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I'm almost sure you'll enjoy C-Evo.

Mod parent up! :)

Seriously, people here love to talk about how the "new economy" makes it possible to remove "artificial scarcity" and make it so everything is free.

What these people ignore is that, even if it costs no money to copy something, it still costs money to create something. There is still, in this "new economy", the very real economics that the majority of content people use (Computer programs, movies, music, television programs, written articles, etc.) is content that would not exist if someone wasn't being paid to make it.

I enjoy reading all of the articles on the New York Times' front page every morning, and understand I soon may need to pay for the privilege of reading the quality journalism and writing the the NYT offers.

Now, I'm sure someone will point to open source software and say "Mr. MaraDNS, you don't know about open source software and how this proves that we can have all the compelling content we want for free in the 'new economy'". I will point out to people who think like this that I am, in fact, a developer of open-source software.

People who think open-source software (OSS) makes it possible for all content to be free don't understand how OSS changes the relationship between the developer and the user. A lot of people think an OSS program is like a commercial program, but free, and that they can ask for features or get support for free, and it gets pretty tiring to have people email me asking for free support, even though I make it clear that I don't provide free email support for my program.

The thinking behind OSS is that I donate some of my coding time and effort to the greater community. In return, people are free to contribute bug fixes or improvements to the program, or supply support on the mailing list. For example, someone wanted better IPv6 support, supplied patches, and now MaraDNS has good IPv6 support. Another person wanted better Windows service support, and supplied patches to make MaraDNS' new recursive core be a full Windows service. Other people answer user's questions on the mailing list or translate documentation. Webconquest very generously provides me a free Linux shell account and hosting for the web site.

Likewise, I found an OSS Doom random generator I liked and provided bug fixes and improvements to it; when I lost interest in it, another person became the maintainer and improvements continue to be made even though I no longer work on that code. And, there is a Free Windows Civilization clone for Windows which I have provided a bug fix and extended the documentation with.

OSS doesn't mean we have the right to demand all content be free or are justified in pirating media and software. OSS means that we can, together, make free content which complements the for-pay content out there.

Opera/Firefox (whichever has a newer version that still supports 98)

That would be Opera. Firefox, as of Firefox 3, no longer supports Windows 98 (this caused a lot of grumbling on Firefox's support forums), but the latest Opera happily runs on Windows 98.

I can also write my own apps for it in Delphi7 (Delphi does not work on Linux)

If you're an old-school Delphi programmer, you might look in to Lazarus. It's 95% Delphi, but FOSS software.

While I'm mainly a C programmer these days, I've quite impressed with Delphi: There is an excellent tiny little Civilization clone, C-evo, out there written in Delphi (that fits on a single floppy if you remove the sounds and 7-zip compress it), as well as a free (beer) office suite called SSuiteSoft.

Oh, God, we have yet another "Artists are perfectly willing to work for fun and for free" thread on Slashdot.

Bottom line: The majority of artists, programmers, etc. out there won't make something for fun and for free. Of, if they do, they will create it to a much lesser degree than they would if they were getting paid for it.

"Having a day job" and "Willing to work for fun and for free" are two very different things. I am sure a lot of your artists friends would find something else to do in their free time if they were told that they would never earn a dime making their art.

Why is it that the majority of video games out there are games people legally need to pay for to buy? With a very few rare exceptions, commercial games blow open-source games out of the water in terms of quality.

For example, let's look at Civilization-type games. If you go to civfanatics.com, you can see large communities playing Civilization II, Civilization III, and Civilization IV. These games are incredibly popular. The graphics are compelling, the games includes movies, and Civilization IV even has 3D graphics.

Lets compare this to the free Civilization clones out there: Freeciv, C-evo, and the abandoned Clash of Civilizations project. Freeciv doesn't have the compelling graphics the professional Civ games have, and its gameplay is as compelling as writing a spreadsheet. While there is a full-screen SDL port, it is incomplete and unstable.

C-evo is essentially Civilization I with Civilization II isometric graphics. It has a nice full-screen interface, but its documentation is sketchy and it has issues with being too difficult for a rank beginner to start playing and enjoying. There are no voice actors, no movies when you build a wonder, no engaging diplomacy, and the game for all intents and purposes can not be modded. Did I mention it's not truly open-source, since you need the proprietary Delphi programming environment to build it?

Clash of Civilizations died a few years ago. Its developers, quite frankly, did not have enough motivation to make a full game. "For fun and for free", the delusion Slashdot keeps bringing up over and over, did not work.

When people are being paid for their work, the result is a game with far more compelling graphics and gameplay. People, plain and simple, will not make the type of compelling music, games, and movies people have come to expect if there is no way people can be compensated for their hard work.

Speaking of Civ...what's your favorite Civ variant. Right now, I'm having a lot of fun with the open-source [1] C-evo. It's a tiny Civ clone; the base game is 1.4megs 7zip compressed (without sound). Yes, this game fits on a single floppy. You'll need a second floppy disk to fit the sounds (about 900k). [1] The game is public domain with source code available, but the game is written in the proprietary language Delphi. No, it won't compile in Lazarus without work done on it; we've tried.

