In your quest to find a good, native and free game for Linux you might have seen long lists of games mentioned on various sites and forums. These mentioned games range anywhere from simple 2D side-scrollers to impressive 3D shooters. The amount of Linux games is surprising and can be a tid bit overwhelming. So, how do you pick out the games that are actually worth your time? Well, I’ve compiled a small list of some of the most talked about games for Linux on the internet. Have a read and see if any of these catch your eye.

1. Heroes of Newerth

As far as visuals go, this game is a gem within a sea of mediocre looking Linux games. It is based on Defense of the Ancients (DoTA) mod of Warcraft 3. Don’t fret, this is not another mod, it’s a completely stand alone game. The characters are revamped both visually (in a WoW-esque style) and functionally. Players take control of one of the numerous heroes, with unique and powerful abilities, and get pitted against enemy heroes in a Tower of Defense like scenarios. This game is fast paced, with brilliant graphics, team-based gameplay and a huge community. It can be frustrating, but also enjoyable if you can ignore all of the immature players calling you a “noob” most of the time.

Heroes of Newerth Screenshot

2. Regnum Online

Regnum is a MMORPG developed by an Argentinian company. It is your basic MMORPG, where you choose a class, level up, acquire skills and equipment. However, the game really shines in the fact that there are 3 different realms that constantly war for control of several areas on the map. Once a player has leveled enough and acquired some armor and weapons to be of any help, then that player can join the battle and fight for their realm. There is a good amount of Spanish, German and French speaking people that play this game, so make sure to pick a server according to your location.

Regnum Screenshot

3. PlaneShift

PlaneShift is another MMORPG, but it focuses more on the RPG aspect of the game, rather than on team work (like Regnum). In PlaneShift you don’t have to choose a specific class or skill, you can level any one skill at any time, to the maximum level. Graphics in PlaneShift are slightly better than in Regnum and since the game is in constant development new quests are always being added. That said, PlaneShift really depends on the player being into role-playing and acting “in character”. So, if that is your flavor then definitely give PlaneShift a try.

PlaneShift Screenshot

4. Nexuiz

A multi-player FPS with great graphics and fast paced action. Think of Quake but for Linux. Nexuiz offers thirteen weapons, 24 official maps and over 240 community created maps, as well as 15 player models. If encinerating your enemies with crazy-looking guns is your idea of fun, then don’t let Nexuiz slip by.

Nexuiz Screenshot

5. Savage 2

Savage series is developed by the same people that bring us Heroes of Newerth. Savage 2 is a mix of FPS, RTS, and action RPG game styles thrown together. Since this game is meant to be played in multiplayer, players join a game and are split into two teams. There are several units that players can choose to control from a third-person view. One player is assigned as a commander and he plays the game as an RTS, building buildings and directing his team-mates, while everyone else runs around and tries to kill the other team. Graphically the game is just as beautiful as Heroes of Newerth and the concept is really fun and innovative.

Savage 2 Screenshot

6. Dwarf Fortress

This game does not have the best graphics. In fact, it has some of the most basic graphics ever – it uses text based interface. The game obviously doesn’t focus on the visuals, but instead concentrates on the gameplay itself. With complex economy and difficult battles, this game comes with a high learning curve. But once you get the basic grasp of it, you might never be able to stop playing… There has been a buzz about this game spreading over some of the social sites and the game is quickly gaining popularity. In fact, community additions to the game bring more pleasing graphics and tools to help with the gameplay.

Dwarf Fortress UI

Not interested in native Linux games?

You can check out some of the alternatives to playing Windows games. The best known is WINE and it plays a multitude of games that are “windows only”. In fact, this article states that Starcraft 2 has a gold rating on Ubuntu, which means it’s fully playable. WINE does have its share of problems and some games, while playable, have just too many problems (freezing, crashing, unresponsiveness). However, there are some paid solutions as well. Crossover Games and Cedega are such solutions. They focus on supporting certain games really well, like World of Warcraft, EVE Online, Guild Wars and other more popular games. The fees are reasonable and your money goes to a good cause – it brings more games to Linux. So if you decide to go this route, consider your money well spent. But if you are tight financially, you can also give PlayOnLinux a try since it’s free.

