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Monday, April 03, 2006

Having fun with remote shells

I just bought a VPS (virtual private server) a couple of days ago, and I'm enjoying tinkering with it. It's not the most powerful beast though; it only has 64MB RAM and 128MB swap. I won't say the name of the company I'm subscribed to since my box isn't exactly the bastion of security, but you should be able to discern the shell provider from how I describe my escapades :D

The most important lesson I've learned while playing sysadmin is: learn how to take notes. I had to take down, reload, reboot, reconfigure, and do it over and over again during the last couple of days. In the end, I settled for a no-frills Ubuntu Breezy, and decided to just scrap the webmin idea and learn how to hand-configure the daemonsmyself. But everything would have been much easier from the start had I taken down notes. Now I have them, and should I need to reinstall the thing (hope I do not) I have a copy of it :)

I'll post it here too just in case I lose that piece pf paper (which I'm expecting is going to happen).

  • Disable root SSH login: nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
  • Create a normal user account: useradd -m -s /bin/bash -g users username
  • Create a password for normal user account: passwd username
  • Add username to list of sudoers: visudo
  • Test account and sudo access, then remove root login: sudo passwd root -l
  • Relog as normal user and restart the SSH daemon: /etc/init.d/ssh restart
  • Add /bin/false to /etc/shells
  • Update apt-get package list: sudo apt-get update
  • Upgrade the whole system to the latest programs: sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

That should take care of the initial setup.

Now what am I using the remote shell for? Since I still haven't figured out how to configure a webserver, I'm currently running my bot on it ^_^ Here are the steps I did:

  • Install an ftp daemon: sudo apt-get install vsftpd
  • Configure ftp daemon to accept uploads: sudo nano /etc/vsftpd.conf
    • anonymous_enable=NO
    • local_enable=YES
    • write_enable=YES
  • Restart ftp daemon: sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd restart
  • Install GNU Screen: sudo apt-get install screen
  • Install compilers and development headers: sudo apt-get install build-essential
  • Install subversion: sudo apt-get install subversion
  • Install development headers for readline: sudo apt-get install libreadline5-dev
  • Checkout OpenKore sources (http://www.openkore.com/wiki/index.php/List_of_SVN_modules)
  • Create symlinks to tablepack and fieldpack
  • FTP over configuration files from local computer

Placeholder for the webserver stuff (Yay! It works~)

http://rimuhosting.com/howto/virtualhosting.jsp

libapache2-mod-php5

php5-mysql

phpyadmin

So far, that's all I;ve done. I'll be updating this page when I do more with my box.

Posted by kaliwanagan at 4:45 PM
Categories: OSS / Linux

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Recommended programs

While mucking around my computer and generally getting bored, I found a few neat programs to install. They're really cool, and your Linux computer shouldn't be without them :)

  • Firefox AdBlocker - blocks ads from websites. Definitely heaven sent, as browsing becomes faster without all those ads being loaded (the extension dynamically modifies the page to comment out the ads, so they don't get rendered). You can get to choose which ones to block too. Get the AdBlocker and teach those popup advertisers a lesson.
  • Yakuake - cool konsole for KDE. Anyone who had played quake before would recognize the interface. No need to reserve a space for the taskbar entry in the main panel. Plus, a terminal emulator is just one keypress away :)
  • kde WorldClock - nice way to impress your friends by showing you are a "Citizen of the World." Set this as your desktop background and you'll immediately know if it's day or night in a particular region of the Earth.
Posted by kaliwanagan at 10:31 PM
Categories: OSS / Linux

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Reinstalling Kubuntu

My data drive had some corruption as regards its file system tree, and i was forced to rebuild it. I figured I'll just reinstall Kubuntu too since I inadverdently installed Ubuntu Desktop, which kinda doubled the applications I have on the menu.

