Support for viewers on Linux.

[arabellajones]

Linden Lab seems totally unable to support a viewer running on Linux, using systems such as Vivox for SLvoice which are not available for Linux, and then running in-world meetings with residents which depend on using voice. That must really hurt for people who are deaf.

It seems not impossible that the Lab's servers are really running under Windows 10.

There are several published work-arounds, but current error messages I get suggest that the Vivox servers are in an overloaded, unreliable, mess. This is consistent with  current reports I am seeing from users of other Vivox-using software. My net-level tools are showing that www.bhr.vivox.com is visible, is not blocked by anything here, but I try to avoid fiddling with Firewall settings: too many Silicon Valley pundits think RTFM is a sufficient response when the manuals are ill-written trash produced by people for whom COBOL is their birth-language.

 

[animats]

9 minutes ago, arabellajones said:

Linden Lab seems totally unable to support a viewer running on Linux

The current LL viewer runs on Linux under the Wine 6.0 emulator. Even voice works. This is on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

However, the LL auto-updater crashes in that environment. That's not fatal; you can still use SL, but each time you log in, you get error messages as the auto-updater crashes. I've filed a JIRA.

Firestorm for Linux works fine. Including voice chat, although you may have to install some 32-bit libraries and run Vivox under Wine, which happens automatically. I've filed a Firestorm bug report asking that Firestorm check that all the components Vivox needs are present, since Vivox itself is too dumb to do that. Voice calls (non-local chat) don't seem to work.

Philip Rosedale's company, "High Fidelity" is now selling their own voice chat system. Maybe SL will convert.

 

[Coffee Pancake]

The writing has been on the wall for the Linux native client since the start. It doesn't build against system libraries like every other Linux application.

Oz spent years asking TPV devs to help make that possible, and if we could accomplish that then they would go to the trouble of adding actual packages to the build server and getting the client into proper repositories. 

That didn't happen because A> there are almost no Linux developers willing to work on the client B> It probably can't be made to work that way at all.

General gaming has moved more towards wine, SL works on wine, it's not ideal, desktop Linux is in the same janky broken mess it's been in for a decade. Vivox is just icing on the crusty cake. Where's my wayland. Why are there still no good nvidia drivers.

 

I stopped making Catznip on Linux when it became clear we couldn't continue to produce a viewer that we would feel comfortable running as a daily driver, be super thankful FS are still sinking precious developer time into this. 

[Liv Simondsen]

I'd use Linux 24/7 if i had a chance, but voice for me on Linux Mint and other distros is terrible, i have a strong and noisy echo when i talk. I know it could be a hardware problem (my pc has almost 6 years) and every trick i found on the web for echo cancellation didn't work for me .. I am now on Windows 10 but i'd love to use Linux as a daily driver.

[Coffee Pancake]

5 hours ago, Liv Simondsen said:

I'd use Linux 24/7 if i had a chance, but voice for me on Linux Mint and other distros is terrible, i have a strong and noisy echo when i talk. I know it could be a hardware problem (my pc has almost 6 years) and every trick i found on the web for echo cancellation didn't work for me .. I am now on Windows 10 but i'd love to use Linux as a daily driver.

I did for well over a decade .. but when dragging a window around on screen starts to stutter and flicker, reminding me of Windows 3.1, on brand new hardware, maybe it's time to move on. My home server runs Linux. Job done.

Windows 10 is basically free beer, WSL2 scratches all the terminal itches .. can even mess about and get X applications running, but honestly, why would you. For the rest, it all just works. No special adventures or exciting evenings reading forums or guides.

[animats]

8 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

The writing has been on the wall for the Linux native client since the start. It doesn't build against system libraries like every other Linux application.

Firestorm built nicely against the native libraries on Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS. It didn't for 16.04 LTS, and I'm told it doesn't for 20.04 LTS, but I haven't tried.

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

2 hours ago, animats said:

Firestorm built nicely against the native libraries on Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS.

I had to drag in a couple of libraries for Singularity and Firefox for Lubuntu 18.04 but once done I've had no problems running this two viewers in Linux, also CoolVlViewer runs well. I;ve not yet gone to 20.04 full-time( I had an initial attempt last year but ran into problems with MySql and Opensim under Mono, which I mistakenly thought was due to Lubuntu but in fact it's MySql changing the game yet again, my recollections of the viewers was that they all ran nicly under 20.04 nd I don't recall having to fish around for any extra libraries).

[animats]

3 hours ago, animats said:

Firestorm built nicely against the native libraries on Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS. It didn't for 16.04 LTS, and I'm told it doesn't for 20.04 LTS, but I haven't tried.

Oops, need to clarify. That's about compiling Firestorm from source code. Running it is much easier.

[KjartanEno]

2 hours ago, Profaitchikenz Haiku said:

my recollections of the viewers was that they all ran nicly under 20.04 nd I don't recall having to fish around for any extra libraries).

I've been running all Linux viewers on Ubuntu 21.04 (Gnome/Wayland) without any issues. Black Dragon will run with WINE. I also have absolutely no screen tearing, stutters, or flickering while dragging windows around the screen. That said, there are a few minor issues relating to the Ubuntu UI on Wayland that Xorg doesn't seem to have. Those will probably get sorted by 21.10 & 22.04. One can simply choose to log in via Xorg every time if they prefer it.

I think I had to install VLC for some libraries to get Singularity to work, but other than that, it JUST WORKS. I do not have a microphone to speak (I don't even like talking on the phone), but I can listen to voice on Firestorm just fine.

[Solar Legion]

Needed to do some library symbolic linking when using Xubuntu to get some Firestorm features to work right (Voice mostly) but on Manjaro? Using the AUR package? It simply runs. And while I have not fired Voice up lately? it worked just fine when I was still using it regularly on Manjaro.

[Henri Beauchamp]

On 7/10/2021 at 10:03 AM, Coffee Pancake said:

The writing has been on the wall for the Linux native client since the start. It doesn't build against system libraries like every other Linux application.

The Cool VL Viewer does: type ”./linux-build.sh --usesystemlibs” in the linden/ source directory, wait 3 to 10 minutes (depending on your hardware), and enjoy your home-built viewer.

Of course, some SL-specific libraries (patched ones, or things such as GLOD) are still pre-built ones, but who cares ?

Quote

Oz spent years asking TPV devs to help make that possible, and if we could accomplish that then they would go to the trouble of adding actual packages to the build server and getting the client into proper repositories.

Oz created ”autobuild”, which basically made rebuilding libraries a nightmare, under all OSes. Oz stopped Linux support (and actually killed it) by his actions and inaction.

Quote

there are almost no Linux developers willing to work on the client

I've been developing the Cool VL Viewer (which is primarily a Linux viewer) for the past 14 years. Nicky Dasmijn also provided a working Linux branch of LL's own viewer, but Oz did nothing with it (inaction, again)... What more do you want (or more exactly what Oz wanted, if not killing Linux support) ?

Quote

General gaming has moved more towards wine, SL works on wine, it's not ideal,

It does, at a HUGE frame rate loss (and frame rate ugly stuttering) cost: why do you want to run a Windows viewer under Wine when there are Linux viewers that run 20% faster natively under Linux than their Windows versions under Windows (and that's not even counting on people with AMD GPUs, who will find out how lame the AMD OpenGL driver is under Windows, after trying the Linux version of their viewer under Linux).

Quote

Vivox is just icing on the crusty cake.

Vivox' fault: they hate Linux and stopped providing Linux clients years ago... This said, their Windows client can be used (via Wine) from a Linux viewer. The Cool VL Viewer is now provided with a script I wrote that will install a SLVoice.exe client in a Wine ”prefix” (separate prefix, i.e. it won't touch your existing Wine install) and setup everything for you.

Quote

Where's my wayland. Why are there still no good nvidia drivers.

Wayland SUCKS (there are things you just cannot do, or cannot do right with Wayland). The viewer (like 90% of graphics software) is an X application. Use it under X, and you will see it fly !

NVIDIA proprietary Linux drivers are excellent: nothing can beat them in OpenGL. Just use them. They also added support for Wayland in v470 (and Wayland recently got an update to use it). But I still highly recommend using native X, which is the true thing !

Edited July 11, 2021 by Henri Beauchamp

[Drakeo]

On 7/10/2021 at 1:43 AM, arabellajones said:

Linux, using systems such as Vivox for SLvoice

This is a vivox issue.  Vivox drop support for linux.  Vivox  lead developer was mad he was unable to install Ubuntu. 

I was openly vocal about this in the vivox forum years ago.

Firestorm works with 32bit and 32bit windows voice.  My Linux builds of the SL viewer  work with 32bit and 64bit windows voice. use wine.

Just set it up in debug settings.

Kokua has a fine one also.  I really Like the Coolvl viewer fast and stable.   Not a fan of v1 interface. very good viewer.

Since I build wine from source in Linux using my build of MinGW-w64  never had any luck with coolVL using wine.

The install for the module  never finds my wine.

I still Maintain The SecondLife viewer for Linux.

Maintain all the non-common libraries to build it.

It is in my profile.

[Drakeo]

15 hours ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

Oz created ”autobuild”, which basically made rebuilding libraries a nightmare,

I found "autobuild" to be a wonderful tool and kept many of my libraries well organized. Sorry  you feel that way.

For a team as large as his it was a very nice tool.

The new enviroment build  has made things  much easier for me.

[Drakeo]

On 7/10/2021 at 3:03 AM, Coffee Pancake said:

stopped making Catznip on Linux when it became clear we couldn't continue to produce a viewer

Your work and how much you gave is still used today.  I thank you for that.  I still maintain a build of the SLviewer.

Have for a decade. It is a ton of work building libraries and keeping up.

But you can grab it off the bitbuckit.  And for my personal viewer LittlePenguin You will see some of your work in it I think?

It would be in the commits.

[Henri Beauchamp]

11 hours ago, Drakeo said:

never had any luck with coolVL using wine.

The install for the module  never finds my wine.

Well, it should... Please, report any issue you find when using the Cool VL Viewer on its support forum. Give all relevant details (at the minimum, what Linux distribution and version you are using); 'which wine' output would help there, or the list of the files (especially, the wine executable) in your Linux distro's package.

Edited July 12, 2021 by Henri Beauchamp

[Drakeo]

3 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

Well, it should... Please, report any issue you find when using the Cool VL Viewer on its support forum. Give all relevant details (at the minimum, what Linux distribution and version you are using); 'which wine' output would help there, or the list of the files (especially, the wine executable) in your Linux distro's package.

Yes Henri it should I  tried editing the install script to force it.

I was at a loss why you would ask the /proc

Love what you do. I love your hard work. keep it up.

[Henri Beauchamp]

1 minute ago, Drakeo said:

I was at a loss why you would ask the /proc

/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/* files are checked by the script to verify that the binfmt module (which is responsible for launching non-ELF binaries, such as Windows ones) is indeed installed and active on your system, and that a proper Wine entry is configured (so that binfmt knows that it needs to use 'wine' to launch binaries matching Windows' executable format).

This should pose no problem whatsoever, unless your distribution is using non-standard kernels patched with a different /proc layout... If this is the case, please provide details on the Cool VL Viewer support forum.

[Drakeo]

15 minutes ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

/proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc/* files are checked by the script to verify that the binfmt module (which is responsible for launching non-ELF binaries, such as Windows ones) is indeed installed and active on your system, and that a proper Wine entry is configured (so that binfmt knows that it needs to use 'wine' to launch binaries matching Windows' executable format).

This should pose no problem whatsoever, unless your distribution is using non-standard kernels patched with a different /proc layout... If this is the case, please provide details on the Cool VL Viewer support forum.

I understand that. but  that part is broken. I will take it to your  support.  Just did not have time.

Call to wine is done through /usr/bin/wine*

why do you need anything more.  Heck debian stop building the preload module years ago.

It is still part of the  build. I build a true 64bit only wine just for SL.

then on my multi-arch systems  for gaming.

 build with MinGW-w64 add support for Windows native binaries (PE format).

And still nothing works with your install script.

My environment is Slackware current aka slackware beta 15

Everything is vanilla

 

 

[Henri Beauchamp]

12 minutes ago, Drakeo said:

I understand that. but  that part is broken.

It's in no way ”broken”, and the script does report to you what it finds missing on your system... Here, it will complain about a missing binfmt_misc module and ask you to fix that issue before retrying.

Quote

I will take it to your  support.

Yes, please, this forum is not the place for this...

Quote

Call to wine is done through /usr/bin/wine*

why do you need anything more.

The call to ”wine” shall be done by the kernel, via binfmt_misc... That's how all modern distros I tested (and I tested many, believe me) do work. That's also what TPVs allowing to run SLVoice.exe from Linux (e.g. Firestorm) expect to happen: they never launch ”wine” (or wine32, or wine64, or whatever it is called in your distribution, which the viewer cannot guess) directly, but delegate to the Linux kernel the care to find the right launcher for the SLVoice.exe binary (which is the binfmt_misc module's very task and only purpose)...

I could of course arrange something else for exotic or badly configured Linux systems (via a wrapper script to launch SLVoice.exe, for example)... Post all the gory details about your system configuration and what messages you get from the installer script on the viewer support forum and I will see what can be done...

[Drakeo]

Glad it works for you. Horse before the cart.  FS works fine my builds of the SLviewer works fine  My viewer LittlePenguin works fine. 

This is a vivox issue so I would look at your vivox-voice-client in your source code.   I did. now you want an outside script to tell me my system of over 20 years is  broken. because you  look for  something on the proc.

I been building using wine longer than I been maintaining the viewer.  If it works for you. then your happy.  I am Happy.

I have no use for that install script to say my system is unusable.

When it works fine.

 

 

[Drakeo]

1 hour ago, Henri Beauchamp said:

SLVoice.exe binary

Henri you understand vanilla. I can run vivox in the viewer or outside the viewer in wine. just  saying. Not the system.

you may need to understand  all the wonderful work you do. is lost on an script that fails to call wine.

In the beginning there was Slackware. And from there you have what. 

Not up to you to tell people  the system is wrong. it is up to you to create a tool so others can use your tools.

Little Penguin Release Viewer 6.4.21.43743 (64bit)
Release Notes

You are at 184.9, 235.9, 89.6 in Missauke located at simhost-054d290d433fb9fc7.agni
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Missauke/185/236/90
(global coordinates 262841.0, 254444.0, 89.6)
Second Life Server 2021-06-23.560819
Release Notes

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor (2800 MHz)
Memory: 32118 MB
OS Version: Linux 5.12.15 #1 SMP Wed Jul 7 14:12:21 CDT 2021 x86_64
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080/PCIe/SSE2

OpenGL Version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 470.42.01

Window size: 1920x1007
Font Size Adjustment: 96pt
UI Scaling: 1
Draw distance: 128m
Bandwidth: 1500kbit/s
LOD factor: 2
Render quality: 5
Advanced Lighting Model: Disabled
Texture memory: 1536MB
Disk cache: Max size 1996.0 MB (36.3% used)

RestrainedLove API: RLV v3.4.3 / RLVa v2.4.1.43743
J2C Decoder Version: OpenJPEG: 2.3.1, Runtime: 2.3.1
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Studio 2.01.09
Dullahan: 1.7.0.202104251721
  CEF: 83.3.12+g0889ff0+chromium-83.0.4103.97
  Chromium: 83.0.4103.97
LibVLC Version: 3.0.7
Voice Server Version: Vivox 4.10.0000.32327

Packets Lost: 0/1615 (0.0%)
July 12 2021 07:05:22

 

Edited July 12, 2021 by Drakeo

[Henri Beauchamp]

12 minutes ago, Drakeo said:

Not up to you to tell people  the system is wrong. it is up to you to create a tool so others can use your tools.

Either you report properly, on the support forum, or I will not even bother trying to understand your issue.

Beware: I won't take abuse from stubborn people... I share my work on my viewer as a free service for other like-minded people; don't make me regret it !

This is my last message here, on this topic.

[Drakeo]

Just now, Henri Beauchamp said:

Either you report properly, on the support forum

that's a deal . thank you for your hard work.

 

[Mr Amore]

@arabellajones When I was using Manjaro, Firestorm installed without a hitch from the AUR. Voice was also working without additional steps.

Other distros may require some tweaking to get voice on, I don't normally use SL Voice, it's not something I look for.

 

But I do miss running Catznip on Linux!

[arabellajones]

That Drakeo guy is now stalking me in-world.  I decided to block him. He's pushing, as an answer, a viewer version which gets almost no publicity, apparently coming out of nowhere, and that rings alarm bells. Past experiences, I am thinking of the "Brave" web browser and, most recently, the Audacity audio editor, make me wary.

There does seem to be a problem many people are having over what it means to "support" a viewer or a viewer platform. Yes, there needs to be code written: without that there isn't a product to support. But there seems to be an all too common failure, in what we sometimes call "Silicon Valley", though it may not bet the best metonym, to find people who can communicate with humans.

I may write text which is too complicated. It is not unknown for me to use litotes. I know some of you will have to look up what a "metonym" is. But, when I look at what Microsoft and Apple are doing, I think I shall stick with Linux. I won't have to spend any huge sums of cash just for the hardware to run the operating system.