Ron Edwards Is Right: System Does Matter

In my last post, I proclaimed that, despite Ron Edwards’ argument that “System Does Matter,” an indie role-playing game (RPG) could nonetheless be generic.

I was wrong.

It helps to define “indie,” because in one sense of the word, the argument from my previous post still stands, but in the sense that I had intended, it was way off base. The most commonly accepted definition of an indie RPG is simply an RPG owned by its creator. In this regard, sure, an indie RPG can be generic, with PDQ, FATE, and my own MULRAH standing as examples.

However, my last post was really discussing Forge-inspired indie games which favor conflict resolution over task resolution and increase narrative control by players, among other innovations. Ironically, neither PDQ nor FATE, the two games most influencing MULRAH, embrace either of these trends. While “Style Points” in PDQ# and Fate Points in FATE create some element of meta-game in which players control the story more than they might in a traditional game, both remain quite solidly in the realm of task-oriented, GM-driven games.

In his essay “Simulationism: The Right to Dream,” Edwards hesitantly argues that rules-lite systems are actually Simulationist, even though they claim to be “story-oriented.” In other words, the minimalist rules leftover from paring down traditional games do not necessarily lead to quality, theme-driven, collaborative story-telling. Based on our playtests of MULRAH, which started as a simple mash-up of PDQ and FATE, I’m inclined to agree. Even with MULRAH’s rules for player-created content, Edwards’ estimations that, in rules-lite games, “playing the character as conceived is the first priority” and that players do not contribute to “outcomes and final-resolutions” are both correct.

Furthermore, simply flipping a switch from “task” to “conflict” resolution and adding in a mechanism for player narrative control do not lead to Narrativist play. What kind of conflicts will the game handle? Over what elements of the story will players have narrative control? Specificity around these answers, including how the game mechanics themselves will support them, build a game that is both playable and meaningful. While it may be possible for a game to act as a guide to the players on how to construct the rules to tell the stories they want to tell, such a game would be far from MULRAH’s “rules-lite” one-sheet effort. More effective is simply to find some free or cheap indie games that have already made the choices and have been play-tested for you.

That said, MULRAH’s inspirations, PDQ and FATE, have led to some of the most highly-rated games in the RPG community: FATE’s Spirit of the Century is the #2 rated game overall on RPG.net, while PDQ’s Truth & Justice, Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies, and the Zorcerer of Zo are all in the top 7%. For players coming from the confines of games focused purely on system (GURPS, HERO), the “rules-lite” nature of FATE and PDQ provides a refreshing change of focus, as proven by the rave reviews promoting these games’ lavish settings, exciting characters, or both. However, for players seeking truly collaborative story-telling or grappling with narrative themes, someone else’s detailed setting or awesome character concepts will be ultimately unsatisfying.

The most “generic” Forge-inspired games that I know of are the Pool, Universalis, and Primetime Adventures, but even these games are more specific in their design than most “generic” games want to be. I’ll likely discuss them in a separate post, but, for now, let’s just say we’re playing these instead of MULRAH, no offense to me.

Can an Indie RPG Be Generic?

In his essay “System Does Matter,” indie role-playing game (RPG) theorist and designer Ron Edwards argues that GMs waste precious time tweaking various game systems to meet the needs of their players instead of using a system that works for them out of the box. This essay served as a revelation for GMs trying to impose second-by-second combat simulation upon players more interested in dramatic story-telling, and it coincided with a vast proliferation of $15 digest-sized indie RPGs, each featuring a different set of rules for a specific setting or theme.

While some of the variations between indie games probably do improve the chances of achieving the game’s stated goals, many of the differences are meaningless. Do you roll one die or many dice? Do you add the results or pick the best one? Are you describing your characters with cliches, traits, qualities, or catch phrases? Are there modifiers and target numbers or is every roll opposed? Do you call those little counters that represent some meta-game economy “bennies” or “points”?

