Well, Slackware 11.0 is officially out after an exhaustive batch of release candidates and (due to some hideously attentive monitoring of the ChangeLog in recent weeks) I've already upgraded to this system. In fact, I've been downloading each new package for the last few weeks as and when they changed the Changelog, and about once every few days, I'd create a DVD and install it onto a copy of my primary partition to find problems before I took the plunge and actually started using it as my primary desktop (replacing an up-to-date, clean Slackware 10.2).
The upgrade, as ever, goes like a dream so long as you follow instructions *very* carefully - don't omit any steps. We won't mention my moment of idiotic forgetfulness where I forgot to upgrade the rc.udev file once I'd installed it or even failing to copy the initial /dev from my existing partition to the "mirror" partition that I was upgrading, both of which caused Slackware to fail to boot... One of those is mentioned in the upgrade.txt (transfer ALL the .new files across! In a moment of blindness, I omitted rc.udev.new), however the other was just common sense if you intend to work from an accurate copy of your existing system! Those installing onto a clean partition should have no problem at all.
After many, many tests (I was, after all, performing a major operating system upgrade on a system that was still being used for "real" work), I copied my Slackware 10.2 main partition to a blank space, freed up 1.5 Gb on it (as leeway for new packages, upgrades, temporary files etc.) and installed the upgrades over the top of this copy. Once I'd followed the upgrade.txt (which, at the time, was the 10.1->10.2 upgrade.txt but still the principle is the same), all I had to do was recompile my kernel (Slackware 11.0 now ships with GCC 3.4 which means you also have to recompile any custom kernel or kernel modules that you may have had from Slackware 10.2, which only used GCC 3.3), reinstall lilo and it all just worked.
However, be very careful if you have extra modules in your kernel (e.g. nVidia/ATI drivers, out-of-tree wireless drivers etc.) as they *will* need recompiling. When you are using the same compiler and kernel on two different machines, the modules are usually transferable between the two machines, but Slackware has changed the default compiler so this time-saving trick no longer works. Failing to recompile them *will* crash your machine, maybe not immediately - for instance, in my initial testing on a blank partition, failing to recompile the nVidia modules and instead "copying" them from a previous installation crashed the machine hard as soon as OpenGL was used, but had functioned perfectly until then (even accelerating X and video flawlessly).
The crash was so hard that the (journalled) filesystem stopped halfway through a write and corrupted the partition - proof, if ever it were needed, that the use of proprietry modules removes any guarantees of stability and also that journalled filesystems and RAID are no substitute for adequate backups. That's also why you should always backup and/or test on a copy of your primary partition before you do stuff like this - I did it out of academic interest and was surprised that X or the kernel didn't throw up more warnings.
Applications, however, should not require any re-compilation at all, unless they are very tightly integrated into the kernel or statically build from the supplied libraries (something that they shouldn't do for most purposes). I haven't found anything that I've needed to recompile except for kernel modules but I'm sure I will find something that will have stopped working - a lot of stuff uses the kernel as the definitive source of information on things like kernel structures etc.
KDE was neatly upgraded to 3.5.4 in the process, all my old settings just ported over without any hassle (although a few KDE-specific tweaks, such as what the taskbar looks like and how multiple-desktop thumbnails work had reverted to a new default - easily changed and they were the exception rather than the rule). And it still runs like a dream.
Given a 1Ghz, 512Mb RAM machine, there is no significant detrimental performance difference between Slackware 10.2 and 11.0. In fact, because of both the KDE and X.org upgrades, programs under X run noticeably smoother - this is an old machine and small optimisations make a big difference when you don't use eye-candy like transluceny and anti-aliasing. Even code like a static-QT installation of Opera 9.0 is seeing responsiveness improvements compared to before. Given that Slackware is not designed as a desktop OS, it functions admirably under such circumstances and the system requirements are minimal.
Because it's Slackware, most desktop software will require, at some point, extra libraries or installations (for instance, mplayer codecs and OpenOffice.org are not included) but everything will usually compile cleanly from source without any patches or there is always Linux Packages.net for packages of any extra software you may need. Slackware's main install is only around the 3-4Gb mark when installed (depending on filesystem and block size) so on a modern hard disk, there's plenty of room for extra software. My main partition (not including personal files in /home directories) rides comfortably around the 10Gb mark and there's always plenty of space for a full install of Slackware plus Wine, Crossover Office, Microsoft Office, OpenOffice and many, many other large pieces of software.
One word of advice - take upgrade.txt's suggestion to just "install the rest of the packages" lightly - in fact the best method, especially if you are short of disk space, is to go through each package directory one-by-one... e.g. upgradepkg --install-new /root/slackware/a/*.tgz etc. Not only does this make it easier to omit the KDE/Koffice internationalisation packages for languages you don't speak (e.g. upgradepkg --install-new /root/slackware/kdei/*en_GB*.tgz), or to omit those packages that you don't need installed anyway (TeX or emacs for example), it saves a lot of time and diskspace and prevents you upgrading to a 2.4 kernel (hiding in slackware/k) and then having to reinstall the 2.6 kernel packages from /extra.
In terms of the final product, hotplug/udev is greatly improved and detects most peripherals and uses them automatically - nothing new or exciting unless you've not run any other recent Linux distro, but being able to plug in a USB drive, joystick or mouse and have it instantly recognised and have X/KDE start using it is a welcome return to the ease of a typical Windows installation. This does require a relatively modern 2.6 kernel though, but the scripts are still designed to take account of older kernels (2.4 or 2.6) that are not able to do this. And yes, 2.4 kernels are still the default for the time being.
One other change to the install process is that the sata.i bootdisk is now set as the default for any bootable CD or DVD (even the text on "how to boot in an emergency" on the boot screen reflects this), allowing direct installion on a old-style-PATA or shiny-new-SATA harddrive without having to select a different bootdisk - apparently a code conflict between the modules for the different hardware has now been resolved, making this possible. It's a welcome simplification to the install process.
