I've just had a bit of a surprise when I realised how long I've been using Linux as my main operating system.
"How long?" I hear you ask...
Thirteen years.
Yes folks, thirteen years!
Around the time that Windows XP was released, I'd switched to Linux as a "can I use it full time" experiment, and never went back.
These days I'm not even dual booting, Ubuntu is the only OS on my computer, and it does everything I need at present - (I'm not a huge gamer). I'll admit, I have got a Windows XP virtual machine, but in all honesty it doesn't get used and will probably be deleted if I start running low on disk space.
In that time I'd started off using Mandrake Linux, switched to Slackware (which I used for a good number of years) before switching to Ubuntu. I never found any good reason to switch back to Slackware - so I've been using that ever since.
It's true what they say, "Time flies when you're having fun..."
Showing posts with label Linux. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Linux. Show all posts
Thursday, 2 October 2014
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
Linux on Fujitsu Amilo Li 1705
Earlier this year I bought a Fujitsu Amilo Li 1705 and I've been wanting to get Linux working properly on it, as it would make a handy portable development system.
As I've just upgraded the CPU from a single core Celeron M to a proper Dual Core processor, I was keen to see how well Linux ran on it, especially as it had made a HUGE difference when running Vista.
It goes without saying that these days installing Linux is a lot less painful than it used to be. In fact, in most instances you can go through the entire install and configuration process without ever touching a command line.
Ubuntu can even take away the agony of partitioning. Using the Wubi application downloads the install files, creates a loopback file system, and configures your Windows boot menu to allow you to install Linux without having to do anything scary with your existing system. You can even uninstall it from add/remove programs.
Once you boot into your new "Ubuntu" option then the install proper takes place, and one reboot later you are the proud parent of a bouncing baby Linux.
End to end the install took less than half an hour. Uninstalling takes a few seconds.
Logging into Ubuntu for the first time it is time to go through the checklists:
Has the correct graphics driver and screen mode been selected? Yes.
Is 3D acceleration working? Yes.
Do we have sound? Yes.
How about wireless networking? Yes again.
Is CD Burning working? Sure is.
How about playing DVDs? Oh dear.
There is an art to getting DVD playback working on Linux. Thankfully the process for doing so in Ubuntu is extremely well documented and it only takes a few minutes to install the necessary packages.
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh
Sadly although the DVD started to play the media player crashed. Not only did it crash, but it took out the window manager too, leaving me back at the login screen.
Installing VLC and trying to play DVDs through that had much the same result. After a bit of fiddling I was able to find a video driver within VLC that didn't crash within a few seconds. However playback was extremely stuttery and stalled within ten minutes.
Trying to install a basic 3D game also showed problems - Saurbrauten was running at a less than impressive 2fps.
The strange thing is that in Windows the 3D isn't that bad, and DVD playback works fine. So what is going wrong?
Web browsing was also a bit hit-and-miss, with various crashes and lockups (usually when playing video, but sometimes when playing music).
After a bit of a search I found the problem is down to the graphics drivers - a Via Chrome9 HLC - a reasonably common choice for laptops and netbooks. Not exactly a 3D powerhouse but no-where near as bad as Ubuntu was making it appear.
The driver that is installed is the OpenChrome open source driver. This provides 2D and 3D acceleration for the Chrome9 driver. Badly.
This isn't meant as a dig at the team that are doing the drivers. The fact that the drivers work at all is no mean feat. However they certainly not stable enough for every-day use. As development appears to have stalled in 2009 I'm not exactly holding my breath for bug fixes.
That said, VIA do provide (limited) support for Linux, and do have a set of drivers available to download at their linux portal.
The problem is that the drivers don't work with the latest Ubuntu release - so for now it is back to Unbuntu 10.10 (the latest supported one) to test their drivers. As the drivers are dated April 2011 it looks like they are still supporting them.
One uninstall and re-install of Ubuntu later. . .
OK, so once we've installed Ubuntu 10.10 and downloaded the drivers let's install them:
The current version is 5.75.32.87a-u1010-55689.tar.bz2. Enter the following:
tar -jxf 5.75.32.87a-u1010-55689.tar.bz2
cd 5.75.32.87a-u1010-55689
cd 5.75.32.87a-u1010-55689
sudo ./vinstall
Once the install has completed a reboot should be all it takes to get things working.
Well, this is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand the drivers have fixed the crashing during DVD playback, and 3D is now running an awful lot faster. On the downside the screen resolution is entirely wrong and the Monitors option refuses to allow you to change it.
As a side note, recent Ubuntu releases don't need an xorg.conf (the X11 configuration file), and do a damn good job of detecting what graphics card / monitor resolutions are available to you. As part of the VIA driver install an xorg.conf is created in /etc/X11. We can use this to add our "missing" resolutions.
So, how do we find our missing modes?
Open a command prompt and enter the following:
cvt 1024 768 60
This returns the following:
# 1024x768 59.92 Hz (CVT 0.79M3) hsync: 47.82 kHz; pclk: 63.50 MHz
Modeline "1024x768_60.00" 63.50 1024 1072 1176 1328 768 771 775 798 -hsync +vsync
Now, we need to edit our xorg.conf file.
sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
We are looking for the currently enabled display.
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "CRT"
Option "Enable" "true"
EndSection
We'll need to edit this section to add in our missing mode. I've also added in some of the other standard resolutions.
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "CRT"
Option "Enable" "true"
Modeline "1280x800_60.00" 83.50 1280 1352 1480 1680 800 803 809 831 -hsync +vsync
Modeline "1024x768_60.00" 63.50 1024 1072 1176 1328 768 771 775 798 -hsync +vsync
Modeline "800x600_60.00" 38.25 800 832 912 1024 600 603 607 624 -hsync +vsync
Modeline "640x480_60.00" 23.75 640 664 720 800 480 483 487 500 -hsync +vsync
Option "PreferredMode" "1280x800_60.00"
EndSection
The final line of the section selects which of our modes we are going to use. In our case we want the 1280x800 one.
One restart of X11 later and YES! We are running in full-screen! 3D now works at a reasonable speed (not stunning, but it does work). DVD playback also works - and by selecting the X11 driver in the VLC preferences it doesn't max out the CPU either. Result!
Using VIA's own drivers has changed my Ubuntu install from being basically unusable, to a pretty stable one.
After four hours of testing (I played a couple of DVDs, browsed the web, listened to some music and basically did all the regular things that I want a laptop to do) there were no crashes or lockups.
I was even able to enable the extra desktop effects such as "wobbly windows". All in all it is very nice indeed.
Once VIA release drivers for 11.04 I should be able to upgrade to that. But there isn't any rush for now.
Update
As the legendary comic Jimmy Cricket often said: There's more...
Updating the kernel reverts the drivers back to the OpenChrome ones. You can, of course, re-install the VIA ones, but there is a little extra to do this time.
We'll need to re-compile the kernel modules for the current kernel version, and then re-run the install routine. So in the directory where we expanded the drivers:
cd 5.75.32.87a-u1010-55689/5.75.32.87a-u1010-55689/VIA_Chrome9/
sudo make
cd ..
sudo ./vinstall
Now, we'll need to copy our configuration file back:
cd /etc/X11
sudo cp xorg.conf.viabak xorg.conf
Now, reboot and everything should (hopefully) be working again!
Notes:
One thing that I have found is that changing resolution (ie a game trying to set full-screen 800x600) stuffs the display. As soon as I find a fix then I'll update the article.
As I've just upgraded the CPU from a single core Celeron M to a proper Dual Core processor, I was keen to see how well Linux ran on it, especially as it had made a HUGE difference when running Vista.
It goes without saying that these days installing Linux is a lot less painful than it used to be. In fact, in most instances you can go through the entire install and configuration process without ever touching a command line.
Ubuntu can even take away the agony of partitioning. Using the Wubi application downloads the install files, creates a loopback file system, and configures your Windows boot menu to allow you to install Linux without having to do anything scary with your existing system. You can even uninstall it from add/remove programs.Once you boot into your new "Ubuntu" option then the install proper takes place, and one reboot later you are the proud parent of a bouncing baby Linux.
End to end the install took less than half an hour. Uninstalling takes a few seconds.
Logging into Ubuntu for the first time it is time to go through the checklists:
Has the correct graphics driver and screen mode been selected? Yes.
Is 3D acceleration working? Yes.
Do we have sound? Yes.
How about wireless networking? Yes again.
Is CD Burning working? Sure is.
How about playing DVDs? Oh dear.
There is an art to getting DVD playback working on Linux. Thankfully the process for doing so in Ubuntu is extremely well documented and it only takes a few minutes to install the necessary packages.
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh
Sadly although the DVD started to play the media player crashed. Not only did it crash, but it took out the window manager too, leaving me back at the login screen.
Installing VLC and trying to play DVDs through that had much the same result. After a bit of fiddling I was able to find a video driver within VLC that didn't crash within a few seconds. However playback was extremely stuttery and stalled within ten minutes.
Trying to install a basic 3D game also showed problems - Saurbrauten was running at a less than impressive 2fps.
The strange thing is that in Windows the 3D isn't that bad, and DVD playback works fine. So what is going wrong?
Web browsing was also a bit hit-and-miss, with various crashes and lockups (usually when playing video, but sometimes when playing music).
After a bit of a search I found the problem is down to the graphics drivers - a Via Chrome9 HLC - a reasonably common choice for laptops and netbooks. Not exactly a 3D powerhouse but no-where near as bad as Ubuntu was making it appear.
The driver that is installed is the OpenChrome open source driver. This provides 2D and 3D acceleration for the Chrome9 driver. Badly.
This isn't meant as a dig at the team that are doing the drivers. The fact that the drivers work at all is no mean feat. However they certainly not stable enough for every-day use. As development appears to have stalled in 2009 I'm not exactly holding my breath for bug fixes.
That said, VIA do provide (limited) support for Linux, and do have a set of drivers available to download at their linux portal.
The problem is that the drivers don't work with the latest Ubuntu release - so for now it is back to Unbuntu 10.10 (the latest supported one) to test their drivers. As the drivers are dated April 2011 it looks like they are still supporting them.
One uninstall and re-install of Ubuntu later. . .
OK, so once we've installed Ubuntu 10.10 and downloaded the drivers let's install them:
The current version is 5.75.32.87a-u1010-55689.tar.bz2. Enter the following:
tar -jxf 5.75.32.87a-u1010-55689.tar.bz2
cd 5.75.32.87a-u1010-55689
cd 5.75.32.87a-u1010-55689
sudo ./vinstall
Once the install has completed a reboot should be all it takes to get things working.
Well, this is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand the drivers have fixed the crashing during DVD playback, and 3D is now running an awful lot faster. On the downside the screen resolution is entirely wrong and the Monitors option refuses to allow you to change it.
As a side note, recent Ubuntu releases don't need an xorg.conf (the X11 configuration file), and do a damn good job of detecting what graphics card / monitor resolutions are available to you. As part of the VIA driver install an xorg.conf is created in /etc/X11. We can use this to add our "missing" resolutions.
So, how do we find our missing modes?
Open a command prompt and enter the following:
cvt 1024 768 60
This returns the following:
# 1024x768 59.92 Hz (CVT 0.79M3) hsync: 47.82 kHz; pclk: 63.50 MHz
Modeline "1024x768_60.00" 63.50 1024 1072 1176 1328 768 771 775 798 -hsync +vsync
Now, we need to edit our xorg.conf file.
sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
We are looking for the currently enabled display.
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "CRT"
Option "Enable" "true"
EndSection
We'll need to edit this section to add in our missing mode. I've also added in some of the other standard resolutions.
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "CRT"
Option "Enable" "true"
Modeline "1280x800_60.00" 83.50 1280 1352 1480 1680 800 803 809 831 -hsync +vsync
Modeline "1024x768_60.00" 63.50 1024 1072 1176 1328 768 771 775 798 -hsync +vsync
Modeline "800x600_60.00" 38.25 800 832 912 1024 600 603 607 624 -hsync +vsync
Modeline "640x480_60.00" 23.75 640 664 720 800 480 483 487 500 -hsync +vsync
Option "PreferredMode" "1280x800_60.00"
EndSection
The final line of the section selects which of our modes we are going to use. In our case we want the 1280x800 one.
