Nepomuk Semantic desktop in Ubuntu

If you want to read about what Nepomuk is, go here.

1. Install Dolphin, Nepomuk and KDE System Settings (Dolphin already has all needed dependencies, including Nepomuk, so no need to specify explicitly):
   

   sudo apt-get install dolphin systemsettings gtk2-engines-qtcurve

   
   


2. Try to call "nepomukserver" from terminal, just to make sure it is installed and works. It should give many outputs, which mean that it started indexing files.


3. Add "nepomukserver" command to Startup Applications


4. Restart Gnome session - Nepomuk will start automatically and run Strigi indexer

The indexing takes quite some time, depending on the number of files and folders under indexer. For my computer it took several hours, because I had large collection of music, films and books. There should appear and icon in the tray, which indicates the indexing process. You may open a menu on this icon, select "Configure File Indexer" and watch the current process of indexing. You can also choose, which folders Strigi must index, in the same dialog window. Another way to open this window is from KDE System Settings -> Desktop Search, which can be issued from terminal with "systemsettings" command. You may find useful to leave Desktop Search window open to watch the indexing process until it is finished.

In the meantime, run Dolphin, select some file (e.g. MP3) and press F11 - it will show a side panel with all meta-information about selected file. Until the indexing process is finished you may see strange incorrect information in Dolphin for imported file properties. For example, ID3 tags may contain something like ":aksdfh". This should change to normal when the indexing is over. You can control the indexing process from Desktop Search dialog described above.

The indexer also still contains some bugs. It may fail on some files. You can see, which file is problematic, by watching the indexing process in Desktop Search dialog. If you find that some folder with files cannot be indexed and Strigi fails on this folder, then you can exclude this folder from indexing from the same dialog, then click Apply and indexing process will start again (no worries, it will quickly skip all already indexed files and concentrate on not yet indexed ones).

Gnomifying Dolphin

While the search is going on, you can make Dolphin look more like a GNOME native GTK-based application (similar to how Nautilus looks like).

1. Run in terminal: kbuildsycoca4 --noincremental
   Don't pay attention to warnings it will give you.


2. Run systemsettings command from Terminal or from Alt-F2.


3. Open Application Appearance.


4. In section Style change Widget style to GTK+


5. In section Icons select something related to the current Ubuntu theme in Gnome. For example, I chose "Ubuntu-Mono-Dark"


6. Apply changes


7. Open Dolphin and make sure it looks like other applications in Gnome

Making Dolphin A Default File Manager

Since we now use Dolphin, you can make it a default file manager in your Ubuntu desktop.

1. Right click on Applications / Places / System menu, select "Edit Menus"


2. In the section Other change commands in both "File Manager" and "Open Folder" items from what they currently have to just "dolphin"


3. That's all. Open Places -> Home Folder to make sure it is now opened in Dolphin

After Indexing Is Finished

When the Desktop Search dialog shows that indexing finished, you may try Nepomuk in action.

1. Open Dolphin, choose some file (e.g. MP3) and remember its properties. Then type the value of one property in the "Search..." box and see if the file appears in the list


2. Assign several tags to a group of different files and search for the tags


3. Search for text content in one of your PDF or office documents

Now you can organize your media collections using existing properties and custom tags, group files by their meaning, assign comment to files, rate them and so on. Potentially its possible to integrate different applications, not only Dolphin, with Nepomuk, but this is a topic for another post.

THANKS: Nuclear Passion

 

LAG ZA gaming community

http://lagza.co.za/community

Openclonk

OpenClonk is the Open source successor of the Clonk gaming series.

OpenClonk is a project dedicated to the further development of the Clonk game series. Our goal is to improve and make the real strengths of Clonk more fun to play: Bustling mining, production lines and economy, fast and fiddly melees. Another focus lies on the further enchancement of the game engine and the extensibility/modability of the game content with C4Script which has always been one of the most important features of Clonk.

Add ppa:openclonkdevteam/releaseto the system's software sources and install OpenClonk from the package manager. More detailed instructions are available at LaunchPad. The ppa has only a Maverick build, so you will have to download http://www.openclonk.org/nightly-builds/ for newer editions.

