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Is the Key to Linux a Games-Based Distro?
An anonymous reader writes "If in the FOSS community we could only get our act together and launch a game-based distro, we will be home and dry. That, at least, is the view of one British games enthusiast, Ian Bonham, who says in the short Linux World article: 'I would be happy to help a group of volunteers create a distro based on games, because I believe that's where the next generation is - NOT in giving away copies of Linux or OOo. That's a short-term ideal. The PS2 and the X-Box(sic) run Linux, so let's create a distro that turns home PC into a console with development potential. Expand that distro to the consoles. And lets get some 'killer' games on that disk.'"
Can we get Tux Racer? Now that's livin'...
I agree with this assessmanent, however, one of the biggest challenges is to get peoples legacy Windows games to work, which is quite the challenge, if possible at all, on a reliable basis.
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson
Yeah, whatever.
There's so much missing structurally for that to even be considered. You know, silly stuff like reliable, robust video and sound drivers.
Cart before the horse.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
As long as it doesn't go the way of Loki...
Linux would gain the gaming consumers and leave the microsoft os for good. Sweeeeet!
How about a variation of a bootable Linux Game CD that you can also install later ala Knoppix?
Of course, you couldn't just run OS/2 off of a CD with no install, and video was next to impossible to configure correctly when you didn't specifically know what video card was in the box, and networking didn't work, yada, yada, yada...
Anyway, it would certainly help to have a WIDE VARIETY of games, that rivalled ones on other platforms, etc.
It takes companies years, millions, and hundreds of megabytes to create successful games, and the success to linux is a game that actually runs on linux? No, I say linux needs to be able to run PC games (well and without hassle).
All we need is for people to actually develop games for Linux, then there might be something to play.
Worried you might not keep your virginity forever? Try new Linux(TM), guaranteed twice as effective as LARPing
When you get to hell -- tell 'em Itchy sent ya!
It's going to take a bad ass mofo of a game, and one that's NOT available on any other platform.
Make it so attractive, so kick-ass, so awesome and so LINUX that they will flock to it.
Don't let it out for M$ and don't copy a M$ or console game.
The Mac suffers from a shortage of games, albeit not as great as Linux, and those games sell for $$$. It's a nice thought but the reality is that you need the developers too. A whiz-bang platform without games leaves you... well... with a neat looking Linux box with a game controller.
Trolling is a art,
Last I checked, the MICROSOFT X-Box runs a special version of Windows CE... Did I miss the big switch?
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
I think knoppix does a great job: you can fire it up and see what it looks like, and if you want, mount a hard-drive partition for the cd, or just install onto your harddrive.
Add games and you've got teen-geek heaven.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Indrema!
...did I miss the point here somewhere? Just about everything I know about gaming says that the more the OS stays out of the way, the better. Now they want to replace our thin OS-like layers with a complete business/research oriented OS. Why?
Seriously, the OS doesn't *do* anything for a game. All a game really needs is a collection of APIs to transparently access low-level hardware. Threading is nice, but "green" thread libraries can be used in its stead. That's much the reason why MSDOS (save for the 640K barrier) was such a great gaming platform. The OS literally did nothing. It got the frick out of the way, and stayed there.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
...DOOM .
The source is there for multiple platforms, lots of WADs are out there, lots of utilities are around... good times.
The Army reading list
That's a step backwards I think. At least in windows you can both develop/work and play games.
I think a step forward will be to get some form of standard for graphics/sound/input ala DirectX style. sure opengl, oss, sdl are all good libs but they follow the unix philosophy. That is, do one thing and do it well.
There should be a unified development tool/library that includes them all. E.g. I can install "blah" and boom I got 3d graphics, sound support, joystick/keyboard support, timers/interrupt/callback etc...
Of course that doesn't stop people from just picking their fav collection of tools [e.g. ut2k4 which runs perfectly on my Gentoo box].
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
We could certainly USE a games-only distribution to add to the countless others but I don't believe that we need to give up on distributing OTHER Linux distribs and copies of Open Office (or the like).
Linux is about freedom of choice. Some people MAY want a Linux distribution that comes stocked w/games to play. Me? I don't. I don't play games on my computer. I use a PS2 for that... That's me though.
Feel free to start the project and get your supporters. Don't expect to dominate the Linux market w/it and PLEASE don't ATTEMPT to dominate it either.
In addition to getting the old Windows games to work and needing better video drivers etc. You're going to have to get the game companies to develope games for Linux. Overall I think this is a good idea. I you have the games based Linux distro then there will be a group which is working on all of these problems (as well all the problems us /.er can't fortell).
As those games are played, kids will be encouraged to learn how they work and maybe work on their own. AMOS and Blitz basic on the Amiga formed a huge range of great games, but getting people learning C++ from an early age would lead to great things for the future, I'm sure.
Does he have any sort of clue what goes into the development of a modern "killer game"?
Programming is nothing. There are thousands of man-hours going into art assets, level design, animation, voiceover production, playtesting, etc..
The days of the kid making a neato race car game on his vic 20 are long, long gone.
And like every other twit in linux land, he offers to "help make a linux games distro, even though im not a programmer and have no appreciable skills". Which follows the standard OSS game production model:
1) Think up cool name for game
2) Open sourceforge project
3) wait for programmers and artists to come write it for you
4) ??
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Mac has tried breaking into the PC gamining scene for decades. They even had that "bigass game thats only available on that platform" called "Marathon."
It requires two things:
Quantity of games
Quality of games
You don't need to make a gaming distro, you need a gaming distro with HUNDREDS (if not more) games already available to it. And not just net-hack and tux-racer, but big name gaming companies spitting out Linux based games.
What do you need to do this? A big-ass company with a ton of cash.
It is a proven plan. Just ask Sony how it broke apart Sega and Nintendo to get into the gaming console. Money, quantity and quality of games.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I thought of this a couple of years ago(BSD though, not Linux).
I think initially a CDROM based distro like Knoppix, with some standard install/play/uninstall options would be a good starting point.
The nice thing about game consoles is that all the hardware is basically the same. If I buy a game for PS2 or XBOX, I know it will work on my PS2 or XBOX. Start letting someone put the linux based game distro on any PC, and they will complain about performance and certain things not working properly because they decided to test it on that old 486 they had in the closet.
Nope.
woohoo!
My first Linux installation had me drooling at the list of games that were in the Games folder. Then, as I started each, one by one, I found the feeling similar to when you got your Burger King meal's get-the-bb-into-the-holes game.
Or, similarly, found the amazing Atari emulator only to find that those games that used to kick ass now keep your attention for about 30 seconds each - but there's 2,000 of them!
Linux users are all underpaid programmers who couldn't afford even semi-new computers to play the newest and best games, if they wanted wanted to.
Because I've used Linux at work. I've seen what it can do. I needed to set up a proxy server and got Squid running. I understand what the fuss is about and why everyone is always shouting about it. It's powerful, you can do just about anything that you want with it and it's not as hard to learn as everyone makes it out to be.
Why not run it at home? GAMES!!!
A good deal of people suggest running games under WINE, but from other posts that I've seen, it doesn't seem like WINE does the best job. I'd rather put up with the usual garbage that my Windows machine gives me (random crashes, etc.) because I play a lot of games.
The problem with writing a 'gaming' distro is that you need people to write games for it. While it's not unheard of, it's going to require a good deal of work and what comes first? Users adopt it or game companies release games for it?
It's a great idea and I hope it does take off, but it seems like a lot of work...
3D acceleration out of the box, an instlaler/uninstaller that's newbie friendly, better hardware detection, etc, etc.
Although I'd bet a distro that could run games would be popular just for the piracy potential.
This guy is way out there
The problem is that FOSS methods are very good for designing technical things like programs, but game design involves huge a art project, which requires massive funding (usually).
-DB-
E-mail is like a prison: a prison with no walls... and no toilet. -Strong Bad
No.
Gamers use game consoles because they just want to play games, and don't care about the OS, or email, or word processing. About the best this would do is help with Linux name recognition as something other than a geek's OS.
Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform
For Linux to truly become the gaming OS of choice it will need a killer app that can't run in Windows, forcing users to switch over.
Problem is, no developer will be willing to develop said killer app until Linux becomes the gaming OS of choice.
Windows became the top gaming platform without any special "gaming" versions of its OS. They did this through marketing and its DirectX APIs. Get some good games and people will play them regardless of their distro. Get a "game" distro and nobody will use it without good games. Either way, the distro doesn't matter.
I don't have an opinion about this issue
- anon cow
It would be quite cool to have some game-targeted features in the kernel for instance:
;-) Would it not help performance
Ability to "lock" the scheduler, so that the game gets 100% CPU until it unlocks (effectively
making it a single process OS like DOS while in this mode).
While in the above mode, a user-configurable keypress to pause the whole system, no matter
what's going on.
Running the games in kernel space? Maybe this is just madness
if the CPU wasn't switching between contexts?
I'm sure I could think of more - yes I know this might not make the most stable system out
there, but for games use, wouldn't that be a good compromise?
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
I think the answer then lies within a solid emulator. I think gamining companies would support this as well. It would take them far less time and money to make sure their game was programmed to operate within Wine than to write a Linux port. Not to mention the pool of open source volunteers at their disposal.
Perhaps, its about time the linux community work as a group on a single distro. That way one day the average person might use it. linux will remain a nerd project only used sometimes by companies.
Linux has what? less than 5%? A linux gaming platform would be less succesful than mac gaming, but never more successful than the Windows platform. After all, most people here 'can't' afford to buy software. So why would a studio like Westlake waste time on such a small market?
No, the key to making Linux a success is getting frikking copy and paste between applications to work, oh and maybe getting applications to understand the printers that I've got set up in CUPS, oh maybe when I click on a link in Thunderbird Firefox could open the page, oh and maybe the other n thousand things that Windows actually does right for the average user.
Disclaimer: I use GNOME/Linux is my primary desktop, day in day out, there are things I love about it, but the average user experience stinks. Creating a frikkin games distro isn't going to help.
John.
gentoo already has bootable game cds, one with americas army, and another with ut2003 demo
heard. Typical opensource person who has no contact with the real world...
Linux games are in a sorry state, you simply can't get professional quality free content (textures, etc) in the same way as anyone can hack up some db server or whatever (which probably points to a fundemental difference between programming (being "easy" and art, demanding "talent").
Imagine if the open source comunity were able to develop a couple of really good games, say just an FPS and an RTS, then release both windows and linux versions. The catch being to charge for the windows version, while releasing the linux version for free. If the games are good enough and don't focus on the activities of penguins, this would be incentive for windows gamers to try linux and see the benefits. I know that the games would then not be considered "free", but the developers could still release the game engines under the GPL or whatever.
Celebrities are like ads, if we all ignore them, they'll just go away.
.. and whilst Linux makes an amazingly robust, scaleable, fast and enjoyable platform for gaming, there simply aren't the games available. Can't have a games distro without the games!
A modded Xbox running XBMC is a whole lot more user-friendly than anything I've seen for Linux. The software is easy to configure and use, looks great on an HDTV. As I understand XBMC is a port of mplayer - but the customizations they've done for it to work with the remote control and adding a multi-media browser (for file selection) take it to the next level.
What would be really great is to port XBMC back to Linux, and meld it with MythTV for PVR functions. Supply the distro with preconfigured Emulators (just drop roms in a particular folder). I'm sure a distro like this would be something that many people would be interested it.
morpix, for example, which I am running right now.
Just think about it. You boot up Linux for the first time, and the way to activate functionality is to make your way through the "game". The first thing it should read when you boot it up:
It is dark. You will mostly likely be eaten by a Stallman.
>inventory
You are carrying:
man light
>man room
The room brightens. You are in a small chamber. A sign on the wall declares this room to be: init.
A door reads, "Daemon Restroom". A light glows from underneath it. You hear a toilet flush
A tall lanky fella steps out of the darkness. He wears a threadbare cloak and carries a large sack. He opens the sack, and grumbles something about "699". A large stilletto knife dangles from his belt.
People band together and volunteer their times and excellent programming skills for Linux system (kernel, drivers, free apps, etc) development... why don't developers band together and just make kick ass open source games?
I suppose creating a stable OS and fixing/improving code is more important, but still.. imagine something like an open source FPS that has all the right features and gameplay, or an RTS that has a more balanced system than the majority of others that are out.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
To discount the importance of entertainment on Linux is a mistake. Now, I did read a poster talk about legacy windows games, and that's all fine and dandy, but what about some new games? Not every game has to be the latest 3d engine to be any good, there's still room for 2d games which tend to also be much easier to write. (as examples of excellent, recent 2d games, I submit Metroid Fusion, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, and the like.) So, let's not just include Tux Racer, or the UT2004 demo, let's also write some 2d games and get them to work properly with a joystick / gamepad. Puzzle games also work well, as they appeal to a wide variety of an audience. Yeah, Tetris has been done, what what about slapping some fancy graphics on it? How about a clone of Dr. Mario? How about a clone of Madden Football, or any other sports games? How about a Wrestling game? (Laugh all you want, but they sell extremely well..)
Instead of being able to play windows games, why don't we give better alternatives to windows games?
Where's this guy's email - I'm signing up.
go on knock yourself out
Morphix
has a bootable , live cd based gaming distro
Mandrake gaming edition was a wash. These things just don't work well for the majority of users. I've been amazed at what I could get running with WineX, but it took hours of tweaking per game. I can't imagine a console emulator working much better. If you want to primarily play games, get Windows. It's just about the only thing it excels at ;-D
Ideally what Linux needs to do for game developers is offer them something more than what Windows gives them.
What could this possibly be? Imagine putting a game you just bought in your computer and it booting up with an OS which is minimalistic with regards to the game in question. Everything it needs and nothing more. Whatever overhead there might be in Windows is irrelevant, this OS is there and just does exactly what you as a game developer needs.
The system boots from the CD (ie knoppix), mounts your windows Hard Disk read/write for game saving, and loads the game. If it's a network game, it brings up your network interfaces too. Everything is detected, and the OS is configured the way the game needs it.
TO BOOT (no pun intended), you can also install the game as a normal windows game and run it from the windows environment if that's what you want, as a user.
Where could one obtain an operating system where they could build this bootable CD from and redistribute free of licensing fees??
What the OSS community who is interested should be focusing on is providing this technology for game developers, giving them a clean and robust migration path out of Windows. Then, miraculously, this framework can be put on top of your existing Linux install with no effort.
Call me crazy. ;)
"Give away the stone, let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and faded anchor." - Maynard James Keenan
Just port the f*cuking EverCrack onto Linux and I'm ready to migrate my desktop. :)
No seriously, that's the only thing that is keeping me and my wife back.
Bot Assisted Blogging
For video game consoles, yes. I feel that designing a gaming-based Linux distro would be a great idea.
For personal computers though, I think something along the lines of Transgaming's WineX program would suffice, as long as it could run everything. That way, if someone wanted to do more with their operating system than just hack and program, they could install WineX and play all of the games they wanted. It just depends on the user though. Given enough time and resources, I think having WineX and a Gaming Distro would be great, because I know a lot of hardcore gamers who hate Windows... and are only keeping it to play games on.
Long live Tux!
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
His point is to give kids a game and they will eventually get interested in the OS.
It doesn't work this way. Once a kid plays a game, once they are done with it, they are done with it. Turing on the TV is too easy. Getting another game is too easy. Surfing the Internet and chatting with friends/strangers are too easy.
And if the kid doesn't have access to these things, they won't have access to a computer to waste time looking into the OS part.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Mouse not working? Switch distros. Don't like your GUI? Switch distros. NIC not working? Switch distros. Neet DirectX 8.0 to play? Well, I guess you could call that a kind of distro switch, sure.
I don't know if you've noticed, but Linux gaming with very few exceptions falls into one of two categories:
And as long as it's a struggle just to get decent video card drivers released from the original manufacturers, what's never going to change.
Mike Hoye
http://www.loadux.com/freeservers.html I got mine last week, but the older 3.3 Now they are offering Knoppix 3.4! enjoy.
At school I know many people would perfer to run Linux but can't live with out their games. And if they are gonna need to run wondows for their games they might as well stick to one OS in general. Just laziness really. Annd these are Computer Science students so we are not tlaking about people who can't handle a console or UNIXness... just people who have no lives and don't shower. Linux has a big chance coming up though. The most common game on campus is Counter-Strike. If when Counter Strike 2 rolls around if Linux supports its it will provide an oppurtunity to people generally sick of Windows updates and crashes. But the key is the games above anything. If we get these guys using Linux at home for gaming they'll use it for everything else and then they'll move their families to it since they'll be able to support it and et cetera. This is the key and the balls is going to be dropped. Everyone wants to do enterprise first but I think the proper place to start is the basement of every house.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
There are probably over a million people running OS X now that have no idea they're running a Unix based OS :). So I think the chance of attracting people to an alternate OS remains slim.
In the end we need something that is easy to use and operate. Say what you want about Windows, but it's still much easier to learn than Linux. Especially if you want to do more than the standard user stuff (install software, etc).
www.lonseidman.com
pr0n!! Everyone knows that if you want something to succeed, it must first pass the pr0n test. Paper did it, photos did it, movies did it. Now linux has to do it.
:-)
So, maybe we need to have pr0n supported directly in the kernel?
I thought a few years ago Mandrake had a "gaming edition" that even came with a Linux version of "The Sims". I don't think that really mattered in the long run, though.
-=Android=- Chew's Eye Shop http://www.chewseyeshop.com
While the X-Box and PS2 may *run* Linux, they don't use Linux to run games. Porting BSD and/or Linux to a box is not the test of its suitability for games, so why even bring this up?
Its utter nonsense.
"Cart before the horse" was the best quote I saw here. I think getting Linux ready for a corporate desktop should be easier, and based on my little involvement with UserLinux (Bruce Perens' new distro), I think Linux is not quite ready yet for corporate. Close, but little things keep poping up.
OTOH, I think it's good that people keep working on Linux gaming. Parallel software development and all that. I just don't think it's on the critical path right now. :)
In Windows, there are only two modes: clone screen and make all the screens a single desktop. XFree86 (which, I'll consider for the point of argumentation a part of Linux) has much better support, and you can even make many seperate, independent desktops, one on each monitor(very useful for monitors that are of different sizes).
Though seemingly useless unless your budget is really tight, you can even hook up an extra USB keyboard and mouse, and have two people simultaniously use the same computer locally. More info here.
The number of things you can do with XFree86 and Linux is endless, and features are developing very fast. Haven't looked at Linux lately? Look again.
Of course, this assumes that "games" = 3D games.
google for morphix, it's a debian based, game-oriented live cd that includes nvidia drivers and about 40 games.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's all about the BZFlag.
Beware when you see a player named "Mad Killa"
I was working for Linux 3d project about 4 years ago, and back then it was not easy. The drivers were poor and X was crushing every 15 minutes. Don't know if it's better now, but...A Linux mobile phones just launched. Mobile phone is a natural handheld gaming platform, it will be PC analog of mobile gaming or better. If Linux phones really take off, they may propell Linux gaming as well. That is if someone developing game for Linux phone this game will run on the Linux PC as well, with minimal effort for porting. I myself indie wonna be and it seems to me Linux gaming have some promise. But if Linux gaming take off it will be low-budget titles mostly IMO...
warez. When stuff like Kazaa and the DivX codec is ported to linux, then you can expect people to take notice and switch. Games are nice, but they get old and can be expensive. As much as it pains me to say it, methods to illegally download movies, music, and games will dramatically increase the user base
From
John C. Dvorak's recent column in PC Magazine:
"All the wheel spinning about the superiority of this platform or that platform just boils down to the fun side of computing: games. No other single factor is so skewed."
I never upgrade my computer for any other purpose than to be able to play the latest games. And it seems that many Linux fans keep a Windoze box around just for gaming.
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
Sorry if I come across as a Mandrake fanboy but. . . I'm a Mandrake fanboy. As a distro, it's got several things going for it:
/more choices for sound cards.
1. Alsa comes with the kernel, this provides better
2. It's RPM based. Not everyone loves RPM but it does make software easier to install, especially for noobs and winex works quite well from an RPM.
3. 3-D support. Mandrake download comes with what is necessary for the DRI 3D cards and the boxed sets come with ATI and NVIDIA drivers that install at . . . install time. The option of installing 3D acceleration is an option when setting up X.
4. Unborked kernel. A few years ago, the stock Redhat kernel had some problems with winex and users had to use a different kernel for reasonable results.
5. Easy Distro to work with. Well, nobody said that Linux was cake & pie but Mandrake is friendlier than most.
Does this make Mandrake THE GAMING DISTRO. . . does it mean that other distros won't work? No, it's just my $0.02 and my opinion. Flame away.
a live cd tailored to games would be sweet. being tailored to games it would give better performance than a normal distro or windows since they're bloated by comparison. you'd have the option of running the game off the cd, thus effectively turning the pc into a console, or installing on the harddrive if you wished. and developers and hardware makers would be freed MS's control over the game related APIs
Sounds like a perfect plan to me. Let's get out of the buisness/enterprise market and sink all of our eggs into something more stable, like video games/consoles
If EA's catalog for the last 3 years could be played nativly in Linux, the desktop use would explode. Gamers could save the money given to M$ and spend it on games.
Games drive the PC hardware industry now. Nobody needs a 3Ghz processor for business apps. For M$ Office or Open Office a 1.2Ghz to 1.6Ghz is more than enough. The only reason for super fast processors and video cards is to play high end games (graphics workstations are different, I mean the standard home PC).
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Games don't attract people to an OS - an OS attracts game developers because of a target audience.
If Halo had come out for only Linux, do you think there'd be a million more Linux users? No, because nobody is going to ditch their OS just to try out one game. And no game developer is going to spend the millions it takes to make a AAA game on an OS with low yield.
Maybe, just maybe, if there was an excellent hobbyist community and development platform then as amatuer productions like FPS mods and the like get more and more mainstream Linux could get a bit of rise up, but nothing serious I'd imagine.
Linux should just keep the long slow road it's been on. Get prettier, get friendlier.
The Linux fanatics would insist that the games be free and open source too.
Until we all live in a cash-free utopia, don't count on this.
Isn't the Phantom going to do this and so much more?
Take a look at X-Box games that have been ported to the PC. Aside from running on the same processor architecture, DirectX provides a nice buffer for X-Box games to be retargeted for the PC.
Window managers, glibc, OpenGL, etc close the gap somewhat, but there's way too much hardware out there in PC land that isn't supported to its potential under most environments. Also, what about sound (some consoles do 5.1 surround, and others don't) and input devices (light guns, DDR pads, keyboards, mice may or may not be present)?
IMO, An gaming/multimedia-oriented OSS middleware/API similar to DirectX would go a *very* long way to help build better games in a platform-neutral manner; This is exactly what a project like this needs.
Morphix, grab the games iso in the downloads , burn to CD and off you go
Go for it. We'll download it and play it and if it is worthy of adoption we'll even help with the development. Nothing stopping you. Have fun.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
I see PC based gaming dying anyway. What's the friggin point of buying new GFX cards every 3 months? The PS2 is much more economical.
The MMORPG's generate a lot of money not through the software but through the subscriptions to the service required to play the game online. Give away the razor, sell the blades.
If an enterprising developer adds a Linux client and makes their money back plus a nice ongoing profit, we'll attract a lot of other game developers to Linux.
Free as in freedom for the OS, reasonably priced as in beer for the games.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
1) Identical hardware on all consoles
2) NO front end - put a disk in and that has your front-end; no Linux programmer will ever understand this one
3) Lots of NATIVE games that run PERFECTLY
4) Someone who is willing to invest and risk hundreds of millions of dollars
I have a question: Why? Is there a reason to do this? I understand that there are people out there who love Linux (a little too much really) but is there a gap in the market that needs filling?
I have a Xbox and I really do not see how it could be improved from a GAMER's perspective. The gamer does not care about the political issues. They just want to be able to pick from a huge selection of games at the store and to be able to put the disk in without ANY configuration or fuss.
It seems that there are a lot of people out there who do not realize how much work it would be just to get the platform together. It would take millions in development.
A console such as I describe above will NEVER be created by the OSS community - there would be no interest in anything other than the technical aspects of it. To make a glossy and perfectly working system will take a Microsoft or Sony behind it.
If we ever do see Linux on a console as a corporate product (and I think that is likely); then it will bear little resemblance to Linux as we know it and will not really be important.
I mean, who cares what OS it is running? I just want it to be cheap and to work EVERY TIME.
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
wait..did you just say XFree86 and developing fast in the same sentence? Best laugh I have had all day thanks :-)
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.
Linux hasn't made it into the enterprise yet, and its whhheeeyyyy ahead there against Linux as a home platform. A crackdown on MS piracy, Media players and P2P apps are more likely to get Linux into the home than games IMO.
Vacancy for signature. Apply within.
Its common knowledge that becoming a superior gaming platform is the best way for a platform to gain mainstream acceptance. Thats why the Amiga has become the dominant computing platform today.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
Quake3
UT2004
NeverWinter Nights
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
etc..
I'm glad the companies that have took the time, effort and capital required to port their games to this platform are getting their due respect. Apparently it was a waste of time.
I agree with a previous poster. Games won't help the OS, consistency will. Follow the apple design guidelines across the board and start coming up with consistency. That will save you, games will not.
I think we should wait the conclusion of the SCO case before investing new energies into anything Linux.
erm, sorry wrong site
I think the only two things I need for an Linux distro are Cinema 4d, and better games support. Oh sure I've got some other apps kicking around, but those are my must-haves. But on the other hand, it's not a big deal either - if I'm willing to drop $3000 (cdn heh) on a laptop, or $300 on the latest gaming system, $100 on a steering wheel, $70 on a joystick etc... (hasn't been one in awhile mind you) the $75 on Windows XP isn't really a huge deal. *But* if Linux had some must have games in its own right then it would be very tempting indeed, but everyone that makes a decent game for Linux ultimately converts to Windows anyways, joining the legions of great games already available.
But it will certainly be nice to have that choice one day - especially with $500 systems with works and windows on it - they'd probably be right down to $350 or so without having to pay the MS tax == a gaming computer for the price of a console.
wow... i always heard that people with sub 100,000 uid's can be pretty jaded and grumpy. you, my friend have been reading slashdot way too long. cheer up :)
I'm writing a GBA game right now in my spare time. So far, I've got about 4000 lines of code in the game itself and 7000 in tools (and I'm about to go throw another 3000 or so in tools.) I've spent several days on all of this, and spent about six hours stealing sprites from other games and making other placeholder art. Yes, placeholder art - I needed something to test my code with.
:P) will have spent just as long on art, if not longer.
I imagine, by the time this is done, I'll have spent several times as long working on levels as I have making code, and I imagine my artist (if I ever get one
And this is just a GBA game! I was involved in making Champions of Norrath. The company included:
Five programmers
One (overworked) level designer
Seven artists
And more than once, I ended up implementing stuff we didn't really need because the stuff we did need was waiting on the artists.
Art uses a TON of resources. Programmers, while still absolutely critical to a good game, just don't need as much time anymore.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
I concur. Let's get Linux, BSD, heavens... just get *nix to be the standard for everyday work. That's where the real fun and profit are. Once *nix is a standard, then games will come to it.
Linux et al. is founded on the desire to get the job done, and get it done efficiently. In the field of high-performance computing and server solutions, Linux (and *nix in general) has been and continues to be the tao. It's becoming so elsewhere, even in small office computing environments.
Patience, grasshopper. If you build the field, then the games will come.
Grow towards progress and keep wheel of enropy spinning, a spring of sustainability, just around the corner. A real carrot for a virtual donkey.
Game environments, however, must be seen as more than time wasters before viability is reached. One could argue that such a endpoint is unreachable from the current state of Game Company vs. Game Company (vs. Game Company) in persuit of the mightly downtime of teenagers, as brutal competition never results in sustained peace, only room to inhale before the next thrust. It is the open community that holds the knowledge of cooperation. It is much easier to sleep well in the company of friends, and the well rested are far more productive.
...but based on the tried and true formula that fueled the adoption of many other technologies, I think we should consider a PORN based distro. It worked for VCRs, DVD, cable TV, and broadband internet, why couldn't it work for Linux? :)
Chris
The kernel can definately be hacked so that it allows this, but this presents a huge security concern. Every user would have to have the same priveledges as root in order to do this, or the user must play as root.
The installation GUI looks way better than Suse6.2's from 5 years ago but...
It didn't set my sound card right : a soundblaster live !
I couldn't find a way to set up my ADSL connection
I had no access to my 5 NTFS partitions, full of data...
It's damn annoying...
Come on Guys...it's no use having plenty of free aps/games/great feature in the Linux distros if you spend days trying to make it work in the first place
In windows, everything you need to set up is in the configuration panel.
In KDE 3.1.9.... I don't say it's scattered all around the place..but I couldn't fix/find where to fix my adsl in more than 3 hours.
The first thing to develop is
the set up application (anaconda for Fedora, Yast for Suse...).
If it doesn't set your linux os cleanly on your Hd without failure...it's no use trying to add feature to the distros
What's the problem with PCs?
(everybody chimes in, a bored monotone)Crap hardware.
And how do consoles aviod this problem?
(again, a bored chorus)Standardized hardware.
And what's the difference between a PC running Windows XP, some crap video card, crap sound card, and strange Taiwanese motherboard, and Linux distro running the same thing?
(bored chorus)When it comes to games, nothing really.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
If the people who run around holding forth on what "we" need to do actually did a tenth of what they're calling for, we'd be "home and dry". For that matter, if they did anything useful, it would make all the difference.
Honestly, we've been hearing "What we need to do is make the bestest game ever and only sell it for Lunix and then everyone will use Linux!!!" for years. And what "we" have to show for it is Tuxracer and 500 libraries in search of developers.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Linux games have always had a very me-too nature. There are emulators for old systems, old commercial games that have had the source code made available, lots of little hobbyist remakes of Tron Light Cycles and Boulder Dash and some C64 games. There's some other stuff, too, but not much.
Back when the Apple IIgs was dying, and I paid attention to that system, there was a similar pattern. Oh so many programmers wanted to prove that the gs was an awesome system, so what did they do? They wrote clones of games that were available for other systems. Really, this was cool for the people who only owned a gs, because they couldn't play those games otherwise. But as an outsider looking in you saw all these versions of Tetris and Lunar Lander and so on. Some were spiffy, yes, but wow did it make the gs seem stale. The Amiga followed the same road. It would have been much better for the programmers of those systems to lean hard on creativity rather than getting in a pissing contest with other computers.
Isn't linux missing something called DirectX? Possibly something to include for a forthcoming release.
I would say that I could easily switch 15% of my customers from windows to Linux Desktops if these apps were NATIVELY available in Linux and had perfect interaction with the windows version:
Act!
Quickbooks
WinFax (client)
AOL
Get the companies that make these programs to make shrink wrapped Linux versions and I'll have them up with Mandrake 10 in a day or two.
It's the APPS, stupid.
And please - to all you pointy heads out there - I know that there are workarounds, compatibility layers, converters, etc. If your first reaction was to point this out, then YOU are one of the people who are part of the problem. Get a clue; users don't grep. And they never will. Understand that and STFU.