All in all, the installation was fairly flawless but be careful about your kernel - unless you stick with the default 2.4 or 2.6 kernels (which will be out-of-date within a week or so, if not already) you are going to have to recompile the kernel and any modules and then reinstall LILO or GRUB. The only other thing to remember (and it's in upgrade.txt) is to ensure that all the .new files that appear on your computer have your settings transferred into them and then rename *them* to replace your original configuration - this way you won't miss any new config options that might have appeared.
I suppose the biggest disappointment would be for Gnome users - there isn't a sign of Gnome left in Slackware (the distribution cited ease of compilation/packaging as the reason for its removal in the last release) although you can still get Slackware packages for it from various third-party sites. To me, this went unnoticed as when I first started off installing Linux with X desktops, I tried both of the major window managers at the time and KDE came off best every time. Gnome felt clunky, old, out-of-place, like the Borland Windows dialogs used to back in the early days of Windows... nothing WRONG with them, they just didn't fit.
They are both now skinnable and in fact either can look like the other, so it's not a win-win situation - however, because of that there's also little reason to claim Gnome's loss is devastating... KDE can be made to work just the same and in fact the two projects are collaborating on just about everything these days. The GTK libraries etc. are still installed by default and, in fact, some ancient Gnome-based software that was left on my setup from its previous Slackware upgrades still functions perfectly.
People say that KDE is full of bloat but, I'm sorry, 3Gb for an entire OS including X and an office suite? That's well within the realms of convenience on a modern computer and most packages can be omitted if you really want (you can get a X installation down to less than a Gb if you really try and omit all the rubbish - I'd hate to imagine what the absolute minimum would be - I should think it would be amazingly small). And a 512Mb system showing only 100-200Mb in use when I have several applications open (and a few dozen background processes including Apache) under X/KDE is perfectly acceptable. And with KDE4 currently in development, the introduction of QT4 is supposed to make everything so much faster and leaner. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Altogether, Slackware 11.0 is another flawless upgrade of a "clean source" distribution - there are very few patches to the software included on the disks and the kernel is always "pure"... making upgrades, recompiles and troubleshooting simplicity itself. I should also imagine that it makes the lives of the software developers much easier as the bug reports are directly relevant to the software, rather than patches that the distro has tried to add itself.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Slackware 11.0 - first experiences and upgrade process
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Slackware 11.0 RC-1
The next version of my favourite Linux distribution is on the verge of being released. Yes, Slackware has it's first 11.0 release candidate.
Normally, I don't chase the very latest versions of software until someone's tested them for me beforehand - for instance, my latest foray into the world of Opera version 9.0 was a bit dismal... most of the computers I installed it on had no problems at all but at least two showed severe random crashes that I could not track down for weeks. The funny thing was that both problematic installs were on different hardware and yet on two very-similar machines one version of Opera 9.0 worked flawlessly but another didn't.
Anyway, unusually for me, I've been closely tracking Slackware 11.0 since the last stable release, 10.2, which is currently powering my main desktop and a number of my servers and hobby machines (I always track updates to stable versions so my software is never vulnerable but I rarely use "beta" software of any kind). I've actually got an up-to-date mirror of the bleeding-edge -current version of Slackware (that will become 11.0) which I update every time the Changelog changes. I'm hoping in this way to not have to suffer traffic-lock when 11.0 is finally released - hopefully at worst a tiny update of a handful of packages will be all that's needed to create my own DVD-R instead of having to fight thousands of people trying to download all 4Gb of software swamping every mirror with traffic.
I have even gone to the effort of a test install of the RC-1 version on a seperate partition. Linux, and Slackware in particular, demonstrated its flexibility and user-focus once again - by booting from a Slackware DVD, I was able to install the full install to a blank partition without doing any more than a very basic check of the partition name (which I am always very careful to double-check by mounting the partition in question - never take partitioning or formatting of anything on a PC full of data lightly). Once it was installed to my spare partition, I was able to copy the kernel and modules directory from my "stable" partition to the new "current" partition and, with a little LILO magic, boot into the new version of Slackware without touching my previous installation in any way, but with the very latest 2.6 stable kernel and all the software of 11.0.
I have to say that it's not spectacular but it's not spectacular because it WORKS. It just does what you tell it. You boot it on your PC, it detects all your gear, you set a few options and you have a full desktop. You port your old settings and files over and everything just works again.
The simple fact was that, in under three minutes of the installation completing, I was in a fully kitted out Linux desktop with drivers for all my hardware without having to compile a single package - installation consisted of nothing more than an automated decompression of the packages to the partition in question and minor copies or edits of my previous configuration files (such as re-doing alsamixer settings, configuring X etc.). My old software worked (at worst requiring a recompile against latest headers), my settings transferred and my computer didn't crash or have to reboot seven zillion times.
New in Slackware 11.0 RC-1:
* Updated kernels (although the default still looks set to be a 2.4 kernel)
Obviously, although I would say that the kernel is the one thing not worth waiting for a Slackware package to come out for - just install the latest stable of 2.4 or 2.6 depending on your tastes... Slackware supports either seamlessly without needing any special setup (although you may find it convenient to stick with one of the two for compiling anything that reads from kernel headers). Don't forget that Slackware always comes with a .config for it's kernel that's fully modularised and ideal for "make oldconfig" when a new kernel comes out that you need to compile.
* Lots of init script fixes and features
* Updated hotplug / udev support
* X.org 6.9.0
* KDE 3.5.4
No more Gnome in Slackware unless you get it from somewhere else. Not a bad thing for me, given that Gnome always reminds me of the old Borland dialogs in Windows - it always looked clunky and out of place. You can still get Gnome for Slackware from many places but it was removed in the previous version because of an apparently horrid compilation rigmarole.
* Updated versions of just about everything else (Samba, Apache, MySQL, Java etc.)
The changes aren't massive - it's not even as if the previous version has software which is currently vulnerable (despite what some checkers may tell you if they only go by software version number rather than whether they've actually been patched!). The software isn't the very latest (but it is almost guaranteed to be the best tradeoff between features, security and code stability) but it's clean, it's quick, it's simple, it works and it's been designed to run on as many computers as possible by default.
Although not designed as a desktop distribution, it's easily subverted to that purpose by installing the right "extra" software but the fact is that you know what you are getting - a stable, safe system that works and is flexible.
