Ultimate Edition

Ultimate Edition, sometimes called Ubuntu Ultimate Edition, is a modified version of Ubuntu with a new theme and tons and tons of applications. To make room for all this stuff, Ultimate Edition is distributed on a DVD, rather than a CD. That said, at only 1.3GB, Ultimate Edition is one of the smalled DVD distros.

I would say that the target audience for Ultimate Edition (which I will call UE from now on) is definitely Ubuntu users looking for some modifications. For those people, one of the main reasons to choose UE is the theme. Most brown-haters will like the new back with blue highlights theme a lot. While I am not a huge fan of dark themes in general, this is one of the best I have ever seen. A lot of what makes this the case is the blue, which helps lighten certain parts. As with any Linux distro, you can change the theme if you don’t like it, but it takes some time and effort to make a really great theme.

Apart from the new theme, the main attraction of UE is all the installed applications. Almost every application most people will ever need is already there, plus a bunch more. So, unless you are working with a lot of audio or video stuff, if you don’t want to bother installing anything, UE might be a very good choice. I say unless you do audio or video work, because UE has relatively few applications in this category. Also, there are a number of distros designed specifically for audio and video work, such as Ubuntu Studio and Musix GNU/Linux.

If you are an Ubuntu user with a big hard drive who is not particularly worried about the bloat of all the included applications, UE is definitely worth a look. Additionally, if you don’t like Ubuntu’s default theme but do like Ubuntu, UE is a good choice for you, too.

Play Games in Linux…

For most hardcore gamers, Linux is taboo since they probably think that they cannot play their favorite Windows-only games with it. They do have a point of staying away from Linux, but if they knew that they can play some of their most wanted games on Linux, will they take the switch?

A program called Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) allows Unix-like computer operating systems on the x86 architecture to execute programs written for Microsoft Windows. Wine also provides a software library known as Winelib which developers can compile Windows applications alongside to help port them to Unix-like systems.

I have picked 10 of the most popular Windows-only games that are now playable in Linux for the hardcore gamers and for those who have just migrated to Linux and are missing these exciting games:

• World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft (commonly known as WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). It is Blizzard Entertainment’s fourth game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994. World of Warcraft takes place within the world of Azeroth, four years after the events at the conclusion of Blizzard’s previous release, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Blizzard Entertainment announced World of Warcraft on September 2, 2001. The game was released on November 23, 2004, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise. It is currently the world’s largest MMORPG in terms of monthly subscribers. World of Warcraft currently holds 62% of the MMOG market at 10 million subscribers. The current subscriber base for all MMOGs is 16 million.

• DotA Allstars

Defense of the Ancients (often referred to as DotA) is a custom scenario for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, based on the “Aeon of Strife” map for StarCraft. The objective of the scenario is to destroy the opponents’ “Ancient”. The two teams’ ancients are heavily guarded structures at opposing corners of the map. Players use powerful units known as heroes, and are assisted by allied heroes and AI-controlled fighters called “creeps”. As in role-playing games, players level up their hero and use gold to buy equipment during the mission.

The scenario was developed with the World Editor of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, and was updated upon the release of the Warcraft expansion The Frozen Throne. There have been many variations of the original concept; currently, the most popular is DotA Allstars, which has been maintained by several authors during development.

Since its release, Allstars has become a feature at several worldwide tournaments, including Blizzard Entertainment’s BlizzCon and the Asian World Cyber Games, as well as the Cyberathlete Amateur and CyberEvolution leagues; Gamasutra declared that DotA was perhaps the most popular “free, non-supported game mod in the world”.

• Half-Life 2

Half-Life 2 is a science fiction first-person shooter computer game and the sequel to the highly acclaimed Half-Life. It was developed by Valve Software Corporation and was released on November 16, 2004, following a protracted five-year development cycle during which the game’s source code was leaked to the Internet. The game garnered near unanimous positive reviews and received critical acclaim, winning over 35 Game of the Year awards for 2004. Originally available only for Windows-based personal computers, the game has since been ported onto the Xbox, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 video game consoles.

• NBA Live 07

The NBA Live series of basketball video games, published by EA Sports, is currently one of the leading National Basketball Association simulations on the market. Originally, the NBA Live series was released for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and SNES with NBA Live 95. The naming was changed from utilizing the last two digits of the year to the entire year number from 2000-2005, but returned to the original naming convention with NBA Live 06. NBA Live 07 was released for the Playstation 2, Xbox, PC, Playstation Portable, and the Xbox360. The major new feature for this year was an evolution of the freestyle superstars system.

• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a first-person shooter video game developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision for the PlayStation 3, Windows, and the Xbox 360. It is scheduled for release for Mac OS X in the third quarter of 2008. It is the fourth installment of the Call of Duty video game series, excluding expansion packs. The game breaks away from the World War II setting of previous games in the series and is instead set in modern times. The game is the first in the series to be rated Mature in North America. The title and game details were announced on April 25, 2007, and the game was released worldwide between November 6, 2007 and November 9, 2007. It became available on Steam on November 6, 2007 for pre-purchase, and was available to play on November 12, 2007.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare received considerable praise and has won numerous awards from gaming websites, including IGN’s “Best Xbox 360 Game”. It was the top-selling game worldwide for 2007, reaching over seven million copies as of January 2008.

• Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars

Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars is a real-time strategy video game developed and published by Electronic Arts for the Windows, Mac OS X and Xbox 360 platforms, and was released internationally in March 2007. The direct sequel to the 1999 RTS title Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun by Westwood Studios, a now defunct company that was taken over and liquidated by EA in 2003, Tiberium Wars returns the Command & Conquer series to its roots in the Tiberium story arc of the franchise, once again featuring the factions of the Global Defense Initiative and the Brotherhood of Nod, and also introducing a new extraterrestrial faction known as the Scrin. A first expansion pack to Tiberium Wars, titled Command & Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath, was released on March 24, 2008.

Tiberium Wars takes place in the year 2047, at the advent of and during the “Third Tiberium War” when the Brotherhood of Nod launches a worldwide offensive against the Global Defense Initiative; abruptly ending seventeen years of silence and crippling GDI forces everywhere. With the odds tipped in the Brotherhood’s favor this time, GDI field commanders rally their troops and begin to combat Nod’s second re-emergence, trying to restore lost hope.

• Final Fantasy XI Online

Final Fantasy XI, also known as Final Fantasy XI Online, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed and published by Square (later Square Enix) as part of the Final Fantasy series. It was released in Japan on Sony’s PlayStation 2 on May 16, 2002, and was released for Microsoft’s Windows-based personal computers in November 2002. The PC version was released in North America on October 28, 2003, and the PlayStation 2 version on March 23, 2004. In Europe, only the Windows version was released, on September 17, 2004. An Xbox 360 version was released worldwide in April 2006 for all regions, as the system’s first MMORPG and the first cross-platform MMORPG. The Xbox 360 version does not require an Xbox Live Gold account.

In January 2004, Square Enix announced that more than 500,000 users, using more than one million characters, were playing the game. As of 2006, between 200,000 and 300,000 active players logged in per day, and the game remains the dominant MMORPG in Japan. Four expansions for the game have been released, capitalizing on the game’s success.

• Guild Wars

Guild Wars is an episodic series of multiplayer online role-playing games created by ArenaNet, a Seattle game development studio and a subsidiary of the South Korean game publisher NCsoft. Three stand-alone episodes and one expansion pack were released in the series from April 2005 to August 2007. All Guild Wars games run on the Microsoft Windows platform.

The games in the Guild Wars series were critically well received and won many editor’s choice awards, as well as awards such as best value, best massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), and best game. Guild Wars was noted for being one of the few commercially developed games in the MMORPG genre to offer online play without subscription fees, its instanced approach to MMORPG play, and the quality of the graphics and play for computers with low specifications. In February 2008, NCSoft announced that 5 million units of games in the Guild Wars series had been sold. The sequel, Guild Wars 2, was announced in March 2007. It will have updated graphics and gameplay mechanics, and will continue the original Guild Wars tradition of no subscription fees. No release date has been announced.

• Unreal Tournament 2004

Unreal Tournament 2004 works right out of the box. Wine is not needed. Installing is as simple as making sure your graphics drivers are up to date and typing: sudo sh /media/cdrom0/linux-installer.sh. With UT2004 comes a host of full modifications also available for play. One example is Alien Swarm. Alien Swarm is a total conversion mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 created by Black Cat Games and initially released on May 28, 2004. If you’ve played UT2004 in the past, but never played Alien Swarm, its definitely worth a try!

• Day of Defeat: Source

Day of Defeat was originally a modification for Half-Life, but Valve released a new version based on the Source engine. This game requires Wine to play, but has a Platinum rating, so it involves little or no hassle. Another thing to note here is that Most of the other games based on the Source engine (Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source) are also playable with Platinum ratings using Wine.

Debian Comes to Live

Monday, September 01, 2008:  One of the oldest and most stable ‘free’ operating systems, Debian, has entered into a new phase of its life. The operating system is now available on live CDs as well. The current release of Debian’s Lenny (Lenny is the name of the version as Vista and XP are the names of the versions of Windows OS) is in beta stage and is available for users to download and try.

Windows and Mac users may not be much aware of what a Live CD is. The best thing about a Live CD is unlike Windows you don’t have to install it on your machine to use it; all you need to do is put the CD in the tray and restart the PC. Your PC will boot from the Live CD and you can use and test all the features of the operating system without installing anything on your hard drive. These Linux-based Live CDs are very helpful when your C drive of Windows gets corrupted and you have some critical data on it. You can simply put the Live CD and take back-up of your critical data, then do whatever you want to do with your C drive.

The GNU/Linux-based operating systems are gaining popularity these days as they are getting more and more user friendly and offering eye-candy looks. Another, or the major advantage of the GNU/Linux-based operating systems is they are virus-free. You will never have to install any anti-virus software or format your PC for removal of viruses. Another major advantage is that the Linux-based operating systems are available ‘free’ of cost as well; the GNU/Linux community defines the word free as in freedom, which implies you are free to do anything with the OS.

Now, coming back to Debian, it is one of the oldest and most stable operating systems. Many popular Linux-based operating systems are based on Debian — the most popular being Ubuntu. Till date, Debian did not have an option of Live CD, but last week, the Debian Live team announced the first beta of Debian Lenny’s Live images.

When you install a Linux-based system, you get most of the software along with it. For writing letters or word processing, there are OpenOffice.org and kOffice, free equivalents to MS Word, you get GIMP, an alternate to Photoshop, you get VLC and Amarok to watch movies and listen to song, you get PidGin, an awesome tool which allows you to log into Yahoo! Messenger, MSN, Gtalk and many more chat programmes simultaneously. In a nutshell, you will find almost everything you need for your day-to-day life in Linux. However, there are some commercial products which are not yet available for Linux.

Dell’s Smallest PC, Runs Ubuntu

Computers, which once used to occupy an entire room, today have shrunk to the size of a book. Intel’s Atom processor is further pushing the size envelope down making PCs smaller and smaller. Flowing in the same current, Dell has unveiled the Inspiron Mini 9 — a small, easy-to-carry device perfect for surfing the Web, chatting with friends, blogging, streaming content, uploading photos or enjoying favourite online videos, music and games. Dell calls it the best buddy of those who love to stay online.

With a starting weight of 2.28 lbs.1, digital nomads will value the Inspiron Mini’s durable design, with sealed keyboard and reliable solid state drive (SSD) memory storage. A bright 8.9-inch glossy LED display (1024×600) presents most Web pages with no left-right scrolling, and the keypads are large and easy to navigate. Standard built-in Wi-Fi means quick and easy wireless Internet access to hot spots in the home, on campus, in a local coffee shop, in the office or at a conference.

Powered by Intel Atom processor (1.6GHz, 512KB L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB), it runs on one of the most famous operating systems Ubuntu Linux 8.04 with custom Dell interface as well as Windows XP Home Edition SP3. The Mini 9 can have up to 1GB 2 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM, depending on your choice of configuration.

It also has a built-in Webcam, bundled with Dell Video Chat, making it easy to stay in touch using video chat, recording and sending video e-mails, or even PC-to-PC phone calls around the world. DVC even supports four-way calling, making virtual family reunions a reality. Its built-in Bluetooth enables easy wireless connections to Bluetooth-enabled accessories like a pair of stereo headphones, a mouse, a printer, etc.

Dell has teamed up with Box.net to offer exclusive Web-based file storage, access and sharing to Inspiron Mini users, including a free Basic plan with 2GB of remote storage space, expandable to 25GB. Dell’s Inspiron Mini will include a direct link to a Dell-exclusive home page on Box.net (www.box.net/dell), providing users with an easy way to add incremental online storage space to easily manage their digital lives. Individuals can safely and securely upload files of any type to their Box, including photos, videos, music, documents and presentations, and then access those files from almost anywhere on any device.

Box.net’s service requires no software to download. With its OpenBox platform, Box.net enables people to edit documents and photos directly from their Web browser and post media to their blog or social networks, further enhancing the mobility and user experience on the Inspiron Mini.