Geek Software of the Week: Rufus!

Rufus USB Boot CreatorThis a truly VERY useful GSotW! You HAVE to check it out!

Rufus – Create Bootable USB Drives

“Rufus is a small utility that helps format and create bootable USB flash drives, such as USB keys/pendrives, memory sticks, etc.

It can be especially useful for cases where:

  • you need to create USB installation media from bootable ISOs (Windows, Linux, UEFI, etc.)
  • you need to work on a system that doesn’t have an OS installed
  • you need to flash a BIOS or other firmware from DOS
  • you want to run a low-level utility

Despite its small size, Rufus provides everything you need!

Oh, and Rufus is fast. For instance it’s about twice as fast as UNetbootin, Universal USB Installer or Windows 7 USB download tool, on the creation of a Windows 7 USB installation drive from an ISO (with honorable mention to WiNToBootic for managing to keep up). It is also marginally faster on the creation of Linux bootable USB from ISOs.”

NVIDIA to Help With Driver Support for Linux

More good news for Linux! NVIDIA is pledging to help the Open Source community with NVIDIA driver help! Awesome!

Nvidia pledge to help Linux’s open source driver community

“This week, it seems, everything is coming up Linux. First Valve announce their own Linux-based OS, and now, Nvidia are making moves to get more involved with the open source community. Nvidia’s Andy Ritger contacted the developers of Nouveau – an open source, reverse-engineered version of Nvidia’s proprietary drivers – offering information on the workings of their GPUs.

‘NVIDIA is releasing public documentation on certain aspects of our GPUs,’ wrote Ritger, ‘with the intent to address areas that impact the out-of-the-box usability of NVIDIA GPUs with Nouveau. We intend to provide more documentation over time, and guidance in additional areas as we are able.’

In the first instance, that means releasing info on Nvidia’s Device Control Block layout, which I’m not going to attempt to explain because I’m not a tech journalist. Ritger admits that ‘much of the information in that document is not news for the Nouveau community,’ but that the official explanation should help strengthen Nouveau’s implementation.

Speaking to Ars Technica, Ritger outlined Nvidia’s future plan, saying, ‘more BIOS-related information is in the pipeline.’

‘Our goal is for the Nouveau driver to give NVIDIA users a reasonable out-of-the-box experience,’ he continued, ‘This entails things like successful GPU initialization, display configuration, and basic 2D and 3D rendering. The DCB and other BIOS-related information will hopefully help improve some scenarios where Nouveau had initialization problems, or display enumeration sorts of challenges.’

Nvidia has had an interesting relationship with Linux in the past. While its proprietary drivers are reasonable – by Linux proprietary driver standards – their reluctance to help the community prompted Linux creator Linus Torvalds to call them the ‘single worst company’ that developers could work with.”

Mark My Words, Linux Will Win!

Steam OSStep one in our attempt at world domination… well, OS domination, anyway! For a LONG time, I have heard, “Well, Linux is nice, and all, but you can’t play games, so it won’t catch on for personal PCs, for most folks.” Oh yeah? Check this out!

Why SteamOS will challenge Windows for PC gaming supremacy

From PC World – “You have to give it to PC gamers. Throughout all the trials and tribulations of the past few years—plummeting PC sales, the mainstream shift to mobile, Windows RT, et cetera—gamers were one of the few bedrocks Microsoft could rely upon. Virtually all major PC games run on Windows, and many run only on Windows.

That’s a big deal. In August, Jon Peddie Research predicted that Bohemia’s ARMA III would drive more than $800 million in PC hardware sales all by itself, and JPR estimates the total market for PC gaming hardware to hit nearly $18 billion in 2013. That’s a lot of quarters, and it’s all funneled toward Windows machines.

But suddenly that domination seems imperiled.

On Monday, Valve launched an assault on one of Windows’ strongest bastions with the announcement of SteamOS, a free, Linux-based operating system built around Steam, the most popular PC-game service in the land. And if any company has the brawn to shift PC gaming to Linux, it’s Valve.

The good news for Microsoft: Windows is going to be the featured destination for PC gamers for a while yet.

SteamOS was built to power so-called Steam Boxes—small, living-room-friendly PCs designed to challenge the gaming consoles’ death grip on the big screen. They’re not fire-breathing enthusiast gaming computers. SteamOS was built around gamepads and Steam’s Big Picture mode rather than keyboards and mice, and perhaps more importantly, it removes the cost of a Windows license—a big expense in the price-competitive living room.

‘I think it is important to understand that the vast majority of gamers consider ‘PC gaming’ to be a situation where the display is a few feet away from the gamer,’ says Ted Pollak, the senior game industry analyst at Jon Peddie Research. ‘…Couch-based gaming is ‘console gaming’ and that is what Valve is making a play toward with Steam Box.’

What’s more, native Linux gaming is still in its infancy and mostly involves using WINE to run Windows games on your machine. Steam for Linux itself only supports around 200 games currently. Most are Valve titles or indie games, and even fewer offer the full gamepad support SteamOS begs for. In fact, SteamOS will rely on a proprietary Wi-Fi technology to stream the nearly 3,000 games available for Steam for Windows to your Steam Box.

‘I think Valve’s challenge will be to get the games ported to its OS,’ says Jon Peddie himself. ‘They can start of course with their own games, and as interesting as they are, that’s a small library.’ (Beyond Steam, Valve has created legendary PC-game series such as Portal, Half-Life, Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, and Left 4 Dead.)

For now, Windows is still firmly entrenched. And yet…

Though Steam Boxes aren’t an immediate danger to Microsoft’s supremacy, the love PC gamers hold for Steam is fierce, and if SteamOS picks up popularity, Valve’s love for Linux could encroach upon Windows’ gaming stronghold.

‘Possibly more important than the ‘PC vs. console’ question is that Valve’s move toward Linux cuts Microsoft Windows out of the picture,’ Pollak says. ‘This then circles back to PC gaming in its traditional form. Will developers make—and people play—Linux-optimized games on the desktop?’

That prospect just got a big boost. On Wednesday, AMD announced ‘Mantle,’ a low-level, cross-platform programming interface driver (read: DirectX replacement) designed to eek superb hardware-optimized performance out of GPUs based on AMD’s GCN architecture across multiple platforms—including both next-gen consoles as well as Windows and SteamOS-based PCs using Radeon graphics.

That could reap immediate benefits for SteamOS if it becomes popular with developers, especially as Steam machines are a natural fit for console ports. EA is already on board with its Frostbite engine; Battlefield 4 will be the first major title to use Mantle.”

Rockin’ the Bandwidth!

Northstate Plex Speed

DEWD! I now have 30 meg symmetrical at my house! Zowie! Rock on Internets! As the banner there says, “Faster than 88% of anyone” in the good ol’ US of A! I now have Northstate Plex fiber optic run all the way to my house. There is nothing sweeter to a geek than tons o’ bandwidth. What else do ya need?!

To take advantage of it, I got a new, rocking wireless router as well. Ton’s of neat features with it, including NAS-like file sharing. What a geeky day I had yesterday getting all this set up! (By the way, the bandwidth DID test out to be 30.4 down and 30.2 up tested directly from the port after it was set up at my house.) I am still performance tweaking the router to get that through it… but, I am pretty dog gone close! I am a happy man!