SoulSe

Console gaming just feels right. Relaxing on the couch is a more logical place to game (which is for relaxation... with me anyway) than sitting upright in an office chair. I've always played games on anything that can do it - computer, console, arcade... even on my iPaq, mobile phone and iPod... but a console is the preferred platform. Some more I've remembered: Commander Keen Duke Nukem Final Fight ... I had a fighter game with robots on my 386... can't remember the name... it rocked. Loom 4x4 California Games Skate or Die Search for the King Macross Top Gun Prince of Persia

I'm with dexter and tyme - put your money where your mouth is, because the developers don't care about petitions. That said, Neverwinter Nights was bought by thousands of Linux users, but they still stopped Linux support for NWN 2 - the problem is that many games have both installers in the same box, so when you buy it the developers have no way of knowing what OS you're running it on.

Pacman Space Invaders Space Quest Series Kings Quest Series Donkey Kong Heroe's Quest / Quest for Glory Sonic the Hedgehog Super Mario Brothers Monkey Island Series Beneath a Steel Sky I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream Tetris Alleycat Monty's Revenge UFO Amazon Wing Commander I & II Day of the Tentacle Mortal Kombat I Goonies NBA Jam (the megadrive version) TMNT 1 Metal Slug Cool Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja Street Fighter Virtua Fighter Virtua Cop etc. etc. I could probably go on all day. I've owned any number of PCs since the 8086, spent many hours in arcades and I had an old Atari system with Tanks and really old stuff that I bought second hand when I was like 9 years old. A friend of mine had a ZX and I also bought an old Tandy 200 laptop that was already ancient when I found it. I hand-coded some games on there, but soon lost interest lol (reading through bible-thick reams of code and hacking them in before playing - and then losing them - is not my idea of fun). I also had a NES, a Master System, A Megadrive (known as Genesis in America), A Sega Nomad and then I skipped the 32 and "64" bit phase and went straight to the Playstation 1, the the GBA and then the PS2, all the while upgrading my computer and playing on that too. I've been a gamer since I remember. Now I'm restricted to my Powerbook and my PC (when it's not in a million pieces) and I'm seriously considering getting a Nintendo DS Lite... when the Wii comes out I will get either that or an XBox 360. I just wish I had more time for my oldest hobby :) Ooh ooh - Dune (the strat game)... and and Doom I and Return to Castle Wolfenstein and....

There is a project that allows you to manage all of these services form one, centralised web interface, called Webmin. I personally prefer to do things separately and directly though. The best would be to check out the site for each project and learn more about their config files. Things like SAMBA and Apache are pretty much the same no matter what distro you use.

Have you consulted the cedega forums at www.transgaming.org to check running instructions for that game and compatibility issues?

Why not drop a mail to the game's developers and ask them for an rpm?

Yup, I remember Mandrake gaming edition with WineX.... 3 I think it was. Cedega gets better all the time, but it still isn't good enough to make serious gamers use Linux over Windows. For the average users with a couple of games though, this might be a clincher for using Linux.

There is a Linux distro that does what you need. It's called LOAF (Linux On A Floppy). EDIT: That site doesn't seem to work anymore, but you can download LOAF here: public.www.planetmirror.com/pub/loaf

SAMBA is for networking with Windows clients, so you don't need that. SCP allows you to copy files over an SSH connection and is resident on most every Linux box. NFS is a file-sharing approach that I am not very fond of. I find a better way of sharing folders in a Linux-only network is to just use SFTP. Most file browsers in Linux have built-in support for SFTP, so you don't even need an FTP client or what-have-you. The possibilities are endless with Linux! Think of things you want to do and we can help you. Scan serving, fax-serving - you name it, Linux does it (I have just setup a Gentoo box as an Appletalk server using Netatalk - all the OSX boxes in our office think it is native). This is more complex, but again - possible. If I remember correctly, some of what you are asking is possible with Webmin. Like I said, you don't need SAMBA unless you want to talk to Windows' machines. But the SAMBA setup is the same no matter what distro you use, so general SAMBA instructions should be fine. Webmin can also be used to admin SAMBA.

I have had generally bad times with the Cedega GUI (although the last time I used it was around 6 months ago, so it might have improved). I like invoking Cedega from the CLI, found that it just worked better. $ cedega setup.exe (or whatever)

A router firewall is generally ok, if it passes all the tests. Make sure no unnecessary ports are open, etc. etc. and it should be fine. I don't run a firewall on any of the boxes behind my router, except for our server (this is just for double-security and probably not necessary either). Desktop firewalls generally just get in the way of LAN traffic and while they offer some extra security are generally not necessary.

I wouldn't recommend gtkpod, in my experience it isn't great at working with the iTunes DB. Don't know about Amarok - never used it / KDE.

Do not worry about the 'Do Not Disconnect' message - that is normal and so long as you've unmounted, shouldn't cause any problems. Try using Banshee to sync your iPod instead - it's a better app and works really well.

Do we know when NWN2 is gonna be out yet? Sorry - I could look it up, but then.. like... everyone else wouldn't see the answer

Hmmm... I agree that I don't find it very useful... whereas OSX uses similar effects and graphics technologies for more practical applications.

You could also turn the OGG back into a WAV and then re-encode it as whatever you want. This is the long way of doing it, but usually results in less quality loss.

I think you actually agree with me, in part. I was not slating MS, quite the contrary.

Interesting project. Although, as the author says;

I was ambivalent about his move in the first place; the thought of a Linux stalwart leaving for MS is a scary one. That said, the best way to change the system is from within... and MS are slowly starting to see the light, in part because of his efforts (albeit a small part). I'm glad he is back at Gentoo. Gentoo is still my favourite distro and, in my opinion, has the best package management available.

What kind of problem, the feathers getting stuck in your teeth? :P No. He just had another birthday and his teeth have fallen out. :P Yup - penguins are chewy.

I have a problem with eating penguins.

How are you trying to install the software? The best way would be to use urpmi. First, go here and configure your repositories. Then, I'm sure, something like this: # urpmi castpodder should work ;)

Oh c'mon SoulSe, you can't please everyone. Which brings a point, why focus on one? Of course you can't please everyone, that's not what I meant. What I did mean was that you should try to be as neutral in a default theme as possible so you'll please as many people as possible. It has been proven that blue, for example, is aesthetically pleasing to more people than black is. In fact, black is the single worst colour to use in information design, unless you don't really care about the masses, which is why I used it for my blog :P The Ubuntu default theme is very nice, but I would argue that they could have done a better colour selection too. I'm not saying that they shouldn't have used brown, but you can adjust saturation levels to carry traces of other colours that are more pleasing. Arch, Gentoo, the older versions of Fedora and other distros have really nice designs for their enviroment's default themes. Even Mandriva's Galaxy isn't too bad. But this needs work.

Never liked Konqueror... or KDE for that matter. It's hard to call something a killer app if I had to use Firefox half the time when pages wouldn't render properly in it...

The design concept is cool, I'm just not crazy about the way it's been done. Looks like a rough draft that needs cleaning up and stuff. Also, it's not something that all users would like, which, imho, is what a default theme should be... simple and appealing to as many users as possible.