Applications/Games-Related Links for September-October 2013
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2013-10-23 11:52:57 UTC
- Modified: 2013-10-23 11:53:55 UTC
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Applications
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Xnoise features a simplified interface. You see just the essentials: your media collection list and the title, album and artist for selections placed in the play list. The resizable media library sits openly on the left side of the application window. Its hierarchical tree design makes it easy to find any single track, artist, album or genre.
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Working remotely is not a new thing for Linux Administrators. Especially when he/she is not in front of the server. Generally, the GUI is not installed by default on Linux servers. But there may some Linux Administrators who choose to install GUI on Linux servers.
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Google has taken up development of Flash, calling it PepperFlash
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apt-fast is a “shell script wrapper” for apt-get and aptitude that can drastically improve APT download times by downloading packages with multiple connections per package. apt-fast uses aria2c or axel download managers to speed up the APT download time. Just like the traditional apt-get package manager, apt-fast supports almost all apt-get functions such as install, remove, update, upgrade, dist-upgrade etc. And one more notable feature is it supports proxy too.
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If you want to do quick everyday photo manipulations on a bunch of images, you will usually not go for Photoshop. Adobe Lightroom is what people inside the Photoshop universe will recommend you. Today we have an even greater solution for you. The formerly commercial, now Open Source tool LightZone will really excite you. The most enthralling thing is, it works totally different from anything you know…
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It’s a good week for music fans on Linux. Following the recent update to Banshee comes a new release of the lightweight Qt music player Musique.
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My daughters love the movie Pitch Perfect. I suspect our XBMC has played it more than 100 times, and I'm not exaggerating. Whether or not you enjoy young-adult movies about singing competitions and cartoon-like projectile vomiting, I'll admit it's a pretty fun movie. The question my girls ask me most often is about the audio-mixing software the protagonist uses to make her "sick beats".
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Clementine is one of the most popular music players in the Linux world, absolutely loved for the Amarok 1.4 way things work and the huge list of available services it can connect you with and please your ears and heart. The music player/organizer has already reached maturity releasing version 1.0 and then bug fixing and slightly enriching functionality with 1.1 that was released 9 months ago.
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Xnoise, a media player for GTK+ with great speed and lots of features that allows listening to music and playing video in a very intuitive way, is now at version 0.2.19.
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This will probably be the shortest post I have to offer, about a single application.
You should be able to guess what this does, just by reading the title.
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Take a semantic Zeitgeist-powered application/file launcher and bind it to the panel. What do you get? Something worth putting in the spotlight, that’s what.
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Have you ever seen a system monitoring tool that sticks to your desktop, refreshes automatically, can have various beautiful GUIs, is highly customizable and can provide plethora of information (including weather information, e-mail notifications etc.) related to your system? Well, I am not sure if there is any system monitoring software that contains all these features, except one — Conky.
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The console calculators I’ve seen thus far have been slanted toward the scientific, with each one striving to be exceptionally precise and capable of some very impressive math.
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LiVES, a simple-to-use, powerful video editor and VJ tool that allows users to combine realtime and rendered effects, streams, and multiple video/audio files, is now at version 2.0.6.
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Just a few days after the Pitivi 0.91 Alpha, the official release has occurred with support for the GTK+ 3.x tool-kit, GStreamer 1.x APIs, and is now powered by the GStreamer Editing Services.
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Proprietary
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You are a Linux user, addicted to Facebook, tired from getting your web browser open all the time on the Facebook page, and searching for a Linux application that can use Facebook chat without losing the performance and the features ?
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Hello Linux Geeksters. Maxthon, a freeware internet browser working on Windows and Mac OS X comes to the Linux platform. There is no release date available, but things will get interesting from now. Firefox and Chrome will be obligated to bring new features to the two browsers.
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Project Releases
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AbiWord 3.0 is finally out with support for the GTK+ 3.x tool-kit and a significant number of other new features to the GNOME-focused multi-platform open-source word processor.
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Highly-performant, Open Source Big Data distributed database in use at Adobe, CERN, Comcast, eBay, GoDaddy, HP, IBM, Instagram, Netflix, Plaxo, and Sony, among others, to create modern, data-driven applications
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OpenZFS is the truly open source successor to the ZFS project. Our community brings together developers from the illumos, FreeBSD, Linux, and OS X platforms, and a wide range of companies that are building products on top of OpenZFS.
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Samba, which has been bringing Windows-compatible file sharing to Linux servers, Mac servers, and desktops for years, takes another step forward.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Now I plan to release a series of how-to articles covering configuration of multi-layout keyboards in Linux. It is obviously a task for the desktop environment in use for the particular Linux distribution. Let's starts with the obvious leaders in the Linux world.
