Running full blown aol on Linux
 

Here's my porblem.... I am trying to convince my parents to switch over to linux and have convinced them that there are equivelents for most of there programs but they flatly refuse to stop useing aol. I have been unable to find any accounts of people running it under wine or any other way. We have broadband so aol is run through that so we don't need the dial up portion to work... any ideas? thanx for the help in advance......


P.S. does anyone know how to run MSN Messanger under Linux... I know there are equivilents but I like it....

probably not what you will want to hear, but a long long time ago, I wanted to get AOL running under linux. The only way I found was to use VMWare with a windows install loaded. Hey, it got AOL running in linux. Besides, this may help ease the transition for your parents.

Well if your running windows in vmware there reallyisn't a point to switching.... So there is no way, not even with that cross over program... seems kinda strange to me that no one has ever done it.... or at least not shared how they did it....

I'm in a similar boat as you.... I tried to get a laptop setup with AOL so my folks could use it, and eventually just gave up. I found there are two dialers out there, the PengAOL program which is several years old an no longer maintained, and the Linspire dialer, which when I tried it was still under development and simply didn't work.

I eventually came to the conclusion that since so few Linux users use AOL, nobody is working on a port and certainly AOL doesn't give a rat's pitooty about Linux.

Now just convience them that AOL is bad, over priced, and pointless software.

If they want to chat they can always use GAIM, Kopete, or AIM for Linux.

Actually I don't need the dialer.. we have a broadband connection with aol..... seems stranget hough that something as complicated as microsoft office works but AOL won't even start to install... and I know that they could use gaim (which I use) but they and I prefer the Messanger interface...

Mercury messenger (http://mercury.to) is a VERY nice clone (in development) of MSN messenger, in case you're looking for only MSN messenger.
KEvin

Any ideas as to why AOL won't work under wine (and remember I don't need the dialer part)... Or any Ideas on how t get it to work... I'm shure some of you have Ideas.....

I finally found a screen shot of someone runnong aol in linux... also some information on it go to this web site http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?appId=80

I use AOL for my connection only, minimise it, and browse with firefox. I've done this for ages. I'm acually very disappointed to find out there's no Linux version. I recently installed Mandriva on my second drive and there are a few things that are bugging me, but I'm gradually getting to grips with this whole new os experience. I was really hoping to get Mandriva to 'see' my aol broadband connection so I could get online and not have to reboot into windows just to come and post on forums when I get stuck.:mad:

Getting my Geforce FX5500 configured for 3d gfx is the next thing....

Paul

Thread is old, so I am not sure I can add anything.

The current situation in average consumer computing is all about addiction and de-facto monopolies. The over-worked example is MS, but there are clearly others.

My first reaction is to not bother convincing anyone to use Linux---**especially** an AOL user...;) Let them come to their own conclusions by seeing a benefit they can relate to---eg cost-savings, added features, etc.

Speculation dept.:
Google is buying AOL (Is that a done deal?)
Google is promoting open source---eg summer of code and the Sun partnership
Therefore:_________________________

google is buying a portion of AOL. not a majority share.

I'm not sure what you mean. What defines an AOL user? Someone of less intelligence/morals or something? Nobody should have to justify their choice of isp, but in my case AOL were the only supplier offering unlimited downloads at the time. Like I said before, I only use AOL for the connection.


Paul

I use penggy (formerly Pengaol; AOL forced them to drop AOL from the name) on Debian and it works pretty well (I know the OP said he doesn't need the dialer but some of the other posters may care). Debian actively maintains a package; I don't know about upstream.

most, that is most not all, AOL users just dont know any better, or have been using AOL for so long they are not willing to give up their e-mail address.