It's time for VirtualBox.

Look, I've long extolled the virtues of Linux and I've linked to the almost infinite variety of Linux equivalent pieces of software. However, there are some things that simply cannot be easily replaced, such as Quicken, which I've been using for more than a decade. And since Quicken 2008 is completely enabled using even Crossover Office, I'd be forced to boot into Windows at least once a day. Or rather, I would be if it weren't for VirtualBox. Lifehacker has the scoop:

You love working inside your Linux desktop, but at the most inconvenient times you've got to reboot into Windows—whether to open a tricky Office file, try out a Windows application, or even just play a quick game. However, with some free tools and a Windows installation disk, you can have Windows apps running right on your Linux desktop and sharing the same desktop files. It's relatively painless, it takes only a little bit longer than a Windows XP install, and it works just like virtualizing Windows on a Mac with Parallels Coherence—except it's free.
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If you're curious what the end result might look like, here's a screenshot from my quick installation. I would've loved to have gotten iTunes running, but I didn't have time to wait for all the post-XP-installation patches/upgrades to install to show you.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 07:06 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Technically, the advice here is for installing into an Ubuntu system. However, by making the appropriate libraries available, there's nothing to really prevent you from installing these games into a KDE-based Linux. Excerpt:

3.Lincity

Lincity is a city simulation game. You are required to build and maintain a city. You must feed, house, provide jobs and goods for your residents. You can build a sustainable economy with the help of renewable energy and recycling, or you can go for broke and build rockets to escape from a pollution ridden and resource starved planet, it's up to you.
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9. LBreakout2

The polished successor to LBreakout offers you a new challenge in more than 50 levels with loads of new bonuses (goldshower, joker, explosive balls, bonus magnet ...), maluses (chaos, darkness, weak balls, malus magnet ...) and special bricks (growing bricks, explosive bricks, regenerative bricks, indestructible bricks, chaotic bricks). And if you're through with all the levels you can create complete new levelsets with the integrated easy-to-use level editor or challenge other humans via LAN or internet iin either deathmatch or normal levelsets. Fun!
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10. Burgerspace

This is a clone of the classic game "BurgerTime". In it, you play the
part of a chef who must create burgers by stepping repeatedly on the
ingredients until they fall into place. And to make things more
complicated, you also must avoid evil animate food items while performing
this task, with nothing but your trusty pepper shaker to protect you.
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14. Secret Maryo Chronicles

Secret Maryo Chronicles is an Open Source two-dimensional platform game with a style designed similar to classic sidescroller games. Secret Maryo Chronicles is a clone of the Classic "Mario bros" game . It features number of levels and stages , attractive sound and graphics and in game editor . Though not exactly small (the entire installation of Secret Maryo Chronicles was 58 megabytes download on my system ), still game is fun filled 2d side scroller with impressive graphics and sound hence i have included it in this list .
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23 Playing classic DOS games with DOSBOX

DOSBOX allows you to run your old dos programs under Linux , DOSBOX provides a full featured dos environment inside your ubuntu box . DOSBOX allows running of DOS programs in Linux and Windows.
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Some of the popular DOS games can be obtained at the following internet address : -

Bio Menace (This game and all it's three series were released as Freeware and can be downloaded from ) ,Commander Keen , Wolfeinstein 3D , Duke Nukem , Hocus Pocus , Crystal Caves and other can be downloaded at the following address some of the games are shareware and some freeware but trust me even shareware games would give you hours if not days of entertainment : - http://www.3drealms.com/downloads.html

Alley Cat ( This game released in 1984 is one of my all time favorite i have spent a lot of time playing this on my 386 computer ) this can be downloaded from the following : - http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/game/91

Dangerous Dave ( Well this game released in 1988 is a very simple game which is quite popular here in India even today in school labs you could find people playing this game !!!!!) :- http://www.abandonia.com/games/Dangerous%20Dave.zip

Mario Brother VGA ( Well this is also a nice game it even has a boss mode to fool your boss that you are working and to top it all it is only few kilobytes in size !!) :- http://www.abandonia.com/games/880/MarioBrothersVGA

Get more old dos games here at : http://www.abandonia.com
http://dosgamesarchive.com

No reference to Colossal Cave (aka Adventure), but I'll go ahead and point you in that general direction by saying XYZZY and PLUGH.

Hint: When you say "KILL GREEN DRAGON" and the computer replies, "WITH WHAT? YOU BARE HANDS?", say "YES". Don't try this on the bear, though. Remember: it's your bare hands against his bear hands.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 08:16 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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However, if it IS broken (your PC, that is), you might want to have a SystemRescueCD Live CD nearby, even if you don't use Linux as your OS of choice. While there are some black bag recovery discs out there ::cough-coughminiPEcough-cough::, SystemRescueCD has the benefit of being completely Open Source, which means you won't ever violate the law while using it. Anyway, excerpt:

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of using SystemRescueCd, the Linux kernel 2.6.24.2-based distribution can be booted from either a CD-ROM or a USB stick. Once it's running, and I've yet to meet a busted PC that still had a working CPU and memory it couldn't run on, you have your choice of the lightweight WindowsMaker GUI or a shell command-line interface.

The distribution comes with a variety of system tools, such as the low-level disk partition programs GParted and sfdisk and disk repair tools like TestDisk and Partimage. For higher levels of repair, it comes with such programs as Midnight Commander, an excellent file manager based on the design of the old MS-DOS Norton Commander and CD/DVD writing tools such as dvd+rwtools.
[ed. note: I used to love Norton Commander back in my old DOS days]
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The new SystemRescueCd also has better support for fried graphic systems. It now includes Xvesa. This is a generic X Window server that can deliver a graphics interface without needing to know anything about the graphics hardware. You won't get a great display, but any graphic display is better than none.

Very cool. While I'm quite comfortable with a command line interface, I know that many people are not. That's one of the -very few- advantages of getting old. One of the more notable advantages is not being, you know, dead, so I'm not complaining.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 10:57 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Pcpag.com has compiled a pretty good list of 157 pieces of free software for you, some of which you don't even have to download to use. Excerpt:

We did the math: If you bought popular apps instead of trying their gratis counter-parts, at the manufacturers' list prices you'd be out $5,183 and change! Why spend money when you can get what you need for nothing? Sometimes, you do get what you don't pay for.

I use, have used, or at least tried over 90% of these tools. Am I a geek or what?

Posted by: Physics Geek at 10:44 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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...at the magnitude of geekery on display in this task: How To Install and Boot 145 Operating Systems In a PC.

Look, just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. On the other hand: Dude.

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