Author: root

By Jack M. Germain

Sep 27, 2018 5:00 AM PT

The
MakuluLinux distro is now something brand new and very inviting.

MakuluLinux developer Jacque Montague Raymer on Thursday announced the first major release of this year. It is a whole lot more than a mere upgrade of distro packages. MakuluLinux Series 15 offers much more than new artwork and freshly repainted themes and desktop styles.

If you crave a Linux OS that is fresh and independent, MakuluLinux is a must-try Linux solution. The distro itself has been around for a few years and has grown considerably along the way. When it arrived on the Linux scene in 2015, its different approach to implementing Linux OS features disrupted the status quo.

I have reviewed six MakuluLinux releases since 2015. Each one involved a different desktop option. Each one introduced new features and improvements that gave MakuluLinux the potential to challenge long-time major Linux distro communities. Series 15 makes it clear that this South Vietnam-based Linux developer is no longer a small player in the Linux distro game.

MakuluLinux Series 15 is not an update of last year’s editions. It is a complete
rip-and-replace rebuild. Series 15 consists of three separate Linux distros: LinDoz is available now; Flash will be released by the end of October; and Core will debut between the end of November and mid-December.

I do mean three *different* distros — not desktop environments you choose within an edition. The first two offerings, LinDoz and Flash, are not new per se. They are rebuilt reincarnations of previous versions. However, LinDoz and Flash are completely reworked from the ground up to give you several big surprises.

MakuluLinux Core, however, is something entirely new. In fact, Raymer had not divulged Core’s development until reaching out to LinuxInsider to discuss the LinDoz release. His plan is to spotlight each distro as a separate entity.

The centerpiece of MakuluLinux Core’s innovative, homegrown user interface is the spin-wheel style circular menu display.

Makulu Unwrapped

Raymer and his developer team spent the last two years building a new base for MakuluLinux Series 15. Their goal is to surpass the functionality of prime competitors such as Linux Mint, Ubuntu and Manjaro, according to Raymer.

All three of the Series 15 editions feature a redesign of the original Ubuntu-based LinDoz OS. The developers spent a major portion of their time over the last two years applying many changes. First, they tackled revamping the LinDoz Ubuntu foundation.

MakuluLinux’s Series 15 LinDoz Edition blends both Microsoft Windows traits and Linux functionality into one OS.

It is “possibly the fastest and most stable base floating around the net at the moment, not to mention it is near bug-free,” Raymer told LinuxInsider. “All three of the builds going live this year will feature this base.”

The new base gets its primary updates from both Debian and Makulu directly. The new strategy is not to borrow the base from Debian or Ubuntu like other big developers. Makulu’s team chose to build its own base instead.

“This way we don’t inherit any known bugs that plague Debian or Ubuntu builds, and since we built the base we know what’s going on inside it,” said Raymer.

It also allowed the developers to optimize builds for speed and stability, he added.

That planning shows. I have been sampling the almost daily builds for the last few weeks. Each one offers a higher level of performance over the previous releases. Stability and speed were evident throughout the process.

What’s Inside

The new base for MakuluLinux resulted from an intense study of the competition, noted Raymer. The developers were determined to surpass Ubuntu, Linux Mint — which borrows from the Ubuntu base, except for its separate Linux Mint Debian Edition — and Manjara Linux, which is a derivative of Arch Linux.

After daily hands-on exposure to the end results of the base changes, I can vouch for the developer team’s success. Clearly, the team members had their priorities in the correct order. The new base is lightning fast. It is also more secure.

Security in Linux is a relative term. The real issue with Linux OSes is how secure you want to make your system. Some distros have higher levels of security that go beyond the upstream patching and package tweaks.

Raymer built in up-to-date security patches along with a reliable firewall and handy virus scanner out of the box. Typical Linux adopters normally do not think about deploying firewalls and virus scanners. Having those two features built into the OS adds to your feeling of safety and instills confidence.

The new base and system structure support a wide range of hardware out of the box. My test bench is stocked with a few old Windows clunkers and some very new rigs. I did not have to give a thought to installing drivers and fiddling with graphics fixes. The audio gear and varied printers and other connected devices I use every day just worked.

One of Raymer’s big demands was a bug-free release. I give him huge credit. I doubt that software can exist without bugs. MakuluLinux does a damn good job of proving that assessment wrong.

Developers can never test every piece of hardware in the wild. That is where the community of build testers and early adopters comes to the rescue. I’m guessing that this large gang of testers found enough bugs in the mix of builds to get a higher percentage of code fixed than generally happens elsewhere.

