Plica Concept Threatens iPhone With Two Touchscreens
Posted on 02 August 2008
I know that probably most of you are enjoying your iPhone 3G and you are very satisfied with it, but when you will see this concept you might want to reconsider your thoughts. The cellphone is called Plica which means folding of a body part.
Plica consists of two touchscreens and it looks exactly like a regular cellphone. When the phone is folded in two screens, you will use one as a keyboard and on the other you will be able to see whatever you want to. Also, you can view the images on both screens which means twice the resolution. Plica is very functional kind of like a mini-laptop and it features USB and headphone jacks.
This could really be the iPhone killer as the double touchscreen is really great, the only problem is that this is only a concept. Plica was developed by designer James Piatt and I can’t wait to see this on the market.
My thoughts:
That’s an interesting concept but one of the things that it will fail at with regards to the iphone is the fact that it sports moving parts. Yes, you can operate it with one hand and one screen, but can you imagine juggling your venti mocha, your laptop bag, your light rail pass, and a headphone cord while trying to open that thing? No, you might not NEED to open it but folks will try none-the-less.
It’s also not as much of a “fashion” item as the iPhone is. But if the functionality is up to par(i.e. running android, remaining open source with a closed source carrier specific package so that phone service always remains consistent) then this would be the iPhone killer for those of us who have been hacking them to get them to do what they want.
Folks who bought the iPhone and use them the way Lord Steve deemed appropriate for all his iChildren… will never buy this. -Joe
Quoted from http://www.linuxtoys.org/multiseat/multiseat.html:
Build a Six-headed, Six-user Linux System
Build a Six-Headed, Six-User Linux System
By Bob Smith
Introduction
A Multi-Seat Linux Box: This tutorial shows how to build a multi-head, multi-user Linux box using a recent distribution of Linux and standard USB keyboards and mice. Xorg calls this arrangement a “multi-seat” system.
Advantages of a Multi-Seat System: The advantages of multi-seat systems in schools, Internet cafe’s, and libraries include more than just saving money. They include much lower noise pollution, much less power consumption, and lowered space requirements. For many applications power and noise budgets are as important as initial cost.
Requirements: To build a multi-seat system you need a video adapter, keyboard, and mouse for each seat. For six seats, you’ll also need a motherboard with an AGP slot and five available PCI slots. In our test system we used USB keyboards and mice exclusively, but you can use a PS/2 keyboard and mouse for one seat if you wish.
Xorg 6.9 or later is required, but this already ships with many of the major distributions. Our test system uses the free version of Mandriva 2006 and we did not rebuild the kernel or install any additional packages.
Overview
We divide the implementation of a multi-seat system into five main steps:
- Select and Install the Hardware
- Install Linux
- Record Hardware Configuration
- Modify xorg.conf
- Modify gdm.conf
After installing the hardware and installing Linux, we read the hardware configuration from the lspci command from from the /proc/bus/input/devices file. Most of the effort in setting up a multi-seat system is in transcribing the hardware information into the xorg.conf file.
Step 1: Select and Install the Hardware
Selecting the Hardware: There are few set rules dictating what hardware to use in your multi-seat system. Of necessity, some of the keyboards and mice need to use USB, but there is no minimum CPU or memory requirements. We suggest building and testing a multi-seat system using a computer that you already have, and use the test results to help scale your hardware requirements. You may be surprised how modest the CPU and memory requirements are for a multi-seat system that is used only for web browsing.
If possible, try to use accelerated video cards, but for increased reliability, avoid video cards with on-board fans. Use recent video cards; older video cards often have a problem sharing the PCI bus. We’ve had good luck with nVidia cards but you can try recent cards from other manufacturers too.
Hardware for our test system: For our system we chose to use video cards based on the nVidia MX4000 chipset. They are accelerated, have no fans, and it was nice having one driver for all six video cards. The downside of nVidia is that the driver is closed source and you need to download and install it. If you use an nVidia card, be sure to check their web site for the recommended BIOS settings for your cards.
We used an ECS 755-A2 motherboard with an AMD64-3200 processor and 1 GB of RAM. Our power supply is a CoolMax 140mm Power Supply and the CPU heat sink is a Thermaltake “Sonic Tower”. During our testing we added a low noise fan to cool the video cards. Airflow is in at the bottom, past the video cards, up past the CPU cooler and out through the power supply. This airflow seemed to work pretty well. At quiescence, the CPU temperature was 31C, rising to only 38C after fifteen minutes of kernel compile. The current from the mains at quiescence was 0.25 amps, and during a kernel compile it was 0.35 amps.
