[ubuntu-za] Ubuntu Indaba 0.5

[Jason Norwood-Young]

Ubuntu Indaba

Read this online at http://www.ubuntu-za.org/Wiki/News-0.5

Issue 0.5 (Burning Bushbuck)

Saturday 26 May 

It's been a crazy week for me, but I managed to unwind on Friday night
by completing Quest for Glory 1, the only Hero's Quest I haven't
finished. And yes, I played it on Ubuntu. Wow, I'm a geek.

* I feel creative today! *
Be it the regular Gnome, Kubuntu, Edubuntu or Xubuntu, we all know and
love our special flavour of Ubuntu. But Ubuntu isn't just for Linux
geeks – the creative types who usually sport Apple Macs are now also
catered for with a fresh, new Ubuntu distribution – UbuntuStudio.
This version of Ubuntu, focused on multimedia creation, editing and
production, includes the best open source multimedia software available,
including The Gimp for graphics, Kino for video, Blender and Yafray for
3D work, and Ardour and Audacity for audio. You'll also find a ton of
other really cool and useful applications for multimedia work, all on
one convenient DVD (868MB). 
If you don't want the whole shebang, you can pick-and-choose bits of the
distribution by adding the UbuntuStudio repository to your existing
Ubuntu installation.
Ubuntu Studio [ http://ubuntustudio.org ]
Download and instructions for adding the repository
[ http://ubuntustudio.org/downloads ]

* Sun defends Ubuntu *
Following last week's Microsoft patent debacle, Sun Microsystems' head
honcho Jonathan Schwartz stated that Sun would bring its significant
patent portfolio to the party to defend Ubuntu and Red Hat from patent
threats. “Sun has what I'd argue to be the single most valuable and
focused patent portfolio on the web (and yes, we'd use it to defend Red
Hat and Ubuntu, both),” stated Schwartz on his blog.
Jonathan Schwartz' blog [ http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/ ]

* What's all the fuss about? - Shuttleworth *
While Schwartz may be wanting to bail Ubuntu out of the perceived threat
of Microsoft's litigious claims, Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu founder, is
unconcerned. In his blog this week, Shuttleworth says: “I don’t think
Microsoft is the real threat, and in fact, I think Microsoft and the
Linux community will actually end up fighting on the same side of this
issue.”
Microsoft, he argues, is under just as much pressure from software
patents as anyone else, and he sees a time when Microsoft turns and
fights the threat to its own business, rather than using it as a weak
defence against others. 
“Microsoft already spends a huge amount of money on patent settlements
(far, far more than they could hope to realise through patent licensing
of their own portfolio). That number will creep upwards until it’s
abundantly clear to them that they would be better off if software
patents were history.
“In short, Microsoft will lose a patent trench war if they start one,
and I’m sure that cooler heads in Redmond know that.”
Mark Shuttleworth's blog [ http://www.markshuttleworth.com/ ]

* How'd you do that? Reviving really old (and fun) games on Linux *
Remember Hero's Quest? Space Quest? Beneath a Steel Sky? If you loved
those old quest games, you can re-experience them in all their
256-colour glory with a number of tools available on Ubuntu.
First up is ScummVM, an engine for playing the old Lucas Arts classics
on Ubuntu. The best thing about ScummVM is that there are two games you
can install straight from the Ubuntu repositories for immediate
gratification – Beneath a Steel Sky and Flight of the Amazon Queen.
For Sierra quests, there are a number of emulators (you'll find FreeSCI
in the repositories), but because Sierra kept on changing its engines
it's not the most reliable way of playing Sierra classics. Instead, I
recommend DosBox, a cool Dos emulator that works pretty well with most
old Dos games. There aren't any Sierra games in the repositories, so
you'll have to dust off those old boxes and find a floppy drive. 
Some great old games have been released freely for the Linux platform,
most notably Star Control II, which has been renamed The Ur-Quan
Masters. The undisputed best game ever written, The Ur-Quan Masters is
exactly like the original, and just as much fun today as it was in 1992.
To install, type “sudo apt-get install” followed by the packaged name in
a terminal window.
Packages:
ScummVM: scummvm
FreeSCI: freesci
DosBox: dosbox
Beneath a Steel Sky: beneath-a-steel-sky
Flight of the Amazon Queen: flight-of-the-amazon-queen
The Ur-Quan Masters: uqm
DosBox supported games
[ http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/comp_list.php?letter=a ]
ScummVM supported games
[ http://www.scummvm.org/compatibility_stable.php ]
FreeSCI supported games [ http://freesci.linuxgames.com/?page=games ]

* Ubuntu Hug Day *
If you've found a bug, and need a hug, join Ubuntu Hug Day on Wednesday
30 May by heading over to the #ubuntu-devel channel on the
irc.freenode.net IRC server. If you're not sure what to do, feel free to
ask bdmurray, dholbach and the rest of the team for ways to help out. 
Ubuntu Bug Day [ https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay ]
Ubuntu QA team [ https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuQA ]

* About Ubuntu Indaba *
Ubuntu Indaba is a weekly newsletter written for the Ubuntu South Africa
community, by the community, and about the community. Deadline is
12:00pm every Friday.

Editor: Jason Norwood-Young
jason at tectonic.co.za
+27-84-680-3445

Sub-editor: Jonathan Hitchcock 
jonathan.hitchcock at gmail.com

Ubuntu Indaba is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5
South Africa licence. 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/za/