Monday, September 16, 2002

Bleh -- 11:21 am CST, Update by The Master

Spent some time trying out the UT2003 demo yesterday, both offline and online with A.T. This is an awesome game. I've been very off of FPS games the last 6 months or so, and this one really drew me in. Lots of gratuitous gibbage, flaming heads, etc. Wheee >:-)

On another note: I've been working on building a new Haus box. Our current box is fine, but really limits what I can do with it. So, I've been fiddling with a new machine, and while it's been an interesting experience, I have to criticize Red Hat for removing all the good character-based admin tools in RH7. Now, I know a "real" linux junkie would just edit the config files with vi, but I don't need that kind of pain in my life. Pfft.

On ANOTHER note, I've been trying to get up the courage to remove Linux from my home box, and reinstall Windows ME on my extra HD. I've been running Win2K, and while I like it a lot, my older games DON'T. The most annoying being Deus Ex, which does this really cool psycho-mouse routine, then you end up staring at the ceiling while the game runs at 1 frame per year. Eidos has already said they won't do anything about it, so I guess they've lost one of their most successful games to Microsoft's OS migration strategy. Too bad.

J.t.Qbe comments: Interesting--Deus Ex ran just fine on my Win2K computer from work, far better than on my Win98 machine. I'm really fascinated by the lemminglike rush to move to XP, then the complaints that older games won't work on it. Uh, didn't you check that out before you threw more money down the Microsoft toilet? Seems like upgrading to XP is the "poor man's" way to be geeky--not smart enough to take up Unix, so I'll spend money on a new version of Windows!

This last weekend I picked up a used Celeron 400 system for $15, so I installed Mandrake 9 RC2 on it--it's the fastest Linux machine I've ever had. It's certainly the easiest OS installation I've ever see, ANY OS; the only tough part has been configuring my sound card (an old SB AWE64 PnP), and it's always been a problem anyway. For ease of use, Mandrake 9 is very very nice.

The Master comments: Yup, that's why I stopped at Win2K--I needed an O/S for programming that didn't die every 2 seconds, but that caused some game issues. I wasn't expecting Deus Ex to be an issue, so I didn't worry about it. I won't touch XP since all the reports of compatibility issues, not to mention the fact that they just TRASHED that O/S from an interface perspective. If I wanted that much pretty, I could run Gnome for free.

News for 09/16/2002

The Haus is powered by:

All original information on this website is copyright © TheHaus.Net, 1999-2005. The use of original images, text, and/or code from this website without expressed written consent is prohibited. The authors of this site cannot be held responsible for any damage, real or imagined, which comes from the use of information presented on this site. All trademarks used are the properties of their respective owners. This site is not to be used as a floatation device (but if you try, I want a video tape of it).