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Classic Games (Games) Software Linux

Hikarunix: The Go Distro 276

Posted by michael from the go-fish dept.
LGRiske writes "In this day and age of the Unreal Final Fantasy of Doom 3 it's nice to see a 4000 year old board game keep up the pace. There's now a whole Linux distribution dedicated to learning, playing and studying the oldest strategy game in the world, Go/Baduk/WeiQi. Named Hikarunix it is based on DamnSmallLinux, the Live Linux CD, and is small enough to fit on a 3" (80mm) miniCD. It is meant for Go players of all levels whether you've never even heard of the game or have been playing for decades."
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Hikarunix: The Go Distro More

Hikarunix: The Go Distro

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  • Note that there's a torrent... (Score:5, Informative)

    by tcopeland ( 32225 ) * <(tom) (at) (thomasleecopeland.com)> on Friday September 24, 2004 @01:31PM (#10342620) Homepage
    ...right here [hikarunix.org]. Only two seeds out there so far...

    • Screw torrent (Score:4, Informative)

      by blanks ( 108019 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @03:04PM (#10343651) Homepage Journal
      Go play IGS, its been around for years, many amazing players.

      http://gobase.org/software/clients/

  • Go is flawed (Score:2, Funny)

    by diginux ( 816293 )
    Play hex.
    • Play hex.

      +++ MELON MELON MELON +++
      +++ Out of Cheese error +++
      +++ Reinstall Universe +++
      +++ Redo from start +++

      [ANT HILL INSIDE]

      Man, I suck at that, how about Cripple Mr. Onion? [jump.to]

    • Re:Go is flawed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Marrow ( 195242 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @01:47PM (#10342845)
      Go is perfect. Perhaps your perceptions are flawed.

      • Re:Go is flawed (Score:3, Insightful)

        by gaijin99 ( 143693 )
        Meh, he's trolling, ignore it.

        I'm not sure any game is perfect, but Go does come damn close. I'm pretty sure that any sentient aliens will play games, and I'd be surprised if they didn't have games of the "move pieces, capture the special piece" vareity (like Chess, Shogi, etc), those games won't be Chess or Shogi, but I'm sure they'll be similar. But I'm pretty sure that they will play Go. Not a "Go like game", but Go, the utter simplicity of the rules ensures that if they evolved a game along the lin

        • Re:Go is flawed (Score:5, Insightful)

          by hunterx11 ( 778171 ) <hunterx11@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Friday September 24, 2004 @02:30PM (#10343311) Homepage Journal
          The simplicity of Go actually makes it seem a bit inelegant when people play it--namely that it is not self-evident when the game is over. I'm not necessarily saying that this is a flaw, although people sometimes continue playing games whose outcome is already decided. I think the most "natural" way to play would be to use Chinese scoring rules, and keep playing until every space is filled up, but that would be tedious and unnecessary.
          • Except that that wouldn't work - you need the holes in your formations to give it strength, otherwise you'll end up filling all your liberties and suiciding.

            I think the only way to tell when a game is over is to practice - for example, when playing my friend, I'll fairly often beleive the board is settled, but he's not convinced so he'll keep pushing. I successfully defend the "pointless" attacks more often than he can make something of it, but regardless we both end up learning something.

        • ... {it is} something unearthly ... If there are sentient beings on other planets, then they play Go.
          - Emanuel Lasker, chess world champion

          http://senseis.xmp.net/?GreatQuotes [xmp.net]

        • Go would be perfect except for the "ko" rule, which prevents what chess would call "draw by repetition". The rule seems sort of arbitrary to me.

          I got OK at chess (1800 rating) but I never broke the surface of Go, its much harder to play well. To make them equal difficulty, you could play Go on a small board, maybe 7 x 7, and then you could calculate the effect of your moves the same way as in chess. On 19 x 19 you can't calculate combinations. You need the years of experience to see patterns.

    • Play hex.

      Here's some more info [wikipedia.org] on hex. From the wikipedia article:

      The game was invented by the Danish mathematician Piet Hein in 1942, and independently by the mathematician

      John Nash [wikipedia.org] in the late 1940s. It became known in Denmark under the name Polygon; Nash's fellow players at first called the game Nash. According to Martin Gardner, some of the Princeton University students also referred to the game as John, because it was often played on the hexagonal tiles of bathroom floors.

      ...

      Players have two

  • Never understood how that game worked (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lphuberdeau ( 774176 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @01:34PM (#10342674) Homepage

    I have tryed to play for hours but I never understood what the point was any why could the computer do stuff I couldn't and beat me every single time.

