. Hell, Dara switched over to the Mac long before I did. :) It is in fact because of deep and abiding loathing for Windows that she made that switch.

And sure, she writes articles for Microsoft, but that's mostly because they keep giving her money. ;) Me, I do prefer that people refrain from snarking on Windows just for the sake of snark.

As for the solution you describe... well, running Windows as a VM in Parallels on my Mac is acceptable for my needs. I mostly keep it for running Money to balance my checkbook, and because I sometimes need to launch Windows browsers for testing stuff. It doesn't take over the Mac, now that I have 2G of RAM.

Really, mostly we got Crossover because they were briefly handing it out for free, so we figured what the hell. :)

[hubbit.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I hear ya. I did the same thing (just got the license number today) but haven't installed it yet.

I haven't used Parallels, didn't realize it's a VM. I love VMs because you don't have to stop doing what you love in order to do what you must. :)

I too have deep and abiding loathing for Windows; the kind that goes deeper than mere snark. :-) When someone in my office winds up a victim of some social engineering stunt like "Windows Antivirus 2008" and winds up at the mercy of malware, they are guaranteed to get a hearty pontificatin' while I clean the crap off their machine.

Not to say that social engineering victims are limited to Windows...back in the glorious days when your internet account was a dialup *nix terminal server, many misguided people would accept IRC scripts and run them, not knowing that there were backdoors inside that could give the author access to the user's command shell....or internal triggers, so that if the a specific command was given through CTCP, it would execute a command like

'yes echo EAT SHIT | mail root'

through the user's shell. FUN TIMES!!

[annathepiper]

Parallels is (to my knowledge) the primary VM software for Mac OS and came most recommended above other solutions. Since I do need Windows occasionally still, that's the route I chose to go rather than doing a dual-boot thing with BootCamp--exactly because of what you describe, i.e., not wanting to stop what I'm doing. It's behaved acceptably, although I did have to kick up my RAM to 2G to really insure that.

Re: the rest, heh, yeah. :)

[maellenkleth]

we see you. sneebleflarp.

[annathepiper]

Thanks! The posting part seems to work fine, anyway, even if the app's got issues showing my userpic correctly, and minimizing

[antonb-ru.livejournal.com]

I can't start Semagic under Crossover. It start's and the shuting down (

[annathepiper]

I was running into that problem too until I pulled a lot of DLLs out of a Windows install and plunked them down where Crossover could find them. The ones you need to look for in particular are mfc40.dll and I believe mfc40u.dll. Semagic wants them, and they don't come installed in Windows by default, so Crossover doesn't have them.

[antonb-ru.livejournal.com]

where this files storef in Windows XP? I can't find (

[annathepiper]

The two DLLs you want should be in the windows\system32 directory. Assuming your Windows directory is named 'windows'.

Note that your system may not show you the contents of that directory by default. If it doesn't, it's simple enough to turn that on.

[antonb-ru.livejournal.com]

i have no mfc40 dll's in this dir// only mfc80, but the don't help me :(( can you send this dll's on anton.belickiy (at) gmail.com?

[annathepiper]

Try here. It's a Microsoft support page saying where you can get Visual C++ components, and the DLLs you want are included in the package described there.

You want mfc42.dll and mfc42u.dll (I had the names wrong before). Everything else I suspect is optional. :)