#latmos linux chronicles

[latmosims]

came back to linux after like 3 months, and I must say: the fedora update manager SLAPS! like, what do you mean it found all the updates I needed in one go? all 20GB of them? it installed them all with no issues, and even notified me a new major release for Plasma was installed without assaulting me in the process??

is this heaven???

[latmosims]

damn, I just discovered I can easily access my windows partition files from linux and copied over my 'Downloads' and 'Neighborhood' folders (which I had updated since my last linux boot) and it toke like 3min (maybe??) to copy the entire thing lol

important edit: @brandinotbroke added a note in the comments to warn me that doing this can lead to data lose. so be careful, not trying to promote unsafe computer practices here 😅 and thx to them again for warning me 🥰

[latmosims]

yooo i managed to make sims 3 run through wine on linux with lutris! it's running smoothly too (although i'm not going to put my hopes up just yet bc it's usually smooth on a fresh start, even though i still feel like it's smoother)

i still don't know how to make it go borderless. i'm using ld's smooth patch, but the borderless setting isn't working (probably bc it's running through wine). also, i might have done an oopsy and used a 64bit environment to install it and now i can't turn it into a 32bit environment (or else it crashes on launch).

but anyway, excited to play a bit tonight 🥰

[latmosims]

DDS and Linux

… surprisingly don't mix all that well (yet?). 😆

Krita doesn't support .dds formats, but supposedly has a plugin for that, which doesn't seem to work atm.

Affinity (which I'm running through a Wine prefix) doesn't support the format either, but is supposed to be able to accept Photoshop plugins. Sadly, neither NVIDIA's nor Intel's respective plugins for Photoshop have worked during my attempts.

And then, there's GIMP. Ah, GIMP! I wish I had nice things to say, but sadly I don't 🙃 HOWEVER, it supports .dds out of the box, which is good! But the DDS exporter is… well, it def. c̸̦̑o̸̭͐m̵̟̈́p̴̗͌r̸̭̽e̶͖̎s̵͓͛s̷̭͌e̶͓̔ṩ̶ the texture alright, a bit too much for my liking.

(I should also mention Photopea, which also has support out of the box, but automatically applies the Alpha layer at import, so it's like working with a PNG… 😮‍💨 We can't have that!)

In any case, if someone else is wondering how to do it in a non-destructive way on Linux, here's my method for now:

Install the NVIDIA Texture Tools (NVTT) standalone utility (not the Photoshop plugin, they do the same thing however) through Wine ;

Import .dds image into GIMP ;

Do "File > Export as…" and select a common lossless format (e.g. TIF with the compression turned off) ;

Import that into NVTT

Select BC3/DXT5 as the output ;

Choose the "Highest" compression effort (better quality, smaller file sizes, ""longer"" export time) ;

Export ;

Profit 😎

A convoluted process I know, but I haven't found a better way to go from DDS to DDS another way. Feel free to suggest your method though, I'd be happy to know 😁

[latmosims]

i just discovered that ts3 smooth patch on my linux playthrough was in fact not activated at all. so the other day, when i created my household and thought to myself "whoa, so smooth, i can switch tabs so easily in cas", it was just barebones ts3 on linux lol

[latmosims]

so far, the only thing i dislike about linux/fedora is the "middle-click is pasting" thing, which if i understand correctly is a "liked feature" since forever and therefore difficult to change.

as a person who uses middle-click for scrolling, i hate it 🙃

[latmosims]

Hi! I'm trying to launch Sims4Studio on Linux Mint and I keep getting error messages about not having dotnet6 installed. I've tried to install it through Terminal (and supposedly did it successfully), the "Dependencies" section in Bottles and using Winetricks in Lutris but nothing works. How did you make S4S work properly?

Hi anon! I might not be the best person to help you with this unfortunately. As of right now, I have yet to install TS4/S4S in my Linux partition. @brandinotbroke did manage to do it though I believe, so she might be able to help you!

From the download post over at S4S forums, Andrew mentions how the required version is the ".NET Desktop Runtime", which in Winetricks seems to be the package named "dotnetdesktop6" (not just "dotnet6" as you seem to have typed). I can't say for Bottles!

Alternatively, you could download the Windows "x64" exe file from the page linked in Andrew's post, and install it through Winetricks by choosing "Install an application > (click OK without selecting anything) > Run an arbitrary executable", assuming you're using Lutris? (I can't tell if your using Bottles, or if the Winetricks window is the same on that app, but I use Lutris).

Hope this helps!