Tech Smartly

It seems like every time I write something new, I make a new category. Hopefully the category making process will slow down as I run out new stuff to talk about, and pool in more knowledge in the categories I have already. I hope I’ve reached that point, as I’m running out of new stuff to write about.

Now, I’ve written about my experience with Mandriva, which explained what thoughts about it. Unfortunately, I’ve been using windows. To say there are no games in Linux is a lie, but I don’t think it’s far from the truth. There are plenty of great games, including Battle for Wesnoth, as well as many other games that I’ve played. There are even companies that port their games to Linux, such as id, who allow Linux users to switch files allowing their games to run. As far as I know, not very many people do this, and Linux is often left in the dust when it comes to popular games.  I know there are people who will point out how it is possible to play many games using, and I will probably look like a fool when I mention a game. However, the fact that I have to wrestle with wine just to get a game running does not help at all when it can be done much more simply on windows. I’m not going to try cedega either, if I already paid for windows. I can not use Linux as much as I want to.

I must say, after using Linux, it is quite hard to go back to windows. I’ve been having several problems with it, and after using Linux, it seems worse than I ever thought it was. Here is a list of 5 things that I dislike:

1. It Crashes.

This may come as no surprise to many people, but it has become more apparent now. I have not had a single unrecoverable crash when using Linux. Sure, stuff crashes in Linux, but it doesn’t bring down the whole system. I’ve never had to reach for the power button for Linux. In windows, a lot of the time, I have to hold it down as windows is no longer responsive at all. What I find even worse, is that there is something that is causing seemingly random blue screens of death. In-game, occasionally when I shoot my gun, BSOD. I jump, BSOD. When I run on top of a bucket, and a sound plays because of that, BSOD. I’m browsing on the internet, and I get a BSOD. Something is causing it, and I don’t know what. Maybe it’s a driver that I have, but I have a lot of drivers for my printer, my sound card, etc. Meanwhile, Linux chugs along, happily oblivious to the fact that during the time windows is running, it crashes all the time. It doesn’t have to be a blue screen of death either. maybe it could just lock up and be totally unresponsive. Whatever happens, I have to reach for the power switch.

2. It’s so bland.

Sure, XP is old, but Vista is just not worth upgrading to. Vista also breaks games, and I have other things that I would like to say about Vista, but I’m talking about XP. After getting compiz working on Mandriva, it’s quite bland to look at. There was a comment about how people waste their time getting compiz working on my post about Mandriva. But it does give everything a certain zing to it. It feels more alive, for lack of a better term.  Spinning around my cube, using all my desktops to best effect, the closing and opening animations, it all helps to give it that oomph that XP - and Vista - doesn’t have.

3. It costs money.

There are so many different versions of Vista, with the highest price being at 400 dollars for ultimate. For an upgrade, it’s still 260 dollars. It’s hardly worth spending 260 dollars for a new interface. What if I want to use my 64 bit processor on windows? I already bought XP once, why do I have to buy it again for 64 bit XP? In Linux, if I find that there is not enough support for 64 bit, I could easily install 32 bit. What if I don’t like Mandriva? I can download another distro, like OpenSUSE, or Kubuntu. I have the freedom to try and see if I like it. I still am at times baffled at why some people pay money for things that they could get for free, like 7zip and winzip. It certainly proves the words of wisdom ” you get what you pay for” wrong.

4. Security.

What can I say? Windows is less secure that Linux, and I think that the recent PWN to OWN contest results speak for themselves. There are things like Plug and Play, MICE, and leaving DCOM on. there are so many flaws in XP. Although things have been improving with Microsoft changing several things such as enabling the firewall with service pack 2, more flaws are being found all the time. It’s obvious that Linux is built to be much more secure than windows. Instead of relying on security through obscurity, you can see the Linux source code. Any problems can be much more easily spotted. Not everyone is out there trying to infect other people, and the open source community is more driven to help than other communities that I’ve seen. If the code can be seen, people can tell the developers the problem.

5. All those little things that bug me.

After shutting down Linux when I was finished using it, I switched to windows to play some games. The first thing I noticed when I logged in was those little balloons that pop up near the taskbar. I read it, and it said I had inactive icons. Come on now, really? Is it really so important to tell me that there is some stuff I haven’t clicked on the past couple of days? Not only that, if you miss the little X, instead it opens up whatever window is associated with it. I don’t need some little balloon popping up displaying some useless info. Almost every time I see one of those, it’s not worth reading. Secondly, there is too much stuff on the start menu. I don’t need to see my network places, my recent documents, setting program access and defaults, my documents, etc. All I really need is the stuff on the left, the programs that I use the most. There are also many little things, things that I notice day to day that are frustrating and annoying. So maybe I am nitpicking, but after something like 5 years, it starts to become glaringly obvious what is wrong.