One restart of X11 later and YES! We are running in full-screen! 3D now works at a reasonable speed (not stunning, but it does work). DVD playback also works - and by selecting the X11 driver in the VLC preferences it doesn't max out the CPU either. Result!
Using VIA's own drivers has changed my Ubuntu install from being basically unusable, to a pretty stable one.
After four hours of testing (I played a couple of DVDs, browsed the web, listened to some music and basically did all the regular things that I want a laptop to do) there were no crashes or lockups.
I was even able to enable the extra desktop effects such as "wobbly windows". All in all it is very nice indeed.
Once VIA release drivers for 11.04 I should be able to upgrade to that. But there isn't any rush for now.
Update
As the legendary comic Jimmy Cricket often said: There's more...
Updating the kernel reverts the drivers back to the OpenChrome ones. You can, of course, re-install the VIA ones, but there is a little extra to do this time.
We'll need to re-compile the kernel modules for the current kernel version, and then re-run the install routine. So in the directory where we expanded the drivers:
cd 5.75.32.87a-u1010-55689/5.75.32.87a-u1010-55689/VIA_Chrome9/
sudo make
cd ..
sudo ./vinstall
Now, we'll need to copy our configuration file back:
cd /etc/X11
sudo cp xorg.conf.viabak xorg.conf
Now, reboot and everything should (hopefully) be working again!
Notes:
One thing that I have found is that changing resolution (ie a game trying to set full-screen 800x600) stuffs the display. As soon as I find a fix then I'll update the article.
Sunday, 17 October 2010
Serious Sam The First Encounter on Ubuntu 10.10
Whilst having a hunt through some things that I had placed in storage a couple of years ago (and then forgot about) I happened across my original CD of Serious Sam - The First Encounter.
As this is one of the games where Loki games provided a proper Linux installer for it I thought I'd give it a bit of a blast.
Problem 1 - Tracking down the installer.
This should have been easy - ie. go to the Croteam website and download the installer, right?
Nope. They had some archived patches for a Linux installation, but not the damn installer - or if the do have it they've hidden it well.
I eventually tracked down the installer here:
Loki Installers for Linux Games
Problem 2 - Installation
So far, so good. Apart from the fact that the installer doesn't work (at least, not without some effort).
So here is a quick rundown on how to get the installer working.
First, move the installer into its own directory:
mkdir ssam
mv serious.sam.tfe_1.05beta3-english-2.run ssam
cd ssam
chmod +x serious.sam.tfe_1.05beta3-english-2.run
Make sure the original Windows CD is in your drive. And if you want you can try and run the installer.
./serious.sam.tfe_1.05beta3-english-2.run
If you are lucky it might work. If so then go, play, enjoy. See you later.
However, you may well find that you see the following:
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing Serious Sam: The First Encounter 1.05beta3-english-2 Installer.............................
after which you are back at the terminal prompt.
If this is the case, then you can try the following, which worked for me.
./serious.sam.tfe_1.05beta3-english-2.run --tar xvf
sudo ./setup.data/bin/Linux/x86/setup
And that should be it. The installer should run and you can choose where to install it and finally play the game!
As this is one of the games where Loki games provided a proper Linux installer for it I thought I'd give it a bit of a blast.
Problem 1 - Tracking down the installer.
This should have been easy - ie. go to the Croteam website and download the installer, right?
Nope. They had some archived patches for a Linux installation, but not the damn installer - or if the do have it they've hidden it well.
I eventually tracked down the installer here:
Loki Installers for Linux Games
Problem 2 - Installation
So far, so good. Apart from the fact that the installer doesn't work (at least, not without some effort).
So here is a quick rundown on how to get the installer working.
First, move the installer into its own directory:
mkdir ssam
mv serious.sam.tfe_1.05beta3-english-2.run ssam
cd ssam
chmod +x serious.sam.tfe_1.05beta3-english-2.run
Make sure the original Windows CD is in your drive. And if you want you can try and run the installer.
./serious.sam.tfe_1.05beta3-english-2.run
If you are lucky it might work. If so then go, play, enjoy. See you later.
However, you may well find that you see the following:
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing Serious Sam: The First Encounter 1.05beta3-english-2 Installer.............................
after which you are back at the terminal prompt.
If this is the case, then you can try the following, which worked for me.
./serious.sam.tfe_1.05beta3-english-2.run --tar xvf
sudo ./setup.data/bin/Linux/x86/setup
And that should be it. The installer should run and you can choose where to install it and finally play the game!
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
Yet Another Linux vs Windows comparison: USB Bluetooth Adapter
OK, so you probably know the drill by now. We're going to plug a random device into our PC (dual booting between Windows XP and Ubuntu 10.04) and let's see what happens...
Excited? Thought not!
Still, onwards and upwards. This time is the turn of a cheap and cheerful USB Bluetooth adapter - sourced from our local PoundWorld store for the princely sum of £1. Yes, one single solitary pound! Bargain or what?
A LiveWire Bluetooth USB Dongle, Yesterday
Starting with Ubuntu, let's plug in and see how we go. Installation was straight forward - a few seconds after plugging the adapter in, a Bluetooth icon appeared on the status bar. Clicking on the icon gives us the option to "Set up device". One short scan later I'd added my phone, had clicked "Browse files on device" (also from the Bluetooth menu) and was copying my photos onto my PC. Nice.
Now for XP. After plugging the device in drivers were automatically installed, including a modem driver to allow me to access the internet using the mobile (in the event that my broadband had died). Of course, being Windows XP a reboot was required before the adapter was ready for action.
Once it was installed a Bluetooth icon appeared on the menu, and much like on Linux it only took a couple of clicks to link to my phone. Now, this is where the Windows XP Bluetooth misses out a bit - there was an option to Send a file, another to Receive a file (and options to connect to a Bluetooth network) but nothing to browse the files on the mobile. Hopefully this is something that will have been improved on for Vista / Windows 7. Luckily, having a Nokia phone meant that I could download the rather nifty Nokia PC Suite - which is an rather nice tool for connecting and synchronising with your mobile phone.
When all is said and done there really isn't much to choose between the two, although Ubuntu does win out by doing a little more "out of the box".
Not bad for a little £1 adapter.
Excited? Thought not!
Still, onwards and upwards. This time is the turn of a cheap and cheerful USB Bluetooth adapter - sourced from our local PoundWorld store for the princely sum of £1. Yes, one single solitary pound! Bargain or what?
A LiveWire Bluetooth USB Dongle, Yesterday
Starting with Ubuntu, let's plug in and see how we go. Installation was straight forward - a few seconds after plugging the adapter in, a Bluetooth icon appeared on the status bar. Clicking on the icon gives us the option to "Set up device". One short scan later I'd added my phone, had clicked "Browse files on device" (also from the Bluetooth menu) and was copying my photos onto my PC. Nice.
Now for XP. After plugging the device in drivers were automatically installed, including a modem driver to allow me to access the internet using the mobile (in the event that my broadband had died). Of course, being Windows XP a reboot was required before the adapter was ready for action.
Once it was installed a Bluetooth icon appeared on the menu, and much like on Linux it only took a couple of clicks to link to my phone. Now, this is where the Windows XP Bluetooth misses out a bit - there was an option to Send a file, another to Receive a file (and options to connect to a Bluetooth network) but nothing to browse the files on the mobile. Hopefully this is something that will have been improved on for Vista / Windows 7. Luckily, having a Nokia phone meant that I could download the rather nifty Nokia PC Suite - which is an rather nice tool for connecting and synchronising with your mobile phone.
When all is said and done there really isn't much to choose between the two, although Ubuntu does win out by doing a little more "out of the box".
Not bad for a little £1 adapter.
Friday, 29 May 2009
Thoughts on Unix File System Structure
There is a school of thought that believes that the Unix File System layout (or Filesystem Heirarchy Standard) is needlessly complicated. Some would go as far as to claim that it is fundementally broken.
The recent post on OSNews by Thom Holwerda (and especially many of the comments) provide some good examples of the perceived problems and the oft touted solutions.
There is a counter argument though, which goes something like this: "the Unix File System has been evolving for well over 30 years, isn't it strange that no-one noticed just how broken it is?"
Let's look at some of the arguments for and against the current system.
To make this easier, I'll pick up on some of the comments and see if they can be answered.
One quick point. In most cases I'm going to refer to Unix where this covers all Unix based operating systems. If I say something specific to GNU/Linux or another operating system then I'll name it.
I'm just trying to explain that many people are put off diving further into the intricacies of the computer simply because of how daunting everything is. By making a system easy to use and understand not only at the very highest level (the UI) but also all the levels below that, we might enable more people to actually *understand* their computers better, which would be beneficial to *all* of us.
I am of the strong belief that there is no sane reason WHATSOEVER why we couldn't make computers easier to use and understand on ALL levels, and not just at the top - other than geek job security.
This is a good place to start. The layout is there to simplify maintenance of the system, not to complicate it. This is nothing to do with "Job Security" - more to do with making a usable, maintainable system. Having people dipping into the OS structure (whether it be Windows, Unix or MacOS) would create MORE work for the support geek, not less.
I'll give you a real life example. Around ten years ago I installed Linux for a friend. This was back in the days that installing it was still a bit of an art. At the time getting XWindows up and running was cause for celebration, and as for working sound, IN YOUR DREAMS BUDDY!
After an hour or so of fiddling around with the config files, xf86config (remember that?), making sure that the correct packages were installed I gave him a quick run-though of how the system worked. As he had come from a DOS/Windows background I'd configured everything to look pretty similar, and showed how the basic commands worked (use "ls" instead of "dir", "cd" works about the same, "rm" instead of "del" and so forth) and gave a quick guided tour of XWindows, X11Amp and the other installed goodies.
He collared me the next day: "I thought you said this Linux stuff was stable. I restarted it and now I can't get back in! It's shit!"
On further investigation what he had done became apparent. He'd had a wander through the file system, picked some files that "didn't look important" (including /etc/passwd in this case) and deleted them to free up a bit of space.
This doesn't just happen with Linux. A year or so later the Telecoms manager at my company phoned me because his PC wouldn't boot any more. He'd been trying to upgrade Internet Explorer to the latest version and had run out of space on his C:\ drive. He'd managed to find a folder that didn't look that important but "had a lot of stuff in" it that he "didn't need" and deleted it. His PC had crashed part-way through and now it wouldn't start any more. Sadly the junk folder he'd chosen was called C:\WINDOWS.
OK, so these are vaguely amusing war stories but what is my point? Well, my point is this: Users don't understand operating systems. I'd go as far as to say that they shouldn't actually have to. In the majority of cases the best thing that a user can do is to not mess with the underlying OS at all. Hiding as much of it as possible from them is A Very Good Thing Indeed.
As is traditional at this point, lets turn to our old friend the analogy. Many people drive cars. You sit down, turn the ignition, grab the steering wheel, press down the accellerator and off you go (yes, I know that there is a little more to it than that, but you get the general idea). Now, how many drivers could strip an engine? How about the gears, know how they work? Could you strip the gearbox down if you needed to and reassemble it in a working condition afterwards?
The fact is that you don't need to know the mechanics of a car in order to drive one. Although anyone could pop open the bonnet and have a root around inside most people don't. If there is a problem, they take it to a garage.
Of course, some people DO tinker with their cars. They take a great deal of pride in being able to maintain and even customise their car. Is what they do easy? Of course not. Can anyone do it? No. Only an idiot would imagine that everyone can do everything, some degree of knowledge or learning may be required. This isn't meant to be an insult, but it is a fact.
To come back to the point of the analogy, is the Car any less useful because people don't understand how it works? Of course not.
This follows through to computers. Most people can use their computer quite happily with no idea of the underlying mechanisms. If they have problems then they can get in touch with their friendly neighbourhood technician. There is nothing stopping them learning about it if they want, just don't expect it to be easy. Just like a car, an operating system (and its component parts) is made to fulfil a function, not to be played around with.
pulseaudio is yet another layer on top of a broken audio foundation. Adding layers does not make things better, it just hides it a little longer.
Another good example of mistaken thinking. Abstraction can be a very good thing, and pulseaudio is an excellent example of this. Let's see how this works.
Just for the same of argument, lets say we were trying to write a simple audio player on GNU/Linux. Now, how do you make it play sounds? At a very basic level you might write directly to /dev/dsp. So now your app plays sounds. It might lock the /dev/dsp device but hey, this is just a simple example.
