Rebel Zero

Steel Storm Episode I

Adam Stovicek — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 06:40:28 +0000

Kot-in-Action Creative Artel describes itself as “a small, independent video game developer, a privately owned entity dedicated to creating and producing fun to play video games.”

For a while now, they’ve been putting together Steel Storm which is a 3D top-down arcade shooter. Delivered in episodic format with Episode 1 being released for free, it’s set to ship with an advanced A.I., deathmatch and co-op game modes, lots of enemies to blow up including structures and obstacles, and have the ability to mod your own missions with the SandStorm in-game editor. The game is cross-platform capable with the ability to play it on Linux, as well as on Windows and Mac.

It was to be released today, but due to some bugs it’s been postponed temporarily. In the meantime, we’ve been given a taste of what to expect:

This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

The official Steel Storm website will soon have the finalized version of Episode I for download (for free, remember). You can also pre-order Episode II should you be so inclined for a measly $10.

Introducing Ubuntu Unity for Netbook Remix 10.10

Adam Stovicek — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 01:09:26 +0000

Personally, I haven’t been too excited with the Maverick Meerkat release cycle. It seems more of an enhancement to the Ubuntu stack rather than the progressive development usually seen out of Canonical. The one big exception to this is the new Ubuntu Unity interface for Ubuntu Netbook Remix 10.10. Just check out Ubuntu Ads video of it below.

This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

Lucid Lynx matures with its first point release

Adam Stovicek — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:24:23 +0000

Lucid Lynx, which has the distinction of being an LTS (Long Term Support) release, has reached its first milestone with the first of four point releases, 10.04.1, on August 17 with plenty of bug fixes.

This shouldn’t be confused with Ubuntu’s regular cycle of releases which will continue with 10.10 Maverick Meerkat this October 10, 2010. The point release isn’t a new version of 10.04 as much as it’s an updated release. Since the LTS versions benefit from a much longer support cycle, three years for the desktop and five years for the server, they will inherently receive more bug and security fixes during its life time. Each point release takes advantage of these fixes by providing up-to-date install images making new installations more stable and secure.

Anyone currently using Lucid Lynx will automatically reach this same level of point release through the regular use of the update system. You can check the installed distribution’s description at the command line with lsb_release.

adam@dauntless:~$ lsb_release -d
Description: Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS

Subsequent point releases are scheduled for:

10.04.2 on January 27, 2011
10.04.3 on July 29, 2011
10.04.4 on January 22, 2012.

You can download the newly updated ISOs from the Lucid Lynx release page. Hop on a torrent and grab yours today.

Ohio Linux Fest 2010: I’m registered. Are you?

Adam Stovicek — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 03:09:17 +0000

It’s that time of the year again to get registered for Ohio Linux Fest.

It runs from Friday, September 10 through Sunday, September 12. Three levels of registration are available:

Enthusiast which is free
Supporter for $65 which includes lunch on Saturday and a free t-shirt
Professional for $350 which gives you access to OFLU classes on Friday, lunch on Friday and Saturday, and a free t-shirt.

There are presentations all day on Friday and Saturday given by many notable people within the Linux community. Mackenzie Morgan, Bryen Yunashko, Amber Graner, Jordan Keyes, and Tarus Balog to name a few.

Keynotes will be delivered by:

John “maddog” Hall, Executive Director of Linux International, on Friday evening.
Stormy Peters, Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, on Saturday morning.
Christopher “Monty” Montgomery, creator of the open source OGG Vorbis audio format and founder of the Xiph.org Foundation, will be giving the closing keynote on Saturday evening.

There are also a ton of sponsors, including Google, HP, IBM, and Linux in the Ham Shack, with booths and tables for most of them in the Expo.

Special rates for rooms at Drury Inn and Suites are available, as well as rooms at the Red Roof Inn for those that need a place to shack up for the night.

More detailed information is available at the Ohio Linux Fest website. Space is limited so register as soon as you can.

Ubuntu 11.04 Codename: Natty Narwhal

Adam Stovicek — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:32:37 +0000

Mark Shuttleworth continues his tradition of naming each subsequent release of Ubuntu following along the English alphabet. After Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat is finished, work will begin on Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal.

“So the Narwhal, as the closest thing to a real live unicorn, is an auspicious figurehead as we lay down the fabric from which dreams will be woven.”

Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex End Of Life

Adam Stovicek — Sat, 01 May 2010 04:34:00 +0000

As we welcome the release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx, we say farewell to 8.10 Intrepid Ibex.

