Doom 3 for Linux

ID Software has always been a good supporter of open source, from releasing the source code for older versions of it's games (quake and doom series) to making available native versions of its games for the Linux platform. Unlike other Windows games which linux users can only hope to run using wine, ID games run natively on linux, requiring lesser resources and also provide better performance.

Doom 3 is one of the great and stunning games made by ID Software. Here's how to install it.

First of all, you would require a legitimate copy of Doom 3 purchased from ID Software.

For the next step, go here and download

doom3-linux-1.3.1.1304.x86.run

onto your desktop.

If you want to try a demo version, download the other file

doom3-linux-1.1.1286-demo.x86.run

If there is a newer version, of either files, download the newer ones.

Now run this file putting the following into a terminal.

sh ~/Desktop/doom3-linux-1.3.1.1304.x86.run

The install program will first detect your distro and system. Press Enter.

Next, it will show you the license. Press Enter.

You will be then asked if you want to accept the license in the next step. You have to accept if you want to proceed.

You will be asked if you want to read the readme file. Select your choice. In the next step, you have to enter the installation path. By default, the installer will install the files to '/usr/local/games/doom3'.

If you want to install Doom 3 for all users, you need to exit here and start the installer again with root permissions in order to write to /usr/local/games. Just put a 'sudo' before the command to start the installer as root. But if you want that all files be handled by the package management of your distro and are a single user, it would be better to install Doom 3 into your home directory.

Create a directory 'Doom3' using the command

mkdir ~/Doom3

in a second terminal. Now give the installation path as '~/Doom3'.

Next, you will be asked for the Symlink path. Keep the default path if you are installing as root. Else, change it to '~/bin' if you are installing as a normal user.

Next choose if you want to install Punkbuster. If you do, you will have to accept a second license agreement.

Next, say 'yes' to install startup menu entries.

The installer will install the files and should finish successfully.

It's not over yet. There's still one last step. Now you will need to copy pak000.pk4, pak001.pk4, pak002.pk4, pak003.pk4, pak004.pk4 files from the Doom 3 Cds. They are available in '/SETUP/DATA/BASE' folder of the CDs.

CD1 -> pak002.pk4
CD2-> pak000.pk4, pak001.pk4
CD3-> pak003.pk4, pak004.pk4

These need to be copied to '/usr/local/games/doom3/base' or '~/Doom3/base' depending upon what you chose as the installation path during the setup.

Now upon restarting your computer or just your DE, you should have menu entries for Doom 3 and Doom 3 dedicated server. If you don't have them, create them, or just do Alt+F2 and run 'doom3' to start the game.

Now, Doom 3 should start without any problems and will ask for the CD key. Put in your key here.

Now you are ready to play Doom 3 on linux. If you face any problems with the installation, consult this page. Enjoy!

Kima, a kicker monitoring applet

I have tried many different hardware monitoring applications for my linux desktop. But most of them either did not work properly or slowed down my computer or occupied my precious desktop space unnecessarily, distracting me with graphs and plots. Then I found the perfect little KDE kicker applet which gave me exactly what I wanted - a simple monitor. It's called Kima.

It can monitor various temperature, frequency and fan sources and sits inconspicuously in the kde kicker panel. It can monitor hard disk temperatures, CPU temperatures, motherboard zone temperatures, laptop battery charge, system uptime, CPU usage and also fan speeds in rpm. It even supports monitoring the GPU temperature of an Nvidia card.

From Kima's website,

Features

Supported thermal sources:

• the Linux ACPI Thermal Zone driver. The corresponding kernel module is called thermal.
• the thermal sources of the Linux ACPI driver for the IBM ThinkPad laptops. The corresponding kernel module is called ibm-acpi.
• the IBM Hard Drive Active Protection System (HDAPS) driver. The corresponding kernel module is called hdaps.
• the Omnibook Configuration Tools & Patches. The corresponding kernel module is called omnibook.
• the iBook G4 CPU and GPU thermal zones. It may work on other Apple machines as well (please let me know).
• the thermal sensors available through hwmon (I2C, lm_sensors, ...).
• the CPU thermal sensor of the i8k kernel driver for Dell Inspiron and Latitude notebooks.
• the GPU thermal sensors of nvidia-settings (provided by the nVidia GPU card driver tools)
• the termal sensors provided by hddtemp daemon (make sure hddtemp runs on 127.0.0.1 port 7634 before kima starts)

Supported frequency sources:

• the Linux kernel /proc/cpuinfo interface
• the Linux kernel cpufreq subsystem

Supported fan sources:

• the fan sensors available through hwmon (I2C, lm_sensors, ...)
• the fan sources of the Linux ACPI driver for the IBM ThinkPad laptops. The corresponding kernel module is called ibm-acpi.
• the fan sources of the i8k kernel driver for Dell Inspiron and Latitude notebooks.

Misc sources:

• CPU usage source (for each CPU and/or commulative for all CPUs)
• uptime source that displays the current system uptime
• battery source that displays the current state of charge of your batteries

Misc:

• cpufreqd control module to switch cpufreqd profiles via cpufreqd remote interface

Give this little applet a try if you are looking for a simple monitoring application. I am sure you will like this one. For openSUSE 10.3, you will need to add the KDE:Community repository. To start the applet in KDE, right-click on kicker and select 'Add applet'. Choose Kima from the list of applets. Packages are also available for Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Mandriva, Slackware, Pardus and Gentoo on Kima's website. Cheers!

