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Live CD for PC Games?

Posted by Cliff on from the why-not? dept.

Onion asks: "Can anyone inform me why games developers don't put out games on a 'Knoppix' style live CD? This would negate coding the games for different PC platforms. Provided the hardware detection routines were up to scratch, the game could be coded using GNU/Linux for development and would run on any PC machine, regardless of OS. Only major drawback I can see would be the need to 'reboot' each time to play. Any thoughts or views on 'why not' ?"

4 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Many reasons. by NotoriousQ · · Score: 4, Informative
    • they would have to include drivers for the all the hardware, games need to run on.
    • how about all the libraries. DirectX et al is not tiny, as well as the OS they have to include.
    • Games frequently use swap, but with no OS, they have no facilities to make their swap files.
    • There is a part of the game that needs to be accessible at all times. (AKA binaries, dlls) Those will need to be placed into some kind of ramdisk for multidisk games
    Do you think the OS is there for nothing?
    --
    badness 10000
  2. Gentoo Games by _iris · · Score: 4, Informative

    They do. Look into Gentoo Games

  3. They have done this. Where have you been? by vasqzr · · Score: 3, Informative

    You don't remember the Gentoo/Unreal Live CD?

    Unreal Tournament 2003 Gentoo Live CD

    Posted on 16th September 2002 by drobbins

    Epic Games' much-anticipated Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo is now available on a self-booting Gentoo Linux-based LiveCD, allowing you to play the Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo using any modern PC with an NVIDIA GeForce 2 or greater graphics card and a CD-ROM drive. Full networking, OSS sound and Creative Soundblaster Live! and Audigy support included, allowing for the full gaming experience including LAN/Internet play, EAX environmental audio and of course 3D accelerated OpenGL graphics. The CD also serves as a fully-functional Gentoo Linux installation CD. You can download the CD using this link.

  4. Of course, there are many of them... by teknico · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...here is one about MAME:

    http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/cd-readme.html

    There are links to other similar projects at the end of the page.