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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...
The Army reading list
Is the window manager called Sai?
...but very frustrating. I learned from a Chinese friend that brought a set from home. He got us all addicted (in college, we had time for this stuff). Soon we had maybe ten games spread out over the quad in front of our dorm. When I finally beat my friend in a match, I retired for good. I had to go out on a high note.
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.
is that really our goal? i already think oss is superior to anything M$ puts out. the only reason microsoft is still dominant is because it's what everyone is used to. all their favorite commercial products (games, office apps, etc.) are written for windows. i don't want a big unified all-powerful linux, i like it the way it is, with tons of highly specialized choices so i can pick the distro that suits my needs best. the question is, do you want choice or not?
seriously, can we forget about "beating" microsoft. what's the point?
I'm against picketing but I don't know how to show it.
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.
Yea, I know this game sounds like vaporware and all, but I assure you, it will be out before Duke Nukem Forever.
Come on, that doesn't seem right. The whole idea of community driven design is to stimulate innovation. A big ass monolithic linux distro would be about as innovative as Windows.
...I learned from watching Hikaru No Go.
Now I'm learning to pilot huge battle mechs by watching Evangelion.
I guess you should read about it or ask someone to teach you.
- These characters were randomly selected.
...I have to ask: isn't learning Go from a computer sort of like learning sex from a porn site? You can pick up some basic concepts and maybe even some effective strategies, 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.
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.
This is actually a great idea and could be the basis for further innovation/exploitation of Linux or alternative and free OSs for distributing products sans the Windows / Direct X / permissions / general configuration headaches. You wouldn't have to worry about what media player or APIs are present on a user's system, instead focusing on creating a robust, stable, and boot-able platform to showcase your wares. Anyone know of any current projects bent towards this goal? Once the work was done, it could be applied to a variety of software products.
I don't know the size of a 3" CD off the top of my head
You know, I understand exactly what you meant, but do you realize how funny this read on my first pass?
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Go is perfect. Perhaps your perceptions are flawed.
why not just
a piece of paper,
another player
some m&m's?
Excuse my non-Linux-user question, but:
What's the advantage of having an entire distro built around this game, rather than just having an application for the game and all its training stuff built into the app?
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
(sorry)
Last time I had to reboot my PC whenever I wanted to run a new program was... 1983 or so with my Apple II. This is an awful idea.
I dunno, while it would awfully tedious to reboot into this thing every single time you want to play Go, I don't think that's really the point.
This seems like it would be great for a Go beginner to be able to get up and running with tons of Go utilities and resources with a minimum of fuss. Once you get things figured out, then install the programs on your regular OS, no big deal.
And while this doesn't apply to this CD in particular, there can be other reasons to use a boot CD for a game. The Gentoo folk (and probably others) have made LiveCDs for popular graphics and CPU-intensive games. The enitre mini-distro is optimized solely for this game, right down to kernel tweaks and patches. For those of us who don't have outrageously expensive gaming hardware, this can squeeze a considerable bit of performance out of a box.
The simplicity of Go actually makes it seem a bit inelegant when people play it--namely that it is not self-evident when the game is over. I'm not necessarily saying that this is a flaw, although people sometimes continue playing games whose outcome is already decided. I think the most "natural" way to play would be to use Chinese scoring rules, and keep playing until every space is filled up, but that would be tedious and unnecessary.
English is easier said than done.
In the late 1970s, I wrote a Go playing program on very limited hardware: my Apple II (serial number 79 - an old one, but with extra memory).
Anyway, my old boss (who once joked that he almost did not get his PhD from MIT because he spent too much time playing Go) convinced me to sell this beast - even though it did not play a strong game it did know about liberties, ladders, some Joseki, etc.
Anyway, I sold it as "Honinbo Warrior". I am fairly sure that it was the first commercially available Go playing program. I did not make too much money from it because advertising costs in Apple magazines ate up most of the revenue.
-Mark
Go play IGS, its been around for years, many amazing players.
http://gobase.org/software/clients/
TruePunk | Games
here
I put the 'fun' in fundamentalism
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.
> > I do have to admit to asking "Why?"
> it'll fit on a 3" live cd,...
plus it'll be optimized for performance. we all know how cruelly fast go can get.
Just yesterday I was thinking "Man, I think the linux community could take off anytime now, we just need one more distro..."
I'm too lazy to even click that link. Can't you just explain it?