Open Source: The future

Xmatrix

Xmatrix is one of the many screensavers in the xscreensaver program. In this article, I’d tell how to use it from the command line, and display various characters in that. Although it can easily be found in manpages, it is a different fun, writing a tutorial on my own.
Okay, first things first. The Xmatrix is a standalone program, which can be used independently of the xscreensaver program. The xscreensaver program merely manages the timing of display, that is it tracks the time the computer sits idle, and then makes a root window, on which the xmatrix can be displayed. Xmatrix can be used just without xscreensaver, and this post is about that.

The Xmatrix executable is located in /usr/lib/xscreensaver. In fact all xscreensaver screensavers are located in this directory. The filename of Xmatrix is xmatrix. If you try to use this program, it will create a window, in which the characters will be displayed as in the computer screens in the matrix trilogy. What if I want it to be full screen? I’d use the argument -root. Thus, I’d type

>/usr/lib/xscreensaver/xmatrix -root

This will display the screensaver in full screen mode.

There is another argument -visual, which specifies what kind of visual is to be used. You can see this in xscreensaver-demo program, where you set screensaver preferences, that it provides a number of visual options like Gl (OpenGL), Truecolor etc. But you have to know the decimal or hex code for the visual type you want to use for this to work.

The -window argument tells the program to create a new window before starting to draw. But, since this is the default behavior, it need not be written when calling the program.

You can even increase the animation delay with the -delay argument. It takes number, which is time in Microseconds. The default delay is 10000 microseconds. That is 10 milliseconds, which is of course, 1/10th of a second.

You can set how sparse or dense the matrix can be. This can be done with the -density option, which takes as argument a number which is the percentage of the screen to be filled with characters.

The characters can be made small or large with the -small or -large options.

Now, you can even recreate some scenes from the movies. Some would be tracing a phone number, as was shown in the first part, or the cracking scene from Matrix Reloaded, where Trinity cracks through the power grid security system to shut down the power grid.

The tracing scene can be recreated with -mode trace. Optionally you can add a phone number with -phone number. Suppose I’m trying to trace the phone number 3248170, I’d write:

>/usr/lib/xscreensaver/xmatrix -mode trace -phone 3248170

The cracking scene can be recreated with the option -mode crack.

>/usr/lib/xscreensaver/xmatrix -mode crack

Now you can even control the characters that are being displayed on the screen. You can change them to simple ascii characters, dna encoding: A, T, C & G, binary numbers, or even hex numbers.

For ascii characters you’d use -mode ascii, for dna, -mode dna, for binary, -mode binary and for hex, -mode hexadecimal.

You can even use external program to generate the characters to be displayed with the -mode pipe option, or the -program option with the program name as the argument to it.

Writing this one was fun. I hope reading will be too.

Considering one of the most widely used Linux distros in this world of technology and Open Source, Ubuntu is most used Linux Operating System in this world. There’s a secret behind this, which might not actually be a secret. ;). According to DesktopLinux.com’s 2007 Desktop Linux Market Survey, Ubuntu leads in case of Linux users with a share of 30% of all Linux users. The following bar chart shows this:

The beginning

Ubuntu was planned and started as another Linux distro back in 2004. This project was started by Mark Shuttleworth with a team of other programmers, basing their work on the Debian standard, and the Gnome desktop environment. These people gave special importance to freedom, which is of course the Ubuntu philosophy. The initial distros were released in http://no-name-yet.com/. Ubuntu immediately gained popularity in the user base, and is where we know it today.

It was given the Y.MM format, when the first version of Ubuntu was released in October 2004, and was given the version number 4.10. Every version of Ubuntu has been given a codename. The current running version is Ubutnu Intrepid Ibex, which is version 8.10.

Ubuntu is financed and sponsored by Canonical Ltd.

Free CDs shipped out

The “secret” that brings this huge userbase to Ubuntu is that it is shipped out for free to the address one specifies. The shipping is done through shippit.com, and the user has to have an account in launchpad.net. Free CDs means no downloading for a lot of days, and getting three major Ubuntu distros: Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu shipped out right at your door. The CDs get shipped in about 6-10 weeks from the date of request. One CD per distro has now become the limit, which earlier last year in 2007 was 3 CDs per distro, one of which was a 64-bit edition. Later, Edubuntu was replaced with an addon CD, with a few educational softwares bundled inside. It can just be added up in Kubuntu or Ubuntu.

Distributions

Ubuntu comes in various different flavors. Different tastes for different people.

