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The brand [GNU/Linux / Alternate OS] thread: Steam finally confirmed

SeeksSeeks Registered User regular
Hello! This is the Linux thread. Herein, we discuss all sorts of nerdy crap related to GNU/Linux, as well as other more esoteric operating systems.

Bits of this OP stolen from previous OPs and contributions by Visti and Jasconius.

What is Linux?

Short version: Linux is an operating system, like Windows or Mac OS X. It's popular with many for both practical reasons (stability, performance and reliability) and 'political' reasons (its freer, open-source nature).

Long version: GNU/Linux (its proper name) is a base operating system with countless variations (known as Linux distributions). GNU – a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not Unix” - is where most of the userland 'linux tools' come from. While technically not code compatible with Unix, it is for all practical purposes a Unix clone. Linux is its kernel, which handles all of the 'behind-the-scenes' stuff for the operating system. People often refer to GNU/Linux as simply 'Linux' because, let's be honest, “Linux” sounds a lot cooler that “guh-noo-linux”. GNU's been around since the 80s, but had never been part of its own 'real' operating system until the release of the Linux kernel in 1991.

What sucks about Linux?

Fewer games, no Final Cut or iTunes.

Then why should I use Linux?

It's famously stable (it runs most of the internet), it's high-quality software, no defragging, no bloat, no viruses. Also, it respects your freedom.


Okay, I'm interested. Now what?

It's generally recommended that newcomers start off with Ubuntu GNU/Linux. Ubuntu (and its derivatives) is basically Linux made easy, and very popular for that reason. It's also just a good operating system, despite what its detractors will tell you.


Ubuntu
ubuntu_black-orange_st_hex_SCALED.png
(Direct download)



Tell me about other Linux distributions!

Happily. While Ubuntu is perfectly fine, there are a number of other popular distros that may better suit your tastes.

Linux Mint
mint-logo.png

Mint is an Ubuntu-based distribution with even more 'good stuff' included by default.



Fedora
fedora-logo.png

Fedora Linux is Red Hat's free, 'bleeding edge' distribution. A word of caution: Fedora doesn't ship with all the proprietary good stuff that Ubuntu and Mint do, which means that playing MP3s or using Flash is more of a hassle.



OpenSUSE
opensuse-logo_sm.png

openSUSE is your run-of-the-mill Linux distro, quite good but seemingly targeted more at small busineses than the previously listed distros. openSUSE has never blown my mind, but it's always been perfectly serviceable and I note that its proponents are often very loyal.



Debian
debian-logo.jpg

Debian Linux is one of the older distributions, and of the still-existing distributions around today, is predated only a number of months by Slackware Linux. Unlike Slackware however, Debian is very easy to install and use for your average, every-day user. The software it provides isn't bleeding edge by any measure (its most recent official release still ships with Firefox 3.5), but this is a tradeoff for its famous stability. It's a very boring distribution, but if you need something that will just keep going forever, here you go.


Quit holding out on me. I want some hardcore Linux!

Oh you do, do you? Feeling that neckbeard growing in good and thick? Alright, here are a few other distributions that may suit you a little better.

Arch Linux
arch-logo.png

Arch is a modern, minimalist rolling-release distribution.



Slackware
slackware_logo2.jpg

Slackware is a very old, very stable distribution.



Gentoo
gentoo-transparent.png

Gentoo is the nerdiest of almost all distros, with the possible exception of Linux From Scratch.


Any other distros you'd like to throw at me?

Crunchbang Linux
crunchbang-logo.jpg

Crunchbang (#!) is a minimalist, Debian-based Linux distribution that ships with the Openbox window manager.



Puppy Linux
puppy-logo_scaled.png

I'm not a huge fan of Puppy Linux myself, but if you've got older hardware then this is the OS you've been looking for.



Trisquel
trisquel_logo.png

Trisquel is an Ubuntu-based distro with all non-free (free as in speech) software removed. Its goal is to provide an operating system that's quality software while still consisting of nothing but Free software with a capital F.


Alright, so there are a lot of distros. But what does it look like?

I'm glad you asked. In Linux-land, you can theme your desktop however you'd like. Hell, you can even live on the command-line with no GUI whatsoever if you want. But for most people, they're interested in what Desktop Environment (or Window Manager) looks like.

Each Linux distro tends to ship with one or more DEs/WMs. Usually just one. If you don't want to mess with the way things look, you're fine just using whatever your distribution ships with. Fear not, however: If you so desire, making use of additional DEs/WMs is usually just a matter of finding it in the repository and installing it. You can have as many as you want installed, switching between them whenever you feel like. That's what I do.

Here are a few examples to give you an idea of what to expect. I've organized them into three categories: Fancy (modern), Traditional and Other. For simplicity's sake (and for the sake of not hitting the character limit for this post), I'm going to skip over quite a lot. I guess you could say these are the 'big ones'.

Warning: H-scroll breakage.

Fancy (modern):

Gnome Shell (Gnome 3)
gnome3.png

Highly polished 'tablet-esque' interface. Not as bad as people say.




KDE
screenshot-kde.png

A nicely polished, traditional desktop environment. Think Windows Vista except better.




Unity (Ubuntu)
screenshot-unity.png

Ubuntu's new desktop environment. Think Mac OS X mixed with Gnome with the Windows 7 taskbar tilted sideways. Not bad.


