Midnite application running in Linux

[asdex]

Hi, I have been reading all about running the Midnite Classic Application in Linux and have been thinking of installing Windows 7 as a dual boot and other options using Wine.
I noticed on the Midnite CD adobeair.deb and installed this. I then installed LocalStatusPanel Version 0.3.27 8-2-2013.air and got the window shown in the attached picture. Does this mean the software is running? I can't test it as I'm not going to our remote house for a couple of weeks.
I'm running LXLE
Thanks,

[TomW]

That sure looks like it is "running" and waiting to find a Classic or be given an address to connect to.

It will not get past that until you connect to a Classic.

That is my opinion, of course.

Tom

[Halfcrazy]

I agree with Tom. I believe it is all ready to go. I know we used to support linux but the newer versions of AIR did not support Linux so unfortunately the newer versions of the Local App wont run on the older AIR.

That said I believe we are going to be recruiting a contract engineer to work on a new Local App that is NOT AIR based. Andrew can comment but I heard something about HTML based.

Ryan

[atop8918]

I am a big GNU/Linux fan which is one reason I chose AIR in the first place as it was one of the few widely used frameworks which provided Linux support. I'd still be working on getting the Local App out if not for having a portability framework like AIR underneath it. Unfortunately Adobe gave up on Linux and we lost out. I have not tried running the Local App under WINE or any other emulator. I'm pretty sure it would work with a VMware player, but I haven't tried it personally.
As far as a new version of the Local App I don't really know anything about those plans as I am pretty much full-time on the website and production support these days.
For those who want to try it, I stopped upgrading the AIR SDK around version 2.5 so if you can find a version of AIR around 2.5 for Linux then the Local app _should_ work. The last version of WINE I played with (can't remember which now) had AIR listed as GOLD support meaning almost all features were working under emulation. It might be worth a try. I'll give it a shot myself at some point.

[asdex]

Hi, thanks very much for your comments. I'll grab a crossover cable from work and try it end of next week.
I had installed Wine but didn't use it. Just installed the deb file then the application. Thais it. two minutes work so was very surprised considering all the complex  instructions on some websites,
Well, time will tell.
Cheers,

[atop8918]

I can confirm that the Local APp works fine under Linux Mint using Wine. I've got mine purring away here watching my Classics. The only feature I haven't tried (albeit a big one) is setting configuration values. I can monitor just fine though.

[ChrisOlson]

I installed the Air .deb package and the Local App runs but it's hosed



Debian 8.2 Jessie with KDE4/Plasma desktop

Maybe it's because the firmware is really old in my Classic.  But I can't update that either because I don't own a Windows computer to do it with.

[atop8918]

I think there is a Linux version of the Classic updater based in Python. You may want to have a quick look through the forum to see if it's still available.

I managed to get mine working with the latest AIR from Adobe installed on Linux Mint which I think is Jessie-based + LXE. That looks to me like the communications aren't working properly, though if it popeed up it must have gotten the first 100 packets or so from the Classic.

[ChrisOlson]

Yeah, it scanned the network and found the Classic OK.  Just that the interface is screwed up and won't show any data.  Back when, running 'winetricks adobeair' used to install AIR on a Debian box.  That doesn't work anymore.

chris@toshiba:~$ winetricks adobeair
Executing w_do_call adobeair
Executing load_adobeair
Downloading http://airdownload.adobe.com/air/win/download/4.0/AdobeAIRInstaller.exe to /home/chris/.cache/winetricks/adobeair
--2015-12-16 09:09:38--  http://airdownload.adobe.com/air/win/download/4.0/AdobeAIRInstaller.exe
Resolving airdownload.adobe.com (airdownload.adobe.com)... 23.79.104.148
Connecting to airdownload.adobe.com (airdownload.adobe.com)|23.79.104.148|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
2015-12-16 09:09:43 ERROR 404: Not Found.

------------------------------------------------------
Downloading http://airdownload.adobe.com/air/win/download/4.0/AdobeAIRInstaller.exe failed
------------------------------------------------------

The path to the Adobe installer was changed or deprecated on Adobe's end and it changed to:
https://get.adobe.com/air/download/?installer=Adobe_AIR_20.0_for_Win32&standalone=1

Various Debian-based distros had .deb packages for it.  Adobe didn't like the the fact that other people were packaging it for their systems (typical with Adobe over the years for everything), so they pulled it.  Adobe likes to keep control and their business model doesn't fit in the open source world.  They even tried to stop Google's Pepper Flash but had to bow to the majority when Android, which is linux-based, gained the largest installed base of any operating system on earth in billions of smartphones and tablets.

The sooner you guys can get away from Adobe and build something different, the better it will be for everybody.

[ChrisOlson]

OK, well - I built a pseudo WinXP wine install with winetricks on Debian 8.2.  This has to be done manually in Debian, where it comes pre-packaged with a lot of the Debian offshoots.  Mint, Ubuntu, etc are based on Debian, but they are not Debian.

So then I manually installed the Adobe AIR and the Local Status Panel and it works fine.  Although in Debian you have to write a little shell script to execute the airappinstaller.exe, put the script somewhere in your PATH as a normal user and chmod it a+x to install AIR applications.

Yeah, Mint (and maybe Ubuntu) make this a lot easier.  But I don't like distributions where they pre-package stuff I don't necessarily want, and then break it later when they shove a half-baked update out the door.  So I stick with Debian where I can custom build my system the way I want it, and it stays stable until I decide to change it, not when some update pops up that says "hey - get the latest and greatest - we just fixed a bunch of stuff that wasn't broke".

Can make settings and so on to the Classic fine with the Local Status Panel after I got it running.

Where's that Python Classic firmware updater tool at?  Can't find it.

[atop8918]

Ah, my mistake. I thought we had a Linux updater but I think I was wrong about that. Sorry to get everyone's hopes up again.

I'm with you on Debian though I was tired of the hassle of updating my netbooks and just went with Mint for one of them. I liked it so much I just stuck to it. 1GHz 2nd gen Atom processor with 1G ram. Runs better than my brand new Windows10 i5 + 8G!

[Halfcrazy]

We do have one but I need to get some one to put the files in it. Let me see what I can do. The actual reason it slipped away as it works on apple to but so many people had so much trouble on apple because of the command line interface I guess. Give me a bit I will see if I can resurrect this

[ChrisOlson]

Yeah, OS X's shell is kinda broken compared to the pure Unix/linux world.  Apple basically took BSD back to the days when it was proprietary, so Linus Torvalds wrote the linux kernel to get away from proprietary Unix operating systems.

We dropped use of Windows here when Microsoft started playing the Windows XP -> kludge -> worse kludge -> max kludge -> total kludge game.  My wife bought a MacBook Pro, which she likes because it's fancy.  I got the old computers and revived 'em with linux and have never looked back.  This old Toshiba that I'm on with only a single core T1350 @ 1.86 GHz and 2.5 GB RAM is way faster with Debian/KDE in it than my wife's fancy MacBook Pro.  My server that I built with a quad-core i7 clocking 2.47 GHz with 8GB RAM and internal RAID10 can compute the Force in the universe and write the results to disk before Win10 running on the same hardware can open Internet Exploder and connect to Windows Update.

It shouldn't be that hard to write even a bash shell script that can make the calls to the USB port to upload and write a firmware file to a Classic.  Just use 'lsusb' to figure out which port it's connected to and send it.  Fldigi and Flrig does it using CAT commands (or CI-V on ICOM) on ham radios with no issues and gives me full software control of the rigs from my linux computers over a USB interface.  Which is one hell of a lot more complicated than updating the firmware in a Classic.

[Halfcrazy]

We dropped use of Windows here when Microsoft started playing the Windows XP -> kludge -> worse kludge -> max kludge -> total kludge game. 

Yes but then they made "Windows 10" to loosen all the Kludge, but it unfortunately plugged all the filters and destroyed everything

[ChrisOlson]

Yes but then they made "Windows 10" to loosen all the Kludge, but it unfortunately plugged all the filters and destroyed everything

LOL!  Yeah.  I haven't really used Windows 10 much, but from what I've seen on other people's laptops it's slower than slow.  Fortunately, for Microsoft, most people have never used anything else so they don't know any better.

The only reason Redmond skipped Windows 9 is because Apple is pretty much kicking their %@*.  Since OS X is, well, version 10 of Mac OS, they decided to make Windows 10 too, to try to keep up instead of looking like the has-been they really are.