Here are some of the things I did in order to remind myself in case my system crashes again:

  • Make a dos partition writable - the options in fstab for the partition should be: user,exec,rw,umask=000 0 0
  • Get Automatix and install some of the necessary non-free software
  • Install packages used for compiling source code: sudo apt-get install build-essential

I'll add to the list as I walk through the rebuilding of my settings.

Posted by kaliwanagan at 10:40 PM
Edited on: Monday, March 20, 2006 12:13 AM
Categories: OSS / Linux

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Wireless mouse

I purchased a wireless mouse today and I'm so glad it works in Linux (despite the package claiming it only works with Windows). Standards are a great thing to have - if there wasn't a standard like USB I would have been stuck with peripherals that would only work with certain types of hardware (like mac only or pc only).

Posted by kaliwanagan at 4:54 PM
Categories: OSS / Linux

Monday, January 09, 2006

ICEAuthority errors

Getting these errors in Ubuntu?

_IceTransTransNoListen: unable to find transport: tcp
_IceTransmkdir: ERROR: euid != 0,directory /dev/X will not be created.
_IceTransmkdir: ERROR: Cannot create /dev/X
_IceTransPTSOpenServer: mkdir(/dev/X) failed, errno = 13
_IceTransOpen: transport open failed for pts/viper:
_IceTransMakeAllCOTSServerListeners: failed to open listener for pts
_IceTransISCOpenServer: Protocol is not supported by a ISC connection
_IceTransOpen: transport open failed for isc/viper:
_IceTransMakeAllCOTSServerListeners: failed to open listener for isc
_IceTransSCOOpenServer: Protocol is not supported by a SCO connection
_IceTransOpen: transport open failed for sco/viper:
_IceTransMakeAllCOTSServerListeners: failed to open listener for sco

The simple solution is to restart the computer in recovery mode and either delete .ICEAuthority from the home directory of your user, or change its ownership into user:users. The reason is that you probably ran K3b as a user - K3b modified .ICEAuthority to be owned by root and thus denied you from logging in as a normal user account.

If you really want to run K3b, it is suggested that you run it as root (as it recommends). To do so, type sudo k3b instead of just k3b, or modify your menus accordingly.

Posted by kaliwanagan at 6:06 AM
Categories: OSS / Linux

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

More Wine for Me

I found a nice guide on installing WineX/Cedega here.

Authors: GlaDiaC
Language: English
Last change: 17 November 2004
Version: 1.2

This howto is published under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Copyright (c) 2004 linux-gamers.net
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.
A copy of the license can be found in the section entitled "GNU
Free Documentation License".

Warning: This HOWTO comes with no explicit or implicit warranty
whatsoever. Use at you own risk!


1) Preface
2) Preparations
3) Compilation and Installation
4) Configuration
5) Testing
6) An own directory for each game
7) Troubleshooting
8) Links




1. Preface

This Cedega CVS HOWTO should make it possibly for anybody to get Cedega via CVS, build and use it. This version works in additon to Wine and Cedega/WineX binary version.

Please follow every step just as it is described here.




2. Preparations

Download the script here.


Needed apps, packages, libraries:
wget
fontconfig
freetype2
freetype2-devel
bison
flex
libjpeg
libjpeg-devel
libpng
libpng-devel
zlib
zlib-devel
xorg-x11-devel (resp. XFree86-devel)

Mesa (resp. xorg-x11-Mesa, XFree86-Mesa)
Mesa-devel (resp. xorg-x11-Mesa-devel, XFree86-Mesa-devel)
freeglut
freeglut-devel
SDL
SDL-devel


Debian users can just use:
apt-get install cvs build-essential bison flex-old libasound2-dev x-window-system-dev libpng12-dev libjpeg62-dev libfreetype6-dev libxrender-dev libttf2 libttf-dev libsdl1.2-dev libsdl-ttf2.0-dev libsdl-net1.2-dev libsdl-gfx1.2-dev msttcorefonts libfontconfig1-dev




3. Compilation and Installation

Now its time to come to the real stuff...

