Slashdot Mirror
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."
Finally there may be a distro that can capture the gamer and the techie. I hate dual booting! This could be the answer I have been looking for. I agree that I am not too hot on the Mandrake distro, but this does have potential.
LD
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
I always hear Mandrake derided by a signifigant portion of the
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
Interesting idea, and I applaud the developers, but I really think it's not going to make any new Linux users.
Little Billy gets a new WinXP machine for xmas all ready to run *every* new Windows game with potentially less headaches than keeping a Linux box upgraded with the kernel du jour and the patch of the week.
Like it or not, Windows Update is much easier to use for the Unwashed Masses than is cvs (now my FreeBSD||OpenBSD bias is showing :))
Trolling is a art,
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?
Refer to the slashdot article about it:4 6&mode=thread
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/14/13182
I'd rather just purchase that, and be able to install it in my choice of distribution.
Linux, being free, wants to be free. Don't force people to buy it.
.. $4.95 - $9.95? You receive two things: the installer for The Sims and a coupon for $2.95 - $8.95 off your next purchase of a full-packaged game from TransGaming -- the goal being that if you do purchase another game from them, that installer kit download ultimately only cost you $2 - $3.
.. business major)
"The Sims" won't be free anytime soon, so here is my humble idea for making this successful:
They create a 'standard' game/application management and installer program for these type of applications. The entire package as a whole can be compatible with the standard add/remove for a distro, but to control the contents requires using its own tools.
They distribute the application manager/control panel part for free, and keep it opensource. An installer kit is developed *specifically* for installing these type of packages, which is also kept open. Anyone can go out and buy a game, get it to work, and create an 'installer' and distribute this freely to whomever they want.
License "The Sims" from Maxis for a reduced cost - 30-50% of MSRP. Include a single "Transgaming Kit," either in the box for The Sims or as an extra shrink-wrapped CD + manual on the outside (think magazines that come in plastic bags with posters and CDs) - the kit contains a distro, packages to install their application/game management on any of the popular distros, and the installer to install "The Sims" into their application/game management system. They sell this for the regular cost for The Sims +10-20%.
What if you already own The Sims? IANAL, but you shouldn't have to purchase it again. You download the toolkit for free, and if someone has freely released an installer for The Sims, you're in luck -- for free. If there isn't, or you don't want to go through the trouble, you go to their web site and pay them
This will encourage repeat business and allow them to recover some logistical/management costs without stifling the freedom of free software.
Many gamers use Linux at work, at home, but don't use it for games because it often won't run the games we want to play. If I were to pick up a game, and TransGaming could atleast compete in price for these new releases, I would purchase from them *just to support the cause* - regardless of whether I planned to play it on Linux. Why not? Their price competes. They get to keep things flowing. I get the same package either way, but now I also get the kit that will allow me to easily play it in Linux without killing myself.
..
But please, do not sell full-priced distributions with every copy of a game that you release. You're only doing this to justify the cost, not as a true value-add. How many of us are going to dump our current setup just to install that special gaming edition distro? 5%? How much of that full price are you trying to justify as being for "that special gaming distro?" 50%?
IANABM. (..
Good luck,
Jason
...the Linux jihad complaining that Windows users can't see the light about Linux, or the other Linux jihad complaining that now all these Windows users will start using Linux!
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've found that mplayer does a really good job of playing mpeg/avi/divx files in Linux.
"To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!"
I tried out Mandrake a couple of years ago and it already shipped with BSDgames and several versions of Tetris.
Sheesh. What more could anyone possibly want?
- Derwen
http://fsfeurope.org/
What kind of bloat do you have running on that Windows machine? Games typically DO run better on Windows, though there are exceptions. (Quake is NOT by any means one of them).
HOWEVER, it is well known that Windows does not Multitask well compared to Linux, so anything you have running in the background is going to have some kind of ill effect on your gaming experiences. How ill that effect is depends largely on how powerful your PC is, what type of game you are playing, and what other software you have running.
Also, if your video card supports T&L, or other really nice very modern features, and the game you are running also supports those features, I seriously doubt Linux gaming performance will even come close to comparing with Windows.
This isn't even so much a "Can't Do" issue so much as "Just not done yet" issue.
Fortunately, things like SDL and Mesa are paving the way for this to change. And of course, Wine is getting more mature all the time.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Actually, they added asf support in the recent 0.9.2 release. You can see it in their release notes here.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Actually, Windows 2000 is VERY suitable for games. Why? I thought you'd never ask:
1) Kernel tuning: The Win2K Pro kernel isn't a server kernel gussied up for the desktop. It shamelessly gives heavy preference to the foreground application (screw UNIXy ideals of "fairness") and gives boosts to media-oriented processes over other types of processes. For example, reading for a sound device gives you thread an 8 point temporary boost in priority while reading from disk gives you a 2 point boost.
2) DirectX: Still unmatched by any other multimedia API on the planet. Maybe OpenGL 2.0 + OpenML + OpenAL could kick its ass, but I have yet to see such a combo in use. What really sucks about Linux multimedia is the situation with audio. ALSA is great, but nothing really uses it that much. Then you have the brain-dead aRts and esound scheme which take a trip down memory lane to software mixing...
3) Hardware. Not only does Windows support more hardware, but it supports it better. More acceleration gets used and more features are implemented.
4) Simplicity: Packages don't work for gaming systems. While packages are nice in theory, RPM (I don't have much experience with Debian, but it isn't a player in this market anyway) sucks monkey balls when it comes to keep track of applications. I have yet to go through DLL-hell in Windows, but everytime I want to upgrade something, RPM puts me through a giant dependency chase/conflict resolution. urpmi is shaping up to be pretty great, but its still not there yet. For example, it often installs cruft that are supposedly dependencies for an app, but the app doesn't actually *require* them (the package maker thought they'd be nice to have).
Of course, Linux technically has a lot of advantages too. Its got a killer VM/IO system, and new memory hungry games can use that. It has great latency (with the new patches) which is good for audio. With a few tweeks (and a lot of changes to developer methodology) Linux could become more suitable for games than Windows. But it isn't right now.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The really big problem is social rather than technical. There's this recursion that it's very hard to break out of - Linux distro's won't be popular until they have the features that are aimed at joe average. But they won't put in such features until it becomes popular with joe average. (until then the linux market, consisting mostly of technical types, doesn't care about those features and often thinks of them as a detriment.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.