Assault cube and sauerbraten
Hello ladies and gentlemen, I wnat to ask why Sauerbraten nor assaultcube are not in Trisquel's repos if the source code is open.
Thank you
If the applications you mention are truly free, then it's probably as simple as: no one has put them into a repo that Trisquel's repos are mirroring.
As far as I can tell, Trisquel's repos are a modified mirror of the Ubuntu repos, which may in turn be a mirror of Debian's. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with the process of getting an application included in an upstream repository.
Sauerbraten and assault cube are on the Ubuntu's repos... That is why I am a little confused.
Trisquel has a free culture standard, too, and AssaultCube doesn't fit that standard. Many of the art assets are under proprietary licenses. It doesn't really matter; the AssaultCube in Ubuntu's repos is years out-of-date, so you aren't able to connect with many people.
I don't know about Sauerbraten.
Also note that Ubuntu has multiple repositories, and Trisquel only pulls from the main one (I think Universe is the one Trisquel pulls from and the other one is called Contrib or something, but I'm not sure; not familiar with Ubuntu's repos).
I don't know any free distro with a "free culture standard" that implies
removing artistic/opinion works with licenses preventing modification.
(Debian has such an approach and requires "a" source for such works in
some more cases.)
The problem with data licensing of these games is that they forbid
commercial use. FSF allows nonmodifiable data of this kind [0] in
distros, I don't remember any such case other than essays in GNU
documentation.
Some specific packages from Ubuntu's Multiverse repo are included in
Trisquel, they are there for patent reasons.
[0] https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html#non-functional-data
OK, I understand... So, the source code of the engine is Free Software but the data of the game has a propriety license. Either way, the data is not exactly software so it should not violate the FSF standards. Please, ¿could you give me a clarification for that?
Thank you
The FSF deals with software. RMS's opinion on artistic works is that they only need to be freely sharable to be ethical (although letting people modify them is a plus).
I think that the sauerbraten and assaultcube data are share-able; if that is the case, I understand that there is no free as in freedom violation in that game. ¿Am I correct?
Those are data files, consisting of no code. Free software is all about the code, and nothing else. These things have nothing to do with software freedom, but is nice to have both the game code and data files released under a liberal license.
There's differing opinions on this. The FSF's position is that non-functional data only needs to be sharable, but some people think that all culture must be free.
Personally, I think that all culture must be free, but I don't think it's an urgent enough issue for me to refuse nonfree cultural works, and if copyright was abolished, which it should be, all nonfree cultural works would instantly become free. For me, the difference with free software is it is controlling what is happening on my computer, and I need to control my computing now. Still, I prefer free culture over nonfree culture, so e.g. Freedoom is preferred over Doom and Xonotic is preferred over AssaultCube, in an ethical sense (for the record, I do play AssaultCube, partly because I don't know of a similar free FPS with free art assets and partly because it's popular, so it's easy to play an online game of it).
Both games are free. You may also consider Xonotic, and Brutal Doom, if you're interested in the FPS genre.
Hello mYself, thank you for the recomendations.
I've played Xonotic and it is awesome but i didn't try Brutal Doom.
If you want to try it, first you need to install some compatible Doom source port. The best, and most advanced one out there is called Zandronum. You can find instructions on how to install it on Trisquel here.
Then you'll need some Doom IWAD file(s), which you can obtain either from your copy of Doom (if you have one), or you can just use the shareware version from here. I does not tested any of the unofficial ones, like FreeDoom (available right from Trisquel repositories), but maybe they will work too (with the Brutal Doom mod of course).
Here are the MD5 sums of the official IWADs, all patched to latest versions:
Shareware: f0cefca49926d00903cf57551d901abe DOOM1.WAD Full version: 25e1459ca71d321525f84628f45ca8cd DOOM2.WAD c4fe9fd920207691a9f493668e0a2083 DOOM.WAD 3493be7e1e2588bc9c8b31eab2587a04 PLUTONIA.WAD 1d39e405bf6ee3df69a8d2646c8d5c49 TNT.WAD
Last, but not least, you'll need to download Brutal Doom, which is (very) basically a gore mod for the classic Doom, released back in 1993. You can find it here. You should also download some more enhancement packs (look for the question numbered six, in FAQ), mainly the Doom Metal Soundtrack Mod (this doesn't wanted to work for me, but you should give it a try yourself anyway), which will improve the music from those 8-bit MIDI sound, to high (CDDA) quality PCM recordings.
Here you can find a review of Brutal Doom to get an idea of what it's about.
Hope this helps.
