Nov 152015
 

Article by Mark

There has always been a silent war between Windows and GNU/Linux fans. The first one is developed by Microsoft and definitely not free of charge, while the second is not that widely used, but available to anyone as open source software. Linux comes with numerous pros for those that use it; over time, many people have realized these advantages and thus the use of Linux noted a growth of 0.11 points in 2015, reaching a 1.74% market share.

Nevertheless, the thing that’s point of interest in this article is how the increased use of Linux devices affected the growth of gaming on Linux. Linux gaming actually refers to developing and playing video games on this open source operating system. As most Linux fans probably know, the development of this idea started as an extension of already existing Unix gaming. It’s believed that the commercial Linux gaming platform was born back in 1994 when the popular game Doom was ported to Linux by Dave D. Taylor. Later on, Taylor was involved in many other projects that only further helped Linux gaming to become reality. For example, working in his free time, in 1996 he collaborated with id Software in order to make the game Quake available to Linux.

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Dec 022014
 

natronWorking on Linux but searching for some good software for your work ?

Now you have a new and powerful tool available for linux: Natron.

Natron is a free and open source video compositing software, similar in functionality to Adobe After Effects or Nuke by The Foundry.

The project is a free (Mozillla Public License v2) node-based compositor that relies on OpenColorIO for color management, OpenImageIO for file formats support, and Qt for user interface. It also works with 32bit float per channel precision and supports OFX plugins, both free and commercial.

Natron was started last year at Inria, a public science and technology institution that unites several research centres in France. Alexandre Gauthier, the lead developer of Natron, got the required funding from the institution, and last December he additionally won a “Boost Your Code” contest at Inria that offered him 12 months of paid development. In May this year, Alexandre presented the project at Libre Graphics Meeting in Leipzig.

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Apr 052014
 

lanius announce
Faster Than Light was one of my favourites games for 2013, and now they have just released a free expansion : Advanced Edition.

FTL: Advanced Edition is a major update that adds features to the original and is a free download for players who already own the original. It was released on Thursday, April 3, 2014

Faster Than Light (more commonly known as FTL) is a top-down, real-time strategy game on Steam, made by indie team Subset Games. The player takes control of the crew in a space vessel that’s in possession of critical information that must be delivered to an allied fleet several sectors away. However, to make the game more challenging, you are pursued by a large rebel fleet in every sector.

In keeping the story simple, the team has been able to create an in depth management system. You must maintain the ship when it’s damaged and make difficult decisions when under attack. For example, jumping in the middle of battle or taking energy from one source to power a weapon.

Jumping is how the player moves through the game, and, in some circumstances, the player may be near death, but can still escape battle. You will, of course, have encounters with the rebels. These are real-time, ship-on-ship battles which are the core of Faster Than Light’s gameplay, and, on quite a few occasions, the tension is increased through forcing you to make split-second decisions at every turn.
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How to measure memory usage in Linux

Article by me, first published on Openlogic.com Whether you are a system administrator or a developer, sometimes you need to consider the use of memory in GNU/Linux processes and programs. Memory is a critical resource, and limited memory plus processes that use a lot of RAM can cause a situation where the kernel goes out […]

Linux Games: Estranged: Act I

Recently (16 Jan 2014 ) this free to play game has been released for Linux on Steam. Estranged tells the story of a lone fisherman, whose ship is stranded on a mysterious island during a violent storm. Explore the rich environments and meet the curious inhabitants of the island as you find a way back […]