Traditional:

XFCE
screenshot-xfce.png

A good, somewhat lightweight desktop environment




Gnome 2.32
screenshot-gnome2.png

A decent, stable desktop environment




LXDE
screenshot-lxde.png

Lightweight desktop environment


Other:

Openbox
screenshot-openbox.png

Minimalist stacking window manager




Enlightenment (E17)
screenshot-e17.jpg

Slick, lightweight stacking window manager




Awesome WM
screenshot-awesome.png

Lightweight dynamic (tiling/stacking) window manager


You know, I'm not quite sold on Linux. What other Operating Systems you got?

While I myself am most partial to Linux, I realize that perhaps not everyone is. And hey, that's fine. It's a big wide world where we can all use whatever the hell we want to... at least, for now. So without further ado, other operating systems:


Unix
freebsd_logo.png
FreeBSD: A popular BSD variant.



pcbsd-logo.png
PC-BSD: A 'normal people' desktop OS based off of FreeBSD.



dragonfly_bsd-logo.png
Dragonfly BSD: A fork of FreeBSD 4.8, created for 'performance reasons'



openbsd-logo.gif
OpenBSD: Another popular and incredibly secure Unix.



solaris-logo.png
Oracle Solaris (formerly Opensolaris): Used to be more popular, but now Oracle owns it. As far as I know, it's still free of cost but consists of both open and closed source components.



Other
haiku-logo.png
Haiku OS: An OS loosely based on BeOS. I've tried it, and it's not bad. But don't take my word for it... let this guy sell it to you.



reactos-logo.jpg
ReactOS: An OS designed to be binary-compatible with Windows in every way. Essentially, a drop-in replacement for Windows.



icaros-logo.png
Icaros Desktop: An AROS operating system... sort of a modern Amiga OS.



menuet-logo.jpg
Menuet OS: A neat hobby OS written entirely in assembly language. It's impressive how much you can cram into 37mb when you're writing in assembly.



kolibri-logo.jpg
KolibriOS: Another Assembly-language-built OS. In fact, a fork of Menuet OS.



Reference Material

Handy command and shortcuts:

These are only useful to you if you're already knee-deep in Linux. If you're new to it all, skip right on by.
Keep in mind that these are only the most basic forms of each command, and that they all have dozens of switches and caveats that enable you to do awesome things with them.

FILE MANIPULATION:

cd <directory> : change current directory to <directory>
ls : list directory contents
ls -a : list directory contents including hidden files
ls -l : list directory contents in detailed list format
mkdir <dirname> : make subdirectory <dirname> (can also specify full directory e.g. mkdir /home/thesquid/giantAngryBear)
rmdir <dirname> : deletes empty subdirectory <dirname>
cp <file> <dest> : copy <file> to <dest>
cp -r <directory> <dest> : copy <directory> and everything inside it to location <dest>
mv <file> <dest> : moves <file> to <dest>
rm <file> : removes (deletes) <file>
rm -r <directory> : removes (deletes) <directory> and everything inside it
chown <user> <file> : change user ownership of <file> to <user>
chgrp <group> <file> : change group ownership of <file> to <group>
chmod XXX <file> : change permissions of <file> to octal number XXX (probably best to 'man' this one)
touch : change file timestamp (and will create an empty file if it doesn't exist)

HANDY TOOLS:

man : gives the manual page on any command including all of these ones (lol man mount)
man -k <string> : gives a list of all man pages with <string> in the title or short description
less : an extremely simple viewer of plaintext files, has regex searching and up/down movement
more : an even simpler viewer than less (now you get the less is more than more gag in bash)
view : a read-only version of vim, so has all the vim commands, but you can't edit the file
vim / emacs / pico / vi / nano : complex text editors that support enormously complicated yet awesome shortcuts, syntax colouring, the whole shebang

SYSTEM STUFF: (you will probably need to be root to take advantage of these)

top : display Linux tasks (equiv. to Task Manager) htop is a widely preferred and more interactive alternative
ifconfig : for configuring network interfaces (setting ip address, activating and deactivating network cards)
iwconfig : for configuring wireless network interfaces
iwlist : getting more info from a wireless network interface (especially seeing wireless networks in range)
route : show / manipulate the IP routing table
dhclient : DHCP client
lshw : list hardware
lspci : list all PCI devices
lsmod : list modules in Linux kernel
modprobe : add / remove <module> from Linux kernel
mount : mount a file system
umount : unmount a file system

USEFUL THINGOES:

wpa_supplicant : for connecting to WPA networks. Requires several reads of the man page, editing of a configuration file by looking at several example files for clarity, and possibly carving arcane symbols into your face.
tar : for making tarballs of a directory / several files
gzip : for compressing said tarball using *.gz
gunzip : for uncompressing a gzipped file
bzip2 : for compressing said tarball using *.bz2
bunzip : for uncompressing a bzipped file
tar xvfz <file> : for uncompressing a *.tar.gz file
tar xvjf <file> : uncormpressing a *tar.bz2 file
date : printing the date and time
ping : to ping
pwd : print out current directory name
killall <process> : kills all processes of name <process>
ps -aux : prints a snapshot of all current running processes
kill <jobid> : kills process of job id <jobid>. <jobid> can be found with ps -aux or top
which : locates a command


Useful Techniques

Once again, newbs should just ignore this section.
Searching for a file based on file name:

e.g. I want to find all the files in the current directory and any subdirectories that start with Photo and end in jpg, such as Photo322.jpg.