@mYself:
Thanks for posting...I was neither aware of Zandorum, nor of Brütal Doom :)
Will test soon....
@a_slacker_here: Even if it is somewhat a resource hogg, you should try out the Xonotic mod posted over here at Trisquel:
http://trisquel.info/en/forum/new-opensourcefree-fps-standalone-mod-xonotic-chaosesque-released
or:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/chaosesqueanthology/
Hello, thank you for letting me know about this mod, I didn't tried before because the free drivers are not powerful enough to handle it...
I have to choose between two evils:
- Not install the proprietary drivers and not try the mod they have made with affection.
- Install the drivers and try the game.
Yeah, I should install the drivers because they want use to try their free as in Freedom mod... all the content is GPL so... I think I know know what is the least worst evil.
Thank you.
The FSF has a pretty clear definition of freedom but on my system I decide what to do :)
A good approach to test things with a propritary driver without messing up your freedom OS is using a live distribution like Kanotix. At least that is what I would do when I run a pure Trisquel installation on my main system (which I do not do).
May I ask which GPU you have ? Most likely an AMD / ATI since NVidia cards have become quite powerful even when using the free Noveau. Although newer modells are not supported that well (unless you use a bleeding edge kernel).
Don't use the proprietary drivers. They might or might not boost performance, but it's not worth it to run nonfree software to play a free game (and that doesn't make much sense).
If it works with the free driver, great. If not, oh well; there are plenty of other games to choose from.
Oh my goodness, I have already installed the cursed driver on my system... Well, I've to say that is easy to remove...
I must confess that my system was already contaminated by a non-free program for running the cursed BCM4312 in order to connect to wifi which is the only way I can connect to internet.
That is the reason why I'm running Debian instead of Trisquel.
Well, in relation to what GPU my laptop is using:
user@debian:~$ lspci | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G98 [GeForce 9200M GS] (rev a1)
And the kernel:
user@debian:~$ uname -vr
3.2.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.2.46-1
The nouveau fails in the illumination system of the games, and have performance issues.
If you know how to make the nouveau drivers work better, please tell me.
Thank you
You probably want a much newer kernel than 3.2. Nouveau works better with newer kernels, so using the latest version of Linux-libre might solve your problems (also might not, but it's worth a try).
Thank you onpon4 and Darksoul for the attention.
I've tried the nvidia drivers and I must say that the nouveau project has improved a lot.
I will remove the nvidia and keep the nouveau.
If I install the Linux-libre kernel, I will lose BCM4312. That wireless card is giving me a lot of headaches... I hate it.
Have you thought of getting a USB wireless adapter from Think Penguin?[1] All of Think Penguin's hardware works with 100% free software setups, and two of the USB wireless adapters have the "respects your freedom" certification from the FSF. Also, if you use that link to go there, some amount (I think it's 20% or 25%) of the profits get donated to the Trisquel project.
Oh my goodness this shop is awesome. A shop dedicated to free as in freedom hardware...
Well, I have a reason for saving up.
Yes, this should do it.
I have some broadcom crap in my used Dell notebook as well and share you pain ;)
They are pretty terrible...both performancewise and in terms of stability.
Thank you for sharing the pain with me.
Broadcom si terrible and all the problems I had in my machine is due to the BCM so perhaps now ir time to consider buying from Chris and throw away all the problems.
Why the hell one want to buy a crappy overpriced wireless dongle (especially the aforementioned model), that is far worse than any of the internal ones, since WiFi cards contained in every current notebook (except museum pieces) has usually two antenna cables connected to the card, that can be half to one meter long (usually interconnected with the sides of display), resulting in a much better signal strength and stability.
You'll be better off if you just switch the internal card, and that (if done cleverly) will not cost you a penny. Just go and buy some compatible card from eBay (will cost you circa 2-3 bucks), then switch the internal one with the newly bought (requires disassembling of the laptop, but it's pretty easy - just look for a disassembly guide for you specific model), and sell the old one.
The next time you start your computer, the wireless will start to work instantly, no more proprietary crap, and it does not costed you a fortune.
P.S.: You can get some advice here about the problems that can occur, since in some very rare cases this will not work, because some laptop manufacturers tends to implement a blacklist into BIOS, that checks the vendor/product ID code of some laptop parts (like the WiFi card), and if they doesn't match with the one you just installed, the computer will refuse to acknowledge the existence of it, even if it's not faulty, and is previously tested on different computers, and proved to be working.