	Ubuntu: The basic one, which is also called Ubuntu comes with a Gnome desktop environment.
	Kubuntu: The next most popular one is Kubuntu, which comes with a K-Desktop Environment (KDE).
	Edubuntu: The former distro Edubuntu came with a Gnome desktop environment, but now is no longer released as a distro, but rather as an addon CD, with some softwares in it, that can be installed and used in other Ubuntu distros. These softwares are primarily for educational purposes.
	Ubuntu MID Edition: The Ubuntu MID edition is for mobile devices and is meant primarily for PDAs. This one has full Internet support, with installed Java and Flash support. The user interface is highly customizable, providing two types of UI: Clutter User Interface, and Flash User Interface. Apart from PDAs, this one can be used in various embedded systems.
	Gobuntu: Gobuntu is for purely and totally FSF based Operating System, providing absolutely free software, and all the rights associated with them.
	Ubuntu Server Edition: This distro is targeted towards server systems, and for use by server admins. Not surprisingly, this is also one of the most used server Operating Systems.
	Ubuntu Studio: This distro is for Audio or Video studio enthusiasts as well as professionals. It provides a wide range of audio and video production programs, ranging from Audacity to Ardour for Audio production, Kino, Open Movie Editor, Pitivi Video Editor and Stop Motion for Video production, and of course among others, GIMP, for graphics production. The good thing about this, is that all included applications are Open Source, which adds to the freedom and power of the creator of contents.
	Xubuntu: Xubuntu is another derivative of Ubuntu, running on the Xfce desktop environment. This one has low system requirements.
	Mythbuntu: Mythbuntu is programmed for setting up a home theatre, and can be used with MythTV. This can be used as a standalone system, or be integrated with existing MythTV networks.
	Ubuntu Ultimate: This derivative is an unofficial derivative of Ubuntu, which comes as a DVD, and loads of free software bundled alongwith. At the time of this writing, the latest available version is Ubuntu Ultimate 2.0.
	Goobuntu: Another Ubuntu derivative, information about which was commonly visible on the Internet a few months ago is Goobuntu, which was supposedly being developed by Google, from Ubuntu. It turned out to be a rumor though. Wikipedia had a mention of this, and searching for Goobuntu on google still returns this article from wikipedia on the top.

So, as is visible, Ubuntu has a huge number of derivatives. Some official, and others not.

My experience with Ubuntu

As being a user of Ubuntu Linux for about one and a half years now, I would share my opinions about Ubuntu with everyone. To be very frank, Ubuntu is a very user friendly Linux distro. But just like with everything else, even Ubuntu has shortcomings. When I started using Ubuntu, I was happy to be using an Open Source Operating System. But as time went by, I started figuring out, that this was running very slow. I had recommended Ubuntu to some of my friends, that had good and expensive laptops with NVidia GeForce and Core 2 Duo processors. I, on the other hand, had an Intel Celeron M processor (which is pretty old now), and no graphics accelerator. So, Ubuntu ran slow and became sluggish. Then one day, I decided to switch off the compiz effects that I had added, thinking that if the processor won’t be engaged in graphical activities, this would free up a lot of processor, thereby speeding up my computer. But I guess I was wrong, because although the computer did not slow down due to desktop switching and other graphical activities, but applications still took a long time to initiate. The CPU usage applet still often showed 100% CPU usage, because of which the computer was sluggish anyway. I tried searching the Internet for this, and found out that Ubuntu has been slowing down with every new release.

Although there is a lot of scope for the Ubuntu developers to increase system performance, as Tanenbaum says, by reducing extra not so used functionalities, for older systems, but the decision is upto the majority of the users, who happen to own some good computers, with expensive configuration, that unlucky people like me cannot afford.

I hope you like this small yet informative article of mine. If you do, do not hesitate sharing this with others. Information is free. Let’s let it be free.

Xmoto

If you think there aren’t enough cool games to be played on Linux, I’d ask you to check out Xmoto: The 2D motorcross game. This one is the game that I find most immersing after I switched to Linux. Since I don’t have a 3D accelerator card, I couldn’t play most of the 3D games. But this one, I found was very light weight, and runs smoothly on my 512 Megs Intel Celron M machine.

Xmoto has got a number of different levels varying in difficulty. In some, you just have to drive around on plain ground. In others, you even have to climb walls! It’s a great experience playing Xmoto and clearing levels. There is an online database for Xmoto, that stores high scores of various players around the globe. If you can cross that high score, you can be on top of the list. Now this is what makes the game  even more worth playing. The challenge is just worth taking. There is also a ghost feature, which will show a ghost of the high scorer and will show how he played the level to get the high score. This is very helpful when you’re stuck in some place and are unable to figure out how to get out of it.

The next release of Xmoto will be released with a new feature: The chipmunk feature. It adds a ghost

Xmoto Chipmunk feature

with motion blur, which looks awesome. You can check out the two videos that are ready to be downloaded from their home page. This makes the game even cooler.

Xmoto Armageddon theme

Apart from all this, if you get bored with the same visuals everyday, you can change the theme to get a new bike, and a new biker costume. Even the surroundings like the strawberries and the thorny balls will change. I have tried Armageddon, Block Rider and Modern themes. Each was better than the other.

Coming to the details about the program, Xmoto is available at http://xmoto.sourceforge.net. Xmoto is available for a wide variety of platforms, including Windows, Linux(native packages for Suse, Ubuntu and Slackware) and FreeBSD. The MAC OSX release is not out yet, because the developers are still waiting for someone to package that. The source package is also available in C++, so that if your OS is not listed, you can simply compile it, provided that code specific to your platform is written in it. There is also a level editor integrated with the famous Inkscape vector graphics editor. It is named Inkmoto. I could not find any licensing information on their site. But one thing that I know is that it is Open Source. Well, that’s because they have given out the source code right away on the site.

Although Xmoto could be really boring at times, yet it is one of the best. You can just move on to the next level…

Xmoto Screenshot

References:

• Me of course, from all the levels I have played.
• X-Moto: Open Source Motocross Platform Action

TIP: If you have a very slow computer (even slower than mine), and don’t care about nifty graphics, then you can just run xmoto with the -ugly argument.