You will probably need some USB hubs to connect all of the keyboards and mice. One problem to think about before permanently installing the hardware is cable management. Seven power cords, six monitor cables, three USB hubs, six keyboard cables, and six mice cables: that is a lot of cabling!
Step 2: Install Linux
Multi-seat capability is provided by Xorg 6.9/7.0 which already ships with most of the major distributions. When you install Linux, you might want to install all of the window managers including fluxbox and twm. If you are going to use the nVidia drivers, be sure to install the kernel source too.
Do the installation with all of the hardware connected and powered up. Mandriva did a great job detecting and configuring all six of our video heads. Select a default run level of 3 so that X does not start automatically after boot. You can check the installation by logging in and running startx. If all has gone well you should be able to move your mouse across all six monitors.
Mandriva makes up to ten entries in the /dev/input directory. We needed twelve since we had six keyboards and mice. We increased the limit to sixteen by changing the line in /etc/udev/ruled.d/50-mdk.rules from:
KERNEL==”event[0-9]*”, NAME=”input/%k”, MODE=”0600″
to:
KERNEL==”event[0-9a-f]*”, NAME=”input/%k”, MODE=”0600″
Step 3: Record Hardware Configuration
All hardware in our computer has a name that distinguishes it from similar hardware in the computer. In this step we record the names for each of our video heads, keyboards, and mice. Let’s start with the video cards.
Video cards are identified by their address on the PCI bus. We can list the hardware on the PCI buses using the lspci command. On our test system, the lspci command gives the following result: lspci | grep VGA 00:09.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000 AGP 8x] (rev c1) 00:0a.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000 AGP 8x] (rev c1) 00:0b.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000 AGP 8x] (rev c1) 00:0c.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000 AGP 8x] (rev c1) 00:0d.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000 AGP 8x] (rev c1) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000 AGP 8x] (rev c1) The bus address is the first field in the lines above. The number before the colon identifies which PCI bus (computers often have more than one), and the second number gives the card address on the bus. You will need to know these addresses to build the xorg.conf configuration file.
The mice are easy to locate. Each mouse has an entry in the /dev/input directory. An ls can identify the mice. ls /dev/input/mouse* /dev/input/mouse0 /dev/input/mouse2 /dev/input/mouse4 /dev/input/mouse1 /dev/input/mouse3 /dev/input/mouse5 The keyboards are identified as a /dev/input/eventN file. Do a more of /proc/bus/input/devices. Each keyboard will have an entry that specifies the event file. The following two entries are for the first two keyboards in our system. more /proc/bus/input/devices I: Bus=0003 Vendor=046e Product=530a Version=0001 N: Name=”BTC Multimedia USB Keyboard” P: Phys=usb-0000:00:03.3-4.2.1/input0 H: Handlers=kbd event6 B: EV=120003 B: KEY=1000000000007 ff87207ac14057ff febeffdfffefffff fffffffffffffffe B: LED=1f I: Bus=0003 Vendor=046e Product=530a Version=0001 N: Name=”BTC Multimedia USB Keyboard” P: Phys=usb-0000:00:03.3-4.4.1/input0 H: Handlers=kbd event7 B: EV=120003 B: KEY=1000000000007 ff87207ac14057ff febeffdfffefffff fffffffffffffffe B: LED=1f
A table is a nice way to view all of the above information.
Seat Video Card Keyboard
(/dev/input/) Mouse
(/dev/input/)
| 0 |
00:09:0 |
event6 |
mouse0 |
| 1 |
00:10:0 |
event7 |
mouse1 |
| 2 |
00:11:0 |
event8 |
mouse2 |
| 3 |
00:12:0 |
event9 |
mouse3 |
| 4 |
00:13:0 |
event10 |
mouse4 |
| 5 |
01:00:0 |
event11 |
mouse5 |
Note the slight change in how the video cards are addressed. Also, you’ll find the numbering of the keyboards and mice easier if you plug each mouse into the same hub as its corresponding keyboard. Don’t worry too much about matching the video head to the keyboard. After setting everything up you can move the monitors or the keyboards around as needed.