I played a little civ4, and i didnt like it much. The religion idea was interesting. It also was 3D... ??WHY?? wtf does it have to be 3d for?? It adds absolutely no gameplay value. Also the little movies add little value. (though the expectation of watching does a bit when you see it for the first time)
I liked civ2 also, that one did add a lot, at least in civ2 On the down side the damn militia cant kill the battleship. civ2 had a ridiculous problem with corruption being unmanagable sometimes.

(GPL-like) Alternatives are FreeCiv, and C-evo of which i personnally liked the second one best. FreeCiv seemed not to have a good AI and even magically apearing cities, while C-evo has several AI's, which are made using *.dll's, the default one is pretty good, and there is a manual for making AI's yourself. (making AI's is usually hard)
I haven't played/looked into these that much, but if you want a civ-like game, feel free to judge for yourself.

I really have to come to Mandriva's defense on this one. My experience was completely the opposite of yours except for one point: I too installed Mandriva 2006 on my laptop (a Compaq Presario X1030US) mainly because of the advertised support for Centrino. It installed very smoothly, and the Centrino does indeed work wonderfully (even though I did have to point it to the correct file first).

KDE looks great with the included interfaces, WINE runs c-evo (my favorite strategy game) nearly perfectly with a single interface tweak (see the September/October forum for details) and all the other software I use (OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Gaim, Dia, Netbeans, etc.) was either included with the install or installed and worked with minimal effort. Battery life seems comparable to running under Windows and my widescreen display (1280x800) was correctly detected during installation. The system is quite responsive and runs speedily enough for me.

So I'm guessing your problems are laptop-specific and, I propose, not representative of Mandriva 2006 as a whole. I'm sorry you had such trouble, but I hope that others aren't turned off; it's working great for me. :-)

And this one:

http://www.c-evo.org/

And its graphics are great.

Speaking of Civ2 and FreeCiv, try C-Evo. It is a very refined and interesting alternative to the two. The gameplay is superior in several ways, though you have to get used to a few of the changes such as custom unit design.

I think you'll find Civilization Evolved is closer to the original Civ / Civ2 than Freeciv.

I tried Alpha Centari in college, but found it's look and feel distracting. I prefer the Earth-like features of Civ. Also, Alpha Centari seemed too military focus, and I didn't like the weird military units. (As with the terrain, I'd prefer soldiers, tanks, planes, etc. over alien weaponry.) I guess my favorite part of the game is growing my cities, discovering new technologies, and establishing alliances with my neighbors. The military part is ok, but I'd rather be at peace with everyone than at war. War, for me, is only fun when I am a modernized nation and I get to pick on some stone aged civ, sending in tanks, bombers, etc. I think I might enjoy the military aspect more if it was more involved - i.e., if a single attack wouldn't just decimate your forces. If there were more variables for accounting the defensive or offensive strength of a unit; if you could plan your attacks better, like having three units attack one simultaneously, or setting up a line of defense in which others could come to the aid of a unit being attacked. Or coordinated attacks/defenses with allies. (I.e., I could agree with an ally to attack a certain city for a certain number of turns...)

Now I've not tried CivIII, so maybe it has a lot of the features I'm looking for, but I am a little doubtful on the reviews I've read and what little I've heard about the game. I am hesitant to give it a whirl b/c I'll be really bummed if it turns out to be a downer, and will likely end up staying up too late, neglecting the ol' lady, putting off working out, etc. as I would be too engrossed in the game if I do enjoy it. Curse you, Sid Meier!

If you want to try another good freeware version of Civilization, there's C-Evo. It's a bit different in gameplay from other Civilization games, but I prefer it to Freeciv.

Never played State of Emergency, but it looked pretty one dimensional. The games that have really stood the test of time, for me at least, are Civ II. I still play Civ II every now and then (well, I use C-Evo). Sports games last a while, along with games that you can play with others online or in person. But the single player game, save CivII and similar type games, do tire out quickly.

Steffen Gerlach's Scanner (see also his excellent Borland Delphi-based Civilization clone) and SequoiaView were invaluable back when my hard-drive was a puny 20 giger. I highly recommend you all get them and try them out.

P.S. Be sure to turn on the colour mode in SequoiaView.;)

For a very promising (if unfinished) public domain alternative, try Civ Evolution. It's gradually evolving away from its Civ II inspiration, to focus more on the strategy and AI aspects of the game. It also looks very pretty, if somewhat Civ II-like: shot1, shot2, shot3. At the moment it's Windows only, but the source is out there...

For a very promising (if unfinished) public domain alternative, try Civ Evolution. It's gradually evolving away from its Civ II inspiration, to focus more on the strategy and AI aspects of the game. It also looks very pretty, if somewhat Civ II-like: shot1, shot2, shot3. At the moment it's Windows only, but the source is out there...

For a very promising (if unfinished) public domain alternative, try Civ Evolution. It's gradually evolving away from its Civ II inspiration, to focus more on the strategy and AI aspects of the game. It also looks very pretty, if somewhat Civ II-like: shot1, shot2, shot3. At the moment it's Windows only, but the source is out there...

For a very promising (if unfinished) public domain alternative, try Civ Evolution. It's gradually evolving away from its Civ II inspiration, to focus more on the strategy and AI aspects of the game. It also looks very pretty, if somewhat Civ II-like: shot1, shot2, shot3. At the moment it's Windows only, but the source is out there...