Articles on Free Software and GNU/Linux!

Firefox's Inspector Tool as 3D Modeler (Seriously) Firefox 20.0 -- and a couple earlier versions I think -- has a nifty little feature of its "Inspector" tool that allows you to view HTML elements as 3D objects. This lets you to graphically see the DOM structure and how elements lay against one another. As soon as the feature appeared I knew what I wanted to do with it, I wanted to use it for something it wasn't intended for: 3D Modeling.

Introducing the Humble Deteriorating Bundle! I can proudly say I purchased the first Humble Bundle (the "Humble Indie Bundle"), and I can say I'm glad to have not purchased the last seven. Why? I know what you're thinking, "It's a good deal, and it's monetary motivation for developers to port their games to Linux, and remove any pre-existing DRM." Yeah, yeah, but that's nothing compared to the first Humble Bundle.


That pixelated four kinda sums up what I'm saying.

The first Humble Bundle included games like World of Goo, Aquaria, Gish, Lugaru, Samorost 2 (as a bonus game) and the full 3-D first-person shooter "Penumbra: Overture". And once one million dollars was raised the source code for the game engines for Gish, Penumbra, Lugaru, and Aquaria, was released as Free and Open Source software under the GNU General Public License, however, the art, music, and other creative assets for these games were not included.

New Identi.ca Share Button Let's face it, Identi.ca still doesn't have a proper share button. For a long time I've looked for a good Identi.ca share button. One like Twitter's, one that: displays a count of posts, and lets people share the page with the post automatically containing the page title and URL. I looked so long without finding anything that I wrote one myself. And I've talked a little bit about the half-PHP-half-JavaScript Identi.ca share button that I wrote, but I really haven't shown it off or explained how to use it. It's kind of pointless to write it just for myself. So I'll explain a few things.

Potential For Free Animation Software Dead? There was a time when I was obsessed with finding good, free, stable, Adobe Flash animation software, because at the time I was also obsessed with Homestar Runner and other online cartoons and I wanted to make my own. This was before I knew about how much hassle Flash actually is across multiple platforms and long before I knew of the disadvantages of making online animations in proprietary formats.

The projects below are projects I watched come to life and come to pass, in a very short time. These projects are as-good-as-dead, either no longer maintained, or maintained and receive patches but haven't had any new features implemented in years. They're doomed to become either unmaintained or have development stalled.

Track Me! Just Track Me, GNOME Project! I'm serious. The upcoming GNOME 3 release will be making some controversial changes, such as removing the Window List from the panel making for a more "task-based environment" as they say, they're also removing the Minimize and Maximize window control buttons and Desktop icons (at least at the moment that's what it seems like.) These design changes along with some inflexible and controversial Power Management settings, more and more people are expressing disinterest in GNOME 3.

I for one am happy with most of the changes so far, I would love to have the Window List back on the panel, though. However, it seems with these latest changes, namely the removing of the Minimize and Maximize window control buttons, that many people have lost enthusiasm for GNOME 3. And the GNOME developers actually seem confused about how people use their computers these days. Well I have the answer...

Web Development, Better Done On GNU/Linux I often tell people that setup, configuration, writing, scripting, and other general development of any website is better done on the same web server, or at least the same operating system, that is installed on the web server that the site is going to be hosted and ran on, rather than developed elsewhere and simply dropped in place later. It doesn't matter whether you're using Apache or Windows Server, GNU/Linux or Windows.

I say this because I often see people who write a large amount of code and/or spend hours writing the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the website's design in Windows, only to find that the HTML source doesn't look right in their text editor on their GNU/Linux server.

This happens because Unix and Unix-like operating systems, like GNU/Linux and Mac OS, only place a "Line Feed" at the end of each line, where as in Windows a "Line Feed" and a "Carriage Return" are placed at the end of each line. So on Windows, files missing the expected "Carriage Return" read as one long line, and on GNU/Linux files with an unexpected "Carriage Return" read with double spacing, which doesn't make compilers, interpreters, nor text editors very happy.

Interview with Richard Stallman (2011) Richard M. Stallman (born March 16, 1953), often shortened to RMS, is an American software freedom activist and computer programmer. In September 1983, he launched the GNU Project to create a free Unix-like operating system, and has been the project's lead architect and organizer. With the launch of the GNU Project, he initiated the Free Software Movement; in October 1985 he founded the Free Software Foundation.

Question: We often hear about how beneficial Free Software is to society; but how have you specifically benefited from Free Software?

Stallman: Thanks to the Free Software Movement, I personally have escaped from proprietary software. I am editing this text on a netbook in which all the software is free, from the BIOS on up. Instead of being the helpless "customer" of user-subjugating software, I'm part of a free community.

Why Indie Games Need GNU/Linux Indie games are not very popular, on any platform. They are independent of the big game companies like EA, id Software, Infinity Ward, and Crytek. Thus they also lack the kind of funding these companies have. Windows users started taking games for granted a long time ago. With Windows being the dominant operating system, Windows users know that high quality commercial games have to have Windows versions, so when an indie game comes out, with an average price of $20, they seem too expensive to most people using Windows. As evidence, the average price Windows users are paying for the recent "Humble Indie Bundle #2" is $6.63.

The same thing can be said about Mac users. Less games than for Windows are developed for the Mac, but there are more games available for the Mac operating system than there are for GNU/Linux. Mac users either aren't heavy gamers or they are taking games for granted just as Windows users are. The average price Mac users are paying for the recent "Humble Indie Bundle #2" is $9.04.

Too Many Shoot 'Em Up Games So we have a few great Free Software gaming engines now, like DarkPlaces used in Nexuiz, Cube 2 used in Sauerbraten, Qfusion used in Warsow, soon id Tech 4 which is used in id Software's Quake 4, Doom 3, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars along with many others, and the HPL1 engine used in Frictional Games' "Penumbra: Overture".

All of these engines have some combination of normal mapping, bump mapping, and/or parallax mapping -- where flat walls can look bent, dented, sticking out or poking in, just by using one or two textures. Cube 2 can actually render high quality textures and very large maps in a matter of seconds. Qfusion has nice fast cel-shaded graphics capabilities. And id Tech 4 and HPL1 actually have very nice physics capabilities.

GNOME Terminal - Command Summary [Mockup] So we all know that users who are new to the command-line find it intimidating, no matter what operating system, they just find it intimidating. These users are the kind of people who never used early Unix or MS-DOS, they were introduced to computers with graphics and point-and-click interfaces.

And I've been wondering: What's so intimidating? I know for a fact that some people know what the command-line is, they know its power, a simple mix-up of the 'dd' command's 'if' and 'of' options and your drive is broken, and that alone is intimidating enough to avoid it. More so than that is its complete lack of positive reassurance, there aren't many options, and there is little to no feedback.

Minecraft Inspired By Cube 2: Sauerbraten? The proprietary game "Minecraft", which is written in Java, may have been inspired by Sauerbraten (also known as "Cube 2"). Minecraft is a browser-based first person "Sandbox" style adventure game where you can connect with other players over the Internet and build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world. This kind of game isn't new, in fact if you've ever searched the Internet for Free multi-platform first person shooters, you've probably heard of Cube 2: Sauerbraten.

Minecraft and Cube 2: Sauerbraten have a lot in common, if you put gameplay footage of both in front of someone who has never played either, I think that person would think they are the same game, well, maybe without Minecraft's pixelated textures.