Minetest for linux mint android#

More importantly, it works more or less everywhere, on PCs running Free BSD, Windows, Linux (look for a package in your repositories), and MacOS X on Android Phones and, this is biggie for education, even on the Raspberry Pi.

Minetest for linux mint software#

I’m not going to state the obvious, like how Minetest is free as in “freedom” and “beer” and won’t cost you a dime to download, share and play or how you don’t have to put up with any vendor lock-in shenanigans or how it is supported by a community of people who really just want to build and play a really cool game, so features tend to get added over time, not arbitrarily taken away as I say, I don’t want to state what is common for most Free Software projects… Well, okay I just did, but as if that were not enough, and apart from all of the above, Minetest is pretty freaking awesome in its own right.įor starters, it is written in C/C++, making it lighter and faster than Minecraft. The sun rises over a desert lagoon in Minetest. I also got hardcore Minecraft players (namely my son and his pals) to try several FLOSS versions of the genre so they could give me feedback. I chatted with developers and users on their IRC channels - mainly asking for help when I was stumped. Not having had much first-hand experience with the original games ( Infiniminer and Dwarf Fortress), I learnt the basics of mining and crafting, and then some. To make sure I didn’t put me foot in it, I have dedicated the best part of four weeks researching alternatives. This article would be quite short if the answer were no. The question is, before things go completely non-linear, has the Free Software community got a plan B? Is there an Open Source program that can rival with Minecraft? By dumbing down the game to its mobile version, and porting it away from Java, Microsoft can better control what platforms it will work on (you know how Minecraft currently works fine on Linux because it is written in Java? That will be the first to go) and kill the non-Microsoft sanctioned modding scene in one fell swoop. What? You hadn’t hear about that last thing? I’ll have you know that once you strip away all the new eye-candy and merchandising hype, you can check out where Microsoft wants to take Minecraft.

Minetest for linux mint movie#

But until a couple of years ago, they just didn’t have that product to capture that demographic.ĭashing any hope that this immensely popular program will ever become open ( as Markus “Notch” Persson said it may back in the day), Microsoft forked out 2.5 billion US dollars for Persson’s game back in 2014 and immediately got to work on expanding its appeal by penning deals with Lego, making it the star of its Hololens technology, and pushing for a movie while at the same time limiting it’s functionality. As acute market manipulators, Microsoft recognise that brainwashing works better the earlier in life you start. Not only is the education market immense and juicy in itself, but the prospect of shaping students into future workers, managers, and entrepreneurs that have literally and formally learnt to depend exclusively on their products must be irresistible.īut, while Microsoft products are prevalent for secondary and university level students, the company was missing the primary slice of educational pie. Teaching ICT is the same as teaching about Microsoft products in our schools.įor a mega-corporation like Microsoft this makes perfect sense. They are required to present their work, be it essay, slideshow, or graph, in Microsoft-owned proprietary formats, recorded onto thumb-drives formatted with a Microsoft-patented file systems. They are not taught presentation skills, they are taught Microsoft Powerpoint. Students are not taught word processing, they are taught Microsoft Word. However, the outrage is spared when this exact same thing happens in computer science class and even during any CAL (Computer Assisted Learning) activity. Most parents would - hopefully - find this outrageous. And, talking about classrooms, when the time comes to learn about nutritional facts, the textbook chapters turn out to be written by the marketing department of the very same snack-manufacturing company. It’s on cups, plates, and posters hanging from classrooms.

Not only that, but the junk-food provider has put its logo everywhere. But what if this were a nation-wide thing?

My guess as a parent myself is that you would think that only allowing junk food into your child’s school is a horrible idea, so much so, you could consider changing her to another school.

Minetest for linux mint how to#

Why using Minetest as an educational tool is a much better idea (and how to get started).

Why using Minecraft as an educational tool is a bad idea.

This is a very long post, and much of it may not be relevant to you, so, if you want to jump to the parts you’re interested in, here’s a handy index: