Just to be clear, this isn't intended to be some sort of Linux advocacy forum, nor is it the place to engage in endless OS-wars. It's for helping out Linux users that want to run the best usenet binary downloader on their favourite OS!
In the meantime, a mini-FAQ:
How do I run Newsbin on Linux?
There's a number of ways:
1. wine, free with every distro of Linux.
2. Crossover, which is a corporate sponsor of the wine folks, who offer a slightly more enhanced wine experience for relatively low cost.
3. VMWare, which is a fully-featured virtual machine that lets you run multiple OS's literally in windows on your desktop. This is beginning to cost some serious coin, however, so it's really more for the serious Linux/Windows user.
There are others, I'll add to this list as people hit me in the head and remind me.
Which one should I use?
There are advantages and disadvantages to all the entries on this list, and as a rule of thumb, you get what you pay for. Crossover tends to give you a better behaving environment than stock wine, while VMWare really sings. It should: it's literally running a cut of Windows in a window on your Linux desktop. It's also using substantially more system resources, and it costs real money.
So, as the "resident expert"
, what do I use? Good old wine. There are some display issues with the latest release of NB + wine, and a few other abilities such as saving font settings don't seem to be compatible at present, but for the most part, Newsbin + wine lets you download headers, peruse them, grab files, use nzb's...the vast majority of what you use Newsbin for on Windows.Do I have to buy another Newsbin license to run it on both Linux and Windows?
The Newsbin guys are very generous with their software license. Not only do they give you free upgrades for new major versions, but they allow you to run three instances of Newsbin, to allow for the fact that some people might want to run it at home, school and on a laptop, for example. Installing Newsbin on Linux is just considered one of these three installs. Note this is for your personal use only, it's not intended to be shared with your best friend or siblings.
How do I install Newsbin in wine or Crossover?
Run the installer with wine as you normally would any Windows application, i.e.
wine nbinstaller.exe
You should be taken through the usual steps, and when finished you should have Newsbin in the directory you put it in your wine setup, typically:
$HOME/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Newsbin
There are two files you will need in order to run Newsbin. You should be able to copy them from any standard, up-to-date Windows installation. They are:
msvcp60.dll
mfc42.dll
and you'll need to copy them into your
$HOME/.wine/drive_c/windows/system
directory. You should be able to start nbpro.exe with wine now and Newsbin should run.
It is possible to download those dll's from the web, however be careful that you get a recent version of msvcp60.dll particularly. If you don't, this may cause problems that will be evident on running Newsbin(e.g. lockups, crashes). Best solution is to grab them from a current Windows installation. It's possible in the near future Newsbin may host those files, after some investigation over legalities is completed.
How do I install Newsbin in VMWare?
Since this is a full install of Windows, just download through that session directly from http://www.newsbin.com and install as you normally would in Windows.
My display doesn't always refresh properly! What gives?
These are some of the things you put up with in wine. Sometimes, just flipping to another desktop and back gives it a kick and the download rate bar will start to refresh after that(as a typical example). In VMWare, of course, you get no such problems.
Newsbin won't save my custom font settings, column widths, and other stuff I can set on Windows. Why?
Sometimes, especially for people like me that test beta versions
, things change in the way Newsbin stores it's information. What may be happening here is that Newsbin is pointing to an incorrect location for it's config files. Ensure that the DATA location in the Configuration is correct - by default this will be$HOME/.wine/drive_c/windows/profiles/user/Application Data/Newsbin
where "user" is your linux user account, by default. You should be able to go into this directory, wherever you set it, and see various db3 files that get updated whenever you change anything in Newsbin, the Spool and Chunk directories, etc. When you're using the Newsbin browser, it's usually a good idea to remain within the paradigm of windows paths - i.e. you are allowed to reference files through wine by using paths like $HOME, or to locations outside of the .wine path. While in theory that's OK, it's more likely this may cause problems like this down the road. Try using "My Computer", then a drive like C:\ and so on, if possible.
I downloaded this "linux distro thing" and I don't know what an iso is, nor have I used Linux and I don't understand what you mean by $HOME. Can you help me install it?
Sorry, Charlie. Too much on my plate. By all means if you're stuck and you can't get something to work, please post here and troll for answers, that's why it's here. It's assumed, however, that you have a basic working knowledge of the OS, just as you would expect in the other forums for Windows. I'm all for getting people to try Linux out, but there are better places for that. I am in no way trying to dissuade people from asking something they might think is a stupid question. Ask away - you won't get your head taken off! However, if it strays into an area that will involve pages of instructions, odds are you should do a little reading elsewhere first. Most distros nowadays come with some pretty good beginner docs. My personal favourite, SUSE, has the best docs in the biz. I've heard good things about Ubuntu as well.
DT
I tried...once... to install mandriva, when it started the boot up etc I couldnt figure out how to login and gave up after a few minutes