I get to choose and keep my own firewall package - one I've grown to love and have integrated lots of my other scripts into, I get to keep my choice of kernels and even whether to go 2.4 or 2.6. Every piece of software has been updated but all my old settings port over easily (at worst requiring a diff of some sort). Every piece of hardware has modules ready-prepared for it so there's no need to keep recompiling to get support. The kernel is bog-standard kernel.org fare, so there's no vendor patches or compatibility problems to worry about. Everything is controlled by human-readable scripts, which upgrade cleanly over previous versions.
I'm planning on building some kind of workhorse headless server and it looks like Slackware 11.0 is going to be my choice, given it's proximity to release and its easy flexibility to be installed without X or other useless software. This server will be performing lots of tasks which I'm hoping to come to rely on - CCTV monitoring and other household security tasks, intranet web serving, firewall, NAT, printer server, transparent HTTP proxy, automated network antivirus scanner, email scanner proxy, Caller ID announcer, wireless gateway, network boot server and all manner of other custom projects. It will use relatively modern hardware, will require stability (as it will be expected to be running all day long), will not need any sort of graphics capability and have to be secure against attack. I don't want to have to compile anything from scratch or find out that I've forgotten package X, so a full install and then prune will be in order.
Slackware's reputation means that I'm quite happy to have waited nearly a year for this release - I haven't had a vulnerable system in that time due to strictly-monitored security fixes for the -stable version, I haven't had to fight with half-new features in things like udev and hotplug which would have caused me a lot of trouble and I'm going to a system that's just as stable albeit further updated.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Windows Vista
Windows Vista (or whatever it will change name to seven times before they ever release the thing) is approaching and a lot of people are focusing on what it can do and what it can't do. What they don't seem to take account of is the history. People who complain that MS has given them a bad run in the past are told they are pessimists and that this is the time when everything will be perfect. I've heard that at least five times now, so will I be upgrading to Vista?
Would you buy again from a butcher that, five times, has sold you a bit of what he assures you is "the best beef in the world" only to discover that when you get home it tastes like old boots?
Not a chance.
DOS I adored. It worked. It was powerful. It was simple. It was fast. It did the job.
Windows 3.1 I gladly bought into and began to love. It was small, simple, worked and worked well. It was easy to use and just pretty enough without needing too much from the hardware (386 with 2Mb RAM).
Windows '95 was then thrust onto me by peer pressure; it was okay but nothing special. There was a lot of frills on an OS that was basically a 32-bit version of Windows 3.1. It was also very buggy. '95 OSR2 didn't help matters at all.
Windows '98 was pushed into my hands because '95 was such a disastrous attempt at trying to push a '98-style OS out too early. It improved next-to-nothing. '98SE came out and you were asked to pay again for it. Yeah. That's going to happen. It fixed a few of the problems and introduced a few new features, but nothing that anybody actually NEEDED at the time.
Windows ME I looked at and quickly became a disaster (things like major components of Windows supporting '98, 2000, XP but not ME... .Net anyone?). It was '98SE-with-knobs-on and didn't manage to do anything particularly exciting.
So from '95 to ME, there were very few, very small improvments in an OS that incorporated at least three major paid-for upgrades (as in major release versions, not just updates) over and above the base price. It was then that I told myself that I would not upgrade any further without good reason. My computers worked, it had cost an awful lot of money to get that far and I hadn't seen much improvement in my actual productivity over previous versions. They all ran the same software, at the same speed, with the same features, with little or no improvements in the areas that mattered - stability, compatibility with older software and hardware support.
Okay, '98SE+ incorporated USB mass storage properly and a nicer driver model but in essence it also killed ISA cards stone dead without giving people a say in the matter... is it really that hard to support a standard that was still in use at the time, had stabilised and standardised itself on things like hardware autodetection, and still works to this day in the Linux kernel which has a much stricter requirement on what stays in the kernel? To be in Linux, the hardware has to be stuff that's used, has support from several programmers willing to change their code constantly, work in the kernel at all times and get updated in line with everything else, from people who are not getting paid to do that job. Anyway...
I stuck to '98SE and I spent most of those years chasing Windows Updates, free antivirus, utilities to manage the computers, anti-spyware, etc.etc.etc. Windows 2000 I skipped entirely - it removed support for a lot of my then-current hardware and only provided a small stability bonus. XP was a "necessity" to run one single game that I wanted on one single machine and has also turned into more hassle than it's worth. XP I see as basically a games console - a bloody complicated and annoying one at that.
I didn't pay for XP, it came with a second-hand computer I was given, one thing I was glad of. XP offered me nothing over 98 except more restrictions, more problems, and much less system transparency - even the filesystem was relatively unreadable outside of XP without expensive utilities (though that's not so much of a problem now but still it's hard to correctly write to NTFS without buggering something up).
Despite several methods of recovery in case of system problems (Recovery Console, Safe Mode, System Restore), it was still perfectly possible to total a machine by installing an official update that would take more hours to fix than the computer was worth. Suddenly, I needed Ghost around constantly whereas before I'd only ever re-installed Windows '98SE from scratch once (and I later found out how I could have fixed that too). It wasn't something the average Windows '98SE user could do but I brought that OS back from numerous permanent blue-screens, booting problems etc. without having to worry that I wouldn't get the system back up and running.
There isn't going to be another chance for MS. This isn't blind MS-bashing, I've just had enough. There's posts on this blog telling you how I kept my own personal '98SE machine in tip-top condition from it's release to mid-2005 and even recommending that people stay with it.
I've always noticed it and never give it a second thought but now I can see the trend in MS OS's:
- More new features that I won't ever use and just get in my way. I end up turning half of them off within the first few days, the rest as time goes by and discover they are causing me problems. I end up setting half the settings to Classic or some other sort of compatibility or failsafe mode because that's how I liked it. Control Panel was prime candidate in XP, along with Autorun. Also disabling of things like power-save settings and screen blanking.
- More restrictions, barriers and brick walls, each of which stops me doing something I WANT to do and can CURRENTLY do. Connection limits, raw sockets, driver signing, not having to activate, the list goes on.
