3rd time posting this message as it seems to not be going through to the forum. I'm keeping it short this time cause im a slow typer and I spent a very long time on the last 2 messages that didn't seem to show up. Got your message about four freedoms - love it.. want it , can't seem to get it. When i try to install get message 'initramfs' ? cp is gateway fx6800. I don't want ubuntu I want gnewsense.....please help baby step me through this. PEACE OGRE

Yeah... It went through, so I'm gonna go ahead and say some more. I know for a fact that Billy Gates wants to eat my soul for brunch, so please help me out of the digital prison. Are the free softwares that do mp3s and youtube illegal in US? Don't want any trouble. Is there an ogg player, and how do you get ogg files? I love my hardware, but if there's no way around it i'll get something else so I can use gnewsense, but I'd much rather somebody try to help me make what I have work. As soon as I found out about you, I put gnewsense on my two old computers and gave them to some friends who needed pcs. I thought they were old broken junk, but they are up and running very well with your distro. Now I cant get mine working so I'm currently using ubuntu but thats not good enough. I want to support you guys because I believe in freedom, and sharing, and the evolution of man kind into something that cares about people more than $$$. Is it the non-free part of ubuntu that is making it work....I hope not. Thanx in advance...OGRE

Peace is for everyone!!!

I admire your enthusiasm. I am not an GNU/Linux expert but I may be able to help you.

As far as I understand you can't even get into the live-cd environment. My guess is that your compact disk is corrupted and what you should do is verify it by using a checksum.

You can do this from your Ubuntu installation. First boot-up Ubuntu, then insert your gNewSense disk and open a terminal window.

In you terminal window type:

Your optical disc drive should now start reading for 2-3 minutes. This command will try to compute a checksum based on all of the data written on the CD.

When finished, the command should output a line corresponding to ONE of the following four - most probably the last one:

b2eea108867693455a47d982d7b81bb1  /dev/cdrom
6f6682512cda5176d44b2b6f871c7ea2  /dev/cdrom
0d8299be56ad9085b47730446b0e9fac  /dev/cdrom
fb7a7a51d5de4ada5d62422846e1d162  /dev/cdrom

If non of these match but looks similar, then you can be pretty sure your gNewSense disk is corrupted and what you should do is burn a new copy - preferably at the lowest speed possible. Sometimes your downloaded ISO file can get corrupted too.

If the checksum matches, then you should wait for someone else's help. ;)

Free software that are able to play MP3s and Youtube videos are not illegal. The problem is that there are technologies incorporated in formats like MP3 that are patented. You can get sued for using such formats, using free software or not, although it is unlikely. It is much more likely for a company or a software developer to get sued, because it is much easer. This gives the patent holders the power to say who can and who can not use their formats. It can be pretty disastrous when your operating system is not given the permission to use a widely used formats like GIF, Xvid or MP3.

This is why such formats are highly discouraged, even by non-free software developers - like Opera.

On the other hand there are formats like Flash, the format used in Youtube videos, a secret format that requires a non-free program to run. The development of a free software player for Flash requires reverse-engineering, which as far as I know is very hard. Since formats like Flash constantly change, free Flash players will always be one step behind.

You should always strive to use only free formats.

Most players and especially free players can play OGG files, Ubuntu and gNewSense can play OGGs out of the box. You can get OGG files as any other files, you either download them or make them, I don't really understand the point of this question.

Concerning your hardware, you most probably will not have 3d acceleration.

You could join the gNewSense irc for help, their very cooperative, or mail me to rafu(at)riseup(dot).net, i work giving free software support, i don't consider me an expert but i have some knowledge.

Alright, I gotta start copying the message to the clipboard before I hit post. I don't know what's up, but when I go to send my message it says I need to be logged on, but I had to log on just to start the message??? (I'm glad I did that cause I had to paste this message after loosing it too)

So here's the short version again, The disk I have worked on two other computers, but mine is a 64, and somewhat of a monster, so I don't know. I'll try the cd check though. About the ogg ?, I'm not sure what they are, but I'm looking for a free compressed format that is like mp3. What format would that be, and is there a portable player for this format. And can you get more music in that format? Can I convert my mp3 collection to that format?

About the 3d acceleration...I have to be able to run Blender, which uses openGl. This will affect my decision on selling my system to get a compatible one. We are making a video game, so making sure I can get Blender working is very important to me. On a side note, my buds that are working on the game with me have no qualms with switching to a free os and making the game for the gnu linux community instead(we were making it for xna games), because we really just want to get art out there for someone to enjoy, and we all hate Billy and greed. That's why I'm so enthusiastic about it, because it looks like I found a way out of a trap. :]

  Can you program in c# or do I have to learn something else?
 Can you release music and loops under GNU GPL? 

Can someone lead me to a good site to explain how to work tar.bz2 or something like that without assuming I know anything, because I can only find the Blender I need in that format. The Blender on the repositories is old enough for my work to be non backward compatible.

 If the gnewsense irc is like a mailing list to the developers, I'd rather non bog them down with noob questions. I can't find a donate button, so I'm assuming Gnewsense would have me give to the FSF instead. Thanx again for the help.

OGRE

....PEACE....

Ok...that one went off the page for some reason. Is Gnewsense irc like a mailing list to the developers or something? I don't want to bog them down with noob questions. Does Gnewsense take donations, or should I give directly to FSF? Don't have much, but I want to do what I can. Thanx OGRE

Peace

You can convert mp3 to ogg, but since both are lossy you'll want to be sure to convert to the same or higher bitrate (I believe they're not exactly equivalent; I haven't ever looked into it, but I think lower numbers in ogg equal higher ones in mp3). If you've got plenty of storage you could just convert to highest quality ogg.