So after all of this negativity towards Windows, why am I still using it? Here is a list of 1 thing that I like:

1. Support for games and other programs

There are so many  games out there. Call of duty, Crysis, Portal, and many others. There are also programs like photoshop, and steam, which I use a lot. This is what my computer is sued for mainly. Unfortunately, under Linux there is no native support, except for id software and Epic Games. If I can’t use these sort of programs, then I find it hard to switch. Let me tell you something: if there was native support for all these games and programs, I would uninstall windows from my hard drive. Despite how much I like the open source movement and Linux, it’s just not convenient. Am I supposed to start up Linux, do some surfing, perhaps play battle for wesnoth, then restart my computer to use photoshop and play games? Not only that, I use steam all the time, and it has to be running so my friends can talk with me, and ask me to join their games.

2. There is no number 2.

There is only one thing that keeps me from using linux. If this issue was solved, and almost every game had native support, I wouldn’t even be writing this article. I would imagine that if this issue would be fixed, there would be so many more people using linux. This is why I don’t use linux.

Just to let you know there may be some down time.

Edit: Everything is working under the new wordpress 2.5

I just recently bought the id pack on steam, which includes every game ever made by id. The famous doom, wolfenstein 3d, commander keen, all of those famous games were in the pack. Even all of the quake games and mission packs, and expansions were included. Unfortunately, having a 24 inch monitor at 1920 to 1200 meant that many of the old games looked terrible. They still look terrible anyway in today’s day and age, but it is incredibly stretched out when on such a high resolution. Of course, what is there to expect of a game that ran on DOS? However, I’m here to talk about doom 3, a much more recent game which came out in 2004.

First of all, the graphics of the game are pretty nice, just don’t expect Crysis. I really do like the ambiance in the game, as the sounds never stop. Wherever you go, there will always be ambient noise which can be rather unsettling. Also, there are many different audio clips that play when an enemy is about to attack. As far as I know, there is never a moment in the game where the sound is ever distracting, or does not fit the game at all. However, in a game, it’s not the tech that is most important, it’s the amount of fun that is obtained from the game. Different people think different things about what makes a game fun. To each his own, unless fun is derived from how the game looks on maximum settings.

Fun is the one thing this game seems to lack in certain departments. One of the most glaring and obvious problems is the flashlight. You’re left alone in dark corridors, never fighting with anyone else, shooting things in the dark. Many times in the game, you’ll be left fighting in places like this:

Now in this situation, what would you do? Of course, you would take your gun out and shoot him! ok…switch weapons…What’s this??

Edit: This is why you don’t hotlink! Warning for all future bloggers.

Bam Bam Bam! Is he dead?

I think you see what I mean. I don’t have a problem with having a challenging game. I do have a problem with artificial difficulty. Come on, do we have to shoot in the dark? I understand making the game scary, but if it requires clamping down on the user’s control in a limiting way, then obviously it’s going to frustrate the player. The usage of darkness is very good, but the way the player interacts with darkness is frustrating. Luckily, someone made a mod that allows a smaller flashlight that works with the machine gun and shotgun. The constant switching between the flashlight and the gun meant that the player had to choose between being ready to shoot, or knowing where to shoot. Whenever I walk up to the door, I’m always thinking about what I should have ready. It doesn’t make a difference however, as there is always an imp ready to jump on you as soon as the door opens. This brings me to another aspect of the game that it relies too heavily on.

Boo. Did I scare you? if yes, this game is not for you. This game relies heavily on cheap thrills. Every room you go into, there is bound to be something that is going to claw/bite/throw fireballs at you . This ties in with the flashlight problem, as you always have to keep your gun ready for every time something pops out to kill you, but you can’t see it. At least this game is realistic enough to provide some light when you shoot your gun. The scare tactics are used so much that they almost become a parody of themselves. For example, when there is armor laying near a wall, sometimes it turns out to be a door which the constructors of the place seemed to build only to house an imp. A small jump in fright, then I proceeded to mow it down with my chainsaw. In the small compartment that opened up, there was more armor. The exact same thing happened again! This had never happened before, was totally unexpected, and I ended up laughing at what had just happened.I heard that the expansion relies much less on this type of thing, but I have not tried it it yet.