Why 'sudo rm -rf /' is BAD!

Here's what happens when you run 'sudo rm -rf /'. Really an excellent example why you should not run this command on your linux machine. Thanks to alwayschooseford for this great video!

Compiz with Nvidia

For all those who are using compiz with nvidia and unable to start it using the Compiz Fusion icon and are getting the error 'No GLXFBConfig for default depth', here's what to do.

This is presently for compiz-0.7.0-5.1, fusion-icon-0.0.1_080201-2.1 and nvidia driver version 169.09. Use the latest nvidia driver if you are not using it. I presume you must have installed compiz, compiz fusion and the compiz fusion icon from the openSUSE repository. If you haven't already, then go here to find out how to install it.

Compiz with nvidia needs to first have the option 'composite' enabled in xorg.conf file. If you haven't done this, add this to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

Next compiz with nvidia also needs to be started with '--no-libgl-fallback' option. This is presently not taken care of in compiz fusion icon. Hence open up

/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/FusionIcon/data.py

with root permissions. Use 'sudo' or 'su', whichever you like and any text editor you prefer.

Find the line

compiz_args = ['--replace', '--sm-disable', '--ignore-desktop-hints', 'ccp']

Replace it with

compiz_args = ['--replace', '--sm-disable', '--ignore-desktop-hints', 'ccp', '--no-libgl-fallback']

Save the file.

Restart X to be safe and fire up compiz fusion icon and select compiz as the window manager. Compiz should start now. Hope this helps! Bye.

Bootsplash in openSUSE

openSUSE has one of the most gorgeous looking bootsplash than most other Linux distros out there. In all my previous installs of openSUSE, for some mysterious reason, the bootsplash never showed up during boot. This was mainly due to the fact that the screen resolution for the splash was not set properly during install. In Yast2, the bootloader module does not give you options to choose the appropriate resolution from, as can be seen below.


You have to manually enter the corresponding code for your screen resolution. In my case, it was 794. Remember that bootsplash currently works only up to 16bit. If bootsplash still does not work, choose a lesser resolution and see if it works. To get the appropriate vga mode for your screen resolution, refer the table below:

	Screen Size	640x480	800x600	1024x768	1280x1024
Colors
256 (8 bit)		769	771	773	775
32000 (15 bit)		784	787	790	793
65000 (16 bit)		785	788	791	794
16.7M (24 bit)		786	789	792	795

Note: If the above does not work, also try running additionally with root permissions

mkinitrd -s screen_size

where 'screen_size' will be 1280x1024 for an LCD monitor with 1280x1024 as the maximum screen resolution.

How to install Internet Explorer in Linux

Although using Firefox is preferable than using IE, sometimes you really require IE to open a page which is IE only. This can be problematic especially if you are running Linux. Also, if you are a web developer and using Linux, installing IE can prove to be be useful.

Internet Explorer can be used in Linux using Wine. Wine can be easily obtained on any Linux distribution easily using the appropriate repository or it may even come pre-installed. But the difficult part is to get IE installed and working properly. To get the latest wine package for openSUSE 10.2, just add this repo as a source to Yast2 and then install wine.

Next, to install IE, use IEs4Linux. This provides a very convenient way to install IE and automatically downloads all required components. It also provides you with an icon on the desktop for launching IE. I have found it to be bug-free and the installed IE has worked flawlessly till now. Although you should be aware that the installed IE is as insecure as actual IE itself and so you would be better off using Firefox and use IE only when absolutely required.

How to change MAC address in openSUSE 10.2

Yast2 is a great tool in openSUSE for configuring all your network settings but one thing it lacks is the option to change the MAC address of the network card. This option is available in Windows so I see no reason why it should not be available in Yast.

Luckily, there is an alternate way to change your MAC address. I am assuming that you would want to change the MAC address on every boot. Otherwise 'ifconfig' is always available to change the MAC address.

To change the MAC address automatically on every boot, just create a file named 'rclocal' in /etc/init.d folder. Enter the following in this file:

#! /bin/sh

## This script simulates redhat's rc.local (Add commands at the end)

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: rclocal
# Required-Start: $local_fs $remote_fs $network
# X-UnitedLinux-Should-Start: $ALL
# Required-Stop:
# X-UnitedLinux-Should-Stop:
# Default-Start: 3 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 2 6
# Short-Description: Simulates rc.local
# Description: Simulates redhat's rc.local: contains
# commands to execute after system has booted (all services are already
# available)
### END INIT INFO

## Execute ony when service is started
case "$1" in
start)
## commands will be executed
;;
*)
exit 0
;;
esac

# vvvvv Add your commands bellow this line vvvvv
/sbin/ifconfig eth0 hw ether 'Your New MAC address here'

Enter the MAC address that you want in the last line. After this, open up Yast2 and goto System-> System Services (Runlevel). In the list of services, select rclocal and enable it.

Save the changes. Reboot your computer. On reboot, the MAC address of your network card should now have been changed to the new one.

Note that this file can also be used like redhat's rc.local and so you can also add other stuff here.

Hope this has been useful! Please let me know if I have written anything incorrectly. Bye!