The beginning of Linux

This is the beginning.

Thanks to Muli Ben-Yehuda of IBM Haifa Research Labs for the quotation

Discovering the wonders of fstab

I’ve recently had to format my Ubuntu partition because of a Kernel Panic. This happened when I hit the “suspend” button in Boxee. The OS freezed still (it didn’t suspend) and there was no way to resurrect it than resetting the system. When I rebooted the there came the Kernel Panic. During the brief unsuccessful efforts to fix the problem I checked the fstab file to see if Boxee did somehow mess with it. I did not know much about fstab so, now that my system is fresh again, I want to discuss the wonders of fstab, this tiny yet superimportant text file.

fstab stands for file system table and it’s basically a configuration file which gives the kernel all the necessary information to mount partitions (usually only the internal ones; external partitions like usb flash drives and similar are mounted via volume managers). Being a configuration file fstab is located under the /etc directory; to read it you can just locate and open it by the graphical interface, however only root can write to it so if you need to modify it you must access with su (super user) privileges.

Disclaimer: Critical system files in Linux can only be modified by ROOT and not by the user(s). The rationale behind this is to make the system more safe against security attacks and mishandling by users. Having said that, use super user privileges to access system files only if you fall into one of the following categories:

- You know exactly what you’re doing

- You’re in an experiment environment

- Your system is completely and –by your point of view- irrevocably compromised so you judge you have nothing to lose

To read-only your fstab gile in console type:

~$ cat /etc/fstab

To open the fstab file in write mode open a console and type:

~$ sudo gedit /etc/fstab

As I said before the information contained in fstab is plain text, organized in rows and columns and laid out as follows

[device] [mount point] [file system type] [options] [dump] [pass]

[device] > indicates the device or partition that contains the file system
Note for Ubuntu: Canonical’s distro now uses UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) by default to identify partitions. In order to listyour devices by UUID you can use ~$ sudo blkid

[file system types] > indicates the type of file system. On Ubuntu you will likely see ext3 or ext4 for the main partition where root resides. Depending on the type of partitions or devices in your computer you could encounter any of the following file system types:

• ext2, ext3, ext4, reiserfs (don’t miss the macabre gossip related to this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser), etc.
• auto (commonly used for removable devices in order to try to detect the specific file system of the device)
• vfat (identify FAT partitions)
• ntfs (identify NTFS partitions)
• udf,iso9660 (identify optical media -aka CD/DVD-)
• swap (a hard disk partition where a page of memory is copied to free up that page of memory)
• procfs (stands for process file system and it’s a pseudo file system (dynamically generated at boot) used to access process information from the kernel. The file system is often mounted at the /proc directory and occupies no storage space

[options] > there are several options which specify how the partition is handled and what can or cannot do. I’ll try to cover them briefly here and let you google for them if you need an in depth description.

• auto / noauto specify if the partition has to be automatically mounted or not at boot or when mount –a command is executed. auto itself it’s almost useless because it’s the default behavior. noauto is more interesting as it blocks a partition to be mounted unless you manually mount it.
• sync / async are for I/O to the file system and indicate whether it has to be done synchronously (at the same time a I/O operation is issued) or asyinchronously. The meaning of this gets more clear if you imagine to issue a command to execute data transfer to a floppy disk or rw optical media.
• exec / noexec is meant either to allow or prevent execution of binaries within the partition. If you set you’re the partition where root dwells as noexec your system is screwed
• dev / nodev interpret or not interpret character or block special devices on the file system
• ro / rw is used to specify if the partition is read-only or read-write mounted
• suid / nosuid allow or block operations of suid or sgid bits. Suid and sgid stand for set user id and set group id. When a suid or sgid file is executed, the process which runs it is granted access to system resources based on the user who owns the file and not the user who created the process.
• user / nouser are used to specify the user related permissions to mount the file system. user means that all the users can mount the file system and by consequence of this the noexec, nosuid,nodev options are automatically implied. nouser means instead that only root can mount the file system and this is the default setting.
• defaults uses the default settings which are rw, suid, dev, exec, auto, nouser, async.
• _netdev is for a network device which has to be mounted after bringing up the network and it’s only valid for nfs (Network File System)

Note for Ubuntu: from the 8.04 release Ubuntu uses relatime as default for linux native file systems. This options replaces atime and it’s used to know when a file was last used. Read more about atime and relatime here.