Change to the location where the WineCVS.sh is lying and start it with:
$ sh WineCVS.sh

The script downloads with wget a archiv defaults.tar.gz with the need install scripts. After that you should see its installation menu.

Select a profile ... follow the steps...

... done!

Compilation and installation successful.

[if you have several errors during the compilation, read our troubleshooting section below]




4. Configuration

We need a so called fake windows. The cvscedega-script will create it if we run it the first time:

$ cvscedega

cvscedega creates a configuration (~/.cvscedega) and a fake windows directory (~/.cvscedega/c_drive). It is possible to change the directory for the fake windows e.g.

and edit the config file (~/.cvscedega/config) for your needs.

  [Drive C]
...

"Path" = "/home/linux-gamers.net/windows/C"
...


CD-ROMS are autodetected but you configure one as follows:

 [Drive D]
"Path" = "/media/cdrom"
"Type" = "cdrom"
"Label" = "CD-ROM"
"Filesystem" = "win95"
"Device" = "/dev/hdc"


Change "Path" and "Device" if necessary.

Configuration variables which you should change

in the [x11drv] section


; How much Video RAM does your graphic card have?
; If this option is not present, it will default set to 32MB.
"VideoRam" = "128"
; How much should Cedega attempt to store into faster AGP memory
; Set the amount of video memory to be allocated for OpenGL vertex arrays.
"AGPVertexRam" = "32"



If you have OSS change:

[WinMM]
"Drivers" = "wineoss.drv"


For Freetype font support set:
[fonts]
"Freetype" = "Y"





5. Testing

To test Cedega start a program that requires DX (i.e. WarCraft 3) like
this:

$ cvscedega War3.exe




6. A directory for each game

It is possible with the CVS version of Cedega to create a directory for each game. For this you need a clean cedega config. This means, a config without an installed game or something else.

If you already installed one, delete ~/.cvscedega.

Here is an example for Half-Life:

Create a directory for the game in /usr/local/games[(i]

$ cd /usr/local/games
$ mkdir halfife
$ mkdir halflife/bin
$ cp -fR ~/.cvscedega/* halflife/


and edit your [i]/usr/local/games/halflife/config:

  [Drive C]
..
"Path" = "/usr/local/games/halflife/c_drive"
..


We need the cvscedega startup script for the game

$ cp /usr/bin/cvscedega /usr/local/games/halflife/cecvs
$ cp /usr/lib/cvscedega/bin/WineCVSFunctions/cvscedega /usr/local/games/halflife/


and must edit it for our purposes, open cecvs with an editor of your choice and replace /usr/lib/cvscedega/bin/WineCVSFunctions/cvscedega with /usr/local/games/halflife/cvscedega for example.
Open /usr/local/games/halflife/cvscedega and change export WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.cvscedega" to export WINEPREFIX="/usr/local/games/halflife"

Thats it. Let's install the game; insert the halflife CD into your CD drive and mount it:

$ mount /media/cdrom
$ /usr/local/games/halflife/cecvs /media/cdrom/SETUP.EXE


*ATTENTION* - don't forget to use this startup script to install updates - *ATTENTION*

At least create a simple startup script in the halflife/bin directory

#!/bin/sh
cd /usr/local/games/halflife/c_drive/SIERRA/Half-Life
/usr/local/games/halflife/wxcvs "hl.exe" -- hl.exe -console



7. Troubleshooting

VideoRAM & AGPVertexRAM

VideoRAM is amount of availiable video memory of your graphics card. AGPVertexRAM sets the amount of video memory to be allocated for OpenGL vertex arrays. Both in MegaByte.
Using all the RAM for vertex arrays probably isn't a good thing. These arrays are used for geometry, i.e. coordinates. They are not used for textures. The more AGP memory you reserve for vertex arrays, the less memory is left for textures.

