Even though I used to think all these FPS games are similar to each, they offer very different game play from each other, so, I started the quest to try all of them out. Let’s start with my favorite (for now):

Urban Terror:

Urban Terror is a modern reality based multiplayer FPS. According to their homepage:

Urban Terror can be described as a Hollywood tactical shooter; somewhat realism based, but the motto is “fun over realism”. This results in a very unique, enjoyable and addictive game.

In game, everyone carries knife and handgun (Beretta or Desert Eagle), other than that, you have 6 available inventory slots, 2 for weapons, 1 for grenades and 3 for other accessories (Kevlar vest, helmet, silencer, laser sight, med-pack, extra ammo etc.), out of these 6, you can only use 4 at one time, so, you should choose the weapons/accessories which suits your style of playing and current scenario. Health system also has a touch of reality to it, once you get shot that part of the body starts bleeding, and loses health until you (or your teammate) bandages it. Stamina depends on remaining health, so, if you are low on health, you might not be able to sprint much.

Urban Terror offers different game modes, including Bomb (Red team plants bomb at one of two pre-defined position, blue team has to defend those by either defusing bomb or killing all members of Red team) Free For All (FFA – Shoot everyone, the one with most frags win), Catch the Flag (CTF – Catch other teams flag and take it to your flag to score a point), Catch and Hold (C&H – map has many flags, touch one to change it to your color, you get a point for every minute you hold a flag), Team Deathmatch (TDM – Kill member of other team, the team with more score wins) & Team Survivor (TS – Same as TDM but once kill, you don’t re-spawn till the end of the round). You can read more about these in Urban Terror manual.

Urban Terror is a standalone Quake III Arena mod, though if you already have Quake III Arena, you can just install it as it’s mod, it is available on Linux, Macintosh & Windows. Image is taken from screenshots section on UrbanTerror.net

ext2:

ext2 (or second extended file system) is the oldest file system for Linux still in use, and until recently one of the most famous. It was created to overcome the limitations of original ext file system (first file system for Linux).

ext2 is not a journaling file system and is not used by desktop users these days, but it’s still one of the most compatible and tested file system for Linux present.

ext3:

ext3 is the successor of ext2 and allows in-place upgrade from ext2. Main difference between the two is addition of journaling in ext3. As ext3 is basically just ext2 with some additional features, it can also be mounted as ext2, though doing so removes the advantage of ext3 file system. In other words, ext3 is backward-compatible. It also provides great compatibility with other operating systems, like windows, that is, you can mount ext3 (and ext2) partitions in Windows using utility.

ext3 provides three different level of journaling:

• Journal
• Ordered
• Writeback

With “journal” offering maximum journaling (both meta-data and user-data), and “writeback” offering minimal journaling (only meta-data). Default journaling level is “ordered”, which is meta-data only journaling but which makes sure that data is written to disk before committing to journal (a precaution not taken in “writeback”), which save from data-corruption.

ReiserFS:

ResiserFS is also a journaled file system, but unlike ext3 it provides only meta-data journaling. It was introduced before ext3 and is the first journaling file system for Linux, though ext3, JFS and XFS very soon followed.

Even though ReiserFS is much faster than ext3, it is sometimes not preferred over other file systems. One of that reason was given by SUSE, when they changed their default file system from ReiserFS to ext3. According to them, ReiserFS doesn’t scale very well on multiple core systems as the critical sections are executed on only one core at a time.

Work on it’s successor Reiser4 is going on, and it has been announced that no new features will be added in ReiserFS. And as Reiser4 won’t feature in-place upgrade from ReiserFS (meaning all data will be lost on partition when upgrading), it has also turned down some ReiserFS users.

XFS:

XFS is another journaling file system and like ReiserFS, it only supports meta-data journaling. It is one of the oldest journaling file system for UNIX, which was later ported to Linux.

On average XFS’ performance is not much different from ReiserFS, though where ReiserFS’ provides great speed when dealing with smaller files, XFS is much better with large files.

Like all other file systems, XFS has it’s own disadvantages too, deleting files is slower than other file systems, and creating/deleting directories also takes more time. XFS also has no un-delete utility, which makes it almost impossible to recover any data once it is deleted (there appears to be one way to do it, if you are desperate enough). Also XFS file system can not be shrunk (it’s size can be increased though).

There is no utility to mount XFS file system under windows. There used to be crossmeta drivers that allowed read/write support in windows, but it isn’t available anymore, even when it was available, it was supposed to be quite buggy.

JFS:

JFS (Journaling File System) is one of the lesser known file system. Like XFS it has been around quite some and then later ported to linux. It offers meta-data journaling, similar to that of XFS and ext3′s “writeback”.

I haven’t tried JFS yet, but according to reviews and others I have checked with, it provides good speed and reliability. Also, it works efficiently even under high load, and doesn’t use too much CPU in these cases, which makes it preferred file system in cases when CPU efficiency is required, though it is not as widely supported by Linux distributions as the other file systems mentioned here.

I couldn’t find any utility or information to mount JFS under windows, most probably there isn’t one.

Conclusion:

All file systems have different advantages and disadvantages and is useful in particular scenario. ext2 is best to use when installing Linux on flash disk. ext3 provides better data recovery option than other file systems so, it’s preferred to use it for /boot or / (root). Either ext3 or ReiserFS can be used to share partition with windows installtion on same computer. XFS is good to use for large parition which contains large files, like movie collection, backup data etc. Whereas JFS can be used pretty much anywhere, preferablly on partition which contains both large and small files and when that system doesn’t dual-boot with windows.

