There's a joke in here somewhere ;-)

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/266965

Nice one, guys.

http://www.elections.org.za

"Our server detected that you are using a browser or operating system (e.g. Netscape, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome etc.) which is currently incompatible with our website. The current website is only compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer V4 (and upward) on the Windows operating system."

So, 8.10 has arrived. I'm not likely to be giving it a go on anything but my testbed desktop at home, but I'm curious to hear what you early adopter whippersnappers have to say about it. Voice your opinions via the comments!

One thing that caught my eye reading one of the reviews was a bit alarming: "Incidentally, 8.10 does away entirely with the X.org configuration file, long the bane of newbies but also the savior of more experienced users. The idea is that the graphical subsystem "just works", and if it doesn't you're supposed to file a bug report."

X has come a hell of a long way since my earliest experiences with it (which frequently included blacking out in a terrible rage and waking up in a room full of inexplicably murdered computer parts) but I'd still question this move. I've had display issues necessitating xorg.conf hacking as recently as 8.04, so I hope they've done their homework.

Phoronix thinks so. It's Wirth's Law in action, of course... Ubuntu isn't immune just because it's open source, unfortunately.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_bench_2008&num=1

Looks like Dell have finally released their Mini 9 netbook with Linux. Bit of a raw deal though, I think I'd rather have the XP version and just install Ubuntu over it ;-)

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/10/06/dell_releases_ubuntu_scc/

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/04/2120206&from=rss

A quick update, since this is something that regularly causes me pain.

Ubuntu decided to release Thunderbird 2.0.0.17 to the Hardy repositories last week. This, of course, wreaked havoc on the delicate and sensitive machinery of the Lightning and Google Calendar Provider plugins (again). Starting up Tbird produced a number of cryptic error messages relating to not being able to load, read, write, or acknowledge in any shape form or fashion the existence of, any Google calendars one might have set up.

The solution is quite simple:

1. Uninstall both Google Provider and Lightning from Tbird. This may require use of both apt and the Tbird add-on manager, depending on what versions you have installed and where you got them from (I had Lightning 0.8 from the Ubuntu reps, and Provider 0.5 from the interwebs). Restart Tbird to make sure you've got rid of them.

2. Download and install the latest Lightning (0.9) and Google Provider (0.5) plugins (in that order) from here and here.

3. Restart Tbird to get them all going. You should be back in business.

We may lose the odd battle, but we'll still win the war ;-)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/16/iso_rejects_ooxml_appeal/

Not strictly Linux-related, but many folks that use alternative OSes also use Google's services pretty heavily. If they're anything like me, they get a bit antsy about a single company hoarding all the user's data away on their servers and making lots of not-quite-promises to lock them in foreve... er, I mean, "look after it" (*cough* Microsoft *cough*). This is quite a nice summary of how to extract your data from our (currently) Benevolent Google Overlords for backup and provider independence purposes.

http://lifehacker.com/software/hack-attack/back-up-your-google-apps-data...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/05/ibm_ubuntu/

Searching the web for some info on automated network management, Google found this gem for me on bash.org...

http://bash.org/?870497

Good news for us laptop folks.

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Software/4473.html

Sitting in an IT usergroup meeting at work this morning, a curious and worrisome fact came to light.

Microsoft do something called Volume Licensing for large businesses. You sign a repulsively large chunk of cash away to them, along with your mortal soul and whatever else they hide in the fine print, and they give you all the software and support you need for some period of time. This is generally a soup-to-nuts deal, covering everything you could possibly want from server OSes and big powerful business management tools down to Outlook and MS Office for Joe Bloggs the user. Getting yourself hooked on the MS teat this way is obviously dangerous and short-sighted, but many companies (including, regrettably, my own) love this sort of one-stop-shop for their IT needs.

What I discovered today after much wheedling is that our IT department's VL contract payments work on the basis of "number of computers on the site". Read that again. Not "every Windows install". Not "every Microsoft product in use". Every single machine!

This raises the rather ludicrous spectre of our IT dept having to pay Microsoft for all the computers that I use... even though they all run Linux.

Fun :-)

http://www.makelinux.net/kernel_map

Gaming in Linux, oh boy. A controversial topic at best, an invitation to an insane flamefest at worst. Still, one that should be talked about, as it remains for many folks the last big stumbling block when converting from Windows. They can put up with a surprising amount of crap, but you'd be surprised how often their favourite games not working is cited as a reason for people sticking with That Other OS, especially among the more clued-up technorati.

