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Posts published in “Gaming”

SuperTux Returns, Proprietary Open Source & More…

By Christine Hall on May 27, 2016 |

Copyright, Distros, Gaming and Operating Systems

SuperTux Returns, Proprietary Open Source & More…Crytek logo

Also included: Google in a TKO over Oracle, four distro releases and Microsoft’s latest trick to force Windows 10 upgrades.

FOSS Week in Review

Today I’m finally old enough to officially take my seat on the council of the elders and let taxpayers pick up the tab for a large portion of my medical expenses. As you might notice, I’m spending the day working. But I did get a really special birthday present Thursday when Google beat Oracle. Of course, that just ends the regular season for this battle. Next up, Oracle appeals to see if there’s going to be any post season play. Read the closing play-by-play on Ars Technica.

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Jeff Hoogland Talks Bodhi Linux, Enlightenment, Moksha and ‘Magic the Gathering’Jeff Hoogland - Bodhi Linux

Jeff Hoogland Talks Bodhi Linux, Enlightenment, Moksha and ‘Magic the Gathering’

By Robin "Roblimo" Miller on May 19, 2016 |

Desktops, Distros, Gaming, Interview and Video

The FOSS Force Video Interview Just a few days before releasing Bodhi Linux 3.2.1, Bodhi’s founder and lead developer, Jeff Hoogland, took time out to…

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No Linux for Batman, XCOM 2 Arrives & More…Batman: Arkham Knight

No Linux for Batman, XCOM 2 Arrives & More…

By Hunter Banks on February 10, 2016 |

Gaming, Hardware and News

Gaming on Linux

Although Warner Brothers has abandoned plans for a Linux port of Batman: Arkham Knight, there’s lots of excitement over last week’s day-one release of XCOM 2.

Seemingly out of the blue, Batman: Arkham Knight’s planned Linux and OS X release has been cancelled. In all likelihood, this cancellation stems from the litany of problems with the game’s Windows port, which has been panned by critics and players as glitch plagued and often almost unplayable.

Hunter Banks

Hunter Banks has been a part of the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) Family for the past 13 years. When not writing about open source gaming, he’s working on creating his own games. Follow him on Twitter @SilvrChariot

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Open Source Gaming News From SCALE 14xSCALE 14x

Open Source Gaming News From SCALE 14x

By Hunter Banks on January 27, 2016 |

Community and Gaming

Gaming on Linux

Hopefully, everyone who was able to attend enjoyed SCALE 14x this past weekend, especially the Game Night which went off without a hitch, thanks to the SCALE staff and the efforts of a certain FOSS Force gaming writer. There were a few presenters with interesting Gaming information, and others with plans later down the pipeline that can be expanded upon later

To start the conference off on Thursday morning, Jorge Castro gave a speech regarding “Gaming on Ubuntu” as part of UbuCon. In only 15 minutes he was able to deliver a State of the Union address on gaming on Linux distros, particularly Ubuntu. He covered the pros and cons, and talked about Steam and Linux getting next gen titles. Most helpful was a reference to multiple Personal Package Archives for the Linux gamer for controllers and new drivers, as well as the proper hardware to use to complement Linux gaming. This was followed by a presentation by Didiers Roche discussing Ubuntu Make, a command line tool for developers of many kinds.

Hunter Banks

Hunter Banks has been a part of the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) Family for the past 13 years. When not writing about open source gaming, he’s working on creating his own games. Follow him on Twitter @SilvrChariot

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PlayStation 4’s Linux HackPlayStation 4

PlayStation 4’s Linux Hack

By Hunter Banks on January 13, 2016 |

Gaming and Operating Systems

Gaming on Linux

Hopefully everyone had a pleasant holiday season. Only weeks into the new year and already some interesting gaming news has happened.

Noted hacker group fail0verflow has hacked the PlayStation 4, running a custom Linux port on the system. Linux has been run on prior Playstation systems, usually via USB boot, but no one expected it to happen on this system so quickly, with rough estimates of a hack being months, maybe years, down the line.

Hunter Banks

Hunter Banks has been a part of the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) Family for the past 13 years. When not writing about open source gaming, he’s working on creating his own games. Follow him on Twitter @SilvrChariot

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FOSS ‘Age of Empires,’ AMD Goes Open Source & Gaming at SCALE

By Hunter Banks on December 23, 2015 |

Community, Gaming and Operating Systems

Gaming on Linux

Bad news first: Psynoix’s Rocket League will not be out for Linux this year after all. Earlier this month the community manager for Rocket League, username Dirkened, said the game would be released for Linux before the end of December. However, since then Psynoix CEO Dave Hagewood told a fan of the game in an email that there will be a delay but it will still be coming out. A Valve representative with the reddit username Plagman issued an apology to the community on behalf of Psyonix, taking the blame for the delay:

Hunter Banks

Hunter Banks has been a part of the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) Family for the past 13 years. When not writing about open source gaming, he’s working on creating his own games. Follow him on Twitter @SilvrChariot

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Five FOSS Wishes for the New Year

