Using Xandros is like Breeding Mules

Day 58

Mules are the result of the love shared by a male donkey and a female horse. These two animals evolved from the same creature so they are still genetically similar enough to produce offspring. Only one problem - horses and donkeys have a differing number of chromosomes (64 and 62, respectively) which means the mule is actually a genetic mess. One major side effect of this darwinistic God-playing is that mules can never reproduce - they are born sterile. 

Xandros is kind of like the mule. It is a derivative of Debian, and the version that ships with the Eee is further customized to fit the specifics of the tiny machine. This means the some .deb packages work, while others either do nothing, or can even brick the computer completely. 

I spent about four hours last night in a semi-circle of laptops trying to get them to recognize each other. Here's my arsenal.

1. Eee PC - Xandros advanced desktop

2. The wife's HP Pavilion - Windows XP

3. Antique Sony Vaio - Originally shipped with Windows 95, currently the only thing I can even get to load on it is Damn Small Linux

4. Dell Latitude - Ubuntu 8.10

My goal is to find a first person shooter game that will run smoothly on all the computers (plus two desktops, but dealing with those are simply too overwhelming right now). Here's where the mule analogy comes into play. Even though Xandros, DSL, and Ubuntu are all based on Debian, it was quite difficult to find a game that would run on the different OSes (especially cross platform). The ones the did load (Nexuiz and Alien Arena, specifically) were unable to find other players in network play. 

So if the mules can't get along, I say put them down and buy horses. I wiped both the Vaio and the Eee with intentions of putting some form of Ubuntu on them. My wife is pro Windows, but I figured she wouldn't mind if I dual booted her laptop with Ubuntu as well. This way all the machines - in theory - would sync nicely. Only one problem - the Vaio never made it through installation, and the Eee gives me about five minutes worth of errors before loading - and wireless doesn't work. 

So basically, last night was a bust. At the very least, I need to pull out my old DSL install disk, and the Xandros recovery CD just to get back to start. 

New Year's Resolution

Day 57

I'm coming up on the two month mark with me Eee PC, and that conveniently syncs up pretty close with the start of 2009. I have a personal resolution to help ring in the new year, but I thought I could make one for the Eee as well - and that is to play well with others.

Well, other computers anyways. I never had much luck getting my Eee to find network printers at work, and I've never even bothered to set up a home network. Counting the Eee, and the soon-to-be acquired Dell from my Mom's office (I was volunteered to set up two new computers for her and that is my commission) I have six machines at my disposal and I think it's time I figure out how to make them all work together.

My ultimate goal is to get a multi-player first person shooter game up and running. I skipped many classes during college to play Half-Life with buddies in the dorms, and I'd like to recreate that in the basement with my assortment of computers. Linux and the gaming world have a love-hate relationship, so this may be an unattainable goal, but aren't all new year's resolutions?

I'm the Bomb

Day 36

Linux isn't known for it's incredible gaming abilities (although Digg is abuzz with stories about someone porting Prey to Linux), and unfortunately, neither am I. Given the preference, I'd still rather pull out the old NES or Sega Genesis than turn on the Wii that's in the living room. The reason I mention these archiac systems is because tonight I got to take my Eee with me down memory lane.

One of my favorite games as a kid was Mega Bomberman for the Sega. Bomberman was forever trapped in a series of mazes with a seemingly endless supply of bombs hidden somewhere on his person. Occasionally a dinosaur bearing a slight resemblance to Yoshi comes to help, and at some point in the game, Bomberman is called upon to fight a giant banana. Imagine my glee when I found an open source version called BomberClone in Synaptic.

It installed no problem, but does not automatically show up in the Launch menu. Instead, it runs simply by typing "bomberclone" in the console.

It's similar to Bomberman, however, sadly, the giant banana is absent. It has a multi-player setting though, so if anyone is interested in trying to play a game, comment me and maybe we can figure something out.

No Bananas or good-natured dinosaurs, but BomberClone is still lots of fun.