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
While many more games come out for the PC, there are are fair few that make it to the Mac: UT2004, Halo, Neverwinter Nights, Shadowbane, Everquest, Ghost Recon. And more. Yet Macs still have a 3% marketshare. It'll take more than just having games, or Macs would have been in a better position already. Mostly, it'll take not having Windows on your new computer already, but also an interface with a consistent metaphor that never requires the command line, etc.
--
$tar -xvf
or it could be that programmers use computers more :P
but let's not think too hard shall we
I completly agree with you
Is what appeals to the lowest common denominator.
Look at the most popular things on television. Sports, bad news, and bad drama. Animal-like behaviour chasing a ball or beating each other up in a ring, and something bad happening to someone else so the audience can feel better about their own lives.
In "`puters", as my cousin would say, the keyboard is still intimidating to a lot of people who wouldn't normally deal with a word processor or similar application on a regular basis.
Think about when businesses first forayed into using computers in the workplace. I'm guessing that most people who had to use one were the same people who'd done the typing on a type-writer in the past.
People are animals. An animal doesn't like to be intimidated, made to feel stupid, feel that it's not in control, or treated like other animals.
Look at the console controller. It's a simple thing with few buttons and the interface is as little as a pictorial menu and simple text. It allows people to believe they're in control.
Look at the popular games. They're violent and vaguely sexual, which makes them fun and if we can not only get more games into Linux that have those qualities, but also market them to the masses, then we'll probably get people interested.
The next step is make Linux and those games so easy to install on the animal's computers that they just need to insert a cd into their computers and reboot them, and _nothing_ _else_.
Don't make them type something. Windows came pre-installed and they didn't have to type anything to use it - remember, keyboards intimidate. This makes them feel like computers are easy.
"That point-and-clicky thingy is all I need to start a game that my son installed."
(Another fascinating aspect of the animal to remember - even if they know that their children can install programs, maintain their computer, and look after the equipment to a far more advanced degree than the parent ever could, most parents will not let their kids touch the computer to do anything other than play a game "in case s/he breaks it".)
In their minds, even an animal can put something into a slot, and to them putting a CD in a ROM is their control over their computer.
Sell to the animal in people and you'll make a mint.
Sell to the intellectual and you'll probably go broke.
In my opinion, here's what a game-based distro needs:
Hardware Support: It needs to instantly figure out what 3D card you have and set it up properly. I pray that someone can do this.
Game Support: It not only has to have plenty of games, it's got to have plenty of GOOD games. Gamers don't want snake or something, they want Unreal Tournament, or Quake. America's Army would be a damn good thing to include.
Polish: It's gotta be awesome looking, and make them want to use Linux over Windows. Hopefully taking advantage of 3D hardware. Even the setup has to be cool, simple, and animated. Something gamers won't be afraid to install on their computer. Remember, Windows comes FREE with most computers, and supports all games, Linux has to have some kind of advantage. This advantage is to appeal directly to the gamer.
Brand Identity: A lot of people identify Linux as a server operating system, and some believe it acts like DOS. This distro needs to use it's own name EVERYWHERE. It's gotta be remembered as being kickass for running games, and it's gotta say, somewhere "Powered by Linux".
Pippin.
Remember the short lived Apple console? That's what happens when a company without many resources tries to enter the game industry. Although this isn't a console approach, I doubt it would end in success. People won't flock over to Linux just to play games. Nobody ever buys a Mac for gaming.
Linux already has a market niche and is associated with being 'for nerds.' It's going to take a serious overhaul to try to do this, and its not even guaranteed to succeed.
...
Off to Whitehouse.com now...
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
:wq
I've been using Linux as my sole home desktop environment for years now. Since the very begining we have been hearing (and chanting) claims about how Linux needs game to become mainstream. Whats interesting is Linux now *has* games. I think a games focused distro would be smart, but certainly won't fix (or hide) the number of other areas in which Linux distro still need to mature.
Linux isn't experiencing a high rate of adoption because its still too hard to use. We know this. No amount of games is going to fix that and [name your favorite distro here] are making slow but relentlessly steady headway (see Microsoft cringe).
My point is there is no single solution at this point. Linux needs Users Friendly standards from the layout to the message dialogs, application naming conventions, install/uninstall and system configuration. Thats a lot detail and involves a lot of seperate pieces. Standardising is also FUCKING BORING WORK. So don't expect it to happen as quickly as some other things.
Games are cool, but its not that simple.
Quack, quack.
Ninnle Linux!
Mandrake's failed attempt aside, a "games distro" is a great idea. IF all you want to do is let Linux users play some new games. However, gaming has nothing to do with business productivity tools or general purpose desktop use. So we get more gamers using linux. How is that gonna affect ANYONE outside the gaming industry? Not to mention the technical problems?
First of all, the "game cd" would need to be a DVD. You can't cram a "modern" game onto a single CDR anymore, much less a fully-compatible linux distribution along with it. Second there's the seek times involved with playing a game solely from a DVD-ROM drive. Thirdly there's the hardware configuration to be thought of; KNOPPIX doesn't work on half the computers I try it on, and most of the time the POS OEM computers people buy need their video and monitor drivers pre-loaded or they'll never boot up in windows!
Not to mention the business problems with this idea. The game developing companies by and large use DirectX to make their games, and trying to *SELL* a game to somebody using Wine to render fonts wrong, not allow anti-cheats to work, break sound card compatibility, etc is not going to fly. Trying to convince them all to rewrite half their games to use OpenGL isn't going to be very well recieved either.
Ok, ok, assuming we had an open Linux gaming console that somehow worked well (on TVs as well as CRTs and LCDs) you'd need to get people to buy that console. You'd need to have the latest ATI video card or something compatible to play games like the new Half-Life and Doom. You'd need a speedy processor (>=2GHz) as well as DVD drive, ethernet, hard drive, and plenty of RAM. You'd need to make it *quiet*. And you'd need to make it $300 or cheaper.
THEN you'd have to get people to buy the fucker. You know how many people are loyal to brand names like Nintendo, Sony, and now Microsoft? How many titles do you think they'll have to port before people decide it's a worth-while investment? 10 titles? 20? Assuming they're even good games?
Look, i'm pro Open Source. I was even hopeful that the Indrema would work out (heh). But Linux is not a magic wand that can fix anything. If you want to start a company that puts out an "open" Linux platform, be my guest. But just starting a new distribution ain't gonna do but jack and shit, and jack left town.
We need a work based distro that contains all of the games with a Master Boss Key.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
I have been asking this one since the day I saw my first Knoppix CD.
Why can't we build games where everything you need to run the game is right on the CD?
There are already Linux distros out there that boot into MAME. Why can't we create some type of standard that is the "whole package" answer to DirectX?
As long as your hardware is compatible, you just work. You boot from the CD and play that game and that game only. We can create a standard bootable game distro and port games inside that distro.
Once you have it running in a "fixed environment" of a bootable CD (you know every piece of code on the CD and its version, so you are in total control of compatibility and run environment), you can expand to get the same game to run in a general Linux environment.
Would it be a PITA to reboot my PC just to play a game? Yeah. Don't I already do something similar with console games? Yeah. Aren't I basically just turning my PC into a fixed environment like a console? Yes, but it is an environment where the developer has total control over the run environmnet.
Am I smoking crack here or does this make at least some sense?
See The New Adventure Shell. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The killer app I think that may have potential to be front runner is Cube. www.cubeengine.com It's not super pretty but its really got a lot of potential, and it really illustrates a lot of the strengths of the open source model. It has innovative features, an ingame map editor for instance.
There should be a unified development tool/library that includes them all. E.g. I can install "blah" and boom I got 3d graphics, sound support, joystick/keyboard support, timers/interrupt/callback etc...
Okay then... I'll just take OpenGL, SDL, and ALSA, put them in one Debian meta-package, call it Universal Games API or "blah" or whatever makes you happy, and there you go.
SDL, OpenGL, ALSA all solve one problem well. They also work together well. Writing OpenGL apps using SDL is simple.
I'm not really sure what you want or why you want it. Yes, all of these libraries are "UNIX philosophy". That means that not only do they do one thing well, they are designed to be easy to make work with other programs that do other things, so you can easily get one program that does both.
What more do you want?
The enemies of Democracy are
There are already a lot of cool games for Linux IMHO. For example, check out Savage from S2games.com. The problem I've encountered is with VIDEO DRIVERS. Specifically, I've got an ATI 9800 class card. If you check out the Linux forum over at http://www.rage3d.com you can see what I'm talking about. Assuming that the drivers will install okay on your distro of choice, one still has to content with decreased performance, screen artifiacts and other bugs. The 3D gaming video drivers need a lot of polish and they need to be included with the main distros. Then, joe user can install Linux, install a game CD and be off to the races. Today once you install Linux you have to track down the drivers and wrestle with them to get them installed!
Windows got in to the office because it was NOT perceived as a "game" OS.
Remember "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."?
Soon to be replaced by "Nobody ever got fired for saving their company money." (by NOT paying the IBM premium?)
As Windows gets gamier and gamier (, I love the British expression,) it is perceived as less and less of a serious OS. Face it, its broken adn it can't be fixed. Its not a "serious" OS.
IBM's OS died from trying to compete by tying hardware in with the software when they'd given the store away to the clones.
Mac OS was never in the running (except that X-Serve running OS X has a shot.)
Windows is losing mind and marker share. WHY?
Linux is now in the running to win the marbles.
Don't blow it by running games.
Linux is poised to conquer the office PRECICELY because its NOT a game platform and its cheaper than having a bunch of MSCE flubbing things.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Lots of games are already available for linux, especially considering its relatively small marketshare and memory optimization not intended for super hi-res 3d gaming.
I've got Quake 3, UT 2k4, and Americas Army all sitting on my computer right now. Things are getting there, it just takes time.
Jesus Christ, you mean that all that's holding back Linux from the desktop is a script to make some goddamned links under "My Computer"?!!!!
Well, I'm a games programmer, I've also been using computers for over 20 years, and I suspect that the key to Linux is NOT a games-based distro. My thinking is as follows:
Hardcore gamers go where the games are. That is currently either Windows or consoles. Casual gamers can't use and probably won't learn Linux. I mean, I have trouble using Linux, and I'm the one writing the games, how do you think the poor punter walking into EB or wherever is going to respond to trying to learn it? And do you think they're going to do it just for games? Hmm...
As many other posters have pointed out, Windows didn't become a decent gaming platform for many years, and many iterations of DirectX. Yes, there were good games, but the biggest things started happening with DX. Think back beyond that to the DOS gaming days. That is pretty much where we are with Linux right now.
Is there a solution to this? I'm not sure. Some sort of DirectX-a-like might help games development, but the usability and marketing and so on all have to work before people will know that you CAN play games on Linux, and that they WILL work. Getting them to know what Linux is might also be a good start...
Game dev and music blog
I'm gonna agree with you, mostly, but (and there has to be a but ;) I don't think that you just outa the blue one day decided, "Hey, I'm gonna edit movies!"
;)
I'm certain that there was a learning curve, and for some of the higher end NLE's, it's pretty damn steep, and for me, "too much work." But then again, I've used Linux for a long damn time, and *to me* it's actually easier to set up a wireless card under Linux than a Mac(*). So, in the end, what "too much work" means is different for us; just because you are used to one way doesn't mean that different == useless.
And if you can afford 10k$ + 1.5k$ a year for Shake, give the Linux geek down the street a couple of hundred bucks to set up your cluster
(*) Granted it was a Proxim Skyline w/ crappy drivers.
What ever happened to these games? I d/l them both, and they not only booted up, and played the games, but played them well on several computers I ran them on.
I think in order for this to work, we need the following steps:
1. Release Linux like a Game CD you'd put in a Playstation or XBox. I often have to reboot to play a lot of games on my PC anyway, because of Window's poor memory management. Things still work better after a reboot, even in XP.
2. Have it save game files to floppy/USB flash card, or a partition on the hard drive. That way, the Gamer can carry the CD with him, or use a friends, but the game saves will be stored in his USB or floppy, just like a memory stick in a Gabecube, for instance.
3. On boot, just like Knoppix, configure the setup, then goes right to the GUI.
4. The GUI has a menu, maybe like:
a. Play game
b. Run GAIM/XMMS
c. Tweak settings
d. Redetect USB/Floppy saves
e. Advanced configuration
f. Really advanced (aka Linux with some GUI)
g. l33t 4dv4nd0rz (aka XTerm)
x. Shut down, eject CD, reboot
See, things like "f" and "g" will introduce kids to Linux like the command cheat codes and easter eggs in games now.
5. We're Open Source. All we need is for people to start thinking like gamers who can program, and we can turn stuff from Egoboo and bzflag (some of the native choices) into some really sweet FPS. Stop trying to copy what's popular, innovate!
6. Since Open Source is not a great marketing engine (at least yet), we'll have to go by word of mouth. The best way to do that is to make something so unique, that big name companies who worry about stuff like parental ratings and market share couldn't compete. Maybe have a FPS with incredible gore and violence, and maybe nudity. A very addicitve strategy or simulation game, like Civilization, Sim City, or something... but something that hasn't been done before, like My First Brothel.
Even better, start a secret campaign banning the game. Get it blacklisted by a church group. That will put it into the limelight real quick. Well, okay... maybe that's too far. The Republicans might denounce Linux as "spreading immorality to the youth." Forget I said that.
But you have to think like a marketing person. You have to:
1. Create need
2. Fulfill need
3. Sustain need
And I agree, games for Linux would really drive it. I mean, come on, who needs an ATI Radeon 9200 for MSOffice? Games have DRIVEN industries, and Linux should not be counted out.
But, and here's the clincher: is the Linux community ready to be popular? Remember when AOL let users onto Usenet? Think hard about this path.
So what needs to be done if you want to win the gamer crowd over is to indicate Linux does something that Windows simply cannot do. I know, there's the infinite flexibility and infinite stability factors, but last I checked, a gamer isn't *really* concerned with that - the gaming box is a gaming box (oppose workstation and server), so you don't need to be up all the time, barring the occasional system explosion that they seem to not mind putting up with. (Note, this is perspective.)
This sig no verb.
that might get people intersted in linux... ...of course better documentation and knoledge bases would get even more people running tux
While the author on Linuxworld has unrealistic ideas about the work necessary to make a "killer" game (let alone a distro with multiple "killer" games) for Linux, he is ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.
For Linux to break MS's stranglehold on the consumer desktop market, the best thing it can do to compete is to offer backwards compatibility with a plurality of Windows games, as well as several Linux-only games.
Market realities have worked against Linux games in the past, and continue to be the biggest obstacle to Linux's success in the home desktop segment. It costs anywhere from 3 to 10 million dollars to make a "good" game. The destination platform for a game is largely decided by the publisher, and that decision is largely based on existing market penetration. Even now, fewer PC games are made, as publishers migrate their products to console.
There is some good news, however. With commonplace multi-platform releases, and Sony's PS2 dev software designed for use within Linux, it makes sense for a developer to write a Linux port, use it for internal testing, and possibly release an unsupported version for Linux gamers. This way, titles for PS2 (or PS3) could see Linux ports in a similar way that titles for Xbox see Windows ports. Unfortunately, for this to be adopted by developers 2 things have to happen. First they need a comprenehsive IDE, toolset, and game API (at least a DirectX-equivalent, but better yet middleware) written by Linux developers and/or Sony, that eases both development of PS2 games and their Linux ports. Secondly, publishers need some sort of incentive to allow the Linux ports to be released to the public. This is especially difficult, given widespread publisher fears of piracy and the current low market penetration of Linux. In fact, the only power that can convince publishers to release for Linux would be Sony, which would have many of the same reservations as the publishers (it is, itself, a 1st party publisher!). Still, Sony has many reasons to push Linux. It would pose little or no threat to the Playstation's current market dominance. If successfully adopted as a consumer platform, Linux would ultimately weaken Microsoft AND the Xbox. One of the most common developer complaints against Sony, programmability and support, would be forgotten. And through its provision of open-source middleware and perhaps closed-source game development tools for that middleware, Sony could license its own development solutions to independent developers for Linux, bypassing the 3rd party publisher middlemen, gaining another source of revenue, and controlling a newly popular PC platform for gaming (essentially providing a game QA/certification position comparable to what Microsoft provides for Windows games). By pushing Linux game development, Sony could kill several birds with one stone.
