Linux Mint Debian Edition - First Impressions

This morning I got up early and replaced my Ubuntu 10.10 installation with a nice shiny install of Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE). LMDE is based on Debian testing, and is a rolling release. I've always wanted to try a rolling release, and one based on Debian ticks all the boxes. The important thing is that Debian and Ubuntu share the APT packaging system which thinking about it, is probably the main reason I use Ubuntu.

I've used regular Linux Mint a few times in the past and I've always been impressed, although I always end up back on Ubuntu, I'm not really sure why that is, probably that I can't wait to test out the newest stuff so I jump on Ubuntu as soon as a new release comes out. A rolling release of course solves that problem.

Reverse Engineering the Abandonware Game "Ignition"

Ignition has always been one of my favourite racing games. It had a quirky charm that was reminiscent of Micro Machines, but set in beautiful outdoor environments.

It's now one of the most prominent cases of Abandonware ever. First published by Virgin Interactive, which was acquired by Titus Software, which then became Avalon Interactive. Both Titus and Avalon no longer exist. So who owns the rights to the game (and more importantly who has the source code) is a mystery.

The other day I decided to take a look at the files that come with Ignition, I wondered if there was anything salvageable for an indie game developer. Perhaps I could knock together a level viewer or mod the game. The first thing I noticed is that Ignition uses a lot of different file formats.

PPA For My Game Developer Kit

So, I've spent the last few months focusing on developing cross-platform games. I've started small with Ubuntu Bug Blast, and gradually I'm going to build to more and more complex games. The idea is that I will identify bottlenecks in development, and create small modular libraries to cover the repetitive parts of developing a game in OpenGL.

5 GUI Apps that Ubuntu is Missing

Ubuntu has come a long way in the past few years. I've been using it as my only desktop OS since Hoary, and it's come along in leaps and bounds. There are however a number of things that just seem to be "missing".

This list is a set of GUI apps that I have discovered to be missing, either on my own desktop (1, 2, 3, and 5) or while installing Ubuntu for friends (4).

Mellowing the Ubuntu Indicator Applets

Update: As of Ubuntu 11.04 Canonical has switched to using light blue icons for notifications. So, I can officially say "I told you so" :)

One thing that has bugged me since Canonical launched their Indicator Applet work was their chosen colour system. I'll explain...

Step Back to the 90s with this Mega Drive Emulator for Ubuntu

This post is a cross-post from Ubuntu Gamer

I don't know about you guys and girls, but sometimes I like reminiscing about my childhood by playing some good old Mega Drive (Genesis for those across the pond) games. You can't beat a good round of Sonic.

When it comes to Mega Drive emulators that run on Ubuntu, Gens/GS rocks. Gens/GS is a fork of the well known Gens emulator, and over the last several months the author has been cleaning up the source code and adding new features and bug fixes to create an awesome (open source!) emulator.

Using Multiple Wine Prefixes

This post is a cross-post from Ubuntu Gamer

Wine rocks. It is probably one of the most underestimated pieces of software in the open source ecosystem. If the idea of running pre-compiled programs from Windows on a totally different operating system with a different kernel, and different programming libraries doesn't make you cross-eyed with the complexity, then you aren't thinking about it hard enough.

Just to give some idea of the Herculean achievement that Wine is; the current number of lines of code that make up Wine stands at well over 2.5 million and the project was started in 1993.

The Wine developers don't just have a mountain to climb. To extend the metaphor, they have to climb the mountain, blindfolded, in a straight jacket while tied to a goat... drunk. Their work really is that hard.

Yet despite all that effort, Wine still isn't 100% perfect. Sometimes a Wine DLL will be missing some code, other times the code may not match what Windows does and occasionally a program assumes the existence of files that may not even necessarily exist on a native Windows installation (e.g. .NET).