Let's up the stakes a bit and try and port the app to, say, Windows. What happened to /dev/dsp? It doesn't exist. How about MacOS X? Nope, not likely to work here either.
How does this relate to abstraction? Well, if our audio app uses pulseaudio to plays its sound it will now work on any platform that pulseaudio is supported on. For something like KDE that is aiming to be a cross platform environment this makes coding your apps an awful lot easier.
In other words the GNU/Linux audio foundation isn't broken, it just doesn't exist on Windows.
Why bin? Because that's where your 'binaries' are, right? oh, except there are programs now that are text files run through an interpreter, so that doesn't really apply. A user's files aren't under /usr, my webserver by default isn't under /svr, it's under /var/www. /etc? Yeah, something about etcetera really says 'config files'. Seriously, who thought /etc was a good name?
This is the biggie. To answer this, it is necessary to look at and understand where Unix came from.
First, another quick experiment. Try and find a Unix reference manual from any time in the last twenty years or so. The command references are still likely to work. Any shell scripts (providing you are using the modern version of the same interpreter) are also likely to work without any changes.
In the earliest days of Unix space was at a premium. Shorter command names meant shorter scripts (and less space in the file allocation tables). This is why the "base" commands are only two characters long, for example, "ls", "cd", "rm", "du" and so forth. Although we don't have the same physical limits these days there are a lot of scripts out there that rely on the short versions of the file names. Keeping them the same means that people don't have to re-learn all their skills with each new release of the OS (something that Microsoft could learn from).
This also follows through to the file system layout (again, I'm going to simplify this a bit, but hopefully you'll get the idea).
At the root of our Unix system we find these main folders:
These are the most basic parts of your Unix system. These are the base commands and libraries that are required to give you a bootable system with access to a network.
Moving down the tree, we come to /usr.
This is the next level up. /usr is NOT where user files are stored, or for user generated versions of applications. In this case "usr" stands for Unix System Resources (although originally this was the location of users home directories). This is where the vendor provided files live (the stuff that isn't part of the standard base files). For those who argue about everything being shoved into /usr by Ubuntu, RedHat or whoever, this is actually where they SHOULD go. Anything in here should have been provided by the distro maintainers. Between / and /USR that should contain everything that your operating system needs. All applications, all configuration files, everything.
So what about /usr/local?
The /usr/local section of the file system is where any binaries that YOU create are stored, along with their configuration files. If you wanted to create a custom version of any application it should appear in here. This keeps your stuff separate from what the vendor provides, and in theory prevents you from permanently damaging the operating system. If you do manage to balls things up totally then deleting /usr/local should be enough to fix it again (as all the vendor provided files should still be intact and untouched).
Another benefit of this approach is that once your root system is installed, the actual location of /usr becomes irelevent. It could just as easily be on a shared network drive as it could be on your local disk. If disk space is at a premium this can be a very effective way of working. It also means that every users has the same base system, because they are running the same apps from the same place.
OK, so thats not as useful for a single user system, but it is still functionality that is used in some places. Just because YOU don't use it, doesn't mean it isn't useful.
Before anyone pipes up yes, I am fully aware of /opt, /var, /tmp, /dev and so forth. All of these have their uses, but are not relevent for the purposes of this discussion.
That's a big giant gaping hole in Linux, not in Thom's proposed filesystem layout. There's no such distrinction in a Linux distro, as there's no such thing as "the OS" vs "the user apps". Once someone gets the balls to stand up and say "this is the OS" and package it separately from "the user apps", the FHS will never change.
Actually GNU/Linux and Unix already does separate the OS from the User Apps. Remember our three levels? The bottom level is the OS - the bit you need to get a working system (ie. /bin /sbin /lib and so on). Anything in /usr or above is a user app. Yes, you may see XFree86 as essential, but GNU/Linux can run without it. Same for Mozilla, and FireFox and anything else in /usr or /usr/local.
* * *
The biggest problem there is with operating systems in general (not just GNU/Linux) is that for some reason people assume that it should all be easy. The desktop is easy to use therefore the underlying system should also be easy to use.
This is a very strange form of logic. Simplifying where necessary is a good thing, providing it doesn't impact on functionality or reliability. To go back to our car analogy there would be an argument for simplifying the innards of the car to make it much easier to understand and maintain for the common user. As a thought experiment, let's try it.
Let's start with the gearbox. Much too complicated and a potential point of failure, choosing a good default gear should do away with the need for that. How about a petrol engine? All that internal combustion malarkey sounds a bit dangerous to me. Running a vehicle based on small controlled explosions? Stuff that for a game of soldiers! Let's replace that with an electric one. But wait, maybe some people don't understand how an electric motor works either. So on second thoughts, let's replace it with a pedal driven one.
Hmm, it's a bit heavy to pedal, so lets remove most of the metal bodywork, a canvass roof should suffice (plus it's easy to repair or replace).
Anti-lock brakes? They'd have to go as well. Disc brakes are much simpler. Power streering? Not really needed now, drop that too. We can also leave out the airbags as we won't be going that fast now anyway.
So what are we left with? Basically a four-wheeled bicycle. Handy in some circumstances, easy to maintain but not necessarily as useful as what we started with.
Yes, this is taking it to the extremes, but that is the equivalent of what people are suggesting is done to the Unix file system. Let's remove everything that we don't understand the reasons for and just use what is left. Sadly what is left may be easy to understand, but its functionality would likely be crippled.
* * *
Does any of this mean that people (like GoBoLinux for example) shouldn't experiment and try different things? Of course not. Finding new (and potentially better) ways of doing things is something that can end up as a benefit to everyone. But making changes for the sake of being different is not so good.
Looking closer at GoBoLinux it is adding one hell of a lot of complexity to the system in order to just keep things working (have a check of http://www.gobolinux.org/index.php?page=at_a_glance and ask yourself about all the symlinks), whilst loosing some of the benefits of the traditional Unix system.
Reading http://www.gobolinux.org/index.php?page=doc/articles/clueless gives plenty of information on why GoBoLinux have chosen their approach. It also re-inforces some of the points made above, especially with regard to the three-tier approach of traditional Unix.
* * *
In the end, used properly the current Unix File System Layout actually works rather well, changing to something else isn't going to solve the problems of people ignoring a standard. All it will achieve is change for the sake of it, and chances are some benefits will be lost in the process.
The recent post on OSNews by Thom Holwerda (and especially many of the comments) provide some good examples of the perceived problems and the oft touted solutions.
There is a counter argument though, which goes something like this: "the Unix File System has been evolving for well over 30 years, isn't it strange that no-one noticed just how broken it is?"
Let's look at some of the arguments for and against the current system.
To make this easier, I'll pick up on some of the comments and see if they can be answered.
One quick point. In most cases I'm going to refer to Unix where this covers all Unix based operating systems. If I say something specific to GNU/Linux or another operating system then I'll name it.
I'm just trying to explain that many people are put off diving further into the intricacies of the computer simply because of how daunting everything is. By making a system easy to use and understand not only at the very highest level (the UI) but also all the levels below that, we might enable more people to actually *understand* their computers better, which would be beneficial to *all* of us.
I am of the strong belief that there is no sane reason WHATSOEVER why we couldn't make computers easier to use and understand on ALL levels, and not just at the top - other than geek job security.
This is a good place to start. The layout is there to simplify maintenance of the system, not to complicate it. This is nothing to do with "Job Security" - more to do with making a usable, maintainable system. Having people dipping into the OS structure (whether it be Windows, Unix or MacOS) would create MORE work for the support geek, not less.
I'll give you a real life example. Around ten years ago I installed Linux for a friend. This was back in the days that installing it was still a bit of an art. At the time getting XWindows up and running was cause for celebration, and as for working sound, IN YOUR DREAMS BUDDY!
After an hour or so of fiddling around with the config files, xf86config (remember that?), making sure that the correct packages were installed I gave him a quick run-though of how the system worked. As he had come from a DOS/Windows background I'd configured everything to look pretty similar, and showed how the basic commands worked (use "ls" instead of "dir", "cd" works about the same, "rm" instead of "del" and so forth) and gave a quick guided tour of XWindows, X11Amp and the other installed goodies.
He collared me the next day: "I thought you said this Linux stuff was stable. I restarted it and now I can't get back in! It's shit!"
On further investigation what he had done became apparent. He'd had a wander through the file system, picked some files that "didn't look important" (including /etc/passwd in this case) and deleted them to free up a bit of space.
This doesn't just happen with Linux. A year or so later the Telecoms manager at my company phoned me because his PC wouldn't boot any more. He'd been trying to upgrade Internet Explorer to the latest version and had run out of space on his C:\ drive. He'd managed to find a folder that didn't look that important but "had a lot of stuff in" it that he "didn't need" and deleted it. His PC had crashed part-way through and now it wouldn't start any more. Sadly the junk folder he'd chosen was called C:\WINDOWS.
OK, so these are vaguely amusing war stories but what is my point? Well, my point is this: Users don't understand operating systems. I'd go as far as to say that they shouldn't actually have to. In the majority of cases the best thing that a user can do is to not mess with the underlying OS at all. Hiding as much of it as possible from them is A Very Good Thing Indeed.
As is traditional at this point, lets turn to our old friend the analogy. Many people drive cars. You sit down, turn the ignition, grab the steering wheel, press down the accellerator and off you go (yes, I know that there is a little more to it than that, but you get the general idea). Now, how many drivers could strip an engine? How about the gears, know how they work? Could you strip the gearbox down if you needed to and reassemble it in a working condition afterwards?
The fact is that you don't need to know the mechanics of a car in order to drive one. Although anyone could pop open the bonnet and have a root around inside most people don't. If there is a problem, they take it to a garage.
Of course, some people DO tinker with their cars. They take a great deal of pride in being able to maintain and even customise their car. Is what they do easy? Of course not. Can anyone do it? No. Only an idiot would imagine that everyone can do everything, some degree of knowledge or learning may be required. This isn't meant to be an insult, but it is a fact.
To come back to the point of the analogy, is the Car any less useful because people don't understand how it works? Of course not.
This follows through to computers. Most people can use their computer quite happily with no idea of the underlying mechanisms. If they have problems then they can get in touch with their friendly neighbourhood technician. There is nothing stopping them learning about it if they want, just don't expect it to be easy. Just like a car, an operating system (and its component parts) is made to fulfil a function, not to be played around with.
pulseaudio is yet another layer on top of a broken audio foundation. Adding layers does not make things better, it just hides it a little longer.
Another good example of mistaken thinking. Abstraction can be a very good thing, and pulseaudio is an excellent example of this. Let's see how this works.
Just for the same of argument, lets say we were trying to write a simple audio player on GNU/Linux. Now, how do you make it play sounds? At a very basic level you might write directly to /dev/dsp. So now your app plays sounds. It might lock the /dev/dsp device but hey, this is just a simple example.
Let's up the stakes a bit and try and port the app to, say, Windows. What happened to /dev/dsp? It doesn't exist. How about MacOS X? Nope, not likely to work here either.
How does this relate to abstraction? Well, if our audio app uses pulseaudio to plays its sound it will now work on any platform that pulseaudio is supported on. For something like KDE that is aiming to be a cross platform environment this makes coding your apps an awful lot easier.
In other words the GNU/Linux audio foundation isn't broken, it just doesn't exist on Windows.
Why bin? Because that's where your 'binaries' are, right? oh, except there are programs now that are text files run through an interpreter, so that doesn't really apply. A user's files aren't under /usr, my webserver by default isn't under /svr, it's under /var/www. /etc? Yeah, something about etcetera really says 'config files'. Seriously, who thought /etc was a good name?
This is the biggie. To answer this, it is necessary to look at and understand where Unix came from.
First, another quick experiment. Try and find a Unix reference manual from any time in the last twenty years or so. The command references are still likely to work. Any shell scripts (providing you are using the modern version of the same interpreter) are also likely to work without any changes.
In the earliest days of Unix space was at a premium. Shorter command names meant shorter scripts (and less space in the file allocation tables). This is why the "base" commands are only two characters long, for example, "ls", "cd", "rm", "du" and so forth. Although we don't have the same physical limits these days there are a lot of scripts out there that rely on the short versions of the file names. Keeping them the same means that people don't have to re-learn all their skills with each new release of the OS (something that Microsoft could learn from).
This also follows through to the file system layout (again, I'm going to simplify this a bit, but hopefully you'll get the idea).
