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RSS isn't a game. The best Linux game is Freeciv.. Period.

Freeciv is an open-source implementation of the classic Civilization I/II games. Go to http://www.freeciv.org to check it out.

It's free and you can get it here

• Abiword - Word processor, supports .doc, .rtf, GPL.
• Open Office - Whole Office suite, including a database frontend and BASIC macro language.
• Perl - Scripting language
• Python - Scripting language
• Cygwin - UNIX emulator. Can create Windows programs, reliant on a cygwin1.dll.
• MinGW - Port of some of the UNIX utilities (BASH, gcc, vi...) to Windows.
• djgpp - UNIX emulator for DOS.
• Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird - Web browser, e-mail client, IRC client, lots more.
• Filezilla - FTP client.
• xchat - IRC client.
• putty, pscp, psftp and others - Telnet/SSH clients.
• Gaim - Client for IRC/Yahoo/MSN/ICQ/AIM and more.
• gzip - Compression (usually better than .zip).
• tar - Extracts/Makes tar archives.
• bzip2 - Totally ace compression (usually better than gzip).
• Info-ZIP - Support for .zip. Good free substitute for Winzip.
• 7-zip - Support for multiple compression formats.
• frhed - Hex editor
• Ext2fs - Several programs for doing Ext2 under Windows.
• Antiword - Converts documents out of the proprietary .doc format.
• MySQL - RDBMS.
• Apache - Web/Proxy server
• sendmail - Mail server
• squid - Proxy server
• freeamp - Audio player
• winlame - MP3 encoder
• cd-ex - MP3/OGG encoder?
• gimp - Very detailed graphics program.
• imagemagick - Graphic manipulation. Provides the 'convert' utility under UNIX.
• freeciv - Civilisation clone.
• gnuplot - Plotting package.
• TightVNC - A fork of VNC, with enhancements.
• RealVNC - The original VNC.
• rdesktop - Access Windows Terminal Services and Remote Desktops.
• Nmap - Well known port scanner.
• John the Ripper - Password cracker. Does NT and MD5.

Freeciv is good to play - linux/mac/win clients.

freeciv.org

Putting together your own cygwin or mingw toolchain (not that that's a bad idea in general) already is a severe pain in the ass. It can be real black magic to figure out what people last did to get primarily-used-on-UNIX-software building.

Black Magic is putting it mildly. You could build a Gentoo system for how long it takes to cygwin configured just so.
And that's not a knock on Cygwin's fine efforts, it's just the matter of fact. You're trying to dupe an OS's behavior on another OS.

I started trying to do this very thing and realized what a colossal waste of time it was going to be.

A good way to see if you have things working would be to try and build freeciv. That'll keep him busy. ;-)

For a full updated list of sites pulling april fools jokes see here

Some of the latest enteries:
livejournal.com - on userinfo pages, "Friend"/"Friend Of" -> "Stalking"/"Stalked By"
www.gpf-comics.com - Comic mirrored.
smh.com.au - Yum-cha trolleys with "L" plates
www.clutchfans.com - Patrick Ewing returning to NBA
www.freeciv.org - Freeciv ANSI client
www.rav4world.com - Closed? Should have announced that TOMORROW!
www.retrocrush.com - Nude pics of Jaclyn Smith
westcoaster.net - Roller coaster site turned into teen girl site
www.meowpawjects.com - Sock people forced webmaster to take website down.
miceage.com - Disney merges with Walmart
www.badgerbadgerbadger.com - Badgers replaces with zombies
skepdic.com - Skeptic's Dictionary closing
fool.com - Buffett buys Krispy Cream
launch.com - Britney Spears & Jason Alexander To Renew Wedding Vows
MetaFilter.com - Turned in to a Wiki for the day
www.ddrkc.com - owner sold site to a user that is unpopular
brownpau.com - March for Web Standards
www.beyondunreal.com - ut2k4 production suspended
globetechnology.com - Microsoft Solitaire
www.modernwiccan.com - Randomized Color Scheme
bbs.fuckedcompany.com - Site shutting down
www.diary-x.com - looks like diaryland!
theprp.com - Music site to "Previously Ridden Ponies"
mpx200.org - Pocket PC with 2Gb system memory/Smart Drunk Pocket PC application
www.macosxhints.com - triple G5 Powermacs
www.slyfx.com - AOL buys slyfx
palminfocenter.com - Palms for toddlers.
www.carniola.org - fake news story
eikenes.alvestrand.no - Considering porn spam to be in a separate dialect to everything else
defunctgames.com - Pimps At Sea fox xbox

