MetaTrader on eeePC

Yay!!! I finally managed to get MetaTrader and MetaEditor working on my 0.92kg eeePC…. which means I can now do my programming even when I am on the move…. spent three nights getting it working…. there are still some rough edges, but on the whole, MT4 on Linux rocks….!!!!!

For those who are interested, you need to first install Wine, which is a program that allows users to run Windows applications on Linux. Here’s a wiki with a step-by-step guide
http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:wine

After installing Wine, you can proceed to install MT4. Follow the steps here
http://www.moneyfanclub.com/forex-forum/3809-metatrader-4-linux.html

Note:

1. When installing MT4, instead of using the cp command to transfer the needed Fonts and DLLs to your linux drive_c, you can actually just navigate to  your Fonts  directory in Windows and copy and paste the files to Linux manually.
2. To get the latest DLLs (the needed ones are mfc42.dll and maybe mfc40.dll), you can download it at http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?mfc42
   Metatrader did not work when I used the dll from Vista, so I recommend downloading from the website above.
3. After installing MT4, you can click the .desktop file generated to execute MT4 or key the following command in a terminal
   wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/MetaTraderXXX/terminal.exe
   (Replace MetaTraderXXX with the name of your Metatrader Folder)
4. Click on F4 in MetaTrader to launch MetaEditor. When prompted to install Gecko, I would recommend that you choose ‘CANCEL’. This was the problem that caused me 2 sleepless nights. Whenever I choose to install Gecko, MetaEditor would crash. To get MetaEditor running, I finally had to give up on Gecko. The only drawback is that “Help” would not work.

That’s all…. If all goes well,  the whole installation should take less than  two hours…. If you encounter any problems, you can post your questions here and I’ll try to help…. but I’m no Linux expert, so no promise….