Step 4: Build xorg.conf
The xorg.conf file has sections to describe keyboards, mice, video cards, monitors, screens, and seats. Most of the work in setting up a multi-seat system is correctly copying the information in the above table into the appropriate section of the xorg.conf file. Shown below is our configuration for seat 5. You should be able to use this configuration as a prototype for your additional seats. Note the places where the keyboard, mouse, and video card information is located. Since we were borrowing monitors for our test, we forced all of the monitors to be flat panel displays with a 1024 by 768 resolution. # Seat 5 Section “InputDevice” Identifier “Keyboard5″ Driver “evdev” Option “Device” “/dev/input/event11″ Option “XkbModel” “pc105″ Option “XkbLayout” “us” Option “XkbOptions” “compose:rwin” EndSection Section “InputDevice” Identifier “Mouse5″ Driver “mouse” Option “Protocol” “ExplorerPS/2″ Option “Device” “/dev/input/mouse5″ Option “ZAxisMapping” “6 7″ EndSection Section “Device” Identifier “device5″ Driver “nvidia” VendorName “NVIDIA Corp.” BoardName “NVIDIA GeForce4 (generic)” BusID “PCI:0:13:0″ EndSection Section “Monitor” Identifier “monitor5″ ModelName “Flat Panel 1024×768″ HorizSync 31.5 – 48.5 VertRefresh 40.0 – 70.0 ModeLine “768×576″ 50.0 768 832 846 1000 576 590 595 630 ModeLine “768×576″ 63.1 768 800 960 1024 576 578 590 616 EndSection Section “Screen” Identifier “screen5″ Device “device5″ Monitor “monitor5″ DefaultDepth 24 SubSection “Display” Virtual 1024 768 Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Section “ServerLayout” Identifier “seat5″ Screen 0 “Screen5″ 0 0 InputDevice “Mouse5″ “CorePointer” InputDevice “Keyboard5″ “CoreKeyboard” EndSection There is a simple trick to help verify that all the numbers in the xorg.conf file are right — pass the file through sort and uniq.
cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf | sort | uniq The output of the above command string will make obvious any errors in numbering the various keyboards and such.
Testing Your Xorg.conf File: It is a good idea to test your configuration and to sort out the keyboards and mice by bringing up the heads one at a time. Login remotely so that you are not using any of the video heads. Enter the following commands for each of the six heads (0 to 5). (The commands below are for head 5.)
X -novtswitch -sharevts -nolisten tcp -layout seat5 :5 & xterm -display :5 & If the above command fails, examine the error messages and check the xorg.conf file. If the command succeeds, use the xterm to help identify which keyboard and mouse go to which head. The keyboards, mice, and video cards are enumerated in the same order on every boot, so you will only have to move things around during the initial set up.
The above commands might be sufficient if you don’t need user logins. For example, a six headed kiosk might need only X and a web browser on each head.
Step 5: Modify gdm.conf
If you want user logins you will need to modify the configuration for your preferred display manager. The directions given here are for gdm but the changes are very similar for kdm, or for the X display manager, xdm.
Modify the [servers] section near the bottom of the /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf file to tell gdm which X servers to start. The lines should be: 0=Standard0 1=Standard1 2=Standard2 3=Standard3 4=Standard4 5=Standard5 You need to tell gdm how to start the X server on each head. The lines to do this are: [server-Standard5] name=Standard server command=/usr/X11R6/bin/X -nolisten tcp -novtswitch -sharevts -layout seat5 flexible=true You’ll need a section like the above for each head. The server name, “Standard5″ in the above example, must match the name given in the [servers] section. Customize the X command line options to meet the requirements of your particular system.
Once everything is configured, you should be able to start graphical logins by switching to runlevel 5. telinit 5 If everything works, make the default runlevel 5 by editing /etc/inittab or by setting it using drakconf.
Test Results, Costs, and Problems
Performance Results: Between resets, we found performance to be excellent for six users doing typical PC tasks, including web browsing, email, word processing, and games. The accelerated graphics cards seemed to do most of the work so that even arcade style games and web-based video did not put much of a load on the CPU. If “3200″ is an accurate assessment of the performance of the AMD64-3200, then a CPU with a performance of “1600″ would have been more than sufficient.
Cost: Not including the monitor, each seat in our system cost about $67. This includes $40 for the MX4000 based video card, $20 for a USB keyboard, $5 for a USB mouse, and $2 for half of a USB hub. Our test system uses expensive keyboards that have a built-in USB hub which we intended for per user flash disks or audio players.
The shared part of our system cost about $520. This includes $180 for the CPU, $50 for the motherboard, $90 for RAM, and $50 for the CPU heat sink. The case, power supply, and disk drive had a combined cost of about $150.
