Unvanquished Beta - help installing

booman

booman

Grand High Exalted Mystic Emperor of Linux Gaming
Staff member
I want to try out this Indie game called Unvanquished
Their beta is available and they have posted directions on installing it with their distribution versions.
http://www.unvanquished.net/download

Its kind of confusing for Mint users. Can someone help add the repositories and then download the game?
 
What is the output when you type:

lsb_release -i -r -c

If you are on Mint 16, I think it should say Saucy, as it is based on Ubuntu 13.10 if I'm not mistaken.

If Saucy is in your output, then you can simply follow the instructions there for Debian, Ubuntu and derivatives, just replace RELEASE with Saucy (provided that is the output of the above mentioned command), and you should be able to follow the commands there.
 
I'll try tomorrow morning... at work right now on Windows.
What will happen if I use the wrong release?
Say precise?
 
I am honestly not sure what might happen when using the wrong release, there will probably be some dependency issues then as I suspect the repository is statically built against the current library versions in the distro.

The safest step would be to run the command first to see what output you get.
 
ok, I'll try that first in the morning.
Then I'll try installing it.
Thanks for your help Daerandin
 
Ok, ran the command and this was the output:
Distributor ID:LinuxMint
Release:14
Codename:nadia

Mint's website says Mint 14 is based on Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal)
 
I am going to assume that you can follow the instructions then and using quantal as RELEASE.

You may want to keep in mind that it says quantal will not be released as of january 2014 on the website for Unvanquished.
 
Yeah I saw that. Means that I need to update to Mint 16 this month.
I wonder why its so hard to support older distros?
Most Microsoft games still support XP so I would think that developers could keep compatibility with older distros too...
I know they are indie and its probably harder to do this...

I used the quantal and it installed fine thorough the Terminal. I didn't have a chance to launch Unvanquished because I was too busy playing Borderlands 2.
I'll launch it tomorrow morning.
Thanks for your help.

Now I know how to figure out which Mint release is related to which Ubuntu release.
Mint 16 is based on the Ubuntu 13.10 LTS release
 
That figures... so what Ubuntu release is it?
The Mint website links to Ubuntu 13.10
 
Yes, Mint 16 is based on Ubuntu 13.10, which will be supported by Canonical only for 9 months.

They used to support the LTS releases for 3 years, and the "normal" one for 18 months.
From 12.04 the support for LTS versions has been extended to 5 years, and as I said for the others is only 9 months.

That's why I stick with 12.04 as my main OS on my 3 computers, although I still like some distro hopping on some partitions.
 
Honestly my Mint 14 32-bit is running great.
I'm not exactly sure why I should upgrade except to be on the same version as other new users.
Is there a downside to upgrading to Mint 16?
 
I checked the Wikipedia Ubuntu page and it appears that Ubuntu 12.10 (and by extension Mint 14) is supported until April 2014.

If you don't have any compelling reason to upgrade (better hardware support for example) I would wait for Mint 17 which should be based on Ubuntu 14.04 and thus supported for 5 years.

Now with the PPA system is so easy to keep most software updated that in my opinion is not worth the hassle of upgrading the distro every 6 months or so.
 
I agree too.
But would it look bad for GamersOnLinux if most of my guides are on an older Mint?
I have to admit, its quite stable.
 
Sorry for the late reply, but why would it look bad for this website?

Your Mint is not an outdated distro, is still currently supported so I don't think that would make any difference.
The only thing I would check is if is still possible to upgrade to the latest Nvidia driver, if necessary.

The alternative is a bleeding edge OS like Darendin's Arch Linux, which if I am not mistaken follows a rolling release model.
 
As long as your release is supported, then there is no problem following it. However, once it is no longer supported, it means it will no longer receive security updates or bugfixes. The reason why they follow such a release cycle that force you to in effect reinstall, is that it provides greater stability. Each release use one kernel, they apply security and bugfixes to it, but the base kernel version is not changed. After a certain amount of time, upstream sources no longer even provide the older versions, and to keep supporting a specific distro release with those versions, it means the distro maintainer would need to start maintaining software packages too.

That makes it a lot easier to simply find stable new versions that have received bugfixes and security fixes from upstream, and make a new release every 6 months.

And yep, Arch is rolling release. This means I never have to install a new version as Arch is continually updating almost as soon as new versions are available from upstream. Rolling release is not always unstable, if the distro repositories keep packages in testing for a long time, however with Arch this is not always the case. I remember when the 3.10 kernel came out. I rebooted, and when I started x, my computer died. I made a couple of attempts, with the same results. I was about to panic, believing my GPU could have been damaged, so I downgraded to the previous kernel and things worked wonderfully again. It turned out there was a problem with certain laptop models with nvidia GPU's and the 3.10 kernel when using proprietary nvidia drivers. Apparently nvidia have yet to figure it out as the forum topic is now 8 pages long on nvidia forums. However, with the 3.11.1 kernel things were working great again and I could get back to keeping everything updated.