Command: find . -iname "Photo*.jpg"

English translation: find, starting in the the current directory (the "." argument), any files that match the name "Photo*.jpg" in a case insensitive fashion (the "-iname") argument.

Notes: It is very important if you are passing wildcards to find that you escape the wildcards by using \ or ". If you do not, then the shell will expand the wildcards on the command line and your command will then be the equivalent of:
find . -iname

Doing the same operation on a bunch of files

e.g. I want to gzip up each text file in the current directory into their own separate archive

Command: for eachFile in *.txt; do gzip "$eachFile"; done

English translation: Take the list of files that are returned by *.txt. Go through each of those filenames in the list one by and one, and each time
1.) Assign the current filename to the variable called "eachFile". This can be accessed by $eachFile.
2.) Execute the command between "do" and "done". In this example, it is gzip "$eachFile".

Notes: "$eachFile" is enclosed in quotation marks so that any filenames with spaces get passed correctly to gzip. The semi-colons tell the shell that a command is done and to treat anything after the semi-colon as a new command. If you wanted to, you could have the loop do more than one command on a single line, like so:
for eachFile in *.txt; do gzip "$eachFile"; mv "$eachFile".gz .. ; done

Any more complexity, and you're probably at the stage where you should be writing a script instead of trying to fit it into one line.

* Displaying the contents of files/simple manipulation of standard input

head [filename]
tail [filename]
cat [filename]

Head will show, by default, the first 10 lines of a file, or if no filename is provided, then standard input.
Tail will show, by default, the last 10 lines of a file, or if no filename is provided, then standard input. Useful for looking at log files.
cat will dump the entire contents of a file to standard output (typically the screen, but often not). If no filename is provided, then it will basically echo standard input to standard output.

This is useful in creating simple files. e.g. I want to create a file called "hello.txt" containing the line "This is a test"

cat > hello.txt
This is a test
Ctrl-D

(Ctrl-D signals end-of-file).

To *append* something to an existing file:

cat >> hello.txt
This will be the second line of the file
Ctrl-D

Note the >>! If you just use >, you will overwrite the file, instead of appending.

* Displaying something to screen

echo Hello world!

The echo command will echo whatever arguments is passed to it back to the standard output. Typically used in scripts to show status reports.

Chaining it all together!

Let's list the first ten lines of every text file in the current directory and pretty it up with a header.

for eachFile in *.txt; do echo "*** Ten lines of $eachFile ***"; head "$eachFile"; done

Oh crud, it went by too fast to see it! Hang on - we know that we can use 'less' to view text files

for eachFile in *.txt; do echo "*** Ten lines of $eachFile ***"; head "$eachFile"; done | less

Tada! (push 'q' to quit from less, by the way).

Replace with appropriate options for those times you want to sort mp3 files, or photos, or whatever.



Other random Linux(ish) resources:

Videos (or Linux shows):

InfinitelyGalactic
Linux4UnMe
LinuxSpatry
metalx1000
Nixie Does Linux
TWIL (This Week in Linux)
CLIMagic (he also has a twitter feed)
Linux Action Show (Jupiter Broadcasting)
Welcome to Vim (Derek Wyatt's video series)

Podcasts: (here's another list with even more shows)

GNU World Order
The Linux Link Tech Show
Hacker Public Radio
Source Trunk
Going Linux
FLOSS Weekly
Kernel Panic
Linux Reality


Interesting or useful texts:

The Cathedral and the Bazaar
In the Beginning was the Command Line
The Coming War on General Purpose Computation (also, video)
The Art of Unix Programming
A Brief History of Hackerdom
The Jargon File
Unix for Beginning Mages

Other links:

ESR's page
Linux.com
GNU.org
FSF.org
Distrowatch.com



Anything else?

Nope! Just get your hands dirty and you'll find that you have the hang of this in no time. If you have any questions, you can either ask in this thread or consult these other resources:

Google / DuckDuckGo
LinuxQuestions.org
Ubuntu Forums
Arch Wiki


...and also, this:
the-brads-buyersguide.gif

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Seeks on
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Posts

  • SeeksSeeks Registered User regular
    edited January 2012

    Software


    What's a repository?

    Probably the easiest way to think of a Linux repo is to compare it to an app store, except just about everything in it is free, open-source software. They make installing software ridiculously easy. Almost all of the software listed below can be found in your distro's repository.

    To access your distribution's repo(s), assuming your distro has one, you'll be interacting with your distribution's package manager. You can do this from the command line or through a GUI interface. Ubuntu, for example, has at least six ways to use the system's package manager. I'll describe three of the most popular here:

    From the command-line, type 'sudo apt-get install PACKAGE', where PACKAGE is the name of the application that you want to install. If you wanted to install Firefox, you'd type 'sudo apt-get install firefox'.

    The other two popular methods are the Ubuntu Software Center and the Synaptic Package Manager. The former is Ubuntu's polished, simplified package manager. The latter is a more advanced package manager that's old as dirt but still, in my opinion, the best GUI package manager on Linux.

