Filed under: Features, Linux, Open Source, How-Tos
Flipping the Linux switch: Disturbingly easy installs, now with sound and action
by Kristin Shoemaker Mar 21st 2008
Last week, we walked through installing Ubuntu Linux.
It's not a particularly hard process, and Ubuntu is great because it clearly illustrates the basic steps every Linux distribution goes through when it installs on a hard drive. Even if you don't use Ubuntu or a derivative, just looking at the installer screenies gives a nice story arc to a generic Linux install.New users often find the first time they log in to their shiny new Linux desktop that not only are many things they need installed and ready, but a few things they really want aren't. They'll have a browser, but the Flash plug-in won't be activated. They'll have a media player, but it won't play .mp3 or .wma files. It won't play DVDs. What's up with that?
The main reason this happens is due to licensing, copyright and distribution issues. It will vary from distribution to distribution a little bit (Puppy Linux usually includes Flash with its browser, and Xandros usually peppers in a few media codecs), but for the most part, the free (as in speech) aspect of the software is kept separate from the proprietary. Legality is the major player, but there are quite a few open source folks out there who like to keep their machine free of the proprietary stuff on principle.
That's totally fine, we say. To each his own. But we have this movie we want to watch right here, right now.
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