I have to be honest here - a few years ago this was a huge issue for me. I owned PCs primarily to play games, and if they also let me do some work and general personal stuff on the side, well, that was nice but certainly not a deal-breaker. In those days the idea of buying a game and having it not run properly on my machine was unthinkable, and not having the latest bleeding edge video cards and hardware drivers was the sort of thing that kept me up at night. Windows got clean-installed at least once a month, and I lived, breathed and dreamed FPS.

If this is you now, I can save you a long and depressing read through the rest of this guide - install Windows and Linux dual boot, and boot to Windows to play your games. Simple as that. Linux has improved enormously, but it isn't quite there yet.

If however you're more like I am nowadays, you try to take a more balanced approach to life, and the computer is a general purpose hub of various activities of which gaming is just one. In such a milieu, Linux as the sole OS is much more feasible. It's very capable of doing everything Windows does in the way of software development, web browsing, email, office apps, photos, music, video, etc etc etc, and it additionally is able to run a fair share of games if you're willing to be persistent and tolerate the occasional failure.

Here follows a bullet list of what I've tried, mostly just noted down as I was doing it, so apologies if it comes over a bit terse. I started with an unremarkable clean install of Hardy Heron on my desktop PC at home, which is now getting quite long in the tooth for gaming - shame :P. It's a Shuttle XPC with an AMD Athlon64 3200+ (the 2GHz 1024k cache version) on an nForce 150 platform, an Nvidia GeForce 6800 128MB with some, er, "hacks" (less said about that the better ;-), and various other hardware bits that no one cares about and aren't germane to the discussion below. I'll also warn you now of some bias: I enjoy first person shooters. I know other kinds of games exist, but (a) I suck at them, and (b) I really suck at them, both of which result in me usually not enjoying them very much. There are exceptions of course, but that's a fair comment on the general state of my gaming predilections. This list is also not entirely complete, as I haven't tested either Diablo 2 or StarCraft, both of which are currently sitting at work. I can tell you that Blizzard's never made native installers for those games, so you'll be stuck using wine which I don't like much anyway (more on this later).

Right, let's get started...

Drivers:
Video - Installed NVidia GF drivers from Ubuntu restricted drivers manager. I don't even know what version they are (eish Reynolds - how far the mighty have fallen), but I assume they're reasonably current, and this way Ubuntu looks after updating them for me.
Sound - Whatever default OSS drivers installed with Ubuntu for the onboard sound. I only use stereo speakers anyway, so fine for my purposes.

Nexuiz:
- gametype: FPS deathmatch (bots or multiplayer)
- mode: native, written for Linux
- Install from Ubuntu repositories
- Game runs well

Alien Arena:
- gametype: FPS deathmatch (bots or multiplayer)
- mode: native, written for Linux
- Install from Ubuntu repositories
- Game runs well

Tremulous:
- gametype: FPS deathmatch (multiplayer only)
- mode: native, written for Linux
- Install from Ubuntu repositories
- Game runs well

Quake 3:
- gametype: FPS deathmatch (bots or multiplayer)
- mode: native
- Downloaded id Software installer from http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/q3a/
- Ran installer w/sudo
- Copied pk3 file(s) from Windows install CD to <q3installdir>/baseq3
- Game runs well

Doom 3:
- gametype: FPS single player and deathmatch (multiplayer only)
- mode: native
- Downloaded id Software installer from http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/doom/
- Ran installer w/sudo
- Copied pk4 file(s) 0 thru 5 from Windows install CD(s) to <d3installdir>/base
- Game runs well

Quake 4:
- gametype: FPS single player and deathmatch (multiplayer only)
- mode: native
- Downloaded id Software installer from http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/quake4/ (note: large file, ~275MB)
- Created /usr/local/games/quake4/q4base and copied all pk4 file(s) from Windows install CD(s) to it
- Ran installer w/sudo (do it this way around because installer includes patches which overwrite some of the original pk4's)
- Language defaults to spanish! Search for "seta sys_lang" line in ~/.quake4/q4base/Quake4Config.cfg and change to english :)
- Game runs well

Unreal Tournament 1999 (non-GOTY edition):
- gametype: FPS deathmatch (bots or multiplayer)
- mode: native
- Loki games maintains a Linux installer - downloaded and tested, repeatedly gave "bad checksum" error however.
- Turns out Loki installer is broken on Ubuntu 8.04 and a number of modern distros.
- Downloaded the modified installer from http://www.liflg.org/?catid=6&gameid=51
- Ran modified installer w/sudo (requests Windows install CDs as per Windows installer)
- Installed fine, however, run script created in /usr/local/bin has broken paths ("bad substitution" error)
- Created a two-line bash script to cd to the UT install directory and run the executable from there, i.e.
    <code>
    cd /usr/local/games/ut
    ./ut
    </code>
- Game runs, but game speed is too fast and quite erratic (either set game speed to 30-50% when starting new game, or futz with CPU frequency to get it working ok, still erratic though - this appears to be an issue related to modern CPUs, video cards, and vidcard drivers and is not unique to Linux - may need vsync or other hacks to get it working).

Unreal Tournament 2003:
- gametype: FPS deathmatch (bots or multiplayer)
- mode: native
- Tried installer on 3rd disk, gives similar checksum error as the installer for UT1999 did.
- Fixing "tail -266" bug in a local copy of linux-installer.sh and running as sudo works to get the install going
- Had to ctrl-c out of the CD key check, which it warns you not to do :), but apparently CD key can be manually entered into <ut2k3installdir>/System/cdkey
- Running from command line starts splash screen, blanks screen for a second or so, and then crashes back to the desktop with lots of "Locking assertion failure" errors - seems like a vidcard driver/opengl error.

Serious Sam - The Second Encounter:
- gametype: FPS single player and deathmatch (multiplayer only)
- mode: native (beta)
- Downloaded Loki installer from http://www.liflg.org/?catid=6&gameid=71
- Ran installer w/sudo (needs Windows install CD)
- Game script crashed "ssamtse: line 123:  7198 Aborted" when I ran it.
- Applied the fix here: http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-173418.html
- Game runs, a bit too fast (bad for an already fast-paced game!) and occasionally with graphical bugs

HERE BE DRAGONS - A friendly note to readers. I don't much like wine. It's a hacky, messy, best-effort-and-poor-performance way of doing things, especially games, and games (particularly modern ones) that will only run under wine speak to me of developers who aren't interested in giving open source platforms the time of day. As a result I didn't try nearly as hard to get any wine-emulated games working as I did with those that have native versions, so YMMV.

Half-life 1:
- gametype: FPS single player (multiplayer with CounterStrike and other mods)
- mode: wine
- Failed completely (installer crash)

Half-Life 2:
- gametype: FPS single player (multiplayer with CounterStrike and other mods)
- mode: wine
- Installed Steam relatively painlessly using the instructions here
- Steam runs fine, if a bit slow and clunky (that's emulation for ya). I can login and check my account etc as per windows.
- Tried installing Half-Life 2. I have the CD version (5 discs). The instructions at the link above simply initiate a new install of Steam - useless.
- Tried running the hl2.exe install on the first disc via wine. This works and starts the install, unfortunately wine locks the CD mount point so install fails at "insert CD 2".
- Tried copying all CDs to hdd and running install from there. Fails halfway through with an archive extract error.
- Tried the CD install + force-unmount method detailed at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2484355. Install fails, repeatedly asking for CD 2 even when it is inserted and mounted.

Sacrifice:
- gametype: RTS single player
- mode: wine
- Ran install from CD, worked fine and installed the game to ~/.wine/drive_c.
- Game runs, but with major rendering and display errors - tried all three rendering options (wine D3D HAL T&L, wine D3D HAL, and wine D3D RGB), all gave the same result. Also unable to change the resolution from 640x480x16 which annoyingly resets the desktop resolution in the process.

Dungeon Siege 1:
- gametype: RPG single player
- mode: wine
- Failed completely (installer crash)

Dungeon Siege 2:
- gametype: RPG single player
- mode: wine
- Failed completely (installer crash)

System Shock 2:
- gametype: FPS/RPG single player
- mode: wine
- Failed completely (installer crash)

Heretic 2:
- gametype: 3PS single player
- mode: wine
- Failed completely (installer crash)

So there you are. A bit of a hit and miss affair, but if you enjoy id Software's games (and most other games based on their engines) you're golden. Epic aren't quite at the polished point of Linux support id are at, but they're catching up fast, and with rumours that even Valve are at the preliminary stages of beginning to consider the possibility of forming a committee to evaluate the consideration that they might one day make native Linux versions of Steam and the Source engine, things are definitely moving in the right direction.

I'd love to chat more, but I'm off to blast some Strogg now. Have a good one :-)