Slashdot Mirror

GonzoJohn writes "When I first subscribed to Transgaming's WineX 2.1 product last year, I was pleasantly surprised that nearly half of the games I had were supported to a degree. The games that did run ran pretty flawlessly. The games that didn't work had varying degrees of success, all just short of actually being able to play the game (the installers seemed to work). With the release of WineX 3.0 from Transgaming on April 17th this year, it looked like it was time to revisit the wonderful world of Wine. This time around, Transgaming WineX 3.0 has some new tools as well as improvements in the number of games supported and gaming speeds. In this article, we're going to take a look at the new features of WineX 3.0, with a focus on their new GUI installer called Point2Play."

GonzoJohn writes "When I first subscribed to Transgaming's WineX 2.1 product last year, I was pleasantly surprised that nearly half of the games I had were supported to a degree. The games that did run ran pretty flawlessly. The games that didn't work had varying degrees of success, all just short of actually being able to play the game (the installers seemed to work). With the release of WineX 3.0 from Transgaming on April 17th this year, it looked like it was time to revisit the wonderful world of Wine. This time around, Transgaming WineX 3.0 has some new tools as well as improvements in the number of games supported and gaming speeds. In this article, we're going to take a look at the new features of WineX 3.0, with a focus on their new GUI installer called Point2Play."

GonzoJohn writes "For the serious techno-geek, Linux Orbit takes a look at installing Debian GNU/Linux on a Netwinder 3100 mini server. Though currently the Netwinder 3100 is not in production, the installation process and the discoveries made make for an interesting Linux sleuthing article. Lots of screen shots and configuration files included."

GonzoJohn writes "For the serious techno-geek, Linux Orbit takes a look at installing Debian GNU/Linux on a Netwinder 3100 mini server. Though currently the Netwinder 3100 is not in production, the installation process and the discoveries made make for an interesting Linux sleuthing article. Lots of screen shots and configuration files included."

GonzoJohn writes "Linux Orbit explains how: "A very common question that comes up when trying Debian GNU/Linux is how the heck do you get Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (a.k.a. ALSA) sound modules set up properly? In this HOWTO we'll show you how to compile and install the ALSA kernel modules, and then setup things using the ALSA Debian script so that modules are automatically loaded and unloaded, and your mixer levels are saved and restored on boot up. Here are some things you'll need to have before you start this HOWTO""

GonzoJohn writes "Linux Orbit explains how: "A very common question that comes up when trying Debian GNU/Linux is how the heck do you get Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (a.k.a. ALSA) sound modules set up properly? In this HOWTO we'll show you how to compile and install the ALSA kernel modules, and then setup things using the ALSA Debian script so that modules are automatically loaded and unloaded, and your mixer levels are saved and restored on boot up. Here are some things you'll need to have before you start this HOWTO""

GonzoJohn writes "The official GNOME filemanager Nautilus was originally developed by Eazel as part of their plan to bring usability and beauty to the Unix desktop. Today Nautilus is maintained by veteran GNOME hackers Alexander Larsson and Dave Camp. Being such a core application in the GNOME desktop it is the topic of many discussions in and around GNOME. In a recent survey on gnomedesktop.org an interview about Nautilus was at the top of the wishlist. So to let everyone get the inside scope on what is happening with Nautilus currently I got hold of Alexander and Dave for a small interview.""

GonzoJohn writes "The official GNOME filemanager Nautilus was originally developed by Eazel as part of their plan to bring usability and beauty to the Unix desktop. Today Nautilus is maintained by veteran GNOME hackers Alexander Larsson and Dave Camp. Being such a core application in the GNOME desktop it is the topic of many discussions in and around GNOME. In a recent survey on gnomedesktop.org an interview about Nautilus was at the top of the wishlist. So to let everyone get the inside scope on what is happening with Nautilus currently I got hold of Alexander and Dave for a small interview.""

GonzoJohn writes "There are always difficult jobs to do as a GNU/Linux system administrator. Sometimes the difficulty lies in finding out how to do a particular job, not necessarily the job itself. This can be particularly true in the open source world where documentation can often take a back seat to implementation. But once in a while, you can stumble on a real gem that simplifies even the most difficult administration tasks. One such gem is the Jail Chroot Project. Linux Orbit introduces you to creating chroot-ed environments in this article."

GonzoJohn writes "There are always difficult jobs to do as a GNU/Linux system administrator. Sometimes the difficulty lies in finding out how to do a particular job, not necessarily the job itself. This can be particularly true in the open source world where documentation can often take a back seat to implementation. But once in a while, you can stumble on a real gem that simplifies even the most difficult administration tasks. One such gem is the Jail Chroot Project. Linux Orbit introduces you to creating chroot-ed environments in this article."

GonzoJohn writes "Linux Orbit reviews the Phoenix 0.2 web browser: 'I've never been a huge fan of the Mozilla web browser. It's too big and too slow in my opinion. I like the Opera web browser a lot, but it is closed source, ad supported (for the free version) or costs money (if you want to get rid of the banner ads). Opera is almost exactly what I'm looking for in a web browser as far as features are concerned: fast, browser window tabs, mouse gesturing, and I can configure the interface a little. It has its problems, no doubt. Java and Javascript are big tripping points for it to name just a few. But speed is what I'm looking for. Then along comes Mozilla's Phoenix web browser. Phoenix still uses a lot of the Mozilla code. In fact, Phoenix code is based completely on Mozilla code, so the development should move rather quickly. Here is a link to a road map for what it's developers think is a close time-line for its development. Although still in heavy development, I have found Phoenix quite useable and stable even in the early 0.2 release and I continue to download the nightly release every day.'"

GonzoJohn writes "Linux Orbit reviews the Phoenix 0.2 web browser: 'I've never been a huge fan of the Mozilla web browser. It's too big and too slow in my opinion. I like the Opera web browser a lot, but it is closed source, ad supported (for the free version) or costs money (if you want to get rid of the banner ads). Opera is almost exactly what I'm looking for in a web browser as far as features are concerned: fast, browser window tabs, mouse gesturing, and I can configure the interface a little. It has its problems, no doubt. Java and Javascript are big tripping points for it to name just a few. But speed is what I'm looking for. Then along comes Mozilla's Phoenix web browser. Phoenix still uses a lot of the Mozilla code. In fact, Phoenix code is based completely on Mozilla code, so the development should move rather quickly. Here is a link to a road map for what it's developers think is a close time-line for its development. Although still in heavy development, I have found Phoenix quite useable and stable even in the early 0.2 release and I continue to download the nightly release every day.'"

GonzoJohn writes "Linux Orbit has reviewed Libranet GNU/Linux 2.7: Other Linux distribution companies have tried to create commercial Linux products based on Debian GNU/Linux, but few have achieved long term success. Progeny Linux comes to mind as a commercial Linux distribution company whose Linux product met with good reviews, but couldn't remain in business. Libranet is a rare exception to this rule. Libranet GNU/Linux has been around quite a while and continues to build a devoted Linux user base on a commercial product based on Debian GNU/Linux. With their most recent release of Libranet GNU/Linux 2.7, Libranet continues to improve on an already solid Linux distribution."

GonzoJohn writes "Linux Orbit has reviewed Libranet GNU/Linux 2.7: Other Linux distribution companies have tried to create commercial Linux products based on Debian GNU/Linux, but few have achieved long term success. Progeny Linux comes to mind as a commercial Linux distribution company whose Linux product met with good reviews, but couldn't remain in business. Libranet is a rare exception to this rule. Libranet GNU/Linux has been around quite a while and continues to build a devoted Linux user base on a commercial product based on Debian GNU/Linux. With their most recent release of Libranet GNU/Linux 2.7, Libranet continues to improve on an already solid Linux distribution."

Mike Potter writes "After our initial launch, we received a ton of requests asking for support for RedHat 7.3 and Mandrake 8.2. OEone is happy to announce that HomeBase DESKTOP is now available as a free download for those two platforms. There's a great review of OEone DESKTOP at Linux Orbit."