We give these prices just for comparison. You may find lower prices that these and we’d certainly recommend that you replace our $230 CPU and motherboard with an Athlon 2800+ set that costs about $80. We have not included the cost of the monitors since these prices are in free fall and your particular needs and tastes may dictate what you spend.
Problems: Did you catch the phrase “between resets” above? While the system worked very well, it was extremely unstable. In particular, we got a kernel oops fairly often when we logged out. A syslog trace of one such oops is available here. We’ve tried several things to fix this problem including:
- turning APIC off and on
- reducing the number of heads
- trying the ‘nv’ and ‘vesa’ drivers
- using NoInt10
- upgrading to the official X11R6.9 release
- upgrading to the 2.6.15 kernel
- using xdm and fvwm instead of gdm and Gnome
The problem persists. Please let bsmith at linuxtoys dot org know if you have any ideas that might help fix this problem.
A much less severe problem is that some programs assume that there is a single user on the PC. Screen savers can take a lot of CPU power and both KDE and Gnome complain if they don’t have audio output. Any shared resource, such as audio or a CD burner, can be a problem.
Longer term, we will need to address security issues surrounding multi-seat computers. Whether from students or cafe patrons, these systems are going to come under deliberate, malicious attack. Can we trust KDE and Gnome to withstand such attacks?
Summary
A multi-head, multi-user Linux system is now possible using commodity PC hardware and standard Linux distributions. Multi-seat Linux PCs seem inevitable given the potential savings in cost, noise, and power.
Further Reading
Chris Tyler’s page: Chris Tyler provided support at almost every step of the way in this project. His web site has a HOWTO that also describes how to set up a multi-seat system. Chris is something of an expert in X and I’m looking forward to his next book which will contain some of the material presented here. Chris’ web site is at:
http://blog.chris.tylers.info/
Xorg man pages: Xorg provides a full set of manual pages that describe the xorg.conf file and all of the commands used in getting X-Windows to run. The manual page for xorg.conf is at:
http://wiki.x.org/X11R6.9.0/doc/html/xorg.conf.5.html
The manual pages for the X commands are at:
http://wiki.x.org/X11R6.9.0/doc/html/manindex1.html
Quoted from http://www.23degrees.net/tools/archives/56-Making-a-digital-picture-frame.html:
Making a digital picture frame – Morehow Hibimoyo
Recently I was wondering if there is a better way to show my digital photos without buying into a proprietary system. There is a better way. I found some sites describing how to make your own frame from a laptop computer but a lot of experimentation was needed to get my frame to function properly.
This is the core of the computer. Everything is removed except for the CPU mainboard. After labelling the cables I could begin to put things back together.
The trouble was I couldn’t afford anything fancy but I needed something fast enough to play videos. I searched for a long time until it was almost too late. My deadline was approaching when I saw an old CTX laptop. The brand is actually discontinued now but this one had an original drivers CD with it. The hinge was severely broken on both sides. This laptop has a plastic frame so repairing this would require a lot of work – perfect for dismantling. I bought it for CAD$320.
Why Make This System?
Instead of denial I propose to artists to practice acceptance and gratitude for the tools we are able to use in making our art. The tools of art are as much of a subject in art as the stories we tell. Unfortunately modernist ideas have obscured even many postmodern minds with the ideas of “a classless society” that ignores the medium “as long as the message is good.” The postmodern reaction seems to be mostly in the discarding of the ideal of “a better life through progress.” But society has not ceased to change. Artists must be able to see their own work in a larger context, regardless if they work in a gallery setting or in the commercial market. To do less than this is to merely react to trends in the art community without thinking about why and how we are able to make art regardless if its a painting using mass produced pigments or a photographer using commercial digital equipment.
In this way the photograph and more so the film owe their credits not only to the artists who conceptualise the forms they will take but also the people who invent and make the instruments of these mediums. In many ways both are a celebration or critique of industrialised society. Largely it has been musicians that have investigated the connection between art and industry. Groups like Einstürzende Neubauten ( lit. Tearing down new buildings ) have used machinery and bits of raw commodities as their musical instruments. The aura of glamour surrounding film and photography rejects a view of itself on purely mechanical and industrial terms. Without industry the glamour would not exist. It is an integral part of both mediums.
Here I was seeing how all the parts would fit after I turned the screen up-side-down and put it on the other side of the mat board. I used paper to test the placement of everything before using plexi.
The Laptop I Used
When I brought it home I began to test all the components. Things seemed to work ok with the Windows operating system. I didn’t want to run Windows because I wanted the open programmability of a Unix like operating system. This is where the fun began.
