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Native Visual Basic now available for Linux

The open source Mono Project, which is sponsored in part by Novell, Inc. announced today that it has developed a Visual Basic compiler which allows software written in Microsoft's most widely used application programming language to be compiled and run on any platform which Mono supports. Until this announcement, Visual Basic applications could only be run on the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems.

"The ability to write software that runs easily across multiple platforms has long been a holy grail for developers," says Mono Project founder and VP of developer platforms for Novell, Miguel de Icaza, "The Mono Visual Basic compiler is a milestone step forward in this direction. Using the software skills they already know, developers can now reach a much broader audience, creating applications that run without modification on all the major operating system platforms."

It isn't de Icaza we have to thank for the Linux VB compiler, at least not in full. Google's Summer of Code project in 2006 brought Raulf Jarve, a Norwegian student programmer who now lives in Spain, to the project. Jarve finished the compiler and has since been hired by Novell.

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Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

CiviballsI have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

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