There are many file systems present, suitable for different needs and can be categorized in many different categories, though we aren’t going to discuss them all here (if you are interested, you can check the list of all file system). In most Linux distributions, there is option to choose from two to five different file systems, which can be classified in two general categories:

• Journaled (or journaling) File System
• Non-journaled File System

Journaling File System:

Journaling file systems makes a log (or journal) of all the changes made before they are written to disk. This is helpful when system crash or power failure may cause loss of some data, while the changes are still being written to disk. In such case, system compares the disk state with journal, and update the disk where required, resulting in data recovery.

Every file has two parts, data and meta data. Data (or user data) is everything present in the file, that is, in case of text file it will be all the text present in file, for music file, it will be the music etc. whereas, meta data is data about data, like when was file last accessed, modified or created. Title of the song and artist information for music file and author information stored by some office programs is also meta-data.

This brings us to a sub-category of journaled file system.

• Meta-data Journaling

As the name implies, meta data journaling file systems only log the meta data of the file and not the user data. It provides better performance then complete journaling file system, but doesn’t provide full data recovery options.

Non-journaled File System:

Non-journaled file system are those which doesn’t provide journaling. Which means in case of system crash or power failure, there are chances of data getting corrupt. It also means data is written just once (as it doesn’t have to written to the journal) there are fewer read/write operations on disk compared to journaled file system, which makes it preferable to use on flash drives and other solid-state drives, which can increase their life span.

That’s all for now, in next post I will provide comparison of different file systems for linux.

Hardware:

• VGA: Intel X3100
• Audio: Intel 82801H HDA (ICH8 Family), builtin microphone
• Modem: Conexant
• Ethernet: Broadcom NetLink BCM5787M Gigabit Ethernet
• Wireless: Intel PRO/Wireless 3945abg Network Connection
• Special Keys: FN keys, volume control, hotkeys (wireless, bluetooth & two editable keys), euro sign, dollar sign
• Misc: Card Reader, Bluetooth, InfraRed

What Works:

I really love it when everything just works, and with Aspire 5720, everything really does, well atleast all the important stuff anyway. VGA, audio, ethernet, FN keys, volume control, wireless, bluetooth and power saving options (hibernate and suspend) works out of the box.

What Doesn’t Work:

• Modem: Unfortunately, soft-modems are still a weak point for linux, though, fewer and fewer people use dialup connections now, so, it’s not much of a problem. If you really want a driver, you can get it from linuxant.com, for a suitable price ofcourse.
• Programmable Hot keys: These hot keys don’t work out of the box, and I couldn’t find any way to make them work in my quick google search.

Couldn’t Try Completely:

• Wireless: Intel PRO/Wireless 3945abg is fully supported in linux, and according to many reports works out of the box in ubuntu but I wasn’t able to check that because my wireless router is out of order.
• InfraRed: I don’t have any infrared device, so, didn’t check it either.

Conclusion:

I don’t have vast experience with notebooks, I have only tried a few, but out of these all Acer Aspire 5720 offers most hardware compatibility with linux. So, if you are looking for a nice laptop to use with linux, I would definately vote for this machine.

First of all, a little about hardware:

• VGA: Intel X3100 – chipset: Intel Mobile GL960
• Audio: Intel 82801H HDA (ICH8 Family)
• Modem: Conexant HDAUDIO SoftV92 Data Fax Modem with SmartCP
• Ethernet: Marvell Technologies 88E8039
• Wireless: Atheros AR5007EG (most probably)
• Misc: Builtin Card Readers (SD/MMC/Express Card/Sony Memory Stick)

Works:

• Audio: Works out of the box.
• VGA: Works out of the box
• Ethernet: Works out of the box, it uses “sky2″ module, so, if it doesn’t work in your distro, make sure it is loaded.
• Card Readers: Works out of the box, Only tried with SD card, but I assume others should work too.
• Wireless: Atheros AR5007EG drivers are available from madwifi, but they are quite new, and currently they are not available in any distro that I know of. You can manually install the new/patched madwifi drivers.
  Step-by-step instructions are provided at ubuntu forums. Ubuntu users can follow it step-by-step, others can look at it to get the general idea.
  ubuntu forums guide doesn’t seem to be available any more, you can follow this guide.
• LCD Brightness: You will need xbacklight (a command-line only program) to change the LCD brightness. You can change brightness using the following command:
  xbacklight -set X

  where X is any value from 0 – 100, if that doesn’t work, then run

  xrandr --output LVDS --set BACKLIGHT_CONTROL native

  and then try again. Hopefully this will work now. For future, you can add the xrandr line in your ~/.profile file (that is .profile file in your home directory), so, that you won’t have to run it yourself after every login.

Doesn’t Work:

• Modem: Drivers for conexant are available from linuxant.com for “a modest price”. I don’t really need modem so, I never tried hard looking for open source drivers but the quick google search didn’t return any satisfactory results.
• Keys: FN keys, S1 and AV Mode.

I am still trying to get the keys to work, if you have any idea, please let me know.

Ubuntu 8.10 Update:

• FN Keys: FN Keys work out of the box with Ubuntu 8.10 / Intrepid Ibex. Though after kernel update, brightness keys stop to work, but if you run
  xrandr

  command mentioned above, they start working fine. Easiest solution is to set this command to run at startup so, you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

If you are living in Pakistan and haven’t changed your computer clock yet, you can update the zone info and have your computer automatically change it’s time (both tonight and at the end of DST).

For more information click on your operating system: Microsoft Windows or Linux (unix, bsd, solaris).

Update: Corrected the link for linux, which reflects the DST changes in Pakistan, that is, DST will continue till October 31st, instead of August 31st.

It is aimed at Windows users coming to Linux, and would help them set their expectations. If you have never understood why people like Linux so much, or had trouble explaining why you like it, then go ahead and read it.