LinDoz Primer

I always liked the sarcasm hidden in the LinDoz name for the former MakuluLinux flagship OS. It is an ideal alternative to the actual Microsoft Windows platform. However, It does not try to be the next great Windows clone on Linux.

LinDoz does offer the Windows look and feel, thanks to its similar themes. That helps your comfort zone. Still, we are talking Linux here. LinDoz does what the proprietary giant cannot do. LinDoz is highly configurable beyond the look and feel of the themes.

MakuluLinux LinDoz has vivid backgrounds, a classic bottom panel, and a preconfigured workspace switcher applet with a nice collection of desktop desklets.

For instance, LinDoz has a unique menu. It blends both Windows and Linux functionality into one OS. If you are a transplant from Windows World, you will be comfy in the familiar LinDoz surroundings. The Linux World part of the computing experience is so well integrated that you actually enjoy a new and better computing platform that does not come loaded with frustration and useless software.

LinDoz uses a nicely tweaked version of the Cinnamon desktop. I recently reviewed Linux Mint’s Debian-based release, Linux Mint Debian Edition or LMDE. I felt right at home with LinDoz Series 15. It uses a combination of the Debian repositories and its own in-house Makulu repository. Raymer just missed debuting the new LinDoz on Debian ahead of Linux Mint’s
release by a matter of weeks.

Flashy and Fast and Splashy

If you fancy a more traditional Linux setting, Flash has much going for it to keep you happy. It runs on the Xfce desktop, only you will swear it is something newer thanks to the snappy integration with other MakuluLinux trappings.

MakuluLinux Flash Edition running on the Xfce desktop is so well tweaked it looks and feels like something new. Flash is fast and splashy.

For example, the desktop has transparency that gives it a modern flavor. The Compiz OpenGL compositing manager is built in, for on-the-fly window dressing and fancy animations. With 3D graphics hardware, you can create fast compositing desktop effects like a minimization animation.

The Flash OS has the old style bottom panel with menu buttons on both sides. If you prefer the old Linux layout still around from 30 years ago, this OS is for you. Unlike many aging Linux distros, though, there is nothing old or sluggish about Makulu Flash. It is fast and splashy.

I especially like how I can turn the Compiz effects off or on with a single click. Flash also exhibits a modern flair that takes the Xfce desktop to a higher level of functionality. You can configure the settings to activate the hot corners features to add actions.

New Core Flagship

What could become the most inviting option in the MakuluLinux OS family — when it becomes available — is Makulu Core. Raymer has this third release positioned to be the new “core” Makulu offering.

Unlike the other two MakuluLinux distros in the Series 15 releases, the Core Edition is a dock-based desktop environment. This approach is innovative and attractive. A bottom dock houses the favorite applications. A side dock along the lower right vertical edge of the screen holds system icons and notifications.

For me, the most exciting eye candy that the Core Edition offers is its dynamic animations that put into play a new way to interact with the OS. The developers forked the classic Xfce desktop as a framework for designing the new Core desktop.

The user interface includes a dual menu and dual dock. It is mouse driven with a touchscreen gesture system.

For instance, the main menu appears in a circular design displaying icons for each software category. Fly over any icon in the circular array to have the contents of that category hang in a larger circle layered over the main menu display in the center of the screen.

The main menu is also based on hot corners. You trigger them by mousing into the top left or bottom left corners of the screen.

MakuluLinux Core is ready to grow and adapt. It is a solid platform for traditional Linux hardware. It will support new computing tools, according to Raymer.

For example, Core will work with touchscreens, and with foldable laptops that turn into tablets. Core will incorporate a way for both to work with ease and without the user having to make any changes on his side.

“We also wanted to make the OS feel a little like Linux, macOS and Microsoft Windows all at the same time, yet offer something new and fresh. This is how we came up with the dual menus, dual dock system. It feels comfortable to use, and it looks and feels a little like everything,” Raymer said.

Bottom Line

Since LinDoz is now officially available for download, I will wrap up with a focus on what makes MakuluLinux LinDoz a compelling computing option. I no doubt will follow the Flash and the Core edition releases when those two distros are available in final form.

One of the more compelling attributes that LinDoz offers is its beautiful form. It is appealing to see. Its themes and wallpapers are stunning.

For the first time, you will be able to install the new LinDoz once and forget about it. LinDoz is now a semi-rolling release. It receives patches directly from Debian Testing and MakuluLinux.

