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If you’ve switched to Ubuntu (as I have) or any other Linux distribution, you may consider the following free (and in most cases open-source) games, as they’ve been favorites of mine for some time now.

1. Tremulous

Tremulous is an addictive first person shooter (FPS) that has countless gamers on at all hours from both the Linux and Windows worlds. As all other games in this article, Tremulous is free to download and play.

In Tremulous there are two teams: Aliens and Humans. Aliens can have such awesome feats as wall-walking (dizzying to say the least), pouncing from great distances, and spraying poisonous gases. Humans can obtain advanced weaponry and armor, and plant strategic devices such as turrets to defend their base.

Tremulous features a unique upgrade system, where players from each team must make a certain number of kills to gain new upgrades (aliens can evolve into more powerful aliens, and humans can obtain better items and gear).

To install under Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install tremulous

2. Gridwars

Grid wars has been removed from the creators website, however you can still install it in on Linux, Windows, or Mac by doing a quick search.

There is a distinct retro top-down-shooter look and feel to this game, but any thought that this is a vintage game is blown out of the water once you see the stunning liquid visuals that this game provides.

3. VDrift

VDrift is a Linux racing game with a focus on drifting. Quite frankly, VDrift sucks if you only have a keyboard and mouse. If you’re nerd enough to have a PC joystick or gamepad, you’ll get the most out of this little gem.

To install VDrift on Ubuntu:

apt-get install vdrift vdrift-data

4. World of Padman

World of Padman is a rather toony first-person shooter which combines fast gameplay, brilliant colors, and the Quake3 engine (massively supported by today’s hardware standards).

There is no aptitude installer for World of Padman, so if you’d like to try this out you’ll need to visit the World of Padman website Download section.

5. Nexuiz

Nexuiz is another Quake3 mod, but with some of the best weapons this side of Half Life 2.

6. Scorched 3D

Scorched 3D has the same objective as old games like Missile Defense, but provides revamped graphics in a 3D world, network play, and terrain interaction. In same cases it’s just more fun to nuke a path to your enemy and sink their base into the ocean.

Applications -> Add/Remove -> Games -> Scorched 3D

7. Glest

Glest is a well designed real time strategy game, which is guaranteed to provide hours of fun.

To install, download from the ubuntu forums:

http://www.getdeb.net/release.php?id=1061

and install using:

sudo dpkg -i glest-data_2.0.0-1~getdeb1_all.deb

8. Flight Gear

Flight Gear is a must for everyone. Sometimes you just need to take to the skies

To install in Ubuntu:

Applications -> Add/Remove -> Games -> Flightgear

9. Battle for Wesnoth

Battle for Wesnoth is a turn-based strategy game. It’s quite fun really!

To install in Ubuntu:

Applications -> Add/Remove -> Games -> Battle for Wesnoth Read More

And once again I am being bombarded with e-mails asking me to help them install ATI drivers under the latest openSUSE 10.3. Make sure that you do follow and understand the how-to and go through it completely … besides I am not guarantying that this will 100% work with your PC configuration … this is what I came up with from my past experience and has worked on several configurations.

Before we start (as of writing this how-to - 11.10.07): We all know about the 1-click install that new openSUSE 10.3 has, but unfortunately if you use this ATI 1-click Driver Installer link, you end up installing the latest 8.41 driver which only has support for the new Radeon HD video cards (HD 2xxx series) and thus we will need to install the older 8.40 driver manually for older cards. Expect the later drivers to work with all cards and hopefully making 1-click install really worthy it’s name for installing ATI drivers. So if you have them RadeonHD card then try 1-click install, as I can’t try it out myself.

I am running openSUSE 10.3 x86_64 platform (AMD64), with ATI Radeon X800 GTO2 PCI-E interface and 22″ 1650×1080 resolution on DFI nForce4 Ultra based motherboard (sad, but from my last 10.2 installation I haven’t upgraded my computer).

Driver used here: 8.40.4

IMPORTANT: Please check for any UPDATES at the end of this blog before continuing.