    GUI Package Managers:
    ubuntu-software-center.png


    synaptic.jpg

    Alright, cool. So what can I run on Linux?

    What can't you run!? Whooooaa! No, but really, here are some popular programs.

    GUI

    Browsers: Firefox, Chromium, Opera (not open-source), xxxterm (download), Epiphany, Konqueror, Midori, Dillo
    Email: Thunderbird, Evolution, Claws-mail
    Twitter: Pino, Choqok
    Chat stuff: Pidgin, Empathy, Emesene, XChat, Konversation
    FTP: FileZilla, gFTP
    BitTorrent: Transmission, Deluge
    RSS / Podcast: Liferea, gpodder

    Image viewing: Eog (Eye of Gnome), Viewnior, Gwenview, Gthumb, Display
    Image organizing: Shotwell, F-Spot, Digikam, Solang
    Image manipulation: The GIMP (raster images), Inkscape (vector images), Phatch, Darktable, Converseen

    Video playback: VLC, mplayer, Totem, Dragon Player, Xine
    Video editing: Kdenlive, Openshot, VLMC, Cinelerra, Pitivi, Avidemux (sorta), Kino (sorta). Coming soon: Novacut, Lightworks
    Video ripping/encoding/decoding: Handbrake, dvd::rip, ogmrip, acidrip, VLC

    Audio playback: VLC, Rhythmbox, Banshee, Clementine, Amarok, GMPC, Exaile, Deadbeef, Audacious, Quod Libet
    Audio editing/production: Audacity, Sweep, Ardour, QTractor, LMMS, Rosegarden
    Audio ripping/encoding/decoding: Sound Juicer, ripperX, grip, ruby ripper, brasero, k3b, Sound Converter

    Text editing: Gvim, Emacs, Gedit, Geany, Kate, Leafpad
    Office: LibreOffice, OpenOffice, Abiword, KOffice, Scribus, Evince, Okular, XPdf, Calibre (I guess?)

    File Managers: Thunar, Nautilus, Dolphin, Konqueror, pcmanfm, xfe, gnome-commander
    Terminal emulators: Terminator, gnome-terminal, LXTerminal, xterm, urxvt, terminal (xfce4)

    Misc: Dia (flowcharts and diagrams), Gummi (editing LaTeX files), MySQL gui, Gnome Do, Kupfer, Synapse, Wine (run some Windows apps)

    CLI

    Browsers: links, links2, elinks, lynx, …..gopher?
    Email: Alpine, Mutt
    Twitter: bti, ttytter
    Chat stuff: weechat, bitlbee, naim
    FTP: ftp, sftp
    BitTorrent: bittorrent, rtorrent, transmission-cli
    RSS / Podcast: newsbeuter, castget, snownews

    Image anything: ImageMagick.

    Video playback: Uhhh... mplayer using '-vo aa' or '-vo caca'. Yeah.
    Video manipulation: You can use mencoder/mplayer or ffmpeg if you want, but it's hard.
    Video ripping/encoding/decoding: Handbrake-cli, transcode, ffmpeg, mencoder

    Audio playback: mplayer, play, mpd (mpc, ncmpc)
    Audio ripping/encoding/decoding: cdparanoia, cdrkit, abcde, mencoder, ffmpeg

    Text editing: Vim (or Vi), Emacs, Nano, Pico, Ed (haha)
    Office: N/A, really. You can use edit documents in Docbook, epub or LaTeX source code using a text editor, though.

    File managers: Just use the command line like a man. Alternately, MC is okay.

    Misc: SSH, GNU Screen

    Compiling Software:

    One nice thing about Linux (and BSD for that matter) is the ease of compiling your own software from source code. I won't get into it too much here, but if you see a program that comes in a '.tar.gz' file, it could very well be source code. Check the README, or if it doesn't have one, remember the three steps that are usually involved:

    ./configure
    make
    make install (make sure to 'sudo' or 'su' first)


    What about installers, like in Windows?

    This is one area in which Linux can be more confusing than its counterparts. Generally speaking, 'installers' come in two forms: The types that are built to work with your distro's package manager, and 'other'. The benefit to the former is that your package manager will take care of the messy details when installing the program, such as dependencies. The benefit to the latter is that 'untethered' installers are more distro independent.

    Package Manager Executables: .deb (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint), .rpm (Red Hat, Fedora, openSUSE), others that I can't remember

    Standalone installers: Anything that's executable. Typical extensions include .bin, .run, and .sh. Often, binary programs will just come in a tarball (anything with .tar in the name, comparable to .zip files) and forgo installers altogether.


    That's all well and good, but what about games?

    Unfortunately, Linux doesn't do games the same way Windows does. Developers go where the money is, which is Windows at present. If you're coming from a Mac, then you'll probably cope a little better since you were already getting shafted.

    That's not to say that there are no games in Linux, however. In addition to free games made by hobbyists, there's been a growing number of commercial titles available for Linux thanks largely to the indie scene getting more popular.

    Desura: Desura is a cross-platform steam-like client that's focused primarily on indie games. It's got a decent amount of Linux content on it, so it's definitely worth looking at. Oh, and quite recently, the good folks at Desura have released an open-source version of their client dubbed Desurium.

    The Linux Game Tome: The Linux Game Tome is a site dedicated to listing damn near every Linux game that exists. Plenty of good stuff there, but also, plenty of crap.