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If you want to know what video/audio codec are used for the video file you downloaded from somewhere, you can play the video itself. Most media player software such as VLC or MPlayer can display properties of a video file being played. However, there are command-line utilities that allow you to determine video properties quickly.
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The increasing popularity of Linux and Linux-native gaming platforms such as Steam is bringing mainstream gaming to Linux. If you are a hardcore gamer, you will probably pay great attention to the performance of the graphics card on your system. Many of you may be willing to shell out a couple of hundred dollars for high-end video cards to enjoy maximum gaming experience.
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The Novell networking protocol, IPX, is commonly used between Windows systems and NetWare servers (The IPX protocol). IPX stands for Internetwork Packet Exchange. This is a network layer that is commonly used with the SPX protocol that is the transport layer.
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ps displays information about active processes, with a number of custom fields that you can decide to show or not. For the purposes of this article I'll focus on how to display information about memory usage. ps shows the percentage of memory that is used by each process or task running on the system, so you can easily identify memory-hogging processes.
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Games
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Monaco is coming to Linux on Monday, October 21, breaking down another barrier to entry for crafty players. Monaco is already out on Xbox 360, PC and Mac, and it even has a European boxed collector's edition because it's a high roller. The Linux edition will have "a ton of free/new content," according to the announcement.
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We told you early in September that Shadowrun Returns (Steam Link) was going into beta soon and it looks to be finally hitting our digital shelves.
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These days, everyone is suddenly extolling the virtues of "open-source" gaming consoles, such as Valve's upcoming Steam Box, Nvidia's (NASDAQ: NVDA ) Shield handheld console, the kick-starter-funded Ouya, and the new Mad Catz M.O.J.O.
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"Linux has been around for so long that you wonder what Valve are thinking, but it does serve their interest in that this is a FOSS OS that can be picked up by any OEM," suggested Lewis Ward, a research manager at IDC. "What Valve is doing could have the potential not to work but, from my experience, they're very careful about how they go about doing what they do."
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While more and more closed-source games -- ranging from indie titles to AAA games -- are heading to Steam ahead of SteamOS and Steam Machines, there still isn't too many open-source games on Valve's digital distribution platform. Here's some information why one of the more popular cross-platform open-source first person shooters isn't yet to be found on Steam.
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DICE is interested in developing for Linux, and feels the OS need only one “killer” game for the platform to become mainstream. Speaking with Polygon, DICE’s Lars Gustavsson said the team wants to get into Linux development “strongly”.
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It would only take one "killer" game for the Linux platform to explode its way into mainstream gaming, DICE creative director Lars Gustavsson told Polygon, revealing that the development studio would "strongly" like to get into Linux.
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If you haven't heard by now, there's a new gaming system called SteamOS that is trying to bring the world of PC gaming into the console-dominated living room. A custom Linux operating system that has been optimized specifically for video games, SteamOS is causing all sorts of excitement in the gaming community.
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The Bard's Tale, an RPG developed and published by the famous inXile Entertainment studio, has arrived on Steam for Linux.
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Total War developer ‘absolutely intends’ to support SteamOS
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Net Games Laboratory, an independent development studio founded by veterans of some of Eastern Europe’s most successful online gaming companies, today announced that its team-based arcade space shooter Cannons Lasers Rockets will launch for PC, Mac and Linux on digital download platforms in November 2013. An online space shooter in which players choose from hundreds of spaceships to customize and team up to defeat other groups of players in fast-paced dogfights, Cannons Lasers Rockets’ highly-competitive gameplay draws from MMOs and MOBAs alike to create a new space combat experience. The game will be playable cross-platform across PC, Mac and Linux at launch, with mobile releases planned for later dates.
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Would you consider buying an Oculus if Steam games start to support it?
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Fistful Of Frags - First person shooter set in the Wild West times. Take part in frenzy team versus shootouts or play cooperative missions against AI managed enemies. Most of the classic black powder guns are available in single or dual wield setup.
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Q-Games' fourth title in its PixelJunk series, PixelJunk Shooter, is migrating from PS3 to PC, Mac and Linux on 11th November.
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Major figures across the games industry have come out in support of Valve’s new SteamOS operating system, part of the company’s new approach to bring PC gaming into the living room.
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Running a SteamOS system is not quite as straightforward as buying a new game console, or even gaming on a Windows PC or Mac. If you're scratching your head over the system's niceties, inner workings and possible benefits, look no further: Tom's Guide has provided answers in a convenient Q&A format.
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Valve's Mike Sartaina briefly talks about Nvidia's involvement with the Steam Machines prototypes.
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"This is another example of Linux moving into a sector and taking over," suggested blogger Kevin O'Brien. "The proposed new Steam Box is good, but for any dedicated gamer, PCs are where the real action is. I think this can benefit all Linux users by getting Nvidia to open their drivers. Nvidia may not care about Linux users, but they won't ignore Valve."