- More time and money, not just on the OS but its supporting programs to get it into a vaguely useable state. Anti-spyware, anti-virus, firewall (because the MS ones I won't trust to be any good from experience and may well be the next anti-competition case against MS), startup controls, Ghost (because, again from experience, the chances of any type of system restore working as it should are extremely minimal). Again, the list could be endless.
- More integration with stuff I don't want (starting with IE and WMP). I don't want stuff connecting to the net unless I SAY so and unless it's ABSOLUTELY necessary (i.e. it's a web browser which has been asked to connect to a website by me personally, or an autoupdate that I'VE scheduled to autoupdate). I don't even LISTEN to music, and I certainly don't want rubbish trying to get album covers and other nonsense from the internet just because I'm testing a drive with an Audio CD. I don't want my browser to even be ABLE to execute code directly in the webpage, or choose a search engine without asking me what one I want to use.
- Nothing that I absolutely *need* when it comes to upgrade time. My computer does lots of stuff already. What can I do in Vista that's totally 100% impossible in 98SE, XP or Linux? If you discount hard-coded restrictions and programming laziness, nothing. Vista is not a quantum computer conversion - it still does the same old stuff the same old way.
- Missing or just starting to introduce a lot of obvious stuff that SHOULD already be in the OS (**why** do I need a completely seperate, non-MS utility to tell me everything that's loading at Windows startup? Why have I gone from Windows 3.1 to Windows XP without MS incorporating such a simple, useful utility? Why can I not also click a button that LOCKS anything else from inserting itself into startup and kill half the spyware/viruses in one fell swoop? And yet they are bundling rubbish like media players and internet browsers that I DON'T want at all and have never even used)
- Still playing catchup to other systems. A database of your files that updates in the background and you can use to locate your files quickly? Got it, except my one doesn't slow the system down when I'm using it like Find Fast and the other MS "inventions" do. Admittedly MS may well be ahead in terms of hardware driver support but considering my Linux machine doesn't NEED half that new hardware and won't do until it's properly supported under Linux anyway... where's the incentive?
I quit Windows about a year ago hopefully forever. I was tired of my computer not doing what I tell it to. This is my biggest, absolute killer for not running Windows... if I say shutdown, you will shutdown, if I say delete that file, just delete the damn thing... I'm not an idiot, I know what I'm doing. The chances are that if I force a shutdown, there's a reason for it. It may not be an important one - I may be rushing to go out for the evening and want to make sure it's off - but that's not for you to decide. Unless I'm going to do permanent, irreparable damage just do what I say, and even then just make sure I'm AWARE of that. My OS of choice will *not* argue or crash or wait for every program on earth to voluntarily allow me to shutdown unless I ask it to.
I'm tired of having to be at the forefront of technology just to browse a simple web-page at a decent speed. I'm tired of "limitations" like XP Home's connection limits, raw socket limitations etc. when there is no technical or practical reason why they have to exist. If my OS is capable of it, it should offer it. It should not say "I COULD but... I'm not going to let you until you pay me money". It's like running a shareware operating system, except I've already paid for it.
I've worked as the only support for many years for a few hundred XP, 2000, 2003 and older machines and yet have only ever used XP on one laptop personally (my "games" machine) and on my girlfriend's computer (it came supplied with the computer and it was easier just to leave it on there for her... she had to "learn" Windows 2 years ago so learning a Linux desktop isn't a big problem at all... it's just easier for when she wants to play The Sims and other rubbish). Windows is "easy" until you need to maintain the thing and then it becomes a nightmare. My choice of OS at home reflects just how good Windows is - I work with Windows all day long, even recommend Windows systems and yet I won't touch it with a bargepole at home any more. On another note, the more broken Windows is, the more money I make because I have to then be paid by numerous schools to fix it for them. And I get paid by the hour. ;-)
I've lost count of the number of computers I've brought "back from the dead" by removing viruses, spyware, too many startups running, etc. When a user can sit at a new, fully-patched, antivirus-ed, antispyware-d machine and, without intent and within a matter of minutes, infect the machine so that it barely loads up in half-an-hour, taking hours to fix, is when I give up on that machine. What a user does SHOULD NOT affect the machine as a whole, only that user... even as a "limited" account on Windows you can wreak havoc.
Windows has an after-the-event method of fixing problems - once the virus is on there, and lots of people have also got it, some company might send out an update that may or may not catch all variants and won't help control the damage the virus has caused. Vista even includes special integration for antivirus apps. Do people not realise how ironic it is that the OS that "invented" the problems with modern-day viruses and spyware even has a special place that you can install anti-virus into so that it will integrate nicely? It's like having a car that comes with an easily accesible tool specially designed with the sole purpose of putting the wheels back on should they fall off on the motorway. So reassuring.
(Yes, DOS had viruses. DOS was back in the era of one-user full-admin home computers without sharing of disks or internet access and was a design disaster from the start... at least it bloody worked though. Sensible people had worked out in the 70's that that was just a stupid idea for multiple-users or internet-facing machines. Windows caught up with them in Windows XP/2003.)
There is actually a page on a website belonging to a Linux security enchancement package called SysMask that actually allows you to upload ANY bash, C or perl script. When you do, it compiles it, runs it and shows you the output! It will voluntarily and automatically run ANY code that ANYONE asks of it as an ordinary user because it's so sure of it's security, just to prove how good it is. This is on the same bloody server that runs their own website where you can download this code for free. It's never been taken down.
Like this site, I want before-the-event fixing - even IF someone runs some dangerous software deliberately, researching the latest holes, it can't affect the machine as a whole, can't destroy other people's files, can't put me in a state where I have to hope I have a recent image/backup. I don't trust Vista to do this... Windows 2000 was supposed to stop this. As was XP. As was 2003. Backups are for restoring files after unavoidable hardware damage - nothing else.
Now, on Linux, the damn computer actually bloody does what I ask of it. I don't have to be too careful about checking licensing for the software I install because it's *all* GPL or free (yes, I still check that it's GPL or otherwise free, though)... I'm not distributing my changes so it's all free for however many computers I want. No more license-counting, no more fighting activation systems that think they know better, no more serial codes, no more.
I used to spend HOURS on Windows hunting down decent freeware to get stuff done without having to shell out even more money but now I don't have to fill every system I own to the hilt with third-party freeware just to get the damn thing into a usable, secure state. It actually comes with everything I need, by default, installed securely.
At aboslute worst, an automated update command (one that WORKS, does it when it's convenient FOR ME, doesn't force updates that are dangerous and doesn't kill one machine or another on a regular basis) keeps me up to date. Rollback? How about a complete uninstallable plain TAR archive of every update I've ever installed, along with a copy of every single package ever installed on the machine? Any package I want, I install. I don't have to con the software into thinking it's NOT installing over a later version, not already been uninstalled, requiring the original setup disk etc.
It's also quite difficult (without doing something incredibly stupid and deliberate while logged in as root) to ruin the actual software on the machine. Windows relies on so much being intact to even boot, Linux just wants any half-recent kernel boot disk to get to a fully functioning command line and repair system (including uninstalling/reinstalling/upgrading/downgrading any single software package individually on the entire machine).
I get to choose what software runs without some arcane registry entry loading up something I'm not aware of, and am not even sure if I need it at all. Same for "services". Additionally, if I want a ten-second boot, I can have one. If I want flashy graphics, I can have them. If I WANT to boot into a command-line only environment, I can. I have that choice available. And you know what? From that environment I can control every single setting that I could control within the GUI if I wanted to. For every user. Without learning hexadecimal or what arcane GUID in the registry it's stored it under.
I can actually TRUST linux, from it's filesystems to it's hardware support to the individual software components to the firewall. I know that someone isn't going to say "well... we COULD let you have five users connected to your shares BUT we're not going to LET you". If something said that, the source code wouldn't know what had hit it after I'd put it back the way **I** want it. You're *my* computer, you can only do what you are told to do and **I** am the one in ultimate control of every single piece of software on my machine. If that means editing source, so be it. If that means I want to voluntarily install some binary (and therefore risk incompatibility, forced upgrades and undiagnosable problems) to get my job done, that's fine.
I don't have to feel like a criminal because I want to use one OS on two computers. I don't have to check in with mothership every time my motherboard changes (which is quite often because the only thing that's constant about my machine is it's data - the drives change, the hardware changes all the time; I've still got data from my DOS days on my current hard drives).
There's very little hardware I own that Linux doesn't support, and all of that is non-essential and easily replaceable (one USB IrDA adaptor, one 56k Winmodem out of eight). I don't need to have drivers on hand for each and every part of it, or a checklist of which manufacturers bothered to pay MS to get their drivers certified and which didn't. I don't need to worry about the drivers interfering or only being able to run them with the most horribly annoying pieces of GUI software known to man (HP printer drivers, some of the arcane school-specific hardware I have etc).
If I get a crash, there is something real, something productive that **I** can do about it. Someone, somewhere will be vaguely interested in finding out why my machine crashed and, hopefully, fixing it. There are constantly new free upgrades to try out, there are config files to play with, there is source to look through, there's one of the most complex debugging systems known to man sitting on my computer already waiting to find the exact spot that something crashed and why, there are many unique, discrete components that can be eliminated one at a time to diagnose and I can even single step individual changes to the kernel to find out which one caused my problem (git bisect's etc.).
I don't get (and could easily discover anyway) obscure problems like a certificate in a JAR file associated with a famous piece of UPS monitoring software expiring and thus killing the entire system without warning or a single error message, taking 100% CPU and stopping approximately 50% of programs from running at all.
Who knows, I may even be able to code a fix myself without having to wait a year for the manufacturer to even acknowledge my problem.
And at the end of the day, there's nothing I can't do on my machine that I ever wanted do on Windows. In fact, most of the tools I use now are so much more powerful it's saddening to think of the time that I've wasted trying to find Windows programs that could perform the same tasks. I **liked** batch files, I **wanted** to tweak every entry in my AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS to get the most out of my very expensive hardware. I want to be able to choose and change between using my RAM for virtual storage, caching my drives when I organise all 500Gb of data on them, displaying a GUI so that I can get work done etc.
My hardware is, to put it bluntly, crap yet expensive (to me). A 1GHz serves all my needs but may well have cost me two years-worth of donated/disposed of hardware (which means several "free" jobs fixing other people's computers and a lot of effort and petrol), plus several hundred pounds of my hard-earned money plus the time and effort to get it working how I want it.
When £1000's of hardware is sitting there and telling ME that it won't do something because I haven't phoned Microsoft or haven't bought the right version, I find it diabolical that my most expensive appliance in the house is not controlled by me.
Windows 3.1 I bought into, 95/98 I used and tolerated for a LONG time, getting many useful hours out of it. By the time '98 was obsolete I'd fallen for MS's spiel far too many times and was getting tired of computers. An OS actually nearly put me, a computer fanatic, off of computers. I didn't believe in or buy 2000, or XP, or 2003 and I won't be doing the same for Vista.
I'll still have to use it, in work if nowhere else, but I'm hoping that I'm going to have made the right move here by moving away from cash-driven OS's to ones that are driven by a yearning for freedom, control, pride in their work and technical prowess. Not that it's got a new glass interface that looks cool.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
The World's Best Computer Games #1 - Quake 1
I thought I would try my hand at saying not only which computer games I think were the best, but also how they could have been made better. Firstly, the list of games. Although everybody else in the world is likely to disagree, the list is based on what games I find myself wanting to play when I have exhausted whatever the most recent game I installed was. I'm not a huge games player but I have played an awful lot over the years and have found an unfortunate trend for modern games to be mostly devoid of gameplay. This list should, hopefully, point people at games that are fun to play, engaging, have lasting appeal and are not sold as an advert for a CGI workstation.
I'll quickly list a few of the candidates, however this is not is order and is almost certain to change and be updated as I describe each game in detail, along with where I think their sequels or extension packs should have gone.
The Settlers (PC)
Chaos / Lords of Chaos (Spectrum)
Syndicate (PC)
F29 Retaliator (PC)
Final Fight (Arcade)
Spy Hunter (Arcade)
Quake (PC)
First, though, I'll start with Quake. For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to take Quake 1, GLQuake and both "official" Mission Packs together.