[dump] > this field specifies if the backup utility dump is enabled -1- or not -0-. Dump is a application which backs up and restores file systems as a whole. This field is usually set to 0.

[pass] > this field is related to the fsck system utility. fsck, which stands for “file system check”, is a program which check the state of the file system. In case of a system crash or a forced shutdown fsck

should detect it and then proceed automatically or user guided to fix the damaged parts. The options are the following:

• 0 -> don’t check
• 1 -> check this partition first
• 2 -> check this partition next

fsck checks the file system every 30 mount operations as default. It’s possible to modify this interval (mostly by using tune2fs)

Here belows my fstab file commented by the system. Try to read it and retrieve the various specifications and options described before. You will surely encounter elements not covered in my description of fstab – i.e. ‘sw’, ‘utf8’ ‘errors=remount-ro’, ecc..- as you possibly will by reading your own fstab. This is common because technologies are for their nature prone to rapid changes and, like systems, tends to accumulates details in times. We have caught a couple of them like relatime and UUID while for the few remaining others you can google them to find more information or issue the command ~$ man fstab in a terminal

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use ‘vol_id –uuid’ to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=197ac49c-16f9-41a6-9c18-40e87231f4ba / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=84365e80-cbc7-495f-9e46-46a852bef3c2 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

The Ubuntu Software Store revealed

Phoronix has recently published an article previewing The Ubuntu Software Store: a rather dull name for a project which is really triggering my hype.

If you read some of my past articles on Ubuntu and Linux in general, you probably know that I consider application distribution and handling (installation/remove) one of the major drawback and “keep out sign” of the desktop oriented Linux distributions.

It’s not that the Ubuntu installation environment isn’t good, on the contrary both synaptic and gdebi are fantastic and full of potentiality. The fact is that as it happens with most community driven things sometimes the spur of productivity has a counterproductive side effect. Diversification isn’t a drawback per se but there are times when concentration can serve better when the target is an important application or system part. This is surely the case of the software installation on Ubuntu. As far as it is right now I’ve no problem to say that the user experience is awful. Installing an application on Ubuntu (and I doesn’t consider the whole Linux based distros on purpose) means dealing with multiple processes plus other random perceived factors. And that’s frustrating at the least.

Just to make some examples each time I install a Ubuntu release I always and immediately install five applications which require five different installation processes:

• Miro player –> add repository to Synaptic packet manager then browse for Miro and install it via Synaptic

• Truecrypt cryptography software –> download the bin, open and execute, follow the instruction of the graphic installation application

• GoogleEarth geography app –> download the bin, open a terminal and mess with bash then follow the instructions provided by the graphic installation interface

• Ubuntuzilla Updater for Mozilla apps –> download the .deb file, install it with gdebi, open a terminal and mess with bash then follow the instructions provided by the graphic installation interface

• Flash player –> download the .deb file and install it with gdebi (painless double click -Windows reminder- operation)

These are just a sample because there are  several other cases where for example you must compile the software following obscure tutorials,  retrieving and install a bunch of other applications (each having its own peculiar process) to satisfy dependencies, etc…

In my opinion this is completely unacceptable.

You can imagine the smile on my face when I read that Canonical is working on a project to unify various graphical install applications in a single graphical interface.

The Ubuntu Software Store is being built on the basics of the Add/Remove Applications (which is another way, not mentioned before, to install and remove software). Surprisingly we will see the first “installment” of TUSS with limited functions shipped with the Karmic Koala October release. According to the TUSS wiki page the 1.0 version of TUSS will hit four goals:

• a graphically pleasing interface
• an improved use of apt: links to replace bash commands and standalone packages
• fine-tune the interface presented when software updates are available.
• involve Launchpad with the goal of acquiring better and up to date information about the applications

With the Ubuntu 10.04 release the TUSS team hope for their app to substitute Synaptic, gdebi, add/remove softwares, Software Sources and hopefully even the Update Manager,conveying all these systems in a common interface. Another very exciting feature which could be included in the early 2010 release is the possibility to manage non-graphical software (programming utilities, fonts, database software, etc) within the Store.

