Linux: Wine or Code Weaver

[Edward Stow]

Hi,

I am seeking experience reports on using Wine or Code Weaver to run EA7.5 under Ubuntu 8.10.  

I had successfully installed the linux trial (EA7.1) with Wine but now that I have bought EA7.5 it freezes whenever I try to open a diagram.

So should I go to Code Weaver rather than Wine.
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Thanks

[Martin Terreni]

didnt try 7.5 yet, but 7.1 work good with WINE.

[Edward Stow]

I have installed Code Weaver and it does work ... sort of.
I cannot display any of the CHM files (compressed html files) that contain the help pages.  For that matter these files cannot be displayed in either Gnochm or xChm.

AND my biggest problem is that EA is so slooooooow to the point of being unusable.  After an hour of usage with approx 8 classes in a diagram you need to wait forever (well a second or so) for any mouse action to be acted upon in the diagram.

EG select a class symbol and drag to new position.  Then wait and wait for the dragged symbol to be re-displayed.

I can only conclude that EA over Code Weaver is not a production viable system.  

It is OK to view a model, and make a change or two, but you could not work effectively all day.

I would love to wrong on this .... I really like EA ... but also Linux is my desktop environment.  

Now if it was a configuration problem on my part ... it would be really neat if a virtual appliance could be created that contained all the tweaks necessary to make it run effectively.
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Edward

[Martin Terreni]

well, as I said 7.1 with wine works fine when just creating diagrams and such (didn't try the CHM though). But you can always use Qemu to install a VM with  WinXP and run EA.
I can't tell much more because I didn't try much more (certainly not 7.5). But I think SParx ahouls be answering for this, since they have a supposedly Code3Weaver compatible version.

[Edward Stow]

Hi

The issue I am having may be the amount of memory allocated for EA.exe.

top reports that VIRT memory is 3802M for EA.exe with 159M Resident ... so my system with 2G Ram must be swapping a lot.  
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Can others report the memory usage of EA.exe under Wine or Crossover.
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Using Code Weaver Crossover Standard version 7.1.0
Ubuntu 8.10
EA 7.5(844) Professional version
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Edward

[mrf]

Hello Edward,

The large amount of virtual memory being reserved appears to be a part of how WINE behaves. You will notice that even though the process has reserved a large amount of virtual memory, there is still little or no swap file being used (and very little resident memory either).

To paraphrase a discussion on the WINE forums (http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?p=4454&sid=a1807c6f78d7f83cccef40dafcdd9feb):

On Windows every application has it's own 4Gb virtual address space , where the lower 2Gb is available to the process and the upper 2Gb is reserved for system use.

Wine is reserving the lower 2Gb to mimic the windows behaviour. The alternative being that linux system libraries that are loaded/used by Wine can appear at the addresses in the same space that the process thinks it has “exclusive” access to do whatever it wants to.

The Wine preloader must mimic the same behaviour that appears on Windows to stop Windows applications trying to use the address space that already has other libraris located in it. Since Wine can't alter the Windows program's behaviour, it must prevent the linux libraries that it uses from being accessible under the virtual address space that Windows reserves for each process.

This is not specific to EA, if you check top (or the Gnome system monitor) you will notice that all WINE applications report the same amount of virtual memory being reserved.

PS: Regarding your initial problem with the freeze, it would be worth logging an official bug report. If you can attach a copy of your model (size and disclosure constraints permitting) that would give us the best chance of trying to reproduce the issue.

[Edward Stow]

AND my biggest problem is that EA is so slooooooow to the point of being unusable.  After an hour of usage with approx 8 classes in a diagram you need to wait forever (well a second or so) for any mouse action to be acted upon in the diagram.

The slow response has been fixed selecting the Basic Renderer options by
Tools | Options | Diagram | Appearance
Renderer drop down to Basic

EA with Crossover is not a usable product.  (Still cannot read the CHM files but at least the documentation is also on the web site.)