    Free games:

    Cave Story – Pretty good metroidvania, quite popular
    Battle for Wesnoth – Strategy game
    UFO: Alien Invasion – XCOM knockoff
    OpenArena – FPS (Quake 3: Arena knockoff)
    Alien Arena – FPS with aliens
    Sauerbraten – FPS based on the... Quake 2 engine? I can't remember. Cool music.
    Tremulous – Decent FPS
    Warsow – Fast-paced, cel-shaded FPS
    Chromium B.S.U. - Decent vertical shmup
    Frets on Fire – Guitar Hero clone
    Lincity-NG – Simcity clone
    OpenTTD – Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe
    Frozen Bubble – Puzzle Bobble clone
    Neverball / Neverputt – Ball balancing game, mini-golf game
    Freeciv – Civilization clone
    Wormux – Worms clone
    Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup – A newer, often-updated roguelike. Quite good.
    Nethack – The older, almost definitive roguelike.
    Dwarf Fortress – A semi-rogulike, somewhat-too-deep text-based dwarf... sim... thing. I'm terrified of this game.
    Ascii Sector – A Privateer knockoff, except with Ascii graphics. Pretty good, actually.

    Commercial games:

    Penny Arcade Adventures 1 & 2 – Action adventure games with some casual RPG elements. Pretty good, but difficult to get working on modern distros.
    Neverwinter Nights – Older, but a classic. (Linux install instructions)
    Unreal Tournament 2004 – Also oldish, but it's still a pretty good arena shooter. (Linux install instructions)
    Quake Wars – Quake's answer to Battlefield, or so I hear.
    Quake IV - Well, it's better than Doom 3
    Minecraft – Prepare to not leave your house for a week
    Cobalt – Not yet released, but it's made by Mojang and will be out soon enough. Looks cool.
    Amnesia: The Dark Descent – Frictional Games' newer survival horror game
    Eschalon, Book I – An old-school indie RPG
    Eschalon, Book II – Another old-school indie RPG, sequel to Eschalon Book I
    Trine 2 - Not out yet for Linux, but soon.

    Humble Indie Bundle games (all commercial):

    World of Goo – Goo-based physics puzzles
    Aquaria – Underwater metroidvania
    Gish – Another physics puzzler, and this time you're a ball of tar or trash or something.
    Penumbra: Overture – Frictional Games' older Lovecraftian survival horror game
    Lugaru HD – You're a rabbit who beats the shit out of other rabbits. Has a pretty compelling combat engine.
    Samorost 2 – A very pretty point-and-click adventure/puzzle game.
    Braid – A time-manipulation puzzle-platformer. Do I need to explain Braid to you?
    Cortex Command – A 2d side-scrolling blow-the-shit-out-of-everything game with jetpacks
    Machinarium – Beautiful 2d adventure/puzzle point-n'-click game, made by the same people who brought us Samorost
    Osmos – Atmospheric amoeba / planet / whatever game. Pretty good.
    Revenge of the Titans – A Tower Defense game with nice graphics and catchy music.
    Trine – A puzzle platformer with good graphics, some voice acting and a neat gimmick.
    Shadowgrounds – A 'walk around and kill aliens' game. Not bad.
    Shadowgrounds Survivor – Sequel to Shadowgrounds, basically the same deal
    Crayon Physics Deluxe – A puzzle game where you draw stuff to solve puzzles.
    Cogs – A puzzle game where you manipulate pipes and gears and stuff.
    VVVVVV – An awesome C64-inspired platformer where you flip gravity instead of jumping.
    Hammerfight – A 2d physics-based fighting game with flying machines
    And Yet It Moves – A puzzle-platformer where you rotate the entire world instead of jumping.
    Steel Storm – A 'drive around and shoot things' game, also pretty damn good for what it is.
    Atom Zombie Smasher – A strategy game with ZOOOOMBIIIEEEESSSS!!!!
    Frozen Synapse – A strategy game somewhat similar to Jagged Alliance or Fallout: Tactics, except more computery
    TRAUMA – A pretentious but good puzzle/adventure point-n'-clicker.
    SpaceChem – Uh... a puzzle game with elements?
    Voxatron – A voxel-based shooter/platformer with a built-in editor and community levels.
    Blocks That Matter – A puzzle/platformer that's a mix of tetris and platforming, with a little Minecraft thrown in (though almost none)
    Darwinia – A strategy game where you make little virtual dudes kill little virtual dragons (more or less). It's pretty good.
    Uplink – A game where you pretend to be a hacker like in the movies. You're already downloading it, aren't you.
    Multiwinia – Darwinia, except multiplayer. I assume.
    DEFCON – I think this is a 'kill the whole world game', but I haven't got around to actually playing it yet.
    Dungeons of Dredmor – A modern roguelike with a sense of humor, very good.
    Jamestown – An awesome 16-bit style shmup.
    Bit.Trip Runner – A rhythm-based (kind of) platformer.
    Super Meat Boy – A pretty good platformer famous for its difficulty.
    Shank – I don't know, but there's a guy with a chainsaw in it
    NightSky HD – You're a ball that rolls around. It's better than it sounds.
    Cave Story + - It's like Cave Story, but better.
    Gratuitous Space Battles – I think this is a strategy game, but haven't played it yet. IN SPAAAAAAACE

    Seeks on
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  • SeeksSeeks Registered User regular
    edited January 2012
    Triple post... whoops.