I always have a USB ready with the Arch Live media on it, set up for UEFI boot so I can always boot with that in case a new kernel prevents me from booting at all. So I could just chroot in from the Live medium and downgrade. I think you have to enjoy struggling to like Arch, haha. For the most part things are stable and work great, since I started using Arch that's the only problem I've had.

There are other rolling release distros that follow a much more stable approach. I believe Linux Mint Debian is semi-rolling release, and definitely much easier than Arch. There is also Manjaro, which is based on Arch, but is more conservative about releasing new versions from testing until they are proven more stable. That's the thing with open source software that is not developed commercially, there is very little testing done so it's up to the users to test it and report bugs. This is why most distros have a conservative approach to new versions, especially the beginner friendly distros.
 
Hence why I don't use Arch ;)
I couldn't recommend Windows gamers to move to Linux with a distro like Arch and expect them to know how to troubleshoot.
So I have stuck with Mint and its been GREAT!
I would go Ubuntu, but the default windows manager has been frowned upon by Linux and Windows users alike.
So Mint would be the next best distro for someone coming from Windows XP.... and most of them are...

I have always believed "if its not broken, don't fix it"
Instead of staying on the bleeding edge of things and stick with stable and consistent.
This is Mint 14 right now.

As long as it is still updated, I will stay on it, but I am curious about 16 and maybe even 17...
I don't mind updating either... I did it with Mint 13 to Mint 14.

Since its a test machine only, I don't keep a lot of personal files on it. I backup all of my guides to Google Drive and most games are played a few hours then uninstalled.

Not to mention its extremely easy to backup virtual drives and PlayOnLinux shortcuts.
I could update to 17 easily and restore all of it.

I'll admit, I still have some fear of updating drivers. I'm sure it will go just fine, but back in the day I installed drivers in my Fedora 8 system and screwed things up. Since I didn't know how to troubleshoot it, I would just re-install Fedora.
So I still have those fears, but I would really like to try Nvidia 325
 
To my knowledge, there were no issues at all with the 325 nvidia drivers so I would not worry about that. The package manager used by Debian/Ubuntu/Mint works very well as far as I know, I don't think you should have any problems installing new drivers as long as you do it with the package manager, for example using PPA if the driver version you want is not in the official repositories.

And when it comes to new releases, you can stick to one as long as it is supported, and when you do upgrade to the next release, you can simply make sure it has been out for 1-2 months and you can rest easy that there will not be any serious bugs.

I actually recently installed Mint 16 on my mothers laptop and she seems to love it. I had previously installed Ubuntu for her, but it would periodically spam crash reports. I have also read a lot of negative criticism about the Unity desktop, and others were experiencing crash reports popping up a lot with certain laptops too. Since I installed Mint for her there have not been any issues.

And I would definitely advice all Linux newcomers to stay far away from Arch. Arch is a project and you have to enjoy it and be willing to maintain your OS yourself. It almost becomes a hobby on its own.
 
I use Synaptics Package Manager for installing drivers. It works great, but in Mint 14 the newest Nvidia driver available is 310
Maybe I have to update Synaptics?

I have ChUbuntu on my Chromebook (based on Ubuntu 12.04) and it runs GREAT.
I havn't had any issues at all. I even play some games on it too.

Once I am confident to install Linux on all of my machines for gaming, I'll probably stick with Ubuntu... but I wonder if Mint would be better because I have more experience with it?
 
Synaptic is just the graphical front-end to apt, which is used by Debian and Ubuntu. And from what I've read it really is a very stable and well working package manager that handles package upgrades very well.

The reason why you don't see newer drivers is because you're still on Mint 14, Mint 14 have specific software repositories, for newer versions you would need to upgrade to a newer release. Or you can use a PPA. If you've never used a PPA before, it really is very simple. It basically adds another repository for your package manager to allow you to easily install software. Actually, I checked the xorg-edgers PPA and they only seem to have the 331.20 driver now. I am using that driver now, and the issues I had seems to have become less frequent with the newest kernel version. No zombies for a boot that has lasted for almost 2 days, and the terminal is behaving better.

Considering the number of issues reported on the nvidia forums with the newest driver, I would suggest waiting until they release a new version with some bugfixes.

You could install 325 yourself if you know how to do it. Like I said, 325 was very stable, I don't recall any specific issues reported on Arch forums when it was being used, and many archers are still using it because of minor issues with 331.
 
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