For a full updated list of sites pulling april fools jokes see here

Some highlites:
livejournal.com - on userinfo pages, "Friend"/"Friend Of" -> "Stalking"/"Stalked By"
www.gpf-comics.com - Comic mirrored.
smh.com.au - Yum-cha trolleys with "L" plates
www.clutchfans.com - Patrick Ewing returning to NBA
www.freeciv.org - Freeciv ANSI client
www.rav4world.com - Closed? Should have announced that TOMORROW!
www.retrocrush.com - Nude pics of Jaclyn Smith
westcoaster.net - Roller coaster site turned into teen girl site
www.meowpawjects.com - Sock people forced webmaster to take website down.
miceage.com - Disney merges with Walmart
www.badgerbadgerbadger.com - Badgers replaces with zombies
skepdic.com - Skeptic's Dictionary closing
fool.com - Buffett buys Krispy Cream
launch.com - Britney Spears & Jason Alexander To Renew Wedding Vows
MetaFilter.com - Turned in to a Wiki for the day
www.ddrkc.com - owner sold site to a user that is unpopular
brownpau.com - March for Web Standards
www.beyondunreal.com - ut2k4 production suspended
globetechnology.com - Microsoft Solitaire
www.modernwiccan.com - Randomized Color Scheme
bbs.fuckedcompany.com - Site shutting down
www.diary-x.com - looks like diaryland!
theprp.com - Music site to "Previously Ridden Ponies"
mpx200.org - Pocket PC with 2Gb system memory/Smart Drunk Pocket PC application
www.macosxhints.com - triple G5 Powermacs
www.slyfx.com - AOL buys slyfx
palminfocenter.com - Palms for toddlers.
www.carniola.org - fake news story
eikenes.alvestrand.no - Considering porn spam to be in a separate dialect to everything else
defunctgames.com - Pimps At Sea fox xbox

FreeCiv supports OS X with Fink. I would think this would be a great game for the kids to get together and play. It would teach history, let them learn about ancient technologies etc.
If you feel like paying money, you might also think about getting Civilization 3, I've never played this game myself, but I recall Civilization II had a lot of good historical information about various technlogies and epochs in history. I would assume that this version would have something like that as well.
If you have any windows machines you might also consider exposing them to Alice, not it's not American McGee's twisted (and quite fun) game, but a project from Carnegie Mellon to teach kids about 3D and Game Programming.

Get it?!? The whole X and Y chromasome thing!?! HA HA HA!!! GET IT!?! GET IT!!!!

oh man... 28 hours [non-stop] of FreeCiv really messes with your head...

Linux went 2.6 with a massive scheduling and memory management system, and the SCO case kicked off. Microsoft launched new security 'initiatives' and Mozilla came out with about three or four new major versions. The next 12 months look as if they'll be just as exciting as the previous, and I myself can't wait. I bet there'll be legal, financial and technical issues abound. My personal favourite at the moment is freeciv. I like to hack it.

Though for me, the ability to hack the game code is probably the next-best thing after its rough-edged cuteness. I'm currently dicking around with the code to add a server option that allows you to choose the radius of a nuclear bomb's fallout and aftereffects. I also made up my own ruleset which has an ICBM, IRBM and Tactical Nuke. Oh, and I threw together a patch which causes dropping a nuke to affect your reputation and to remove infrastructure from around the epicentre of the blast.

(Whew, that's quite a lot to say.)

And the CVS now has AI diplomacy. All, right!

I started playing freeciv last week and i've allready put in ~45 hours into it.

i can't speak for everyone who uses linux here, but perhaps if we stay doing things that have at least some conceivable merit rather than looking at porn and playing through simulations and games...that better things (ie, a better overall os to play games and look at porn on!) will come of it.

don't get me wrong. i think games (and porn) are great...but you can lose a lot of spare energy, and right now the last thing we need, as a community of users, and as people in general, is more [bread and] circus. we need in its' place, stronger communications forums, and more activity. go out, right now, to your local irc channel and say hi/io. spend 5 minutes or so talking at minnimum. breathe some life into your corrospondants.