At the root of our Unix system we find these main folders:
/ -- root
/bin -- binaries
/sbin -- system tools (ie. fdisk, hdparm, fsck)
/lib -- libraries
/etc -- configuration files / scripts / anything that doesn't fit
in the other directories
These are the most basic parts of your Unix system. These are the base commands and libraries that are required to give you a bootable system with access to a network.
Moving down the tree, we come to /usr.
/usr -- root
/usr/bin -- binaries
/usr/sbin -- system tools
/usr/lib -- libraries
/usr/etc -- configuration files / scripts / anything that doesn't fit
in the other directories
This is the next level up. /usr is NOT where user files are stored, or for user generated versions of applications. In this case "usr" stands for Unix System Resources (although originally this was the location of users home directories). This is where the vendor provided files live (the stuff that isn't part of the standard base files). For those who argue about everything being shoved into /usr by Ubuntu, RedHat or whoever, this is actually where they SHOULD go. Anything in here should have been provided by the distro maintainers. Between / and /USR that should contain everything that your operating system needs. All applications, all configuration files, everything.
So what about /usr/local?
/usr/local -- root
/usr/local/bin -- binaries
/usr/local/sbin -- system tools
/usr/local/lib -- libraries
/usr/local/etc -- configuration files / scripts / anything that doesn't fit
in the other directories
The /usr/local section of the file system is where any binaries that YOU create are stored, along with their configuration files. If you wanted to create a custom version of any application it should appear in here. This keeps your stuff separate from what the vendor provides, and in theory prevents you from permanently damaging the operating system. If you do manage to balls things up totally then deleting /usr/local should be enough to fix it again (as all the vendor provided files should still be intact and untouched).
Another benefit of this approach is that once your root system is installed, the actual location of /usr becomes irelevent. It could just as easily be on a shared network drive as it could be on your local disk. If disk space is at a premium this can be a very effective way of working. It also means that every users has the same base system, because they are running the same apps from the same place.
OK, so thats not as useful for a single user system, but it is still functionality that is used in some places. Just because YOU don't use it, doesn't mean it isn't useful.
Before anyone pipes up yes, I am fully aware of /opt, /var, /tmp, /dev and so forth. All of these have their uses, but are not relevent for the purposes of this discussion.
For a start, it has a gaping hole: he doesn't explain how you separate "System" from "Programs".
That's a big giant gaping hole in Linux, not in Thom's proposed filesystem layout. There's no such distrinction in a Linux distro, as there's no such thing as "the OS" vs "the user apps". Once someone gets the balls to stand up and say "this is the OS" and package it separately from "the user apps", the FHS will never change.
Actually GNU/Linux and Unix already does separate the OS from the User Apps. Remember our three levels? The bottom level is the OS - the bit you need to get a working system (ie. /bin /sbin /lib and so on). Anything in /usr or above is a user app. Yes, you may see XFree86 as essential, but GNU/Linux can run without it. Same for Mozilla, and FireFox and anything else in /usr or /usr/local.
* * *
The biggest problem there is with operating systems in general (not just GNU/Linux) is that for some reason people assume that it should all be easy. The desktop is easy to use therefore the underlying system should also be easy to use.
This is a very strange form of logic. Simplifying where necessary is a good thing, providing it doesn't impact on functionality or reliability. To go back to our car analogy there would be an argument for simplifying the innards of the car to make it much easier to understand and maintain for the common user. As a thought experiment, let's try it.
Let's start with the gearbox. Much too complicated and a potential point of failure, choosing a good default gear should do away with the need for that. How about a petrol engine? All that internal combustion malarkey sounds a bit dangerous to me. Running a vehicle based on small controlled explosions? Stuff that for a game of soldiers! Let's replace that with an electric one. But wait, maybe some people don't understand how an electric motor works either. So on second thoughts, let's replace it with a pedal driven one.
Hmm, it's a bit heavy to pedal, so lets remove most of the metal bodywork, a canvass roof should suffice (plus it's easy to repair or replace).
Anti-lock brakes? They'd have to go as well. Disc brakes are much simpler. Power streering? Not really needed now, drop that too. We can also leave out the airbags as we won't be going that fast now anyway.
So what are we left with? Basically a four-wheeled bicycle. Handy in some circumstances, easy to maintain but not necessarily as useful as what we started with.
Yes, this is taking it to the extremes, but that is the equivalent of what people are suggesting is done to the Unix file system. Let's remove everything that we don't understand the reasons for and just use what is left. Sadly what is left may be easy to understand, but its functionality would likely be crippled.
* * *
Does any of this mean that people (like GoBoLinux for example) shouldn't experiment and try different things? Of course not. Finding new (and potentially better) ways of doing things is something that can end up as a benefit to everyone. But making changes for the sake of being different is not so good.
Looking closer at GoBoLinux it is adding one hell of a lot of complexity to the system in order to just keep things working (have a check of http://www.gobolinux.org/index.php?page=at_a_glance and ask yourself about all the symlinks), whilst loosing some of the benefits of the traditional Unix system.
Reading http://www.gobolinux.org/index.php?page=doc/articles/clueless gives plenty of information on why GoBoLinux have chosen their approach. It also re-inforces some of the points made above, especially with regard to the three-tier approach of traditional Unix.
* * *
In the end, used properly the current Unix File System Layout actually works rather well, changing to something else isn't going to solve the problems of people ignoring a standard. All it will achieve is change for the sake of it, and chances are some benefits will be lost in the process.
Wednesday, 16 July 2008
Ubuntu DVD Writing Lockups
I switched to Ubuntu from Slackware a couple of weeks ago now, and most of my hardware worked off the bat (it is worth noting that it all worked OK in Slackware).
There were two casualties, one was my onboard network card, the other was my DVD Writer. Luckily I don't burn DVDs all the time, but this weekend when I tried (after installing K3B) I found that the computer locked solid part way into the burn. Everything was frozen: mouse, keyboard, network, the lot.
On testing I found that my CD Writer (I've got a CD Writer and a DVD writer installed - don't ask) worked fine, but the DVD burner locked the PC solid every time, even when doing a simulated burn.
So what is going wrong? Windows XP can burn DVDs without problems. Slackware Linux can also burn DVDs without breaking a sweat. Ubuntu 8.04 - nope.
A bit of research courtesy of Google revealed that a lot of people have had this problem - and there is a solution to it.
Chances are if you are having this issue then your motherboard has either a VIA or AMD based chipset (mine is a VIA). Ubuntu have changed the way that IDE drives are accessed, switching to new pata_via and pata_amd modules from the original via82cxxx and amd74xx ones.
There is a problem with these modules, and that is that for some reason if you have a 40-wire IDE cable (the old fashioned black and grey one) attached to your burner it will fail to work reliably. Switching to a new 80-wire one (blue, grey and black) fixes the problem.
I've got to admit, I'm not keen on this as a solution. If the module doesn't detect the hardware configuration properly but other operating systems do then that suggests an inherent problem with the modules.
A bit more research revealed this to be a likely cause.
So, while we look for an 80-wire IDE cable to test this with, can we get the burning working again?
Yes we can.
A forum post here (which also includes the info on the 80-wire cable) gives the following advice (tweaked for the 2.6.24-19 kernel).
BIG FAT WARNING - You are responsible for any changes you make to your system - back up anything important before continuing. . . . .
A big hint for this is to take advantage of the partition UUID when mapping your partitions.
You should see that Ubuntu has already mapped your root and swap partitions using UUID strings.
To convert your own fstab to UUIDs do the following (don't forget to take a copy of your existing fstab just-in-case):
1 - run the following command against the partition you want to change (change hdd7 to whatever your partition is), eg:
sudo vol_id /dev/hdd7
This will return the UUID of the partition.
c90cc868-2b06-4f77-9ddc-d0a7e16f200b
2 - Next, open your fstab and amend the parition line to include your UUID
sudo gedit /etc/fstab
Change the line as follows:
/dev/hdd7 /mnt/linstor1 reiserfs defaults,noatime,nodiratime,data=writeback 0 0
to
UUID=c90cc868-2b06-4f77-9ddc-d0a7e16f200b /mnt/linstor1 reiserfs defaults,noatime,nodiratime,data=writeback 0 0
The UUID is constant regardless of whether the partition is recognised as hd?? or sd??.
Update 1: I've managed to get hold of a spare 80 wire IDE cable, so once I get the chance to strip my PC down I'll put things back so I'm using the pata_via module and test burning again.
Update 2: Strange but true, I've already got an 80 wire IDE cable installed, but just to show willing I swapped it for the new one, removed the replacement modules, basically undid everything I'd done to fix the problem and rebooted.
And. . . . . . . . .
It still freezes when burning DVDs. So at the moment my only choice is to use the replacment modules (and next kernel upgrade I might have to re-compile them myself).
Not fun. Not fun at all.
There were two casualties, one was my onboard network card, the other was my DVD Writer. Luckily I don't burn DVDs all the time, but this weekend when I tried (after installing K3B) I found that the computer locked solid part way into the burn. Everything was frozen: mouse, keyboard, network, the lot.
On testing I found that my CD Writer (I've got a CD Writer and a DVD writer installed - don't ask) worked fine, but the DVD burner locked the PC solid every time, even when doing a simulated burn.
So what is going wrong? Windows XP can burn DVDs without problems. Slackware Linux can also burn DVDs without breaking a sweat. Ubuntu 8.04 - nope.
A bit of research courtesy of Google revealed that a lot of people have had this problem - and there is a solution to it.
Chances are if you are having this issue then your motherboard has either a VIA or AMD based chipset (mine is a VIA). Ubuntu have changed the way that IDE drives are accessed, switching to new pata_via and pata_amd modules from the original via82cxxx and amd74xx ones.
There is a problem with these modules, and that is that for some reason if you have a 40-wire IDE cable (the old fashioned black and grey one) attached to your burner it will fail to work reliably. Switching to a new 80-wire one (blue, grey and black) fixes the problem.
I've got to admit, I'm not keen on this as a solution. If the module doesn't detect the hardware configuration properly but other operating systems do then that suggests an inherent problem with the modules.
A bit more research revealed this to be a likely cause.
So, while we look for an 80-wire IDE cable to test this with, can we get the burning working again?
Yes we can.
A forum post here (which also includes the info on the 80-wire cable) gives the following advice (tweaked for the 2.6.24-19 kernel).
BIG FAT WARNING - You are responsible for any changes you make to your system - back up anything important before continuing. . . . .
0. download and unzip ide-modules.zip
1. sudo cp via82cxxx.ko amd74xx.ko /lib/modules/
2. sudo depmod -a
3. sudo vi /etc/modprobe.
4. add 2 following lines:
blacklist pata_via
blacklist pata_amd
5. sudo update-initramfs -u
6. sudo reboot
You may also want to check your /etc/fstab if you have any custom drive mappings in here - as it will change your /dev/sd?? devices back to /dev/hd?? ones.A big hint for this is to take advantage of the partition UUID when mapping your partitions.
You should see that Ubuntu has already mapped your root and swap partitions using UUID strings.
To convert your own fstab to UUIDs do the following (don't forget to take a copy of your existing fstab just-in-case):
1 - run the following command against the partition you want to change (change hdd7 to whatever your partition is), eg:
sudo vol_id /dev/hdd7
This will return the UUID of the partition.
c90cc868-2b06-4f77-9ddc-d0a7e16f200b
2 - Next, open your fstab and amend the parition line to include your UUID
sudo gedit /etc/fstab
Change the line as follows:
/dev/hdd7 /mnt/linstor1 reiserfs defaults,noatime,nodiratime,data=writeback 0 0
to
UUID=c90cc868-2b06-4f77-9ddc-d0a7e16f200b /mnt/linstor1 reiserfs defaults,noatime,nodiratime,data=writeback 0 0
The UUID is constant regardless of whether the partition is recognised as hd?? or sd??.
Update 1: I've managed to get hold of a spare 80 wire IDE cable, so once I get the chance to strip my PC down I'll put things back so I'm using the pata_via module and test burning again.
Update 2: Strange but true, I've already got an 80 wire IDE cable installed, but just to show willing I swapped it for the new one, removed the replacement modules, basically undid everything I'd done to fix the problem and rebooted.
And. . . . . . . . .
It still freezes when burning DVDs. So at the moment my only choice is to use the replacment modules (and next kernel upgrade I might have to re-compile them myself).