    Edit: I guess I'll take this opportunity to mention how cool xxxterm is. If it had a way to quickly save youtube/blip/vimeo/etc. videos to disk, I think I'd be looking at my new main browser.

    Seeks on
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  • MKRMKR Registered User regular
    edited January 2012
    That is a great OPus.

    MKR on
  • SeeksSeeks Registered User regular
    Thanks. Believe it or not, this is the trimmed-down version.

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  • GnomeTankGnomeTank What the what? Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
    FreeBSD 4 lyfe!!!

    Oh wait, this isn't the OS religious wars thread?

    Sagroth wrote: »
    Oh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
    Steam: Brainling, XBL / PSN: GnomeTank, NintendoID: Brainling, FF14: Zillius Rosh SFV: Brainling
  • SeeksSeeks Registered User regular
    edited February 2012
    Alright.

    Two things: A new Humble Bundle is out, so... yeah.

    And also, a question: Is there a way to make E17's default file manager sort by date (from newest to oldest)? I really want to give Enlightenment more of an honest try, but that shit gets on my tits way too hard. Am I just being dumb and missing something obvious?

    Finally, bonus comic which I'll put at the end of the OP's first post. You've probably already seen it, but if not, here you go.

    Seeks on
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  • GnomeTankGnomeTank What the what? Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
    Has Enlightenment had any active development for the past eight years? I remember when E17 was just being "released", in like 2002.

    Sagroth wrote: »
    Oh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
    Steam: Brainling, XBL / PSN: GnomeTank, NintendoID: Brainling, FF14: Zillius Rosh SFV: Brainling
  • SeeksSeeks Registered User regular
    Yeah, Enlightenment's a bit weird. E17 was released a year or two ago, but I think 'officially' it's some weird version like 16.9999 or something.

    It's pretty slick, though, if a bit Fisher-Price. I just keep hitting this brick wall with Enlightenment. I'll be using it for five or ten minutes, and then I use the file manager and it's like... "...Oh. So this is why I don't use Enlightenment." What's worse is that they don't even let you change the default file manager.

    userbar.jpg
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  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    Your OP is fantastic.

    I'm delving back into the open source world - more for servers than for desktops, because my company management is loathe to give Microsoft any more money than they have to.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • Mr.RitzMr.Ritz Registered User regular
    Linux crew signing in

  • Apothe0sisApothe0sis Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? Registered User regular
    I am currently studying for my RHCSA exam which has been enlightening in that it requires me to know about things which I have tended to ignore (like lvm). So that's been fun.

    On the other hand, the two *nix machines in my personal life aren't treating me all that well.

    My home FreeNAS I have to expand its system partition so I can add a few more applications which aren't part of the normal distribution. Which has been interesting.

    On the other hand my main server keeps getting power outages at annoying times, which seems to be hurting its disks. Or not. Currently one of the drives leaves a few different errors in the dmesg logs that seem usually to be associated with head collision, and the drive disappears from the server. Once I reboot, it is all fine ( I've been moving the data off and it's been passing the checking I've done at the same time). I'm beginning to suspect it may be a heat issue or the power supply being underpowered/dying.

  • Apothe0sisApothe0sis Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? Registered User regular
    I never knew about auto-apt if you're running a Debian flavored linux distro. Then I found out about it a few weeks ago and promptly forgot about it. Basically, it allows you to install packages on demand, which makes compiling random things much easier.

    I hope I don't forget again.
    # auto-apt run ./configure
    

  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    edited February 2012
    Okay, I'm trying to do something really simple and I can't figure out how to do it.

    I just want to change the timezone on my Knoppix box to Pacific, and set up time synchronization to an offsite NTP server.

    I've Googled and found instructions and none of them have worked.

    Feral on
    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • GnomeTankGnomeTank What the what? Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
    Feral wrote:
    Okay, I'm trying to do something really simple and I can't figure out how to do it.

    I just want to change the timezone on my Knoppix box to Pacific, and set up time synchronization to an offsite NTP server.

    I've Googled and found instructions and none of them have worked.

    Did you try running the tzselect command? Not sure if Knoppix has it, but I think it's pretty standard these days.

    Sagroth wrote: »
    Oh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
    Steam: Brainling, XBL / PSN: GnomeTank, NintendoID: Brainling, FF14: Zillius Rosh SFV: Brainling
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    GnomeTank wrote:
    Feral wrote:
    Okay, I'm trying to do something really simple and I can't figure out how to do it.

    I just want to change the timezone on my Knoppix box to Pacific, and set up time synchronization to an offsite NTP server.

    I've Googled and found instructions and none of them have worked.

    Did you try running the tzselect command? Not sure if Knoppix has it, but I think it's pretty standard these days.

    Weird that this command didn't come up on Google searches.

    I just ran it, and my time didn't change. Still showing UTC.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • GnomeTankGnomeTank What the what? Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
    Oh, UTC is a completely different setting, that's not your timezone, that's how your internal clock is interpreted. Unless you mean your timezone is actually set to UTC (aka GMT)?

    At any rate, if it is just the UTC clock setting, that's setup very different on every flavor of Linux, though it's generally in some file in /etc, generally in the RC/bootstrapper stuff.