By Christine Hall on December 23, 2015 |

Gaming, Hardware, Operating Systems and Software

Father TimeIt’s almost Christmas, which means that the day isn’t far off when ol’ Father Time rolls the odometer over yet again. This, of course, is the time of year when news writers like to publish lists, partly because they’re easier to write than real news stories. It’s not that we’re lazy, mind you, we’re just too busy shopping and decorating and drinking egg nog…especially drinking egg nog. We love drinking egg nog.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
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Linux Predictions 2016, FreeNAS Logo Contest & More…

By Larry Cafiero on December 18, 2015 |

Community, Distros, Gaming, News, Operating Systems and Security

FOSS Week in Review

FreeNAS logo
Artists, can you improve on this? Get on it, then…
This week’s wrap-up needs no introduction, with an art contest to redesign a logo for a BSD-based OS, predictions for 2016, a new release from CentOS, shenanigans from our friends in the Isle of Man, and multiple reasons to use FOSS.

Oops.

FreeNAS Logo Contest: Okay, artists, get those colored pencils sharpened, those brushes cleaned and ready, because you have an assignment — that logo isn’t going to design itself.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

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The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Linux GamingRockleague game logo

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Linux Gaming

By Hunter Banks on December 9, 2015 |

Gaming and Operating Systems

Just in time for the holiday season comes some exciting gaming news. There’s good news, not-so-good news,and bad news this week.

The Good News: The wildly popular game Rocket League is expected to be playable on GNU/Linux soon. Rocket League is a multiplayer physics based Soccer game played with fast booster, rigged vehicles in place of athletes, and is the sequel to Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars! Since its release last year for Playstation 4 and Windows, Rocket League has gathered a huge following, which has only increased the demand for a Linux version.

Anticipation has only been building since the SteamOS icon appeared briefly a few weeks ago on the Rocket League store, though to the disappointment of Steam users everywhere it isn’t ready for installation. The news was officially announced in August via Twitter that the game would soon makes its way to SteamOS/Mac after celebrating a million sales on Steam, and last week the news was broken by Steam forum moderator Volodesi that the game should be available before the end of the year. There’s no solid release date yet — the year’s end date isn’t official — but it sounds as if the release is in its final stages.

Hunter Banks

Hunter Banks has been a part of the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) Family for the past 13 years. When not writing about open source gaming, he’s working on creating his own games. Follow him on Twitter @SilvrChariot

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Will Steam Machine Solve Linux’s Gaming Woes?Syber Steam Machine X

Will Steam Machine Solve Linux’s Gaming Woes?

By Hunter Banks on November 25, 2015 |

Distros, Gaming and Operating Systems

The Steam machine is now publicly on sale as of last week, but it’s not off to the best start. A couple of weeks ago, Ars Technica compared the performance of games when running on Valve’s Linux based SteamOS and Windows 10. Six Valve games were tested on a single machine and results showed a 21 to 58 percent frame rate drop when running on Linux. While only six games were tested out of an entire collection of around 1,800 available titles, the games used Valve’s own Source engine, which is designed for Linux and SteamOS. Valve had previously stated that Steam games run faster on Linux, so it was expected that any of Valve’s own Source engine games would run smoothly.

Syber Steam Machine X
Top drawer Syber Steam Machine X which retails for $1,499 sold out in less than a day after Syber put them on sale for $1,299.
Under-performing Linux ports may be something players will have to deal with for a little while longer as porting is difficult and time consuming with not much of an expected payoff for developers.

Hunter Banks

Hunter Banks has been a part of the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) Family for the past 13 years. When not writing about open source gaming, he’s working on creating his own games. Follow him on Twitter @SilvrChariot

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The State of Open Source Gaming on LinuxLudum Dare Logo

The State of Open Source Gaming on Linux

By Hunter Banks on November 11, 2015 |

Community and Gaming

In the month of October, the spotlight seems to have been on Indie games, and for the open source/Linux developer there were some exciting things happening. On October 26, the 2016 Independent Game Festival (IGF) had its last call for independent game submissions. The IGF is basically Sundance for game developers and student designers who create for Linux, Steam, Mac, and Windows as well as virtual reality and consoles, with over $50 thousand in prizes up for grabs. The competition takes place March 14-18 in San Francisco, for those interested.

Ludum Dare LogoA few game jams, contests for developers to design a game in a short time span, usually between 24-72 hours, have just passed or are soon to be underway as well. Gaming on Linux just concluded its very first game jam last week. Ludum Dare recently finished its “October Challenge,” and as a result eleven more games have been added to the Linux roster. Their next challenge begins in four weeks, with the theme not yet determined, so feel free to visit and suggest a theme. Ludum Dare also has a mini-challenge, Fusion, scheduled to start on November 20 — so keep checking those links for updates.

Hunter Banks

Hunter Banks has been a part of the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) Family for the past 13 years. When not writing about open source gaming, he’s working on creating his own games. Follow him on Twitter @SilvrChariot

Continue readingThe State of Open Source Gaming on Linux
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