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Mandrake Linux Gamer Edition
JWhiton writes: "According to Blue's News, Mandrake and TransGaming are going to ship a new distribution of Mandrake Linux specificially aimed at gamers. It comes with The Sims and TransGaming's WineX for compatibility with Windows games. Apparently it's going to ship on November 9th."
I currently use Manrake 8.1 and I use it for everything except multimedia and games. For which I use win2k. Of course most of everything I do is multimedia and games. Hopefully if this version of mandrake works well, and isn't an unstable piece of junk then I will only have to use windows for multimedia. I just wish it were free. I'm not willing to pay 70$, especially since I don't want the sims.
I think I might just keep trying to configure mandrake 8.1 to do all that stuff.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
This is a GOOD MOVE!!
,extra features, and perhaps make it easy enough to install, people will have a reason to use linux. To play their favorite games!
packing games with linux and calling it the gaming edition is genius.
Gamers who may not otherwise have ever known about linux will see linux plays games and may actually improve frame rates and speed, they might actually buy it just for gaming purposes considering they spend $500 almost for Gforce3 graphics cards and soundcard. Linux could be sold on the fact that it is a "gaming" OS.
Think about that.
Example. Linux Mandrake Gaming Edition (Starcraft)
Linux Mandrake Gaming Edition (Warcraft 3)
Linux Mandrake Gaming Edition (Quake 3)
And if they manage to somehow get these versions to have higher frame rates
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
1. People who know what they are doing will build their own customised version from whatever version or distro they downloaded to work from.
2. I am firmly of the opinion that Linux should stop trying to compete with Windows on Windows's home ground - the office market. Those people are sluggish and resistant to change (we'll see how many even upgrade to Office 2000, not to mind Office XP, or Windows XP)
3. I think the linux missed out on exploiting a weakness in Windows - gaming - by the OS community concentrating on Windows one-upmanship with StarOffice vs. MS Office, etc., . WIn32 GUI vs. Gnome/KDE (who cares, like I said, people who know what they want will use FVWM if needs be, and the Office-lethargic group will stick with Windows/MS as has been shown).
Years ago (like 10 maybe) people would say to quit using that Amiga - it's a kid's computer and all you do is games or graphics, etc., . These days the thing that drives PC sales is exactly what MS lackey's would have scorned - games sell new PCs; that Clippy fucker doesn't.
Linux, if a direction should be made (I realise that that goes against general OS consenus, but I see more inventiveness and ingenuity from the demoscene (the real demoscene) with no OS at all IMHO), should aim to beat Windows at what it's weaknesses are, not by trying to beat it on it's strengths (Office, hardware support....I'd happily buy that one video card supporting everything than have a choice of 50 with shitty support).
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
I use Windows Media Player with Wine to watch my...uh...Multimedia Presentations. It really does a decent job with AVI files. I have only tested it with the older non-"themeable" release of Media Player.
The only problem that I have seen is that sometimes the colors will get messed up. It doesn't always do it with the same file. So, it is not like a perpetual bad coloration from the same file.
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If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Please don't discriminate like that. RedHat on servers? I don't think so; you need something more solid and stable. Suse for science/engineering? Why? And there's plenty of other good distributions, e.g. Slackware. These classifications may make sense to you, but they don't to me, so I doubt they're valid in general; they just make people get angry at you or think you're a stupid slashdaughter.
I checked mandrake's site and transgaming.com but couldn't find any mention of this "gamers distribution" for 69.99 or whatever anywhere. I also checked google but no luck. I would think there would be an announcement since this is supposed to be out in 19 days... anyone have links?
While this probably comes as good news to some who want to play their windows games on linux, it may not be good news for linux.
If/when wine gets to a point where it can perfectly emulate 100% of all windows games, there will be no reason for software developers to release any linux games, and linux ends up losing exposre.
I don't know what will happen, but this is just one possible scenario to think about,
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
- All the sales of all Linux Games are dwarfed by
the sales of a single, average, Windows game
- While commercial Linux 2d games are generally more stable than their Windoze counterparts, there are still a lot of problems in the 3d area, and the future is bleak (VA layoffs, etc.)
Anyway, it's a good step forward, even though it might not be a commercial success.
The Raven
Installing Windows isn't much easier... you still have to create/delete partitions; I have had very good luck setting up friends with Mandrake. Most recently, I set up three friends who live in a house together with a network running Mandrake 8.1 on most of the systems; this distro is very, very nice. Easy to use for newbies, but still configurable for those who know what they're doing. I am very impressed with the hardware support, as well - it even worked out of the box with my Samsung ML-1210 laser printer, which was a gigantic pain in the ass to set up manually even with Samsung's directions.
I think that this new gaming distribution is a step in the right direction for Linux. The only way that Linux will gain market share as a desktop OS is to cater to desktop users needs. Gamers are a large part of desktop users, probably the largest segment other than business users. The beauty of Free Software is that you can specialize distributions towards different segments very easily.
"To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!"
I agree, the only real way to get to gamers is to start serious devleopment on Linux games. Until there is some steady games released on both platforms I can't see Linux winning in this.
:)
I do applaud the effort though
There is an interesting transcript of a chat with Jacques Le Marois, head of Mandrakesoft. Most of his 44 answers are predictable but I didn't expect that he would predict a 99% market share for linux on the PC in the next years !(with 20% or 30% for mandrake)
Yes 99 percent !
The text is in french but I used this excellent translation engine and mirrored the original translation.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel