Planet Open-Future

While checking the Google Analytics for gertschepens.be, I noticed someone ending up there with a “gish linux how to install” search. Since I don’t answer that anywhere (nor do the interwebs), I thought Id do a lil Q&A This question isn’t really answered anywhere because its very straight forward!

The linux package is called gish153-1.tar.gz or something alike. You will of course need this to install the Gish! Buy it at http://www.chroniclogic.com/gish.htm (its worth it!)

Installing it is pretty straight forward, as it is simply extracting the archive and putting it where you want to keep it. The .tar.gz (or .tgz) file is an archive file; a lot like the more known .zip or .tar files and extracting them is really simple.

You can extract the file in several easy ways

• By double clicking it. This will open the file roller or whatever its linked to depending on what linux distro you have. Click extract, choose where you want to extract it and done.
• By right clicking the file and selecting “Extract Here”; this will extract Gish in the map you have the archive in.
• By navigating the commandline to the map where the Gish archive is and typing “tar -xvzf gish153-1.tar.gz”. If this doesnt work, check that the archive is in that map and check if the archive name in the command here is correct. This will extract the Gish archive in the map run the command in.

After extracting, you ll have a map with all the Gish files in. You can simply run the “gish” file to play. You can store this map anywhere you want, but do it somewhere logical because you ll navigate there every time you want to play it.

And thats how its installed. Simple, no

Now, you ll probably also want to launch it from your Gnome menu and simply adding the link will have the Gish start without any graphics (this is because the paths are relative and the app as such doesnt find the files it needs.) You can create a new launcher using the menu editor under System > Preferences > Main menu; there select the Games menu and click “New Item”. You can quickly solve this by following the guide on their forums Gish Launcher in Ubuntu or by using the following starting link for your app menu launcher command (The command assumes you have the Gish installed in your home directory; for example “/home/yourname/gish153″. If this is not where you put it; change that Bash will probably be in /bin but if it doesnt work, do check that too.)

/bin/bash -c “cd ~/gish153/ && ./gish”

The mechanics are that you have bash change the working directory to the right path and start the gish from there. Ill see about posting this to the forum thread too, but I honestly dont have the time right now to do the registration dance & all..

Id never have thought of writing this, but since there was a search hit for it, I guess its something people have questions about. I hope its of use to someone!

Edit: As blogs are a fleeting medium, this is maintained at gertschepens.be