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Mandrake Linux Gamer Edition

Posted by michael on from the emulate-this dept.

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."

5 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. This is GREAT!! by HanzoSan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is a GOOD MOVE!!

    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 ,extra features, and perhaps make it easy enough to install, people will have a reason to use linux. To play their favorite games!

    --
    If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
  2. Great move by Red+Moose · · Score: 4, Interesting
    This may be a very good thing, if not *the* best thing to happen Linux Distro's in a long time.

    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

  3. Where is it? by Bren · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

  4. Re:point-and-drool herds by Diomedes01 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    My first experiences with Mandrake were not good. It destroyed my Windows partition without warning. (fortunately I had a backup, but this was hardly a user-friendly thing to do).

    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!"
  5. Re:Silly for the non-nerds by garcia · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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 :)