zero0w

Edit: I have received many positive feedbacks on the article, thanks :D . Also there were many suggestions contributed by various fellow Linux users, and credits are given wherever their modifications are applied. Thanks again for the contribution, you guys rock! :) 2002 has been a very good year for open source and Linux: the maturity of the 2.4 kernel series; the 1.0 release of Mozilla.org web browser and OpenOffice.org office suite; also the proliferation and improvement among many other open source projects and technologies. There are already many articles around the web discussing what Linux needed to improve to secure a stronghold on the desktop; which I will not be repeating here. What I am going to discuss in this thread, is (1) what resources we already have; (2) what interesting and great stuff will be released in 2003; and (3) finally the resource and discussion which can help you navigate your journey in starting and enjoying Linux.. I will be presuming you have already made it thru installing a Linux distribution on your own. If not, please refer to the discussions in the 'Installing Mandrake' forum. Also there's an online walkthru of the Mandrake 9 installation process over here. (1) So, what resources do we have already? Before you read on I will urge you to check out this great article from RatedPC.com: Linux On Desktop (Mirror page 21), if you have not already done so. It will inform you a LOT about what you can do with Linux as a desktop. cannonfodder, our awesome Site Admin :) , also posted a very useful link on looking for software on Linux where their equivalents on Windows are listed side by side as comparison: http://linuxshop.ru/linuxbegin/win-lin-soft-en/ Since I use Mandrake 9 (mdk) exclusively as my desktop, the following resources and links are mostly applicable to mdk9, for other distributions you can search in rpmfind.net, freshrpms.net (for Red Hat) or if you are using debian or Gentoo, use apt or emerge. PCLinuxOnline.com also hosted links to various RPM packagers (see the left column of the site, under the title "RPM Outlet"). For those who used Mandrake 9, this site provides several good tutorials on enhancing its desktop capability: >> trylinuxSD.com Also here are some screenshots for the applications and enhancement I made use of: >> Linux application screenshot page Ok, here comes the resources to enhance you desktop: Fonts & Themes: <1> Corefonts package - This is part of the Microsoft True Type Font set on Windows. Sometime in August 2002 MS removed it from their web site, but the EULA allowed it to be distributed in unaltered form. The corefonts project was created and the MS fonts were hosted in the sourceforge mirrors so that everyone can download those MS fonts and use it under Linux (notably the fonts in KDE/Gnome, mozilla.org and OpenOffice). You do NOT need to have a copy or license of Windows to use the corefonts package. Corefonts: http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/ Similar project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/font-tool/ Mandrake src rpm bulid: http://ben.reser.org/corefonts/ (Thanks, breser!) You can also import fonts from your Windows partition if you have a dual boot system. For mdk, drakfont will do the job. <2> KDE/GTK/Gnome Theme Modification - Well this is just to customize the look and feel of your KDE desktop. Keramik, Apple Aqua or even MS Windows XP themes are available. For more information, check out KDE-look.org. MDK rpms available from: Texstar (I don't link to them directly since with new versions they will have different filenames.) Keramik Theme (keramik-3.0.3-3tex.i586.rpm) Bluecurve Theme from RedHat (freecurve-artwork-0.47-1tex.i586.rpm) Crystal Icon set (crystal-icons-0.8.0-2tex.i586.rpm) Geramik Theme (mdk Contribs rpm: Geramik-*.*.i586.rpm) Note: Both Keramik theme and Crystal icon set will become the default theme/icon for KDE 3.1. Web Access & System <3> Web Access 1. Downloader for X - d4x (mdk rpm) &. ProZilla, ProZilla-GUI (mdk rpms: prozilla, prozgui) (Thanks, ramfree17!) Basically, they serve as the FlashGet on Linux. 