I recently found out about a game called Minecraft. It is a game that puts the player in a block-based world which can be altered by removing or placing blocks as appropriate. The player can build almost anything he or she desires. The game design is quite simplistic, but nonetheless immersive and I have to admit that I got quite addicted to it. Still, I'm more of the collaborative player, so I installed a Minecraft server instance on a remote host. The setup procedure is not very complicated if you know a bit about Linux systems. Still, I will go through each of these steps, in case a fellow reader with none or less Linux server experience wants to setup a server too. It shouldn't be hard to follow these instructions, even if you are inexperienced with Linux. The instructions apply to modified servers, like bukkit, as well.

As you might have already experienced (why else would you care to read this post?), the installation of Windows-flavoured operating systems kills existing bootloaders (like GRUB), so you won't be able to boot other OSes from your hard drive any longer. If you are using GRUB, you can attempt to restore the situation before the Windows installation by grabbing a live CD of some Linux distribution and by performing the following actions.