top 10 Ubuntu Games

Ubuntu 10.10/11.04 or any other Linux Based systems(such as – Open Suse, Linux Mint, Fedora etc.) has been lagging behind the windows when it comes to Games support. There are mainly two reasons that Linux based os isn’t the favorite platform of Gamers- First,Most of the commercial games are released just for Windows Platform; second the graphics card performance(probably due to the fact that Graphics Card Manufacturers do not release the appropriate drivers for Linux Platform,by the way if they releases proprietary(Closed Source) drivers then there is much possibility of compatibility issues with Linux based operating system).

The time has changed now,Linux based OS like Ubuntu is now becoming the favorite choice for gaming; mostly,due to availability of a large collection of open source and free games. Some commercial games developers has also concentrated on Ubuntu as their target platform. Nvidia Graphics card provides good performance on Ubuntu.

Top 10 Ubuntu Games – at a Glance

# 0 : Open Arena

Open Arena is an open source (and free) multiplayer FPS (First Person Shooter) game based on ioquake3 fork of the id tech 3 engine. it is the free version of quake III arena and it can stand alone so Quake III Arena is not required to play this game.

Download and installation instructions

If you are using Ubuntu 10.04/10.10 then download open arena deb and open with ‘Ubuntu Software Center’ (or open with ‘gdebi Package Manager’ in older versions of Ubuntu)to install. Visit the official wiki  page of Open Arena- Installation Detailsfor other Linux Distributions.

# 1 : Torcs

Torcs is a 3D Racing Car Simulation Game based on OpenGL. it is available free for all platforms e.g Linux based OS(e.g Ubuntu 10.04/10.10/11.04),Windows,Mac OS X,BSD; available as an open source software.it has more than 50 cars,20 tracks and 50 opponents available for racing with lot of other features that brings reality during simulation.

Install Torcs on Ubuntu 10.04/10.10/11.04

>> Download the debian package – download torcs debian package

>> Open the *.deb with Ubuntu Software Center ; then click  on install.

# 2 : Urban Terror

Urban Terror is a free multiplayer and multi-platform FPS(First Person Shooter) game similar to Quake I

Remote control your Linux with any mobile Phone

What is anyRemote?

The overall goal of this project is to provide remote control service on Linux through Bluetooth, InfraRed, Wi-Fi or just TCP/IP connection.

anyRemote supports wide range of modern cell phones like Nokia, SonyEricsson, Motorola and others.

It was developed as thin communication layer between Bluetooth (or IR, Wi-Fi) capabled phone and Linux, and in principle could be configured to manage almost any software.

anyRemote is console application, but in addition there are GUI front ends for Gnome and KDE.

Features

Plenty of connection variants

anyRemote can be used by:

bluetooth connection with java client if cell phone is JSR82 compatible

Wi-Fi connection with java client if phone supports Wi-Fi

IR connection with java client if java realization in phone supports access to IR port

Linux Performance Monitoring and Tuning

Linux system administrators should be proficient in Linux performance monitoring and tuning. This article gives a high level overview on how we should approach performance monitoring and tuning in Linux, and the various subsystems (and performance metrics) that needs to be monitored.

To identify system bottlenecks and come up with solutions to fix it, you should understand how various components of Linux works. For example, how the kernel gives preference to one Linux process over others using nice values, how I/O interrupts are handled, how the memory management works, how the Linux file system works, how the network layer is implemented in Linux, etc.,

Please note that understanding how various components (or subsystems) works is not the same as knowing what command to execute to get certain output. For example, you might know that “uptime” or “top” command gives the “load average”. But, if you don’t know what it means, and how the CPU (or process) subsystem works, you might not be able to understand it properly. Understanding the subsystems is an on-going task, which you’ll be constantly learning all the time.

On a very high level, following are the four subsystems that needs to be monitored.

• CPU
• Memory
• I/O
• Network

1. CPU

You should understand the four critical performance metrics for CPU — context switch, run queue, cpu utilization, and load average.

Context Switch

• When CPU switches from one process (or thread) to another, it is called as context switch.
• When a process switch happens, kernel stores the current state of the CPU (of a process or thread) in the memory.
• Kernel also retrieves the previously stored state (of a process or thread) from the memory and puts it in the CPU.
• Context switching is very essential for multitasking of the CPU.
• However, a higher level of context switching can cause performance issues.

Run Queue

• Run queue indicates the total number of active processes in the current queue for CPU.
• When CPU is ready to execute a process, it picks it up from the run queue based on the priority of the process.

20 Linux System Monitoring Tools

20 Linux  System Monitoring Tools Every SysAdmin Should Know

Need to monitor Linux server performance? Try these built-in command and a few add-on tools. Most Linux distributions are equipped with tons of monitoring. These tools provide metrics which can be used to get information about system activities. You can use these tools to find the possible causes of a performance problem. The commands discussed below are some of the most basic commands when it comes to system analysis and debugging server issues such as:

1. Finding out bottlenecks.
2. Disk (storage) bottlenecks.
3. CPU and memory bottlenecks.
4. Network bottlenecks.

#1: top - Process Activity Command

The top program provides a dynamic real-time view of a running system i.e. actual process activity. By default, it displays the most CPU-intensive tasks running on the server and updates the list every five seconds.

Commonly Used Hot Keys

The top command provides several useful hot keys:

Hot Key	Usage
t	Displays summary information off and on.
m	Displays memory information off and on.
A	Sorts the display by top consumers of various system resources. Useful for quick identification of performance-hungry tasks on a system.
f	Enters an interactive configuration screen for top. Helpful for setting up top for a specific task.
o	Enables you to interactively select the ordering within top.
r	Issues renice command.
k	Issues kill command.
z	Turn on or off color/mono

#2: vmstat - System Activity, Hardware and System Information

The command vmstat reports information about processes, memory, paging, block IO, traps, and cpu activity.


# vmstat 3
Sample Outputs: