Very close... Help pls!

First off, good work folks! I thought that my class would be learning java or C++ but Alice is a lot of fun. I'm not sure how to jump from Alice to either of the above languages, though that may become clear as we go.

So, I'm one of those PITAes... I'm running the software on Slackware 11, kernel 2.6.18.6 and there are issues (it does run though!). Some are minor, others prevent me from following along with the class:

• Object(s) change color at random. Sometimes not at all. Seen with bunny.
• Add rabbit. When using the arrows to move the camera, rabbit "slips" around.
• Save nag appeared as I was dragging a tile. Clicked save. Drag canceled but unable to drag thereafter. Error was "..unable to initiate drag.." or something close.
• Cannot disable control structure tiles, only -- so far -- the method tiles.
• "create new method" button spawns a pop up name input box. Unable to type in box. Middle-click paste works. Once, I managed to get it working by opening kedit and typing text for pasting into box. Using alt-tab to switch apps I noticed that a couple of chars from kedit had |somehow| made it into the method naming box. Backspace and typing now worked, that time only. Naming a new method required another app switch. After a reboot, even that kludge failed to work.

Um, that's what I've seen so far. I've only been dragging for about a week. I would like to continue to use Slackware in class but I know the 'nix version is PoC. What differences between the win and lin versions would cause these issues? I'm going to look at the source but I'm pretty sure I'll get lost. I would have searched the bug db, but she's down. The few results returned searching "linux" on the forum did not seem applicable. Sorry for the length. If you need more info let me know. Thx!
Boont

Try to emulate the windows version in WINE. Wait... That would be an emulator emulating a virtual machine.

Anyway, try it and see if that works.

Thanks for the suggestion. Installed Wine (not an emulator) and tried to start Alice. The splash screen came up and I thought I was home free. No such. It just stalls there. If I move the splash window, it erases my desktop. So, its sorta working not really. I've not used wine too much, so I'll rtfm a little, see if I can figure it. Any further suggestions are very welcome.

[gabe]

We apologize for the lack of updates on Linux Alice. Due to our inexperience with Linux and its many flavors, we simply don't have the time at this moment to get another release out ASAP with bug fixes, as we are working really hard on Alice 3. However, it is still on our radar. We have slowly been getting bug reports in (alice-admin@cs.cmu.edu), which should help us tremendously in diagnosing issues. I will keep everyone posted.

Thanks for the update Gabe. I understand that linux is not job#1, and applaud the fact that the "proof of concept" works as well as it does. If you could use a tester/abuser, I'm for it. I have to use Alice for this class and I would rather do it without windows. That's not really possible (w/my configuration anyway) with the current alice-for-linux release, for the above reasons. Well, it probably could be done, but...