    Sagroth wrote: »
    Oh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
    Steam: Brainling, XBL / PSN: GnomeTank, NintendoID: Brainling, FF14: Zillius Rosh SFV: Brainling
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    edited February 2012
    GnomeTank wrote:
    Oh, UTC is a completely different setting, that's not your timezone, that's how your internal clock is interpreted. Unless you mean your timezone is actually set to UTC (aka GMT)?

    At any rate, if it is just the UTC clock setting, that's setup very different on every flavor of Linux, though it's generally in some file in /etc, generally in the RC/bootstrapper stuff.

    Okay, here's what I get when I run the date command:

    Thu Feb 2 18:20:28 UTC 2012

    and the clock in the lower right shows 18:30.

    (My local time is 10:23.)

    Does that mean my timezone is set to UTC?

    (BTW, I'm using Knoppix because I want to run WatchOCR on this box, and the Knoppix install was straightforward while people in their forums were saying they were having problems installing it on Ubuntu.)

    Feral on
    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • GnomeTankGnomeTank What the what? Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
    If you do a 'cat /etc/localtime' what does it return?

    Sagroth wrote: »
    Oh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
    Steam: Brainling, XBL / PSN: GnomeTank, NintendoID: Brainling, FF14: Zillius Rosh SFV: Brainling
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    GnomeTank wrote:
    If you do a 'cat /etc/localtime' what does it return?

    No such file or directory.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • FeralFeral MEMETICHARIZARD interior crocodile alligator ⇔ ǝɹʇɐǝɥʇ ǝᴉʌoɯ ʇǝloɹʌǝɥɔ ɐ ǝʌᴉɹp ᴉRegistered User regular
    I think I might just wipe this and reinstall using Ubuntu and take my chances with WatchOCR compatibility.

    It shouldn't be this fucking difficult to change my time zone.

    every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.

    the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
  • GnomeTankGnomeTank What the what? Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
    No, it really shouldn't. No /etc/localtime is very odd, unless something in the way people are structuring Linux distros has fundamentally changed since the last time I was doing this a lot.

    Sagroth wrote: »
    Oh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
    Steam: Brainling, XBL / PSN: GnomeTank, NintendoID: Brainling, FF14: Zillius Rosh SFV: Brainling
  • Apothe0sisApothe0sis Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? Registered User regular
    I know nothing about Knoppix other than it is debian based, but have you tried all the options here:

    http://wiki.debian.org/TimeZoneChanges

    ?

  • SeeksSeeks Registered User regular
    Your OP is fantastic.

    Thanks. 8-) It's long enough that I felt I had to make an html mirror, haha.

    Incidentally, that prompted me to write a script that automates that process somewhat in the future, if anyone's interested. It can be found here:
    http://pastebin.com/NE7bQsHn

    It shouldn't be this fucking difficult to change my time zone.

    Yeah, I remember I had that problem once with some distro or another. Never really solved it, but I did 'fix' the problem by just... never rebooting after setting the time with the 'date' command. So you know... close enough.

    userbar.jpg
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  • Monkey Ball WarriorMonkey Ball Warrior A collection of mediocre hats Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    edited February 2012
    Anyone have some experience with hostapd? Basically I am trying to get rid of this crappy wireless router I have and use my linux box instead.

    I have all the wired stuff working great, though I honestly forgot exactly how I got IP masquerading to work. But it does! I am firewalled up, I have dhcpd going and dns cacheing and samba and public key based ssh.

    What I want is an encrypted wireless access point. I want, assuming they have the right WPA2 key, for wireless clients to be on the LAN, like they were on the eth1 side of the router. I have already confirmed that this wireless card support AP mode (it uses the ath9k_htc driver).

    Do I have to do some sort of bridging, or do I just need to do something fancy with my dhcpd.conf or what? Most of the how-to's I see online are about how to set it up on a seperate box on the LAN side, not how to do it on the actual router.

    Failing that, I would accept making a new LAN just of wireless clients, though that would complicate sharing files between my laptop and my desktop. I can always just plug in a physical wire though, so it's not a disaster if this is not possible, or not possible to do securely.

    Diagram:
    hostapd.png

    edit: After playing with it for several hours I am left with either trying to figure out bridging, or trying to figure out how to ip masq to two different internal networks. weefun

    Monkey Ball Warrior on
    "I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
  • EgoEgo Registered User regular
    This thread makes me want to do a proper gentoo build again. These days, unlike the last time I did it (where I constantly rebooted to play games in windows) I'd probably get a lot more traction out of it for a daily system.

    Great thread and OP.

    Erik
  • GnomeTankGnomeTank What the what? Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
    edited February 2012
    Sometimes I do a fresh Gentoo bootstrap just to keep my Linux-fu strong, because it requires you to know something beyond how to move a mouse to setup properly.

    Plus Gentoo uses emerge, which is a direct descendant of FreeBSD's ports, and we know how much I love FreeBSD.

    GnomeTank on
    Sagroth wrote: »
    Oh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
    Steam: Brainling, XBL / PSN: GnomeTank, NintendoID: Brainling, FF14: Zillius Rosh SFV: Brainling
  • DarmakDarmak RAGE vympyvvhyc vyctyvyRegistered User regular
    Goddamn, these threads always make me want to install and fuck around with Linux but I don't want to dual boot and I certainly don't want to give up Windows. I guess I could build another PC for cheap or buy a cheap laptop and install some flavor of Linux on it. Hmmmmm.

