LGDB news

Server Migration

Hi fellow Linux gaming enthusiasts,

most of you haven't missed the recent downtimes of this sites. In the beginning every second day but in the last week the site was more time offline than online. Those are hopefully problems of the past since the site was moved to a new server.

Peace, pheonton

1000 GET

Okay guys, the picture says it all:

It took a damn long time for us to achieve it, but here we are now. Today, on 23rd November of year 2011, LGDB contains one thousand entries. Yes.
Few words personally from me. I've joined LGDB about two years ago and it was only ~240 games big then (while happypenguin contained more than 3000 by that time). And it was a good luck to see more than 3 users here at the same time. Nevertheless, I liked the website and the way it was organised, so I decided to concentrate my efforts on supporting LGDB. Today, I think we've all done the great job, and I hope that people find LGDB as a good source of Linux-gaming related information.
I would like to thank pheonton for creating and constantly improving the website; everyone who submitted new games/tools/emulators/reviews/etc.; active users that comment, rate and suggest the games; everyone, who spreads the word about LGDB and Linux gaming in general on their blogs and websites. And of course, the biggest thanks goes for those who create Linux games. I believe that Linux will once become the true gaming platform.

And here's the game number 1000: The Flower Shop: Winter in Fairbook

Why Flower Shop? There's no real reason, it just appeared in time. And I like flowers.

Enjoy.

Database restore

We had to restore the database with a version from Saturday 24. Sept. 2011 9:40 UTC. Comments, submissions and user accounts created after that time are lost together with any other changes. We are very sorry if this has affected or is affecting you. Since 15:00 UTC today the website is functional again.

Major downtime

Hello fellow Linux gamers,

Today, the site went down for several hours, hours where i tried to find the source of 100% CPU usage. Since two days the server load was really high and i tried with caching and code optimizations to maintain it, but to no avail.
Then to day i, and presumably many others couldn't login anymore. Time to dig deeper. But it took some time before i identified the function that was causing the problem. Finely i had to disable the "Who's Online" block, sorry but its broken.

Sorry for the inconvenience.
Peace, pheonton.

LGDB needs your opinion.

Good day everyone.

We are currently thinking about making improvements to website and it's design, and there is one thing that we want to hear from you now: do you find "1-click-install" feature useful?

VOTE HERE: http://www.lgdb.org/poll/do_you_find_1_click_install_feature_useful

Create lists of games

Hi all!

Today, i want to present to you a new feature. Lets imagine you get asked: what cool games are there on Linux? and cause you are a nice person you gather links, compile a list and show it to the questioner, or you just want to have YOUR list of the best games of 2011, or a list of the cutest characters, or whatever, you name it you crate it, now with the new list feature on lgdb.org.

Go to the Create link, (only if you are logged in) and create a new list of games, give it a name, maybe a description and start adding games. you find your lists under My Content on your profile page.

All lists can be found here where all users can see the lists and can comment on them.

If the acceptance of this feature is high, lists will be displayed alongside games that are included in said list.

Have fun and go list!
pheonton

Similar games

Hallo world,
or at last the small part that is interested in Linux gaming and happens to visit this site.

I want to talk to you about some features on the site that became rather useless over time. If you have browsed the site in the past you might have come across the similar games block and the recommender block. The purpose of these blocks is to give you some suggestions of games that are similar to the one you view. Similar games bases its selection on the categories a game is in. While it worked on the past its not so accurate now. The huge amount of games in database leads to wrong ranking mechanics.
The other block bases its recommendation on the browsing history of other users and from the recommendations i asume you are all browsing randomly, clicking here and there... ;) well, its also not that use full.
The best solution, something i wanted to avoid from the beginning, is a manual selection. But since sixsixfive took the burden to started just that, the rather useless automatic attempts might be removed.
But before i do that i want to hear your opinion, what should go what should stay?
http://www.lgdb.org/poll/what_game_recomendation_method_useless

Peace,
pheonton

Goodbye 2010!

This was 2010, i feel obliged to write a roundup. here we go:
Many thanks to all gamers out there, your support and kind words make it worth while. Special thanks to all contributer who added content and helped with the administration, you made the number of daily visitors triple this year! yeah!
The site didn't only double the number of listed games to now 712!! but a lot of features where added throughout the year. Thanks for the constant flow of great ideas! Metarating and twitter identi.ca feeds being two of them.
2011 will not be the year of the Linux desktop and certainly not the year of Linux as a gaming platform, but never the less every release, every update and every project will be here, on lgdb.org!

Peace,
pheonton

Server and chat

I'd like to take the time to write a little round up of recent changes and future development.

Some months ago we realized, that, for the site to grow, a better hosting solution would be indispensable. We left goneo, cause we just couldn't raise the php memory limit above 54MB and support was not impressively helpful. The attempt to run our own server failed because we coudn't get a decent and free hosting control panel to run. After a week of reading, comparing and testing dtc (domain technology control http://www.gplhost.com/software-dtc.html ) was selected as the only possible solution but we didnt managed to install the software properly and after the third fruitless installation attempt we moved the site to greengeeks, thinking that, not caring for the whole server setup is probably the safest way.
At greengeeks, php memory limit was not a problem (256MB), but after they blocked the site about a month ago, because it was apparently using to much resources the only way was to move to our own server at vcserver. This time we got dtc properly install and are very happy with it.

Now with the new system in place, the site can grow again.
One month ago i published a little list of features that would enhance the site in one way or another.
http://www.lgdb.org/forum_topic/roadmap
Implementing them will take a lot of time and for every feature one or two problems need to be resolved. So we will work on them one at a time.

In this post i want to talk about the chat feature. It is the key to a fast communication but choosing a solution is not trivial. We narrowed the possibilities down to three options irc-chat, jabber-chat or php-chat. irc chat uses only the recourses of the chat server but can not be integrated into the site, php-chat can be integrated but has the biggest performance impact. jabber-chat would have both advantages but the implementation was a pain. Because of the expected little usage we decided a php-chat would be enough for the time beeing. So now the site has a chat feature that is more like a shoutbox, but gives the users a fast and easy way to communicate.
Go here to test the new chat feature http://www.lgdb.org/tribune and feel free to comment on the other things on the Roadmap as well.

Cheers,
pheonton

Server downtime and migration

The Linux game database was inaccessible during the last three days because our provider blocked the webspace, apparently the site was using to much cpu time. We moved the site to a different host witch caused additional access problems during Sunday. Now everything is back to normal (Fingers crossed).
On behalf of the whole lgdb.org team i apologize for any inconvenience. The database was restored to the last accessible state but we are confident that no content was lost.

Cheers,
pheonton

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