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If you really want to see stuff in ASCII....
check out aalib
It seems a version of doom works.
And The Gimp

How do I do a
cat * | sort | uniq > BigDictionary
from the gui?

Maybe someone can answer why some packages are really outdated. Examples? readline 2.2.1. We're at 4.1, and I remember someone from RedHat saying at a list that 4.0 wasn't included because it isn't binary compatible with 2.2.1. But it was before a beta for 6.0. slang 1.2.2. We're at 1.4.0, another major release. No need to mention tcl/tk 8.0.5. We're at 8.3.0. OK, they'll be all in 7.0. Now think about including IceWM, Pavuk, Qps, Kim, among others useful applications. The svgalib graphics library is now depracated and DOSEMU moved to Powertools. I wonder why. And their versioning scheme isn't accurate. As an example, lynx-2.8.3-2 means what? The final 2.8.3 wasn't released. We're still at 2.8.3dev22. IMHO unfortunately RedHat actually is focusing on newbies and including too much useless (I said popular?) applications. I may consider switching to Slackware in my next installation. But it's still a great Linux distribution.

How about giving me a browser that just does browsing? I know it's a novel concept, but why should my WEB BROWSER do Usenet and email? That's why I have slrn and mutt... I know, I know: "use lynx". But the formatting and graphics are tough to do in a tty...

Someone should write a patch for lynx to use the ascii graphics library - aalib to render web graphics as ascii text. Anyone who's missed this gem should check out ttyQuake. :-) Or maybe not ...!

Cheers

Toby Haynes

I don't mean to nitpick, but that's not a BSOD. The BSOD is a NT term.

You are right, but the term seems to have filtered downwards to WinDOS. Take a look at BSOD Properties which lets you have a Red Screen of Death, etc, on WinDOS.

In my four years of experience administering NT boxes, every BSOD I've seen has been caused by NT not liking a particular combination of hardware devices or drivers.

Try running the DOS binary of XaoS.

Actually, I think the problem is with the DOS virtual machine. XaoS includes support for *text-mode* realtime fractal zooming, using AA-lib, and it is this I was trying to use. I also bluescreened just by asking for the usage message (which worked the first time).

I think I have finally found a use for Microsoft's obnoxious 'policy manager' - fix this security hole by stopping users from running DOS applications.

I've bluescreened my NT4SP5 box twice today by running the DOS version of XaoS. This is a consistent, reproducible way to bluescreen NT (it worked on another machine with SP3, too.)

XaoS is an excellent realtime fractal zoomer, BTW. But don't run it on NT (even with the 'Windows-friendly' -i_love_bill switch) unless you have synced your disks first.

First off, without source code, folks won't be able to debug the driver and send in patches. This would result in kernel space bugs, which in turn means the OS becomes less stable. That is not good.

This AC did not investigate -- someone confirm, does the spec require releasing source code?

Second: do take a look at ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture). Eventually it will be in the Linux kernel, hopefully in 2.3.

Trident, my favorite video card manufacturer from back in the day, manufactures a fantastic sound chipset. Recently they wrote a GPL'd driver and contributed it to ALSA.

--ac

Hi Guys, I wrote terminatorX and I like to add some comments to what I read above....

o BeOS: I think that BeOS-Arrogance I read above is really sad, reminds me of 'em old Mac vs. PC days. From what I've read it's a really cool OS, but as commercial OS that costs quite some money I don't expect it to be around for long... although I'd like to be proved wrong.

o "Vinylness" of use: (I will not start discussions about the SOUND of vinyl ;)) If you attach your mouse to somekind of pseudo-turntable you can get "fulll vinyl feeling" even with terminatorX. A friend of mine had the even cooler Idea to buy an extra mouse, open that, and connect its x-axis directly to a real turntable's axis. If I have enough money and time I will check that out ... that should be close to "perfect" (well the hardware at least ;))
One more thing on vinyl: Its expensive! And digitial audio data is is much more flexible....

o MP3 mania: In my oppinion mp3 should not be used to create NEW music (quality aspects). And that's what I do with terminatorX. That`s why there`s no mp3-support in terminatorX now. But that might change after some mergeing with Andy`s alsaplayer . Also, YOU can come along and help. terminatorX will be in CVS soon....

All for now, bye, Alex

http://alsa.jcu.cz

Keep an eye out for some cool audio apps on Linux soon!

Check out ALSA for some cool audio developments on Linux.

I'm working on an ALL software solution.

alsaplayer.It's not quite ready yet. Mixed with terminatorX it should do the same. The Vinyl interface is cool though (hi Markjan! :)

Adnans

Oh dear, you've gotten me started. As an occasional game author myself, I have some perspective on this (with lots of lessons learned the hard way from both sides), and it just happens that I've been thinking about this issue lately. Here are some things I believe Linux needs to improve its appeal to gamers and game developers.

Transparent Access to Full Screen Display Modes
SVGAlib has been an excellent tool for a long time, but it's starting to show its age, and it supports considerably fewer cards than the current release of XFree86. Further, it's silly to have to write a driver for the same card two or more times (once inside XFree86, once inside SVGAlib, etc.). I've read the work of The GGI Project, and I suggest interested techies do, too. There are no glaring flaws in the design (though it has odd warts here and there), and with work it could become an excellent foundation for high-performance graphics device control and configuration. SVGAlib and XFree86 could both be built on top of this structure. Thus, drivers would need to be written only once. I've love to see this move forward.

Unlike Windoze display modes (which all come out of a fixed table), Linux should be able to generate any resolution and scan rate the card can physically generate. Multi-monitor support would also be nice, but this is much harder (trust me on this one). Also, you should be able to launch a full-screen app from inside XFree86, and neither XFree nor the app should care (being able to switch back and forth would be nice, too). Ambitious souls may care to emulate BeOS's "Workspaces", where each virtual desktop can be a different resolution, scan rate, and pixel depth.

There also needs to be work done on supporting VESA DDC (Display Data Channel) which allows the system to identify the attached monitor and determine its scanning limits (thus alleviating the need for the dreaded mode table in XFree86config; just ask the monitor what it can do). We may also need to beat up on VESA to make its standards more readily available.

Expansion of OpenGL Efforts
OpenGL is the future of 3D gaming (just ask John Carmack). While Mesa is an excellent first step (and very complete), its performance is poor compared to OpenGL ICDs available for Windoze. Basically, we need to get the triangle counts up. Part of this can be done by optimizing Mesa. However, a significant portion of the rest has to be done by or in cooperation with the 3D card manufacturers.

A standard interface needs to be established between Mesa (or whatever OpenGL implementation ends up dominating) and the graphics cards. This will allow for Mesa and the hardware drivers to be evolved and optimized independently of each other. It also allows users to plug in any compliant card and expect it to work. This GL/hardware interface can be established at the driver level; the GGI people probably have suggestions on this.

Finally, everyone reading this article needs to beat up on the 3D card vendors to support Linux. Roughly half of all Quake servers are running on Linux. 3D card vendors live or die based on their Quake frame rates. Why should a server operator have to crash back into Windoze just to test out the latest RA/TF/CTF/LMCTF release? This alone is compelling enough reason for the 3D vendors to formally support Linux.

New Sound Architecture
OSS is functional (it works well for Quake and MikMod), but modern gaming requires much more. Sound has always been my weak point, so I don't have a lot of concrete ideas here. ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) looks interesting, but I lack the knowledge to evaluate it properly.

Basically, the goals of the sound API need to include extremely low latency and low overhead. The system shouldn't be eaten alive just mixing and playing back sounds. Also, for applications that do buffer sounds ahead of time, there should be an event system built in such that the application can be informed when a particular sample or sample segment has started playing. This allows the client to synchonize other events (explosion visuals?) with the audio.

Networking
In my view, very little needs to be done here. Linux's socket API is one of the most reliable and complete implementations anywhere. There's no reason a game can't directly use network sockets.

Input Devices
Again, the keynote here is low latency and high sample rate. Most PS/2 mice will run at higher baud rates (if you're running Windoze at the moment, grab a copy of PS/2 Mouse Rate and see for yourself), so the mouse drivers should have the ability to tweak this.

I'm not as convinced that USB is important, but in order to get that to work, you better start beating up on Intel for the specs now. Intel's documentation department can be slow to respond (I'd use the term "glacial," but that conveys an unwarranted sense of haste). USB is a non-trivial beast. Getting all the device types, hubs, and hot-plugging issues down is going to take time.

Anyway, that's pretty much what's on my laundry list. I also have specific ideas on how some of this might get implemented. If I wasn't so darned employed, I'd probably be working on some aspect of this stuff.

Thanks for reading.

Schwab

> If you use an MP3 player, which is it?

mpg123 -s foo.mp3 | aplay -m &

ac
--
OSS != OSS.

Install ALSA and just cat /proc/asound/card1/pcm0p > data.raw, while realplayer is decoding the data. You'll get the pure digital output data produced by RealPlayer. And guess what, it's totally free! :)

Linux runs fine on anything from one to sixteen processors. With kernel 2.2.x, this has gotten better. Linux handles SMP just fine.

The point is, it only handles it just fine. One of the major things about BeOS is it isn't just fine SMP support, it is excellent, thorough SMP support. Be will really shine on 16 processors, because the entire OS, and all standard applications, are heavily threaded. How many programs do you have to be running under linux before it can use all 16 processors at once?

It will take a very, very long time for linux to ever acheive this. In fact, an OSS OS that is more modern, including features such as Be has, may be the OS that replaces linux a few decades down the line. (Yes, the implicit assumption is that linux is going to replace windows in between now and then. Both OSes are somewhat archaic, linux is better at adapting new features though, and has a much more sound foundation than windows.)

Disclaimer: I've never actually used Be, just read about it... It looks *really* cool, but the price is outside my meager budget, otherwise I'd try it out on the 3rd partition on my machine.

1. partition for WinNT so I can play games(WINE isn't good enough yet, espescially since it won't run starsiege tribes, a really really cool game that I've been playing lately), and so I can do my RealAudio broadcast, because the linux port of realencoder has trouble recognizing input devices(dunno why, but it doesn't even detect an available recording device with either of my soundcards under linux, though one is using ALSA drivers). What I'd really like though is open source shoutcast player and encoder for linux and windoze, my station would switch to shoutcast if we had that.
2. partition with debian linux 2.1(slink) The OS I miss almost every time I go to that slow, ugly, unstable thing called windoze
3. parition for trying out other OSes, except I never got around to using it, and am using it for additional storage for windoze, cuz 2 gig isn't enough. (would have installed win98 for playing games, but fucking 98 won't handle multiple real partitions on a drive(as opposed to extended partitions))