Once again there are prerequisites before you begin installing the drivers. You will need to have the following installed. All these can be found on your openSUSE 10.3 DVD or main repository:

1. kernel-source 2. kernel-syms 3.gcc 4. make

Also make sure that the followings are installed, which are usually installed with default installation (just to make sure)

• compat-32bit
• qt3-32bit
• libstdc++-32bit (plus -devel packages)
• compat-libstdc++
• libgcc
• xorg-x11-libs-32bit (plus -devel packages)
• Mesa-32bit (plus -devel packages)
• fontconfig-32bit (plus -devel packages)
• expat-32bit (plus -devel package)
• freetype2-32bit (plus -devel packages)
• zlib-32bit (plus -devel packages)
• libdrm
• libdrm-32bit

(the list is for x86_64 users, for 32-bit users the same applies but without “-32bit” string in the name for packages)

Info for n00bs/newbies: When you see “~>” it is user prompt and when you see “#“, you have to be root (by typing “su” and supplying the password when asked).

Once the above mentioned packages are installed, let’s prepare the kernel modules. Execute the following commands:

# cd /usr/src/linux–2.6.22.9-0.4 (or the version of kernel you are using, usually the newest available)

# make mrproper

# make cloneconfig

# make modules_prepare

and one last command to clean the kernel source:

# make clean

Also, if you have tried installing drivers before, let’s remove them completely by executing the command:

# rpm -e $(rpm -qa | grep fglrx)

(Just in case, run also Yast Software Manager and search for fglrx and remove all of them)

Now to installing drivers:

1. Download the latest available drivers from ATI Drivers and Software section. Choose your version of drivers: Linux x86 for 32 bit, Linux x86_64 for 64 bit.

2. Once downloaded, copy to a folder that you wont forget. (let’s presume /home/me/ATI)

# cd /home/me/temp

3. Generate distribution specific package:

For 32-bit users:

# sh ./ati-driver-installer-x.xx.x-yy.run –buildpkg SuSE/SUSE102-IA32

(where x.xx.x is the driver version number and yy the architecture)

For 64-bit users:

# sh ./ati-driver-installer-x.xx.x-yy.run –buildpkg SuSE/SUSE102-AMD64

(since driver version 8.40 does not have support for 10.3 we are using the file to generate 10.2 package. Once new drivers are there I will update this step)

4. Now the ATI Driver Installer made a driver package for your system which has to be installed and has been created in:

/usr/src/packages/RPMS/i386

of if you have a 64-bit processor it’s located here.

/usr/src/packages/RPMS/x86_64

Head to the location where installer has been created:

# cd /usr/src/packages/RPMS/x86_64

(64-bit version is presumed from now onwards for the tutorial (adjust according to your platform))

5. Once there we need to install the rpm package that we compiled:

# rpm -Uvh fglrx*.rpm

and at the end you should have something similar to the following, without any errors:

6. Hopefully the above command went well, without any error messaged and the drivers were installed. Now run the following command:

# ldconfig

7. Now we need to leave the cool graphical desktop and switch to console mode by typing (as root):

# init 3

Log-in as root.

8. Last thing left is to configure the X server, to let it know which driver to use for rendering 2D and 3D:

# sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx

Test and then save the configuration. No need to run aticonfig command (at least it works for me)

9. Reboot(!) before you enter your DE (Destop Environenment).

Once rebooted and back to your KDE/Gnome and logged in as user, launch few more commands to verify that all went good and OpenGL is working now at it’s max:

~> fglrxinfo

~> glxinfo

If it states ATI Technologies Inc and the make of your card - excellent. Everything is setup correctly and working flawlessly. Time to relax and have a cup of coffee.

Troubleshooting 1: When running sax2 command and/or when switching to terminal screen you face problem of blank screen (screen going dead), then you should disable framebuffer in the console. For this do the following:

1. Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and remove the vga=xxx statement from the kernel line.

2. Reboot once you have modified the menu.lst file

3. Rerun the sax2 command mentioned above in step 8

Tip: If you would like to get back your original/higher resolution when in console mode (ex: Ctrl+Alt+F1), once you have installed and rebooted and verified that ATI drivers are in charge for OpenGL, you can re-input the string vga=xxx (in my case as seen above it is 0×317 which is for 1680×1050).

Troubleshooting 2: If you get stuck while installign driver (black screen, not booting DE, etc), reboot and once in grub menu type “init 3″, and once loaded log-in as root and runf the following to load the default drivers:

# sax2 -r -m 0=radeon

With video drivers installed you will notice the quick responsiveness of your GUI and a more pleasant experience. Hey don’t forget that now you can enjoy the 3D desktop

Also check out the openSUSE.org ATI wiki page, though mine is easier to understand but you can find more detail their per your needs. Enjoy.