This behaviour is there simply because the laptop manufacturer wants you to buy only from him (for profit!), and those parts have usually premium prices (if you doesn't buy them used). This is the sad reality. Even if changing the wireless card will not work for you (again, it's very rare), it's still worth a try, especially considering its
- low purchase price,
- that you can expunge replacing the internal WiFi card from the list of possible solutions,
- that you can use the card on any other computer later,
- or that you can try to patch your BIOS with a hacked version, that does have this blacklist removed.
Kinda hard words IMO against Think Penguin. Always keep in mind that Chris does not only donate some part of the income to Trisquel but also needs to investigate hardware for compatibility which can quickly change if the vendor uses another chipset.
But in general I would agree with two things:
- Price tags are quite steep compared to stock hardware
- Nano WLAN almost always have a much lower receiption than the ones with external antenna.
If I use my nano stick from TPLink down in our garden I often have connections issues with my grumpy Dell notebook. I found this WLAN stick with antenna listed on your site:
http://www.atelco.de/USB/TL-WN722N/1/44993/TP-Link+TL-WN722N.article
Only costs 10€ and may be enables me to use Trisquel on my notebook as well instead of Debian 7 with vanilla Gnome 3. I just ordered it and will report back.
> Kinda hard words IMO against Think Penguin
It was against the smaller USB models (like the TPE-150USB), and wireless dongles in general. No, it wasn't against ThinkPenguin, but I agree that their prices is absolutely outrageous (multiple times the cost of the real ones)!
> not only donate some part of the income
I'll be better off to buy the hardware elsewhere, and donate "more money" to Trisquel, or other free software projects. This will also save me money, and give a wider selection of FLOSS compatible hardware.
> Chris [...] also needs to investigate hardware for compatibility
If you think that you can only have a FLOSS compatible hardware if you first buy one and test it out, or that you need to make a long conversation with the manufacturer, in order to tell if the HW is free software compatible or not, then you're on the wrong track. In the present time, buying a FLOSS compatible hardware is fairly easy (if you know what to look for), and you does not need to buy it from shops like Garlach44, LAC, InaTux, or ThinkPenguin in order to be sure that they will work with Trisquel, or another fully-free distribution of GNU/Linux (I'm talking only about Linux; you can have trouble using other kernels).
My laptop computer was totally free software incompatible, even booting into the system after the first installation (of Trisquel) resulted in just a black screen, and now everything is working smooth as one can expect from a FLOSS compatible laptop (even the Sony's proprietary DHGS is, after a bit of scripting, working as expected, although it needs rebooting every time I want to switch from intergated to dedicated GPU, and back).
> which can quickly change if the vendor uses another chipset
Again, not a problem since it is very easy to know which chip/chipset is used within the dongle, regardless what revision it is. The WikiDevi hardware database is the best example for this.
> Only costs 10€ and may be enables me to use Trisquel
The TP-Link TL-WN722N(C) has the best performance/price ratio of all the currently available free software compatible external USB dongles; and yes, it's confirmed to be working on Trisquel 6.0 (will work on older versions too, back to 4.5, but you need to de-blacklist the ath9k_htc kernel module, and install the missing firmwares), but you need to install the required firmware files, and update your kernel first (e.g. using the Update Manager). This adapter works considerably better than the TPE-150USB model, although both share the same internal chip (Atheros AR9271).
> instead of Debian 7
You doesn't need to use a different distro just to get the wireless working. For example, I can use the infamous Intel 3945ABG card on Trisquel with ease. Proof:
@all: Sry for this off-topic posting !
I can confirm that the above mentioned USB WLAN stick works perfectly under Debian and Trisquel 6.0 as well.
@mYself: Frankly it was not very clear to me that you were not against ThinkPenguin :)
If you want to tell me that finding free hardware is not exacty that hard, you are preaching the priest. I set up several systems (desktop though) with Trisquel and beside GPUs the only hardware component I found which might cause issues were NIC. Either WLAN or standard LAN. For normal LAN a cheap Gigabit adapter from TPLink did the job for my two Trisquel boxes. For WLAN I have now found a valid option as well.
I am also aware that I do not need to install Trisquel for using this WLAN stick and have a free system. Debian would do as well.
May be not from the 100% free black and white perspective but from my point of view (which is all that matters to me).
Also, the TP-Link TL-WN722N(C) is considered to be a budget adapter, and if you want something better that the average, look no further than the TL-WN822N v2 model. Bear in mind that I'm talking only about the second revision, and you need to be sure about that when ordering one. To know to differentiate the correct revision from others, here is a picture of the v2 adapter backside.
