''XBill'' is an arcade style game for the X Window System. The game features a bespectacled character known as "Bill" (a spoof of Bill Gates). The goal is to prevent Bill's legions of clones from installing "Wingdows", a virus "cleverly designed to resemble a popular operating system" (a parody of Windows), on a variety of computers running other operating systems. It was very popular among Linux gamers at the end of the 1990s, beating out '' Quake'', though not '' Quake II'', as ''

Linux Journal ''Linux Journal'' (''LJ'') is an American monthly technology magazine originally published by Specialized System Consultants, Inc. (SSC) in Seattle, Washington since 1994. In December 2006 the publisher changed to Belltown Media, Inc. in Houston ...

'' reader's favourite Linux game in 1999.

Gameplay

The operating systems are represented by logos shown on the computer screens. The computers the player must defend include

PCs A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or techn ...

running Linux and

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...

, SPARCstations with

Solaris Solaris may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Solaris'' (1972 film), directed by ...

SGI SGI may refer to: Companies *Saskatchewan Government Insurance *Scientific Games International, a gambling company *Silicon Graphics, Inc., a former manufacturer of high-performance computing products *Silicon Graphics International, formerly Rac ...

IRIX IRIX ( ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. In IRIX, SGI originated the XFS file system and ...

workstations, Apple Macintosh, PalmPilots, and NeXTcubes. When Bill installs Wingdows onto a computer, its current operating system is placed beside it. Using the

mouse A mouse ( : mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus' ...

, the player must squash Bill and drag discarded operating systems back to their computers. At the end of the level, points are accrued for every computer that is still running its original operating system. On later levels, computers are connected to each other with

LAN Lan or LAN may also refer to: Science and technology * Local asymptotic normality, a fundamental property of regular models in statistics * Longitude of the ascending node, one of the orbital elements used to specify the orbit of an object in sp ...

cables, causing Wingdows to spread faster. Some computers may also catch fire. This can be cured by dragging buckets of water onto them.

History

The game was written by Brian Wellington and Matias Duarte in summer 1994.history
on xbill.org Originally written in C++, the code base was later with version 2.1 refactored to C. The game was later in the end 1990s, deliberately ported to

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. Ports to many other platforms as Mac OS X, Openmoko,

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

, and Maemo phones followed due to its open source nature. Re-implementations of the game also exist. In 2009, the project was resurrected as XBill-NG, similar in concept to Lincity-NG.

Reception and impact

''XBill'' was very popular among Linux gamers at the end of the 1990s, beating out '' Quake'', though not '' Quake II'', as ''

'' readers' favourite Linux game in 1999.1999 Reader's Choice Awards
-

The game holds four out of five stars on the Linux Game Tome and was noted by DesktopLinux.com. Despite its status, it is not always packaged with

Linux distribution A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

s due to its "disparaging" content: for instance

Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...

does not integrate itXBill Legal Opinion Required
- Fedora Project (February 2009) while

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

does. Somewhat illustrating its notoriety, graphics from the game are used on the website of the 2009 Free Software Foundation campaign Windows 7 Sins.Windows 7 Sins website
/ref>

References

External links

* {{Official, http://www.xbill.org/
XBill
- Freecode 1994 video games Open-source video games Unix games Linux games Classic Mac OS games Cultural depictions of Bill Gates Maemo games MacOS games Parody video games Video games developed in the United States Windows games Software wars Android (operating system) games IOS games Video games based on real people

Gameplay

History

Reception and impact

See also

References

External links