Try few free (of cost) games:

strategy

FreeCiv - new version was just released, FreeCiv is not as good as Civ3 in single player, but it's very playable in mp

TEG - if you want simple strategy (it's risk clone)

lgeneral - panzer general clone

action

RTCW ET - IMHO best team action game

Cube - simple multiplayer FPS, with nice graphics

Armagetron - 3D tron implementation

sport

CannonSmash - table tennis simulation

foobillard- billard simulation

misc

Scorched 3D - scorch (or for younger slashdot users: worms) clone

Freeciv is multiplayer and works on about any machine that can run X comfortably. If you want more action, may I suggest the classic XPilot?

Freeciv. Sorry, its not action though.

[The source code] has been stripped of comments

Ah, so they have learned from SCO ;)

Seriously, though, I'd be more than interested to see what the community will do with the code. The first CtP was available for Linux, and there is already Freeciv. Maybe the latter will integrate a few ideas (personally, I think not, since they are very well underway on their own!).

Now, Sid, how about the Civ3 source? ;)

I know you were just trying to be funny, but Freeciv is a multiplayer strategy game, released under the GNU General Public License.
It is generally comparable with Civilization II(R), published by Microprose(R).

With Open Source being so popular, people can write a program to act like a Classic program and even look like it, but be a totally differnet source code frm the original. Then port it to different platforms. So we get a Classic Rewrite.

Take for example Telengard for Windows a Windows re-write of the Classic C64 game. See how the game looked like and played on a C64, but on Windows instead.

We just need more people to re-write the classics to save them.

I hate to rain on your parade, but Iraq war news is not "news for geeks". It is news for armchair generals

And since when have geeks not been armchair generals?

For the record, I would've posted many many more links, but I'm feeling to lazy to track them down. You get the picture, though, I'm sure.

One word: freeciv

- Sam (The AI is a little tough to fix, a bug which I have fixed)

But then it was Civilization based, wasn't it?

If you loved Master of magic, you might love Age Of Magic when it is released. It is FreeCiv based. FreeCiv is an open sourced version of Civilization.

I've found the best places to look are on sites for RPG engines, like Verge. Generally there are links to sites with literally oodles of tile banks. You may also want to try DIV Arena and, of course, the Freecraft and FreeCiv projects, both of which offer free art assets.

Hope this helps. Oh, done a google for SpriteLib lately? Or Ari Feldman?

... and I'm spent.

The question then becomes, can you do better writing closed-source software?

Obviously for some applications you can. One of the prime examples of this is games. Games are highly optimized, one-off efforts involving a lot of artistic work. While I think FreeCIV is great, It is years behind the commercial Civilization games.

But what about a peer-to-peer file sharing program? File sharing applications don't typically involve much artistic work, don't involve deep optimizations or rare specialized knowledge. This means if your application is successful it is relatively easy for a group of open-source developers to make a work-alike program, and if that becomes a success to keep improving on it until the original is no longer able to compete.

Here's my opinion on the whole world of software development. In the very early days, when programming was a dark art and computers were rare, there wasn't too much distinction between closed source and open source. Programs were often written by one person and were generally pretty specialized. Nobody sold much code because there was no major consumer market for it. Then computers became much more commonplace, while programmers were still rare. This meant that closed-source software was a natural fit. You could make lots of money with even a so-so application (like say, I dunno, DOS? *grin*) because there wasn't much competition. Applications were also still pretty specialized, and if you wanted to collaborate on software, outside a University it wasn't necessarily easy to find other people who also wanted to work on the same thing. These days there are lots of programmers out there, and an easy way for them to communicate and collaborate. The niche of closed-source applications is getting smaller and smaller.

I think for file-sharing applications, the battle has already been won (or lost, depending on your point of view). Internet server applications are probably the current battleground. I think open-source has largely won on the Internet and is gaining ground rapidly in corporate networks. MS Office still has a major lead over OpenOffice and the like, however with the high cost of MS Office that might not last. These days, unless your product involves specialized knowledge, intense artistic work, or has a very small niche its viability as a closed-source product is small and contracting.