I can't even get 2D acceleration, so I wouldn't get your heart set on 3D. Well, I should clarify: I installed glx and the GL screensavers work, but it's still painfully obvious that 2D accel isn't working under general use conditions. I don't know how to "force" it on (advice appreciated). Perhaps I'm just unlucky. Hope you have better!

(I'm right there with you on loving the philosophy but finding the road a little bumpy. Thank goodness for friendly folks who've gone before us!)

Right on. "Hat's off to all the ones who came before us!"---Primus, 'Hat's off'

I just did the cd check and it was the fourth one exactly.

I use a text editor when I want to write on this forum and then copy-paste it, the forum software is awful. I do not know why the admins would not switch to something more reliable and better designed. The login cookies expire too fast, there is no indication that you are logged in, there is no search engine, there is no forum link in the menu, there is no markup legend, no post preview, no post edit.

A post can get discarded without any explanation, no even a "post discarded" message and there are no set of rules anywhere on this site that say why a post may get discarded. I know from experience that you post will get discarded for having more than one URL in it. WHY?! Sometimes I get the feeling that the developers of gNewSense are doing this on purpose - punishing user who strive to use only free software, as a way of making sure only the most loyal stick around.

Ogg is a media container, the same way AVI, QuickTime (.mov) and MKV are. It can contain different audio, video and subtitle streams/channels/formats in it, and all of them are free. The extensions of this media container are usually ".ogg" or ".ogv".

".ogg" is mostly used for audio files similar to MP3s. They usually contain a single audio channel encoded with the Vorbis audio compression. They are so common that some people use Ogg as a synonym to a Ogg + Vorbis file. A bit less commonly, the ".ogg" extension can be seen used in a file with a video channel encoded with the Theora video compression. The use of ".ogg" for anything other than Vorbis audio is deprecated now days, but it was not until recently. You can still find a lot of older files or programs that do not comply with this.

The ".ogv" extension is usually Theora video + a free audio channel like Vorbis.

Another renowned free audio format is FLAC - Free Lossless Audio Codec. FLAC can stand for both the .flac container and the FLAC audio compression. FLAC is "lossless", as no audio quality is lost during the compression. This comes with the prize of slightly bigger file sizes. FLAC can also be seen used in the Ogg containers.

There is also Speex. An audio compression specifically designed to compress human voice.

There are portable audio players for both Vorbis and FLAC. See this link: http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/PortablePlayers

You can easily convert your MP3s to any of the free formats. But keep in mind, even though Voribs is superior to MP3 both ethically and technically, doing a lossy compression on file already compressed with another lossy compression is going to create a badly compressed file. Compressing an MP3 to Vorbis will ALWAYS worsen the audio quality. On the other hand, compressing an MP3 with a lossless compression like FLAC, is going to create the same quality audio file, only bigger in size.

The optimal solution is to find the original audio file - the Audio CD, a lossless CD-Rip or a WAV and compress from that. Then not only you will get a ethically better format, but technically too.

The free 3d acceleration is really problematic this days. Both AMD and Nvidia would not release specifications for their video cards and free software drivers can not be developed. As I am aware, only Intel has some video cards that can be used along with free 3d acceleration. You should make a new topic and ask what is the status on free video driver for 3d acceleration.

tar.bz2 is nothing more than a compressed file archive, just like ZIP and 7Zip are. To run Blender, all you need to do is extract the archive and then run the file called "blender". Nothing can be more simple.

Mampir-- Thanx for the tip with the text editor. I guess my login cookie was expiring.

Also the Vorbis and flac tip will help a lot.

Blender tip was so easy. I tend to over complicate stuff. Thought I had to do some make file stuff or something.

I suppose the 3d thing doesn't matter right now, cause I can only run gnewsense in a virtualbox since it doesn't have a 64 version. I guess that's why I can't install it....I don't know. We'll see what happens.

Thanx for the help man!

OGRE

Hello, SmashOgre.

For c#, take a look at Mono (http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page). But there are other languages that you could find useful and powerful (C++, Python, Ruby, ...)

For licenses you could apply to your music and other artwork, you could read Creative Commons Licenses, those that are 100% Free Cultural Works.

As for Blender, I use it and haven't had problems so far.

And finally, you seem committed to use free software only. I know we can listen to mp3 and see Flash stuff with free software implementations, but I'm committed too to use free software only and I don't like using mp3, swf, and other files that are not free standards, I better support those that were created with quality and freedom in mind.

¡Welcome to freedom!

I have a 64 bits architecture and I run gNewSense.

Do you get a kernel panic message? If so, you can boot the gNewSense cd with the noapic option, or you can disable APIC in your BIOS.

If you wanna 3d take a look at free3d.org and buy one of that cards, if you already don't have one. Unfortunately, I have a nVidia, so I already forget about playing AssaultCube :P

It's nice that you are making free games, you don't need to release the images, songs and videos under GPL for your game to be qualified as free software, but I think it's possible to do so.

I suggest that you learn another language to make the games. Python is a good choice and it's very easy but I think that the best language to make games is C++. I'm no game programmer (my only language is C, and I'm learning lisp) but all major games I know (unfortunately, most of them are proprietary, so I cannot play then) is made with C++.

So if you want to release I major and portable game I think it's a good idea to learn C++

Hi victortc. Are you running 64 bit gNewSense? Just wondering, as I've downloaded the CD but haven't tried it yet.

Hi. No, I'm running the x86 version.