Advanced Chess with Ubuntu

Here is a great tutorial on how to install two Chess engines which allow one to study the game, presumably by loading PGN from here

M.A.R.S a ridiculous shooter

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o73TDDfZtjE&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

http://mars-game.sourceforge.net

Debian packages:
mars-0.6.9-amd64.deb
mars-0.6.9-i386.deb

Game links

Alien Arena 2011 released

SuperTuxKart 0.7 Released

True Combat Elite

Xonotic, a Nexuiz fork

Linux Gamers Rock

While every day is Christmas for Ubuntu, I think this is great site for Linux Gamers. Enjoy

http://www.penguspy.com

Cave Story (Doukutsu Monogatari)

Great retro game with huge following in Japan.

wget  http://shii.org/pixel/linuxdoukutsu-1.01.tar.bz2

rar linuxdoukutsu-1.01.tar.bz2

cd linuxdoukutsu-1.01

run the bin file

Link to Cave Story Tribute Site

Steelstorm for Linux

More great development in the world of Linux gaming. Whole first episode of Steelstorm is free to play. Check the licensing details here.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fAVk05OyGQ&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Installation
Download the game from here, extract the archive and run the file steelstorm with executable permissions. The game graphics details is configurable so it will be playable on many system with few changes in settings.

More info at Official Website

THANKS: Ubuntuvibes

Dosbox Wizard

GR-Lida is a nifty Dosbox front-end which makes setting up games in Dosbox, ScummVM and VDMsound a lot easier. Nice piece of work for those who want to explore classic PC games.

http://www.gr-lida.org/

At last, a Duke Nukem 3D port for Ubuntu

This discovery made my day. The classic first person shooter Duke Nukem is available on Ubuntu

EDuke32 is an awesome, free homebrew game engine and source port of the classic Duke Nukem 3D

Follow the directions on the wiki to install.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al7i_v1a0m0&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

EDuke only comes with three levels, it is basically a port of the demo version which was released some time ago. To play more levels, you either have to purchase an original disk, or download the mods. Needless to say, there are quite a few mods available, as well as an editor, so you can create your own. Enjoy.

THANKS: Unixmen

Playing Doom Legacy on Ubuntu Lucid

ID Software's Doomsday Engine was released for most computer platforms. You can use it to play a number of legacy games in Ubuntu like Doom, Heretic and Hexen,  all kickass games whose commercial sell-by-date was probably around the turn of the century. Nevertheless some relatively free fun is still to be had, especially with Russian hacks and customisations which arose in the cold vacuum of cyberspace and in an age when RAM and graphics cards were relatively scarce. Believe it or not, people still hand over cash to play Doom on high-end iPhones and it amazes me that proprietary behaviour is relegating the platform to a quaint oddity. Let's free the iWad then?

This tutorial, based upon this one, is still a work in progress. Using it, I managed to get a game of Ultimate Doom going, minus sound.

1. First install deng

Add the closest or most recent deng repo for your distribution, in my case luckily, karmic. Check here for repo updates and campaign for more releases.

deb http://debian.keesmeijs.nl/ karmic-kees main
deb-src http://debian.keesmeijs.nl/ karmic-kees main

sudo apt-get update &&  install deng

2. Install the Snowberry launcher

Dependencies

First make sure you have snowberry's dependencies: python and a recent wxpython (available here at wxpython.org)

To get the latest wxpython add this key

curl http://apt.wxwidgets.org/key.asc | sudo apt-key add -

Add the following to your sources list

deb http://apt.wxwidgets.org/ [distro]-wx main
deb-src http://apt.wxwidgets.org/ [distro]-wx main

Where [distro] is your distro i.e lucid-wx main

Update then install python-wxgtk2.8

sudo apt-get update && install python-wxgtk2.8

LGP gaming demos

At least demos keep us in the loop. And hopefully the games will eventually be released as Open Source.

Welcome to the Linux Game Publishing demos website.

Here you will find the latest demos for each game published by LGP. You can download any of the demos and try them out for free!

Ballistics	2 Files
Candy Cruncher	1 File
Cold War	2 Files
Creatures Internet Edition	2 Files
Gorky 17	2 Files
Hyperspace Delivery Boy	1 File
Jets'n'Guns	2 Files
Knights and Merchants	2 Files
Majesty Gold	2 Files
Mindrover	2 Files
NingPo MahJong	1 File
Postal 2: Share the Pain	2 Files
Shadowgrounds	2 Files
Shadowgrounds Survivor	2 Files
Software Tycoon	0 Files
Soul Ride	1 File
X2: The Threat	2 Files

http://demos.linuxgamepublishing.com/

ShadowGrounds Survivor demo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arI-LtciO3E&feature=player_embedded

wget http://demofiles.linuxgamepublishing.com/survivor/survivor-demo.run

wget http://demofiles.linuxgamepublishing.com/survivor/manual.pdf

./survivor-demo.run

Lugaru goes open source

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxgxYxTWcOI&feature=player_embedded

http://www.playdeb.net

add the playdeb mirror  to software sources:

deb http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/getdeb/ubuntu lucid-getdeb games
deb-src http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/getdeb/ubuntu lucid-getdeb games

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install lugaru

Astromenace in Ubuntu

Great space shoot em up. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eOxBLgH1GI&feature=player_embedded

Viewizard Games repository
deb http://viewizard.com/linux debian/

from terminal:

$ wget http://www.viewizard.com/linux/viewizard-gpg.asc
$ sudo apt-key add viewizard-gpg.asc
$ sudo aptitude update
$ sudo aptitude install astromenace

THANKS: Lincudo

Mega games pack

A cool linux games iso packed with freedom.

http://www.cyvoc.net/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=36

Frogatto

One of my favourite games used to be Jazz Jackrabbit. Frogatto has a similar 2D look and feel but could do with an information bar instead of pop-up dialogues which I find slightly irritating. Great game though.

sudo wget -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/frogatto.list http://www.frogatto.com/apt/frogatto.list
wget -O- http://www.frogatto.com/apt/key.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install frogatto

THANKS: Ubutronics

Some extraordinary Ubuntu games

1. Install OpenTTD

[caption id="attachment_1991" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Low resolution, but fun"][/caption]

Found this great free gaming site, which nspired me to install the latest OpenTTD. In other words, the FREE version of Transport Tycoon Deluxe.

OpenTTD is the best of both worlds -- from previous recollections, LinCity was a poor contender next to the more popular & commercial SimCity and my initial reaction was -- you expect me to actually like 4bit colour? OpenTTD seems to have improved on the lot of Unix and Linux freaks who demand better graphics, (retro is only cool if you play Atari) and we can only hope it gets better.

You can either download the new deb from OpenTTD site or use the old one in the Ubuntu repos.

After installing it, you will have to install a few extra files.

You  can also use your original Transport Tycoon Deluxe data files (translation: you need to own a Transport Tycoon Deluxe CD) or use the free alternatives:

download OpenGFX, download OpenSFX and download OpenMSX.

Unstuff and move them into your /usr/share/games/openttd/data folder:

sudo mv <file> /usr/share/games/openttd/data

Now comes the interesting part. Once you start up OpenTTD.

Set the  resolution.

If you have a high end card, you might be a tad disappointed, play around a bit.  (Okay its not exactly  high-res utopia compared to Eternalands and Openlife), but it has its charms.

For starters, the ability to download extra modules ( I downloaded the Netherlands and Swiss Alps) which means you can share landscapes. Being open source, this  feature results in a hackers paradise and great place for kids.

If we can coax the developers to embrace a higher resolution: millions of colours as opposed to thousands, we could be on to something.

Considering its open source, I am sure this will happen soon. Better palettes for instance change the tonality of the resulting image landscape.

I rather like watching the end result of a couple of days of gaming. The  sheer complexity of the finished worlds means there could just be a new fad in sharing virtual real estate. Think about it. Do you really want to waste time building a cybertopia? Get the virtual architects out there to create one for you. Test the results -- which are bound to be more like art and less like a geography lesson, for which OpenTTD excels.

2.Install Osmos demo

This is a killer game and the demo has two introductory levels. Wish I had the $10 needed to burn the full version (translates into R80 which for me is two bags of groceries).

Download the latest osmos demo deb

3. Play Wormux

Amazing how some games evolve, from virtually nothing into virtual worlds on their own? Wormux is really looking stunning. Be warned its a 95mb download.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wormux/ppa

4. World of Goo Demo

When I first heard some geeks raving about World of Goo, I searched around the Net which looked like one giant sales pitch. Trawling through some of my RSS  subscriptions via Google Reader, I found a more sober appraisal,  along with the link to the demo.  A free sample which deploys the physics engine of my NVIDIA 8400GS.

Briquolo, a cool game

Type this in a console:

sudo apt-get install briquolo