Quake was (I believe) the first ever truly three-dimensional, fully textured game on a standard computer. My first exposure to it was on a Pentium 133MHz . To set the scene, 3D graphics cards did not really exist except in the most extreme of PC's, the Internet was there but mostly limited to specialist uses and the OS of choice was DOS or Windows 3.1.
At the time, Doom and some other minor shareware offerings were the only games to have any sort of 3D. The best 3D offering up until Quake had, in fact, been Doom, with it's textured walls that didn't scale well, 2D-only movement (3D was faked... you could see out of windows and go up stairs but it was all a clever trick... you could never look up or down), blocky sprites and an atmosphere that no game before its release had ever shown before.
Doom was no more that a more convincing version of the "3D" techniques used in previous titles of a similar nature, such as Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny. Quake, however, managed to invent a whole new level of gameplay. Fully 3D environments, introducing full mouse-look, had most people spending the first hour of playing their new game just looking at the scenery and eagerly hunting out things to look at.
Quake was beautiful for it's time. 3D cards showed off their power and uses like never before and most people who bought a 3D card at this time bought it so they could play Quake. A 3D-card in this era meant that you bought a 3DFX card - no set standard of 3D acceleration in DOS existed until 3DFX's Glide arrived, thereby making itself the standard for years to come. Now virtually unheard of, 3DFX and Glide had set the pace for home 3D graphics. Without them, the nVidia's and ATI's of today wouldn't exist.
3DFX cards were also able to use SLI (Scan Line Interleave). PC's at the time were pretty puny for any serious 3D work and so being able to install 2 3DFX cards in one PC and having them share the work of the drawing helped considerably and at a price point where there wasn't a faster processor available to just brute-force their way through the calculations.
Quake showed off Glide's capabilities to the point where, ever since, they've been basically an essential part of running a gaming PC. Modern computers are approaching a point where 3D and 2D are integrated so tightly, processors are so over-powered and consumers so demanding that most PC's are capable of running even the most powerful games without "specialist" 3D hardware, just an ordinary graphics card. Back in Quake's day, to make people go out and buy an expensive component was the games one main drawback but it easily overcome it by making such good use of every processor tick it could.
The 3D environments were used well. Monsters jumped out of shadows, attacked from every concievable angle, pored out of secret doorways that you wouldn't notice if you weren't paying attention. Secret areas were difficult to get to but many players found them just by trying out things that they'd never been able to do before... jumping across obstacles, leaping onto tiny platforms, looking for inconsistencies in room sizes, hunting for secret buttons above and below them.
Lighting was used to good effect, the rooms going dark and strange noises coming from behind you was guaranteed to make you panic, critical areas were visible from the rest of the map making you try to fight through to get there, slits of light under wall indicated secret areas.
The sounds were incredible but no more scary than the noises of Doom, except now full stereo and an enviroment to support your movements made it even more realistic. But what made the game was its easy introduction to such new environments, the balance of the game, the level design and the relatively new multiplayer facilities.
Multiplayer was only used in relatively basic games up until the likes of Quake and Doom. Quake supported local network play (traditional IPX and newer TCP/IP), effectively creating the first LAN parties as well as modem and serial connections. I can remember playing Quake with certain mod's over a 56,000 bps serial connection (I remember distinctly because we didn't have any sort of connections between the machines beforehand and had to bodge a 9-pin to 9-pin cable using a variety of other cables and adaptors. The final cable ended up over 6 metres in length with numerous adaptors but worked at full speed without any issues - I still have the cable and still use it because, by disconnecting it at certain points, you can form ANY serial connection you're ever likely to need with each end being male or female, null-modem or plain, 9 or 25 pin.)
Talking about mod's... the fact that people could make maps and modify the game added greatly to its use. I spent many hours combining the best parts of my favourite two addons (both of which changed everything from the weapons to the monsters to the AI) and removing features they had that I didn't like (things like instantaneous weapon respawning) while adding in other stuff that I wanted. This wasn't tweaking or playing about, you were actually given a fully functional programming language (QuakeC) in which to do whatever you wanted. It was a little buggy and pernickity but once you got the hang of it you could do almost anything. In fact, that's how the addon packs came about - the better AI in the official addons (codenamed hipnotic and rogue after the companies that made them) worked purely by using new code in QuakeC, with new models and new maps. The Quake executable never really changed at all, except to support loading from different filesets.
Quake was my first exposure to multiplayer deathmatch - years after our first foray with "the ultimate serial cable", we were still playing Quake mod's like Nehara and Wyrm with friends over our 10base2 network and the internet and still they worked just as you'd expect today, sometimes miles better than even many modern games multiplayer implementations!
Even the basic single player game would last you ages, though. You could probably force your way through it in several days of gaming but you never wanted to. Much more fun to actually play the game, find the secrets, kill every monster on the map. Your path was always pretty linear but it was actually intriguing, wondering what new monsters you'd have to deal with around the next corner. Quake was never easy, it wasn't a game to pile through just to say you'd completed it, you could take your time over it and enjoy it.
From a technical side, the system requirements were pretty minimal, even adjusting for relative price increases, and signle-handedly sparked the entire 3D gaming hardware industry - and the compatibility was phenomenal. It ran under DOS originally but then Windows came out in force and Quake still run under Windows, then a Windows native version was released and when the game was over-sequelled, the source code (which was already being licensed into games for things like the Half-life engine etc.) was GPL'd and Unix-native versions came out among all sorts of strange conversions. It also ran on Mac's from early on in it's life.
Gamesaves were simple - one key save and restore from whereever you were. Without those sort of gamesaves, the game would have taken months to complete. Video options could be ramped up or down to suit your hardware and platform. Modern computers just laugh at Quake now as they can all run it in it's top resolution without any sort of strain but back in it's day, some of the options seemed unreachable. The fact that it still scales and plays well on modern machines (and modern OS's) is only testiment to it's high technical quality. You could actually play with just the keyboard if you wanted to but having mouse-look on made it the exact equivalent to the modern FPS's that it spawned.