The roadmap goes until 2011 when, according to the plans, TUSS will be mature enough to include rich functions like “sharing and tracking of software, overviews of installed software by license, cost, or maintenance timetable, discovering software by what your friends have installed, visible history of past installations/removals/purchases, including the ability to undo specific changes, specialized interfaces for browsing and installing particular classes of package like fonts, screensavers, Windows applications, etc”.

By reading the dedicated wiki page it’s clear that Canonical is fully aware that the way applications are handled right now it’s one of their greatest Achill’s talons. The way they are facing it it’s something that make me proud of running Ubuntu as my first and main operating system.

Despite all the smaller and bigger problems user constantly face (nearly all of them are caused by the scandalous and evil lack of support from hardware manufacturers) Ubuntu (as many other Linux distros) is capable of beam the user with a sense of pleasure in using it which is generated by the stability and safety you clearly perceive in everyday usage. More than that, the continuous improvements are introduced in each six month release and make you feel on the edge of technology and part of project that, because of its scope and vision, is good and brings welfare to the people who use it and mankind as a whole.

Having said that I’m really impatient to see the first release of The Ubuntu Software Store and review it. So stay tuned.

Images are from The Ubuntu Software Store wiki. One is an interface sketch and the other is one of the proposed logos. This one is by SebastianPorta

Bash script to Mount/Unmount .ISO from Nautilus

I was googling to find a software for Ubuntu which helped me to mount and unmount .ISO files, you know the same job DaemonTools does so flawlessly on Windows.

Well I found a four years old post in the Tutorials&Tips section of Ubuntu Forums where Sonny explains how to create a script which will enable you to to the job directly from Nautilus.

I know that you can already do it on the newer version of Ubuntu but I find sometimes nice to hack here and around obtaining the same effect with some home brewed script.

I tried it and it perfectly worked on my Jaunty version so I thought it would have done good to spread the word around.

Here’s the recipe.

First thing to do is create the folder where the files are going to be mounted.  Open a terminal and type:

sudo mkdir /media/iso

You can create whichever folder you like but the Sonny’s way will place the folder next to the cdrom and other media in the system

Now we must create the script itself so always in the terminal type:

gedit ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Mount\ Iso

When the editor opens up paste the following code inside, save and exit

#!/bin/bash
for uri in $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS; do
gnome-terminal -x sudo mount -o loop -t iso9660 “$1″ /media/iso
done

Now get back to the terminal because we need to make the script executable, so type:

chmod +x ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Mount\ Iso

That’s all folks! Now, next time you encounter a .ISO file just right click on it and from the context menu select script and then Mount Iso. Type the user password and you will find the .ISO mounted and ready to be used directly on your desktop.

The next part is to create the script to unmount the .ISO. It doesn’t really work for me this but I suppose it’s worth give it a try and let me know if it works for you.

open a terminal and type:

gedit ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Unmount\ Iso

When the text editor showup put this code:

#!/bin/bash
for uri in $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS; do
gnome-terminal -x sudo umount “$1″
done

Make executable by typing in the terminal:

chmod +x ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/Unmount\ Iso

And now you can simply mount and unmount the .ISO images directly from Nautilus and with just two clicks. According to Sonny it’s possible to mount also .cue and .nrg images by just changing the parameter in the script. You could then have one script for each type of image you need to mount/unmount. Again, if you try to do so drop me a line to let me know if it worked or not.

Image from *** Fanch The System !!! *** published under this Creative Commons license.

KDE 4.3.0 Caizen Released

Today the KDE community announced the released of their 4.3.0 desktop environment, codenamed Caizen.

If you don’t know KDE you should give it a peek because, either you like the philosophy behind or not, the project is important and daring.

As I mentioned before KDE is a desktop environment. It’s commonly related to the Kubuntu official derivation of Ubuntu Linux and other Linux distributions in general, but the environment can be installed also on Windows and Mac.