I love Linux, Rails and my Mac laptop. When I’m on my Mac I use TextMate for my Rails projects, but when I’m using Linux I prefer the simplicity of gEdit. However, I always have this feeling like I want gEdit to act a little more like TextMate. Well, there’s a way to do that, thanks to gEdit plugins. gEdit doesn’t handle Ruby on Rails syntax highlighting properly, especially the erb and yml files. So let’s begin with that.

First, I’d like to mention the gMate project. It’s a collection of plugins and other things to make gEdit behave and look almost like TextMate. So check out gMate and see if it is for you. Me, I really don’t need all of the things gMate provides. Instead, I just grab the syntax highlighting files.

So, to get syntax highlighting to work in gEdit grab the necessary files from gEdit repository (I’ve also attached the files here rails_syntax.tar). Grab the rhtml.lang, ruby_on_rails.lang, yaml.lang and rails.xml files and let’s move them into the right directories.

sudo mv rhtml.lang ruby_on_rails.lang yaml.lang /usr/share/gtksourceview-2.0/language-specs/

sudo mv rails.xml /usr/share/mime/packages/

Now restart gEdit and your files should reflect proper rails syntax highlighting.

In order to get some useful functionality (like in TextMate) look through the list of plugins that gMate uses and pick out the ones that seem helpful to you (look here for a list of gMate plugins). You can also look at this list for all the available plugins for gEdit.

• Snap Open or Open File (they both do the same thing)
• Zen Coding
• File Browser Pane (comes with gEdit)
• Snippets (comes with gEdit)

It is also useful for me to enable line numbering, set tab width to 2 spaces (using spaces instead of tabs), and turn on automatic indentation. Once I have all that setup, my gEdit functions almost like TextMate!

What my gEdit looks like

Installing Minimal Ubuntu
If you are like me, then you enjoy using the Ubuntu linux distro, whose latest release at the time of writing is 10.04 (Lucid Lynx). I’ve always been somewhat annoyed by all the applications that get pre-installed, as I never use them, but rather install the ones that I prefer. Because of this, I went in search of a “bare-bones” solution for Ubuntu. Basically, I wanted the Ubuntu Desktop, but none of the applications out of the box. That way I can install only the ones that I’m going to use. Luckily, there is a Minimal CD Image for the latest Ubuntu release, which will let me do just what I want.

To get started get the minimal image here. Then burn the image to CD (USB method didn’t work for me). Make sure you are connected to the internet via a cable as this install will need to get some additional basic packages from the Ubuntu repository.

Go ahead and boot your machine from the installation CD. You should be prompted with a boot screen. At this point you can enter additional boot flags or just simply press the “Enter” key and the installation will begin.

Follow the prompts. They should all be self explanatory. You’ll be doing things like specifying your location, detecting your keyboard, and naming your machine.

On the partitioning screen I chose “Guided – use entire disk”, but you may want to do something different here, depending on your preferences.

Then the actual package installation progress will begin. Once it finishes you’ll be prompted to select a username and password. You can also choose to encrypt your home directory. I did. You’ll be asked about update preference. It’s safe to choose automatic updates.

Next, you’ll be presented with some package choices to install since we only have installed the very “bare-bones” of Ubuntu. You certainly can select something here, but the idea is to do a very minimal install. So, I suggest choosing manual package installation (at the bottom of the list).

After GRUB installs itself, the installation will finish up (this will take a while). Once everything is installed, remove the installation CD and hit “Continue”. The system will reboot and you’ll be greeted with a shell login prompt. Congratulations, you have just installed a bare minimum Ubuntu Lucid Lynx system.

This will get you the basic gnome environment with networking:

sudo apt-get install gnome-core gdm network-manager-gnome indicator-applet-session notify-osd

After this you can reboot and you’ll see a graphical Gnome login. You can login as your user and see a very basic Gnome Desktop. It’s very plain at this point, but that is what I wanted. Since trusty old terminal is present with this minimal install, you can fire it up and get to installing your favorite theme, icons, applications and whatnot. I will install the default Lucid theme with icons and some favorite apps of mine.

sudo apt-get install light-themes chromium-browser gnome-do

Have fun configuring your system and I’m always happy to receive comments about my posts, so feel free to write something.