Remark: Expect updates for this tutorial once newer drivers are available from ATI/Yasts ATI repository.

Update 17.10.07 : (not same as above icon) The drivers are not official ATI, so it may work or not, which are based on 8.40, thus supposedly supporting most of the cards. Read More

Ubuntu is extremely popular on the desktop, but it's made comparatively little progress on servers. That's about to change. Dell is expected to announce in the first quarter of 2008 that it has certified Ubuntu Linux for its server lines. In an interview with Rick Becker, Dell Product Group's vice president of solutions, Becker said that Dell is currently in the process of certifying Ubuntu for all its server lines. "But we are still several months away from announcing a certification. I'd say it'll be announced in Q1 next year." Dell, however, is already selling pre-loaded Ubuntu on its servers. "At the moment, if a Dell customer asks us to pre-load Ubuntu on a server, we'll do it for them. We do the same for Red Hat and SUSE. Our open-source support group will work with them as best they can, but most developers who ask for Linux probably know more than we do about Ubuntu. In fact, we may ask them for advice," said Becker. For now, Dell will direct customers who get pre-installed Ubuntu Linux on its servers to Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, and the Ubuntu community for support. "With Linux, it's not like you can just pick up the phone [and get support], as you know. We can't go too deeply into Ubuntu support at this time. We'll pre-load and resell it, and support the hardware with our Dell support folks. We'll refer people to the Ubuntu community if we need to," said Becker. After all, explained Becker, "We're not into operating systems much. We'll let the other companies handle those. We're much more into providing the hardware and the management software, as well as optimizing how it runs on our servers, finding bugs, making sure the drivers work well, etc." Just a day earlier, Dell had announced that it had formally certified Sun's Solaris on its servers. By March of next year, Dell, once an almost 100 percent Windows Server shop, will be offering pre-installed RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server), Solaris and Ubuntu Server to customers across its standalone, rack and blade server lines by the spring of 2008. Gerry Carr, marketing manager for Canonical, said he was unable to comment directly on Dell's decision since "although it is our software, these are entirely Dell internal matters so we cannot comment on them. As a good partner, until and unless we are given specific permission to talk about any initiative, then we have to defer to Dell." There is, however, no secret that Canonical has been working to get Ubuntu on the server and Dell's servers in specific. Carr and other Canonical executives are on record as saying that Canonical has been working on persuading server OEMs, and Dell in particular, of the advantages of offering Ubuntu on their servers since this summer. Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical's CEO, added: "It would be superb for adoption--and would accelerate the positive trends we see already. We have indicators from several ISVs saying that Ubuntu is now their No. 1 or No. 2 server platform. These are more aggressive, newer ISVs, but even some proprietary heavyweights have started to come knocking about certification, support and joint sales, largely based on perceived momentum for the Ubuntu server platform among their customers."So I would be delighted if Dell took this step. I think it would be very reassuring to the people who are already deploying Ubuntu on the server; it would make Dell attractive to them as a supplier and it would catalyse another round of adoption by folks who require certification and support throughout their stack," Shuttleworth said.Dell was also the first major PC OEM to offer pre-installed Linux on desktop and laptop lines. Dell began this move with Ubuntu-powered desktops and notebooks in May 2007. Sources at Dell indicate that the company will soon be offering pre-installed Ubuntu on more desktop and laptop lines with the latest version of Ubuntu 7.10."We have built a very productive relationship with Dell on the consumer range, which does continue to mature, and will build on that as the market requires it. The Dell folks have a knack for tracking demand and responding," Shuttleworth said.Ubuntu's first major server success was getting Ubuntu certified on Sun's Fire T1000 and T2000 servers. Since then, Ubuntu has continued to work hard on its server support efforts. In July, for example, Canonical launched Landscape, its Web-based systems management program for Ubuntu servers and desktops, and the company has also expanded its support, training and certification efforts. In short, Canonical has been busy during 2007 setting up all the business infrastructure needed to support enterprise server customers. As Carr said, there are no specific announcements to make at this time. "Our position remains that we are keen to see Ubuntu on as many servers and as many desktops as we can get it onto," he said.With Dell's forthcoming server certification, Canonical and Ubuntu are posed to make a major step forward in the server market.