Network play was smooth, single play was great fun and engaging, the maps seemed enormous and to have no end to their number, downloads (if you had Internet connections back then) would only extend the amount of things you could do and the time you could spend on it. There wasn't really much of a community of multiplay gamers back then and yet there was still a major source of new content for it coming out, from official mission packs just as large as the original game to entirely new ways to play the game coming out of FTP sites.
There was no complex plot; it needed none, it was sheer atmosphere. You could jump, swim, drown (!), burn, electrocute yourself, get squished, use lifts and stairs, dodge flying buttresses and collapsing rocks, watch lava balls leap into the air in front of you, see zombies rise from the water, tear off their arms and throw them at you. The new concepts that arose were just fascinating and that's where the gameplay come from. Mods added things like low gravity levels, grappling hooks, heat-seeking weapons, trap-laying, capture-the-flag games, even primitive physics.
It was like nothing that had been seen before by the average gamer. And all from your home PC. Unfortunately, the number of new features introduced into a dozen modern games is seriously dwarved when compared against those introduced just in Quake. We might have higher-tech games now but, short of more realistic physics, there is little new in them that wasn't present or possible with the now-ancient Quake engine. In fact, many modern games use engines which are based, somewhere along the line, on actual Quake source code.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Plunge Taken...
Bandwagon firmly landed on with both feet...
Windows decided to play up. I thought to myself "I can fix this". Then I thought, "Why bother? This is my work machine and it should ALWAYS be up". Then I installed Linux. I now have Linux as my primary desktop.
Things I will miss:
- Games (but may well invest in a cheap XP machine for those)
- My plethora of "essential" programs (no more Zonealarm icon flashing away reassuringly, no more need for specialist programs like NAT32, virus scanners, spyware detectors etc.) which have become obsolete or unnecessary.
Things I won't miss:
- Bugs
- Blue screens
- Viruses (Only ever had one, personally, from a respected PC Games magazine CD)
- Spyware (Never had any but always kept checking)
- Endless drivers
I've moved onto a Slackware 10.1 system running KDE and it's working just fine. I plan to use it for work mainly, and to provide a fault-free stable system for the next few years. Already browsing the web, rss, irc & emailling (having Opera be multiplatform is a lifesaver and greatly helped the transfer), icq, msn, yim and aim (thanks to Kopete, the linux equivalent of Trillian without the ludicrous upgrades and skins), printing (via CUPS and the lovely people at linuxprinting.org for the PPD), access to all my parititions, a firewall, a version of PuTTY (yes, I know it's just an SSH frontend but I liked it on Windows and I'm used to it now).
Considering it's running on a plain VESA driver for now, it's actually faster than even my finely-tuned 98. Have still to set up my CD-RW and DVD-ROM but don't see them being a problem, using k3b and mplayer. My scanner is linux-incompatible but I have two others sitting under the desk that are 100% compatible, so just have to re-cable that. My "weird" hardware like my cheapy-RAID card, cheapy USB stick, USB IrDA, Intel QX3 are already supported and auto-detected without me having to touch anything. Will have a look see how hard it is to connect to my Nokia via IrDA and use my card-reader at some point but that's hardly a priority.
Collateral damage is minimal so far, just a lilo change to boot Linux by default. All my flaky FAT drives are still there and accessible. I am considering investing in Crossover Office to run my Word 2000 and Excel 97 combo and possibly even things like Dreamweaver but for the moment, KOffice is holding the fort.
Considering that 90% of my use of the computer is Web, Email and IM, the impact has not been too bad, it took minutes to get up and running with the exact same version of Opera that I was running on Windows and import all my stuff over. Scroll wheel on my mouse and the occasional segfault due to not having any swap were very quickly cured and I haven't managed to crash it since.
I need to switch on APM/ACPI but I haven't tried that yet. Normally a "modprobe apm" does all that for me but it appears to be missing so I will try and track that down. When it didn't work, I was too busy trying out all the silly card games to care. :-) Worst case scenario is that I recompile the stock kernel that Slackware provides to something a little more relevant. The only difference that that gives me to my old Windows 98 is that now I don't have a pretty screen up when I have to turn it off saying "Windows is shutting down..." :-)
I've decided to allocate one month of time to it, to see how I get on with it. I've resigned myself to the fact that it will not run my games but I may well be able to find emulators for my favourite older systems (Spectrum etc.), use things like DOSBox to run some of my older titles, and anything DirectX/OpenGL I can use on some other computer. That should be enough to distract me and I can use an XP machine as a games-console only.
The programs I have yet to find a suitable replacement for are Paint Shop Pro 7 (nice, simplified interface around a powerful image manipulation program), Dreamweaver (nothing quite like it), and a few tiny utilities I like to use.
I'll see how it goes and see whether I can hold of a nice games machine for myself. My ideal aim is to have a Linux desktop for work, browsing, email etc. and only power up a Windows XP machine for games, literally using it as a games console. Even then, what I want to do is make CD images of all my games and mount them over a Samba share via Daemon Tools on the windows side so that I don't have to track down every CD for every single game every time I want to play it. The samba share would be held on either the main Linux machine or on a small Linux storage server with a mini-RAID on it.
Sunday, March 28, 2004
Counterstrike : Condition Zero - First impressions
My CD of Counterstrike : Condition Zero
At first I had numerous problems, not with the game but with my computer. Zonealarm Pro will insist on bringing up a dialog for each application that wants to connect to the internet, which makes the window focus switch away from the game itself. I couldn't ALT-TAB back into the game or kill the task properly, so I had to reboot. I have this problem with all Half-life-based games.
After that problem was solved, I spent a few seconds tuning the standard Half-life style options to my liking and started a campaign. I've never been very good at CS or any other FPS - on my public server I used to score more than my deaths on a good day, about the same as my deaths on an average day, and about zero on a bad day. I decided to start on "normal" difficulty level.
The game consists of a series of challenges. Each challenge, if successfully completed, earns you points to spend on your team. For the first round you're lucky if you can buy three level 1 bots to help you. As you complete each map, you get an extra point and, periodically, the next "level" of bots is opened up to you.