Many of these indie games are quite similar in the areas that actually matter. The table below summarizes these key shifts.*

Prevalent Shifts in Indie RPGs

Aspect of Game	Traditional	Indie
Resolution of	Tasks	Conflicts
Authorship by	GM, Pre-Game	Players, In-Game
Session Content	Combat, Physical Detail	Character Development, Moral Choices
Character Creation	Quantitative	Descriptive

If the best parts of indie RPGs are all basically the same from game to game, it seems to waste more of the GM’s time to expect her to learn a different system for every theme/setting/goal. The old days of just tweaking a few (or even many) rules in D&D or GURPS to up the “pulp” feeling or adding in a couple elements to enhance the “horror” of a game seem a far cry from the growing shelf of small press rulebooks in the indie GM’s library. Why not use one simple system that collects the common elements of indie RPGs, and then add a couple key tweaks to establish the thematic atmosphere so important to indie games?

While a number of free generic systems exist, not even the most cutting edge ones manage to fully incorporate all the above trends. That’s the idea behind MULRAH, a new indie RPG that you can download for free from my Other Explorations page. MULRAH collects and synthesizes the best innovations from free generic games like FATE, PDQ, and Active Exploits and then adds the indie elements they are missing, like conflict resolution and player narrative control.

* See the Mighty Atom for a more comprehensive list of innovations that I found well after writing this post.

New Site “Cheapskate Reviews” Now Live

For over a year, the majority of the posts here at the Dead Dog Cafe have been reviews of various consumer products like mobile devices and online applications, and I have since spun these off into a new site, Cheapskate Reviews. I’ve moved all the reviews originally posted here at the Dead Dog Cafe to this new site. Below you’ll find links to these new sections.

• Automotive: For used cars under $3,000, refer to my old posts or my collection of links on Diigo.
• Computers & Internet:Cheapskate Reviews has all my posts on (free) online applications and cheapskate approaches to mobile devices, computers, and printers. Even more reviews with my comments are in my Diigo collection of links.
• Fitness & Sports: I’m no expert on any of this, but I do have some clues on ultralight backpacking gear.
• Health & Beauty: For men who want to make the most of their fashion dollars, check out my post on cheap wardrobes.
• Kitchen & Food: I’ve done a couple posts on food, but if you want to follow the recipes I like, visit my list on Diigo or find me on Allrecipes.com.

If you find something you want, I recommend using one of these excellent shopping sites to get it.

Six Categories of Life Goals

A couple weeks ago, I participated in a brainstorm of areas in which one might want to have clear long-term goals. Career, Personal Development, Relationship(s), Finances, Fitness, and Travel were the categories that immediately came to mind, but, as with any brainstorm, I thought we might have had a blindspot or two, so I’ve been scanning the internet for others’ ideas. From an assortment of credible to dubious sources (see below), I have gleaned a list of the primary areas that one might want to consider when coming up with life goals. In no particular order:

1. Health (Physical/Fitness)

2. Financial

They won’t singlehandedly enable you to retire early, but my Cheapskate Reviews might save you a few bucks here and there.

3. Career

Elsewhere, I’ve discussed personality and career satisfaction, particularly for INTJs and INTPs.

4. Relationships (Family/Friends)

Some sources broke this down into multiple categories, one going so far as to have a separate category for spouse, friends, family, co-workers, and God. If you’re single and want to know the best place to live for meeting other singles, check out this post.

5. Exploratory

I’m using this as a catch-all category for a variety of other categories that are related to each other but are never quite the same from one source to another. One lists “Artistic/Creative.” Another lists “Fun/Creative.” Yet another lists “Travel/Fun.” Whatever your preferred flavor (adventure/travel/pleasure/recreation/fun/creative/art/intellect/education/personal), the general idea seems to be that exposure to new ideas, people, places, etc. is healthy and worth aspiring toward over your entire life.

6. Greater Purpose

For some sources, this category is strictly religious or “spiritual,” while others had a category for “public service” without mention of religion at all. While we are all aware of the importance of separating church and state, here I am lumping the two together. I believe that as long as you feel like you are a part of something greater than yourself, you can find greater fulfillment in your life.

Several sources had some form of Psychological Wellbeing (Emotional/Attitudinal/Mindset/Behavior) as a category, but I kind of think it is really just the sum of the other categories. A couple sources also had a category devoted to the home or “living environment” but it was far from a consensus pick. All in all, our initial brainstorm was not too far off the mark, nailing four out of the six, and touching upon a fifth twice (“Personal Development” and “Travel”).

Sources

• “15 Key Life Categories” by Joel Frankel
• “A Goal Setting Plan for Your Success,” Effective-Time-Management-Strategies.com
• “Organizing Your Life Goals,” Rachel Ray Show
• “Personal Goal Setting,” MindTools.com
• Plan To Live
• “What Do You Want To Do with Your Life? Your Life Plan To Find Your Answer” by Hans Glint (pdf)
• “What Is a Life Plan?” Journey to Fullness Inc.

My First Ten Years Since Swarthmore

In some ways, my life has come full circle in the ten years since shortly after graduating from Swarthmore College. The the buzz cut and goatee have returned, though this time with a little gray, and I’m once again without a full-time job. Though it’s easy to ruminate upon how much more I could have accomplished and all the ways I fell short in the last decade, on the whole, I must say I’ve been rather fortunate, and I want to share some highlights, particularly for the Swatties I’ll be missing at this weekend’s reunion. Here’s what I’ve been up to since June 1999.

• Searching for artistic passion. I loved my time at Swarthmore, but one regret I had was bailing on my Art major after trying to choose the “right” major for a variety of wrong reasons. Unfortunately, an $80,000 Masters at a school offering Fine Arts degrees did not correct for this mistake, probably because I got my degree in Urban Planning. (I’m as mystified as you are.) Returning for a post-bac in Visual Arts at UC Berkeley has simply reminded me of why I quit in the first place: I’m not ready to work so hard at something that still seems self-indulgent and lacks a clear, practical purpose. There’s a contradiction in there I haven’t quite ironed out, and, ten years from now, I’ll probably still be on this journey.
  

  That's me, but is this my life/career/passion?

• Started a non-profit that reaches thousands of kids each year. I devoted most of my time since college–six years, in fact–to City Year, a non-profit organization for young idealists dedicating a year of their lives to service. The first half of my time was as a Manager in Philadelphia, and the second half was as an Executive Director starting up City Year’s local branch in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. City Year was a perfect complement to Swarthmore, rounding out an education in critical (over)thinking with daily lessons in getting things done. For someone used to researching, analyzing, and synthesizing unto 30-page 12-point-font perfection, the endless struggle to meet a barrage of goals in variously imperfect ways was hard to handle at times, but such is life at even the best non-profits. Working here, I got more done in a year than I could have done in all ten on 90% of the other paths I might have pursued, and I came out a more mature, well-rounded person. I’m not sure if I’ll get back into non-profit leadership, but the experience I gained at City Year will last the rest of my life.
  

  Getting Things Done at City Year

• Visited almost all of the mainland lower continental National Scenic Parks in the US. 93%, to be exact. Some of you may have traveled more of the world than I have, but I don’t know anyone who has been so lucky as to see so many highlights of this country’s natural splendor. In the lower 48 states, I’ve yet to hit three National Parks, but I’ve checked the other 39–from Olympic National Park (longest trip) to Shenandoah National Park (most frequently visited)–off the list. I hope to hit Alaska and the various island parks in the next ten years. My favorite park? If there were a “Southern Utah National Park,” that’d be it.
  

  Here I am in Boulder, Colorado, with Rufus. Discovering beer after college canceled out any physical benefits of my extensive park travels.

• Three Women. Obviously, no woman defined my life as a young man more than my mother, who passed away in 2000, about a year after I graduated Swarthmore. In retrospect, her death was a gift, as I had an easy excuse to forgive myself if I were not pursuing the most “ambitious” life possible at the time. Unfortunately, I thought this gift expired after a few years, which led me down some less-than-enjoyable paths. On the other end of these ten years, I’ve had the great fortune of meeting Carinne, who is the Absolute Best and will be a defining factor in my life for these next ten years and hopefully more–she is that awesome. However, in this “category” the decade belongs to Stephanie, who was with me through the doldrums of grad school, explored those great parks with me, and was at City Year during both my stints. I thank her for her continued friendship.

Add in an inordinate amount of time playing fantasy sports and you’ve pretty much got the ten years since I graduated in less than 1000 words. You’ve also got all three reasons why I won’t be at the Swarthmore reunion this weekend: 1) Yosemite with 2) Carinne but mostly 3) unemployment. I’ll be there in spirit, and I welcome updates from anyone who wants to share.