Didn't a Games centric focus wipe out Commodore Amiga? I loved the Amiga, great little platform/os back in the day. But all Commodore seemed to promote was how great it was for games. Doubt many businesses will put support behind something that is looked at as primarily a game machine.
This week's article compares Windows and Linux, and he concluded that GAMES are what's keeping Linux from going mainstream...
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
Online RPGs are perfect for the open source model of charging for server access instead of the game itself. Why not make games like this?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
I dont run Linux, in fact I've never tried Linux. Linux does nothing for me that Windows XP doesnt already do, at least easier if not better. Windows however, does a lot that Linux doesnt do - namely run all the games, and all straight out of the box.
All I need a PC for is surfing, email, MP3, and games. Linux can do all of that except the games - at least not nearly all of them and very rarely straight out of the box.
A stripped down linux that is optimised for running games would likely find it's way onto a partition of my hard drive. Need to have enough games working running better than they do on Windows though.
Bullshit, you obviously don't know any hardcore gamers. If you're willing to drop $300+ on a video card, there is no way in hell you would settle for onboard sound (not having a dedicated soundcard means your CPU deals with it, which means a framerate drop) or a cheap soundcard. Most gamers who are willing to shell out a lot of money for hardware realize that you get exactly what you pay for; and buy accordingly.
As an interesting side note, The subject of my post was initally "Score: -1, Talking Out of Ass" however /. seems to strip out the string "Score:" and anything following it.
I run Windows XP and find it adequate for what I do. The only reason I haven't installed Linux on any of my machines is games - the main reason I use Windows is for games, and if Linux could play all of the games that Windows does, then I'd switch in a heartbeat. For a vast majority of my gamer friends, this is also the case. If Linx could play games, I'm sure quite a large number of your non-geek/non-techie people would start using Linux over Windows.
Valid points, to a degree....
I do not care how customizable Linux is. I don't care what distros are out there. I want to use Linux to get work done.
Same reason I started with Linux -- it was more practical. At some point I swayed into the whole Free Software mindset and actually put up with some workarounds just because I felt it was the right thing to do. No longer. I'm back to using Linux because it's just easier.
I've been thinking of getting Shake, the high end compositing package. It's no longer available for NT. It's only OSX, Irix, and Linux now.
It may have an XP version at some point...
I downloaded Mandrake, because I heard it was easiest to use. I partitioned in advance, burned it, and installed it. It went off without a hitch.
Installation is a strongpoint of Mandrake's.
When I tried to setup my wireless network card, it wasn't automatically recognized and installed. I couldn't find documentation on how to get it recognized and installed. No links to device drivers. Nothing.
Nor was the wireless card in my Thinkpad recognized by Win2K. I had to do lots of Googling and hunting around on the IBM site to find drivers. The modem was recognized without a problem in 2K. Under Linux (RH9, specifically) the wireless 'just worked'. The modem required a download of the Lucent rpm and a rebuild. Then it worked. The ease of installation was a little better for Linux in this case.
At this point, I wanted to quit. For some reason, I didn't.
I felt the same way about Win2K. It was a PITA to locate all the drivers (video, sound, power management, DVD playing, etc..
I used a different card, that was automatically recognized. When I went to setup the ESSID, WEP key, etc, I was presented with lots of options in the network setup. I didn't know what they meant, nor did I suspect they were important.
That's odd. The network setup for the Linux partition was pretty much the same as the Windows version.
In the end, just as the past 3 times (usually every two years) I've installed Linux, I've been annoyed and bogged down with learning useless information that "Just Works" in other operating systems.
And again I felt the same way about Win2K. For example, try getting DivX to play properly under 2K. It required downloading of the DivX program and a fee. The CD Writer required extra software (and a fee). There was no word processor. There was no remote desktop software. There was no graphics software ( I don't count Paint as a graphics program). Updates required a minimum of four reboots for various service packs and "must reboot to complete" packages. Hell, even the digital camera wasn't working properly. Under Linux it was a simple matter of "yum -y update; reboot; yum install OpenOffice". Everything else was installed by default.
Linux does not need a games distro. It needs to be easy to use. I don't care how close it is. If I have to use google to find a device driver, it's too much work. If I have to edit a text file, it's too much work. If I have to manually compile programs, it's too much work. I'm lazy, because there's no reason I shouldn't be.
And this was just for the laptop. Have you ever tried configuring Windows for commodity hardware (i.e., not bought from a big name manufacturer?). It's near impossible to find drivers that work properly. Under Linux most stuff "just works". Edit text files? Ever try to clean up spyware and adware from a Windows machine before Adaware existed? You're talking serious registry hacking there. Let's not forget all the little tweaks to the TCP/IP stack under Windows that requires, that's right, more registry hacking. Under Linux these are text files in plain English. Now I'm not saying that you need to mess with the registry for everything under Windows, but it's unfair to claim that it's easier than having to edit a text file.
The key to Linux's mainstream success is offering the same services of other operating systems rather than offering services only a few people give a damn about.
Linux is a lot bigger than some may realize. It's getting mainstream.
You cant sell a video card with no games. Duh, so why would you have a linux specific video card when theres no linux specific games?
I think MMORPGs are perfect for the open source model, you charge 5-10 bucks a month to everyone, give away the code and the game for free, and you can actually profit.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Linux will be able to be an excellent gaming platform. A common problem with games is that they want everything of the PC. Consider a user that has what OSes installed on their hard drive. Now, consider that the game can install its stuff to the hard drive (under the OS or from a LiveCD) but relies on the LiveCD to afford the minimum required of OS bloat and the game to run. The game would NOT require a window manager and all sorts of junk like that (and if it did, it could use its own).
That is a solution... And by the time that this happens LiveCDs will be very trivial to produce.
They ported closed source games. We are talking about creating new open source games to compete with closed source games, on an open source platform. I think it can work, you could easily design good open source games, in fact by reusing the engine, instead of reinventing the wheel each time open source games could have better graphics and play mechanics than closed source games.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
I'll probably repost a derivative of this, next time a post asks "How do we get Linux mainstream?"
But we *don't* want to get Linux mainstream.
