LanPartyUbuntu

Revision 1 as of 2006-05-23 03:08:59

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Summary

LAN Party Ubuntu (LPUbuntu) is a version of Ubuntu that minimizes the desktop seed in favor of games.

Rationale

A viable gaming community could be built around Ubuntu, with LPUbuntu LiveCDs being used to get non-Linux users into the game. This would allow non-Linux gamers exposure to Ubuntu and possibly send them home with an LPUbuntu CD, or even result in eventual dual-booting. This provides an obvious marketing angle.

Use cases

LPUbuntu aims to cover the niché market of computer gamers. This is a narrow market with both a cultish or "hard-core" and a casual following. In addition, both followings engage in single- and multi-player gameplay.

The following use cases can be considered:

  • Casual gaming
    • A user may occasionally devote a few hours or days to playing an RTS game such as Battle for Wesnoth.
    • A few developers may feel worn out after muddling over code for days, and run a few rounds on an FPS such as Quake 3: Open Arena or Nexuiz.
    • An extremely bored teenager may go wandering through the menus looking for something to play with, and pick up Frozen Bubble or Armagetron.
  • "Hard-Core" gaming
    • A user may load Quake 3: Open Arena on his water-cooled 64-bit gaming rig with 4GiB of RAM and stripped WD RAPTOR 10000RPM SATA drives for a quick network game.
    • Several users could hold a LAN party and bring LPUbuntu LiveCDs to play a few rounds of Nexuiz and eat pizza.

    • Someone may want to show off the capabilities of his newest nVidia GeForce 6800GT to his friends and load Zymotic with all eye-candy on.

Scope

The initial goal of LPUbuntu should be to get games from [:MOTU/Teams/Games] packaged and maintained so that they can be fully supported in Main. This should be followed closely by making sure all supported games have proper desktop icons and upstream maintanence; icons and .desktop files should be sent upstream. Finally, an lpubuntu-gaming seed should be made to install LPUbuntu games.

Design

LPUbuntu should be intentionally based on XFCE and Xubuntu to provide a low-footprint but still highly usable environment. Many games are very memory intensive; the desktop environment will not be used much, and so should be kept out of the way. Something like Fluxbox would be smaller, but both more of a shock for new users and more packages to maintain.

A minimal XFCE desktop should be installed with another seed. This can be shared and used by Xubuntu and LPUbuntu.

lpubuntu-gaming should not depend on the XFCE environment if ubuntu-desktop or kubuntu-desktop; these already bring a desktop environment, and installing LPUbuntu on a system including these already would indicate that the user is simply adding games rather than creating a gaming-focused installation.

LPUbuntu should bring a basic text editor, Web browser, and instant messaging client. These tools are useful for gamers posting on forums and coordinating remotely over AIM, YIM, MSNIM, or ICQ. A text editor is a basic must-have. Again, having a desktop seed already makes these unnecessary; and besides, Gaim and Firefox will be there already.

LPUbuntu should supply all games through the Games menu. A simple LPUbuntu Launcher could be written as well to categorize games by type and perhaps even track play frequency to control the order in which games appear.

Implementation

Implementation is straight forward.

  • Form an LPUbuntu team dedicated to managing and maintaining LPUbuntu.
  • Select fully open code and content games to support. Some interesting games are listed on [:MOTU/Teams/Games].
  • List selected games on a Wiki page created for LPUbuntu.

  • Any selected games in [:MOTU/Teams/Games] listed as Ready for Packaging need to be packaged. These currently include some interesting candidates such as Nexuiz, Tremulous, and Glest.

  • Games without icons or .desktop files need these created.
  • Supported games should eventually be moved into Main and removed from [:MOTU/Team/Games].

  • The lpubuntu-gaming seed should be created with games and gaming utilities only, plus a text editor, Firefox, and Gaim.

  • Work with the Xubuntu team if they are interested to create a xubuntu-xfce-minimal(?) seed, which installs XFCE but no desktop utilities.

  • Build install and LiveCD images for LPUbuntu.
  • Officially release.

Code

Many games will have networking code, which requires security fixes be maintained. If the game has no upstream maintainers, then the only choices we have are to either not ship the game in Main; or fork/take over the project and support it ourselves with bugfixes. It is highly unlikely any non-maintained games will be packagable.

Data preservation and migration

Not applicable here.

Outstanding issues

Games can be quite large, especially 3D FPS and real-time strategy games involving lots of character models, levels, and sounds. Packaging a large number of games may not be feasible with CDs; we may be faced with a DVD distribution. Some data for game sizes:

  • The Battle for Wesnoth: A 2D RTS, sizes in at 53.4M with all data, music, and scenarios.
  • Armagetron: Simple 3D Tron game, sizes 2.3M.
  • Nexuiz: A 3D FPS, compressed its Sourceforge.net download is 187M.

Also an issue, nobody probably cares about games on Ubuntu, so this spec is highly subject to rot.

BoF agenda and discussion

CategorySpec