This is a short guide on how to get Rails 3 (which is still in beta) running on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx. I’m going to assume that you have some skill with the terminal. Also, since you can’t have one without the other, I’m going to walk you through through installing Ruby 1.9.2 and also sqlite3. So there it goes.

First, let’s install all of the necessary tools and libraries:

apt-get install curl git-core build-essential zlib1g-dev libssl-dev libreadline5-dev

Install ruby 1.9.2 using RVM. Refer to the official RVM instructions here. Make sure you have curl and git installed (from above) and run this command:

bash < <( curl http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/releases/rvm-install-head )

Then add this line as the last line in your .bashrc:

if [[ -s "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]]  ; then source "$HOME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ; fi

Close your terminal and open a new one, then run the following to test RVM install:

rvm notes

Next, you can begin ruby 1.9.2 installation by running:

rvm install 1.9.2

The install will take up to several minutes and once it completes you have to set ruby 1.9.2 as the default version:

rvm --default ruby-1.9.2

Then you can test your new ruby install:

 ruby -v

And now, to install Rails 3 simply type in your terminal:

sudo gem install rails

The above line should be all you need, as it will take care of installing all of the pre-requisite gems that Rails 3 needs, like rack and bundler.

rails testapp

From here on you can start creating and testing your application further. I’ll note that this guide did not cover the setup for the database, whether it be mysql or sqlite.

Quick SQLite quide:

If you want to get a quick database up and running with sqlite, then you’ll need to sqlite3 and the libsqlite3-dev packages:

sudo apt-get install sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev

Then you can install the sqlite gem:

sudo gem install sqlite3-ruby

That should properly install sqlite3 that is necessary for simple Rails 3 database function. You can now successfully run the server for you app.

Make sure you are in your test app directory and run:

rails server

or (even better):

rails s

If you enjoyed or found this post helpful, please leave a comment. Also, if you found some mistakes or have a tip on how to improve this installation process, don’t be shy and tell me about it.

If you use Ubuntu’s latest release Lucid Lynx and you enjoy to chat with your friends using Skype, then you might have noticed that Skypes default theme clashes with Lucid’s dark theme. Personally, I think the new theme is kick-ass, but I was a bit annoyed that I couldn’t read any of the menus in Skype. I’m taking about the kind of menus you get when you right click on the Skype icon in your top taskbar. The dark text on dark background makes it unreadable.

Skype black on black menus

If you are seeing this same problem then here’s a solution for you.

Bring up the Skype Options (Ctrl+O)

Under “General” look for “Choose style”. It should be set to “Cleanlooks”.

Change the style to “Desktop Settings”. You will need to restart Skype.

Skype options menu

Once Skype restarts you should see light text on dark background. Which is much more readable!

Skype menus are much more readable now

I know that lots of the people choose to use open source software for their productive purposes. Linux is a vast ocean of open source apps. It’s easy to get lost in this ocean, and is even hard to find out about some great applications that are out there.
Thus, I hope that this modest list will help someone to discover a new application that they will love.

Inkscape

An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Cenon

Cenon is another great graphical tool for vector design and desktop publishing.

Endeavour Mark II

Endeavour Mark II is a complete file management suite that comes with a file browser, image browser, archiver, recycled objects system, and a set of file and disk management utility programs.

Gcolor2

Gcolor2 is a simple color picker.

gParted

The GParted application is a graphical partition editor for creating, reorganizing, and deleting disk partitions.

Cinefx

Cinefx is a suite of open source, cross platform media playback, encoding, visual effects and editing digital content creation tools.

KoverArtist

KoverArtist is a program for the fast creation of covers for cd/dvd cases and boxes. The main idea behind it is to be able to create decent looking covers with some mouse clicks.

Krita

Krita is a creative sketching and painting application based on KOffice technology. Whether you want to create art paintings, cartoons, concept art or textures, Krita supports most graphics tablets out of the box.

WhiteDune

White Dune is a low level VRML tool that can read VRML files, display and let the user change the scenegraph and fields.