Essential patches are pushed to the system as needed.

Caution: The LinDoz ISO is not optimized for virtual machines. I tried it and was disappointed. It loads but is extremely slow and mostly nonresponsive. Hopefully, the developer will optimize the ISO swoon to provide an additional option for testing or using this distro.

However, I burned the ISO to a DVD and had no issues with the performance in live session. I installed LinDoz to a hard drive with very satisfying results.

Want to Suggest a Review?

Is there a Linux software application or distro you’d like to suggest for review? Something you love or would like to get to know?

Please
email your ideas to me, and I’ll consider them for a future Linux Picks and Pans column.

And use the Reader Comments feature below to provide your input!

Jack M. Germain has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2003. His main areas of focus are enterprise IT, Linux and open source technologies. He has written numerous reviews of Linux distros and other open source software.
Email Jack.

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Without any preface, let me get straight to the point. In this tutorial, we will be installing Damn Vulnerable Web Application (DVWA) on a Ubuntu virtual machine. Our attacker machine would be Kali Linux, which is also installed as a virtual machine (or virtual box). The host can be any OS, and doesn’t matter since we won’t be using it at all. An alternate configuration is when your host is either Kali or Ubuntu, in which case you need only one VM, to install their the other OS. Alternatively, you could just use a single Kali machine both as attacker as well as victim (running the vulnerable application). However, that makes things less realistic.

Contents

1. Pre-requisites
2. Installing DVWA

Disclaimer : No cool stuff in this tutorial, just straightforward installation.

Pre-requisites

You need to have Kali Linux (rolling release) and Ubuntu (I’m using 16.04) up and running. If you aren’t familiar with virtual machines and stuff, then take a break of a few days, get familiar with them, install and run a few Linux (any flavour) VMs, drink some coffee, etc. Once you’re comfortable with virtual machines (and have Kali & Ubuntu up nd running), proceed onward.

You also need some minimal knowledge of linux, networking, and web applications. As an exercise, you could try getting some free web host (a pathetic one will suffice, since you are only doing this for learning and won’t need anyone to use your website), and deploy a wordpress site. Tinker around the website, install themes and stuff to get a feel for it. Then, go one step further and deploy a wordpress instance on your linux virtual machine. This time, don’t use the wordpress UI to do things, but instead try and figure out stuff manually. Install themes, modules, etc. on your own by placing them in the correct directory. Just tinker away, in short, till you have some level of familiarity with web applications.

Now, you are familiar with web apps, virtual machines, and linux (not networking though). The task above were pretty simple but for now you can move ahead with the tutorial with the given amount of expertise. Also, the pre-reqs listed above are for the entire web pentesting series, and most probably you’ll be able to follow this tutorial without completing some of them, since this is the first and very basic installation tutorial.

Important: Make sure you use the same version of stuff as me. This will avoid scenarios where our systems behave differently (in which case you’ll have to use google-fu to figure our how to deal with unexpected stuff happening).

Ubuntu Version – 16.04.1 LTS

XAMPP Version – 7.1.1 (you’ll install this later in the tut)

Installing DVWA

This is a fairly simple procedure. Below are screenshots with explanation. At the end of the tutorial, I have listed commands that you need to type to get all this done (you can simply copy paste the commands). The unnecessary steps are not present in list of commands (in screenshots they are there to enhance your understanding oh what’s going on).

Overview-

1. First we will download DVWA.
2. Then we read it’s doc and find out what to do.
3. After reading doc, we realize we need to install XAMPP, we do that.
4. After installing XAMPP, we test if it works by starting it and opening localhost on our machine.
5. Once we’re sure that XAMPP works, we will proceed and copy DVWA files to htdocs folder of XAMPP.
6. Now we check if localhost/DVWA-master leads us to the vulnerable app. If it does, then we did everything right.

Navigate to the extracted archive. Get a lay of the land. You’ll find that there is documentation available in docs folder.

Here is the relevant section of the documentation. We need to install XAMPP. You can get it to work with any other equivalent software bundle, but for ease, let’s stick to the recommended way.

Proceed to download the XAMPP bundle. I went with the latest version (going with latest version poses a slight problem for us, while DVWA is flawed, our PHP version is perfectly patched. For now, let’s ignore this. If this cause hinderance at a later stage, then we’ll deal with it)

Navigate to downloads directory and run the installer for XAMPP

Realise that you forgot to run the installer as root! (kudos if you ran as root and didn’t make the same mistake as me)

Run installer as root

It’s a simple installer. You’d know what to do.

Wait for it to finish.

Start the XAMPP server (note that the directory is lampp in linux systems)

Check if your server is running by typing 127.0.0.1 or localhost on your browser. XAMPP is now up and running properly. Let’s run our vulnerable app on XAMPP now.

As suggested by the documentation, we simply move our folder into the htdocs directory.

Open the localhost/DVWA-master URL and you’ll see that everything works as expected. Our initial setup is successfully done.

There is still further configuration to be done, but I don’t want to extend the tutorial any further. After the next section, there is link to part 2 of this series.

Commands

For below commands to work, ensure the following-

• xampp-linux-x64-VERSION-installer.run – this file downloaded and is located in Downloads folder
• DWVA-master directory is located in home folder (the archive to be downloaded and extracted to obtain this directory).
• Replace VERSION with the version you have downloaded (7.1.1.0 in my case)

Here are the commands-

1. cd ~/Downloads
2. chmod a+x xampp-linux-x64-VERSION-installer.run
3. cd ~
4. sudo ./xampp-linux-x64-VERSION-installer.run
5. sudo mv ~/DWVA-master/ /opt/lampp/htdocs/

Part 2 : fixing the problems and finishing the configuration. Here’s the link –

Configuring DVWA

Extras

1. Read about localhost (what does this URL signify – 127.0.0.1)
2. Commands used – ls, cd, mv, sudo. Use man pages to find out what these mean (eg. type man mv into the terminal)

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Last updated October 11, 2018 By John Paul 7 Comments

There are a number of small operating systems out there that are designed to replicate the past. Haiku is one of those. We will look to see where Haiku came from and what the new release has to offer.

Haiku desktop

What is Haiku?

Haiku’s history begins with the now defunct Be Inc. Be Inc was founded by former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée after he was ousted by CEO John Sculley. Gassée wanted to create a new operating system from the ground up. BeOS was created with digital media work in mind and was designed to take advantage of the most modern hardware of the time. Originally, Be Inc attempted to create their own platform encompassing both hardware and software. The result was called the BeBox. After BeBox failed to sell well, Be turned their attention to BeOS.

In the 1990s, Apple was looking for a new operating system to replace the aging Classic Mac OS. The two contenders were Gassée’s BeOS and Steve Jobs’ NeXTSTEP. In the end, Apple went with NeXTSTEP. Be tried to license BeOS to hardware makers, but in at least one case Microsoft threatened to revoke a manufacturer’s Windows license if they sold BeOS machines. Eventually, Be Inc was sold to Palm in 2001 for $11 million. BeOS was subsequently discontinued.

Following the news of Palm’s purchase, a number of loyal fans decided they wanted to keep the operating system alive. The original name of the project was OpenBeOS, but was changed to Haiku to avoid infringing on Palm’s trademarks. The name is a reference to reference to the haikus used as error messages by many of the applications. Haiku is completely written from scratch and is compatible with BeOS.

Why Haiku?

According to the project’s website, Haiku “is a fast, efficient, simple to use, easy to learn, and yet very powerful system for computer users of all levels”. Haiku comes with a kernel that have been customized for performance. Like FreeBSD, there is a “single team writing everything from the kernel, drivers, userland services, toolkit, and graphics stack to the included desktop applications and preflets”.

New Features in Haiku Beta Release

A number of new features have been introduced since the release of Alpha 4.1. (Please note that Haiku is a passion project and all the devs are part-time, so some they can’t spend as much time working on Haiku as they would like.)

HaikuDepot, Haiku’s package manager

One of the biggest features is the inclusion of a complete package management system. HaikuDepot allows you to sort through many applications. Many are built specifically for Haiku, but a number have been ported to the platform, such as LibreOffice, Otter Browser, and Calligra. Interestingly, each Haiku package is “a special type of compressed filesystem image, which is ‘mounted’ upon installation”. There is also a command line interface for package management named pkgman.

Another big feature is an upgraded browser. Haiku was able to hire a developer to work full-time for a year to improve the performance of WebPositive, the built-in browser. This included an update to a newer version of WebKit. WebPositive will now play Youtube videos properly.

WebPositive, Haiku’s built-in browser

Other features include:

• A completely rewritten network preflet
• User interface cleanup
• Media subsystem improvements, including better streaming support, HDA driver improvements, and FFmpeg decoder plugin improvements
• Native RemoteDesktop improved
• Add EFI bootloader and GPT support
• Updated Ethernet & WiFi drivers
• Updated filesystem drivers
• General system stabilization
• Experimental Bluetooth stack

Thoughts on Haiku OS

I have been following Haiku for many years. I’ve installed and played with the nightly builds a dozen times over the last couple of years. I even took some time to start learning one of its programming languages, so that I could write apps. But I got busy with other things.

I’m very conflicted about it. I like Haiku because it is a neat non-Linux project, but it is only just getting features that everyone else takes for granted, like a package manager.

If you’ve got a couple of minutes, download the ISO and install it on the virtual machine of your choice. You just might like it.

Have you ever used Haiku or BeOS? If so, what are your favorite features? Let us know in the comments below.

If you found this article interesting, please take a minute to share it on social media, Hacker News or Reddit.

About John Paul

My name is John Paul Wohlscheid. I’m an aspiring mystery writer who loves to play with technology, especially Linux. You can catch up with me at my personal website

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Linux kernel is the essential part of any Linux operating system. It is responsible for resource allocation, low-level hardware interfaces, security, simple communications, basic file system management, and more. Written from scratch by Linus Torvalds (with help from various developers), Linux is a clone of the UNIX operating system. It is geared towards POSIX and Single UNIX Specification compliances.

Includes powerful features

Linux provides users with powerful features, such as true multitasking, multistack networking, shared copy-on-write executables, shared libraries, demand loading, virtual memory, and proper memory management.

Initially designed only for 386/486-based computers, now Linux supports a wide range of architectures, including 64-bit (IA64, AMD64), ARM, ARM64, DEC Alpha, MIPS, SUN Sparc, PowerPC, as well as Amiga and Atari machines.

The most essential component of a Linux-based OS

The most essential component of a Linux-based operating system is the Linux kernel. Without it, the entire system (libraries, applications, etc.) is useless. When creating a Linux distribution, it is also very important to know how to correctly optimize the Linux kernel package, in order to make it support certain hardware components or recognize a specific device.

Distributed in multiple stable branches

Once should not be confused by the many stable branches of the Linux kernel, as they are available for different purposes. For example, there are several LTS (Long Term Support) branches that can be used to deploy very stable Linux operating systems.

These days, major Linux distribution developers provide users with optimized kernel packages for different purposes. However, advanced users can configure, compile and install their own kernels directly from the source packages at any point (all you need is a supported GCC compiler).

The heart of a Linux distribution

The Linux kernel is the heart of a Linux distribution. If you are a long time Linux user, you may have stumbled across upgrades to the default Linux kernel packages, which lead to better support for certain hardware components or peripherals.

Linux kernel Linux core Kernel linux Kernel Linux Core Unix

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As the creator of the first commercially supported enterprise Linux distribution, SUSE is no stranger to open source innovation or working with partners to achieve industry goals.

SUSE is proud to join the Forschungszentrum Jülich research institute, Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems, Huawei, Mellanox, and E4 in a new initiative to develop open ecosystems for High Performance and Edge Computing. This initiative brings together end users and solution providers to accelerate adoption of new technologies for HPC and Edge computing workloads including deployments of 5G networks.

SUSE contributions to this initiative will leverage our experience delivering three versions of our commercially supported Linux distribution for Arm. SUSE supports a variety of 64-bit Arm System-on-a-Chip processors including those from Marvell (Cavium), NXP, Qualcomm, HiSilicon, Ampere, Mellanox, and Xilinx among others. SUSE Linux for Arm is already being used by customers for workloads such as the Catalyst UK High Performance Computing project with HPE. Multiple manufacturing customers are also using SUSE Linux on the Raspberry Pi for industrial IoT automation and monitoring.

SUSE as a key player in High Performance Computing where SUSE Linux is the underpinning for almost half of the TOP 100 HPC systems. SUSE has already delivered an initial set of HPC infrastructure packages such as slurm, openblas, openmpi, and fftw that are supported as part of the HPC Module, available for Arm-64 and X86-64 platforms.

This new initiative is expected to improve the maturity of ecosystems across multiple industries and simplify using new technologies such as Arm processor technology to deliver innovative High Performance and Edge Computing solutions. ­­

Press release: http://www.fz-juelich.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/UK/EN/2018/2018-10-10-hpc.html

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At last year’s International supercomputing conference (ISC) we noted the trend of Linux underpinning the vast majority of supercomputers that are being built using sophisticated acceleration and interconnect technologies, effectively redefining the term “commodity“ in high performance computing (HPC).

