Faye asked me for some descriptions. I wrote her back in a more descriptive way. Then she asked for more. I added even more description space. But she wants even more, something like drawing sketches or schematics? Sure do, time to install Google SketchUp 8 on my old but sturdy ThinkPad. Only thing is that I'm running OpenSuse Linux and Google SktechUp is an application crafted only for Windows and Mac OSX.

But there's Wine - the Windows emulator which makes applications "believe" that they install and run inside a Windows box, while Wine is just a virtual Windows sandbox nested inside Linux.

With YAST, I added this repository:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine/openSUSE_11.3/

Then used Software Manager to search for "wine" which popped up in the results and a few couples clicks later the Wine emulator was graciously opening the ugly GU interface of a Windows XP inside my cool KDE4.4.4. cube rotating effects environment.

On a side note, installed ie7 from the command line, with this:

winetricks ie7

It is because some overly styled client web sites still return transparency errors "only" in MSIE. Good that the world is past the purgatory of ie5.5 and ie6...

And finally installed Google SktechUp8, under Wine1.2 and inside OpenSuse11.3. But it won't open, returning the error message:

"SketchUp was unable to initialize OpenGL!
Please make sure you have installed the correct drivers for your graphics Card. "

The fix is simple: in OpenSuse Linux, from your Kickoff Application Launcher (yes, the smiling green chameleon) go to Applications > System > Emulator > Wine RegEdit and then follow this reg key for SketchUp8. It should be:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Google/SketchUp8/GLConfig/Display.

The default value for the Data is 1. Make it 1 in all given instances.

Close the wine, not the machine, mind you! Then open Wine File from the same kickoff apps launcher. In the ugly Windows interface, go to Program Files... Google... Google SketchUp and inside this folder click on the file SketchUp.exe ...simple do!

Happy 3D drawing and sketching!

Little note: besides the ie7 install, which goes on a side note, not of interest for our Google SktechUp install, none of my actions required the command line. This means that if you know what you want, how to search and where to look, then you can install, run and debug Windows applications under Linux by clicking on buttons, entering root passwords in dialog boxes and, yes, changing a few reg keys in the Windows emulator.