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Hikarunix: The Go Distro
LGRiske writes "In this day and age of the Unreal Final Fantasy of Doom 3 it's nice to see a 4000 year old board game keep up the pace. There's now a whole Linux distribution dedicated to learning, playing and studying the oldest strategy game in the world, Go/Baduk/WeiQi. Named Hikarunix it is based on DamnSmallLinux, the Live Linux CD, and is small enough to fit on a 3" (80mm) miniCD. It is meant for Go players of all levels whether you've never even heard of the game or have been playing for decades."
...right here. Only two seeds out there so far...
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What is this game? Is it any fun? That sounds pretty cool.
There's a link in the submission to a site that will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Go. If you're really too lazy to go back it's here.
If you are interested in playing Go online, I would recommend Kiseido Go Server, is it is the best there is and its java so it can run on almost any platform.
I guess you should read about it or ask someone to teach you.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Chess may be more fun but with Go a good human player can beat the computer every time.
don't play a computer. Go is a notoriously complex game that computers can't even come close to understanding (there is simply too much strategy and too many possible moves). The best way to learn is to find someone (in real life) who knows how to play and play some 9x9 (not a full 19x19) games against them. If you can't find anyone in real life find an online go server (google for it) and play some people there. Playing real people is the only way to learn, and if you say you're a noob someone will probably help you out with some pointers.
I'm not sure if I remember correctly and if the grandparent was referring to it anyway, but I think one the main characters (the tutor) of Hikaru No Go is also called Sai. Hikaro No Go being the anime that inspired the name of the distribution.
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but until you have a real, live, flesh-and-blood human partner you're just not getting the full effect and are never going to be truly good.
probably true, but many of the tools on the CD are designed to connect you to real-live human Go players. Sure it might be nicer to sit down with someone face-to-face, but not everybody has the advantage of living in a part of the world or a city big enough to have Go clubs or other Go players at all.
Sorry guys, I didn't realize there was so many people using 3" CD's today. My point being, I think most of us know a normal CD is 650-700mb, a floppy is 1.44mb, a 256mb usb drive is 256mb... It has been my experience people tend to think in file sizes first and then apply it to the media format of their choosing. So while saying it fits on a 3" CD may be more useful to the people that actually use them, the rest of us that use more standard storage are left wondering if it will fit in the remaining 40mb of free space we have on our jump drive. Just my thoughts.
Well... online Go. Just hook this baby up to KGS or IGS and you've got an assload of Go players waiting for someone else to play with.
"Another Player" can be hard to find, since Go isn't terribly popular and a fairly decent player can thoroughly trounce a beginner.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
Well first of all, you'd need a HUGE amount of m&ms.. and you'd either have to be a total go expert with a great memory, or you'd need to draw out a 19x19 board. Go is VERY popular actually and its really like a martial art in that the ranks are perfectly laid out. After you get a stable ranking you should be able to make the game a perfectly even match just by giving the lesser player a handicap equal to the difference in ranks. Its really so much like a martial art in so many ways.
Go play IGS, its been around for years, many amazing players.
http://gobase.org/software/clients/
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Ack, that would be http://www.goproblems.com/, not .org!
I hadn't thought of that, actually. I was talking about the distro's name, "Hikarunix". It's a reference to the anime Hikaru no Go. The title character is taught to play Go by Sai, the restless spirit of an ancient Go master.
Would have to be through an online go server. KGS (Google-search it) is a very mature system with all levels of players from green beginners up to actual professional players. Moreover, the server has constructs built-in that allow and encourage review of games, tutoring, tsumego practice, etc. There are beginner rooms in there that I myself, in addition to hundreds of others, frequent for the sole purpose of helping newcomers.
My uname on KGS and IGS are hermit, if anyone sees me or wants a game, get in touch.
Playing against the computer is worth it if you're a beginner. It will take at least a few months of study for most people to be able to beat a good computer program (GNU go is only a few stones weaker than the strongest.)
If you are new to the game and want to play real people, I would reccomend playing in yahoo games since you can find plenty of real beginners.
For information on the game, senseis.xpm.net and gobase.org are essential.