Linux Articles

FooBillard is a free OpenGL-billard game for Linux with realistic physics, AI-player and many gametypes like pool carambol or snooker. Why foo? Well, actually I had this logo (F.B.-Florian Berger) and then foo sounds a bit like pool (Somehow I wasn't quite attracted by the name FoolBillard) The main physics is quite mature but not yet perfect. If you are a billard-pro and you're missing some physics, please tell me. Cause I've implemented it like I think it should work, which might differ from reality.

There are two supported implementations concerning the interface. A GLUT and an SDL implementation. So you need to have either GLUT or SDL installed on your system Furthermore libpng has to be installed for loading the textures and freetype2 is required for font rendering.

Here are some key features of "FooBillard":
· wood paneled table with gold covers and gold diamonds
· reflections on balls
· shadow pixmaps
· detail switching of balls according to distance
· zoom in/out - hold right mousebutton
· FOV +/- - hold right mousebutton + CTRL
· rotate - hold left mousebutton
· animated queue
· 8ball, 9ball, snooker, carambol
· simple AI-Player
· strength adjustment
· eccentic hit adjustment (button2-Shift)
· red/green 3D stereo view !!!
· sound
· network play
· free view mode

Here are some key features of "FooBillard":
· wood paneled table with gold covers and gold diamonds
· reflections on balls
· shadow pixmaps
· detail switching of balls according to distance
· zoom in/out - hold right mousebutton
· FOV /- - hold right mousebutton CTRL
· rotate - hold left mousebutton
· animated queue
· 8ball, 9ball, snooker, carambol
· simple AI-Player
· strength adjustment
· eccentic hit adjustment (button2-Shift)
· red/green 3D stereo view !!!
· sound
· network play
· free view mode
Download FooBillard From here.

SuperTuxKart is a Free 3d kart racing game; we want to make the game fun more than we want to make it realistic. You can play with up to 4 friends on one PC racing against each other, or just try to beat the computer.

See the great lighthouse or drive through the sand and visit the pyramids. Race under water or in space, watching the stars passing by. Have some rest under the palms on the beach (watching the other karts overtaking you. But don't fall in the volcano.

You can do a single race against other karts, compete in one of several Grand Prix, or try to beat the high score in time trials on your own.

Here are some key features of "SuperTuxKart":
* 12 tracks
* Multiplayer support
* Grandprix
* Single Race
* Time Trail
* Funny Characters
* Runs on GNU/Linux, Windows, MacOSX

Requirements:
* SDL
* OpenGL
* PLIB

What's New in This Release:
Version 0.5 of SuperTuxKart has been released. It offers 6 new and improved tracks, a new game mode ('Follow the Leader'), new Grand Prix, some new music, and translations into German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian and Swedish. The new tracks and game modes need to be unlocked: you have to fulfill a challenge in order to use them. If all challenges are done, a preview of the upcoming skidding support can be tested.
Download SuperTuxKart right now from here.

SuperTux project is a classic 2D jump'n run sidescroller game in a style similar to the original SuperMario games. The Milestone1 release of SuperTux features 9 enemies, 26 playable levels, software and OpenGL rendering modes, configurable joystick and keyboard input, new music and completly redone graphics.

Together with a little story, we hope to provide a good gaming experince with this first Milestone release.

The improvments in Milestone1 are in huge part the result of the work done surrounding the Game of the Month March 2004 event on happypenguin.org.

The Milestone1 section of this webpage was mainly used to coordinate development and to post sketches and other things. It will give you an overview of the development of the features and enemies that have gone in Milestone1, it might be a bit outdated and is mainly present for historic reasons to those interested in the development.

What's New in 0.3.1 Development Release:
* Four new Forest levels
* On the forest island, Tux must collect Keys to solve the final level
* Slightly improved Antarctica and Bonus World levels
* New and improved sound track that can loop seamlessly
* The Windows version now ships with OpenAL
* An experimental Addon Manager allows downloading new game content
* Screenshots can be saved by pressing a key
* Level statistics are tracked and saved
* Several improvements to the engine and scripting system

Download Elive 1.8.2 right now from here.

C-DAC (Center for Development of Advanced Computing) announced a few days ago the availability of the latest version of BOSS Linux. This release brings support for both KDE and GNOME desktop environments, and includes wide Indian language support, Bluetooth, PDF Viewer and RSS Feed Reader.

Developed by NRCFOSS (National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software), BOSS Linux 3.0 comes with a broad range of features that can get many desktop tasks done easily. In addition to that, support for 18 desktop Indian languages is provided, in order to try to increase the popularity of open source software among the non-English literate people of India. Let's see what applications this version includes in more detail:
· The GIMP
· PDF Viewer (including an Edit function)
· RSS Feed Reader
· Firewall
· Firefox 3.0
· Instant Messenger
· Bluetooth for short range communication
· Desktop sharing and Remote Desktop Connection
· CD and DVD Burning tool
· Package Manager
· Strong support for Printers, Digital/Web Cameras, Scanner

Also with this release, a Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between C-DAC and NIC (National Informatics Center). This action has been taken with the purpose of implementing BOSS Linux on eGovernance applications developed and maintained by the NIC.

About BOSS Linux:
BOSS Linux tries, and succeeds in being the optimal choice for government employees from India. The needs of this kind of users involve mostly office applications, like spread sheet or word processor, and of course, accessing multimedia and the Internet, all of them done in a safe environment. BOSS Linux has been proved to excel with this sort of tasks, while being absolutely free to install, use, modify and distribute.

