Qbe Root

Click here for other Qbe Root columns.

December 20, 1999 -- Welcome to Qbe Root! All about PySol.

Welcome to Qbe Root! Several months ago, over beer and steak, my old friend A.T. asked me to crank out some content for his web site. I knew about his extreme Shogo-philia, a philia I don't share, and asked him what on earth he wanted me to write. "Whatever you want," he said. Hmmm. . . .

Fast forward several months. Time to put some electrons into the buffer. Abracapocus -- here's Qbe Root! Qbe is one of my traditional CRPG character surnames going back to Pool of Radiance and Ultima IV. Root is a term heavily used in Unix, and hints at the general content you'll see here. As a long-time Linux user and current Unix administrator, I'm interested in all things Unix. I'm going to devote many of my words to interesting Unix issues--mainly Unix gaming and other miscellaneous fun. I'm not going to waste a lot of time trying to convince you to run Linux, FreeBSD or another form of Unix. Instead, I'll show you some of the cool things you can do with Unix. If you have suggestions or compliments on Qbe Root, email me. If you have complaints or flames, send them to /dev/null.

Unix gaming is a quickly growing subject. The Linux world is pretty hyped up about Loki, the software company which is porting Windows games to Linux--good games too, games like Civilization:CTP and Myth II and yes, Q3A. It's important for Linux to have good games, too. Games are going to bring users from the Windows world. Who doesn't want a gaming platform which is faster than Windows and which doesn't crash?

I'm not going to talk much about Loki games here, though. They're beyond my budget (though I am saving up for Heroes of Might & Magic III . . . ), and they're pretty thoroughly covered on other sites. Most of the time I'm going to cover games which are native to Unix, not ports. And yes, Unix does have a wide selection of native games--everything from chess to first-person shooters, real-time strategy, and online RPGs. In the Unix world most games are continually under development, constantly being improved and expanded. In the Unix world, most games are also free. Now that fits my budget!

PySol

One of Loki's recent releases is Eric's Ultimate Solitaire. I've never seen it, never played it. Instead, I've been spending too much time lately on a free solitaire game called PySol. PySol is a good example of the Unix approach to games. PySol uses common Unix tools--it is written in a programming language called Python and uses a general purpose graphics toolkit called Tk. It runs under the Unix X Window GUI, but you can also download PySol for Windows or Macintosh. As long as you have or can get Python and Tcl/Tk, you can run PySol. How's that for compatibility?

In the features department, PySol puts most games to shame. The current version of PySol contains 111 different solitaire games. Sure, it'll play Klondike and Freecell, and many other games you've never heard of before. I'd describe them, but I've been hooked on Yukon for weeks. If you think you've mastered one version of solitaire, just try out one of the other games included in PySol. Before you know it, you'll have wasted several more of your sleep hours.

Little things go a long way toward making you comfortable with a game. PySol has those little things, features such as multiple cardsets and backgrounds, unlimited undo & redo, load & save games, player statistics and log files, hint system, demo games, support for user written plug-ins, integrated HTML help browser and lots of documentation. And did I mention that it's free?

It's hard to think of any gripes about the game. It takes longer to load that Windows Solitaire or Freecell, but it has far more playability. Sometimes it seems too picky about where I place the cards, though maybe I'm not putting them in the right place--at 1 am, who can remember?

Any complaints about this game would be minor. This is quality software. If you enjoy solitaire at all, check out PySol. If you ever have a few minutes to kill, check out PySol. All it'll cost you is download time. Plus the many hours you'll spend playing it. . .

You can find PySol at The PySol Home Page.

Next time: Freeciv.