Art Commentary: As Subjective as Art Itself

A quick read of Celia McGee’s 1995 “Portraiture Is Back” piece for the New York Times and Pernilla Holmes’s 2007 “In Your Face” article for ArtNews leaves an unwitting reader with the impression that portraiture had experienced a dramatic transformation over the course of a dozen years. McGee writes of a renewed interest in portraiture born of a recent focus on social issues like race, class, and gender, all inexorably leading to the deeply personal interface portraiture lends itself to between the artist, subject, and viewer. She provides only a handful of examples, but all of them grapple with gender, race, or personal identity, according to McGee. In stark contrast comes Holmes’s writing, which describes eleven bodies of work, most of which focus on people with whom neither the artist nor the viewer have any personal connection but through mass media: politicians, pop musicians, reality TV stars, athletes, and models. The work she describes does not make these figures any more accessible but rather heightens the concepts they represent: environmentalism, mass media, exploitation, and isolation. However, like the artists themselves, McGee and Holmes’s writings have more to do with their own frame of reference and subjective perspectives than a dramatic transformation in portraiture. The most notable flaw in the two articles is the lack of a comprehensive review of all types of media. McGee focuses on more traditional portraiture media like painting and sculpture, while Holmes seems to discuss everything but. Of course, these different focal points will lead to seemingly different types of “portraiture,” no matter when the articles were written.

Although McGee mentions many artists in her attempt to show that portraiture is “back,” she discusses only a few of them in detail, most of whom are painters and the rest are sculptors. Though she writes in the guise of an objective journalist, her selection of these types of artists is no mistake and reveals a romanticized notion of portraiture as an intimate process that only traditional media can truly capture. She notes, “Many artists believe that no mechanical means of reproduction should come between artist and subject in their intense connectedness.” Indeed, she is careful to explain that Chuck Close, best known for his photo-realistic paintings, has moved away from such stolid formalism to a more personalized, intimate approach to portraiture.

Holmes, on the other hand, cannot seem to get away from “mechanical means of reproduction.” Of the eleven bodies of work she covers, six of them work directly with photography or film, hardly the kind of mechanism-free nothing-between-you-and-me art-of-intimacy McGee envisioned. Of the remaining five, two actually work with photography as an integral part of their work—Nicolai’s “performance” piece really just being an elaborate staging for taking photographs and Herring’s sculptures comprised of collaged fragments of photographs—and one, Brian Alfred, does work inescapably entwined with technology as a device, since he bases his paintings off of pictures taken from the internet. Compared with McGee’s intimate “menage a trois…among artist, subject and viewer,” these mechanically-induced portraits are sure to seem more impersonal, detached, less imbued with the artist’s presence, and therefore more conceptual in nature.

While Chuck Close is the perfect example of how a painting can look like a photograph (and certainly the opposite can be true), different media, like different art forms, experience their own trajectories in art history. While some themes might move between music, visual arts, and writing simultaneously, they are also distinct art forms that evolve at their own pace. Similarly, photography, sculpture, painting, performance art, and movie-making are all very different approaches to the visual arts. This begs the question: what conclusions might have McGee drawn if she had looked at photography or performance art for her article? Similarly, what might have Holmes seen if she had included more than just one painter in hers? By the way, that painter, Brian Alfred, does small paintings of people he admires, including friends and family, in an attempt to portray his own identity. He exemplifies the kind of art McGee described in her article over ten years earlier and shows that, at least in the realm of portraiture painting, perhaps there has been no change at all.

Even within the media McGee and Holmes selectively review, a scan of 500 Self-Portraits suggests they are just cherry-picking examples to make their own points. Adrian Piper’s 1981 “Self-Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features” certainly seems to be striving for individuality in the context of race and ethnicity at least as much as McGee’s example—nearly 15 years later—of Dennis Kardon’s “Jewish noses” sculpture series. Chuck Close’s 1991 self-portrait, comprised of small amoeba-like shapes, seems far more a formal exercise and much less personal than his photo-realistic “Big Self Portrait” from 1967-8, suggesting the trend McGee described with him might actually have been happening in reverse, if at all. Cindy Sherman’s self-portrait is a photograph that “quotes” Ingres much in the same way that Holmes describes contemporary portraiture as doing nearly twenty years later. Similarly, Shirin Neshat’s “Seeking Martyrdom” from 1995 is as every bit as conceptual and “in your face” as Holmes’s repertoire of examples from a decade later.