Another trait of BOSS Linux is that it brings technology to more people than ever before, by supporting many Indian languages and being very easy to install and use. These advantages and more make BOSS Linux the OS of choice for a great number of Internet cafes owners, as it is cheap, friendly, language-supportive and a more than adequate replacement for unlicensed proprietary software.
Download BOSS Linux 3.0 now from here.
By Mihai Mircea

The Pardus Team has just announced the first release of the 2008 Pardus branch. This version brings important features such as support for new languages, a better network manager, two kinds of Live CDs and lots of upgrades, like the 3.5.10 and the 4.1.1 editions of KDE, the latest 2.6.25 Linux kernel (2.6.25.16), Mozilla Firefox 3.0.1 and more.

Here's a slightly deeper analysis of the most important elements and aspects present in Pardus 2008.1:
* an efficient and powerful network manager - this version features an improved network manager, which, although maintaining a great ease of use, brings new capabilities such as connection sharing, ad-hoc 802.1x support for wireless networks and numerous bugfixes and adjustments;
* two Live CD variants - this version comes with either KDE 3 or KDE 4, so it's really up to the user which one they want to use. However, the difference between them, other than the version of the desktop manager, is that the KDE 3 CD includes all the Pardus technologies up to now, while KDE 4 is regarded more like a preview of Pardus and KDE 4.1.1 integration. The KDE 4 Live CD comes with very popular applications such as Amarok, Kaffeine, K3b and more;
* language support - this feature also splits Pardus 2008.1 into two CDs, one with support only for English and Turkish, and one with support for all 11 languages supported by Pardus 2008.1, as the Sweedish language has recently been added to the list;

Besides the new additions, Pardus features many improved, bug-fixed or updated applications. Here are the most important:
· KDE 3.5.10 / 4.1.1
· Linux kernel 2.6.25.16
· Firefox 3.0.1
· OpenOffice.org 2.4.1.7
· and many more free tools, most of them in their latest version.
Get Pardus 2008.1 right now from here.
By Mihai Mircea

A few days ago, the Kiwilinux team announced the release of the latest version of their Linux distribution. Kiwi 8.04 has some nice features, like the support for the Speedtouch USB ADSL modem, and also includes by default the necessary packages to play restricted video, audio and Flash formats.

The software repositories for Kiwi and Ubuntu are much the same with one source extra for Kiwi, required for some minor differences with some packages. The major advantages are that it's relatively easy to change to or from Ubuntu, and also that Kiwi benefits from all the security updates of the former, as these are fetched automatically.

Although they are similar in many ways, the two distros do have some notable differences. For instance, Kiwi 8.08 has a different default mail client (Mozilla Thunderbird) and music player (Audacious) from Ubuntu's Evolution and Rhythmbox. Apart from that, Kiwi 8.08 comes with two very useful packages: unrar (a freeware program for extracting and viewing the contents of archives created with the WinRAR archiver) and msttcorefonts (which allows the installation of the Microsoft True Type Core Fonts for the Web).

Here is the complete list of differences from Ubuntu 8.04.1:
· Packages up to date as of August 28, 2008;
· Thunderbird as the default mail client and Audacious the music player;
· All gstreamer codecs and flashplugin-nonfree;
· Compiz extra settings GUI;
· msttcorefonts and unrar;
· a graphical application designed to restore GRUB boot menus lost after installing other OSes;
· mc (midnight commander);
· 12Mb of space have been cleared by removing the on-CD package archive.

About Kiwi Linux:
Kiwi is an Ubuntu-based distribution for the x86 processor family that comes on a live CD. It features numerous tools such as Flash plugin for Firefox, multimedia codecs, support for encrypted DVD, PPPoE GUI for an easier access to local ISPs, and Romanian and Hungarian localization. As for language support, the current version includes on the CD only English, German, French, Romanian and Hungarian.

Get Kiwi 8.08 right now from here.
By: Mihai Mircea, Linux Editor (news.softpedia.com)

Anti and MEPIS announced a few days ago the release of the latest version of their Linux distribution, antiX MEPIS 7.5, codenamed "Toussaint Louverture." It brings some new additions, like the antiX Control Centre and the smxi script, and some improved features such as the Fluxbox and IceWM window managers.

Particularly useful to users keen on having a very fast and configurable system, this lightweight OS is based on the MEPIS Linux 7.0 core, featuring the MEPIS 2.6.22 kernel and utilities, together with certain additions from Debian Lenny.

Probably the highlight of this release, the antiX Control Centre is a feature based on community contributions, which brings many settings (desktop and system management, network tools, hardware configurations) all in one easy accessible place.

Another new presence is the smxi script, which gives the user the option to manage the kernel and driver upgrades more easily, while allowing three kernel version possibilities: default, sidux and Debian Unstable. Community support is strongly felt, mainly thanks to the MEPIS Wiki and User's Manual, the antiX MepisLovers forums and a revised set of FAQs.

The Fluxbox and IceWM window managers have been given new and improved interfaces in order to enhance functionality and appearance. Like the two pre-installed WMs, Conky and ROX Desktop are also available and ready for use. An important mention would be the fact that all applications, including Abiword 2.6.4 and Iceweasel 3.01, have been upgraded to correspond to the Debian testing versions.

In order to upgrade to this version, you can use the available script which permits you to get your system from 7.0 or 7.2 to 7.5. Looking to give users as much setup flexibility as possible, antiX MEPIS 7.5 comes in a base configuration, strictly needing only 64 Mb of RAM, and Pentium II or AMD equivalent processor.

Download MEPIS AntiX 7.5 right now from here.
By: Mihai Mircea, Linux Editor (news.softpedia.com)