Not fun. Not fun at all.
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness - Episode 1
I've made no secret of the fact that I use Linux as my OS of choice on my home PC. For me it does what I need, and doesn't get in my way. The only disadvantage I've found is that there is a severe lack of games available, so when a new game supports Linux it tends to be a newsworthy event.
Today is such an event.
I'm sure you've heard of Penny-Arcade. If not then may I say welcome to our planet, and I hope the cave you were living in was pleasant. It has been no secret that they were developing a game, but what was less well known was what systems it would be released on.
Windows, MacOS, XBox Live and. . . . . . Linux.
Damn it, they are supporting us! Bless their black and jaded hearts they are supporting us!
Download the demo here and see what you think.
Today is such an event.
I'm sure you've heard of Penny-Arcade. If not then may I say welcome to our planet, and I hope the cave you were living in was pleasant. It has been no secret that they were developing a game, but what was less well known was what systems it would be released on.
Windows, MacOS, XBox Live and. . . . . . Linux.
Damn it, they are supporting us! Bless their black and jaded hearts they are supporting us!
Download the demo here and see what you think.
Saturday, 10 May 2008
Random stuff from my week
This has been quite a busy week, both at work and at home. Having to children at home keeps you busy at the best of times, starting to prepare for the new baby (due date October 21 folks!) is keeping us in a permanent state of panic.
Work has been busier than usual. Last week was spent on a fast-track Windows Server 2003 Active Directory Planning, Implementing and Maintaining course (Microsoft 2279B and 2282A). Since I've spent the last year or so battling with our current AD setup most of this was pretty familiar, but it is nice to get an insight into the less well used aspects of AD, and also to see the new features for AD 2003. Now all that remains it to persuade my boss to buy the licenses to upgrade our AD controllers to Windows Server 2003.
This week has been varied at work (to say the least). We had a major crash on our main editorial server (running on Solaris) that took a little while to sort out. The problem looks like it was either caused by the network card or by some corruption in the /devs directory. Either way the outcome was the same - neither of the network cards would start on boot-up. After removing and re-seating the gigabit card I was able to start it manually.
After trying quite a few alternatives (checking the network and so forth) we did a "boot -r" to recreate the device nodes, followed by another reboot which got everything up and running again.
This was followed by spending some time upgrading our backup Editorial server to give it enough disk space to adequately hold a copy of our editorial data. Finding out how to get the extra disks added to the A1000 controller was fun, to say the least. To cut that story short you need to be running Array Manager 6.22.1 to get it to run on Solaris 8. A word of warning - don't be tempted to install an earlier version. I did, and had one hell of a time getting access back to the existing raid arrays.
Luckily for me Sun still provides downloads of Array Manager 6.22.1 as well as some decent documentation on installing and running it.
One problem I did encounter is that once we had installed the new disks, created a new LUN and a raid 5 stipe set (with one disk left over for a hot spare) we couldn't create a file system on the disks. In fact we kept getting the error that the disk geometry was unrecognised.
Running format against the new disk set provided the fix for this - the labels on the newly added disks were incorrect. Once they had been re-labeled by format it was a simple task to create the new file system and migrate over the old data from the old disk to the new one.
To top off the week was my yearly assessment. A couple of hours of being told how wonderful I am by my manager is great. Now about that pay rise. . . . . .
. . . . .
To finish off with I've just got round to upgrading the hard disk on my current test laptop. It has a 15gb drive, but I wanted to use the 40gb one from my previous tester. Swapping the drives is the work of a few minutes. How about re-installing the OS?
The original machine dual booted between Windows XP and FreeSpire, the current one was just using Ubuntu. Booting up the new laptop was great. FreeSpire autodetected all the new hardware, went straight into X, started the onboard wireless and connected to my network. Amount of reconfiguring to do - none. Everything works perfectly and at the higher resolution that the new laptop supports.
Now for Windows XP. The story here is not so good. Windows "Blue Screens" about two seconds into the boot process. It won't go into safe mode either.
I'll have to decide whether XP goes back on when I re-format to put back on Ubuntu.
Work has been busier than usual. Last week was spent on a fast-track Windows Server 2003 Active Directory Planning, Implementing and Maintaining course (Microsoft 2279B and 2282A). Since I've spent the last year or so battling with our current AD setup most of this was pretty familiar, but it is nice to get an insight into the less well used aspects of AD, and also to see the new features for AD 2003. Now all that remains it to persuade my boss to buy the licenses to upgrade our AD controllers to Windows Server 2003.
This week has been varied at work (to say the least). We had a major crash on our main editorial server (running on Solaris) that took a little while to sort out. The problem looks like it was either caused by the network card or by some corruption in the /devs directory. Either way the outcome was the same - neither of the network cards would start on boot-up. After removing and re-seating the gigabit card I was able to start it manually.
After trying quite a few alternatives (checking the network and so forth) we did a "boot -r" to recreate the device nodes, followed by another reboot which got everything up and running again.
This was followed by spending some time upgrading our backup Editorial server to give it enough disk space to adequately hold a copy of our editorial data. Finding out how to get the extra disks added to the A1000 controller was fun, to say the least. To cut that story short you need to be running Array Manager 6.22.1 to get it to run on Solaris 8. A word of warning - don't be tempted to install an earlier version. I did, and had one hell of a time getting access back to the existing raid arrays.
Luckily for me Sun still provides downloads of Array Manager 6.22.1 as well as some decent documentation on installing and running it.
One problem I did encounter is that once we had installed the new disks, created a new LUN and a raid 5 stipe set (with one disk left over for a hot spare) we couldn't create a file system on the disks. In fact we kept getting the error that the disk geometry was unrecognised.
Running format against the new disk set provided the fix for this - the labels on the newly added disks were incorrect. Once they had been re-labeled by format it was a simple task to create the new file system and migrate over the old data from the old disk to the new one.
To top off the week was my yearly assessment. A couple of hours of being told how wonderful I am by my manager is great. Now about that pay rise. . . . . .
. . . . .
To finish off with I've just got round to upgrading the hard disk on my current test laptop. It has a 15gb drive, but I wanted to use the 40gb one from my previous tester. Swapping the drives is the work of a few minutes. How about re-installing the OS?
The original machine dual booted between Windows XP and FreeSpire, the current one was just using Ubuntu. Booting up the new laptop was great. FreeSpire autodetected all the new hardware, went straight into X, started the onboard wireless and connected to my network. Amount of reconfiguring to do - none. Everything works perfectly and at the higher resolution that the new laptop supports.
Now for Windows XP. The story here is not so good. Windows "Blue Screens" about two seconds into the boot process. It won't go into safe mode either.
I'll have to decide whether XP goes back on when I re-format to put back on Ubuntu.
Friday, 18 April 2008
Adventures with Ubuntu
Seeing as my Ubuntu CDs had arrived, I decided to see how the Toshiba would run with it.
First problem - installation. The install routine needs over 350 meg of ram to be able to run (!). I found this hard to believe - but three hours into trying to install via the desktop shortcut on the live CD I'm forced to agree. It doesn't work.
Since I still wanted to see Ubuntu running from a proper install on the laptop I downloaded the "Alternative Install" ISO which has a text mode installer. This works fine - in fact the only long winded part of it was waiting for the files to copy. FreeSpire took around half-an-hour to install, Ubuntu has taken that long already and is still going (and this is without installing any updates).
Select and install software
Please wait...
Well, that took some time. Over an hour for the install, and that's without any updates. But, at least it's now in and working, right?
Well, nearly.
After rebooting and logging in as my new user I received an error that the clock was probably set wrong (which was correct, I'd not got around to setting the date correctly yet, so it was showing as some time in 2000). Not to worry, there was an option to allow me to set the time. Choosing to set the time resulted in an error message that I had insufficient rights to change the clock.
At this point I was left looking at a plain orange screen. No icons, no toolbar, nothing.
Could this be Ubuntu's own "Orange screen of Death?"
One forced restart later I chose to ignore the date error and was able to log in OK.
Normally I use KDE for my desktop, so using Gnome is a new experience, but I've got to say that it isn't bad. Connecting to my wireless network was a breeze using "Network Manager" which was already running in the task bar.
Updates installed easily too, in fact installing system updates on Ubuntu is every bit as easy as on Windows, with the bonus that many of your applications can be updated too.
Watching videos was also straight forward. Connecting to my video share on my main PC, I double clicked a likely looking .AVI file which launched the Totem player, this displayed a message that it needed to look for a codec, I click Yes to install, clicked Next a couple of times and hey presto! It played back every video file I threw at it.
Adding Flash support was just as easy in FireFox as it is in Windows (you do get to choose between Adobe Flash and the GPL Gnash player, personally at the moment I'd say stick to Flash).
Adding extra programs is a doddle (as is to be expected these days) using the "Add / Remove Programs" option off the main menu.
All in all I'd say this is a mixed bag. Hardware support is good. The "Live" installer is much too bulky for what it does (350 meg memory needed just to run an installer? Oh come on!). The default desktop is good (but I still prefer KDE). Software installation and updates are as easy as you can get.
....
This was written a couple of days ago. I've stuck with Ubuntu on the Toshiba (but I've installed KDE4 as my main desktop) and I've got to say that I'm really enjoying using it.
I'm even tempted to install this on my main PC (replacing my three year old Slackware install). I'll have to see how well it handles BlitzMax before making the jump.
....
Four days later. . . .
So how well is Ubuntu standing up to regular use?
I've switched back from KDE4 to the default desktop as some of Ubuntu's features are better integrated into Gnome. Totem has remained as the media player of choice and so far has played everything that I have thrown at it.
FireFox has also impressed. Embedded video files (such as QuickTime) haven't caused any problems. More importantly YouTube videos play without any issues.
Some of the smaller touches have been really nice. For example, when trying to trace a network issue and trying to run "traceroute" from the command prompt, I received an error that the command wasn't installed, but was given full instructions on which package needed to be installed, and how to do so.
Monday, 14 April 2008
Things that make you smile
Sometimes it is the smaller things in life that make you smile, such as receiving a batch of free Ubuntu install / live CDs from Canonical.
It still amazes me that a company is willing to send out free CDs (and to pay the postage themselves too). Not only that, but they've added in a batch of Ubuntu stickers this time too.
Neat!
I'll be having a play with Ubuntu 7.10 later on this week, and handing out free CDs to friends and colleagues too.
It still amazes me that a company is willing to send out free CDs (and to pay the postage themselves too). Not only that, but they've added in a batch of Ubuntu stickers this time too.
Neat!
I'll be having a play with Ubuntu 7.10 later on this week, and handing out free CDs to friends and colleagues too.
Friday, 4 April 2008
FreeSpire 2.0.8 - First Impressions
Regular readers may remember my quest to find the perfect GNU/Linux for my elderly HP OmniBook XE (40 gb hard drive, 156 meg RAM, running at a cracking 450mhz). I have tried a few different distros with varying levels of success - Green OS being the closest so far.
I've been playing with XP on the beast too - which worked surprisingly well on the limited hardware and memory.
Recently I went back to try a current version of Freespire, which like Green OS is based on Ubuntu. I've had limited success with Ubuntu itself, but strangely enough distros based on it seem to work well.
Freespire is no exception. I'd decided to set the laptop to dual boot between XP and Freespire in case everything went tits up. I'd given Freespire a dry run on an old Dell PC which I'd had lying around.
If you do a default install (and take over the entire disk) then the install is entirely painless, and slightly easier than installing Windows XP.
Setting up a dual boot on FreeSpire through was less straight forward. Choosing an "Advanced" install gave me a list of the current partitions, but no way to resize them. It recommended rebooting and choosing the third option to amend the partitions.
The third option turned out to be the graphical safe mode - nothing to do with resizing the disk. In the end I turned to an old Ubuntu CD and used that to resize the Windows XP partition. Returning to Freespire with 20 gig of free space I tried the advanced install again - even with free space on the drive there was no way of creating partitions.
Bugger.
Back into Ubuntu and I created a large main partition and smaller swap one. Returning to FreeSpire and this time I was able to select my new partition ready for the install. But wait, even though the partition was available and selected there was still no option to continue the install. Yes folks, we have hit the curse of the 800x600 screen resolution.
The "next" button was hidden off the bottom of the screen. Hitting "Tab" a couple of times then pressing "Enter" got me onto the next stage of the install and after that it was plain sailing. Right up to the point where I re-booted.