2. Adobe Acrobat Reader for Linux (rpmfind.net: acroread-5.x.*.rpm) 3. gaim, SIM-ICQ, KMess, center-icq These are instant messengers on Linux. These two articles will provide more information for IMs on Linux: http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/563/ http://www.extremetech.com/article/0,3396,...&a=27776,00.asp 4. HTTrack & khttrack (mdk rpm: httrack, libhttrack) Ever used TelePort Pro on Windows? An offline browser. It can download a normal web site for offline browsing, the same goes for HTTrack, but it's open source. 5. Flash 6 plugin For viewing Flash in browser or in standalone player. 6. JRE for Linux (Sun download page) You need Java runtime to browse Java-enabled site. <4> System & Archive 1. zip-2.3.9 (from mdk9 cd) 2. RAR Linux (RARLab official homepage) 3. LHA rpm (mdk rpms) Want to extract the *.zip, *.rar or *.lzh format inherited from Windows/DOS archives on Linux? By installing these packages you can gain access to, or even create them on Linux. Ark (from Qt/KDE) will recognize and use them automatically after installation. 4. setcd (RH rpm) For some very high speed cd-rom, this utility can slow down the reading speed to reduce noise (and probably reading error) in CD spinning. 5. Other CD-Writing app: K3b, Arson I personally use GCombust , so I haven't tried neither of them; but I heard many good things about them. You can find the rpm packages at rpmfind.net. 6. AbiWord (mdk Contribs rpm: abiword-1.0.2-1mdk.i586.rpm) I like using Abiword: it's a fast and elegant word processor. Strangely, it's not included in the mdk9 3-cd set, while RedHat has it installed by default. Multimedia, Gaming and Development <5> Video & Streaming 1. Real Player + mozilla plugins (Texstar rpm: RealPlayer8-8.0.3-5tex.i586.rpm, mozilla-realplayer-1.x-1tex.i586.rpm) Update: Codec upgrade to Real Player 9 (Mirror site) 2. Cinelerra (mdk PLF rpm: cinelerra-1.1.5-2plf.i586.rpm) The excellent video editor on Linux (check out the screenshot page). 3. FilmGimp (mdk rpms) As the brother of GIMP, Film Gimp is a motion picture editing tool primarily used for painting and retouching of movie images. More details are available from the site. 4. Xine & Mplayer Update http://www.zebulon.org.uk/ICML0.HTML For more information on playing DVD on Linux, you can check out this article: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=5644 Note #1: The Xine version comes with mdk9 is 0.9.13, some of the rpms from PLF are for verion 1.0beta-*, make sure you install the xine plugins for the former version. Also there are Win32, DiVX, Xvid, DeCSS plugins+codecs available. The Win32 plugin+codec will allow you to access Windows movie formats! Now you can enjoy movie/game trailers on Xine as your buddies on Windows can. The same goes for Mplayer. Note #2: MPlayer plugin support for Konqueror/Mozilla/Phoenix (New!) http://mplayerplug-in.sourceforge.net/ <6> Audio enhancement 1. MIDI - For SB AWE/Live/Audigy User: > awesfx & awesfx-devel package (from mdk9 cd) > alsamixergui-0.9.0-0.5rc1_2mdk (from mdk9 cd) You can perform MIDI playback as good as you did on Windows, with soundfont support! This article illustrates the steps to do so: http://www.mandrakeusers.org/index.php?showtopic=1189 If you connect 4 speakers to your SB Live, you will need the alsamixergui package to enable surround sound with the two rear speaker output. 2. playmidi, playmidi-X11 (from mdk9 cd) For non-SB Live users, playmidi can perform midi playback on your system, it supports SB16, GUS, AWE32/64 (so does the previous awesfx package), external MIDI. However, it's a commandline-only tool; another author and I are working on an XMMS-playmidi plugin (actually I only did some testing and reporting error :P), so stay tuned ;) . 