Wings3D

Wings 3D is a free, open source, subdivision modeler inspired by Nendo and Mirai from Izware. Wings 3D can be used to model and texture low to mid-range polygon models.

Desktop environments give the users a very rich, cool interface with their computer. Gnome is one of the best desktop environments that is made available to the users since its release version.

1. Gnome had its developments in various releases, and most recently the stable release of gnome 2.28.so whats up now, its time for gnome 3 release.

The Gnome 3 a..k.a gnome-shell is expected to be bundled as a default desktop environment of ubuntu 10.10 But why to wait, lets test the gnome-shell development release in ubuntu karmic koala.

Here are the instructions for installing Gnome-shell in your Karmic machine:

Pre-requisites:

a) Install the package jhbuild:

“ download the deb package from http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/all/jhbuild/download and install it.

“ b) Get GNOME-Shell Build Setup script from the gnome git repository.

wget http://git.gnome.org/cgit/gnome-shell/plain/tools/build/gnome-shell-build-setup.sh

Then run the downloaded script by issuing this command,

gnome-shell-build-setup.sh

this makes sure that u have all dependencies satisfied.

Atlast its time to build:

jhbuild build

this will download the required modules and compile it.

I think totally 7 modules. It may take time around 15min, so be cool but also ignore the error when it asks u.

Before to run, disable compiz settings (if u have enabled) by Right click in desktop–>change desktop backgrounds–> visual effects–>none.

And also save and close any other works.

Launching Gnome-shell:

~/gnome-shell/source/gnome-shell/src/gnome-shell  – - replace

~voila! U did it!~

For to return back from gnome-shell: press alt+F2 and type debugexit

PhotoGallery

Gnome-shell overview:

Showing items, when searching:

Glances:

Showing sidebar (activate by clicking username in top panel)

Thanks Guys.. Thanks for reading this article

Today, I’ve got a nice story for you about the world’s largest JPEG image. This image is being kept on magnetic tape in a research laboratory in Palo Alto, California. The image measures 2,147,483,647 pixels wide by 2,147,483,647 pixels tall, and contains nothing but the color black.

Pixels are the smallest element of a graphics picture that computer monitors display, corresponding to a single dot on your screen.

The new Palo Alto image, scaled way, way down, in a nice picture frame.

If you wanted to print out the entire image on your new 600-dpi (dot per inch) laser printer, you’d need a sheet of paper over 50 miles-by-50 miles. “Though why, of course, you’d want to waste all of the toner is beyond me,” Dr. Whoobint of the Palo Alto Institute for Really Useless Things commented. “You might as well use paint.”

The image represents an advance in photographic technology, also, as each pixel corresponds to a real-world space about the width of a photon at the shutter aperture. In other words, Dr. Whoobint explained, “this picture contains absolutely all of the resolution that it’s going to get.”

The Palo Alto image is the very largest a JPEG image can legally be. Nobody will make one bigger that this!

APTonCD is a piece of software that backups all your downloaded software from internet.

1. Download APTonCD using Synaptic and install it. Use this to make a ISO image from downloaded packages.

2. Then you can mount this ISO image and it will just work as the package CD.

3. To mount an ISO image:

$ sudo mount <image> /media/cdrom -t iso9660 -o loop

4. To unmount:

$ umount /media/cdrom

This is the method I am following. Download packages and dependencies using synaptic once. Then copy them from /var/cache/apt/archives/ Then make an APTonCD and share with friends and new installations.

Note: This is not for the older versions of Ubuntu.

1. Go to Nvidia site and download the driver for your model.

2. Save the driver somewhere on your file system, that may be your home folder or /opt.

3. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 and go to terminal. Enter terminal as root.

4. Then to end xserver, type the following command:

# /etc/init.d/gdm stop

5.  Go into the directory where you placed your Nvidia driver and type the following command:

# sh xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.run

7. The installation of the driver will begin. Wait for it to finish.

8. To start xserver again, type the following command:

# /etc/init.d/gdm start

9. Once again login into the xserver and you should see the desktop effects  enabled. If not, manually enable the effects in System -> Preferences -> Appearance (under the Visual Effects tab).