Cubic

Linux simply wouldn't be Linux without Linux distributions and Linux distribution builders. From Linux's earliest days, it has been the people building distributions that have put down the roads the rest of us have followed. From choices about configuration files and package repositories, to desktops, and even systemd, none of this would make sense without Yggdrasil's Live CD or Softlanding Linux System becoming Slackware. It's a tradition that has crossed the three decades since, with many people and companies still creating their own distros, sharing ideas, integrating features, and iterating updates with each release, helping all modern distros to reach their full potential. We now have distributions for beginners, for experts, for musicians, for security experts, for developers, and everyone in between. Experimenting with your own distribution is still a great way to learn about Linux, and more importantly, learn about what you personally like about Linux.

Cubic helps you build a customized Ubuntu without hand-building packages or running make menuconfig to compile your own kernel.

Linux history is also littered with the tools that help people build their own distributions, from Gentoo and Arch build scripts to SUSE's Studio, and now, Cubic. Cubic is a brilliant "Custom Ubuntu ISO Creator," which means it's not a fully fledged distro builder but it can still help you build a custom version of Ubuntu. This is particularly useful if you find yourself always running through the same package installation ritual, or you'd like a version of Ubuntu that you can share with friends and family, knowing what packages are installed and preconfigured. Cubic does this through a simple wizard interface, using an Ubuntu-based ISO you download first as the source. This is selected in the first page of the wizard, which also lists important general information about your chosen distribution. These details can also be changed, letting you create your own release name, URL, and version number, for example. The next step extracts the components necessary to provide a minimal virtual environment running from within the new distribution. This allows direct filesystem access, helping you to set up configuration files or copy across new desktop backgrounds and other artwork, for instance. It's a powerful step, but it can also be easily skipped if you don't want to make any low-level changes.

The next page is probably the most useful. It will detect and list which packages are going to be available, and you can select these to remove them from either the standard installation or any minimal installation, if available. This page really lets you create the distribution you want, and is easy enough for anyone to understand. The same isn't true of the next page, which is for configuring boot options. There are three tabs for selecting the kernel, adding and editing pre-seeding scripts, and for GRUB boot manager configuration. There's even an integrated editor, so you can make changes to any scripts or configuration files, including grub.cfg. You then get to choose which compression to use, to give you some control over image sizes and install speeds. Options include LZ4, LZO, gzip (default), LZMA, and xz.

The final step will generate the image, and the wizard will update through several stages to let you know what's happening. Compiling our own version of Ubuntu Server took less than 30 seconds, and it worked brilliantly. If you've ever wanted to build your own distro, but never knew where to start, Cubic is both powerful and beautifully designed. It makes distro building almost too easy.

Project Website

https://github.com/PJ-Singh-001/Cubic

While Cubic is easy to use, it also offers deeper features, including an editable virtual environment, package selection, and boot configuration.

Space arena

SuperStarfighter

Games within games have been around for a long time. In the 1980s, sporting games in particular would aggregate several mini-games together into an "Olympics" or sports triathlon, both in the arcade and on home computers. Nintendo used the same trick with Wii Sports, and Starship Olympics does the same for open source gaming in the 21st century. It's a beautifully drawn and rendered, top-down arena that can host 20+ individual games for 1-4 players. You can play it alone, against computer opponents, or in cooperative modes, and the whole game has been developed with Godot. It's set in some distant future after everyone replaced fighting with intergalactic sports games. Each player takes on the role of the champion for some alien race in their attempts to win the games.

Each game starts at a different planet, with a different selection of games to work through in order to win a round. Most of the mini-games are a variation of arcade classics, including breakout, light cycles (with objects and shooting), asteroids, and "get to the diamond before your opponents." They're all drawn in neon bright colors and spread across a CRT-distorted arena. Controls are usually little more than up, down, left, right, and fire, mapped onto a keyboard or controller. The fire button is often used held down, or in short bursts, but each mini-game takes very little learning. Several people can play at once, either huddled around multiple keyboard positions or with multiple controllers. They're suitable for anyone, and it's a lot of fun trying to beat the computer together or grab as many diamonds as you can to push your power bar ahead of your opponent. It's simple, but it's one of the most effective and enjoyable open source arcade games we've come across, and highly recommended.

Project Website

https://github.com/notapixelstudio/superstarfighter

The game can be downloaded or built for free, but a small donation will help keep the game being developed in such high quality.