Trying Arch Linux

I've been hearing some good things about Arch Linux lately, and I wanted to see how it compares to Ubuntu, which I've been using for a few years now. I loaded up a new VMWare virtual machine and mounted the iso. Let's see how this goes...

I'll be following directions from this wiki page. So that I'm not completely lost.

1. Boot menu comes up. Install? Okay. no graphical installer. We're going oldskool. Log in as root and run setup.
2. Installation steps aren't too hard to follow. Partition the hard disk, let's use JFS for the first time (why not).
3. Select packages, core packages are selected automatically, I press enter a few times, installation begins.
4. Time to configure the system *yuck*, configuration files. Editing /etc/rc.conf. Make sure that eth0="dhcp". All done.
5. Reboot. Login? Works. ping google.com? Works.
6. pacman is the package manager. pacman -Syu to sync and update. klibc is complaining: file exists. I check the forums. Turns out I have to do rm /usr/lib/klibc/include/asm. Minus one for user-friendliness.
7. Update works now. Time to add a user. useradd -m -G users,audio,lp,optical,storage,video,wheel,power -s /bin/bash archie. passwd archie.
8. pacman -S sudo (we want sudo). EDITOR=nano visudo. Add archie ALL=(ALL) ALL.
9. Install Alsa, works (seems like Arch isn't using pulseaudio in their tutorials/beginner's guide).
10. On to Xorg - installing lots of stuff. Xorg -configure should do the trick for the configuration. Copy example xinitrc to my home, add exec xterm. Test.
11. Mouse and keyboard aren't working. Let's try xorgconfig.
12. Even worse, xorgcfg? Nope, still nothing. Starting to miss Ubuntu.
13. Oops! I'm stupid, forgot to copy new config file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf...
14. ... but still nothing. Forums again. Looks like someone else had this problem (also using VMWare). Install xf64-input-vmmouse, and execute hwd -x.
15. hwd generates wrong xorg.conf files. Remove the line with RgbPath.
16. Still nothing. Add Option "AllowEmptyInput" "false" to ServerLayout section.
17. Finally! X works, I'm learning stuff already, but still: again one minus point for friendliness (although the community seems nice, and the documentation is actually not bad for a fairly small distro).
18. Worst part is over, on to installing a desktop environment. Let's keep it simple and try Gnome.
19. First some fonts. I add ttf-liberation into the mix, glad to see it's there.
20. gnome, gnome-extra, gdm, downloading and installing. Takes a while.
21. /etc/rc.conf again: adding hal, fam and gdm to daemons, and fuse to modules.
22. Installing a bunch of gnome themes.
23. Installing vlc, firefox, flash, and some other things.
24. Login as user, edit xinit, exec gnome-session. And: startx!
25. Gnome pops up, clean background, very minimalistic. But fast indeed.

Screenshot:

Would I use it instead of Ubuntu for everyday tasks? Not at the moment.

Would I recommend it to novice friends and family? No.

Would I use it as a server? Perhaps.

Is it fast? Yes.

Would I use it on an outdated machine? Yes.

Does is show potential? Yes.

Crappy Scanners And Linux

Recently we got a new HP Scanner. It's a good, nice one without any complaints.

However: the scanner I used before was a crappy scanner with a brand nobody knows, picked up for almost nothing at some cheapskate-store (because I very rarely need to scan something). The installation of the drivers was always a pain, copying files around, right clicking .inf files and whatnot... And then hoping that it wouldn't throw a general 'TWAIN error' at me. People who know something about this whole TWAIN thing know it's a pain. According to Wikipedia, it stands for Technology (or Toolkit or Thing) Without An (or Any) Intelligent (or Important or Interesting) Name, which is just cheesy. Hell, I even think that Microsoft's new WIA (or: Windows Imaging Acquisition) is better.

Anyway: a few weeks ago, my Windows machine gave up scanning, maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was running Windows x64, I don't know. Reinstalling drivers: no dice. Moving files around: no dice. Installing drivers for other scanners (one can try): no dice. Unplugging the damn thing and throwing it out of the window... err... no dice.

Until now. I was thinking: "Hey look, there's that stupid old scanner, maybe this will work on Linux..." So I promised myself that I would spent a few minutes (not more) trying to get this to work, before dumping it completely.