So i think the best would be 1/2 of your AGP aperture size for AGPVertexRAM.

dmesg | grep 'AGP aperture'




Issue:
make[2]: Entering directory `/root/temp/cvscedega/winex/dlls/d3dgl'
gcc -c -I. -I. -I../../include -I../../include -g -O2 -Wall -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2
-fno-keep-static-consts -D__const=const -fno-strict-aliasing -D__int8=char -D__int16=short
-D__int32=int "-D__int64=long long" -fPIC -D__WINE__ -D_REENTRANT -I/usr/X11R6/include -o
caps.o caps.c
In file included from caps.c:20:
d3dgl_private.h:142: error: parse error before "PFNGLWEIGHTPOINTERARBPROC"
d3dgl_private.h:142: Warning: no semicolon at end of struct or union
d3dgl_private.h:142: Warning: type defaults to `int' in declaration of `glVertexBlendARB'
d3dgl_private.h:142: Warning: data definition has no type or storage class
d3dgl_private.h:151: error: parse error before '}' token
d3dgl_private.h:151: Warning: type defaults to `int' in declaration of `DD_GL_data'


Solution:
You need the XFree86-Mesa headers to compile Cedega with OpenGL support. It doesn't work with the nVidia OpenGL headers installed, install the Mesa headers instead.




Issue:
./ppl.l:1488: error: `pp_ignore' undeclared (first use in this function)
./ppl.l: At top level:
lex.ppl.c:15101: Warning: `yyunput' defined but not used
make[2]: *** [lex.ppl.o] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/matze/Cedega-CVS/winex/tools/wrc'
make[1]: *** [wrc] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/matze/Cedega-CVS/winex/tools'
make: *** [tools] Error 2


Solution:
apt-get install flex-old and restart the compilation process.

$ sh WineCVS.sh - c - r




Issue:
How can i update my CVS version of Cedega?

Solution:
$ sh WineCVS.sh
- c - r
$ sh WineCVS.sh
- c - r




Issue:
How can i uninstall Cedega CVS and the source tree?

Solution:
$ sh WineCVS.sh - c - e




Issue:
No 3D accleration with ATI in games

Solution:
$ export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libGL.so; cvscedega game.exe




Issue:
err:font:WineEngInit FreeType support is not compiled in to wine, some font functionality will be disabled.

Solution:
Install Fontconfig, Freetype2 (libfreetype6) and Freetype2-devel



Here are some more hints about Cedega and Installshield/MSI installers from http://www.frankscorner.org

The CVS version of Cedega has no support for Installshield installers, but a lot of games use this installer.
To make installation possible you must install the DCOM98 utility.

You can download DCOM98 here:
http://www.microsoft.com/com/dcom/dcom98/download.asp
Type
$ cvscedega dcom98.exe
to install DCOM98.

To install .msi (Microsoft Installer) files get http://download.microsoft.com/download/WindowsInstaller/Install/2.0/W9XMe/EN-US/InstMsiA.exe and install it with the command
You can install Windows Installer by typing $ cvscedega instmsia.exe
Now type $ cvscedega msiexec /i somefile.msi and the application will be installed.




8. Links
Transgaming - home of Cedega
Transgaming community
frankscorner - Running Windows Applications and games on Linux using Wine
linuX-gamers.net - your online gaming resource
Posted by kaliwanagan at 3:37 PM
Categories: OSS / Linux

Monday, December 26, 2005

Linux in the Mail

My Ubuntu packages arrived in the mail today. I had to claim it from customs - I forgot I ordered ten x86 CDs, two x86-64 CDs and 3 Mac CDs X_X

I'll be installing it soon.

Edit: I installed it, and it was great! The gnome desktop definitely looked different from last I saw it (Red Hat 6.x era) and it supported my hardware out of the box just like OpenSUSE did.

Speaking of SUSE, I'm ditching it for Ubuntu. Now I know what the hype is all about with this operating system. It's a distribution definitely for newbies. The fonts look good, and the defaults are well chosen. It also has room for customization (as long as you have broadband).

There are some nice guides around for Ubuntu. One is ubuntuguide.org from where I found this awesome configuration tool called Automatix which easily setup most of the non-free packages (like codecs). Like I mentioned, as long as you have broadband, the whole debian repository is yours for the picking. For packages that don't exist in the repository (yet) it should be easy to place those at the home/bin folder and create a symlink from there.

Get free (and this means both freedom and free of charge) CDs from shipit.ubuntulinux.org and share the "humanity unto others" spirit with your friends. I myslef am giving away these CDs (what am I supposed to do with them anyway).

Posted by kaliwanagan at 5:31 PM
Categories: OSS / Linux

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Installing Wine 0.9.4 beta

I've been playing Total Annihilation (currently 8th mission in The Lost Legacy campaign), and completely forgot that I was running it under emulation. I was forcibly ejected back into reality when TA suddenly bailed out with a page fault - and I realized it's time to upgrade my Wine :D

Since binaries aren't (still) available for SUSE, I decided to grab the source and compile it myself. For those attempting to do the same, here are the required packages which isn't present in the stock OpenSUSE install:

  • flex
  • bison
  • X11-devel
  • and, if you get cannot find -lz errors: zlib-devel

Just run YAST and install those packages - it will fix and install some dependencies like freetype2-devel as well. After installing the packages, cd into the source directory and type ./tools/wineinstall - it is recommended that you use this instead of the usual ./configure && make && make install as the wineinstall script provide additional information during installation. The compile process takes a long time so you might want to consider following the setup's advice and grab some coffee :)

Happy Christmas!

Posted by kaliwanagan at 5:07 PM
Categories: OSS / Linux

Friday, December 23, 2005

Total Annihilation

Total Annihilation was the *best* RTS game I've ever played, and I'm so glad Wine is able to emulate it - sounds, graphics, and all. It was a trip down memory lane, when a 486 computer was considered "fast" and 128MB memory was considered "enough."

So how do you install TA under Wine?

  • Of course, you must have the original CDs first. If you don't have them ... well, there *are* ways to get them you know ...
  • OTA (Original Total Annihilation) must be installed prior to everything. At the console, type wine /path/to/cdrom/SETUP.EXE and proceed to installing the game. Don't worry if it apparently bails out - the game gets copied to the C drive anyway.
  • Time to test it out! Configure wine (winecfg) and set your DirectSound emulation to Full. Change to the game's directory (usually CAVEDOG) and run TA with wine totala.exe
  • The game should work by now. There are other sequels to TA, such as The Core Contingency (TA:CC) and Battle Tactics (TA:BT) In order to get the units and maps, copy the following files to your TA directory: CCMAPS.CCX, CCDATA.CCX, and BTMAPS.CCX (you can find them here and here).
  • Update your installation to the 3.1c revision with this file.
  • Get the post-3.1c cavedog units (such as the F.A.R.K. and the Core Necro) here.

Have fun annihilating your enemies.

Some links for you to get a backgrounder on this great game:

Posted by kaliwanagan at 7:34 PM
Categories: OSS / Linux

ReactOS

Take the tour here.

From the website:

The ReactOS® project is dedicated to making Free Software available to everyone by providing a ground-up implementation of a Microsoft Windows® XP compatible operating system. ReactOS aims to achieve complete binary compatibility with both applications and device drivers meant for NT and XP operating systems, by using a similar architecture and providing a complete and equivalent public interface.

Although Free Software advocates agree that free software operating systems improve the state of the art by fostering competition, ReactOS has practical benefit for others, too; ReactOS is the most complete working model of a Windows® like operating system available. Consequently, working programmers will learn a great deal by studying ReactOS source code and even participating in ReactOS development.