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Valve has just announced a new Beta version for its Steam Linux client, this time with just a few changes and fixed.
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'The Raven - Legacy of a Master Thief' is a thrilling crime adventure in three chapters from the creators of 'The Book of Unwritten Tales'. Full of twists and turns, it immerses you in both sides of the story, combining thrill-of-the-chase whodunit with the risk and reward of a heist story.
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The Dead Linger is the definitive zombie apocalypse survival horror experience! Set in a planet-sized, procedurally generated world, survivors learn to fight, run, and survive against the never-ending and relentless zombie hordes.
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Alien Arena is a free, open-source first-person shooter built around the CRX engine, an open-source, Quake-based engine. It features a fast-paced gameplay taking place in a Sci Fi universe over dozens of maps. Alien Arena provides both single-player and multi-player modes.
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Of the newest game releases on Steam, around 20% of them are supporting Linux from the start, but that will certainly rise.
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Valve has been very clear that there will be a number of manufacturers making a number of living room-centric boxes running the recently announced SteamOS. Still, there's a lot of attention being paid to the prototype box Valve is creating and distributing free to 300 lucky beta testers this year (before the boxes get a wider launch next year).
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Today the high-end gaming industry is controlled by two players Sony and Microsoft. It’s becoming a very tightly controlled walled garden leaving no place for 3rd parties.
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After last week announcing Steam Machines as the Valve-backed Steam "living room consoles" (a.k.a. Steam Box) powered by the Linux SteamOS, today Valve has released the prototype hardware details that they will be shipping to 300 beta testers.
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In an interview Friday Ryan Gordon talked with Kris Graft of www.gamasutra.com about Linux gaming development. With so many notable quotes available, it's difficult to pick just one for the teaser. The central theme of Gordon's responses is that Linux is a viable platform for gaming - more now than ever.
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Valve has completed their string of announcements this week for their Steam Machine, and today's announcement was not what everybody wanted (a Half-Life 3 announcement), but a reveal of their controller for the Steam Machine.
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Chip company and graphics specialist Nvidia has put its considerable weight behind Valve's Linux-based SteamOS.
By announcing plans to optimize the Linux-based SteamOS for its own range of components, Nvidia has ensured that Valve's free operating system has a fighting chance and becomes a viable option for many PC gamers.
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If Monday’s announcement of SteamOS was greeted with a great deal of interest and speculation, Wednesday’s announcement that Valve was getting into living room PCs with broad compatibility and a full range of supported hardware was a major letdown. The limited information available doesn’t point to much of anything beyond “We’re doing a cheap living room PC.” So what are the options and potential for a Steam Box? To answer that, we need to consider three separate questions. Valve’s just-unveiled controller, while interesting, is unlikely to be the peripheral that makes or breaks the device, particularly since it’ll work on the Windows side of the equation as well.
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Just a few days after it was released, I purchased the game, Deluxe Edition, at USD64.99. Even though this is a hefty price, I wanted to support both Bohemia Interactive as well as Steam for their gallant Linux efforts.
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The Valve developers have been releasing their catalog of 3 at a steady pace, and now Half-Life: Source and Half-Life Deathmatch: Source have officially exited the Beta stages.
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Neverending Nightmares is a psychological horror game featuring a truly interactive narrative structure allowing the player to shape the outcome of the game. The player character navigates a chilling and constantly shifting reality as they experience false awakenings into new and different nightmares.
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Valve also promise that they’re working on bringing music, TV and movie services to SteamOS...
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It's been a while in the making...
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Independent developer Polypusher Studios is delighted to announce the imminent release of its debut game, Montague’s Mount. The Irish studio has been working closely with UK publisher Mastertronic to complete the title and it will be launching digitally on October 9, 2013. Developed for PC, Mac & Linux, Montague’s Mount will be available on Good Old Games, Get Games and GamersGate. Fans of Steam can vote for the game on Greenlight.
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Chainsaw Warrior (Steam Link) from Games Workshop is the classic nail-biting game for one strong-nerved player!
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So two bits of Steam news for you, Valve has put 64bit support for Linux games into Steam now on the official non-beta client and also announced family sharing of games.
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2013 may go down in history as the year gaming came to Linux. It feels like there's news of a new release every week, and they only seems to be comming faster. On the Steam platform alone, there's almost 200 games for Linux users to download.
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Open source gaming console and kickstarter legend OUYA is facing some harsh criticism over what appears to be the bungled handling of a questionable campaign. OUYAs “Free the Games” fund promised to match funds raised by game developers on crowd funding sites like Kickstarter or Indiegogo.
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Worlds of Magic is a 4X game being developed by a team of Master of Magic fans, determined to recapture the gameplay feel of the original MoM but with updated technology. Worlds of Magic was covered on GOL here during its successful crowdfunding campaign in April and has been making steady progress since then.
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