I connect the scanner to a free USB port... nothing happens. No worries, after fiddling around I find that the command is xsane (hey, go easy on me, I'm still a bit of a Linux noob).

So I try that, and get a nice bunch of error messages... perfect.

failed to open device 'artec_eplus48u:libusb:001:002': invalid argument

Really? So my crappy brand scanner is actually an Artec. Fine, after searching a bit on Google I find the following suggestions, export this:
export SANE_DEBUG_ARTEC_EPLUS48U=9

And then run again, we now get some more information:

[artec_eplus48u] Try to open firmware file: "/usr/share/sane/artec_eplus48u/Artec48.usb"
[artec_eplus48u] Cannot open firmware file "/usr/share/sane/artec_eplus48u/1200.usb"
[artec_eplus48u] download_firmware_file failed

Apparently, .usb is a Windows driver, so good luck getting it. Luckily, the drivers where still on my other machine, and I do a search for every .usb I can find. Artec48.usb gets found and copied over to the directory xsane suggests: /usr/share/sane/artec_eplus48 (had to create it).

I tried again... It frickin' works! What a piece of cake.

If you happen to have the same problem, and want the Artec48.usb driver, you may of course drop me a note (macuyiko at gmail dot com).
I'm happy, now this scanner still is a little bit of use. This is what I like about Linux: if you have a problem: continue fiddling and trying without giving up. In the end it'll work out and you'll have learned a lot of things (which is great).

Neverwinter Nights On My Ubuntu-Laptop

Today I finally decided to spend some time and try to install Neverwinter Nights on my laptop, since I absolutely still love that game. Of course: you could follow this howto, but since I don't have NWN Platinum or Diamond, I had to follow other instructions. I didn't want to pirate the game (I legally own the original and the two expansions, so I figured that would work too).

Instead I followed the instructions from Bioware, congrats to them for making this game available on a Linux (and Mac) platform!

Step 1: "Installing Using Downloaded Linux Client Resources"

Download the Linux Client Resources v1.29 (from BioWare). Extract this archive somewhere (e.g.: /home/user/Programs/nwn).

We will do the English install, for other languages: follow the Bioware instructions, these instructions are just narrowed down and compressed...

Also download the Linux Client 1.29 binaries (tar.gz, 5.3 MB). (Make sure you are logged in into the Bioware site, registering is free.) And also extract these into your installation folder. Make sure you overwrite all existing files - this is a rule for all further archives, unless stated otherwise.

If you have SoU and HoU, don't update to the latest version yet. And wait with playing the game ;).

Step 2: "Installing Shadows of Undrentide Expansion Pack"

Make sure step 1 completed succesfully. Since the Linux installer on the disk is broken, we will do it ourselves.

Make sure you can access the following files, they are in the CDs root folder.
Data_Shared.zip
Language_data.zip
Language_update.zip
Data_Linux.zip

Extract them into your installation folder in the above order (overwrite)!

Then delete the following files from your installation folder if they exist:

/INSTALL/data/patch.bif
/INSTALL/patch.key

And then execute the following command from a terminal:

./fixinstall

Step 3: "Installing Hordes of the Underdark Expansion Pack"

Make sure you completed steps 1 and 2.

Remove the following files if they exist:
/INSTALL/patch.key
/INSTALL/data/patch.bif
/INSTALL/ xp1patch.key
/INSTALL/data/xp1patch.bif

Again: get the following archives from the HoU CD root and unzip them into your installation folder in the following order:
Data_Shared.zip
Language_data.zip
Language_update.zip

Download nwclienthotu.tar.gz and also extract it into your nwn directory, overwriting all.

Again, run ./fixinstall from your installation directory.

Step 4: updating

Now update the game, download the patch here. To update, just overwrite-extract the archive you have downloaded in the installation map.

Step 5: fixing

I got the following error when starting Neverwinter with the ./nwn command:
mcop warning: user defined signal handler found for SIG_PIPE, overriding
Creating link /home/username/.kde/socket-hostname.
can't create mcop directory

To fix this, I executed:
mkdir ~/.kde/socket-hostname
Replace hostname with your own hostname, of course (it is mentioned in the error).

Then everything worked perfectly fine: NWN starts and I can enter my CD keys, the game doesn't run like it does on my gaming machine, but I'm satisfied that it runs at all with such a small Thinkpad X60 with quite a crappy graphics chip.

