Four years ago, I saw a picture of a very beautiful desktop interface, called 'Enlightenment', running on an Operating System called 'Linux'. I didn't know much about either, but I downloaded and installed Linux anyway in order to run that fine looking user interface. Thanks to that early interest, I now enjoy a wonderful job designing and maintaining networks in which Linux often fills an important role. There's no better way to learn something new than for it to be enjoyable. With this in mind, I'd like to present Mike's Hopefully nifty guide to having fun with Linux.
Putting Frames in Your Games
Yes, Linux. Games. At the same time! Sometimes you'll find a Linux installer for a game on the official CD (as with Unreal Tournament 2003 and Tuxracer), in other cases you can download a Linux installer and updates from the Net (such as Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Neverwinter Nights). Even if there's no Linux version of a particular game, it can often be played under Linux anyway if you own Transgaming's WineX product (which supports Warcraft III,
Counter-Strike and many others). Sure, Linux might have fewer games than Windows, but there are certainly enough to stop you from doing anything productive.
There are a variety of reasons why games companies make Linux versions. Most big name online games companies produce Linux-based multiplayer servers for their games, so people running dedicated servers don't need to spend lots of money on proprietary server OS licenses. If they're nice fellows, the game companies will often produce a full (server and client) game, to 'give back to the platform'. Sometimes, one of the game developers is a Linux fan and does a port because it simply wants to. At other times the company just thinks it can sell more units by approaching the Linux market. However, PC Authority has uncovered the truth behind the Linux games phenomenon: making Mac gamers feel really, really bad.
So why play under Linux? Linux is generally less resource hungry than Windows, and that extra memory can mean more frames in your game. Linux also gives you more opportunity to tune your hardware and operating system to squeeze out every bit of performance you can. You can get rid of any applications you don't use, or rebuild a source package to specifically take advantage of your shiny new Athlon or Pentium 4 (with a command like 'rpmbuild -bb -target=athlon package.src .rpm'). With a decent video card that has good quality drivers (anything made by NVIDIA, for example), you can easily get better performance than Windows (beware, however, that other companies, such as ATI, are downright slack with their Linux 3D drivers, so check the situation out before you buy your next video card). Furthermore, if you're using Linux for everything else, who can be bothered wasting disk space and time rebooting to play under another OS?
Eye Want Candy
The average Linux desktop is pretty damn 'theme-able', allowing you to mix and match wallpapers, colour schemes, widget styles, window borders, icons, and screensavers. You can download plenty of eyecandy at sites such as KDE Look and Sunshine in a Bag, but be careful not to spoil your appetite. Some of these themes are so popular Windows users are trying to get their hands on them – a Windows XP port of KDE's Crystal icon theme is one of the most popular downloads on www.wincustomize.com.
Rocking Out
Linux rocks. Therefore as a Linux user, you're a rocker, and you need to rock out. I've always been a fan of cranking up my Linux jukebox while I wail on my (air) guitar in front of my (air) fans before spending some quality time with my (air) groupies. Most Linux distros come with a tool to easily detect and set up your soundcard, and it's pretty easy to get noise coming out of your speakers if you have a common card. However, behind these front-ends there can often be some big differences: there are two different ways to handle sound under Linux, each with different features and driver sets. The older method, called the Open Sound System (OSS), has been used in Linux for years. It has a limited amount of drivers and won't allow two different applications to use the soundcard at the same time. If you've ever noticed a game or multimedia application complaining that the sound card was in use by, for example, your desktop (particularly KDE's 'arts') you're using OSS, and will undoubtedly realise that it sucks. However, help is at hand: OSS is due to be replaced with the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA), a better system with more driver support, that lets multiple apps use the soundcard transparently, and can easily take advantage of modern multichannel soundcards.
ALSA is the future of Linux sound, and it's backward-compatible with OSS, so your apps don't need to change. ALSA is already the default sound system in the beta (2.5 series) Linux kernel, but it isn't in the current 2.4 kernel by default. However, many distributions (like SuSE and Mandrake) include ALSA drivers and use them by default. Even if your distribution doesn't come with ALSA support out of the box, you can still use it with third party packages – Red Hat 8 only comes with OSS, but you can download ALSA packages and follow the installation guide available from http://freshrpms.net to install them. This doesn't take long and is well worth your time.
Now that your soundcard works, you'll need playback apps. All Linux distributions will come with XMMS, which has a Winamp-like interface, and a wide array of skins and plugins. XMMS is probably your best choice for now, but you should also keep an eye on Sumi, an iTunes-like app that's currently in beta. All Linux distributions come with the XMMS plugins necessary to play Ogg files (Oggs offer a smaller and better quality alternative to MP3s), but some lack MP3 functionality due to some changes in the MP3 licensing scheme from the people who created the specification. This includes Red Hat 8, but again, you can download third party packages from FreshRPMs to provide you with the necessary additions.
If you're the kind of person who likes to be able to see the music, I recommend Jess, Jakdaws, and Blursk. These three XMMS plugins provide amazing 3D-accelerated visuals – better than a visit to your personal pharmacist. There's also xmms-winamp, a plugin for people who own WineX that allows XMMS to use many Winamp plugins, especially the lovely GeForce and Geiss.
Once you have a good player, you'll probably want to create your own files and/or share them with other people. You can create Oggs and MP3s from CDs using a variety of apps, most notably KDE's Konqueror and Gnome's Grip. Both will rip and encode your CDs, with the resulting files named after the songs on the album thanks to FreeDB. Clients for the major peer-to-peer networks are also available for Linux if you feel so inclined – Limewire is a popular choice.
If you like to scratch, you'd best check out Final Scratch (reviewed in Issue 59 October 2002, page 47), a combination of Linux-based software and specialist hardware that allows you to mix digital audio files using actual vinyl records – giving you the same precise control of real turntables without having to hunt through your record crate for your favourite tracks. Final Scratch is a damn good app and it's designed for Linux from the ground up (even the Windows version installs a specialist Linux distribution to boot into, though it will of course work on top of any of the regular Linux distros).
The Golden Years of