4ndy
Tutorials
| Title | Score |
|---|
Software reviews
| Software | Score |
|---|---|
| exaile "Exaile has done a good job of creating smart playlists. It is a bit slow with a large library (~5000 songs), but at least it is faster and more stable than Banshee at the moment. However, the version provided on LM18.3 (version 3.3.2) is over 5 years old, and upon upgrading my system from 17.3 to 18.3, the upgrade broke some of its dependencies on gstreamer plugins, and I had to install a version 4 beta from a PPA to fix this. Still quite a nice player, but now there is a bug with the last-played-in-(specified period) criterion in smart playlists. Also, Exaile never imported my song ratings associated with files by WMP, which Banshee did do, so I had to go through re-rating things." |
4 |
| quodlibet "The GUI is awful, making it needlessly difficult to simply build a playlist - with no smart playlist function, and since the browser view only shows individual contributors, not album artists, seemingly the only way to add by album artists is to use the file system view, where you can't even drag a whole artist folder in but need to open all sub-folders, select them and then right-click and add to an existing playlist. There isn't even a stop button! Unless you set stop-after-current-track and play a track to the end, QL always opens where it left off in the last-played track. Yes it opens quickly with my large library, but then so does a file browser, which is perhaps less awkard than this GUI! I tried this with v3.5.3 as offered on LM18.3, then installed v4.2 from a PPA and that still does not seem to have solved this problem. Exaile is working far better for my use case, creating smart playlists to play me fresh content." |
2 |
| okular "The only linux-native reader I found that would show the annotations that a colleague sent me from horrid adobe software, but this was a pain to set up as this package did not include the necessary dependencies. To open the document I also installed kdelibs5-plugins, kdelibs5-data and oxygen-icon-theme. Thanks to user1529891 on askubuntu for that solution." |
4 |
| qjoypad "Very useful for games with poor controller support. Runs quietly in the background, otherwise you may need to run it with --notray to edit your setup - that needs to be fixed." |
4 |
| freeciv-client-gtk "NB: you MUST also install freeciv-server in order to play local/offline games. Decent, very much like Civ2, has a quite dated UI now, while also lacking the human element of the original series (e.g. advisors, audio quotes). Highly customisable of course." |
4 |
| banshee "tl;dr feature rich & slow. Seemed great for organising my music, fixing erroneous track information and making smart playlists to suit my mood... until my collection grew enough (just a few thousand songs) that it became very slow to use: it takes most of a minute to load, can be over a minute once you load your favourite playlists, and even rating a single track would freeze up the program for several seconds! Its internal database must have messy code. Its playlists are not accessible by other programs nor can they be played via terminal commands, and are a pain to generate & export. Occasionally it crashes when commanded to play, so it cannot be used reliably with alarm-clock. Reference point as YMMV: version 2.6.2 on an old laptop running LM17.3XFCEx32 with Intel Core2 Duo @ 2.26GHz and 4GB DDR2@800MHz." |
3 |
| marsshooter "High quality simple game. Can be a hectic couch competition, although limited to 2 players, with beautiful neon art and an amazing soundtrack. The controls are difficult in the same way Asteroids always was. There are no brakes on this ship! >:D" |
5 |
| ufoai "Engaging gameplay with challenging tactics, and great writing for the single-player campaign make this one of the best FOSS games out there, which can keep you up all night. An amazingly creative use of the old Quake 2 engine. Update 2.5 gave it a bit more of XCOM's brutal edge with a new enemy type, along with a lot of bugfixes, but the screenshots here at the time of writing are way out of date. Check out their website, and make sure to install the music package too." |
5 |
| ufoai-music "Necessary. Great electronic soundtrack adding tension to battle and atmosphere to the strategic layer. C&C-meets-FTL kinda vibe." |
5 |
| freeciv-server "Required for single player games or hosting." |
5 |
| torus-trooper "Simple lightweight shmup with poor feedback, which could be modified into a libre F-Zero-like racer. I wish it had rebindable keys and some in-game explanation, but the man page is barely good enough. I was impressed by its replay function." |
4 |
| uqm "Fantastic fun! May have inspired some of Mass Effect." |
5 |
| gnash "Youtube works even better than with Adobe's plugin, as videos don't play until you tell them to. However, some ShockWave Flash animations and games will be broken, as to be expected" |
4 |
| firefox "I much prefer the fork Pale Moon now for not bloating the browser with DRM, useless animations, etc." |
3 |
| openlugaru "The engine and its fighting mechanics are solid, but the environments look very barren (is this what is meant by 'a limited subset of the original art'?) However, this makes it highly responsive as a result. I didn't find the story interesting enough to finish it though so can't speak for that." |
3 |
| xscreensaver "Breaks the Lock Screen command and some Power Manager functionality on Mint 17 XFCE, and interrupts full-screen applications without keyboard & mouse input (doesn't detect other inputs). If you want to stare at pretty patterns or you're simple enough to be amused by a bouncing 3D cow, this is for you. If you actually want to lock your screen to keep your contacts' confidential emails safe while taking a piss, use gnome-screensaver instead." |
1 |
| gnome-screensaver "For XFCE users who simply want Lock Screen to work, this is perfect. xscreensaver breaks some Power Manager functionality, doesn't allow you to set zero (off) as a screen-saver time, and will even interrupt a full-screen game while using a controller. I don't care much for 'screen-savers'. We don't use CRT displays anymore and they are a waste of processor time and energy." |
5 |
| usbmount "Version 0.0.22 mounts USB devices as root, so that only root can write to them" |
1 |
| abuse "Can't re-bind the controls. Gameplay seems ok, but not gripping" |
2 |
| konquest "Almost as much a logic puzzle as a strategy game. Knowing the status of every planet but not of enemy fleets in transit leaves this playing like a game of Risk without dice. I enjoyed figuring it out, but it quickly got boring after that. Needs more complex game mechanics." |
3 |
| warzone2100 "The game's alright, but the videos are pointless hard-drive clutter. The 'story' couldn't be any more superficial. Might as well call this Gratuitous Robot Battles." |
2 |
| boswars "Has a feeling of early Command & Conquer games. The mechanics are all there, but the game still needs a lot of work on playability details, e.g. tech tree balance (you can currently build missile silos straight away in a skirmish) and some campaign missions (the only current one lacks any opportunity for tactics, and is difficult without save-scumming). Having a few factions with different units and ability to steal others', as with C&C games, could improve the fun here." |
4 |
| gl-117 "The physics are very basic (no inertia or stall), and when I try to customise joystick buttons the game just uses the default settings anyway, even though the list has clearly changed." |
3 |
| holotz-castle "Collision physics aren't very good, as some things detect contact on an area bigger or smaller than they appear, but otherwise a fun wee game. (v1.3.14-5)" |
3 |
| singularity "A very interesting 1-player strategy game, being a bit innovative in its story-writing, but sadly it has no replay value as of yet." |
4 |
| tmw "Easy smooth gameplay, carrying on that SNES tradition of beautiful sprite art. Getting to learn magic seems a to take a while at first, but the writing is good. An instant favourite." |
5 |
| assaultcube "The fast pace takes a minute to get used to, but this is great fun on minimal resources. Don't download a 50MB FPS game and complain about graphics, spoiled brats..." |
5 |
| anki "This package is out of date, you can get the latest version (2.0.8 +) from their website." |
5 |