Beebem, the BBC micro emulator

This is certainly one of the better BBC micro emulators. The BBC (Acorn) computers were really something. I found a great tutorial at muffin research, and the steps below are copied from there.

# Install the dependencies
sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev libgtk2.0-dev build-essential

# create a directory
mkdir beebem && cd beebem

# Get the source files and patches
wget http://beebem-unix.bbcmicro.com/download/beebem-0.0.13{.tar.gz,_64bit.patch,-keys.patch,_menu_crash.patch}

# Unpack the main source-code
tar -xzf beebem-0.0.13.tar.gz

# patch the source-code
for file in *.patch; do patch -p0 < $file; done

# Change directory into the source-code directory
cd beebem-0.0.13/

# build it
./configure --enable-econet
make
sudo make install-strip

#Run beebem /path/to/file

F12 will pop up an interface to change disks.

BBC Links

http://www.bbcmicrogames.com/

http://www.nvg.ntnu.no/bbc/

http://central.kaserver5.org/Kasoft/Typeset/BBC/Contents.html

Interactive Fiction on Ubuntu

[caption id="attachment_2762" align="alignleft" width="273" caption="pillow, an interactive story displayed in the gargoyle-free reader"][/caption]

sudo apt-get install gargoyle-free

then hop over to http://www.ifarchive.org and download some interactive fiction.

http://www.ifwiki.org/ is also helpful.

Snapfly

If you use Openbox Window Manager you might be interested in this project

http://code.google.com/p/snapfly/

Fragmentarium

Fragmentarium is an open source, cross-platform IDE for exploring pixel based graphics on the GPU.

It is inspired by Adobe's Pixel Bender, but uses pure GLSL, and is specifically created with fractals and generative systems in mind.

Features:

• Multi-tabbed IDE, with GLSL syntax highlighting.


• User widgets to manipulate parameter settings.


• Different 'mouse to GLSL' mapping schemes.


• Modular GLSL programming - include other fragments.


• Includes simple raytracer for distance estimated systems.


• Many examples including Mandelbulb, Mandelbox, Kaleidoscopic IFS, and Julia Quaternion.

Fragmentarium is built in C++, OpenGL/GLSL, and Qt 4.

Build Instructions (Linux)

These instructions should work for Ubuntu 10.10 (but will likely work on other distributions as well). If you encounter graphics trouble, you might have to turn off any advanced 3D desktop effects.

You will need to have a C++ compiler, X11, Qt4, and OpenGL development libs (and Git if fetching the source directly from the repository):

# sudo apt-get install build-essential libx11-dev mesa-common-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libxext-dev libqt4-opengl-dev


(No line breaks!)

Get the source.

git clone https://github.com/Syntopia/Fragmentarium

Build Fragmentarium.

Navigate to the 'Build/Linux' directory

chmod +x build.sh

and run the build script:

$ sh build.sh

The Gawker Network hacked

Great post on the Gawker network hack

How it unfolded, blow for blow

Dealing with cue bin data files

This how to guide, tutorial will give you a program that will extract your cue bin files under any Linux system.

1. Install bchunk first. Under Ubuntu use the command sudo apt-get install bchunk, for a different distribution use the http://he.fi/bchunk/


2. Now enter the following command bchunk <file.bin> <file.cue> <basename> where the file.bin is the file that contains the actual data (e.g for example Music.mp3 file that is 50MB and contains 15 mp3 files), file.cue is the catalogue file and basename is the name of the "output" that extracted files will go to. This command will create an iso image caled basename.iso or a basename.cdr file depending upon how the bin was encoded.

Dealing with the ISO

1. Enter the following comand: sudo mount -o loop basename.iso /mnt, this command will mount the iso file to /mnt


2. List the content using sudo ls /mnt

Dealing with the .CDR

The  .cdr  tracks are in the native CD audio format. They can be either written on a CD-R using  cdrecord  -audio,  or  con‐

verted to WAV (or any other sound format for that matter) using sox.

Another way of dealing with .cdr is to try the bchunk process again with the -w option which will output to .wav format which you can then either convert to ogg or mp3.

XplanetFX real-time earth wallpaper

XPlanetFX is an incredible tool for rendering high quality real time earth wallpaper in Ubuntu. XplanetFX comes with a handy GTK interface which makes things a whole lot simpler

MORE Tech Drive-in

Afros Live

If you enjoy alternative operating systems, then you might have some fun playing with Afros, which is an ARAnyM (Atari Running on Any Machine)  Emulator  system configured to boot on top of Slax  Linux. You can also simply install ARAnyM from the ubuntu repos, otherwise download the live CD. I like where this project is headed even if it is a a slightly older demo, and hoping my posting will encourage future development, one can only dream, but who knows, the project might just manage to develop into its own installable distro, if only so that people can brag about using an Atari?

As yet there appears to be no way of installing Afros, which is simply a live CD which you can either boot, or run as a VM in virtualbox. First person to do so, wins the 1990 retro computer of the year award.