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Everyone wants a quick boot time, from the beginner user to the advanced user, this is a issue that bothers us all. As Linux has advanced it has increasingly become slower to boot. I have tested on my machine 5 Linux distributions: Linspire, Fedora 3 & 4, Suse 9.2 & 9.3, ubuntu and Debian. And on average between all these distributions Linux needs around a minute to 1 and half minutes to go from boot loader to graphical login screen. So I decided to look into reducing the time it takes to boot my current setup, which is Fedora 4. In doing so I was able to reduce the boot time of my Fedora 4 installation to less than 25 seconds (just above 24 seconds on average). Below I have documented what I did, and what you can use to potentially reduce your boot up time for Linux.

Of course we will be dealing with advanced Linux know how, so this is not for beginners. Also results may vary on your end since there are a lot of factors involved.

My Initial Setup

My initial setup was pretty much standard Fedora 4 with nvidia driver loaded. My PCs hardware is an Athlon64 3000+, 1GB RAM, 80GB SATA 7200 rpm hard drive, and Nvidia Video Card. I was getting about a minute for booting Fedora 4 on this setup. I decided to benchmark in two ways, the first was using a standard stopwatch and manually starting / stopping, and the second way was using bootchart software which you can download here (bootchart.org). Bootchart will capture you boot time from when init starts (init? See below) till its finished loading your system up. It also provides visualization so you can see potential bottlenecks. My initial setups bootchart is below.



Note: I will describe a basic simplified overview of the boot process. When you turn on your computer the BIOS starts up and after initializing some parts of your PC, it hands over control to the bootloader. The bootloader then loads the Linux kernel and hands control to the kernel. The kernel then executes init a program that starts and manages services. After its finished loading up all services specified a login prompt is displayed. To reduce the time it takes to boot we need to reduce the time it takes in any of these stages. For the most part there is little you can do to reduce the time it take for the BIOS to go from power on to bootloader though generally this is only a 1-2 seconds anyway. And the bootloaders life is extremely short lived since it only loads and executes the kernel, so all the optimization tips I will discuss in this article are going to center on the kernel and init parts of the boot sequence.

The First Step

As you can see X gets started twice, which is a major time waster. So I decided to look into disabling that, and as I was googling I found an interesting feature disable by default in Fedora 4 called “early-login”. This enables you to only start X once and allows a user to start logging in while other services are still starting in the background. This both reduces the actual boot up time and the user impression of boot time (Since they can log in earlier it seems to boot up faster even though it still booting up in the background). To enable, type the following:

[As root]
# chkconfig --add gdm-early-login
# chkconfig --add gdm-allow-login
# chkconfig gdm-early-login on
# chkconfig gdm-allow-login on

I also wanted to reduce the number of services I was running there by reducing the number of things that need to start at boot. Below is a list of services I decided was only needed for what I do on my personal desktop Fedora machine. The services you need may vary:

acpid
anacron
atd
crond
cups
cups-config-daemon
gpm
haldaemon
iptables
messagebus
netfs
network
portmap
syslog

As you can see I disabled kudzu (bootup hardware detection, saves a second of time), auditd (I also disabled selinux), rhnsd (red hat network update daemon), and sendmail. I personally use yum to do updates and will weekly check for them, I rarely make changes to my hardware but can add hardware on my own if needed, and I think selinux is overkill for a personal desktop machine. You can do this by going to Desktop->System Tools->Server Settings->Services and de-selecting services to disable. Then when you are done click done.

Below is what the boot looked with these changes. Wow, as you can see we went from 41 seconds in bootchart to 25 seconds. But with my stopwatch we where looking at 34 seconds of boot time from boot loader to login screen. Definitely better, but can we see even quicker boot times? I wanted to find out.



