Okay so maybe it isn't the best idea to admit on a public forum that you spent the last 20 minutes of your work day testing out the games on your new operating system, but at least it was educational. After all the crap with Evolution I needed something to unwind before heading home for the day so I decided to check out some of the long list of games that came with Edubuntu by default.
I started out with my childhood favorite Connect Four (or four in a row as it is called). The computer cheats! I was very good at this game in my prime and lost four straight to the computer. Any little kid would have punched it and walked off if it had been a person!
Next I tried a classic called nibbles. It is a game where you run around as a little worm and collect food and numbers. I had the game on my cell phone my senior year and was playing it during history of Jazz. I actually filled the entire screen with the worm. EVERY SINGLE PIXEL. Well, this one has color and changes levels and stuff. I got bored after a bit (you probably will too) and moved along.
The potato guy was fun to revisit. I had played with him when I was trying out the CD to make sure it would work on this computer. It was better this time since I put powered speakers on my computer and could turn up the sound and hear what each piece was.
I tried Tetravex and set a record for the fastest time on the first puzzle. Even though I was the only one to complete it, 1 minute 29 seconds is still fast. I gave up on the second one after about 3 minutes. My brain hurt before I started and I wanted to relax, not give myself a headache.
I finished off with gcompris. This was awesome. If I let my kids (not that I have any of those) have a computer to play on, I'm going to put Edubuntu on there so they have a hard time screwing it up. They won't need all the stuff I do so Ubuntu will be fine. And this software package is just the kind of educationally mind numbing stuff I was looking for. I played kickball (click on the ball and try to get it in the hole) and find the strawberry before moving on to the classic grid lock game. I have seen this game many times, but in this one you had to move the "cars" (read colored rectangles) around to get the red "car" out of the notch on the right hand side. It was cool. I beat the first five then moved on to Sudoku. I liked the pretty pictures, but then it was time to do my evening write up and go home for the night.
Maybe I will have better luck with Evolution tomorrow, but if not I will just have to continue to use Outlook on my other PC to manage Exchange specific tasks.