    I'm not too sure a dedicated distribution is such a good thing. Wouldn't have packing it with Knoppix be more useful? Booting a PC to play a game isn't the kind of thing I do every day anyway.

  • So... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @01:35PM (#10342682)
    Is the window manager called Sai?

    • Re:So... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by dosius ( 230542 )
      Sai Go... lol

      (note for those not so versed in Japanese, "saigo" = "final")

      Moll.

      • Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)

        by moonbender ( 547943 ) <moonbender@gUUUm ... inus threevowels> on Friday September 24, 2004 @01:46PM (#10342833)
        I'm not sure if I remember correctly and if the grandparent was referring to it anyway, but I think one the main characters (the tutor) of Hikaru No Go is also called Sai. Hikaro No Go being the anime that inspired the name of the distribution.

      • Re:So... (Score:3, Informative)

        by Millennium ( 2451 )
        I hadn't thought of that, actually. I was talking about the distro's name, "Hikarunix". It's a reference to the anime Hikaru no Go. The title character is taught to play Go by Sai, the restless spirit of an ancient Go master.

  • Interesting game (Score:4, Interesting)

    by lukewarmfusion ( 726141 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @01:36PM (#10342696) Homepage Journal
    ...but very frustrating. I learned from a Chinese friend that brought a set from home. He got us all addicted (in college, we had time for this stuff). Soon we had maybe ten games spread out over the quad in front of our dorm. When I finally beat my friend in a match, I retired for good. I had to go out on a high note.

  • Why the run around? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Askjeffro ( 787652 )
    Would it not be easier to simply say the size of distro rather "the Live Linux CD, and is small enough to fit on a 3" (80mm) miniCD." Let us determine what media it will fit, I think most of us have had basic math.
    • I think most of us have had basic math

      I don't recall the capacity of a miniCD being part of the math curriculum.

    • I don't know about you, but I don't know the size of a 3" CD off the top of my head, because I rarely use them. Saying "it'll fit on a 3" CD" is much more useful to me than "it takes up 62.182MB".

      • Re:Why the run around? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Control Group ( 105494 ) * on Friday September 24, 2004 @01:47PM (#10342840) Homepage

        I don't know the size of a 3" CD off the top of my head

        You know, I understand exactly what you meant, but do you realize how funny this read on my first pass?

      • Sorry guys, I didn't realize there was so many people using 3" CD's today. My point being, I think most of us know a normal CD is 650-700mb, a floppy is 1.44mb, a 256mb usb drive is 256mb... It has been my experience people tend to think in file sizes first and then apply it to the media format of their choosing. So while saying it fits on a 3" CD may be more useful to the people that actually use them, the rest of us that use more standard storage are left wondering if it will fit in the remaining 40mb
    • Maybe the FAQ would help you out:

      1) Burn the cd image (hikarunix-XX.iso) to a CD (full sized or a 210MB miniCD).

      Looks like its = 210MB.

  • Sweet (Score:5, Informative)

    by pHatidic ( 163975 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @01:39PM (#10342730)
    For those who don't get the name, it's based on the anime series Hikaru No Go which is about a boy who is taught to play Go play the ghost of a former pro player from thousands of years ago.

    If you are interested in playing Go online, I would recommend Kiseido Go Server [kiseido.com], is it is the best there is and its java so it can run on almost any platform.

  • Unreal Final Fantasy of Doom 3 (Score:3, Funny)

    by jetkust ( 596906 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @01:39PM (#10342733)
    Yea, I know this game sounds like vaporware and all, but I assure you, it will be out before Duke Nukem Forever.

  • All I know about Go (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24, 2004 @01:40PM (#10342748)
    ...I learned from watching Hikaru No Go.

    Now I'm learning to pilot huge battle mechs by watching Evangelion.

    • Re:All I know about Go (Score:2, Interesting)

      by tetsuji ( 572812 )
      One of the cool things about Hikaru is that the games that they show being played in the anime are actual, historical games.

      I remember the first time a friend showed me an episode of Hikaru, and about half way through I started getting this intense sensation of deja-vu. It took me a few minutes to figure out that the game that the characters were playing was one I had memorized out of a book of famous games!

  • As someone who's terrible at strategy games... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kzinti ( 9651 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @01:42PM (#10342772) Homepage Journal
    ...I have to ask: isn't learning Go from a computer sort of like learning sex from a porn site? You can pick up some basic concepts and maybe even some effective strategies, but until you have a real, live, flesh-and-blood human partner you're just not getting the full effect and are never going to be truly good.

    • Re:As someone who's terrible at strategy games... (Score:5, Informative)

      by untermensch ( 227534 ) * on Friday September 24, 2004 @01:49PM (#10342861)
      but until you have a real, live, flesh-and-blood human partner you're just not getting the full effect and are never going to be truly good.

      probably true, but many of the tools on the CD are designed to connect you to real-live human Go players. Sure it might be nicer to sit down with someone face-to-face, but not everybody has the advantage of living in a part of the world or a city big enough to have Go clubs or other Go players at all.
    • That's why there are apps on the distro to hook you up to play online, and a database of annotated games.
    • So play people online, perhaps?
    • Odds are good that for the majority of people here, that's exactly how they did learn about sex.

      (end portion intended to be modded funny)

      And you're right. Learning go from a computer, or a book, will only get you so far, and in my experience with go that isn't very far. You can learn something about fuseki, joseki, tesuji, life and death, ko fights and the like, but that won't do you much good until you sit down with a live opponent and start seeing how it all fits into the structure of a game.

      That inclu
    • Is psyching the other player out. Maybe not downright tricking him, but getting him caught up in what's happening to lose track of a larger threat.

      Learning go from a computer is like learning sex from a text-based porn site censored for language. Not only does the computer have terrible form and awful strategy, but he never makes mistakes. At least bad human players occasionally accidentally make insightful moves. Go AI's are like really good players with no foresight or sense of strategy to the poin

  • Great Idea with Potential (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RobRancho ( 569680 ) * on Friday September 24, 2004 @01:47PM (#10342837) Homepage
    This is actually a great idea and could be the basis for further innovation/exploitation of Linux or alternative and free OSs for distributing products sans the Windows / Direct X / permissions / general configuration headaches. You wouldn't have to worry about what media player or APIs are present on a user's system, instead focusing on creating a robust, stable, and boot-able platform to showcase your wares. Anyone know of any current projects bent towards this goal? Once the work was done, it could be applied to a variety of software products.
    • I think it still doesn't consider that not many people want to reboot play a game. Rebooting to play games is for consoles, if you want that, code for the original Playstation or something.

      If you want to promote Go to a Windows user, I suggest finding an available Go game for Windows.

      It isn't that I don't think the idea of a bootable, self-contained program is uninteresting, it is just too inefficient to reboot so often. The Knoppix and such projects are great for kiosk type programs though, so maybe se
      • What, is your attention span so short you have to switch to a new game every five minutes, and can't wait 60 seconds for a reboot? Since Go is a game of *patience*, it's better not to have other "distractions" in the background, and be able to invest an hour or so in a worthwhile game.

        I wouldn't mind putting in a new CD every hour or two if I wanted to change between Go, Risk, Doom 3, etc. Hell, the load time on most modern games is already over 1 or 2 minutes for loading the game, then loading the intro
      • So, for Windows users, using a copy protected game that requires you to shut off loads of crap and then restart it when you're done is more efficient?

  • What if... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by p0 ( 740290 )

    What if all the PC games came this way? With it's own OS, bundled with vendor drivers and so on?

  • High tech solution for a low tech game (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 24, 2004 @01:50PM (#10342870)
    why not just
    a piece of paper,
    another player
    some m&m's?

    • I'd eat the M&M's before the game was done. That's why computers were invented.
    • Well... online Go. Just hook this baby up to KGS or IGS and you've got an assload of Go players waiting for someone else to play with.

      "Another Player" can be hard to find, since Go isn't terribly popular and a fairly decent player can thoroughly trounce a beginner.
      • "Another Player" can be hard to find, since Go isn't terribly popular and a fairly decent player can thoroughly trounce a beginner.

        Yahoo Games [yahoo.com] is a great place to play Go, for all levels. There's always lots of people playing there, at all levels, for all board sizes.

        Usually when I try to connect to IGN, there's about 5 players online. I understand it's like the official Go network on the internet, but to me it seems fairly useless.

    • Well first of all, you'd need a HUGE amount of m&ms.. and you'd either have to be a total go expert with a great memory, or you'd need to draw out a 19x19 board. Go is VERY popular actually and its really like a martial art in that the ranks are perfectly laid out. After you get a stable ranking you should be able to make the game a perfectly even match just by giving the lesser player a handicap equal to the difference in ranks. Its really so much like a martial art in so many ways.
    • m&m's melt. What you need is poster-board, a sharpie, and those stupid glass decorative gems from Wal-Mart.

      Heh, it sounds like that old Kings-of-Comedy guy that would make random shit up like "Oh, so you wanna have a barbeque? Alright, meet me in the back in 15 minutes with a coonskin cap, a bottle of Ensure, and a dirty Swiffer pad... we're making chicken!"
  • probably several centuries older than GO, and originated in what is now Iraq, where, you might notice, a protracted match of the real oldest strategy game is being played out: war.