Intrepid was the first release to include the Ubuntu Live USB creator. Guest sessions were also introduced to provide a temporary user account with restricted privileges with the idea that one could lend a computer to a friend or colleague for simple tasks like a quick email check. Encrypted private directories with the use of the ecryptfs package provided users with an alternative to the drawbacks inherit to the optional full-partition encryption using LVM and LUKS.

Intrepid did all of this and more using Gnome 2.24 and the Linux 2.6.27 kernel. As much as Intrepid forged ahead, it has finally reached the end of its 18 month life cycle. Users will be encouraged to upgrade their Intrepid installations to at least 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope to continue receiving security updates and critical bug fixes.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx Released

Adam Stovicek — Sat, 01 May 2010 03:10:25 +0000

I’m a little late in joining the flood of announcements regarding the official release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Lucid Lynx. I spent release day working in the morning and spending most of the evening helping my Mom purchase a new car. She absolutely loves it, by the way.

I am currently in the process of downloading all of the CD isos through the use of the torrents. Those will be seeded out over the next few months, probably until the first point release, 10.04.1, which we should see in July. I also have 5-packs of Ubuntu Desktop, Server, and Kubuntu Desktop CDs on order through Canonical that I hope to have in a week or so.

You can visit the “How to get Ubuntu” section of Ubuntu’s website which lists all of the available ways to get a copy of your own. The fastest way of course is to download a copy which can be burned to a CD or made into a bootable USB drive. You can also order your own CDs like I have. If all else fails, you can request a CD to be sent to you which can take up to six weeks to arrive.

Another option that is not so well known is to get in contact with one of Ubuntu’s many LoCo teams scattered around the globe and request a CD from them. They usually get a number of CDs to help spread the news about Ubuntu. The United States has plenty of state/region based teams to cover almost every state. Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, Australia (sorry, no Antarctica, yet) all have country based teams. The Loco Team List provides all of the contact information for each team and whether or not they provide any local support.

RIP: Jan Mette (1978-2010)

Adam Stovicek — Sat, 01 May 2010 01:56:16 +0000

I don’t know too much about Jan Mette except what I’ve been able to read about him [link] [link]. He was a founding member of Chakra, a LiveCD environment based on KDE and the Arch Linux distribution, which he was also a significant contributor. More information can be found in the Chakra Project’s forums.

Shoot It In The Head!

Adam Stovicek — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:15:37 +0000

From the dmsetup changelog, Scott James Remnant adds the following:

Version 2.02.54-1ubuntu4:

* Some idiot thought it’d be a good idea if device mapper didn’t respond
to “add” events, like those during boot. Take their change out back
and shoot it in the head. LP: #561390.

Tell it like it is, Scott.

Thunderbird 3.0.4 Fails To Start After Upgrade

Adam Stovicek — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 21:00:15 +0000

There was a regression that was introduced with the update of Thunderbird to 3.0.4+nobinonly-0ubuntu2 that prevented the application from starting. Chris Coulson provided a description and a manual fix for those affected by it to the Ubuntu Developers list which is quoted below:

Some people have experienced a problem with Thunderbird failing to start after upgrading to 3.0.4+nobinonly-0ubuntu2 (see [1]). An updated version which fixes this bug has been uploaded already and the affected binaries removed from the archive. If you have already updated to the affected version and you are experiencing this problem, then you will need to recover manually in order to use Thunderbird again.

The issue is that under certain conditions, the thunderbird wrapper script replaces your profile with a recursive symlink. If you are running the affected version and thunderbird no longer starts, please open a terminal and run “ls -ld ~/.*thunderbird*”. If you see output similar to the following, then you are affected by this bug and will need to proceed with the instructions following.

lrwxrwxrwx 1 chr1s chr1s 24 2010-04-15 19:08 /home/chr1s/.mozilla-thunderbird -> /home/chr1s/.thunderbird
lrwxrwxrwx 1 chr1s chr1s 24 2010-04-15 19:08 /home/chr1s/.thunderbird -> /home/chr1s/.thunderbird
drwx—— 3 chr1s chr1s 4096 2010-04-15 19:08 /home/chr1s/.thunderbird.upstream

To recover from this, you need to:
1) Delete the recursive symlink (~/.thunderbird) by running “rm ~/.thunderbird”.
***Only do this if you see the output above, else you could be deleting your profile. If you are unsure, then rename the file instead***
2) Move ~/.thunderbird.upstream to ~/.thunderbird by running “mv ~/.thunderbird.upstream ~/.thunderbird”

Once you have done this, you will be able to open Thunderbird again.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Regards
Chris

[1] – https://launchpad.net/bugs/563893