The tough thing is, it is hard to make a living writing open-source software. When you're required to give your code away for free, how do you make money writing it? The main way I can see is corporate sponsorship.

Big corporations always need software, and sometimes they get very little value from restricting others from using it as well. If a huge company like say Exxon Mobil were to switch from MS based software to Linux based software they could save a lot of money in licensing. But they may think that a certain aspect of Linux lags behind the Windows equivalent. They could assign a small team of developers to focus on that aspect and improve it. The work these developers are doing may not give Exxon Mobil a competitive advantage over the other oil companies, so they might decide to release the changes under the GPL and receive peer review on the changes, bugfixes and other improvements that come from outside the company, and some good publicity for helping the community. Because they only distribute the changes internally, they would also have the option of keeping the source internal and never releasing the changes, but there are times when that isn't the best option.

Any dissenting views? What types of applications will still continue to succeed as closed-source applications for years to come? Does anybody think that, even with all the GPLed code out there, open source / free software is just a fad that won't last?

What about FreeCiv? Perhaps it scores low on the easy-to-pickup scale, but I imagine anyone has played some Civilisation version before.

Bonus is that as a turn based game it can be easily paused when necessary, and it is heaps of fun.

Why yes. OpenBSD supports FreeCiv Also. =)

It's quite possible to license graphics under any free or open source license. There are several interpretations then of what is 'source' and what is 'compiled', but they add up to the same thing. The most sane form (IMHO) of what is 'source' and what is 'compiled' is that any image *file* is source (as it is friendly to edit with normal tools) if it is in a standard format, preferably something raw like XPM or BMP. The picture as printed, or shown on display, is the 'compiled' output.

Think about it - otherwise how do GPL games (like freeciv) work?

A simple proof of evolution is to look at genetic programming (for example here, here and here).
Just look at the classic example of ants collection food. It is beautifully described in John R. Koza's great books (1, 2 and 3) on the subject.
Just imagine adding a fermone layer to freeciv and let the random search for a superior player begin.

nobody has mentioned LiteStep!
LiteStep is a replacement desktop environment released under the GPL.

I have nine desktops, can drag windows between them, I have cpu and ram meters, quick-launch buttons and shortcuts, and can even drag windows from other destkops anywhere (don't think you can do that in most desktop envs).

with litestep and mozilla, unless I have a windows [file] explorer open, there's no MS except the system (kernel, services) running - which means with the multiple-instances-of-explorer option, I need not worry about [i]explore[r].exe crashing.

and (obviously) there is theming

other GPL windows projects of interest:
FreeCiv Civilization (one and/or two+) clone
Gaim AIM/yahooim/msnim/icq/jabber/... client
and the already mentioned cygwin, vim, gimp, mozilla.

if you hunt for it, there's a cygwin version of gvim that allows unix paths, etc. but uses X.

Xfree86 for cygwin is now prime-time (in installer) and works really well with windowmaker and openbox, but lacks integration with ms windows as the wm (the way eXceed, winaXe, XwinPro, and Xthin do). please, please contribute to that somebody!

Freeciv is cool

• FreeCiv - free Civ 1/2 clone
  
• Tux Racer - downhill racing game
  
• Tux Typing - typing tutor
  
• IceBreaker - Jezzball clone
  
• Maelstrom - networkable, cool Asteroids clone
  
• Angband - best dungeon crawl ever!
  
• Chromium BSU - neat-o OpenGL 2D shooter
  

I'm pretty sure there's a FreeCiv client for Windoze. That way, when they make the switch (we can hope, right?), they'll have a little something familiar to jump into and play with...

FreeeCiv
OpenOffice
and WinGimp
I would love to hear more from everyone else.

I care about Linux's reputation as well, but only to the extent that it deserves it. If there isn't a market for ports of new Linux games, then there isn't a market for ports of new Linux games. If there were, Tribes 2 would have likely sold a lot better for Loki, and quite possibly Q3 (although I think 3d acceleration was severely lacking at the time of Q3's release). Let's face it, Loki's plan sucked and that's why they didn't do well. They sold ports of year old games at year old prices. No one except die hard Linux fans will buy that, and quite frankly given Linux's actual cost that number is few and far between.