I downloaded FreeBSD 4.8 since I’m running an older FreeBSD on this server (back when I wrote this). It would have made things simpler to use the same OS on both computers but I got a kernel panic every time I tried to boot the installer. Eventually I gave up.
I used Debian before. So I downloaded the Debian installer floppies.
Problems encountered:
- The CDROM on this EZbook is not reliable with any form or Linux, there are some workarounds but these were not worth my time.
- The Belkin network card was not in the original pcmcia.config file. The Belkin Linux FAQ lists the data that must be entered into the file. This was an easy fix – see the end of this document for exact details.
- Partitioning a harddrive that is only 2 GB is not easy. I wanted this to be a robust system with very separate home and var directories.
- The CTX laptops have a strange quirk. They need to have a small partition at the beginning of the drive for writing the RAM to disk when it goes to sleep. Linux does not use this function as far as I know. It does’t work on my EZbook, but I had to wipe the drive clean and install this partition before I installed the rest of Debian.
This is the first simple version of the frame. I was using foam-core and mat board because it’s easy to work with but its not a very strong material for a long lasting frame. For the final result I used plexi.
After three installs I had all the quirks figured out. The computer runs almost perfectly. One little problem is that the clock battery is weak. The computer will not boot properly if it has been unplugged for a few days. Then I need to put the hard-drive in a horizontal position to boot it. After this it runs fine on its side. If I leave it plugged in all the time it boots without any trouble.
Some specs on this system:
- EZbook series, 233 Pentium with MMX
- 32 MB RAM
- 2 GB hard-drive swap = 320 MB, / = 160 MB, /usr = 900 MB, /var = 160 MB, /tmp = 45 MB
I need to have 320 MB of swap to run Imagemagick’s animate function. It uses a lot of RAM and will crash if it can’t get enough. I am using Mplayer to run the clips I made. It uses very little resources but it flashes back to the Xserver desktop each time it begins a new loop. I can run it either on top of XF86 running Blackbox or from the console directly to the video card (vo=vesa).
The Screen Test
After I knew everything would work properly I began to transfer all the parts to the clear plastic sheet. Since the protective wrapping is still on the plastic you can’t see it’s transparent but it kept the surface from being scratched during the work.
The first iteration of the laptop frame was made with the whole computer still intact. I wanted to get it all working before I removed any crucial parts. When I was happy the with the network, USB and video performance I dismantled the whole computer. I removed as many parts as I could.
Parts discarded:
- CDROM
- floppy
- battery mounts
- keyboard
- trackpad
The Prototype
This made the motherboard very compact. I put this upside-down onto a piece of mat board. I needed to keep the RAM and other bulky components from touching the paper. I used the plastic screw mounts from an old radio. I used a small power tool with a cut-off wheel to get those parts. I screwed every mount to the motherboard. Then it would be easy to glue the whole thing down to the mat board. Epoxy glue held the mounts to the mat.
The screen was glued to the other side of the mat board. Slots were cut into the mat to allow the connectors to pass through. I had to plug in the connectors with the screen facing backwards from its original placement. I put the computer upside-down as well. I used spacers in between the screen and the board to keep it from overheating.
I was happy with the layout. It worked properly and it ran very cool so the fan never needed to turn on to cool the CPU. I was worried about this since the CPU heat-sink fins faced the bottom of the computer. This is not an efficient way to cool.
The Final Design
I wanted the final look to be minimalistic. My brother began to help me put this together. He suggested I use clear plastic sheets to support the CPU and screen. So the screen and the CPU are attached back to back on the same piece of plastic sheet. The rear sheet is used to hold the assembly to the wall and protect the CPU but it isn’t touching it at all. The two pieces are held in place with dowels drilled from both ends.
The photo gallery for the laptop digital frame is here.
The finished laptop frame displaying a looping five minute time-lapse film I made called “United” in 2004. More Technical Info
I needed to add this to my /etc/pcmcia/config-2.4 for my Belkin PCMCIA ethernet card to work properly before I could do a network install.
- card “Belkin 5020″
- version “Belkin”, “F5D5020-PCMCIA-Network-Card”
- bind “pcnet_cs”
I decided to partition the hard-drive this way to prevent any overlap or full partitions. Maybe I was too paranoid. I also opted for a journaling file system* because I expect this laptop to be be shutdown in nasty ways if it on exhibit, like it already has been a few times it was shown without my presence. The *ext3fs keeps the file system up-to-date so there is little or no corruption when it’s rebooted. The best part of this is that I don’t have to be there to run fsck on the disk and I don’t have to teach anyone to do it for me.