And if you still want to buy the TPE-150USB adapter for some weird reason (again, not recommended, since there are obviously far better and cheaper dongles readily available), you can still go for the Onkyo UWF-1 model, that is the same adapter, except the branding, and possibly a different vendor/product ID (same blacklisting technique used in some HiFi systems, that accepts only this adapter), and also it's available at half the price of the TP adapter. If you want to make a purchase, you can find the required links here. You also need to know, that these adapters will not work on Trisquel unless you does not install the required firmwares, and update your kernel (Update Manager is sufficient, no need to install bleeding-edge Linux-libre kernels from PPAs).
One thing I forgot to add: Forget about playing the Xonotic mod with your notebook GeForce chipset. It was dog-slow on my E350 with GeForce 9500GT and is not really fast on my AMD QuadCore (4x3GHz) on a GeForce 650. I suspect that even a 680 would have its issues with it.
Thank you again for giving me the information in time, I will have this in mind.
:-)
mYself, this is off topic but:
¿Could you tell me where do I need tu put the burtal doom files?
the .wad are on .zandronum and I created the Skins directory inside but it doesn work.
You need to edit the Zandronum configuration file:
Press [Alt]+[F2](+[Fn] key on Apple keyboards). That will bring you a new window called Run Application, into which you need to type:
gedit .zandronum/zandronum.ini
Now, you need to insert the following two lines (the bolded ones) into their corresponding areas (they need to be on the top level). The application will then expect, that all the required data files (both .pk3 and .wad) are located within ~/Software/doom folder (if you want to put them elsewhere, just change the path).
[IWADSearch.Directories] Path=~/Software/doom [Doom.Autoload] Path=/home/user/Software/doom/brutalv018a.pk3
After that, save, and run Zandronum from the Main Menu (Trisquel logo), and everything should be fine.
While Zandronum is my favorite Doom source port, it's not free software friendly. Thank FMOD and Ken Silverman for that. If GZDoom removed the software renderer (or, preferably, rewrote the parts from the BUILD engine) and replaced the FMOD audio code, then it (and hopefully by extension Zandronum) would be Free Software. The closest equivilant would be the Odamex engine. While it isn't as advanced as ZDoom or Zandronum, it's the most advanced portability focused free software Doom port in existence. Combined with Free Doom, and you have a 100% libre game compatible with as many wads as possible.
In other words, there is no libre option for playing Brutal Doom. Then again, the reason I love Zandronum so much is because it has the best support for the family friendly Chex Quest and it's mods. Considering that that game heads in the opposite direction of Brutal Doom...
Hello Danfun64. I'm reading the licenses but is hard for me to understand.
If I understand it correctly, it says that the source code is available but the distribution must be non-commercial.
Please, am I wrong or right?
Anyway, It is non-free software because you cannot redistribute the program how you wish...
I think that doomsday and chocolate doom are free software engines.
I think we are moving too far away from the original topic but anyway:
@Danfun64: Could you elaborate what Ken Silverman and the Buildengine have to do with Zandronum ? AFAIK all doom ports share the original released doom engine and had some parts removed.
The build engine is a completely different beast which powered games like Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Shadow Warrior and so on.
First of all, we are completely changing the topic here. Maybe this isn't a good idea.
You are correct with zdoom. The confusing combination of licenses requires non commercial use.
Doomsday is Free Software...if you don't compile it with fmod.
Chocolate Doom is Free Software.
Doomsday is limited to limit-removing wads and wads that use its own content system. You can't even run boom wads, let alone zdoom wads, in Doomsday.
Chocolate Doom by nature can only run Vanilla Wads.
To run as many wads as possible on a Free Software engine, you will need Odamex.
As for Assault Cube and Sauerbraten, I'm surprised nobody mentioned Red Eclipse, as it uses the Sauerbraten engine and has free assets. In other words, completely free software.
Red Eclipse might use the Cube 2 engine, but it plays nothing like AssaultCube. I like Red Eclipse for different reasons.
AssaultCube doesn't use the Cube 2 engine either. The engines used for AssaultCube and Red Eclipse could be considered Cube 1.5 and 2.5 respectively.
I installed freedoom and now want to find the config files. If I do 'whereis freedoom' I get the location of the executable but not the actual install directory.
You mean the IWADs? For PrBoom (that's the only Doom engine in the repo), it's in something like /usr/share/prboom/wads, I don't know the exact directory but it's easy enough to find.
The Freedoom in the repo is actually out-of-date; the latest version is 0.8, which made some major changes to the levels. (They call it a "beta", but that really doesn't matter when there's no code involved in the project and the whole project is in alpha anyway.)