Not necessarily. True, a lot of the major distros have their own software repositories, but they might not have a more obscure piece of software, or they might not have the latest version of an app.

Thats why there are a subset of developers called "Maintainers?" Arn't most programs released through whoever is maintaining the distro as opposed to the author?

Ahhh, I understand. Excellent points and it does make logical sense now.

[quote="Ice Cream Jonsey"]ghira, from the IF Mud, suggested Tiny Fugue as a mud client. It is only released as source code. It's not that I don't know how to compile it - I have to know how to do it for a living - it's that who has the time. The developer can do it once and save thousands of downloaders from having to do it themselves. That will always amaze me.[/quote]

Well, the thing is, Linux differs from Windows in that there are approximately infinity different Linux distributions. Where people who develop for Windows pretty much just have to make sure it works on 2K, XP, and Vista, Linux software needs to be able to work on any of the bazillion different flavors of Linux.

That's why sometimes, with the higher-profile open-source projects, there are a number of different packages for Linux--usually for Red Hat, Debian (Ubuntu uses Debian's package format), Gentoo, Slackware, and perhaps a couple of others.

I probably could have organized the above two paragraphs better but it's late and I'm tired. My point is that for a lot of projects it's really difficult to just compile one binary for Linux and have it work "out of the box" on an acceptable number of systems. Thus, for the more finicky applications it's easier for the user to just compile it themselves for their particular system than for the developer to try to wrestle with it and make it work everywhere.

However, having Synaptic means that 95% of the time you can just laugh at the poor mugs who have to deal with this shit as you select what you want from a menu and click Install.

Also:

Fallacy of Dawn doesn't run
The graphics are messed up on Cryptozookeeper.
Necrotic Drift appears to be OK, but I get a note telling me it can't play music.

It's good that I am doing this. I expect to have a fix out for FoD at some point. I want these games to play correctly on Linux. If that means two .zip files or something then so be it. FoD crashing is odd, because I think I used the same mechanism to set the windows on both it, ND and CZK. Odd!!

[quote="hygraed"]You probably know this already, but just in case you don't, pretty much any open-source software you need that isn't already installed can be downloaded and installed automatically from Synaptics Package Manager.[/quote]

This is all news to me. You are being very helpful - you are a [i]credit[/i] to Linux, hygraed!

ghira, from the IF Mud, suggested Tiny Fugue as a mud client. It is only released as source code. It's not that I don't know how to compile it - I have to know how to do it for a living - it's that who has the time. The developer can do it once and save thousands of downloaders from having to do it themselves. That will always amaze me.

I am going to attempt to learn more about this Synaptics Package Manager. Thank you!

You probably know this already, but just in case you don't, pretty much any open-source software you need that isn't already installed can be downloaded and installed automatically from Synaptics Package Manager.

Oh. When I try to Telnet someplace, Putty version 0.60 is the default telnet client.

[i][b][u]Sorry, Ubuntu![/i][/b][/u]

In what will probably be an amazingly frustrating thread for all who view and participate in it, I am going to try to get Hugo running on the Hugo games on a fresh install of Ubuntu. No problem, except for the fact that I have never had Linux installed at home before. (I do use Unix every day at work, however.)

There are two executables for the Hugo version of Linux on the IF Archive. (Do not go to the actual archive: pick a mirror. The real archive is the slowest of the bunch.)

I see
hugov31_wxwin_linux.tar.gz

and

hugov31_linux.tar.gz

I grab them both and attempt to "install" them. However, this has me extracting them off of my "home" directory. I assume in Ubuntu that has them at /usr/local/robb but who knows.

(Oh, I am not going to the IF Mud for any of this because when I attempted to get the Unix version of Putty, I found out that there is no fucking binary on their download site. They want me to >make it. I don't have that shit setup yet. But Jesus Fucking Christ, that's the sort of thing that has cemented Windows as the only usable OS in the world.)