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda5 183M 62M 111M 36% /
/dev/hda6 1.3G 826M 421M 67% /usr
/dev/hda7 168M 48M 112M 30% /var
/dev/hda8 38M 4.1M 32M 12% /tmp
I’m using Murasaki instead of Hotplug for my USB devices. It seems to work a lot better for me. I can use an apple keyboard and a Logitech 3-button mouse without drivers anytime I want.
Quoted from http://www.bspcn.com/2007/05/26/top-8-linux-games-of-2007/:
Top 8 Linux Games Of 2007 | The Best Article Every day
Written by rangit.com
Below are 8 addictive 3d games for linux users to fill their time with. These games are really good and some have won awards or have been featured on magazines. Most of it is cross platform and free. You don’t have to use ‘Wine’ to be able to play as they come with Linux installers.
- Battle For Wesnoth
David White who started Wesnoth back in 2003, had a vision of a free open source strategy game that had very simple rules, uses a strong artificial intelligence, challenging and fun. Wesnoth has already passed the 1 million mark for downloads. As of March 2007, the game is available in 35 different languages.
A normal Wesnoth player has
- 200+ unit types
- 16 different races
- 6 major factions
to choose from. Actually, you can even make your own custom units, design your own map, scenarios or even campaigns. It’s all up to your creativity. The most interesting part of any game is the ability to multiplay. You can challenge up to a total of 8 friends in multiplayer fantasy battles.
- Nexuiz
Nexuiz is a free, cross platform, first person shooter distributed under GNU General Public License by Alientrap Software. It started back in May 31 2005 with version 1.0 using DarkPlaces, a significanlty modified quake engine. The current version, 2.2.3, was released on January 26, 2007. Nexuiz’s logo is based on the chinese character “力” which means strength.
Several notable features of the game include
- ability to multiplay up to 64 players
- ability to generate bots for practice sessions
- dynamic lighting system similar to Doom 3
- America’s Army
America’s Army is a tactical, multiplayer, first-person shooter owned by the United States Government and released as a global public relations initiative to help with U.S. Army recruitment. The first version, Recon, was released on 4th July 2002. The current version 2.8.1 was released on 22nd Mar 2007.
It’s the first well known computer game used for political aims. The game is used as a playable recruiting tool and critics have charged the game serves as a propaganda device. A counter on the homepage of the PC version shows over eight million registered accounts as of 2007. GameSpy tracked the game usage and reported an average of 4,500 players at any one time between 2002 and 2005. It is enough for America’s Army to rank in the Top 10 Online Games chart.
- Enemy Territory : Quake Wars
is a first-person shooter follow-up to Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. It also has the same science fiction universe as Quake 4, with a story serving as a prequel to Quake II. Quake Wars is the second multiplayer-only game in the Quake series after Quake III Arena. The gameplay is almost the same as Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, but with the addition of controllable vehicles and aircraft, asymmetric teams, much larger maps and the option of computer-controlled bots. Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is being developed by Splash Damage for the PC using a modified version of id Software’s Doom 3 engine and MegaTexture rendering technology.
At E3 2006(Electronic Entertainment Expo), the game won the Game Critics Award for Best Online Multiplayer.
- Tremulous
Tremulous is an open source team-based first-person shooter with a game play that is similar to Gloom(a quake 2 mod) and Natural Selection (a Half-Life mod). The game features two teams, humans and aliens, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. The game has been downloaded over 200,000 times and was voted “Player’s Choice Standalone Game of the Year” in Mod Database’s “Mod of the Year” 2006 competition.
- Tux Racer
Tux Racer is a newbie friendly, open source, 3D computer game starring the Linux mascot, Tux the penguin. Like many open-source games, the replay value of Tux Racer is extended by easy modification of the game. New maps can be created by making three raster images to indicate height, surface, and object placement. The last release of Tux Racer was version 0.61, 29th October 2001.
- World Of Padman
WOP is a new and free comic style game that uses the Quake 3 engine. The game was recently featured in 3 German magazine covers; PC Action, ‘BRAVO Screenfun’ and ‘Linux Intern’.
- Vendetta
is a first person twitch based MMORPG. New players get an 8 hour trial which is enough to get anyone hooked to it. After that, you gotta pay $5 a month which is quite worthwhile, especially considering the incredibly communicative development of the game. It has a native linux installer as well as one for Macs and Windows.