    -dameron

  • Why a complete distro? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MacGod ( 320762 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @01:54PM (#10342936)
    Excuse my non-Linux-user question, but:

    What's the advantage of having an entire distro built around this game, rather than just having an application for the game and all its training stuff built into the app?
    • If you were a Linux user you would know that installing programs are not always easy. There are several Linux distros with different file structure, so installer program doesn't always works. At least that is why I made a distro with Bioinformatics software. I think there is also a "me too" component :)

    • Re:Why a complete distro? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cjpez ( 148000 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @02:08PM (#10343071) Homepage Journal
      Perhaps you've got some favorite UNIX Go client you like to use to play against people in other geographical regions, and it doesn't talk to Windows, and you want to play against your windows-using friends? Could just give 'em a CD and then they wouldn't have to worry about installing a whole distro.

      Still, it is a bit silly.

    • If the game was an app you could load on the operating system you use at work, just think how much your productivity would suffer!
      These Hikarunix guys have cleverly required that the game run in its own OS, thus making it too much of a hassle to play it solely for the purposes of procrastination.

      If only the people who designed Slashdot did the same thing.... /me alt-tabs back to my IDE to get some work done
    • None really. The main benefit of Hikarunix is that because it's a "Neat Linux Hack," it gives Go, the best game evahr, a good excuse to be on the front page of Slashdot.
  • Why is this not called the "Go OS"?

  • Yeah, but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by spongman ( 182339 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @02:01PM (#10343005)
    will it boot on my Atari?

    (sorry)

  • Boot the ISO into vmware... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kraegar ( 565221 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @02:19PM (#10343194)
    Booting the ISO into vmware is a great way to keep all your go related stuff handy, without the reboots, and without having to install a lot of stuff.

    It's also handy to keep an ISO of knoppix-STD for booting and using security related tools in a seperate VM.

    (knoppix-STD is also done by the same individual who does the Hikarunix bootable go CD).

  • I was ok with "Higaro no Go" UNTIL I REALIZED SAI WAS A DUDE.
    After that, my interest in the manga plummeted.
    I think it would rock to have a female ghost "skinnin" along for the ride,
    but a dude?

    It would actually be fun to hear her sighing in the brainspace and saying,
    "I hate it when you read porn--now you'll have to mastrubate again and again and...STOP TOUCHING YOURSELF!"

    or

    "You're wife is such a pig. Would you like me to talk dirty to you again?"

    The possibilities are endless.
    Hey, someone's probably writ

  • I wrote the first commercial Go Playing Program (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MarkWatson ( 189759 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @02:49PM (#10343501) Homepage
    In the late 1970s, I wrote a Go playing program on very limited hardware: my Apple II (serial number 79 - an old one, but with extra memory).

    Anyway, my old boss (who once joked that he almost did not get his PhD from MIT because he spent too much time playing Go) convinced me to sell this beast - even though it did not play a strong game it did know about liberties, ladders, some Joseki, etc.

    Anyway, I sold it as "Honinbo Warrior". I am fairly sure that it was the first commercially available Go playing program. I did not make too much money from it because advertising costs in Apple magazines ate up most of the revenue.

    -Mark
    • Go is such a beautiful game. The rules are simple in the extreme, but Go is exponentially more difficult for a digital computer than chess. After 25 years [google.com], the best commercial Go programs are still weaker than 5kyu [nyu.edu] (okay for an amateur but way below any pro-level player).

      Barring unexpected breakthroughs in AI/quantum/parallel computing, computer Go won't threaten human dominance for decades to come.

  • Round Go (Score:4, Interesting)

    by c64cryptoboy ( 310001 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @03:05PM (#10343665) Homepage Journal
    here [youdzone.com]
  • Since Linux is Torvald's UNIX-like OS, is Hikarunix Utada Hikaru [toshiba-emi.co.jp]'s?

  • Go is unbalanced (Score:3, Funny)

    by carcosa30 ( 235579 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @03:46PM (#10344109)
    Black moving first = black rush, gg white
    black gets build advantage, n00bs build 9 times faster, more unbalanced + black moves first = gg gg white

    Joseki_Noob: R U KOREAN R STH?
    [DAN]Go_Seigen: ^___^ kekekekeke laaaaaaa~

  • You know what I was thinking?... (Score:5, Funny)

    by fawlty154 ( 814393 ) on Friday September 24, 2004 @04:04PM (#10344285)
    Just yesterday I was thinking "Man, I think the linux community could take off anytime now, we just need one more distro..."

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