Aside from their "level", each bot is assigned a value for Skill, Coop and Bravery. Skill is obviously how well they shoot, etc. Coop is how well they will take your orders and work together. Bravery is how much they will charge in or whether they will run and hide somewhere. When you pick your level 1 bots you have to weigh up if you want a lot of maverick bots running around who can kill or less skilled bots who aren't afraid to charge in with you.
The game is split into groups of three maps. Each map has it's own challenges and you can't move onto the next without completing them. The challenges usually set you two or three criteria, e.g. You must rescue a hostage, you must kill three of the enemy, you must win a round in under 90 seconds. You play Counterstrike as you would online but with your bot buddies. Generally you keep playing until you have fulfilled all the criteria and you have won a certain number of rounds.
The maps also set a limit as to the round score, that is you must not go less than 2 rounds below the enemy score and to win you must win at least three rounds and win 2 more rounds than the enemy. You keep playing rounds until you either fail by losing too many rounds or you complete all the rest of the challenges set to you.
When you win a round you get another "reputation point" to spend on your team, which could mean an extra level one bot or upgrading one of your bots by one level, for example.
For once, the game can't "give away" it's ending from easy mode. Most games become dull if you start playing them at Easy level because you know where most of the enemy are going to be or how to solve the puzzles. In CS:CZ, the easy level is exactly the same as the Normal, Hard and Extreme levels but sets easier challenges. You may have to win a round within 90 seconds rather than 60 for example. This lets you ease into the game nicely without spoiling it for you.
The difficulty range is set quite well. A total CS newbie will struggle through the Easy level but just enough to show them that it's possible to complete everything if they get enough practice. Normal suited me just fine and was a challenge to complete. Hard should satisfy the hardcore gamers lust for brutal play and for Extreme you might as well go download an aimbot now.
The longevity of the title is increased by it's smooth difficulty curve and by it's freeform "Custom game" mode where you can try and play any sort of game with the bots from 1 vs 1 pistols only to 16 v 16, they can only have sniper rifles. Also the multiplayer aspects, although identical to Steam CS, will make sure this title is played at least as long as Steam is alive.
The graphics are, to most people, disappointing. I was reading the material for CS:CZ before it came out and could see that it was only going to be a Halflife mod, which means that it can't do any more than the original CS. However, considering that, it looks better than I expected. The maps are all retextured versions of the originals, but with slight changes. For example bomb site A on de_dust2_cz actually incorporates more crates on the upper level to camp behind. The retexturing improves the look immensely and the dust maps take on a much more "Persian" feel, with tiled wall, marble floors, cracked and crumbling masonry.
Sounds are pretty much identical to the original but the bots always keep you informed of their progress through short sound samples. You can also you your standard communication commands to get them to do things, like "Fall back", "Get out of there, it's gonna blow!" and even "Report in". The lower-level bots tend to be a bit dumb. They feel like their reactions have been deliberately slowed by half-a-second. It's common to find them to walk round corners and face each other off for a second or two before either of them fire.
As the bots progress, they get better and better and the higher level bots are quite a challenge. The bots also follow your orders quite well, but only if their Coop rating is quite good. Sometimes they'll still run off on their own but saying "Follow Me" or "Stick Together, Team" will give you a following big enough for your purposes. The bots also tend to react to "Need Backup" quite well, rushing to your aid, and they also announce everything they do.
It can be quite useful to have a bot go to the opposite bombsite to warn you if they see anyone and if they see the bomb carrier or the planted bomb. Sometimes the AI slips up slightly, though. Apart from the fairly-major problem with hostages, they quite good and worth the money for CS:CZ alone. If you have a mission involving rescuing hostages, the bots can sometimes run off and kill everyone on the enemy, meaning the round ends and you don't get credit for any hostages in tow.
This is an annoying bug, not necessarily the AI's fault, but especially when you need to rescue lots of hostages. I found that a good workaround was to get a hostage and then keep issuing the "Cover Me" command to stop the bots running off and finishing off the enemy before you can get the hostages home. It doesn't always work, but it's a good tactic.
The AI also has silly niggles. If the bomb is planted the bots are aware of this and will try to look at both bomb sites to ascertain where the enemy has hidden it. Unfortunately, this can mean that even though a bot has just walked through bombsite A unscathed, they will retrace their steps just to check, leaving you one or two men down in the critical firefight by the planted bomb. They also have a nasty habit of standing in your line of fire if you're a sniper, but that's not really any different to playing with real people.
Performance wise, the programmers seem to have done quite a good job. If you can run CS, you'll run CS:CZ at an almost identical speed. I did have a slight problem during installation in that, after taking 1Gb and installing itself in a standalone directory, it then insists on having to be copied to the Steam directory if you want to play online. This means that you need around 2-2.5 Gb for this game alone. My Half-Life based games on my computer occupy about 15 Gb between them!
Also, it doesn't install into Steam automatically. You have to select the CS:CZ icon on your Steam list, click "Buy Now" (which I imagine is a little scary for a computer novice to attempt) and then select "I already own this title". Steam will then copy the CS:CZ files into it's own directory and upload your CD key to Steam so that you can play online. Don't forget that you can only allocate your CS:CZ key to one Steam account!
The deleted scenes component of the game is basically just a cleanup of what one developer of the game inherited from the previous one. It's quite nice of the publishers to include this as a bonus. Unforunately, the original CS:CZ idea was for a normal Half-life mod along the lines of Blue-shift
Online play is the same as CS but with the new maps. People are already loading these maps and some conversions of them into their normal CS servers which misses the point. You buy this game for the bots and offline play, not for the maps. The standard Dedicated Server packages for CS:CZ allow server admins to add the bots to their servers without any downloading or (much) configuration.
Overall, the game is fun and challenging. £16.99 from Amazon.co.uk means that it's in the "mod/expansion" price range, at least in the UK, and that's exactly what you get... a worthwhile mod with good bots and fun online play with a snippet of the programmers mindset from a few years back. Complaints might include longevity, with only a few maps more than CS, but the bots should provide the average gamer which a few weeks of spread-out gaming, not to mention the Deleted Scenes plus masses of online and offline practice potential.
