Even though we run linux doesn't mean we don't like to game. So here it looks like there's going to be a shift in the linux gaming community. Steam has just launched a beta for a linux steam client. You can sign up here and maybe you'll get chosen to be a beta tester.

Now for linux gaming there are two other options, which are wine and crossover linux. Wine is opensource and supported by the community and crossover linux is based on wine but where you pay for a year subscription/license a year for updates and support. I thought I'd try out crossover linux and see how it runs. Two of my favorite games are UT99 and UT2K4. Here's what I did to get it running via crossover linux.

1. I got a subscription/license, which costs about 51 euros a year and gives you 12 months of support. But you can also first try the trial first.
2. You get the package for your distro. There's packages for debian, redhat,fedora,mandriva,suse. If you don't have the list you can also use a binary to install from. I'm running debian.
3. A package that crossover is dependent on is ia32-libs. Install it: sudo apt-get install ia32-libs
4. Then you can install the crossover package: sudo dpkg -i ia32-crossover_11.2.1-1_amd64.deb
5. It'll start installing and let you know when it's complete.
6. Insert your dvd/cd into your drive. I'm installing UT99/UT2K4. Once it loads, brows into your drive where you will probably find a setup file. Right click and select run with crossover linux.
7. Crossover linux wil start, you can scroll down to Community Supported Applications/Other Application.
8. Next you can select what virtual system you want to run it as. I chose vista. Select it give it a name, and click on install.
9. It'll create your virtual bottle as they call it and you will get a a flash error(at least for my install). You can click on autofix and an installation wizard should start.
10. After this  you should get a screen where you can click on Install and the rest is pretty much following the game installer wizard.
11. After install is complete, you can go to your menu, and you will have a new menu option called "Windows Applications" Here your game is installed and you can open it and run your game.
12. Your game wil start and you can set your video settings to match your screen size.

Now startup TeamSpeak and startup UT99/UT2K and have some fun


Here's a screenshot:

Linux Mint 13 RC has been released. Linux 13 is based on ubuntu 12.04


Here's a link to more detail information if you're interested

For those of us who like ubuntu LTS releases, ubuntu 12.04  was released  yesterday.  This release will have support for five years.
There's are a few different images for you to pick from two download.


IntelX86 and AMD64

Desktop Install: for those running ubuntu on your desktop
Alternate Install: for those wanting to running ubuntu on your desktop but want to encrypt and setup lvm during install and several other tools.
Server Install: for those wanting to run ubuntu as a server

http://www.ubuntu.com/download

I've been wanting to filter my own network traffic by running it through a proxy. So I did some reseach of how to
set it up and configure it. My first plan was to use squid and dansguardian but I found an easier way to do it.
Here's how I did it for those who come across this post.

I used squid and openDNS:

1. Install Squid: yum install squid
2. Configure Squid: add hostname, user/group, port, and DNS option

*Edit configuration file with you favorite editor: vi /etc/squid/squid.conf
a. Add: visible_hostname Proxy-name
b. Add: cache_effective_user squid
c. Add: cache_effective_group squid
d. Add: shutdown_lifetime 20 seconds
e. Add: port 3128 to:  http_port 3128
f. Add DNS option: dns_nameservers 208.67.222.123 208.67.220.123 #OpenDNS Nameservers
g. uncommented: cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid 100 16 256
h. save your file: :wq

3. Restart Squid: service squid restart
4. Edit your firewall: I used system-config-firewall-tui
a. Add tcp port 3128 and run through the options, no others needed and when done iptables will be restarted.
4. for the client side you need to setup the proxy for firefox or whatever browser you want. I use firefox.
a. Extra-->Options-->Advanced-->Network-->Settings: manual proxy configuration: set your ip/port: 192.168.1.100:3128
b. Klik Ok and try browsing(Test).
c. Done.

On my home situation I don't need to lock out the clients from being able to edit the browser options. But you can change
the rights if you need it for your situation:

Ubuntu:
1. chown root /usr/bin/gnome-network-properties
2. chmod ug-x /usr/bin/gnome-network-properties

Window: You probably only need to let your users login with normal users accounts.

You can also force all the pc's on your network to go through your proxy via iptables, but I didn't find it
necesarry. Another way of filtering your webcontent is by using dansguardian, but I find this way just as effective
and easier to do setup. With Dansguardian you can add your own blacklists/whitelists of sites. The only disadvantages I found
is that you have alot of configuring to do, cause when you set it up and add a blacklist. You have to whitelist everything that's
blacklisted in your blacklist folder. Example I wasn't able to access a topic on this forum because I had the word porn in the topic.
I'm real happy with OpenDNS and when you get redirected from a blocked porn site you can also click on send messages to
system administrator using your openDNS account email adress which you can set in the OpenDNS panel and the most important
thing is that it's free

Fedora 17 moving Linux system folders to /usr


Developers are busy working on Fedora 17 and found out they are making a few changes. What changes? They are moving some system files to the /usr directory.
The Following directories will be moved there: /bin /sbin /lib and /lib64 including their sub directories. For now they will keep a symbolic link from the / directory to the
/usr directory, that is to prevent compatibility issues with older Linux software and scripts. This way making it only possible to have a few system files under root and letting
the system creating a seperate mount point for the system files under /usr . Why are they doing this? The simplified directory structure brings advantagesto virtualization
and cloud computing. And developers want to improve  compability with other unix varients and GNU software. See more information here. What do you think of this?
change?






Sources: tweakers.net and linux.com

SOPA has nothing much to do with Linux but with free(opensource) internet. Here's a video about SOPA that I found interesting and I hope all Americans vote against it and the rest of the world fight against it.

Remember a while back when a US drone crashed? Well the cause of the problem that caused it to crash seems to have
been a malware infection. Here's a picture of the controls is 2009 . Check the middle screen between the two pilots. Recognize the well know windows menu bar? And here's a more recent picture from 2011 The second picture is really a clear picture. But how cool is that


source

I came across an interesting articleshowing the statistics about what distro is the most popular as a webserver. It was CentOS
but just recently Debian took that position back. With Ubuntu in 3rd place but not even close to be being 2nd. I wonder why
Debian has become more popular then CentOS as a webserver and why webmast favorite distros change so quickly. Interesting
to see how there are a variety of linux distros all used as webservers even though I expected before I came across this that most
webservers would be CentOS/RHEL. Interesting how wrong our perception of things can be sometimes. I'm still running SL as
a webserver, and have never used Debian as a webserver before. Does make me curious and thinking of maybe trying debian as
a webserver just to feel and see the differences. What does your webserver run on?

Awesome to hear a story like this  that Linux migration from windows to Linux has been a a success. I was thinking now days with so many countries in financial trouble and have to cut down on expenses. Replacing windows with Linux with cut down on  quite a bit of expenses. The only downside of it would be that it would take a lot of time to plan and it may cost alot, but it would only be a one time project thing. Once they get it setup and running their expensive would go down when using opensource software and not having to  buy windows licenses and alot of other software licenses. For most software you have an opensource alternative and for the ones that you don't. You'll have extra to spend on licenses from where you saved on. And if more governments started doing this there would be more Linux development and eventually there would be an alternative for Linux for most windows software. That way home consumers would feel more free/comfortable to try out Linux and eventually windows would become less needed/necessary than it is today. Only thing is getting used to a new OS takes time. Well that's just my thought of saving money in this financial crisis time.

Ever get tired of looking at the same wallpaper for days, tired of having to change it yourself? Well, I did and I went to search for a solution. I came across good wallpaper changer. There are deb, rpm, and even dmg packages available for installation. All you have to do is install the package and you are ready to go.  What configuration options are there? You can set it to automatically change your wallpapers x minutes, x seconds, x hours. You can select how you want them display: scaled, centred or scaled and cropped,etc. You can select folders and sub folders from your local pc. Still feeling lazy? and don't want to search for wallpapers yourself? No worries there's a setting for that too. Where you can select google or yahoo and several others images hosters too to load wallpapers from key search words or phrases. Here's the link to Wally if you want to get started

I was hoping this wouldn't happen but looks like this is the end of skype for linux users. Microsoft bought skype and now they are banningreverse engineering of the skype code.
Haven't used skype much, but it was a great app. I'll be looking for a good alternative.

The world mourns not just the loss of one but two large names in IT.

http://www.theregist...dennis_ritchie/

He knew what he started, and it ain't over yet.

Dennis, from one geek to another - I salute and thank you for your vision and inspiration, and what you've achieved in your uptime.

init 0;

I'm sure all of us have read it in the news already. Even though it's not about linux and I'm not an apple person, I thought it'd be good
to have a moment of silence for Steve Jobshere on the forum too. RIP Steve!!

Linux website kernel.org has been hacked and is offline. The hackers managed to get root user access.
Kernel.org is offline; They are still investigating the attack and making backups and doing reinstalls
I wonder what effect this hack will have on linux and linux users?No online system is safe, everything
can be hacked but if kernel.org got hacked and their security must be high. What are the chances of
your system or my system getting hacked?

Source

It's all over the web, rumors about Ubuntu switching over to a monthly release cycle. Seems like Ubuntu is following up
Firefox's example(copying Firefox?!). A reason behind it, because people like to explore. There would be no more code
names and updates would go through /etc/apt/sources.list just like Debian's testing repository(copying Debian?!). Problem
with this is same as the problems with Firefox moving too fast. Developers not being able to keep up and having alot less
time to develop decent applications for the OS. Applications would have more bugs making ubuntu even less stable Other
problems would be users losing confidence in the Operating system. Who wants to upgrade their OS every month? or
re-install every month?I know I don't, a 6 month release cycle I already find short. That's why I switched from Ubuntu to
Debian and same reason why I never liked fedora. But one month release cycle is insane!!Any Ubuntu users here?!I'm glad
I'm not What are your opinions on this? I sure hope for the Ubuntu users they don't make this mistake of switching to a monthly
release cycle.

source