Once again, I'll point out the likelyhood of having Linux lying around on the old computer is far greater than having it as the sole OS on a brand new home desktop system. Linux has a wonderful reputation for being a fun and practical way to resurrect old boxes, and this wasn't gained for nothing. The old cheap game port idea could leverage this quite well. And yes, the market isn't huge, but it's no smaller than the market for new games that are only made for Linux out of the box. People will buy the cheaper windows version to avoid the porting costs and the possible hassle of distro incompatibilities simply because most new desktops will have some form of windows on them, and rebooting for a gaming session isn't a big deal.

Plunking down $50 dollars for yesteryear's game isn't going to help the Linux gaming market at all if you're looking to have it taken seriously as a platform for new games. It's not going to be much of a platform for new games until it really starts showing large numbers of desktop installs.

I understand perfectly well why Myth II was priced at $50, but that's the problem with the business plan. A very small number of people are going to pay the relatively high price for an old game that won't even run on their toy Linux system (but will run great on their Windows side). Companies can be motivated to allow ports of older games though because it's old news. They'd be wringing a few extra bucks out of an old product that they thought they were all done with. The cost that the porting house would have to pay would be much lower because it is an older game, and the original developers wouldn't feel the need to charge the massive price to port their latest hit (i.e. Tribes 2). What you obviously don't understand is that porting houses pay the developers to be allowed to port their games, not vice versa. In turn, the porting house expects to make some income on the game to pay off the costs for porting it. If the fee that the company charges is high, then the retail price would be high. If Loki had decided to port Bungie's Marathon series (before the release of the engine source) it probably would have cost them very little, and thus the product itself would have been cheaper and would have run on far more Linux installs.

Of course, I could be wrong about the idea that people are interested in old games on Linux, but there's a lot of projects that back me up. ScummVM, X-MAME, SNES9x, various NES emulators, FreeSCI, and of course, Freeciv. I can already hear you complaining that these are all free, which is true, but they do show that there is obvious interest in old gaming on Linux. And free is cheap, is it not? It's a little bit sad that the various companies like Lucasarts and Sierra didn't see that people might want to play their older titles under Linux, or they might have gone ahead with the projects themselves. But the community just implemented what they really wanted.

The community also wanted new games, and that's why we have WineX. Gamers wanted it all, so that's why Transgaming is still around but Loki is not. Porting just isn't good enough (I know this, having been a Mac person for years). I'm just as willing to support Transgaming as Loki. If they provide a service that's useful to me, then I'll purchase their product. Anything more or less is doing the Linux community, as well as the company in question, a disservice. If the reputation of Linux is really your concern, then you shouldn't be advocating artificially buoying poor business plans. If Transgaming survives, it will be because they provided what the Linux gaming community really wanted. And what the community wants is what should actually give Linux its reputation, not some feeling of needing to support some people just becuase they made something on Linux.

I'm kinda surprised that no one has mentioned that yet ...

Just a little plug for FreeCiv

Well, we could always play freeciv on an xbox.

But then again, xbox stuff is prettier, and we all know we play games 'cus they're prettier.

Another reason might be this, which I suppose could be viewed as a game as well.

So we want linux on the xbox to play games?

I am going to the FUADEC :)

There will be held a FreeCiv Tournament also,
more info at FUADEC

Quazion.

Funny, that Tetris can be so effective in removing similar games, but I Hasbro (which now owns Microprose) hasn't seemed to have complained about FreeCiv.

Not that I'm complaining. I've played FreeCiv and I still bought Civ III - I don't think sales are suffering because of it - both games are fun in different ways.

Among the new features since 1.12, I see that now Isotrident is the default tileset.

I am very surprised by this decision, since you conducted a poll specifically asking the community which tileset should the new version carry by default, and the community clearly answered Trident, while Isotrident came second with a significant margin.

I happen to know that many Freeciv developers are annoyed by the Isometric view. So what is the deal with this apparent attachment to the iso-view by some of the (more influential) freeciv developers?

> But how will the GPL license of the software affect their works?

