Nootka is a graphical application intended to teach classical score notation.

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Akregator is the default KDE RSS/Atom feed reader and it does it very well. Without being bloated with a lot of features, Akregator takes a rather simple approach, yet providing all the needed features one would expect from a feed reader. You have an integrated web browser, tabs, feed fetching interval configuration, feed archiving, system tray notifications and a few other notable features shown below. Akregator is part of the KDE Kontact Suite.

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It’s been three years since the last version of AssaultCube was released, but the wait was well-worth, since 1.2 brings several major new features and a ton of improvements. First, I must say AssaultCube is one of my favorite shooters because of its simplicity yet pretty addictive gameplay and a nice community.

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Initially scheduled to ship with the Mir display server, and XMir as a fallback solution, Ubuntu 13.10 postponed Mir as default replacement for X due to the fact that Mir is not yet considered ready for end-users.

With Saucy Salamander, Ubuntu ships a solid desktop based on the work that has been done since 13.04, with few new features that are noteworthy, and no major changes. Saucy will be supported for 9 months, until July 2014. With 13.04 support ending very soon, Saucy is a good replacement to feature newer packages and a decent lifespan.

Default Ubuntu 13.10 desktop:

For this review I used the 64-bit Desktop ISO image. Let’s see what are the main applications offered by Saucy:

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Red Eclipse is a free, open-source shooter based on the Cube 2 engine, the engine on which two other popular games, AssaultCube and Sauerbraten, are based. The game was initially launched on March 15, 2011, and the latest release, Red Eclipse 1.4, was put out on March 22, 2013.

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Alien Arena is a free, open-source first-person shooter built around the CRX engine, an open-source, Quake-based engine. It features a fast-paced gameplay taking place in a Sci Fi universe over dozens of maps. Alien Arena provides both single-player and multi-player modes.

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SuperTuxKart
Or STK for short, is one of the most popular racing games available freely and open-source on Linux. You can find install it in any major distribution with the default package manager. SuperTuxKart comes with several game modes, like single racing or Story mode, vehicles models, inspired by mascots in the free software world (you can drive with Tux, FreeBSD devil, GNU etc) and a whole bunch of maps, which you can unlock by completing missions in the story mode. STK also includes weapons to slow down your opponents. There is an in-game add-on menu from which you can download even further maps and models.

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Each Linux Mint release usually offers four flavors, to say nothing about LMDE: Mint Cinnamon, Mint MATE, Mint KDE and Mint Xfce. The MATE edition is based around a desktop environment forked from GNOME 2, featuring a similar interface and a familiar user interaction experience. MATE started as a need of some users to have the classic GNOME 2.x interface once GNOME 3 was released with huge interface changes. MATE does offer a classic, solid and familiar interface, and it also provides a compositing window manager for graphical effects and transparency.

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Here is an overview of 10 clones of the game after which a syndrome was named, some graphical and some running in a console. Hopefully you will find these enjoyable (maybe while still trying to avoid the Tetris effect).

Atris
Alizarin Tetris, or Atris, is a 2D graphical Tetris clone with some very neat features. I find it easier to handle since moving the pieces to left or right is done instantly, faster, without the short delay typical Tetris games have. It is also possible to use accelerated speed (default key Down Arrow) and then, when the piece is near the bottom, quickly move it left or right. It provides fullscreen or windowed mode, has graphical configuration options (except for the resolution), keyboard shortcuts, color schemes and pieces schemes. It seems that it doesn’t save the toggle fullscreen option between sessions, but this can be fixed by manually editing the ~/.atrisrc file and setting full_screen to 0 or 1. Press Q to quit a running game.

Alizarin Tetris

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I tried 4.10 in Kubuntu 13.04 Daily Build, which is still two months away from being released but, surprise, KDE 4.10 seems very stable. The system is up to date as of March 4, 2013, and I installed a few more applications from the repositories to see how they work.

Default KDE 4.10 desktop in Kubuntu 13.04 Daily Build

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I made this review after a fresh install of Mint 14 Xfce ‘Nadia’ from the ISO DVD and a full sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade.

Here’s what I ended up with:

• Linux Kernel: 3.5.0-21
• Desktop Environment: Xfce 4.10
• File Manager: Thunar 1.4.0
• Terminal: Xfce Terminal 0.4.8
• Web Browser: Firefox 17.0.1
• Office Suite: LibreOffice 3.6.2
• Music Player: Banshee 2.6.0
• Chat Client: Pidgin 2.10.6

In addition to these, Mint 14 Xfce also comes with Totem movie player, GIMP image editor, XChat IRC client, gedit text editor, screenshot tool, gThumb image viewer, a document viewer, Transmission BitTorrent client, catfish find tool, a sound recorder, Xfburn burner.

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0 A.D. is a strategy game that has been around for quite some time now, and it reached a decent level of completeness despite the fact that Wildfire Games are releasing only alpha versions. It’s free, open-source and available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X and the latest alpha, codenamed ‘Ides of March’, comes with a whole bunch of new features and fixes.

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Akregator
This is the KDE-based feed reader with support for RSS feeds. Akregator comes with lots of features and it has a simple interface, with a tree-like view to the left side for the feeds list and a large area for reading news. It supports tabs, sharing to websites like Twitter or Identi.ca, while links and pages can be opened in an external web browser. It uses the WebKit engine for displaying web pages. It allows the configuration of its appearance, like font and colors, sharing services, article archiving and it support system tray integration.

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