The main purpose of the KDE community is that of providing a strongly integrated, easy to use and stunningly stylish desktop. This is pursued not just by a pure aesthetic work but by a strong effort to propose and follow a their own concept of human-machine interface. The stress is always on the integration of the applications with the desktop composed of a stylish layout and sleek objects seen as track leading to simplicity and tidiness. The desktop is completely composed by widgets which float over the surface like objects on a table. Unlike a table however you can’t just drop a file onto the surface, the way you would with any other desktop environment, but you must place them inside a dedicated desktop widget. This can be frustrating at the beginning but after a while you will likely find the desktop widget easy to use, intuitive and helpful in driving you to keep your monitor free from the mess.

A strong asset of KDE is that it’s built on Qt libraries which is an extremely powerful and modern UI and application framework (probably the best). For this reason all a series of features, like graphics, graphical effects, etc.. are comparable to those found on Mac OSX and far better than those implemented in Vista, with the surplus of working smoothly even on my 4 years old average end laptop.

Unfortunately but physiological given the youth and ambition of the project, KDE suffered of many bugs during its life. However the community behind KDE is strong and the bug solving process did not lag behind. With the 4.3.0 version they claim the “community fixed over 10,000 bugs and implemented almost 2,000 feature requests in the last 6 months“.

Check all the freshly implemented features of KDE 4.3.0 Caizen here.

Linux Foundation coordinates Intel’s Moblin development

That’s a good news indeed, that Intel’s called The Linux Foundation to host and take care of the management behind the development of their former vendor-tied Moblin platform.

Moblin was created in 2007 by Intel as a platform for devices powered by their first generation of Atom processors, codenamed “Silverthorne”, which landed on the market in 2008. Now that the new Atom generation, codenamed Lincroft, is about to be released (Q4 2009) Intel’s has handled over the Mobile project to the Linux Foundation. This has officially happened on April 2nd 2009.

Intel’s already a Linux Foundation member and has now taken a more important step in promoting the Linux ecosystem than merely financing the Foundation. But don’t misunderstand me, with promoting I’m not stating that Intel’s effort is a bare charity-driven promotion. This is the sort of business move are good for Linux. Obviously Intel’s believes in Linux, as the lots of companies which had chosen this operating system as the engine for their product. Don’t forget that if Linux’s market share as a desktop system is ridiculous with respect to Microsoft’s, the same is not for a lot of other real world technology from flat screen tv  to supercomputers, from navigation system to Nasa’s Mars rovers and so on. With Linux Foundation’s stewardship Intel can hope to increase its market share of its Atom processor especially in the view of the constantly rising mobile Internet devices (MIDs). The Linux Foundation, on its turn, will ferry Moblin to the vendor-neutral shores thus providing a new open source platform and libraries for the development of mobile systems such as notebooks and car computers or infosystems.

Linux vendors such as Novell are positively impressed by Intel’s choice that will surely boost the Linux development and adoption in the environment of the mobile devices.

You can find more information by reading the announcement post on the Linux Foundation website.

What I deem more important about this is the fact that Linux, as a platform, is more and more getting support from big agents in the market. This is especially important because the war that Linux and its users fight on a day to day base is that of getting support for third parties software and hardware. What’s more frustrating to be unable to exploit your new sleek mobile phone or portable media player and so on, because the manufacturer didn’t even think about releasing the software/driver for Linux? And the most frustrating part is that you know that with modern programming languages (like Python) and software development toolkits (like Qt) it’s not so hard to write a software that can run on Windows, Linux and Mac with minimum or even no modifications on the original source. These sort of battles can only be won through politics and public relations, that is to say creating a critical mass of alliances and support to induce the above mentioned vendors to take into consideration that their few Linux oriented customers deserve support the same way do their Windows oriented customers.

How I messed up my laptop with Kubuntu 8.10 KDE 4.2

I’m a Linux user since Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbons”, then we can say I’m quite a freshman.

I took the decision to migrate my XP laptop to Linux mostly because I wanted to sail new waters after being a MS user since MS-DOS 5.0.

Until now I must say that my experience was pretty positive. I had no major problems switching to a new system. I found substitutes for most of the software I was used to and for those few I didn’t find an alternative, I relied on VirtualBox OSE and my old XP home edition. I was quite impressed by the stability and safety of the system. My laptop and me experienced a new speed we weren’t accustomed to. The only thing made me a bit crazy was the impossibility to run the composite manager with application based on OpenGL or which worked with video rendering (basically Google Earth and VLC for watching videos). I understood that this was because of my ATI video card yet I was disappointed by the fact that the situation remained always the same either with Hardy and lately with Intrepid.