Grub came up, but no option for my Windows installation.
Aaaaaargh!
Luckily there was an option to redetect and after running that and rebooting again an option for Windows XP did appear.
But enough about the install. Once I had Freespire up and running it actually works rather well. My wireless card was detected and easily runs as well as it does on Windows XP. Connecting to my wireless network was a snap using the provided tools. The onboard sound card runs well, everything feels nice and snappy.
A real bonus is the CNR (Click 'n' Run) service. You don't need to register to run it (although it is free to do so if you wish), and installing additional software is as simple as choosing it from the list and clicking "Install". I've already added "The Gimp" and "Amarok" onto the laptop and I've got to say it was entirely painless.
Another "good thing" is that MP3s work from the outset. Flash is also pre-installed (so YouTube works out of the box). In fact, as far as multimedia goes Freespire is as good as it gets. All the codecs are legally licensed versions and I can safely say that this is a Linux distro that is squarely aimed at giving as good a user experience out of the box as you are likely to find.
Freespire looks good, is nippy enough to install on low-end hardware (P2 class and above) and feels like a modern operating system should.
Overall I've got to say that I've been pleasantly surprised at just how well it works. Yes, the install was a bit quirky (if you want to install alongside Windows that is) but once it is on the whole thing runs really well.
I'm going to stick with it for a while and see if it holds up to prolonged usage. But so far, so good!
Update (11/4/2008)
In the interests of fairness, I'm going to admit something. The install instructions were correct. If you boot into the "Live CD" environment then the partition manager is right there on the desktop.
D'oh!
I've stuck with FreeSpire for a couple of weeks now - and it really does work like a charm. In fact, I'm currently playing with an old Toshiba Satellite 4600, which also works really well with FreeSpire. High resolution graphics, decent performance, the built in wireless card also works out of the box too.
I've been playing with XP on the beast too - which worked surprisingly well on the limited hardware and memory.
Recently I went back to try a current version of Freespire, which like Green OS is based on Ubuntu. I've had limited success with Ubuntu itself, but strangely enough distros based on it seem to work well.
Freespire is no exception. I'd decided to set the laptop to dual boot between XP and Freespire in case everything went tits up. I'd given Freespire a dry run on an old Dell PC which I'd had lying around.
If you do a default install (and take over the entire disk) then the install is entirely painless, and slightly easier than installing Windows XP.
Setting up a dual boot on FreeSpire through was less straight forward. Choosing an "Advanced" install gave me a list of the current partitions, but no way to resize them. It recommended rebooting and choosing the third option to amend the partitions.
The third option turned out to be the graphical safe mode - nothing to do with resizing the disk. In the end I turned to an old Ubuntu CD and used that to resize the Windows XP partition. Returning to Freespire with 20 gig of free space I tried the advanced install again - even with free space on the drive there was no way of creating partitions.
Bugger.
Back into Ubuntu and I created a large main partition and smaller swap one. Returning to FreeSpire and this time I was able to select my new partition ready for the install. But wait, even though the partition was available and selected there was still no option to continue the install. Yes folks, we have hit the curse of the 800x600 screen resolution.
The "next" button was hidden off the bottom of the screen. Hitting "Tab" a couple of times then pressing "Enter" got me onto the next stage of the install and after that it was plain sailing. Right up to the point where I re-booted.
Grub came up, but no option for my Windows installation.
Aaaaaargh!
Luckily there was an option to redetect and after running that and rebooting again an option for Windows XP did appear.
But enough about the install. Once I had Freespire up and running it actually works rather well. My wireless card was detected and easily runs as well as it does on Windows XP. Connecting to my wireless network was a snap using the provided tools. The onboard sound card runs well, everything feels nice and snappy.
A real bonus is the CNR (Click 'n' Run) service. You don't need to register to run it (although it is free to do so if you wish), and installing additional software is as simple as choosing it from the list and clicking "Install". I've already added "The Gimp" and "Amarok" onto the laptop and I've got to say it was entirely painless.
Another "good thing" is that MP3s work from the outset. Flash is also pre-installed (so YouTube works out of the box). In fact, as far as multimedia goes Freespire is as good as it gets. All the codecs are legally licensed versions and I can safely say that this is a Linux distro that is squarely aimed at giving as good a user experience out of the box as you are likely to find.
Freespire looks good, is nippy enough to install on low-end hardware (P2 class and above) and feels like a modern operating system should.
Overall I've got to say that I've been pleasantly surprised at just how well it works. Yes, the install was a bit quirky (if you want to install alongside Windows that is) but once it is on the whole thing runs really well.
I'm going to stick with it for a while and see if it holds up to prolonged usage. But so far, so good!
Update (11/4/2008)
In the interests of fairness, I'm going to admit something. The install instructions were correct. If you boot into the "Live CD" environment then the partition manager is right there on the desktop.
D'oh!
I've stuck with FreeSpire for a couple of weeks now - and it really does work like a charm. In fact, I'm currently playing with an old Toshiba Satellite 4600, which also works really well with FreeSpire. High resolution graphics, decent performance, the built in wireless card also works out of the box too.
Thursday, 21 February 2008
This Week I Have Mostly Been Playing: Hover Bovver 2
Most games easily fit into one or more categories. Shoot-em-ups, platformers, RPGs, there is a category for pretty much every game. Then there are games like this. Mow-em-up perhaps? Third person lawner? I'll have to think about this.
It's a lot less bovver. . . . .
So what is the game about eh? Well, in a nutshell, you need to mow your lawn. Sounds simple? Not in this garden it isn't. You see, you've had to borrow your neighbor's lawnmower and he wants it back. Not only that, but if you mow the flowers you'll have an angry gardener to deal with.
Luckily your dog is on hand to chase off your pursuers, but watch out, the more he chases them, the less happy with you he'll be. As if that wasn't enough you also have to make sure your mower doesn't overheat, so don't mow too much grass in one go. Mow enough of the lawn and sheep will come out to help eat the grass
Not to mention the mole hills, dog mess and other obstacles that you'll encounter as the game progresses.
With comical sound effects, cute graphics and frantic gameplay this is one time you won't mind mowing the lawn.
The game runs under Windows, and Linux users can run it under Cedega (like I did).
Head on over to Llamasoft to give it a shot. Ewe won't regret it!
It's a lot less bovver. . . . .
So what is the game about eh? Well, in a nutshell, you need to mow your lawn. Sounds simple? Not in this garden it isn't. You see, you've had to borrow your neighbor's lawnmower and he wants it back. Not only that, but if you mow the flowers you'll have an angry gardener to deal with.
Luckily your dog is on hand to chase off your pursuers, but watch out, the more he chases them, the less happy with you he'll be. As if that wasn't enough you also have to make sure your mower doesn't overheat, so don't mow too much grass in one go. Mow enough of the lawn and sheep will come out to help eat the grass
Not to mention the mole hills, dog mess and other obstacles that you'll encounter as the game progresses.
With comical sound effects, cute graphics and frantic gameplay this is one time you won't mind mowing the lawn.
The game runs under Windows, and Linux users can run it under Cedega (like I did).
Head on over to Llamasoft to give it a shot. Ewe won't regret it!
Friday, 25 January 2008
To GPL or not to GPL
To GPL or not to GPL, that is the question that has been posed on the Linux Games Tome comments page for RetroRoids.
The request started off with a single comment posted a couple of hours after the game was first listed:
It’s proprietary — guess that’s why there are no comments.
Well, I decided to respond with a brief explanation of why I hadn't released the code.
If by proprietary you mean there isn't any source code released with it then yes. Mainly because it has been written with Blitz Max (which makes it easy for me to support Windows and MacOS as well as Linux), so most people couldn't recompile it anyway, at least not without buying a copy of the language first. If there is a call for it then I'm more than happy to release the source under the GPL - I'm just not sure that there would be much benefit to anyone. Hopefully you won't let this put you off trying the game.
That, I thought, would probably be the last I would hear on the subject, but one week later. . . . .
You know, if as you say there are no objections to releasing the code under the GPL, I think it would help your project a lot. The publicity alone would be much higher. But, I wouldn't be surprised if some people would actually help out with patches. Besides, that would allow your game to be included by default in many distros that wouldn't touch it otherwise.
Well, now that is food for thought. So here is what I think.
The patches don't really interest me much, since games programming as a hobby (in my case anyway) is a solo event. The challenge of writing the code (and playing the finished game) is the where the fun is.
As for publicity - well thankfully that's not entirely what I'm here for. Yes, in any sort of games programming (freeware or otherwise) there is an element of look what I can do, aren't I clever about it, and I get as much of that as I need. Generally speaking there are only a couple of places that I release the news of any games that I release.
Retro Remakes is the first place that gets the news, usually on the message board. This site is the center of the remakes world and the feedback here is usually very good (constructive criticism can be a very good thing). All my games also have work logs on there.
If it is a remake of a game that was released on the Spectrum then www.worldofspectrum.org get's a heads up.
I've also got a mailing list going for people who are interested in what I release (there are a couple these days) so things get mentioned on there too.
Last (but not least) The Linux Games Tome gets a post too. This is because at home I use Linux, my games are developed on Linux for Linux users. The Windows and MacOS versions are the ports.
I've also started posting the news on the BlitzMax home page. RetroRoids is the first game I've done this for.
RetroRoids has actually been a fairly quiet release compared to RetroVaders, but even this has had over 500 downloads over the last five days. Having had a couple of news items written about RetroRoids (items that I didn't submit I might add) and generally positive comments from people who have downloaded the game has given my ego all the polishing it needs at the moment.
However this isn't to say that I'm against releasing the code. Like I said before, I'm just not sure what benefit the BlitzMax source for the game would be to most people.
So here is the deal. If enough people want my games to be released under the GPL then yes, I will do that.
If ANY of the Linux distros want to include my games and can't because of the current FREEWARE license then get in touch and I will release my games as GPL.
I will only do this if there is a call for it. So if you want the code (remembering that you will need a copy of BlitzMax to be able to compile it) then make your voices heard here, or by emailing me directly at dans(dot)remakes(at)googlemail(dot)com.
Postscript
Not long after posting this I realised that I'd forgotten to mention something important, the real reason that I'm doing this. It isn't for money or publicity (believe me, if it was for money then I'd have given up games programming back in 2002).
The reason I do this, and why I release my games for free, is that I enjoy writing games. I hope you enjoy playing them.
The request started off with a single comment posted a couple of hours after the game was first listed:
It’s proprietary — guess that’s why there are no comments.
Well, I decided to respond with a brief explanation of why I hadn't released the code.
If by proprietary you mean there isn't any source code released with it then yes. Mainly because it has been written with Blitz Max (which makes it easy for me to support Windows and MacOS as well as Linux), so most people couldn't recompile it anyway, at least not without buying a copy of the language first. If there is a call for it then I'm more than happy to release the source under the GPL - I'm just not sure that there would be much benefit to anyone. Hopefully you won't let this put you off trying the game.
That, I thought, would probably be the last I would hear on the subject, but one week later. . . . .
You know, if as you say there are no objections to releasing the code under the GPL, I think it would help your project a lot. The publicity alone would be much higher. But, I wouldn't be surprised if some people would actually help out with patches. Besides, that would allow your game to be included by default in many distros that wouldn't touch it otherwise.
Well, now that is food for thought. So here is what I think.
The patches don't really interest me much, since games programming as a hobby (in my case anyway) is a solo event. The challenge of writing the code (and playing the finished game) is the where the fun is.
As for publicity - well thankfully that's not entirely what I'm here for. Yes, in any sort of games programming (freeware or otherwise) there is an element of look what I can do, aren't I clever about it, and I get as much of that as I need. Generally speaking there are only a couple of places that I release the news of any games that I release.
Retro Remakes is the first place that gets the news, usually on the message board. This site is the center of the remakes world and the feedback here is usually very good (constructive criticism can be a very good thing). All my games also have work logs on there.
If it is a remake of a game that was released on the Spectrum then www.worldofspectrum.org get's a heads up.
I've also got a mailing list going for people who are interested in what I release (there are a couple these days) so things get mentioned on there too.
Last (but not least) The Linux Games Tome gets a post too. This is because at home I use Linux, my games are developed on Linux for Linux users. The Windows and MacOS versions are the ports.
