The Perils of Express Scribe

Tags

express scribe, kde, linux, ubuntu

Here is where you are going to find out how much of a newbie I am to Linux/Ubuntu. I don’t know why I have to do the things I am doing, I’ll admit it. One day, I will know the answers. But for now I just do, with the hopes of eventually knowing why I am doing this. But, whatever it is I’m doing works. 

I needed to get an open-source software named Express Scribe working properly on my Chromebook in Linux since I am transcribing a really great sermon series our pastor is preaching, and Express Scribe, when actually working, makes this process so much easier. But it’s proving to be a drawn-out and frustrating process, one which has taken me weeks to figure out. We finally had it up and running and well… much to my chagrin the second paragraph will explain. The native Linux program is incredibly buggy and doesn’t work properly whatsoever, which is to be expected considered it’s still in beta (and it doesn’t seem like it will ever be out or that they will ever fix the problems). Yet I was having an incredible amount of problems getting it installed and running properly in Wine as well. 

A couple weeks back my husband went through and installed several different libraries and did some other things, and, abracapocus hocus cadabra, it was the only time Express Scribe worked properly in Wine. It ran flawlessly. However, he didn’t write down what he did, so he had been searching earlier tonight on Google trying to remember the steps he took in order to get it working properly again. Why did he need to do it again? On Startup in Developer Mode, Chrome OS has a warning screen that pretty much says without actually saying it that it’s in Developer Mode and to press “Space” then “Enter” to get out of Developer Mode. Hubby hasn’t had much experience with my Chromebook, and he had no idea those two buttons would take the computer out of actual Developer Mode, thus pretty much erasing Linux. Grand. Before that happened, I had suggested he keep a log in Evernote of what he was doing before this mistake (I have a log going of all the things I’m doing to install certain things, and it’s so incredibly handy considering I’ve had to erase and reinstall Ubuntu several times), but he didn’t, unfortunately. Thankfully, between installing the libraries and writing this blog post, he found it. 

The problem I was having with Express Scribe running in Wine is this: it starts up just fine and works pretty much flawlessly, but when I close it out and try to reopen it, it pops up a little message (I can’t remember what it says… something about not being for commercial use), then automatically closes out. So it basically won’t allow you to use the program. Or, it just decides it doesn’t want to open, and the icon just bounces up and down until it goes on for so long that it just doesn’t open at all. So, I am writing this blog post because in doing the following steps, I got it to work properly again. I have no idea WHY these made it work, and I have no idea if I installed a bunch of stuff I didn’t need. At this point in the process, after literally weeks of trying to get this program to work, I really don’t care. Hopefully these steps will help someone else out!

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How to Install Express Scribe in Ubuntu and Have It Actually Work

1. First, I’ve installed a bunch of libraries. I honestly have no idea really what this does, but it seems important. Maybe one day I’ll understand the technical language. Here’s what I’ve installed so far with the command lines here for each of them. Yep, it’s probably overkill, but I don’t care. 

• sudo apt-get install libgtk2.0-0:i386
• sudo apt-get install lib32stdc++6
• sudo apt-get install lib32z1
• sudo apt-get install lib32ncurses5
• sudo apt-get install lib32bz2-1.0
• sudo apt-get install build-essential
• sudo apt-get install libz-dev
• sudo apt-get install libreadline-gplv2-dev:i386
• sudo apt-get install libncursesw5-dev
• sudo apt-get install libssl-dev
• sudo apt-get install libgdbm-dev
• sudo apt-get install libsqlite3-dev
• sudo apt-get install libbz2-dev
• sudo apt-get install liblzma-dev
• sudo apt-get install tk-dev
• sudo apt-get install libdb-dev
• sudo apt-get install libc6-dev

2. The second thing I did was install a bunch of old Linux headers with the following commands (as a side note, I’m not sure if both of these are necessary, but I installed them because well… I’m new, and I have no idea what I’m doing):

• sudo apt-get install linux-generic 
• sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic

3. Then I downloaded Wine with the following command:

• sudo apt-get install wine

4. And then I downloaded the .exe file from the NCH website. Currently it can be found here: Express Scribe for Windows.

5. Then I run the following commands which update and upgrade… something. I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s needed. But all I know is I used it and it worked, so even if it’s completely pointless, I did it, and I will do it again in the future when I, inevitably, need to reinstall Linux. 

• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get upgrade

6. I then open up Wine.

7. Then I find the .exe file I downloaded from the Express Scribe website and it should install from there. No more message about being for commercial use only, and no more trampolining icon! 

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If these steps don’t work for you for some reason, I honestly don’t know how to help. I’ve searched and searched and searched the forums with no luck. It’s just the only thing that ended up working for me!

I have a confession to make: I sometimes really, really love and really, really hate the Linux OS. I have wanted to give up on it several times, but I keep being drawn back. My current experience is what has started this particular blog. There are a lot of Linux newbies out there, including myself, who, perhaps, want help from someone who understands newbies. I have found myself frustrated with the forums, constantly having to go on rabbit trails figuring out what someone is trying to say. I just want step-by-step directions on something; I don’t want half the directions step-by-step followed by the other half that just assume you know what they are talking about, as if they were never a beginner who didn’t know the first thing when it comes to this diverse yet frustrating operating system.

So enter this blog. I have very, very limited knowledge of Linux – so limited, in fact, that advanced users will probably think I’m rather moronic for posting the things I do post, but I wanted to blog about my journey here, and to keep a running log of what I’ve done in case I do something stupid to crash it or make it completely inoperable.

My first journey with Linux started about 8 years ago with OpenSuse, I believe. It was the OS on my then-boyfriend-now-husband’s secondary family computer, installed by one of his older brothers. It was actually pretty neat. There were incredible programs, games, etc., all for free. I really wanted to have it on my laptop, but we never were able to properly install it, so we gave up. In that time, my husband has tried different Linux distributions such as Mandriva, Linux Mint, Kubuntu, and several others, all with very little success in either, which usually resulted in a fresh Windows installation. I hated Linux. I was too impatient to learn the system, and I was always wanting to go back to Windows.

My laptop had recently died, and it was starting to get really beat up. Unable to really fix it, we almost spent $1800 on a Macbook Pro. I wanted something much more stable than Windows, especially the horrid Windows 8. However, rather than fork out half my right arm to buy a Mac, I decided to “get something cheaper until I had nothing else better to spend $1800 on.” Enter the Chromebook, pretty much a glorified web-browser. The “apps” are mostly just fancy bookmarks to take you to websites, though they are now coming out with more desktop-based apps. It was the Chrome browser in shiny packaging. And now I absolutely love it. My particular model is the HP Chromebook 14, so it has a nice 14” screen, a 16 GB SSD, and combined with 4 GB of SDRAM, it makes this a rather wickedly fast machine! (We are currently looking to upgrade the 16 GB SSD to a 128 GB SSD, and also hoping to add more RAM).

But we almost took it back. Spending $373 on a web browser just didn’t make sense. But the more I played with it, the more I loved it. It was so fast, but it was pretty much just a web browser. The keyboard was amazing to type on, but it was still a fancy web browser. It was much cheaper than a Mac, but IT WAS STILL A GLORIFIED WEB BROWSER! And I almost justified throwing $1800 on a Macbook. I had it customized and in the cart, but just couldn’t seem to get myself to submit the order.

I decided to do a bit of Google searching on things to do with the Chromebook… and enter Linux. I ran a cross an article titled How to Install Linux on Chromebook and Unlock Its Full Potential from LifeHacker. Basically this was the epiphany for me to not only explore the Chromebook and Chrome OS, but it was giving me yet another shot at Linux. Not wanting Windows, and not wanting to fork out nearly $2k for a Macbook, the Linux option was going to be the best for the price.

I currently run the Ubuntu distribution with the KDE desktop environment (Kubuntu). It’s run right on top of the Chrome OS, so it’s a quick and simple punch of a couple keys to navigate between the two of the operating systems. When we get the 128 GB SSD, I want to clear everything off and do a traditional dual-boot. I’ve had to reinstall Ubuntu SEVERAL times since having my Chromebook, and every time it gets much easier, and reinstalling things gets much faster. I’ve also kept an Evernote note documenting of all the things I’ve done so I have something to refer back to later when (inevitably) I have to reinstall for one reason or another.

So, here is my journey in learning Linux. Considering I just had to do a fresh install of Linux today (more on that in the next post), it just made sense to start documenting it. And hopefully this will inspire other novice computer users to take up a rather complex yet pretty much amazing OS. I’ve learned that I love to hate it.