Warband

Big Linux gaming news this weekend.  I turned on Steam to see a welcome announcement, that Mount & Blade: Warband is not only on sale right now, but also has a new Linux client and Workshop support.

A native Linux client for this popular Medieval RPG is great for Linux players like me.  Keeping the entire workflow of playing, recording, and editing on the same operating system should make things more stable.  I might use this as a launch point to begin recording and posting gameplay videos instead of just watching everyone else's and playing on my own.
Also, with Steam Workshop support in addition to the Linux client, players don't need to sort out mods with Wine anymore.  Players can just install compatible mods from the workshop.  

As these things usually go, I think we can expect Bannerlord, the sequel to Warband, to come out on multiple platforms when it is released.  That fraptious day may be a little further off, though.  I've heard the developer Taleworlds needs a new publisher after Paradox Interactive decided not to print this one.  

Regardless, this is a fun game and I look forward to conquering Calradia on my Linux gaming PC.

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Bugged By Comments

I've just discovered an odd bug occurring on my computer.  I can't post comments on YouTube.  That may be the curse you wish on most YouTube commentators but I swear it was going to be a civil remark.
A bit about my computer's background.  It's the iBuyPower i-series 301 I was just talking about.  Running "Precise Pangolin", Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, but I've changed out the default browser for Chromium.  The biggest suspect culprit right now is Pipelight and or Chrome UA Spoofer.  These plug-ins enable such basic and necessary functions as Netflix viewing on Linux PCs.  Now, I've had issues with Pipelight  and YouTube before which is why I suspect it now.
The behavior is that clicking on the "Share your thoughts" comment box on any YouTube video flashes a pop-up window with a very long URL which immediately closes.  The comment box doesn't have focus after the window goes away so I can't start typing and the window doesn't stay long enough to copy the URL but it's a YouTube page.  This happens both while the video is still running and after it has ended.  Like and share works and I can make comments while sharing to Google+, just not on the video.
Well, that's something of a bug report, then.  Circumstances, behavior, and basic configuration.  More than what I used to get at work.  You cannot know how many customers called up with nothing more than "it broke".  That's so undefined there's no starting point for troubleshooting.  How many customers have cussed at me for trying to get enough information to even bother opening a ticket?  Too many.  I'm thankful I left that line of work so I can leave the bug reports in the hands of other people.  I'd better get back to gorging on videos or I'm going to be a mopey mess.

By the way, I was going to say "a wok" on this week's Still Untitled. 

I Bought Power

This is a quick review of a computer system I bought several months ago.  I bought the iBuyPower i-series 301 "gaming" desktop.  As it turns out, this system is no longer offered, unfortunately, because it's been such a great value to me.  It came with an AMD Radeon HD 6450 graphics card, bottom of the stack and next to be discontinued.  And also Windows 8, which we'll get to.  I'm actually quite happy with this system and give it a qualified endorsement.

Hardware

The 301 came with an AMD FX 4200 quad-core processor and Radeon HD 6450 graphics card.  The cost effective option for the budget gamer, as they say.  With 4 GB memory to stretch out in, the performance is more than adequate for my gaming library.  I actually have to get into editing video or compiling software to tax the system resources.  Gigabit ethernet, 1 TB HDD for storage, USB 3.0 and enough ports to plug in all my controllers, headset, and webcam; I don't know what else to say about the hardware.  I did add a sound card, Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi if you must know, to move sound processing off the CPU and free up those resources.  It improved performance but the real boost came from software.

Software

Windows 8 came pre-installed and was actually a drawback to me.  The typical complaints from a long time Windows user.  It isn't as familiar as Windows XP, it doesn't look like XP, it takes up more system resources than XP, and on and on.  I've been getting into and preferring open source software so I made the computer dual-boot with Linux.  I used GParted to carve up the hard drive and installed Ubuntu from a Live CD.  Linux takes up noticeably less system resources on a PC compared to Windows.  Even better, all of the programs I wanted to run, even and especially the games, are available on Linux.  

I'm using the 12.04 LTS version of Ubuntu, so-called Precise Pangolin.  I must be getting old; I prefer stability and don't need the drama of the nightly builds which is why I chose the long-term support (LTS) version.  Version 14.04 is the latest LTS and was released in April; I'll be upgrading to that when it hits the general repositories later this month.  

After I had the operating system itself sorted, I loaded up my applications.  The Ubuntu Software Center, aka "the respositories", is where you get most of your software from.  The software center has many game titles on its own.  First-person shooters, real-time strategy, and my favorite, dungeon crawlers.  

But everyone else wants to keep the game library they've already bought.  Gaming software Steam has a native Linux client, it's in the Software Center, and it has a growing library of games which run natively on Linux so, of course, it was one of the first to get installed. That gets me my games like Half-Life and Team Fortress 2 that are made for Linux.  Then I installed Wine, WineTricks, and PlayOnLinux, and through that installed the Windows version of the Steam client.  That gets me my other games like Doom and Mount & Blade which don't have Linux versions but play anyway through the Wine "emulator".  If you prefer GOG for your games, PlayOnLinux looks like the easiest way to install those.  Another favorite of mine, Minecraft, is written in Java so it runs on Linux easily.  Just download the "jar" file and set it to run as an executable.  

Anyway, I mention all this gaming software because the iBuyPower i-series 301 was billed as a budget gaming PC and it's doing a very fine job of being exactly that.  

Conclusion

I don't like the games that have a reputation for taxing system resources.  I prefer lighter weight titles.  Even with the "budget" components in this system I haven't bogged them down yet with my library of games.  It's a dirty little secret that PC customers buy more computer than they need.  This $500 gaming rig has been handily sufficient for my needs.  

Standard disclaimers apply: Trademarks are property of their respective owners and used without commercial consideration or any endorsement implied beyond what is stated.