Mike Potter writes "After our initial launch, we received a ton of requests asking for support for RedHat 7.3 and Mandrake 8.2. OEone is happy to announce that HomeBase DESKTOP is now available as a free download for those two platforms. There's a great review of OEone DESKTOP at Linux Orbit."

GonzoJohn writes "Looks like TheKompany has released an ogg rippoer for CDs: "tkcOggRipper is a freely available (but not GPL) program for easily and conveniently ripping CDs into the Ogg Vorbis format. If you are not familiar with Ogg Vorbis, it is available from Xiph (www.xiph.org). It compresses smaller and creates higher fidelity files than MP3. Ogg Vorbis also doesn't have any license time bombs or restrictions associated with it as MP3 does. You can look here to see what we mean. MP3 royalties will cost you either directly as a producer or indirectly as a consumer. One problem with Ogg Vorbis has been a lack of easy to use tools for ripping CDs into the Ogg Vorbis format -- they were confusing or command line based. This led us to write tkcOggRipper, which couldn't be more easy to use. Pop in a CD, pick an ouput directory and select a "Quality" setting, and go. tkcOggRipper is currently available for Linux and Windows, and we hope to release a version for Mac OS X soon."

GonzoJohn writes "Linux Orbit takes a look at TransGaming Technologies' WineX and puts it through its paces with eight different Windows games. In addition to reviewing: Diablo 2, Starcraft, LinksLS 1998 (Golf Simulation), Dungeon Keeper 2, Populous the Beginning, Black and White, Fallout 2 and Might and Magic 6 under WineX 2.1, we also give you some helpful tips to make your WineX gaming experience as pleasant as possible."

GonzoJohn writes "Linux Orbit takes a look at TransGaming Technologies' WineX and puts it through its paces with eight different Windows games. In addition to reviewing: Diablo 2, Starcraft, LinksLS 1998 (Golf Simulation), Dungeon Keeper 2, Populous the Beginning, Black and White, Fallout 2 and Might and Magic 6 under WineX 2.1, we also give you some helpful tips to make your WineX gaming experience as pleasant as possible."

GonzoJohn writes "Jamie Harrison, founder of GBLUG in Glen Burnie, Maryland, has written an exclusive editorial for Linux Orbit about how he sees the state of Linux advocacy. "Whether we want to admit it or not, Linux has entered a critical period in its development - a period that may, in fact, determine in fate forever. Now that Linux is no longer a strange little niche Operating System, and has developed to the point where Microsoft actually feels threatened by its proliferation, the folks in Redmond are doing everything they can in the way of software design, legislation, regulation and control of the internet to snuff Linux out. The main reason that they have failed up to this point is that Linux has matured and grown in popularity, gaining public and private defenders in the consumer market and especially the corporate boardroom." Read the editorial here" I don't think that I agree with all the points here - but it's an informative read if nothing else.

GonzoJohn writes "Jamie Harrison, founder of GBLUG in Glen Burnie, Maryland, has written an exclusive editorial for Linux Orbit about how he sees the state of Linux advocacy. "Whether we want to admit it or not, Linux has entered a critical period in its development - a period that may, in fact, determine in fate forever. Now that Linux is no longer a strange little niche Operating System, and has developed to the point where Microsoft actually feels threatened by its proliferation, the folks in Redmond are doing everything they can in the way of software design, legislation, regulation and control of the internet to snuff Linux out. The main reason that they have failed up to this point is that Linux has matured and grown in popularity, gaining public and private defenders in the consumer market and especially the corporate boardroom." Read the editorial here" I don't think that I agree with all the points here - but it's an informative read if nothing else.

GonzoJohn writes "Jamie Harrison, founder of GBLUG in Glen Burnie, Maryland, has written an exclusive editorial for Linux Orbit about how he sees the state of Linux advocacy. "Whether we want to admit it or not, Linux has entered a critical period in its development - a period that may, in fact, determine in fate forever. Now that Linux is no longer a strange little niche Operating System, and has developed to the point where Microsoft actually feels threatened by its proliferation, the folks in Redmond are doing everything they can in the way of software design, legislation, regulation and control of the internet to snuff Linux out. The main reason that they have failed up to this point is that Linux has matured and grown in popularity, gaining public and private defenders in the consumer market and especially the corporate boardroom." Read the editorial here" I don't think that I agree with all the points here - but it's an informative read if nothing else.