3. Broadcast 2000 (from mdk9 cd, source) Broadcast 2000 is actually a full-feature video-audio editor, released in 2000. At that time it was pretty advanced and even being used by some movie studio to do some serious work - but that's exactly what got it into trouble: from what I've heard, it seemed that someone who used it in big-budget production wanted the author to hold responsible for liabilities (remember all GNU/GPL software tools are come with no warranty), which the author would not or could not afford to do so, hence he removed it from his site. Now it is being replaced by Cinelerra (see above). However, Broadcast 2000 still performs very good as an audio editor. As it comes with Mandrake, you might just want to play with it. :) 4. xmms-alsa, xmms-writer (from mdk9 cd) Two xmms output plugins: xmms-alsa will use alsa (instead of OSS compatibility mode) as the output interface, while xmms-writer will write wav file to your harddrive instead of audio playback. 5. SoundTracker (mdk rpm) SoundTracker is a GTK-based music tracking tool for Unix / X11 similar in design to the DOS program FastTracker and the Amiga legend ProTracker. 6. Rosegarden, Audacity, Noteedit, Ardour and many other excellent audio apps (see screenshot for Rosegarden) http://rpm.nyvalls.se/sound9.0.html 7. Turnkey Linux Audio Turn Key Linux Audio is a rich collection of audio packages for Mandrake Linux 9, for more detail please refer to this article: http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?s...=2565〈=en <7> 2D & 3D Graphic 1. sodipodi (Sourceforge RH & mdk rpms download page) Vector Illustrator on Linux using SVG Format. It works and looks very promising. Check out the screenshot page to have a look at it. 2. Blender 3D (mdk rpm) 3. Wings3D (mdk rpm, draft manual) 4. Moonlight3d These are some of the open source 3d packages available on Linux. In particular, Blender3D became open source since October 2002. Even these packages are relatively small (compare to the big 3d commercial package), don't overlook their excellent features and speed. You might be surprised when looking at a screenshot of a scene rendered by them. There are other 3d packages and independent renderers out there; hang around certain 3d forum and you will find them. 5. Highend 3d packages: Downloadable learning editions on Linux. Houdini Apprentice learning edition (download page) Softimage EXP Linux version (download page) (New!) Note: Softimage EXP Linux only runs on Red Hat 8 and some version of Debian Sid; Mandrake users are out of luck when it comes to Softimage EXP. <8> Games PSX Emulator: ePSXe and PCSX Linux (Check out NGEmu.com for more detail) Zsnes (from mdk Contribs rpm: zsnes-1.36-2mdk.i586.rpm) xMame, Visual Boy Advance (from mdk PLF Cooker) Yet another nV Configurator: Modify the OpenGL 3D configuration and setting for nVidia display cards. (Thanks, blackstripe!) Linux Game List (New!) Linux Gamers' FAQ (New!) Article: Gaming and Linux in 2003, by DOlson FPS Game demos: Return to Wolfenstein, Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament 2003 FPS Multiplayer Game Full Version: America's Army, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory Free Car Racing: Racer, RARS, TORCS (Joystick required) Free Games: Fallen Block Game, FooBillard, pyDDR, Star Control 2 (Thanks, Falcdragon!) Neverwinter Nights Linux Client official site (Linux Installer) NWN Linux Client support fan site <9> Others 1. Wine (from mdk9 cd, or compile from source) 2. Wine Daily binary & src RPM build (Thanks, ramfree17!) 3. WineX from CVS Wine and WineX will allow you to run *some* Windows applications and games on Linux. 4. Kylix 3 Open Edition The Visual Development environment from Borland on Linux, supports both Delphi and C++. <10> Internationalization (Thanks, blackstripe!) For those who would like to input in, or switch the entire system GUI/message to another language under Mandrake Linux, here are the resource guide on how to do so: > Foreign language support > HOWTO: Japanese IME in Mandrake 8.1 Typing in Japanese and Chinese has been known to be successful under Mandrake Linux, provided you have installed the relevant locale language package(s), or you can perform a multiple-language install in the beginning. With all these info and the new packages installed I hope you will have a smoother desktop experience with Linux. :D In another post later I will discuss the second and third issues on the outlook of Linux in 2003 and the resources to guide your way online. Feedback and suggestions are welcomed :) .