    JtgVX0H.png
  • GnomeTankGnomeTank What the what? Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
    Darmak wrote:
    Goddamn, these threads always make me want to install and fuck around with Linux but I don't want to dual boot and I certainly don't want to give up Windows. I guess I could build another PC for cheap or buy a cheap laptop and install some flavor of Linux on it. Hmmmmm.

    https://www.virtualbox.org/

    Linux runs great in a VM, and if you install the VirtualBox Guest Additions (which are available in the package repos of most major distros), they come with an XWindows driver that allows you to use pretty decent resolutions. I run a Gentoo setup in a VM and I am able to run KDE just fine and use the system with no issues.

    Sagroth wrote: »
    Oh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
    Steam: Brainling, XBL / PSN: GnomeTank, NintendoID: Brainling, FF14: Zillius Rosh SFV: Brainling
  • SeeksSeeks Registered User regular
    Man, don't be a pussy. Use real hardware.

    8-)

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  • GnomeTankGnomeTank What the what? Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
    I game too much to run Linux on my primary hardware, and I don't have a spare machine. A VM does the job for now.

    Sagroth wrote: »
    Oh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
    Steam: Brainling, XBL / PSN: GnomeTank, NintendoID: Brainling, FF14: Zillius Rosh SFV: Brainling
  • DarmakDarmak RAGE vympyvvhyc vyctyvyRegistered User regular
    How does a VM work, exactly? If I install Linux via one and do stuff, are the changes saved or is it like running a live cd?

    JtgVX0H.png
  • EndEnd Registered User regular
    edited February 2012
    Darmak wrote: »
    How does a VM work, exactly? If I install Linux via one and do stuff, are the changes saved or is it like running a live cd?

    Changes are saved. When you create a virtual machine, you create a disk image which is presented to the guest OS as if it was a "real" hard drive.

    End on
    I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
    zaleiria-by-lexxy-sig.jpg
  • SeeksSeeks Registered User regular
    Yup, it's pretty cool. I've got Windows XP in a virtual machine for testing purposes.

    It doesn't play so well with games, but then, that's not quite the problem with a Linux 'guest' as it is with a Windows one.

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  • DarmakDarmak RAGE vympyvvhyc vyctyvyRegistered User regular
    Well if I ever get off my ass and figure out what's wrong with my PC at home then I'll install virtualbox and fuck around with stuff. Thanks for the info!

    JtgVX0H.png
  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    I've been meaning to install Linux on my desktop/laptop for a while now so I can get a better feel for it. My Win 7 is customized basically how I like it, and I've realized I might feel more at home if I used it as my main OS more often.

    The problem is I utterly hate where Ubuntu and Gnome 3 seem to be going at the moment. Lubuntu seems more like my style, any opinions people?

  • Monkey Ball WarriorMonkey Ball Warrior A collection of mediocre hats Seattle, WARegistered User regular
    I've been meaning to install Linux on my desktop/laptop for a while now so I can get a better feel for it. My Win 7 is customized basically how I like it, and I've realized I might feel more at home if I used it as my main OS more often.

    The problem is I utterly hate where Ubuntu and Gnome 3 seem to be going at the moment. Lubuntu seems more like my style, any opinions people?

    Xubuntu is pretty sweet. There's still a few rough edges (like notifications that refuse to go away and a mixer that's always muted on boot) but otherwise it is good stuff.

    "I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
  • SeeksSeeks Registered User regular
    edited February 2012
    Honestly, I'd say download something decent and then install like, five or six different DE/WMs. I mean, I can't think of a reason not to.

    Other than that, I'm having a hard time picking a favorite. At the moment, I'm in KDE a lot. Previously it was XFCE, then Gnome shell, then Openbox. I will say that I think you'll find Gnome shell growing on you more than you'd anticipate if you give it an honest try for a week or two.

    That being said, I'd generally recommend people migrating from Windows to go with KDE if you absolutely had to pick just one DE. It's been pretty good since 4.6 (it's on 4.8 now, I think), and they seem to be sticking with the nice, familiar desktop paradigms we all know and love instead of tablet-ing it up.

    Seeks on
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  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    I must say I don't find Gnome Shell totally offensive, although I'm wary of "highly integrated" environments. It's why the LX Desktop project has caught my eye - all the bits of that standalone quite well.

    I really would like to get caught up on making GUI apps for Linux, since my current skillset is very Windows centric.

  • SeeksSeeks Registered User regular
    All the recent hubbub about WindowMaker's got me curious. I've decided to give 'er a try for a while.

    It's taking a bit of getting used to, but it's not as bad as I remember. I'm liking its customizability quite a lot.

    userbar.jpg
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  • augustaugust where you come from is gone Registered User regular
    edited February 2012
    After hopping around a bit I've sort of settled on Ubuntu with Gnome Shell and ANewStartBlood. And a crunchbang install I'm busy playing with and breaking occasionally.

    As I'm typing this I'm trying out Cinnamon. The way windows bounce into place is one of the stupidest and most headache inducing things I've ever seen.

    EDIT: Great OP by the way.

    EDIT EDIT: Crunchbang no longer comes in a xfce flavor, fwiw.

    august on
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