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Duke3d in Linux
Obiwan Kenobi writes "So it took four days, but Duke3d now runs in Linux, courtesy of Icculus.org. Ironically, a win32 port has yet to be released. Features include full sound support, hi-res video modes (aka VESA modes for those familiar with DOS), saved games, full screen or windowed viewing, and even the BUILD editor works (to a degree). No mouse, demos, or networking just yet, but the basic gameplay is there and now that the BUILD engine has been ported a win32 version is soon on the horizon."
"Ironically, a win32 port has yet to be released."
Ironically, Duke3d has been running on win32 operative systems since the beginning. The tweaks to get the it working has been around about as long.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
These guys are usually actually willing to give great support with odd problems. In general I have received MUCH better support from the OSS community, then what i get for paying $150/hr to a brain-less M$ support tech. Why would they provide support for a product that they know isn't done or even beta ready, has tons of known problems and after all, has been in development for 4 days? I think this is very reasonable. And when was the last time YOU talked to the actual coder of a piece of software at M$ or other commercial software company? In the OSS community, if you really have a bug or weirdness, they are usually more then willing to exchange emails with you directly. AND this is FREE. What are you complaining about?
Reinard
IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS:
Tough luck. Do NOT contact us with bug reports at this time. Do NOT contact us if you can't get it to build. Do NOT contact us for copies of the game.
People are already grousing about this and saying it's a fault of open source. But the thing is, they probably have a list of their own planned updates/fixes, and accepting a slew of bug-reports from every linux-newbie who wants to run duke3d would just be distracting from (the above) more important things. I expect they'll accept feedback once we're past the current beta-type stage of coding.
I wonder about some of the original duke3d bugs too. Nothing worse than just about fragging somebody in deathmatch only to get munched by a closing door...
let me be the first to say "huh?"
Notice that icculus weren't the ones that posted this to slashdot (or any other major news site). They finished the first stage of the port, got the DOS game to run on Linux using SDL (which the game was not written in) and then were cool enough to allow us to try it out.
Isn't the whole point of releasing the source so that people can dabble with it? It's not like they're releasing Duke3d Retail, they took four days to make a port of it to linux (and they're even trying to port it to windows too if you read their page).
I'm pretty much 100% certain that a Duke3d linux port that they took four days to work on which isn't perfect yet won't turn people off to the linux desktop.
Maybe you should be happy that someone with the talent to port it to linux (and windows) is working on it at all.