Compared to my earlier attempts at running ARAnyM, this LIVE version is supreme, reason being,  the TERA desktop and inclusion of software like the QED wordprocessor and aniplayer. Remarkably fast, it could lend itself to the kind of thing happening in Haiku OS which is an attempt to create an open-source version of Be-OS. If only Atari would realise the benefits of open-source and stop being so protective over their brand, which at one point was up there with Apple.

Surely a parallel universe in which Atari and Acorn prevailed over the Macintosh?

[caption id="attachment_2734" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Afros running in Virtualbox showing 2010 Highwire browser for Atari"][/caption]

"ARAnyM/AFROS Live CD is a SLAX-based bootable CD with a small collection of GNU/Linux software, the ARAnyM and the AFROS. It boots and runs completely from CD, does not write anything to the harddrive on its own (but you can write to harddrive from inside the AFROS using the drive D: so be careful!) and so it is relatively safe to try out. It is meant as a demo version of ARAnyM/AFROS. It is not the dreamed Installation CD of ARAnyM yet (although it could be modified to work so)."

"The underlying Linux kernel and related software provide the CD autoboot, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, networking and USB devices and other peripherals. ARAnyM plus AFROS provide our familiar and friendly TOS/FreeMiNT/GEM operating environment. It's all integrated seamlessly and after PowerOn boots straight to the Teradesk (GEM desktop)."

"ARAnyM/AFROS Live CD is distributed in the form of a CD ISO image which is the usual way of distributing CDs electronically. The ISO image file can be burnt on a CD-R/RW and so you'll get an exact copy of the AFROS Live CD I created on my machine. You can get it in our SourceForge.net download area.

Monofree: Keep mono from your system

the release of Monofree brings another tool to help prevent the microsoftication of Ubuntu.

A while back, I wrote a post on how to clean mono from your system, my information was gathered from blogs arround the net.

But that information was quite outdated and a lot of it did not apply to mono 2.0 which is in Ubuntu now. I also recommended mononono to prevent mono from being pushed back on your system, but that too is outdated.

That’s why I used the list of low-level packages Jo Shields pointed out to create my own version of mononono called monofree that will clean Mono 2.0 and it’s applicaions from your system.

Lutris, universal gaming platform for Ubuntu

Lutris is a platform for easy installation of games similar to Software Center

The amount of games available is amazing (keep in mind that they are still starting) and we can find free software or private, including games for Windows will install simply with the help of this program and Wine . We also have games for emulators (MAME, NES ....)

Lutris is still in a very early stage of Development, so it's not yet available for Every Linux distribution. The package provided Should work on Ubuntu 10.04, 10.10 and Debian Squeeze.

Download the Deb

Desktopography

Some great wallpapers at http://desktopography.net/

Apple dumps GPL apps from its Appstore

Developers are squaring up for a clash between Apple's Terms of Service (TOS) and the Free Software Foundation's GPL license which is the basis for most open source (free, gratis and libre) software.

First casuality has been the popular VLC media player, which has been dumped by over-zealous Apple executives unwilling to amend the TOS to allow for freedom.

It appears the  General Public License (GPL) clashes with the Apple App Store’s Terms of Service (ToS).  Rémi Denis-Courmont, a Linux developer and the popular VLC media player,  announced this week that Apple had pulled the popular GPLed VLC media player from its App Store.

Denis-Courmont wrote, “On January 7th, Apple removed VLC media player from its application store for iDevices. Thus the incompatibility between the GNU General Public License and the AppStore terms of use is resolved – the hard way. This end should not have come to a surprise to anyone, given the precedents.”

Denis-Courmont  pointed out that Apple’s ToS conflicted with VLC’s GPLv2 licensing on October 25th when he sent a formal notification of “copyright infringement"  to Apple Inc. regarding distribution of the VLC media player for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

VLC media player is free software licensed solely under the terms of the open source GNU General Public License (a.k.a. GPL). Those terms are contradicted by the products usage rules of the AppStore through which Apple delivers applications to users of its mobile devices.

In a note to the VLC membership list, Brett Smith, FSF Licensing Compliance Engineer, wrote that because “Apple ‘only’ allows you to do the activities in the list of Usage Rules, if an activity does not appear in this list, you’re not allowed to do it at all.”

Section 6 of GPLv2 says: Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients’ exercise of the rights granted herein.When the App Store terms prohibit commercial use, general distribution, and modification, these are exactly the kinds of “further restrictions” that are not allowed thanks to the last sentence here. This is a crucial part of the GPL’s copyleft.

THANKS ZDnet

How do I see how much free ram I really have?

Too see how much ram is free to use for your applications, 

run free -m and look at the row that says "-/+ buffers/cache" in the column that says "free". That is your answer in megabytes:

$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1504       1491         13          0         91        764
-/+ buffers/cache:        635        869
Swap:         2047          6       2041
$

If you don't know how to read the numbers, you'll think the ram is 99% full when it's really just 42%.

THANKS: Linux ate my ram

Last reboot

Want to find out how long your computer has been on since the last reboot? Simply enter into a terminal:

last reboot

It will actually give you a list of the last few reboots, with the latest on top, and display the results as so:

Fri Aug 21 10:43 – 10:24 (5+23:40)

If you just want the last login, and happy to have is displayed like 2009-08-21 10:43, simply enter:

who -b

THANKS: Ubuntu Genius