I've also started posting the news on the BlitzMax home page. RetroRoids is the first game I've done this for.
RetroRoids has actually been a fairly quiet release compared to RetroVaders, but even this has had over 500 downloads over the last five days. Having had a couple of news items written about RetroRoids (items that I didn't submit I might add) and generally positive comments from people who have downloaded the game has given my ego all the polishing it needs at the moment.
However this isn't to say that I'm against releasing the code. Like I said before, I'm just not sure what benefit the BlitzMax source for the game would be to most people.
So here is the deal. If enough people want my games to be released under the GPL then yes, I will do that.
If ANY of the Linux distros want to include my games and can't because of the current FREEWARE license then get in touch and I will release my games as GPL.
I will only do this if there is a call for it. So if you want the code (remembering that you will need a copy of BlitzMax to be able to compile it) then make your voices heard here, or by emailing me directly at dans(dot)remakes(at)googlemail(dot)com.
Postscript
Not long after posting this I realised that I'd forgotten to mention something important, the real reason that I'm doing this. It isn't for money or publicity (believe me, if it was for money then I'd have given up games programming back in 2002).
The reason I do this, and why I release my games for free, is that I enjoy writing games. I hope you enjoy playing them.
Wednesday, 14 November 2007
gOS (Green OS, not Google OS)
A couple of weeks ago Everex released a low cost (sub $200) PC running on Linux. The PCs were on sale at Walmart. Note the past tense here. They sold out within days.
The PCs themselves aren't that highly powered (1.5GHz processor, 80GB hard drive, 512 meg memory) but are certainly more than up to daily word processing and web browsing tasks. The big news was the choice of Linux distro - gOS.
Despite rumours this isn't Google OS - it's Green OS, but unofficially it contains so much integrated Google stuff that it is hard to see it as anything other than Google OS.
Although the PCs are sold out at the moment, developer boards are available which all come with a DVD version of gOS. This includes licensed versions of all codecs needed for MP3 playback, DVD playback and some other stuff too.
gOS is available for download from http://www.thinkgos.com/ as a single live / install CD.
So what is gOS like? First impressions are very nice. The desktop runs on Enlightenment. It looks remarkably MacOS X like, right down to the dock at the bottom of the screen.
gOS detects most wireless cards without problems (seeing as this is based on Ubuntu 7.10 this shouldn't be a surprise) and the hardware support is quite good.
The installer looks very slick - but I did have some problems getting it to install on my laptop. After a few hours (aaargh!) of trying I finally managed to repartition the drive using gOS, reboot, manually install an ext3 file system, go back into the installer, choose a manual install, selected the already existing partitions, and then it worked.
This was certainly not as smooth as it might be.
On the plus side, the installer works fine on an 800x600 screen (unlike some other installers I could mention).
Once it has been installed it boots quickly, launches apps quickly and generally feels snappy even on old hardware. Yes folks, the trusty old HP OmniBook has been rolled out and reinstalled again. This may well be the cause of the HD install problems as the OmniBook hardware is, well, finicky.
The OS itself feels like the best of both worlds in that it is small and fast enough to run on old hardware, but looks and feels very modern indeed. As it is based on Ubuntu there is plenty of software available for it via Synaptic, the system is well documented, in fact, it is difficult to find much to complain about.
I'll have to play some more with it and see if the initial positive impressions hold up.
The PCs themselves aren't that highly powered (1.5GHz processor, 80GB hard drive, 512 meg memory) but are certainly more than up to daily word processing and web browsing tasks. The big news was the choice of Linux distro - gOS.
Despite rumours this isn't Google OS - it's Green OS, but unofficially it contains so much integrated Google stuff that it is hard to see it as anything other than Google OS.
Although the PCs are sold out at the moment, developer boards are available which all come with a DVD version of gOS. This includes licensed versions of all codecs needed for MP3 playback, DVD playback and some other stuff too.
gOS is available for download from http://www.thinkgos.com/ as a single live / install CD.
So what is gOS like? First impressions are very nice. The desktop runs on Enlightenment. It looks remarkably MacOS X like, right down to the dock at the bottom of the screen.
gOS detects most wireless cards without problems (seeing as this is based on Ubuntu 7.10 this shouldn't be a surprise) and the hardware support is quite good.
The installer looks very slick - but I did have some problems getting it to install on my laptop. After a few hours (aaargh!) of trying I finally managed to repartition the drive using gOS, reboot, manually install an ext3 file system, go back into the installer, choose a manual install, selected the already existing partitions, and then it worked.
This was certainly not as smooth as it might be.
On the plus side, the installer works fine on an 800x600 screen (unlike some other installers I could mention).
Once it has been installed it boots quickly, launches apps quickly and generally feels snappy even on old hardware. Yes folks, the trusty old HP OmniBook has been rolled out and reinstalled again. This may well be the cause of the HD install problems as the OmniBook hardware is, well, finicky.
The OS itself feels like the best of both worlds in that it is small and fast enough to run on old hardware, but looks and feels very modern indeed. As it is based on Ubuntu there is plenty of software available for it via Synaptic, the system is well documented, in fact, it is difficult to find much to complain about.
I'll have to play some more with it and see if the initial positive impressions hold up.
Saturday, 3 November 2007
Linux (and BSD) on a HP OmniBook XE2 - Part 2
Although I've had Linux working on the old OmniBook, one problem had shown up - that was that the wireless card drops its connection after a couple of minutes. So my quest for the perfect free operating system for this old laptop continues.
FreeBSD has a reputation of good support of wireless cards, so it was with high hopes that I downloaded the latest version PC-BSD and installed it on the laptop.
First impressions weren't promising. The installer doesn't fit on an 800x600 screen, small, unimportant things like confirmation buttons are not visible and can only be accessed by the old "hit and hope" method of hitting tab and pressing enter and hoping that the correct option has been selected. Through a mix of luck and bloody mindedness I got PC-BSD installed.
The graphics card was detected, but showed some corruption once KDE had started up. Sound worked fine. The wireless card on the other hand was absent without leave. After a bit of searching through all the options looking for the configuration program for the card (there wasn't one) I discovered that you need to run a shell command and have the Windows drivers to hand to get the wireless card running.
Although this is nice as a fallback option, really this shouldn't be the default. Linux manages to support the cards natively, why can't BSD?
As a last resort I tried the distribution formerly known as Mandrake - Mandriva. Their latest release is Mandriva 2008, which runs as a live CD but can also be installed to disk. Running the live CD was a slow process as the CD drive isn't that fast on the OmniBook, but once the OS was installed to disk - wow! Colour me impressed - this is really good.
The wireless card was detected without any problems at all - and has remained connected to my wireless network without any problems with dropping the connection. The default desktop looks great, with no graphical corruption (unlike BSD). The onboard sound has been detected and works well. The local network shows up without any issues at all (browse smb:/ through Konqueror to see the local Samba shares).
What is really good is that even on this old laptop the whole thing feels snappy. Apps launch with very little delay. Web pages launch quickly. In fact, there is very little to complain about. I really like Mandriva 2008. It feels like a lot of time has been taken in getting things "just right" and compared to the other distributions this just feels so much better.
The on-screen fonts look better than I would have thought possible, the icon scheme looks slick, the only slight downer is that by default MP3 playback won't work. This is down to licensing issues, but luckily there are third party solutions for this.
All in all, it looks like the perfect Linux for this laptop may turn out to be one of the least likely ones.
FreeBSD has a reputation of good support of wireless cards, so it was with high hopes that I downloaded the latest version PC-BSD and installed it on the laptop.
First impressions weren't promising. The installer doesn't fit on an 800x600 screen, small, unimportant things like confirmation buttons are not visible and can only be accessed by the old "hit and hope" method of hitting tab and pressing enter and hoping that the correct option has been selected. Through a mix of luck and bloody mindedness I got PC-BSD installed.
The graphics card was detected, but showed some corruption once KDE had started up. Sound worked fine. The wireless card on the other hand was absent without leave. After a bit of searching through all the options looking for the configuration program for the card (there wasn't one) I discovered that you need to run a shell command and have the Windows drivers to hand to get the wireless card running.
Although this is nice as a fallback option, really this shouldn't be the default. Linux manages to support the cards natively, why can't BSD?
As a last resort I tried the distribution formerly known as Mandrake - Mandriva. Their latest release is Mandriva 2008, which runs as a live CD but can also be installed to disk. Running the live CD was a slow process as the CD drive isn't that fast on the OmniBook, but once the OS was installed to disk - wow! Colour me impressed - this is really good.
The wireless card was detected without any problems at all - and has remained connected to my wireless network without any problems with dropping the connection. The default desktop looks great, with no graphical corruption (unlike BSD). The onboard sound has been detected and works well. The local network shows up without any issues at all (browse smb:/ through Konqueror to see the local Samba shares).
What is really good is that even on this old laptop the whole thing feels snappy. Apps launch with very little delay. Web pages launch quickly. In fact, there is very little to complain about. I really like Mandriva 2008. It feels like a lot of time has been taken in getting things "just right" and compared to the other distributions this just feels so much better.
The on-screen fonts look better than I would have thought possible, the icon scheme looks slick, the only slight downer is that by default MP3 playback won't work. This is down to licensing issues, but luckily there are third party solutions for this.
All in all, it looks like the perfect Linux for this laptop may turn out to be one of the least likely ones.
Friday, 5 October 2007
Linux on HP OmniBook XE2
(last updated 07/10/2007)
Sometimes working in IT does have its benefits. Take today for example. We´ve been clearing out some of our old hardware, and amongst the 80486, Pentium I and Pentium IIs was a small stack of old laptops. Most of them were digital doorstops, but there was a stack of three HP OmniBook XE2s. All three of them had problems - but thankfully not the same problem, so I was able to swap things around a bit and come out with a working (if low-spec) laptop.
The spec of the rescued laptop is a Celeron 433, 160 meg RAM, 40GB hard drive, 800x600 resolution display. Although the laptop doesn´t have any in-built network ports I do have an old wireless card that I´ve wanted to try.
I wanted to test the laptop out with Linux, but the only distro I had to hand was an old beta version of Freespire, but what the Hell, at least I could use it as a quick test even if I was going to replace it with Ubuntu later on.
The install was straight forward, taking around half an hour. I accepted the defaults and took over the entire hard drive. Everything (including the sound card) was detected OK. So far, so good.
Now here is a good thing. Freespire auto detected my wireless card and it works fine with my home network. In fact, I´m posting this from the Laptop.
I´m probably going to install something a bit more lightweight on this (probably Slackware), but I´ve got to admit that I am impressed with how easily everything was installed, and how little configuration was required.
I´m going to play around a bit more with this - who knows, I might even keep Freespire on for a few days.
. . . .
Update #1 - 6/10/2007
Or maybe not. One problem with Freespire is that it is dog slow on older hardware. This is a shame - as overall the distro seemed rather nice. Click'n'Run works well for installing additional software and updates, but the laptop just seemed to be running slower than my old Pentium MMX 233 laptop. I'm not too sure if this was entirely Freespires fault, as I was running on battery power so it may have stepped down the CPU speed. One good positive is that at least I know that my wireless card will work with Linux.
I did give Ubuntu Gutsy a try but couldn't get it to boot into the live CD. This is strange as Freespire is based on Ubuntu and it worked fine. I'll maybe give Ubuntu another try at a later date and see if I can figure out what is going wrong.
So instead I'm re-installing the laptop with Zenwalk, a Slackware derived distro. I've always fancied giving something like Zenwalk a shot and I'm certainly curious as to how it will compare with something more "modern" like Freespire, Ubuntu or Mandriva.
Ths Zenwalk installer is very similar to the traditional Slackware one in that it is text based. One important difference is that you don't choose the packages that need to be installed, this is a single CD with everything you need on it. I'm installing using the default options, so this will be taking over the entire hard drive and configuring the partitions itself.
The Zenwalk install took around 40 minute and takes up a similar amount of space to Freespire. One notable difference is that whilst Freespire creates one large partition, Zenwalk gives us separate Root, Home and Swap partitions. I've got to admit this is a much better way of laying out the disk, as at least if you need to re-install at some point then your home directory and files will be safe.
After the main install has finished, there are a couple of options to configure for things like the Admin password, adding a new user and so on, then you reboot, the sound card is detected and on you go.