From these examples, it seems impossible to conclude anything from a comparison of McGee and Holmes’s articles other than the fact that they, like the artists they write about, are creating their own stories from personal observations and subjective experience. If asked directly, they would likely define portraiture differently, know of vastly different types of artists, and therefore see completely different trends in the exact same period of time. Portraiture in 2007 may well have been very different from portraiture in 1995, but we would not know it from these two articles.

The Science Behind “Warm” and “Cool” Skin

Understanding skin pigmentation is vital to artists, beauticians, fashion experts, and color analysts. In my last post, I explained why picking whether your skin is pink or yellow will not help you determine whether warm or cool colors are right for you. Instead, I suggested you try to determine whether your skin is blue or orange, which kind of sounds ridiculous, but is actually based on the realities of melanin in the skin.

• Blue = Very little melanin: Skin with very little melanin will appear bluish from the light reflecting off blood veins and diffused through the skin. Color for Men calls this a “blue undertone” and assigns people of this skin type to Winter (dark hair) and Summer (light hair) color schemes, which include cool colors to go with the cool blue of your skin.
• Orange = Pheomelanin: Pheomelanin is the more rare of two types of melanin and creates a pigmentation in the skin ranging from yellow to red-brown. In very limited quantities, pheomelanin will combine with the blue vascular layer to create a cool, greenish yellow skin tone (sallow). However, with any intensity, it will overwhelm the coloration of blood vessels and create the warm “golden undertone” that is the signature of Autumn and Spring color types. Indeed, on the spectrum between yellow and red-brown lies orange, which my last post noted is the very definition of a warm color. Unlike the far more common eumelanin, pheomelanin does not create a UV-protecting tan, which is why Color for Men notes that Autumns burn easily.

Unfortunately, this blue/orange dichotomy works for only a small fraction of the world’s population. Eumelanin provides the black to brown pigment that colors the skin of most non-European people, for whom Color Me Beautiful provides very little coverage. In fact, 90% of the men photographed in Color for Men are white as are all of the models used as examples on the Color Me Beautiful website. Even more recent varieties of this approach to color coordination come off as racist, as evidenced by the comments on this article. People of color interested in learning more about selecting the right color palette for them might be interested in Darlene Mathis’s Women of Color.

Color Analysts, Pink Is not Cool

Most experts advise that people with pink undertones have “cool” skin while those with yellow undertones have “warm” skin, but this advice is so misleading that even color “experts” get confused.  For example, the color analyst behind Style Makeover claims that most people have “warm” skin, while Mineral Makeup Reviews argues the opposite is true. Part of the problem is that both yellow and pink are on the whole warm colors, and some yellows can be cooler than some pinks. Therefore, ascertaining whether you have a pink or yellow undertone does not help you determine whether you have warm or cool skin.

• Pink Is not (Always) Cool. Some experts would have you believe that simply seeing pink in your skin means that your skin is “cool” and therefore you are a “Summer” or a “Winter” color type for the sake of color coordination in clothing and make-up. Indeed, articles around the internet almost universally describe cool Winters as having pink undertones to their skin (Widipedia, Associated Content,TheSoko.com). However, Color for Men says that most “Winters…are those with gray-beige skin…usually with no visible pink.” Color for Men also explains that Autumns can be pink, “but the pink is more peachy than blue.”
• Yellow Is not (Always) Warm. One testimonial on Yahoo! Answers nicely summarizes the prevailing wisdom of color analysts (pink vs yellow) while also pointing to why it’s a mistake to use yellow as the defining color for “warm” skin tones.

“Warm means you have yellow undertones, cool means you have pink undertones. However, extremely yellow undertones and olive tones (which are kind of greenish-yellow) can still be considered cool. Think of lemony yellow vs. golden yellow — the lemony yellow would be cool while the golden is warm. That’s why many Asians are cool even though they have yellow undertones.” – Yahoo! Answers

On your average color wheel, like the one below, it’s pretty clear that blue is the most quintessentially “cool” color while orange, its complement, is quintessentially “warm.” Some reds are warmer than others; some yellows are too. Likewise, both purple and green can get cooler. However, orange can get no warmer and blue no cooler–they are the definitions of the terms.

Why Pink and Yellow? After all, blue and orange are the very definitions of a cool and warm color, respectively.

