Ultimate questions on Linux, the Universe and everything

When publishing software, it is custom to update software version when releasing an update. Why would you just silently replace a released software package with an updated one without changing version? In most cases this means that users downloading the package for the first time will get the latest package, but users that have downloaded the software previously will receive no notification about an update (assuming that there is an upgrade mechanism such as apt, yum or dnf, or in the Windows world maybe a custom software updater). If the update isn't worth pushing out to all users, why not just wait with pushing out the change until next official release? I don't know, but it feels like hiding something. Or maybe the publisher is just clueless. The only thing I could think of that would justify doing this, is if the software installation package has some minor issue (or completely broken thus preventing any installation). But not updating version numbers is just, well... weird...

RuneScape is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game ( MMORPG ) created by Jagex Ltd.. Their Linux client allows you to play the game natively also in Ubuntu. The client is written in C++ and uses OpenGL rendering. For reference, the Ubuntu client is available here: https://www.runescape.com/download . It is possible to play also in other Linux distributions, if you use the same libraries as in Ubuntu. This Fedora rpm is created from the Ubuntu package with two extra libraries that are privately installed. They don't interfere with the rest of the system. I don't guarantee that the client will work in the future, but as of now it works fine. There is a 64-bit package available for Fedora 25 and 26. Because the RuneScape client is proprietary, it isn't possible to host the package in the usual package repositories. For now it is provided here from my own private repository. To enable this RuneScape repository in Fedora: sudo dnf -y config-manager --add...

UPDATE. This headset works without modifications in Linux after the changes were committed to pulseaudio in 2017.  The Steelseries Arctis series headsets are very comfortable. You can wear this headset all day long thanks to the comfortable head strap. Steelseries Arctis 7 There are three models, Arctis 3, 5 and 7. The last one is the most expensive and has wireless connection. Arctis 5 is basically the same without wireless (only USB connection). Arctis 3 has only analog inputs. I've got the Arctis 7 model and of course I'm using it with Linux. There were some issues setting it up. It works fine in Alsa, the device is recognized. You do have to adjust sound levels, at least the mic has too low sound level. Use alsamixer on command line to adjust all volume levels for the headset to 100% (the two outputs and one input). But Pulseaudio has some issues. Only the mono device (chat output) and microphone is visible. This is because the headset uses a non-supported co...

I've read a lot of e-books . And since I use Linux devices, it is sometimes a bit problematic. How do you read e-books that you have bought in Linux? One way is to read public domain and free e-books. There are a lot, just search for them on the Internet. But they are mostly old books. Some writers actually publish some of their books explicitly without DRM. I like those writers. Then it is easy to transfer the book to any of your devices. There are many e-book readers on linux. I like Calibre and Fbreader . Calibre for managing and converting ebooks and also reading on the PC, and fbreader for reading on smaller devices, like my linux phone and tablet. The DRM-equipped e-books that I have bought are all the Adobe DRM type that have to be read in Linux using Adobe Digital Edition (ADE) using wine . So far the old 1.7 ADE version has been sufficient. The good thing with that version is that it just works. No runtime installation in wine or nothing, just install and fire it u...

For a long time, at least a year, Steam Family sharing has been broken on Linux PCs. Fortunately something has changed and it is suddenly working again (as of January 2017). I'm a bit disappointed at Valve's support, though. The problem hasn't been commented on at all by Valve, even though it has been reported both in the Steam support forum and on github: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/4051 At least the problem could have been acknowledged.

There have been efforts a few years ago in bringing 10 Gbit/s network speeds to PC motherboards. It has also been used in servers, but mostly using fiber cable. It is only recently when the standard has evolved to be usable with regular twisted pair copper cable. With CAT6a cable you could in theory reach 100 m using 10GBASE-T. Due to the high requirements of 10 Gbit ethernet, it is often not possible to communicate over longer links due to not spec compliant cable, or when using much more common CAT5e cable. What happens then is that the network link speed is lowered from 10 Gbit/s to 1 GBit/s. Recently a new standard has been evolving to lower the implications of this problem. New speeds of 5 Gbit/s and 2.5 Gbit/s have been introduced in a new standard IEEE 802.3bz and then later in practice as the NBASE-T alliance. With IEEE 802.3bz, a speed of 5 GBit/s can be used with up to 100 m CAT5e copper cable. What this means is that when your 10 Gbit/s link doesn't manage to k...

I've got a Razer Deathadder mouse connected to one of my PCs. This is a quite popular gaming mouse. It doesn't work fine in a standard Linux distro (at least on Fedora). The resolution is too high and it isn't possible to turn down. In the past I used a script and xinput to lower the mouse sensitivity . But there is a driver for Linux created by the free software community, in this case by Michael Büsch . The driver automatically sets the resolution to something usable and you can set different profiles and tune it from the command line or using a GUI application (the latter which doesn't currently work on Fedora due to missing python libraries, but no big deal). I've been using this driver for a long time, first by compiling it from source, and later through the rpmsphere-release repostory at https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/home:zhonghuaren . At one point it stopped working and I found out that it hadn't been updated in a few months in t...