Can you post the specific link of the post you started? I would like to contribute too.

Thank you very much. I am going to spend more time doing more reading.

Could it be something misconfigured? GF2MX 64MB should not be too slow for NWN.

Now if Linux also got more articles and resources like these: 1. Slashdot: Porting to Mac OS X from Windows Win32 API http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0...2/12/24/1650216 2. Slashdot: OpenGL Widget Set Recommendations? http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/...2/12/24/1813219 EDIT: Another article I've found: 3. Linux GUI Application Development for Windows Programmers How do you get started? http://xminc.com/linux/wxpython.html

Not that they did not exist. SDL was around since 1999, being discussed from IBM's developer guide. But for published books (those that you can find it on bookshelf) SDL is significantly outnumbered by DirectX books. If I am used to make games on DirectX and I did not browse that much around the web .... how am I supposed to know that SDL existed at all? (Not to mention the book link you posted (Focus on SDL) is published on Nov 2002, not that readily available). Yes we can search to download the PLG book - but not everyone knew SDL is available on cross-platform (meaning developers don't need to create different codes for Win32 that they MUST support) - in such case developers might think the PLG book is entirely for Linux only - that didn't serve a good purpose when supporting Win32 is a must. If one wants to confirm about the supreme importance of Win32 support, check out these sourceforge.net project: GAIM, SIM-ICQ . They both have Win32 and Linux version - and they are both free. But the amount of downloads for Win32 version is 5-10 times of that of Linux version! That's why I say supporting Win32 is a must. The revenue is too big to miss - even for free software Win32 support has a bigger demand. Agree. But to promote further on coding in SDL, say in book publishing; or some direct comparison report of SDL+OpenGL against DirectX, and most importantly - illustrate clearly that SDL is available on Win32 as well as Linux are of utmost important for now. And man, fund raising to donate to the SDL Project so that it can be improved further and better is another thing we can all work on. Considering SDL has 17 lanugage library bindings, it can be a significant effort to promote the freedom of choice in language selections, and might stand a chance later on to counter .NET with its support on so many languages like .NET does.

You made a good point DOlson. The realistic goal, I think, here is that to encourage companies to engage a multi-platform (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) development strategy from the beginning using OpenGL and SDL. There is no way one can convince any companies to make games only for Linux with a goal of reaping (big) profits. I believe, however, more resources, efforts and "marketing" must be made to encourage cross-platform developments. Such as books, sample projects, compiler choices (such as MinGW/Dev-C++ on Windows) and other considerations to be made when one wants to support multiple platforms. Indeed, cross-platform development (as an important issue) is relatively new since the wider adoption of Linux literally began in 2002 (with mozilla.org and OpenOffice.org 1.0 being the major factor - and KDE 3.1 + XFree86 4.3 + kernel 2.6 will be the pushing factor in 2003). More awareness and education must be provided on this - think about it, where you can find a good book on SDL (except the PLG book)? Make the computer book publishers aware of this, and game developers will have more accessible resources and hence more confidence and experience to enter into a new platform. Using Linux as game servers is no news, now the effort remains on encouraging cross-platform development, and we all need to focus on this.

Now that the rumor of Microsoft acquiring Macromedia has surfaced, I think it's a good time to have a look at SVG - the vector drawing/animation (XML-document) format supported by Sodiopodi: > Microsoft To Acquire Macromedia? http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/23/1223232 SVG format related info: 1.W3C.org - Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 2.SWF Is Not Flash (and Other Vectored Thoughts) 3.Mozilla SVG Project 4.SVG On the Rise 5.Comparing .SWF (Shockwave Flash) and .SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) file format 6.Flash and SVG Currently, I believe sodipodi does not support (vector) animation authoring yet but the future looks bright for SVG. This can provide us another choice of content format in case MS really buy out Macromedia :!: .

Try the SIM-ICQ, support the ICQ 2001 protocol (getting contact list from servers) and pretty decent: http://sim-icq.sourceforge.net/ I came across this in a recent KDE release digest.

Check here for > Geramik theme discussion and link. It has a dependency on Keramik theme installed for KDE.

Flash 6 plugin for mozilla.org/Netscape 7 on Linux is finally released! Official mirror http://macromedia.mplug.org/

Have you tried Sodipodi? It is a GTK-based Vector Drawing program. Sodiopodi http://sodipodi.sourceforge.net/ Mdk 9 & RH 8 RPMs are available. Give it a try, it's very fun to play with it. With Geramik theme I think it just looks pretty, personally :) . Here's a sodipodi screenshot I captured: http://www.geocities.com/zero0w/ What do you think of it?

I am using the nightly build (2002120221), only one crash so far, not much problem....

Just something to add before starting JACK server In console: su cd /usr/lib/jack ln -s jack_alsa.so.0 jack_alsa.so Then one should be also to start the JACK server with the command thac stated. Now I am in ardour... but I don't know what to do .... how can I add & load audio track? Any tutorial on using ardour? EDIT: Just found it, it seems to be rather complicated, but powerful. You can check out the Quick Toots site with various tutorials on Ardour: http://www.boosthardware.com/LAU/quicktoots/

thac, I downloaded and tried, but ardour requires JACK server which I can't get it to work.... also it logged out the whole system without any reason....

Mozilla.org 1.2.1 is released, go grab it now :) .

Yeah how to setup a P2P connection between two Linux system? I always wondered. With Windows 98 setting two systems to the same workgroup will do the job easily, but what about Linux - Mandrake in particular?

Mozilla 1.2.1 Coming Soon: http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=2702

TO-DO #1: Ok I've tried editing modules.conf by adding either one of these lines: post-install snd-emu10k1-synth /bin/sfxload /etc/midi/8MBGMSFX.SF2 post-install snd-emu10k1 /bin/sfxload /etc/midi/8MBGMSFX.SF2 No luck :( . I still cannot autoload soundfont at boot. Over a discussion with LinuxExplorer, I have tried to take a look at the system service/device modules with "cat /proc/modules" at console, and here I'll list all the snd-* part: 1. snd-seq-midi 3680 0 (autoclean) 2. snd-emu10k1-synth 4220 1 (autoclean) 3. snd-emux-synth 25532 1 (autoclean) [snd-emu10k1-synth] 4. snd-seq-midi-emul 4880 0 (autoclean) [snd-emux-synth] 5. snd-seq-virmidi 2888 0 (autoclean) [snd-emux-synth] 6. snd-seq-oss 26176 1 7. snd-seq-midi-event 3208 0 [snd-seq-midi snd-seq-virmidi snd-seq-oss] 8. snd-seq 33264 2 [snd-seq-midi snd-emux-synth snd-seq-midi-emul snd-seq-virmidi snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi-event] 9. snd-pcm-oss 36932 0 10. snd-mixer-oss 9016 0 [snd-pcm-oss] 11. snd-emu10k1 56592 1 [snd-emu10k1-synth] 12. snd-pcm 55808 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-emu10k1] 13. snd-timer 9964 0 [snd-seq snd-pcm] 14. snd-util-mem 1280 0 [snd-emux-synth snd-emu10k1] 15. snd-rawmidi 12864 0 [snd-seq-midi snd-seq-virmidi snd-emu10k1] 16. snd-seq-device 3836 0 [snd-seq-midi snd-emu10k1-synth snd-emux-synth snd-seq-oss snd-seq snd-emu10k1 snd-rawmidi] 17. snd-ac97-codec 25508 0 [snd-emu10k1] 18. snd-hwdep 3840 0 [snd-emu10k1] 19. snd 24804 0 [snd-seq-midi snd-emux-synth snd-seq-virmidi snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-emu10k1 snd-pcm snd-timer snd-util-mem snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device snd-ac97-codec snd-hwdep] 20. soundcore 3780 0 [snd] No.2 item refers to the "snd-emu10k1-synth" module, but it seems that "post-install" with this "snd-emu10k1-synth" module in modules.conf didn't work; so I might guess, in ALSA 0.9 series the "snd-emu10k1-synth" needs to be replaced with another MIDI-related module name. For now I still need to enter the commandline in console after login to make MIDI play. Or, the alternative is to execute a bash script whenever one logins to his/her account; or to modify /etc/profile, could this work?

Grip doesn't cut it. Humm... I would like to know - maybe there are commandline setting to adjust the bit rate inside the Grip config dialogue box/Tab.

Create a desktop shortcut and link to /usr/local/mozilla/mozilla That's what I did. That way you can keep both versions.

Just upgraded to Mozilla 1.2 final, the problem is GONE for good :D .

It's not good to hear that. Hopefully the future version of XFree86 will improve on this issue.

XFree86 4.3, to be released in January 2003, is supposed to take care of this problem, allowing switching true desktop resolution on the fly with right-click menu just like Windows (of yourse you Window Manager/Desktop environment needs to support such feature).

Geramik has some success to make KDE and Gnome apps look alike. Now the only thing remains is the font.