This seems to be a growing issue. E.g., there has been a recent discussion on the Freeciv mailing list, where they are actively trying to get their hands on improved graphics but want to be rigorous about licensing issues. (And alas, they had to reject some nice tilesets that various people have submitted because of dubious licensing status.)

It seems to me that this would be worth writing the FSF about and seeing whether they are interested in providing a "content" license. They recently produced their GNU Free Documentation License in recognition that the GPL doesn't cover everything, but that does not seem to be completely apt for game artwork (and other game content) either.

They do link to another Design Science License for data, which you may want to evaluate. But IMO it would be great if you could get the FSF to produce and defend a free content license (GCL?) that was explicitly defined to work like and with the GPL.

The reason I think the FSF might take an interest is because so much new GPL'd software is GUI-oriented and requires graphics of one sort or another, and a basic corpus of free/licensed graphics might help free software take off in new areas like it has in infrastructure.

I was thinking along the lines of the IBM Thinkpad 730T, which I found on eBay for a nice price. Now all I need to do is get it working so I can play freeciv from my living room.

• somewhat educational/thought-provoking in a how-did-the-world-get-to-be-this-way kind of sense, and
• free (speech and beer.)

> Globalism, dude. It's a lot easier to make enemies worldwide in 2002 than it was in 1492, or even 1902.

I dunno 'bout that. Whenever I play Freeciv I usually have the rest of the world on my case by 3500 BC.

> Math cannot predict wars, but logic and political analysis can.

My buddy Harry Seldon says otherwise.

You could get Nethack running by installing XDarwin (thereby getting an X Windows Server on yer machine) and then using fink to install Nethack. It's a long download (mainly because you have to download all the dependencies), but all the compiling is done for you.

It's overkill to install XDarwin just for Nethack, but if you have any interest in theGimp or Civilization then it's purdy durned cool.

Then there is the warm feeling of being a Linux Weenie everytime you start up an X Windows session: priceless.

-----

Freeciv is a Civ/Civ2 clone, released under the GPL, running on Linux (also Windoze, and a lot of other operating systems). It plays just like Civ/Civ2, with only very minor differences in gameplay, and with a huge one: the interface is much superior to that of Civ2, so you don't end up frustrated and bored by it.

I can't recommend this game enough.

Yes, it's been done before, by freeciv

I never miss a chance to plug freeciv, because it's my favorite game, and a prime example of what good can come from programming free software.

freeciv takes the same client/server approach you're advocating, and, as near as I can tell, scales somewhat. Now, if you've got a lot of graphics going from client to server, it might not work the same. So I recommend freeciv just as a starting point.

Have fun!

Sounds like the architecture you're planning is quite close to FreeCiv's. You might want to take a look at that.

The success or failure of game systems depend on two factors:

1. The quality of the games that are available.
While open source/free software development is a noble concept, if the games aren't built, they will not come. Honestly, how many of us here who play games use Linux or Free BSD boxes *exclusively* for game machines? I play games on Windows boxes because the games are there. Until there are handheld games the quality of those produced for GameBoy, the GP32 will never sell well. If I want to play "snake", I can do that on my cell phone.

2. Inertia.
If I've invested in a hardware platform for games that I'm satisfied with, I'm going to continue to use that platform, and buy more games for it. The GP32, or any future handheld game system, will have to offer qualities or features that aren't on my current platform.

Closed-source games are bad. I am an ardent RMS follower; hence, I play Freeciv and Nethack. Granted, they may suck, but at least I can rest assured knowing that I helped make the world a better place and protected our American freedoms.

Dont strip Networking support, cause i think we will go back to Dumb/Smart-Terminals in the near future and X in this is proven technology and trust me managers love those words. And also with Linux/BSD its very inexpensive to create, and with the internet it means i can run my own e-mail client at my GF and at work, damn i love networking...

Also i see no realy problems with X except maybe that its hard to compile (which i think it isnt) and hard to configure (which also isnt true), it does all it needs todo and it does it pretty fast on my machine's (a AMDK6/2-350 and a Indigo2 Impact), look and i can run my favorite game Freeciv on IRIX without compiling or installing a binairy (which isnt available for IRIX 6.2) tru X forwarding and it runs just as fast if i was running it local on my Linux Box..

Quazion.