Just to further prove the point, check out the confusion over the skin type of various celebrities on Pretty Your World and Mineral Makeup Reviews, both of which subscribe to the idea that pink is cool and yellow is warm. Pretty Your World has Gloria Estefan and Sophia Loren as Autumns (warm), but Mineral Makeup Reviews has them as a cool skin types. Meanwhile, Pretty Your World calls Aishwarya Rai a Winter (cool) while Mineral Makeup Reviews has her as an Autumn (warm).

I’m no expert myself, but it seems like people should instead be looking for whether they have blue or orange skin, not pink or yellow skin, to determine whether cool or warm colors suit them best. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I’ll cover the notion in my next post.

Contrasting Ship Series by Feininger & Dean

Recently investigating the artwork of Lyonel Feininger, I was struck by recurring theme of ships in his pieces held here in San Francisco. He seems captivated by the image of a ship at sea, coming back to it numerous times over at least 24 years from Hanseatic Fleet (1918) to Peaceful (1942). These works are essentially studies of composition and shape relations and, though they vary in energy, err on the side of stillness and permanence, emphasized by the frequent use of woodcuts. Though also of ships, Tacita Dean’s 2002 piece “Chere Petite Soeur,” could not be more different in nearly every way from Feininger’s studies.

The overall mood of Dean’s piece is intensely dramatic, and it instantly involves one as both a viewer of art and the reader of an unfolding story. The blackboard as a base layer literally establishes the foundation of a dark, ominous mood, that plays through the entire piece. The rendering of the ship(s) at sea is done so convincingly in chalk that the viewer is teleported to the scene, immediately involved in the danger taking place. The presentation of the piece as a diptych involves the viewer even more, creating a sequential story left for the viewer to complete.

The overall composition of the piece is powerful in both parts of the diptych, with dramatic contrasts of light and dark, chaotically varied use of line evocative of the storm the drawing depicts, and a strong horizontal orientation that accentuates the left-to-right reading of the two panels as a story. As the viewer moves closer, the technique and the medium become more apparent and are, in fact, quite surprising. Reading from a distance almost like a painting, the drawing itself is actually chalk on blackboard. In addition, the sweeping movement of the composition as a whole seems contradicted by the realization that each panel is actually a set of four smaller frames, meticulously delineated from one another.

Indeed, this closer investigation of the piece almost makes the initial intensity and drama of it recede as the viewer begins to question the essence of what exactly s/he is looking at? Perhaps this is not a story at all; perhaps we are not to have been “transported” to another place and time.

Perhaps, as Vitamin D suggests, the piece is about memory. Memory, like each panel of the diptych, is pieced together as we live our lives. In many cases, these pieces are disparate and not logically associated, like seeing your spouse in a dream about your childhood. However, particularly dramatic memories can be unforgettable, and traumatic ones tend to be relived with great clarity. Oddly, the small notes written into the piece create a technical sensibility, as if we are looking at the blueprint of a memory methodically reconstructed in all its intensity.

Finally, there exists the great irony of the piece, that it is drawn upon a blackboard that, while essential to the piece’s dramatic mood, is a surface meant to be erased. It leaves the thoughtful viewer with the notion that, after all this methodical reconstruction, the piece will simply disappear, as if it never was. What then, was the true purpose of it in the first place?

GNU/Linux on Windows XP: Using UNetbootin & Virtual Machines

Want to try a lightweight GNU/Linux distro (or any distro) for yourself without installing one to a hard drive or flash drive or burning it to a CD? Check out this post from guest writer puppycat, who just started a new blog over at Lex Linux. It tell you how to install and use UNetbootin, discusses why its better than using a virtual machine, provides a couple options for running a virtual machine anyway, and mentions how to tweak start up once your experimenting has resulted in a new distro you want to use as your main system.

____________

There’s a great way to play with Linux distros without installing them to a hard drive, a flash drive or burning them to a CD. If you are running Windows XP, download UNetbootin, install and run it, selecting the .iso you want to test. UNetbootin will create a folder in C:\ and re-write a couple startup files (including C:\boot.ini). Upon restart UNetbootin will launch Grub4Dos which can boot from the .iso image file you selected. There’s no formatting, installing or partitioning. It just works. When you’re done test driving your Linux distro and upon rebooting back into XP, UNetbootin will ask if you want to uninstall it, a handy reminder if you’re using a public computer or a friend’s machine and don’t want to leave any software behind.