With the advent of the 8.10 “Intrepid Ibex” release I decided to try again something new and switched to the Kubuntu fork. At the beginning I felt both dizzy and bewildered by the KDE4 environment. It took me some times to get somewhat accustomed to the new desktop manager which sets a complete new concept of user interface. The learning curve wasn’t so flat but I judged the worth the effort. On the other face of the coin the stability of the system was terrible. Panels got messed up once in a while causing me to swear first and sweat after to get everything in place. Contextual menu were sometimes weird (I couldn’t open a pdf from the web on the fly but was forced to download and open it after), the ark tool won’t compress -it didn’t see them- some kind of files (like pdf) and folders, trying to erase a file caused the system to drain an insane amount of resources without apparent reason (but pressing shift+canc didn’t), etc… With KDE4.2 version things im proved quite much and this was a great relief. However something dark was coming…

Out of the blue the headphones just stopped working. The weird was that by inserting the jack I got the feed for about one sec and then all went silent. After searching forums I did understand that the problem was probably related to ALSA and they advised to uninstall it and recompile. You know how it is when you happen to have an uncommon problem; the resources are few and often contrasting. As I said I’m a freshman and what is worse, a freshman without the time and will to learn bash and compiling and stuff the way I used to enjoy with MS-DOS when I was a teen. So I did what I usually do when I don’t know where to slam my head against what in Linux. I opened Adept and looked for ALSA related package. And I had the great idea to uninstall one package (probably libasound-2, or alsa-base). The computer crashed and I was forced to restart. Guess what it happened when I tried to access to my user session again? See below…

Then I got scared. The computer was full of documents, all expendable except the fact I had a big bunch of new pictures of my son I didn’t backuped. I was cold sweating and already thinking of my wife chasing me down like Sauron with the Fellowship of the Ring, except I wasn’t likely to make it… I accessed my user from console to try to backup the pictures directory by cp-ing it to the external drive. But I could find the external drive in the /media directory and all my attempts to mount it were a failure. At this point I booted from the live cd and managed to have access to the folder and copy it to a safe location. At least I managed to sleep that night…

The day after (which is two days ago) I wiped the hard disk and installed Ubuntu 8.10 which is now running onto my laptop. I enjoy a immediate feel of improved stability and boosted speed. However the headphones problem keeps on haunting me!

I’ve grown loving Linux but there are things that really piss me off. I worship over all the concept of ergonomics and elegance in all human manufactured products, so also for what concerns software. In their way the distros I used are ergonomic and elegant but there are a few things I can’t stand. Installing new software is a completely insane process. Left behind the add/remove tool, all what remains is chaos. Sometimes you just download a software from a website, double click and it installs and goes into the right place of the menu (Truecryp on Ubuntu). Sometimes you download it and then you must go and search for instructions to install it, copy&paste those on the terminal and that’s it (Google Earth) but then how you uninstall it?? Sometimes you must add the repositories and, if you’re lucky, the software get installed without issues and goes in the right menu place. Some other times you must mess with bash to copy files to some root place with sudo etc… As far as I’m concerned this is something crazy and one of the things which keeps new user at bay from say Ubuntu. Nowadays many people are willing and able to search the internet for open source alternative software, but how many of them can or want to the same to learn how to install it? Again, let’s be frank, apart from the add/remove and, in a shorter range, synaptic, tool it needs a super user to install software on Ubuntu.

Anyway I could stand all this installation matter and bound to let’s time be my teacher. The headphones trouble is though something completely unacceptable. We’re speaking of a pretty basic function and a priority one. I will probably take my time and try some solution in a protected environment like VirtualBox but again this takes time and to me it’s really a pain in the rear to waste a lot of time trying to solve this headphones related issue!

I won’t surely go back to Windows, but I’m looking forward an iMac as my next computer.

The Linux Game Box #4: Beyond the Red Line (Battlestar Galactica)

Welcome to episode 4 of The Linux Game Box.