Fast forward to ISC18 and Linux is the defacto standard operating system for all top supercomputers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux powering some of the largest and most intelligent supercomputers on the planet – Summit and Sierra. Red Hat is looking forward to seeing how these two newest US-based supercomputers have scored on the latest iteration of the Top500 list.

In the past, HPC workloads have had to run on custom-built software stacks and overly-specialized hardware. As HPC customers move toward cloud deployments, Red Hat is bringing open technologies to the supercomputing arena, from the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform tailored for HPC workloads to massively scalable, fully open cloud infrastructure, along with the management and automation technologies needed to keep these deployments running smoothly.

Red Hat technologies are at the heart of this transformation and we will be showcasing our latest solutions for HPC at ISC18. Stop by our booth (H-700) to learn about:

• Proven HPC infrastructure
  Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides the foundation for many HPC software stacks and is available across multiple hardware architectures. It is at the core of Red Hat Virtualization and Red Hat OpenStack Platform, both of which are part of many HPC environments.
• Persistent scale-out storage
  With the modernization of HPC applications based on containers and the adoption of hybrid cloud infrastructure, many enterprises, and government agencies with HPC workloads are increasingly frustrated with existing storage technologies. Software-defined solutions, like Red Hat Gluster Storage and Red Hat Ceph Storage, provide cost-effective alternatives for scale-out network-attached storage (NAS), containerized applications, and hybrid cloud environments.
• Emerging technologies for highly scalable environments
  Large supercomputing sites find Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and Red Hat Ansible Automation compelling for their science work as they can provide better application portability and system provisioning and automation. Modern applications are more and more frequently involving machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other data science workloads which can make use of hardware such as GPUs. NVIDIA and Red Hat are working hard to enable these workloads and to make them usable with Linux containers for deployment simplification, build automation, and scale.

Also in the booth, you will have an opportunity to experience the power and flexibility of the Red Hat portfolio by way of a virtual reality experience. In this interactive encounter, you will create your own compute cluster using multiple hardware architectures, including Arm, x86_64 and IBM POWER, deploy multiple Red Hat products to solve advanced computational problems and visualize the results.

Red Hat’s chief ARM architect, Jon Masters, will be presenting on the effects of the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities on large size clusters during the show. Be sure to catch his presentation at booth N-210 in the exhibit hall on Wednesday, June 27 from 3:30-4:00 pm.

See demos in our booth, discuss trends, challenges, and opportunities you’re facing with our global team, claim your red fedora and just in time for the FIFA World Cup enter to win soccer-themed barbeque grill that we’re raffling off at the end of each conference day.

For last minute announcements, demo updates and additional information please visit www.red.ht/ISC18. We look forward to seeing you in Frankfurt!

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For those who love a good twin-stick shooter, Smith and Winston certainly looks quite interesting and it has some pretty sweet design.

Currently in “First Access” on itch.io (their form of Early Access), Smith and Winston is a hand-built metroidvania-styled twin-stick shooter in a world built with voxels. Have a look at their teaser:

The developer kindly provided a testing key and I can confirm that it works rather nicely. The Steam Controller paired with SC Controller also works quite well in it. I often find twin-stick shooters not all that great with aiming on the right pad of the Steam Controller, in Smith and Winston it actually feels pretty natural which is awesome.

Since the world is built with voxels, it’s almost entirely destructible. You can shoot through walls, blow a hole in the floor to make enemies fall to their death, make a path for yourself through something and it does actually look really quite stylish. Interestingly, they’re not just using a destructible environment to look cool with explosions, some portals you need are also buried requiring you to dig them out which I thought was a fun idea. I hope they do more interesting things with it like that.

Camera controls are quite nice too since it’s also a fully 3D game, allowing you to rotate all the way around your character as well as adjust the tilt on it to get the position you want.

Unlike a lot of games, they’re not sticking in random generation. I like that, because so many games have now moved towards random generation that they can end up feeling a lot less personal, hopefully with the hands-on approach to world building the developer will be able to make it stay interesting.

The combat can be a challenge since you only have limited lives and no health bar, if you’re hit you go down and you have to respawn. The movement system is also quite nice, with you being able to dash forwards and boost upwards to reach new areas and avoid enemies in a flash.

I really love what I’m seeing here and it could be especially fun when they add in two player co-op, which is planned. It’s a little limited right now since it’s still in development but very promising indeed.

They are planning a Steam release when it’s further along, for now it’s only on itch.io.

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The trouble with being punctual is that nobody’s there to appreciate it.
— Franklin P. Jones

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