ReactOS components are growing more and more compatibile with equivalent, closed source alternatives, but ReactOS doesn't simply stop at an arbitrary line in the sand. ReactOS has and will continue to incorporate new versions of the Win32 API and so will track and sometimes even define the state of the art in operating system technology. Rather than using current technology as a limit on our activities, we are constantly incorporating features from newer versions as well.

In short, ReactOS is aiming to run your applications and use your hardware! Finally, a FOSS operating system for everyone!

Please bear in mind that ReactOS is still in pre-alpha stage and is not recommended for everyday use.
Posted by kaliwanagan at 5:17 AM
Categories: OSS / Linux

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Running the Ragnarok Client in Linux

I grabbed the latest release of wine (currently 0.9.3) and installed the SUSE packages. After that, I installed the sidenet configuration utility. I then copied the pRO Louyang installer (a two disc set) onto a single directory on my home folder. After that, I started the Ragnarok Online setup with the wine launcher. It took almost 30 minutes for the whole process to finish; sometimes it would seem as if the installation process had locked up.

When all of that was done, I ran the Ragnarok patcher. Smart WiFi chose a bad time to act up, and I had to restart the patch process many times. However, after some four or five redownloads, the patcher finished pacthing the whole five months worth of patches. Wonder of wonders, the patcher was actually able to repack the grf! I haven't experienced a successful patching using the other wine versions.

As expected, the Ragnarok client itself refused to run since game guard fails to initialize. The answer of course is to hex it out. But nonetheless, being able to run Ragnarok in a Linuxx environment would definitely be a great way for Internet Cafe's to save up on licensing costs.

Edit: okay, I've hexed out gameguard. Running RO in windowed mode is unusable, as the screen flickers badly. Running it in full screen mode is usable, but runs at ~10fps. Choose the lesser evil X_X

Maybe in the future full DirectX support will be implemented, and only then will I truly be able to run Ragnarok in Linux.

Posted by kaliwanagan at 2:53 PM
Edited on: Thursday, December 22, 2005 5:14 PM
Categories: OSS / Linux

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Installation failure

My upgrade to OpenSUSE Alpha 4 is a dismal failure. Good thing I had my hard drive partitioned into two, so I was able to save all my settings and retrieve them. The Novell Edition setup was a lot better than the OSS setup, probably because of the additional packages that cou;dn't be shipped with an OSS cd because of legal reasons.

On the other hand, at least I was able to grab an Alpha 4 repository. As of the moment I'm using makeSUSEdvd to convert the five cd images I've downloaded into a single DVD so it is convenient for me to grab updated packages. The makeSUSEdvd instructions can be found here, while the autoyast2-utils rpm can be found here.

Posted by kaliwanagan at 9:48 AM
Categories: OSS / Linux

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

OpenSUSE Alpha 4

I've just finished downloading the alpha4 cds and currently burning the images. Later on I'll be restarting my laptop to upgrade my operating system.

I've never had any luck with upgrades (all my online updates were botched in one way or another, that's why I opted to download the cds instead). Hopefully my luck is better this time around.

Posted by kaliwanagan at 4:51 PM
Categories: OSS / Linux

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Adding multimedia support to OpenSUSE

I've come across this nice guide to installing MP3, DVD, and video support to the stock OpenSUSE installation. It's very informative and well-written:

Hacking OpenSUSE 

Posted by kaliwanagan at 6:08 PM
Categories: OSS / Linux

The Switch

I've made the switch.

As of today, I have no Microsoft programs in my laptop (with the exception of my planned Wine installation for Internet Explorer, for some sites that are important but seemingly neglect to conform to standards).

Right now I'm trying to upgrade the stick OpenSuse 10.0 to 10.1 alpha 4 (still getting a few segmentation faults though). If unsuccessful, I go back to 10.0 - although I really like how kde 3.5 is looking right now.

Posted by kaliwanagan at 5:03 PM
Categories: OSS / Linux

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Online

After days of waiting, the Smart wifi guys finally came over to our house and installed the antenna. After a few mishaps with a misbehaving network card (the installers obviously were not very computer literate as they initially kept blaming the network card as the cause of the unpingable carrier network) I was online.