Today I’m gonna talk of Beyond the Red Line, a space combat simulation and unofficial spin-off of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica show.

Title:        Beyond the Red Line
Genre:     Platform
License:  Unknown but free
Website: http://www.game-warden.com/bsg/

Beyond the red line is a standalone conversion (hooray!) of the award winning FreeSpace 2 game by Volition, Inc. The game released in 2007 it’s only a demo featuring three single player missions and multiplayer support. A full game version (commercial?) is announced but no release date is specified. The official website provide scarce information and on October 2008 part of the team left Beyond the Red Line to work on a different project. We can thus fear that the full Beyond the Red Line full game is a vapoware.

INSTALLATION REQUIREMENTS → 5

To install the demo first thing you must download the install script. You can do so using this tracker for your torrent client. If you don’t have a torrent client you can just download the script directly from on of the mirrors on the official web site.

After having downloaded the file you must set the script to be executable. To do this right click on the file, choose the permission tab and click the executable check box and run the script by double clicking it. At this point you could face a library problem like “error while loading shared libraries: libgtk-1.2.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory”. If you have this issue just install the last version of libgtk from Synaptic or Adept. At this point you can double click again on the install script and install the game.   Alternatively to solve the dependency and install the the game you could type this on the console:

$: sudo apt-get install libgtk1.2
$: sh BtRLDemoInstaller.run

The installer will create a btrl_demo folder on your /home folder.
Run the btlr_demo script to run the game.

Linux system requirements:

• Operating System: Linux x86 compatible
• CPU: Pentium® 1 GHz or AMD Athlon 800 MHz processor
• Memory: 512 MB RAM, 1 GB recommended
• Graphics Card: 64 MB NVIDIA® GeForce 3 or ATI Radeon with closed source drivers, Mesa 6 or better with S3TC extension available for open source drivers
• Input Device: Mouse and keyboard
• Installation: 800 MB free HD space

GAMEPLAY FUN → 8

BTRL is a space combat simulator game so the gameplay is similar to that of glorious games of the past like Wing Commander and the Lucasfilm X-Wing series. Thus the concept is basically you sit into the cockpit of a colonial Viper to do the fighter pilot’s job: escort ships and do a lot of dogfight against the cylons. The game implement semi Newtonian physics flight to enable the player to perform all the manouvers seen on the show. Also the weaponry and ship instrumentation are replica of those designed for the SciFi tv show. Similar to its predecessors also BTRD features a full set of commands which requires a certain amount of practice to be learnt and mastered. This can be see as a drawback but in my opinion that’s not the case. At the beginning can be hard to mess around with all the keys -somewhat contortionist- but as you learn and use them you get accustomed to them and acquire more control on the ship and this is quite rewarding.

GRAPHICS APPEAL → 9.5

From the visual point of view BTRL is quite satisfactory. The ships are accurately modeled and contain high-resolution textures. The environment is fascinating and immersing. Performing flybys of asteroids while chasing down cylon fighters with a gigantic alien planet in the background is something which provides breathtaking experience. Some effects, like explosions, could have been better and some others, like the shaking of the ship in afterburner, are really nice.

SOUND DELIGHT → 9

The sound is a real plus of this game. Even if BTRL is not an official Battlestar Galactica game the guys of the development team put pieces by Bear McCreary and Richard Gibbs which, useless to say, create a unique atmosphere. Music apart, the game is rich of actor speech either during briefing or during space combat. This especially helps you to bathe into the pilot character; you will hear pilots chatting, swearing “frak!” and screaming for their life, this all melted with the crackling of the laser and the humming of the cylon fighters brushing your ship.

STORY ENCHANTMENT → 7

The story is set during Battlestar Galactica Season 2. You are a pilot recruit draft and pressed into service by the not-so-gentle folks of the Battlestar Pegasus. Who watched the show’s already aware that the philosophy of the Pegasus captain concerned a struggle to survive which implied dismantling of the civilian ships it was supposed to protect. Your objective is do your job and becoming a first class pilot of the Pegasus forces and possibly not to get killed also.

