Hackosis

Nothing is better than a 3D game, but when you haven’t installed a GUI and have a quick need to play for a bit, here are 4 text based Linux games for CLI:

1. Bastet - Tetris clone:

Bastet ("bastard tetris") is an ncurses Tetris clone which is harder than every other tetris released. It is based on a heuristics engine which tries to detect which block you need or don’t need, and then gives you the blocks that you don’t need. For instance, if you usually play by leaving long "canyons" one square wide and then waiting for the long "I" block, you’ll have to wait till eternity before you see it. The heuristics have been worked on for some time and are quite nasty.

Install Bastet on Ubuntu:

2. Ninvaders - Space Invaders Clone:

nInvaders project is a Space Invaders clone for ncurses.

Ever wanted to play space invaders when you can’t find a GUI? Now you can!

Install Ninvaders on Ubuntu:

3. Moon-buggy - drive on the moon:

Moon-buggy is a simple character graphics game, where you drive some kind of car across the moon’s surface. Unfortunately there are dangerous craters there. Fortunately your car can jump over them!

Install Moon-buggy on Ubuntu:

4. Greed - a puzzle game:

The strategy game of Greed. Try to eat as much as possible of the board before munching yourself into a corner.

Install Greed on Ubuntu:

Hope you enjoy playing these simple, but fun Linux based CLI games. You can play any of these games by entering “/usr/games/xxxxx” with the Xs being the name of the game.

Do you know of any other fun CLI based games for Linux? Let us know in the comments. [via mellowd.co.uk]

NOTE: See the previous posts about Vyatta.

The Vyatta open source routing platform is built upon XORP, the eXtensible Open Router Platform, and uses templates to execute commands that are entered into the xorpsh, also know as the Vyatta CLI, much like other routing platforms.

For example, when entering show system memory in the Vyatta CLI (xorpsh), the system actually executes free -ot. The Linux free command displays the system memory information and the -ot switch enables the ‘totals’ and ‘buffer adjusted’ lines. The output is displayed in kilobytes by default. There is so much RAM in computers today, that it makes more sense to display the output in megabytes with the -m switch; free -m.

Changing How ’show system memory’ executes:

NOTE: Don’t forget to backup before making changes to these important files!

1. Login as root.
2. Go to the template directory:
   cd /opt/vyatta/share/xorp/templates
3. Find the free command:
   # grep free *.cmds
   rl_misc.cmds: %command: “free -ot” %help: “Show system memory usage”;
4. See that it’s in the file rl_misc.cmds. Change it from “-ot” to “-m” with sed:
   cp rl_misc.cmds rl_misc.cmds.bak
   sed -i ’s/free -ot/free -m/’ rl_misc.cmds
5. Try it:
   xorpsh
   Welcome to Vyatta on vDUT
   > show system memory
   total used free shared buffers cached
   Mem: 250 190 59 0 23 96
   -/+ buffers/cache: 70 179
   Swap: 0 0 0

This not only applies to the show system memory command, but for all other Vyatta CLI commands as well. Thanks to Stig on the Vyatta-Users mailing list for the hacking tips. If you have any more Vyatta hacks, please email them to me, or leave a comment.