GonzoJohn writes: "Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller for Linux Orbit: 'If you have followed GNU/Linux for the last few years you know that GNOME has long been a stronghold of C, Perl and Python GUI programming. With Ximian's work on Mono, C# seems also to be a language that will see wide use in GNOME. Sun's involvement should also make Java applications integrate strongly with GNOME. But what about C++? Even in the GNU/Linux and Unix world this language has received many advocates and developers. I sat down with Murray Cumming, lead developer on the gtkmm and gnomemm C++ bindings for GTK+ and GNOME to get some information on the status of C++ development in GNOME.'Read the Interview."

GonzoJohn writes: "Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller for Linux Orbit: 'If you have followed GNU/Linux for the last few years you know that GNOME has long been a stronghold of C, Perl and Python GUI programming. With Ximian's work on Mono, C# seems also to be a language that will see wide use in GNOME. Sun's involvement should also make Java applications integrate strongly with GNOME. But what about C++? Even in the GNU/Linux and Unix world this language has received many advocates and developers. I sat down with Murray Cumming, lead developer on the gtkmm and gnomemm C++ bindings for GTK+ and GNOME to get some information on the status of C++ development in GNOME.'Read the Interview."

GonzoJohn writes "LinuxOrbit.com reviews the 3D Tank game BZFlag. 'Have you ever been walking down the street, minding your own business, and suddenly look down to find something you hadn't expected? It might be money, it might be a decoder ring, it could be anything. But the almost universal reaction is pleasurable. 'That's a nice surprise,' you think as you stoop and pocket whatever good fortune has dropped in your path. The same thing can happen in the strangest places. For example, a recent post on our message boards inquired, 'What's your favorite flag in bzflag?'. Not being familiar with the game, I had to ask "What's bzflag?' Little did I know that such an innocent inquiry would result in an almost indecent obsession with a very cool game.'"

GonzoJohn writes "LinuxOrbit.com reviews the 3D Tank game BZFlag. 'Have you ever been walking down the street, minding your own business, and suddenly look down to find something you hadn't expected? It might be money, it might be a decoder ring, it could be anything. But the almost universal reaction is pleasurable. 'That's a nice surprise,' you think as you stoop and pocket whatever good fortune has dropped in your path. The same thing can happen in the strangest places. For example, a recent post on our message boards inquired, 'What's your favorite flag in bzflag?'. Not being familiar with the game, I had to ask "What's bzflag?' Little did I know that such an innocent inquiry would result in an almost indecent obsession with a very cool game.'"

GonzoJohn writes: "If you've ever been stuck on the freeway with a flat tire and no jack, you know what it's like to have a Linux system crash and not have a boot disk. And although nearly every Linux distribution company asks you make a boot/recovery floppy when you install Linux for the first time, many users skip this important step. Out of the boot/recovery disk concept was born the Mini-Linux distribution." Read this article on Linux Orbit, with a brief intro to some of the mini-distros available.

GonzoJohn writes: "If you've ever been stuck on the freeway with a flat tire and no jack, you know what it's like to have a Linux system crash and not have a boot disk. And although nearly every Linux distribution company asks you make a boot/recovery floppy when you install Linux for the first time, many users skip this important step. Out of the boot/recovery disk concept was born the Mini-Linux distribution." Read this article on Linux Orbit, with a brief intro to some of the mini-distros available.

Slashback with more on paying royalties for Web standards, Sun's newest office suite, securing your 802.11 network starting with the antenna(e), and another glove.

Fewer excuses for the "memos and shopping lists" crowd. Sean Lamb writes: "Now that everyone's done slashdotting Sun's servers, I've posted an Out-Of-Box-Experience review of StarOffice 6.0 beta over at Linux Orbit."

Some things just want to be Free. Bruce Perens writes: "HP has made a public statement supporting royalty-free web standards and urging the community to write W3C with their opinion. "

A document on Perens' web site outlines Hewlett-Packard's response to the ongoing discussion of allowing technologies into W3C standards which could require patents on the so-called Reasonable and Non-Discrimatory (RAND) basis. That document reads in part:

"Agreement on royalty-free standards does not end this discussion. The licensing of patents embedded in standards must be compatible with the GPL license that is applied to the Linux operating system kernel, the MIT-derived license that is applied to the Apache web server, and a number of other software licenses. Because of the many thousands of copyright holders who have already contributed to existing products under those licenses, those software licenses can not be changed - the patent licensing mandated by W3C standards must accommodate them."

I hope other companies benefiting from software like Apache, Linux, and any other software which could be hurt by royalty-based standards make similar statements.

Wardrivers, begone. Moshe Barr may have laid out how to share a network connection with the neighborhood, but what about when you don't want to or can't afford to? trevmar writes: "BYTE.com has just published an article I wrote about WLAN antennas -- how they work and how to choose them. Hopefully I have put in all the stuff you will need to know whether you are setting up a community freenet, or just want to make your own home network harder to hack. If you are hardware inclined, I also describe some low cost hardware, and an access point that can be pulled apart very easily and resoldered at will ..."

Need an integrated keyboard here ... Adrian writes "Forget the guys with the glove from Berkeley, check out these guys -- they have a great product that interfaces with 3D Max for realtime animation generation that is on the market and won best of SIGGRAPH a couple of years back -http://www.didjiglove.com.au" While that's nice, I'd rather not forget the Berkeley guys just yet, since their seems like a more generalized concept.

IceFox writes: "In this first installment of a four part series, LinuxOrbit takes a look at AOL Instant Messaging clients available for GNU/Linux. Kaim, Gaim, and the official AOL Linux client are reviewed. It's interesting to note that open source projects are way ahead of AOL in developing a full featured AIM client for GNU/Linux."

GonzoJohn writes: "Linux Orbit editor-in-chief John Gowin contacted Helix Code to catch up on where their products and projects were heading in the New Year. Miguel de Icaza, GNOME evangelist and developer and Helix Code co-founder was kind enough to answer our ten question interview. Included in the interview is some new information on the Red Carpet Project, the next iteration of the Helix Update utility." Miguel also speaks here about the not-yet-feature-frozen Evolution (what happens when Evolution is declared "finished"? ;) ). Is anyone out there using Evolution in their own workplace?

GonzoJohn writes: "Linux Orbit editor-in-chief John Gowin contacted Helix Code to catch up on where their products and projects were heading in the New Year. Miguel de Icaza, GNOME evangelist and developer and Helix Code co-founder was kind enough to answer our ten question interview. Included in the interview is some new information on the Red Carpet Project, the next iteration of the Helix Update utility." Miguel also speaks here about the not-yet-feature-frozen Evolution (what happens when Evolution is declared "finished"? ;) ). Is anyone out there using Evolution in their own workplace?

tintin writes "While GNOME and KDE get most of the attention from the user and distributions, other alternatives should not be left out. The interview with Olivier Fourdan of Xfce points out one lightweight alternative, XFce. To get more information on Xfce, go to xfce home page"

Clyde has written a nice article over at LinuxOrbit about the state of the GNOME office suite. With all the hubbub surrounding the recent freeing of Sun's StarOffice, this is gonna get more interesting. I'll tell ya the one thing that I miss in AbiWord is anti-aliased text. Staring at that horridly pixelated text is hard on the eyes. Between the Gimp, Gnucash, Eazel, Evolution, AbiWord, Gnucash and the like (no, I'm not forgetting KDE, I just haven't used it recently), the application support under Linux is rapidly making it feasible for a desktop user, but we're just not there yet. And it's the little things that get ya.

Bocaj writes: "LinuxOrbit.com has news from VTech on their plans to upgrade the Helio PDA to Linux. But thats not the interesting part: Quote: Programs chosen by VTech/Helio for special attention will receive incentives that include special donations to the Linux Open Source Foundation in the name of the developer of choice, or a cash grant for further development of Linux programs for the Helio OS or other Linux systems, open to the developer's choice."