For taking a distro out for a spin, I prefer using UNetbootin over a virtual machine. Virtual machines still suffer from an inability to dedicate all system resources to the guest OS, so being able to boot into the Linux distro you want to try will give you a better feeling for their actual performance, especially if you are using an older machine. The only disadvantage between of UNetbootin compared with a virtual machine is the series of two boot cycles required for UNetbootin, unless you want to be impolite and skip the second boot required to uninstall. In my opinion, the performance boost gained from avoiding a virtual machine (QEMU) is well worth rebooting with UNetbootin and then rebooting to uninstall it from XP.

Both virtual machines and UNetbootin are advantageous to a full install or a live CD/USB because they are post-BIOS grabs of machine resources. I love the idea of booting directly from a USB stick or from a mini-CD (you can easily fit Puppy on an 8cm, 210 MB mini-disc – I use a mini-CD-RW so I can keep up-to-date on the new releases of Puppy 4.20). But when I’m on campus (and in plenty of other locations, I imagine), there’s a BIOS password that prevents me from changing the boot order and de-prioritizing the hard drive. That’s where virtual machines and Unetbootin are helpful. If the computer you’re using does not allow the option of booting from a peripheral device, then you can either use a virtual machine or you can temporarily re-write the post-BIOS boot sequence (Unetbootin) to use your preferred Linux.

While UNetbootin has many other features and does not only run on XP, my guess is that many folks who are interested in exposing themselves to Linux but are not yet ready to commit to a full install are probably running XP and could benefit from UNetbootin’s small footprint, easy install/uninstall cycle, and its ability to boot from an .iso. I’ve heard folks criticize this method as being a timid approach to exploring Linux. So be it. If it exposes someone to Linux who otherwise would not have bothered for fear of reformatting, partitioning or installing, then a good deed has been done.

If you really want to try a virtual machine instead of UNetbootin, I recommend a couple options:

• VirtualBox: If the primary goal is experimenting with different flavors of linux without rebooting and with performance that most closely reflects a real install, a live cd image seems to run best under VirtualBox. The user manual is thorough yet not intimidating and the initial install and set-up was a breeze. I have not benchmarked performance but booting SliTaz through VirtualBox felt much faster than through QEMU (even with the KQEMU accelerator running). Unpacking initramfs, normally a bottleneck during boot, was extremely fast.
• QEMU: In my experience, QEMU runs much better with the KQEMU accelerator installed on the host machine and I consequently keep the installer on my flash drive, installing KQEMU on any computer within which I want to run Linux via QEMU. QEMU is nice because you don’t have to install anything to the host OS, and you can just write a little batch file to launch each .iso on your hard drive/flash drive/cd. If anyone as a tip for improving QEMU’s performance, please feel free to share in the comments.

If you find a Linux distro you like, you can still retain the flexibility of UNetbootin while gaining the advantages of a faster boot time by automatically starting into the distro of your choice. I personally run Puppy 4.1.2, lauded elsewhere on this blog, on a Dell C400 (1.2GHz PIII, 1 GB RAM). I have XP squished onto a 6 GB partition (C:\ in XP, /mnt/sda1 in Puppy) and have my Puppy .sfs files (pup_412.sfs, devx_412.sfs, openoffice-3.0.0_412.sfs, pup_save.2fs) on my data partition (the D:\ drive in XP, which automounts at /mnt/home in Puppy because that’s where the pup_save.2fs file is located). After I installed UNetbootin in XP, I rewrote C:\boot.ini, changing the default OS from XP to UNetbootin and dropping the timer to 0 seconds. I then dropped the Grub4Dos timer to 0 seconds (located in C:\unetbtin\menu.lst) and can boot Puppy in 55 seconds flat, bypassing XP without having reformatted the Windows MBR or having installed GRUB. (I’m not opposed to doing either of those, by the way, but I have found Grub4Dos to meet my needs just as well as GRUB.) It’s now super easy to play with all sorts of Linux distros. All I have to do is change the initial timeout in “/mnt/sda1/boot.ini” from 0 to something reasonable (5 seconds or so) while in Puppy, reboot into XP, and re-run UNetbootin to launch SliTaz, Damn Small Linux, or even the Fedora Core live CD. Running a live CD .iso from your hard drive is significantly faster than running it from a CD and for a fellow like me who doesn’t have a CD drive, it’s the perfect solution.