I must say that the story is not that well told or present in the game. There’s a lot of briefing (all spoken by actors) but no introductory sequences, no cinematics, and no after mission chill out activities such as interaction with the mother ship personnel or environment. Although this is only a demo of a future game, I must list this aspect within the cons.

MALUS POINTS → -5

Even is Beyond the Red Line is amazing under many aspects, to have only 3 single player missions to play with it’s simply disappointing.

Note: the source code of FreeSpace2 was released by Voliton, Inc. under a non commercial license. The source code can be used to produce mods and stand alone games and it’s currently developed and maintained by the FreeSpace 2 Source Code Project

OVERALL SCORE → 6.7

Here below you can see a video footage showing the game in action.

If you want browse more videos you can check the Beyond the Red Line YouTube channel here

The Linux Game Box #3: Secret Maryo Chronicles

The game I’m about to present you for this instalment of The Linux Game Box, it’s just one of those title so polished, smooth and fluid that lets you think that yes, there is hope for Linux to be just a little more of a gaming platform. I say this despite the simplicity that marks every aspect of this particular game.

I don’t wanna waste more time so let me introduce you Secret Maryo Chronicles.

Title:        Secret Maryo Chronicle
Genre:     Platform
License:  GNU Public License v3
Website:  http://www.secretmaryo.org/

Secret Maryo Chronicles is platform game heavily inspired (someone could find it a clone) by Nintendo’s Super Mario series. The game is coded in C++ with SDL and OpenGL libraries and it’s really pretty fluid on my 4yo laptop. On January 2008 SMC has been awarded #1 in the 5 best (free) open source games chart by the Australian computer magazing APC.

INSTALLATION REQUIREMENTS → 7

To install Secret Maryo Chronicles on (K)Ubuntu is sufficient to add the repository to your repository list with Synaptic or Adept.

The repository for (K)Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex is this:

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ intrepid universe

The packages to be installed are called:

smc
smc-data
smc-music

The Ubuntu Package page can be found here. The download page on the official site is here

GAMEPLAY FUN → 9

Of course Secret Maryo Chronicles is pure fun. Just like the old 2D Super Mario games you have basically to explore and travel through various levels running and jumping to crush enemies or discover goodies hidden behind bricks. There’s no more to say about it as this is a well tested formula of simple and mindless game fun. The sensation of running a Nintendo classic on your Linux machine is strong and, as far as I’m concerned, this is also a strong plus for this well done game.

GRAPHICS APPEAL → 8

The graphics is simple but just perfect for the game. I would say it’s flawless either in concept or in design. The sprites and the world components are well refined with a great appeal. Again, main character apart all the graphics in the game strongly resemble that of Super Mario 2D games. This is not a drawback in my opinion but I must be honest and say that even if the guys in the wiki faq say they don’t want to clone Super Mario (that’s why they redrew the Maryo sprite) the sensation of playing a clone is pretty strong.

As already said the 2D engine runs perfectly fast in all the conditions I have been able to test.

SOUND DELIGHT → 6

The sound is generally nice and does is job well.  The music is well suited for the game and again it reminds the Nintendo block buster. The sound effects are nothing special but they work sufficiently well.

STORY ENCHANTMENT → 3

You couldn’t expect the story to be a high score aspect in a game such as this one. The game ratio is all focused on the gameplay that, as I mentioned above, scrapes perfection. However even the Mario game’s attempted to sketch a story, at least as a sort of frame to give a “structured sense” to the action. Super Maryo lacks in this aspect. When you start the game you are presented with no introduction and no hints are shown during the games (at least during the few levels I played). At the beginning there’s just a map showing your progress in the world and that’s all.

A manual for the built-in editor can be found in the game wiki here.

BONUS POINTS → 10

The game comes along with a built-in editor which is so simple and intuitive to be a valuable tool for enthusiast level creators. As a matter of fact by installing smc-data you are supplied with lots and lots of user created levels. To enter the editor you just press F8 when playing a level and you are allowed to modified everything with a drag and drop fashion by means of a side bar presenting all the game components. Creating a level with the SMC editor it’s really simple and fun. To prove this you can see a screenshot of my messing around and creating a dummy Wiz & Chips level.

OVERALL SCORE → 8.6

Here below you can see a video footage showing the game in action.