This game is great in so many aspects, but it fails in so many others. This game seems to rely heavily on horror and tense environments. And it does well with things such as the ambiance and the way everything looks. It falls flat however, when the scare tactics start to become overused, and the player becomes desensitized to all the monsters that pop up. It would be much effective if it happened much less. It feels like it’s trying too hard. I have the feeling that if it was a game that was playtested and polished extensively, such as what Valve does, these issues would have been fixed, and given much more polish. Everything would combine effectively to create a great but scary game that would not have been so imperfect.It was a good job, but could have been much better.

edit: Well, I just learned what hotlinking is, and why not to do it. Seems like the pictures are down.

edit 2: pictures are back up.

As I was setting up Mandriva, I ran into a small problem. No sound. Stepping into the big scary world of Linux, I have no knowledge of many things. Sure, everyone knows about “the spinning cube”, but what do you do if your sound doesn’t work? Having an X-Fi card, I didn’t want it to go to waste so I used my favorite Linux documentation site, Google. I plonk in X-fi Linux compatibility, and to my dismay, I find that there is no support. No sound at all in Linux? Could I really use linux if I could not even hear anything? I didn’t want to go back to windows, so I kept on looking.

One of the unfortunate parts of being a first time linux user (or at least the first time I’ve used it seriously), is requiring a step by step guide on how to do certain things. My terminal knowledge is a joke, I only know cd, ls, makedir, and su. It was a godsend that I found a page explaining exactly how to get X-Fi to work. Head over to Usefuls to find out how exactly to do so. Also, there are some interesting things to read at the blog, like how to easily copy and paste in linux, or jpeg vs. png. For those with X-Fi problems, and not using 64-bit, this will be helpful.

As for why I’m not using the drivers offered by creative, for some reason it thought that I was using 32-bit mandriva, and I don’t know why. Whatever the reason, I have my sound working now, thanks to Usefuls.

So after reinstalling windows, hunting down drivers, and setting everything up properly, I realized that all I really needed in windows was steam. Since I had a fresh reinstall, that would mean I had to download and install everything. I’ve always wanted to try Linux, but it was always impractical, since I had some stuff installed that I needed, and it would take ages to get everything working smoothly on Linux. But now, with a fresh reinstall, why not install Linux as well? I downloaded it as I was working with the sound card drivers, and as soon as everything was working properly, I burned it onto a DVD and started it up.

The installation was pretty easy. I was able to understand mostly everything, and it was able to partition itself without touching windows. The only problem I had with it were the packages. As a first time Linux user, it was very confusing, and I didn’t know what everything did, and I wasn’t sure which ones I would most likely need or not. There also seemed to be a limit to the amount I could install, which sort of caused some issues. When I started installing all the packages, it seemed frozen. I clicked cancel, and nothing happened. After a couple of minutes, it started installing the packages, but then it canceled. It went back to the list of packages, but it was empty. It installed them properly however in the end. Apart from this, it was quite smooth.

I logged in, and it looked very clean and visually appealing. I saw 5 icons on the desktop, 2 which had to do with Mandriva which I deleted, since they weren’t useful. I was left with Home, Trash, and Storage Media. Basically, from here on out, I set about configuring everything to my liking. It took me a while to find out how to get Compiz working, until I realized that I had to get the proprietary drivers for my 8800GTX. I am still figuring out how to get Compiz-fusion working, or maybe it is and I don’t realize it. I downloaded the package, but I didn’t notice anything new. The effects are very nice, and it’s not just eye candy as it does do some useful things, especially with the multiple desktops. It is a very different environment, but it feels very flexible. Installing applications is as easy as looking through a list and selecting which ones I want. Updating is done for everything. It has only been my first day since installing it, so I still have a lot to learn, like tarballs. There is also a lot of programs that are 64 bit. I never realized that there were so many.

I do not really notice any difference between 64 and 32 bit. But then again, I’ve never used 32 bit linux, so all I can really go by is how much faster Linux is compared to windows. I did have one big problem however, and that is to do with flash. Come on now Adobe, can’t you make a version of flash that is 64 bit? The problem is not going to go away, as more and more people are going to use 64 bit machines. It is unfortunate that I can not do many things now, and until I find a workaround, I can’t even see the youtube videos I embedded on my site! Hopefully, adobe will get it’s act together and release 64 bit flash soon. While I wait for you, Adobe, I’ll be spinning my desktop-on-a-cube, while I watch a tropical storm on my desktop. Oh, did I forget to mention it’s free?