Or not, as the case may be. Zenwalk uses a very minimalist desktop enviroment (XFCE) - too minimalist for my liking. Also although it detected the wireless card (whoo!), it doesn't work (boo!). It took a while to track down the problem - which turns out to be the firmware for the card (an Atmel based one) isn't included. Once I'd tracked down the firmware and copied the .BIN files into /lib/firmware, one reboot later and everything was working great.
Not a difficult thing to do once you know about it, but not really that well documented. Yes, there were warnings (available via dmesg) but how many novices are going to check there?
Oh well, at least it does work. Zenwalk certainly feels faster than Freespire, it also boots up a lot faster (around half the time that Freespire took). Right - time to play around with it a bit more.
. . . .
Update 2 - 7/10/2007
Well, Zenwalk works OK, MP3 and MPEG playback worked out of the box, USB devices are automounted, everything pretty much works as expected.
One issue I have found is with the Zenwalk tools. If you are running in 800x600 then you can't use all of the tools. This is especially true of the update tool - which although you can view the software, and add it to the list to install, the install button is hidden - presumably somewhere off the bottom of the screen.
I'm going to install KDE from the Zenwalk repositories and see how that works, as I'm still not sure about XFCE.
Sometimes working in IT does have its benefits. Take today for example. We´ve been clearing out some of our old hardware, and amongst the 80486, Pentium I and Pentium IIs was a small stack of old laptops. Most of them were digital doorstops, but there was a stack of three HP OmniBook XE2s. All three of them had problems - but thankfully not the same problem, so I was able to swap things around a bit and come out with a working (if low-spec) laptop.
The spec of the rescued laptop is a Celeron 433, 160 meg RAM, 40GB hard drive, 800x600 resolution display. Although the laptop doesn´t have any in-built network ports I do have an old wireless card that I´ve wanted to try.
I wanted to test the laptop out with Linux, but the only distro I had to hand was an old beta version of Freespire, but what the Hell, at least I could use it as a quick test even if I was going to replace it with Ubuntu later on.
The install was straight forward, taking around half an hour. I accepted the defaults and took over the entire hard drive. Everything (including the sound card) was detected OK. So far, so good.
Now here is a good thing. Freespire auto detected my wireless card and it works fine with my home network. In fact, I´m posting this from the Laptop.
I´m probably going to install something a bit more lightweight on this (probably Slackware), but I´ve got to admit that I am impressed with how easily everything was installed, and how little configuration was required.
I´m going to play around a bit more with this - who knows, I might even keep Freespire on for a few days.
. . . .
Update #1 - 6/10/2007
Or maybe not. One problem with Freespire is that it is dog slow on older hardware. This is a shame - as overall the distro seemed rather nice. Click'n'Run works well for installing additional software and updates, but the laptop just seemed to be running slower than my old Pentium MMX 233 laptop. I'm not too sure if this was entirely Freespires fault, as I was running on battery power so it may have stepped down the CPU speed. One good positive is that at least I know that my wireless card will work with Linux.
I did give Ubuntu Gutsy a try but couldn't get it to boot into the live CD. This is strange as Freespire is based on Ubuntu and it worked fine. I'll maybe give Ubuntu another try at a later date and see if I can figure out what is going wrong.
So instead I'm re-installing the laptop with Zenwalk, a Slackware derived distro. I've always fancied giving something like Zenwalk a shot and I'm certainly curious as to how it will compare with something more "modern" like Freespire, Ubuntu or Mandriva.
Ths Zenwalk installer is very similar to the traditional Slackware one in that it is text based. One important difference is that you don't choose the packages that need to be installed, this is a single CD with everything you need on it. I'm installing using the default options, so this will be taking over the entire hard drive and configuring the partitions itself.
The Zenwalk install took around 40 minute and takes up a similar amount of space to Freespire. One notable difference is that whilst Freespire creates one large partition, Zenwalk gives us separate Root, Home and Swap partitions. I've got to admit this is a much better way of laying out the disk, as at least if you need to re-install at some point then your home directory and files will be safe.
After the main install has finished, there are a couple of options to configure for things like the Admin password, adding a new user and so on, then you reboot, the sound card is detected and on you go.
Or not, as the case may be. Zenwalk uses a very minimalist desktop enviroment (XFCE) - too minimalist for my liking. Also although it detected the wireless card (whoo!), it doesn't work (boo!). It took a while to track down the problem - which turns out to be the firmware for the card (an Atmel based one) isn't included. Once I'd tracked down the firmware and copied the .BIN files into /lib/firmware, one reboot later and everything was working great.
Not a difficult thing to do once you know about it, but not really that well documented. Yes, there were warnings (available via dmesg) but how many novices are going to check there?
Oh well, at least it does work. Zenwalk certainly feels faster than Freespire, it also boots up a lot faster (around half the time that Freespire took). Right - time to play around with it a bit more.
. . . .
Update 2 - 7/10/2007
Well, Zenwalk works OK, MP3 and MPEG playback worked out of the box, USB devices are automounted, everything pretty much works as expected.
One issue I have found is with the Zenwalk tools. If you are running in 800x600 then you can't use all of the tools. This is especially true of the update tool - which although you can view the software, and add it to the list to install, the install button is hidden - presumably somewhere off the bottom of the screen.
I'm going to install KDE from the Zenwalk repositories and see how that works, as I'm still not sure about XFCE.
Wednesday, 5 September 2007
Nobodys working #1
Well, here we are at work. What is nobody doing today? Installing a virtual Windows 2003 Server ready to start testing IceWarp's Merak Mail Server.
(How far along is it?. . . . Still formatting C:.)
We've already bought it - but this is just to get a bit of experience before the real install once the license / server hardware arrives.
One thing that surprised me is that it doesn't have it's own database backend - instead it relies upon either an Access .MDB file (yuk!) or an external database. For me it's a toss-up between MySQL and Microsoft SQL Express. As the price is the same for both (free) and seeing as I already run SQL Server 2000 servers here then the obvious choice is SQL Express.
Dear reader, don't take this as a slight against Open Source. I really like Open Source products. I run Linux at home as my main OS and have done for around five years now, but at work - well, standardisation is king. This is also because I won't be the only person maintaining this and, well, Microsoft's SQL Server (and Express too) have very good management tools. Yes, MySQL is getting better, but it isn't there yet.
(Copying files. . . .)
So on to Merak. Not a particularly well known product, at least, I've never heard of it before now. One of it's selling points is that it fits in well with Exchange clients, supports shared calendars, has loads of plugins to extend the functionality of the server, and it is a damn site cheaper than Exchange. It is also cheaper to add additional user licenses to it. Apparently we've bought 1000 user licenses for this.
(Please wait. . . Oh, we've rebooted. Hang on a tick, I'd better get the rest of the install under way.)
Merak can run on either Linux or Windows. It looks like it supports most of the major Linux distros. As we are integrating this into our Active Domain structure we're having to use Windows Server 2003.
("Setup will complete in 39 minutes". Yeah, sure it will.)
All the files are available on the Merak website, and will run quite happily for 30 days before you have to register it. Once you give it your license key then the demo becomes the full, unrestricted version.
(Adding the machine details. One question. Which berk decided to make Tijuana the default time zone for Windows installs?)
Once the initial server install is done, then I'll install SQL Server Express. I've not had chance to play with this yet, so if it turns out to be crap then I'll switch over the MySQL. Hopefully it won't come to that. Let's have a look at what it provides, while I'm waiting for the server install to finish.
. . . .
Scratch that, we're going to have to use MySQL. The limits on the database size and number of processors would cripple the mail server. Thank you Microsoft.
("Installing start menu items. Setup will complete in approximately 19 minutes". Liar. )
Right, I'm off to lunch now. Hopefully the server will have finished the initial install by the time I've eaten my sandwiches.
. . . .
OK, so Windows 2003 is now installed and running as a terminal server. MySQL (and the tools) are installed, so it's time to get on and install Merak itself.
. . . .
Well, installing MySQL was nice and straight-forward. It was an object lesson in clicking Next, Next, Finshed. Installing the tools was just as easy. The only small gotcha with it is to remember that by default you must connect to the databases via localhost rather than by the machine name.
Installing Merak is pretty straight foward too. During install you get two choices - Easy and Advanced. The easy option installs the Access DB backend and is recommended for 100 users or less. For any more than this you should use the advanced option and then select the required backend. And it does support plenty of them too. We chose the MySQL backend, entered our login details, realised that we had to create a blank schema in MySQL for Merak to create its tables in, and then let the installer do its job. Finally we added our administrator account and set up the mail domain.
So far, so good. Now to play with the server and see what it can do.
. . . . Later . . . .
That took some getting going. In fact, even though it isn't documented it took a reboot before any of the mail accounts could be accessed.
The web admin tools seem nice enough, and the web mail client is pretty neat. In fact the default interface is nearly a clone of Outlook 2003 - and includes calendering functionality (which I can't get working yet).
I've been able to send emails OK - but not receive them yet. I'll have to double-check the MX records for the test domain.
(How far along is it?. . . . Still formatting C:.)
We've already bought it - but this is just to get a bit of experience before the real install once the license / server hardware arrives.
One thing that surprised me is that it doesn't have it's own database backend - instead it relies upon either an Access .MDB file (yuk!) or an external database. For me it's a toss-up between MySQL and Microsoft SQL Express. As the price is the same for both (free) and seeing as I already run SQL Server 2000 servers here then the obvious choice is SQL Express.
Dear reader, don't take this as a slight against Open Source. I really like Open Source products. I run Linux at home as my main OS and have done for around five years now, but at work - well, standardisation is king. This is also because I won't be the only person maintaining this and, well, Microsoft's SQL Server (and Express too) have very good management tools. Yes, MySQL is getting better, but it isn't there yet.
(Copying files. . . .)
So on to Merak. Not a particularly well known product, at least, I've never heard of it before now. One of it's selling points is that it fits in well with Exchange clients, supports shared calendars, has loads of plugins to extend the functionality of the server, and it is a damn site cheaper than Exchange. It is also cheaper to add additional user licenses to it. Apparently we've bought 1000 user licenses for this.
(Please wait. . . Oh, we've rebooted. Hang on a tick, I'd better get the rest of the install under way.)
Merak can run on either Linux or Windows. It looks like it supports most of the major Linux distros. As we are integrating this into our Active Domain structure we're having to use Windows Server 2003.
("Setup will complete in 39 minutes". Yeah, sure it will.)
All the files are available on the Merak website, and will run quite happily for 30 days before you have to register it. Once you give it your license key then the demo becomes the full, unrestricted version.
(Adding the machine details. One question. Which berk decided to make Tijuana the default time zone for Windows installs?)
Once the initial server install is done, then I'll install SQL Server Express. I've not had chance to play with this yet, so if it turns out to be crap then I'll switch over the MySQL. Hopefully it won't come to that. Let's have a look at what it provides, while I'm waiting for the server install to finish.
. . . .
Scratch that, we're going to have to use MySQL. The limits on the database size and number of processors would cripple the mail server. Thank you Microsoft.
("Installing start menu items. Setup will complete in approximately 19 minutes". Liar. )
Right, I'm off to lunch now. Hopefully the server will have finished the initial install by the time I've eaten my sandwiches.
. . . .
OK, so Windows 2003 is now installed and running as a terminal server. MySQL (and the tools) are installed, so it's time to get on and install Merak itself.
. . . .
Well, installing MySQL was nice and straight-forward. It was an object lesson in clicking Next, Next, Finshed. Installing the tools was just as easy. The only small gotcha with it is to remember that by default you must connect to the databases via localhost rather than by the machine name.
Installing Merak is pretty straight foward too. During install you get two choices - Easy and Advanced. The easy option installs the Access DB backend and is recommended for 100 users or less. For any more than this you should use the advanced option and then select the required backend. And it does support plenty of them too. We chose the MySQL backend, entered our login details, realised that we had to create a blank schema in MySQL for Merak to create its tables in, and then let the installer do its job. Finally we added our administrator account and set up the mail domain.
So far, so good. Now to play with the server and see what it can do.
. . . . Later . . . .
That took some getting going. In fact, even though it isn't documented it took a reboot before any of the mail accounts could be accessed.
The web admin tools seem nice enough, and the web mail client is pretty neat. In fact the default interface is nearly a clone of Outlook 2003 - and includes calendering functionality (which I can't get working yet).
I've been able to send emails OK - but not receive them yet. I'll have to double-check the MX records for the test domain.
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