June 23, 2008

Installing Second Life on an EEE PC

I've been playing with an EEE PC lately. This 299€ (in Portugal) GNU/Linux ASUS laptop is awsome, and I'm really happy that ASUS did it. They did some mistakes, like using Xandros Server 2.0 as base for their distro, making me think, for instance, that if I had one of these I would replace their Operating System with something like Debian Eee PC, eeexubuntu or even eeedora. I might write about my thoughts on EEE PC later, but for now, a quick HOWTO (because I think this isn't documented nowhere) on installing Second Life on EEE PC.

HOWTO Install Second Life on an EEE PC:

  1. edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and change DefaultColorDepth 16 to DefaultColorDepth 24
  2. restart your X (press control+alt+backspace, for instance)
  3. edit your /etc/apt/sources.list file and add this lines:

    deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/pub/debian testing main contrib non-free
    deb http://apt.byteme.org.uk/apt/ unstable main
  4. in a terminal (CTRL+ALT+t) write sudo aptitude update && aptitude install slviewer
  5. Remove the added lines on /etc/apt/sources.list and in the terminal run aptitude update to go back to the state you were
  6. Your Second Life is now installed. To run it write slviewer in a terminal.


Regarding to using Second Life itself, you'll notice that the windowed view assumes a bigger resolution than the one you have, so I recommend you to start by going to the options, changing the ratio scale and remove the windowed mode. Et voilá, you're on Second Life!

Second Life on EEE PC

22 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:44 AM

    Tried to follow this tutorial did not work even remotely, too many dependancies and when trying to use aptitude get nothing but errors, SLviewer does not even install

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  2. Weird: perhaps you have older versions of the stock packages than the ones in the EEE PC I've tried...

    Can you please put here aptitude's output?

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  3. Anonymous1:44 PM

    I tried this with a 900 which apart from updating to madwifi had nothing but the original os and the "approved" (from the add software tab) updates. The dependencies were horrendous and ultimately the only way it purported to install was by removing open office and number of other core programs. Since i had no data to loose I tried it out of curiousity but even after all that the slveiwer did not work. So I ended up doing a system restore. I have seen pics on the net of sl on the eee but have yet to find functional instructions for the 900 with xandros. Thanks for trying though:)

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  4. Oops... Sorry mate, this HOWTO was written using an EEE PC 701, I had no clue that the 900 model was that different OS-wise... If I ever come to have in my hands an EEE PC 900, I'll update this :-)

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  5. Anonymous4:11 PM

    Thanks for the reply I have subsequently tried downloading the linux version of SL directly from the website extracting and running from a console. This works to the extent that it starts and doesn't seem to have fubarred anything else but dies about halfway through start up due to a window making error as a result of the a glx visual error ( I have tried resetting colour depth to both 24 and 32 but to no avail). I am begining to think it is a hardware compatibility issue with later eeepc (which is a bit disappointing) though I have seen posts on the wiki which suggest it will run on the eeepc 900 under other linux os. I realise that makes the solution seem simple switch the os but actually it makes me think more that there must be a work around (I like the user friendly xandros interface:) Thanks for sharing your insights Noori I will post back if I find a solution.

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  6. Anonymous11:21 PM

    Just thought I would check back SL does indeed work well on the 900 in mandriva the downside is a lot of users also experience problems with the built in mic and intermittant issues mounting harddrives.

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  7. Anonymous12:02 PM

    Hi, i'd tryed to use this Howto into my Eeepc 701, but not work.
    i'd investigate with synaptic and there isn't public PGP key for that repository.
    thank you.

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  8. The package nowadays have a broken dependency.

    Instead of doing
    # aptitude install slviewer

    please do:
    # aptitude install omvviewer-data omvviewer-artwork libc-ares1

    And then download
    http://talkerspt.no-ip.org/~mbooster/omvviewer_1.20.15-1_i386.deb

    and then
    # dpkg -i omvviewer_1.20.15-1_i386.deb

    :-)

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  9. Hi, well I got SL running on my 701 with no difficulties, it was an early one and I did not (need to) alter the xconfig file. Since then several colleagues with later models of 701 (and 900) did have difficulty. I've recently upgraded to a 901, which has several hardware changes over the 701, and I was disturbed that I too could no longer get SL working (the blessed windows creation error) but on looking what was appearing in the console it was clear it was a colour depth problem. The change to xconfig has now enabled me to run SL. Many thanks!

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  10. Anonymous9:35 AM

    Now... I did this way on a 901: do the trick to set default colors to 24, then go to the SL website and download the linux client, extract it and run secondlife (you can just doubleclick on it in the file manager) easy as 1 2 3 :)

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  11. Anonymous4:13 AM

    i'm using 900 and after the x mod to 24 currently having a window problem, it's ok when in a window, well at 2 or 3 fps anyway, it crashes out when going to fullscreen. it seems to be because of the resoluttion being nonstandard 1024x600. is this problem from programs detect resolution by scanlines (which should be redundant with lcd and tft)? i can't get it to work using a vga crt either but that's probably because of the limited multi desktop manager that can't even remember i set it to 1024x768 not 800x600 in the firstplace.
    this isn't even touching the sound issue, about as broken as the framerate! then there's the flying keys being fn over the movement...

    just basicly adding that yes it works, no it's never easy. let's keep trying!

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  12. I have Eee PC 901. Installation under Xandros was easy but I must work for the stability. Do you have good tips?

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  13. Diddle: I never tried it on an 900, and never found those issues before.

    Nikolas: It is quite stable here...

    Question for both: are you using the 1.21.6-1 version?

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  14. No, the package number seems to be i686-1.21.6.99587 .
    I got it from SL site. Maybe that is the big difference?

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  15. I guess talkerspt.no-ip.org is temporarily down.

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  16. Few seconds after I said that, now downloading works.

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  17. You see that I am a Linux newbie. This is difficult, and I am not sure what I'm doing wrong. I'm trying installation but I get plenty of error messages.

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  18. OK, sorry, the problem is mine: I have this HOWTO outdated and I've been with less time than I wanted to to dedicate to replying blog comments... sorry :-(

    Here's an updated HOWTO:

    HOWTO Install Second Life on an EEE PC:

    * edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf and change DefaultColorDepth 16 to DefaultColorDepth 24
    * restart your X (press control+alt+backspace, for instance)
    * edit your /etc/apt/sources.list file and add this lines:

    deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/pub/debian testing main contrib non-free
    deb http://apt.byteme.org.uk unstable main

    * in a terminal (CTRL+ALT+t) write sudo aptitude update && aptitude install omvviewer
    * Remove the added lines on /etc/apt/sources.list and in the terminal run "aptitude update" to go back to the state you were
    * Your Second Life is now installed. To run it write omvviewer in a terminal.

    Please tell me if this work well for you. If it doesn't, feel free to post here the error messages you get, and I'll try to help you... But with this latest "howto" you should have no problems at all.

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  19. Thanks! I must try that.

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  20. I got this error message:

    omvviewer: error while loading shared libraries: libboost_program_options-gcc42-1_34_1.so.1.34.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or director

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  21. Sorry for the late reply. A new version is out (do the same thing I told you to in my previous comment), can you please try it and see if the problem is gone?

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  22. I downloaded on my eeepc901 linux debian xandros (desktop) and just ran it . But it lagged a lot.

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