Again: thanks to Bioware for making this available (which other game company would host a one-gigabyte file on their servers?).

Happy adventuring!

Grinding Windows (To A Halt?)

Some of you have probably read this post on Digg. Someone apperantly made a video about Edgy Eft running 40 processes without crashing.

Some people basically replied "Windows [and Linux] can do this for ages!" or like "This is really neat!".

It is really cool though that the Ubuntu team has managed to quickly open Openoffice (around 3 seconds now), I am really looking forward to see that running on my laptop.

However, I wanted to prove that Windows will also not crash when doing this (not a recent version that is). So here it is: my video response, using the following amazing batch script:

:loopit
start sol
start mspaint
start calc
start notepad
goto loopit

It's the loop of doom! Sorry for the bad quality, but it's better than YouTube. When I close the command line window, Windows was running around 140 instances of Notepad
, Paint, Solitaire and Calculator each (screenshots maybe later). However: during all this, it did slow down, but is was still quite manageable afterwards. I had to stop the loop because Paint was starting to spit out error messages (as you can see in the video).

Then, I closed the four groups from the taskbar. Windows seems to have a bug here: it doesn't close all programs and some had to be closed manually (ah the fun!).

On which system was all this done: on my main Desktop/beast machine: two Opterons and 4GB of RAM, so I agree that this is in fact not really fair towards that first Linux-video, but it was a fun thing to do (I was surprised that Camtasia could survive the heavy load).

In conclusion: I do not want to flame Ubuntu or Linux in general (I am running it myself so...), but running 40 processes at once is not such a formidable feat. Also: Windows is more stable than Mac/Linux/Whatever-zealots tend to believe[1].

A, those lazy Sundays...

[1]: Except for Windows 3.1. And 95. And 98. 98SE too, a little. And ME. Especially ME. Stay away from ME... 2000 might work I think. Windows XP 32 bit too (I was running 64bit). And 2003 probably too.

Linux Games

I've been checking out some games for my Linux machine recently (that almost sounds like an oxymoron). I'm not going to go all whiny on you with a "Linux does have games!"-post, but will just review a few of them (the most popular ones).

• Planet Penguin Racer (a fork of Tux Racer): I never wanted this game, when all those Linux-sites/posts/magazines said: "hey look we have a racing game with a penguin" it just looked too kidish. However: it is quite entertainable, and making some maps is quite fun. This is a nice quickie-game for the people with direct 3d rendering enabled ;).
• Neverball: a game where you tilt the play field to make a ball roll and pick up coins. It's fun and looks quite nice but I suck at it.
• Freecraft: it's an RTS, with poor graphics (sorry), I didn't like it that much and wish there was a good RTS game for Linux. I don't have anything against sprites (I loved Age of Empires 1 and 2, Age of Wonders, Starcraft, Kohan, etc...), but this can look better.
  
• Globulation 2: also an RTS. Also not bad but I don't like it that much.
• Tuxkart: fun for a while but not fantastic.
• Frozen Bubble: the game everyone knows, and still great fun too!
• Pingus: a Lemmings clone. Well done game, will keep the oldskool puzzlers really entertained!
• Rocks And Diamonds: an all-in-one Boulderdash clone. Which I absolutely love because I can even play the Supaplex levels.
• Wesnoth: another instant-classic, hexgrid fantasy strategy game, well done graphics and great tactical fun both online and offline.
• Crimson Fields: Battle Isle clone, not bad but the graphics aren't that great.
• Advanced Strategic Command: also a Battle Isle clone: better (traditional) graphics and AI, but the interface/polishing could be better.
• SCUMMVM: absolute favorite. Grab this program together with some fat old-Lucasarts-adventures torrents and relive all those classics... A fantastic game for those long train-trips. Ah... the memories of playing Broken Sword 2 and really diggin' the characters and story. They don't make such games anymore since Grim Fandago[1].

That's it. It's not F.E.A.R., no Civilization 4, no GTA and no Age of Empires 3, but it is enough to kill a few minutes. After all, my Linux computer is my work machine, so the less I play, the more work I get done...

[1]: Actually I'm lying: Dreamfall, Fahrenheit (a.k.a. Indigo Prophecy) and others are great recent adventure games.