FPS server ...

despite my slow internet connection (192 kBit/s upsteram), i decided to put several games on my linux station (Athlon XP2000+, 512MB RAM, ATI Radeon 9600XT 256MB, 160GB HD, xubuntu 6.06), mainly ego shooters. ^^

the major problem i ran into was ma graphics card to play the games on that machine. i tried the linux driver provided directly by ati, used ubuntus fglrx package and edited the xorg.conf file (be sure to load dri and glx in Section "Module"; set the identifier in Section "Monitor" to "aticonfig-Monitor[0]" (there are more than one entries); same thing with fglrx as driver in "Section "Device").
finally i am able to play quake3arena (and the free port ioquake3), wolfenstein enemy territory (also a free shooter), f.e.a.r. combat (free too), warsow (what do u think? ;) ), Doom3 (including the cooperative mod) and Quake4 (unfortunately i can't find my UT2004 CDs).

next step was to run them as server, and i've been very surprised to see, that there were no problems getting them started. i just followed the included INSTALL files and everything went well.

while i wanted to start several instances for the servers (quake3arena, rocketarena3, ...) without loosing the servers console, i learned to love screen ... it's so powerfull ... just a few words: instead of starting my quake server with "./quake3ded +set ...&", i start it with "screen -d -m -S Q3Ad ./quake3ded +set ...". in contrast to the way with &, you can get back to your console by running "screen -r Q3Ad". if you've finishe your serverstuff, you can disconnect the console by pressing CRTL+a, d.

its just so satisfiable to get everything done so nicely ... i know why i love my linux ^^