Note: What was interesting with my system is in the time X took to start and display a login screen, it was finished loading up all background services. So I could literally log in right away as soon as the login prompt was displayed. Since I did not test this on any other machines this behavior maybe localized to my system or similarly configured PCs as mine.
Drivers and Modprobe

The boot up time is also consumed by loading additional kernel modules as you can see with the modprobe bar in the boot chart. So I decided to reduce the number of kernel modules that had to be loaded by compiling them into the kernel. To do this you will need kernel source of course, and will need to take an inventory of what drivers you need on your machine. I also compiled the ext3 file system into the kernel so this didn’t need to be loaded either. I also reduced the number of drivers / modules in my kernel, by disabling the ones I did not use (for starters wireless lan, SCSI raid controllers, console frame buffer [they use to conflict with nvidia driver, do not know if this is still the case], selinux, and some of the misc. filesystems (amiga fs?). Below is an overview of the changes I made to the kernel:

Ext3
USB driver (on my system OHCI, EHCI)
Removed Selinux and auditing system calls feature
Compiled in Drivers, Ex. Parallel Port, Floppy, and others
Compiled in some features that where originally in module form.

This distribution was based on the latest kernel release for Fedora, 2.6.12-390.
So I compiled, rebooted, and below the results…24 and change. I am now at 18 seconds in boot chart, but now we are at little more than 24 seconds for total boot time using my stopwatch.



Did I stop there? Of course not, but nothing else more I tried worked. So I will have to write a follow-up article if I find anything more. Below are some things I tried which had little effect:
Recompiled the X server with custom optimization for my processor. My aim was to reduce the X servers start time, but this did very little.
Compiled the kernel with size optimization instead. My aim here was to reduce the size of the kernel (which it did) and to potentially speed up the kernel load time (less of a kernel to load). This did nothing either.


Conclusion

And there is my story for 24 second boot time in Fedora on standard PC hardware. I really think I’m onto something with compiling some of the kernel modules into the kernel. Why would ext3 filesystem not be compiled in anyway? It is the default file system for Fedora. Ext2 is compiled in.Hope you enjoyed!! Read More

Blackboard Communications Systems announced Wednesday that it would be partnering with Sony to begin developing contactless identity card systems in the U.S. Blackboard designs "one-card" systems for campus transactions, bridging financial, data, access, and authentication systems into a single "network transaction environment."

The company's swipe-able card systems are in place in many academic institutions across the globe. By partnering with Sony, and utilizing its successful FeliCa system, Blackboard systems will be able to produce student identifications that work like SpeedPass and EZPay.


FeliCa works on the industry standard Near Field Communication (NFC) protocol, which has been successfully integrated with door access readers, point-of-sale terminals, cell phones, as well as other attended and unattended devices. And not just Sony devices either: mass transit systems in Japan, China, Thailand, India, The Phillipines, and Hong Kong all utilize FeliCa chips in various capacities for fares and ticketing.

In addition to protected financial transactions, a contactless identification card system is able to take student attendance, and grant them access only to approved areas.

With headlines of school shootings becoming an almost weekly occurence, on-campus security measures have become a major concern for students, parents and faculty in American learning institutions. The need for an efficient emergency announcement system and an effective means to remotely "lock down" a campus were especially apparent after the Virginia Tech shootings in April.

If Sony's FeliCa technology is placed in students' phones, like the "Osaifu-Keitai" marketed by NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and Softbank Mobile in Japan, students could start using the Blackboard system not only as a key, identification and credit card, but also as a system to send SMS updates to all students in the event of an emergency lockdown, or on a more positive note, for a snow day.

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Ticketmaster and Apple said Wednesday that they had formed a partnership where digital albums of artists would be sold alongside concert tickets on Ticketmaster.com. About 700 artists including Kanye West, Keith Urban and Bon Jovi would be the first to take advantage of the tie-in on the ticketing site. As a promotion, albums sold at Tickmaster and redeemed through iTunes would be cheaper by $1 through December 29.

The promotion would compliment another that the two companies have launched at Target. A $50 iTunes card is available at that retailer, which gives a $25 credit towards a purchase at ticketmaster.com along with $25 in iTunes credits. This isn't the first time Apple has joined forces with the ticket seller: in 2005 it sold pre-sale tickets for a Depeche Mode concert alongside the band's newest album at that time.

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Prism is an application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop. It lets users add their favorite web apps to their desktop environment. They are accessible with Control-Tab, Command-Tab, and Exposé, just like desktop apps. And users can still access these same applications from any web browser when they are away from their own computers.

Mozilla Prism has the following other editions available: Mozilla Prism for Windows and Mozilla Prism for Max OS X.

Screenshot


Homepage

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