If you want browse more videos you can check the Secret Maryo Chronicles YouTube channel here

The Linux Game Box #2: UFO: Alien Invasion

In this installment of The Linux Game Box I will discuss about UFO: Alien Invasion (U:AI), a turn based strategy game in which humans must fight back aliens attempting to invade Earth.
You play both the head of PHALANX, an agency whose aim is to fight and study the alien invaders, and the several soldiers members of the tactical teams.
The game is heavily influenced by the well known and appreciated X-COM and especially by the X-COM: UFO Defense episode.
U:AI is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

The project is alive and very active. The team is well coordinated and always looking for help in various aspect of the game production. Help is needed in many fields ranging from coding to 3D modelling and animating, translating, etc…

This is indeed one of the most interesting aspect of open source games which give the chance to common people to be part of an amazing project in the area where their skill can be more of help. As a matter of fact, giving my chronic lack of spare time, I found an ideal way of helping this project by translating part of the game text (which is quite massive in this case) to Italian.

If you want to get involved in the project you may refer to the wiki for the full list of areas you can contribute to develop. The easiest way to meet up with the community however is perhaps joining them at this IRC channel (irc://irc.freenode.org/ufo:ai).

INSTALLATION REQUIREMENTS → 10

U:AI is already present in the repositories and can thus been easily installed via Synaptic or Adept. If you run (K)Ubuntu you will also find the game inside the list of the add/remove tool.
Apart from Linux, the game runs also on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.

However instructions can be found here and the download trunk can be found here.

GAMEPLAY FUN → 9

There are two main gameplays sections that compose the game: a strategy/management part and a tactical/action part.
In the strategy/management part you take the role of the head of PHALANX and must take high level decision like arranging the base facility, hire personnel, start researches, schedule equipment and vehicle production and send squads to intercept alien fighters and engage alien troops on the ground. The time management system for this phase is based on the calendar in the way of other famous games like Sim City or The Sims. You can adjust the time speed in order to increase or decrease the chance of an alien ambush to take place during this phase (thus pushing you to the tactical phase).
In the tactical part you command the privateers and specialists of the tactical team to perform the mission objective. The action is split in turns and every character has a defined amount of Time Units (TU) to perform each desired action (i.e. walk, recharge the weapon, throw a frag grenade, etc..).
If you like strategy games you will find the gameplay mechanism of U:AI well calibrated thus providing a large amount of fun.
There’s also the possibility for multiplayer game either via LAN or Internet connection.

GRAPHICS APPEAL → 8

U:AI’s game engine is based on a heavily modified version of ID Software’s Quake2 engine. The graphics quality is thus quite high and there’s clearly the evidence of an effort to give the game a touch of professionalism. As the matter of fact the open source team has the target of producing a game which increases and surpasses, in all aspects, the game experience and overall quality of the original 1992 title. The updated OpenGL graphics shows well polished 3D models, several detailed environments, special effects, high resolution textures and nice characters animations.

SOUND DELIGHT → 9

A big attention is given to the music and sound effects (more to the first to be honest) in order to create the right atmosphere for the game. This is another aspect which tells you how much care the team puts into this project.

STORY ENCHANTMENT → 10

This is the game’s strongest plus.
U:AI takes place in 2084 in a planet Earth with a geopolitical configuration pretty different to the present real one. The various countries around the world did solidify and unify in huge blocks, with The Greater European Union and The Asian Republic being the most powerful and rich ones. Humanity is on the verge of welfare and peace at a level never experienced in its whole history. In this idyllic scenario aliens come out of the blue and attack the Indian city of Mumbai causing thousands of casualties among civilians and troops of The Commonwealth . The new UN meet and Earth declares war to the unknown aliens. Standard army approaches show poor results thus leading to the creation of PHALANX: an secret agency, established under UN banner, which summons the best of the best of Earth resources to eliminate the alien menace.
Every aspect of the game is rich of detail. The story literally rises from the player’s progress in the game. For this reason every mission performed contains a cliffhanger, in the shape of an upcoming research on alien specimen or equipments, or story developments resulting from the mission accomplishment.

OVERALL SCORE → 9.2

here below you can see a video trailer of the game