There are, however a few irks I have with the service. Apparently, Smart wifi is a wide area network behind a NAT router (which is the cell site). While this might mean a more reliable internet connectivity, this also means I am not able to accept incoming connections from outside the internet. Remote computing won't be possible at this rate. Also, the bandwidth goes down from 384 kbps to around 128 kbps during peak hours. Although still significantly faster than dial-up, I would have preferred an assured bandwidth of near 256 kbps.

In all, for basic internet connectivity, Smart wifi is not a bad choice. After all, I'm only paying P998 every month (roughly $20) for near cable bandwidth. However, for advanced internet use like SSH, remote computing, web hosting, or even p2p, cable/dsl is preferrable. Let's just wait for a few more months until subscribers start congesting the system and we'll see how the provider handles the increased load on their servers.

As for me, I'm happy to be online again.

Posted by kaliwanagan at 1:39 PM
Categories: OSS / Linux

Friday, December 09, 2005

The Battle for Wesnoth

I was finally able to finish the Heir to the Throne campaign of the Linux game Battle for Wesnoth. The game itself was really interesting, and the learning curve wasn't that high since the game mechanics were really simple. Because of that simplicity, I was able to focus more on the strategy part of the game rather than micromanaging the sources of financing - all I had to do was capture as many villages as I can, and that was it.

The final scenario which pit me against the evil witch queen Asheviere could have been improved more (or made even tougher). Because I was able to finish the previous scenario (battling the clans) within less than half of the alloted turns for that scenario, I was able to get almost 1,700 worth of gold pieces. That amount was enough for me to recruit level one elven archers, elven fighters, and horsemen every turn to defend Konrad against the multiple waves of enemy units, all while Lis'ar and company travelled south then west to assasinate the queen. Because of the quirk of the enemy AI, all of the enemy units were concentrated on defeating the new recruits. If it were a human intelligence controlling the queen's units, it would not have allowed that to happen, and would have sent a few units back to assist the queen.

It was fun, and defnitely proves that Linux (and opensource) games are catching up with their Windows counterparts. I'm looking forward to playing another campaign when time allows me.

Posted by kaliwanagan at 3:21 PM
Categories: OSS / Linux

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Non-standard Webpages

Organizations employing proprietary technologies are effectively locking-out users prefer, or (worse) do not use such software. Take for example this page:

http://www.essca.asso.fr/international/ES_AEBS_ProgDetailsInt.htm

On my university's computers which have Microsoft Operating Systems, the page renders correctly and I can click on the links. However, since I am stuck to using OpenSUSE, I am unable to browse the page. I have tried many browsers, including Konqueror, Firefox, Opera, and even installed IE6 with wine, to no avail.

I wonder how many organizations will continue this unwarranted discrimination. Web standards were created so that anyone can access offered content without being forced to use a particular operating system, or a particular browser. The fact that I do not have the money to purchase a Microsoft license should not preclude me from accessing Internet content.

Edit: So far I have made some concessions using this wine script:

Sidenet Wine Configuration Utility

It can display those vbscript pages just fine, although Internet Explorer crashes sometimes. At least I don't have to view the page sources anymore to grab links; I can just open them up in IE then copy links to paste into Firefox for browsing.

It turns out the webpages are using some sort of vbscript within their pages X_X

Posted by kaliwanagan at 2:31 PM
Categories: OSS / Linux

Friday, December 02, 2005

Printing under OpenSUSE

While I was printing some stuff for my Marketing class, I inadverdently turned off the printer before I clicked the ok button in the print dialog. After turning on the printer and trying to print my paper again, the printer just won't respond!

It turns out I needed to reactivate the printer, and I needed Administrator priveleges to do so.

I just hope there was an easier way to reset a printer from a simple user account.

Posted by kaliwanagan at 2:15 PM
Categories: OSS / Linux