not the other way around. Games by themselves won't make people come to the platform, and no developer will sink the (millions of) dollars it takes to build a game if there's no chance the investment will be worthwhile. Look at the Mac: it had MS beat, hands down, on user interface and desktop publishing tools that took advantage of the nifty commonality of a standard GUI. The problem being, of course, that Apple discouraged people from buying the Mac by pricing it well above PCs and keeping it a very closed platform. We naturally know how that turned out. Now, while people still use Macs for Photoshop and other desktop publishing tasks today, the bulk of the work is done on Windows PCs and THE EXACT SAME SOFTWARE (ported to the PC). This isn't because the desktop publishing software came to Windows and the legions of rabid Mac users clamoring for PCs raised Windows out of the dirt and made it king. The developers behind said software said, "Gee, there's a lot of people using PCs and Windows. Maybe we should try to sell them some software..." Games under Windows were, similarly, a joke and, more importantly, a huge pain in the ass until Windows95 and, more importantly, DirectX. This is true. But what is also true is that developers STILL TRIED to put those games out on Windows. Remember WinG? Or having special DOS BOOT disks to run your favorite resource-intensive game that Windows was muscling out of CPU time? Yeah, me too. I was king of autoexec.bat and config.sys for this very reason. Microsoft eventually came around and admitted that it was hard for developers to write games under Windows and gave them DirectX. Notice a pattern here? Microsoft, if nothing else, has gone to great lengths to strike a balance between keeping the PC as open a platform as possible (Windows runs on nearly 100% of the hardware out there -- granted, a lot of hardware is designed with Windows in mind wrt. driver support, but it's the same problem of the installed base...) and making it easier and easier to use. This is one thing they have done QUITE correctly. Now, on the other hand, being a CS geek and general practitioner of most CS philosophy/ideology, I think that Unix (and Linux, by extension) is more PHILOSOPHICALLY correct in its approach to computing. It's much more modular, security and multiple users have been in place since the beginning, and stability generally trumps features. This is good. What is bad is how hard it has been, historically, for people that don't know what they're doing to get going in Linux. And, if you're Joe User who just wants to download pictures off your camera and look at pictures of girlies on the web, it's more trouble than it's worth because Windows, for all its faults, does it out of the box. Linux needs to get into the business. Into the small to mid-size business. Vendors need to push the point that, in general, you will pay through the nose to get Windows installed legally on 3 computers in your home office. Price and user control is still king in this game (hell, it's why the PC won), but people need to be convinced that it's cheaper and just as good. Better, even -- who cares if it's just as good? If they have to spend a lot of time to learn it, then, guess what? It's not cheaper; people value their time above most other things. And, sadly, while OOo is just as good as (I use it every day), it's not *better* than Word. My thoughts, anyway. C
The Sun is proof that we can't even do fire properly.
Look at it this way. Whether anyone likes it or not, Microsofts strongest point is that it does everything well enough when used by a competent user. Even Microsoft doesn't quite "get it". By making different versions (think Media Center edition) they just dilute the bloodlines. Why would anyone opt for specialization?
Why make a gaming distribution? Wrong path in my opinion. Make all distributions have what it takes. Specialization is exactly what is HURTING linux adoption.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
It seems to me that a solid cross-platform API is worth two gaming distros. As it is, I can whip up a little demo in SDL and run it under linux or windows or a host of other operating systems. I think if we could get good industry support for OpenAL and OpenGL to supplant less compliant libraries, that a good API like SDL could serve the purpose rather than devoloping a whole distro around games.
Passionately pushing pixels since 8086 =)
You could use code from other projects without paying millions to license code. The graphics engine, the physics, all the difficult stuff would have already been done right by someone else so you'll never have to reinvent the wheel.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
I really don't see how a game-oriented distro does much to persuade people to switch to Linux. It's just a way of saying, "Hey, there are more good Linux games than you thought!" To which, gamers will respond, "That's cool, but there are still more games on Windows, right? And I still can't play X or Y on Linux, right? And even if it runs under Wine, I can't call the publisher and ask for tech support, right?" Until you can find good answers to those questions, forget it.
Get the ISO
The morphix site
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
yeah, adding punkbuster to bf1942 was just part of some grand evil conspiracy to lock linux users out.
right.
punkbuster is actually very weak (though they are getting better). when i checked recently, punkbuster didn't even integrity check itself internally!
fwiw some cheat detection is better done directly from the engine or game itself, there are a number of very simple generic exploits that punkbuster doesn't look for, and others that it can't catch from the way punkbuster runs.
and uh, you can already change graphics drivers to allow wallhacks -- you don't need an emulator to do that. hell, videocard _vendors_ have released official wallhack drivers. pb won't catch those. so much for "trusted" environment huh?
the only truly 'trusted' environment will be one running only select specifically authorized vendor videocard drivers, running inside a TCPA protected vm. but that doesnt exist yet.
Not to be a troll, but this is why there are operating systems like OSX. Granted, you'll have to be running Apple hardware, but luckily for you Apple hardware + Apple software usually works happily together.
Linux is still a hobbyists or a computer nerds system, in my opinion. I'm not entirely sure we need to push it into the mainstream. I suspect MS will do all it needs to disenfranchise a lot of it's more technically savvy users in the next few years, and quite a few of it's non-technical users. The popularity and accesibility of OSX, as well as the customizable, tinkering community (could apply to OSX as well) of Linux will reap the benefits of an increased user base.
Its great, but it requires the intervention or sponsorship of the hardware manufacturers to recognise the market for it to succeed, they will need to create something that impresses and encourages support from those already organising this kind of thing, maybe gaming clan techs can offer some insight.
lol. oh c'mon, mod this up!
Why doesnt the OSS community collaborate with Apple to make a robust *well marketed* alternative to DirectX for *nix? It would use OpenGL of course for the graphics. The rest of it might even be able to come directly from some existing projects.
This would be a win for Apple and the community as then game developers could target one platform that would encompass Mac, Linux, BSD etc. Perhaps the combination of all these platforms together would be a big enough number to start convincing game companies to pursue the *nix market.
The key here would be convincing Apple to throw in the marketing. Without marketing, it would probably never take off. And come to think of it, maybe it would be impossible to convince Apple since they really arent trying to sell gaming machines. idunno, just a thought that seems to make a lot of sense in a lot of ways.
I'll make music for a game for free just to get exposure, I know lots of artists who will draw artwork for open source games just to get into the industry. You could easily get free art and free music, you could even get free code. The hardest part would be marketing, making the game fun, fixing bugs that no one wants to fix, finding beta testers, and paying the bills to host the game.
You don't understand, that open source once the code is written, once the artwork is made, or the music is created, many games will be able to reuse code from other games, music can also be reused, or remixed, etc.
You don't need to pay as much when you never have to reinvent the wheel.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
re:Arrogant Advocacy -- ever tried OpenBSD?
An easy parallel... Imagine having never used windows before. You go and install a version of Windows that doesnt have drivers built in for your wireless card. You would have the same amount of trouble. Good luck finding the driver without google as well. I have had more problems with drivers while installing Windows than Linux the majority of the time. Knoppix autodetected ALL of the hardware on my laptop, while I had to copy network drivers (among many others) to a floppy to make the system usable under Windows.
Your problem is that you don't want to learn..."I've been annoyed and bogged down with learning useless information that "Just Works" in other operating systems"...BAH!!!
To each their own...Linux is a hell of a lot easier to use for me, and I've been using Windows 5 times as long. How we get Linux mainstream is have it preinstalled on cheap computers targeted towards new computer users. People are too stubborn and stuck in their ways to change for the most part.
its already there.
We already have all sorts of high level and low level librarys for game programming. For example, OpenGL,SDL and PyGame cover the graphics side of it. So what we don't have a equivalent of an all in one set of librarys like DirectX, thats not the real problem.
We even have 3d engines such as crystal space.
What are we missing? The artists. More specific, high quality open source art - 3D models and animation, textures, sprites.
If we can get some good artists on the GPL bandwangon we can be on our way.
It might be too late for anyone to see this comment but just in case... what I would like to see is a linux distro specifically tailored (or with specific instructions) for people who currently have Windows on an NTFS partition consuming 100% of the drive. I love Linux, use it on 3 systems at work, but when I got my new laptop from IT it came with XP pre-loaded on an NTFS partition. I would love to put linux on it. Dual boot at first and slowly migrate over to all Linux.
However what's holding me and I think many people back is the uncertainty here. For instance, if I were to repartition my drive from the installer would it resize an NTFS partition without blowing data away? As far as I know it would not, correct?
That being the case, what is the simplest (lowest risk) way of creating a dual boot setup on a laptop?
People are willing to pay $10 a month fees to pay everquest and games like it. The key to success is the online RPG, and the realtime strategy game. This is what makes the most money, this type of game is what is most compatible with the open source model, and these are the type of games which attract the hardest of the hardcore gamers who are willing to do anything to play the game.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Getting some 'Killer Games'
How long has HL2 and Doom3 been in development? 5 years each?
So how long would it take an OSS project to make a killer game like that? 10 years.
It's not going to happen for free.
-- taking over the world, we are.
Friend of mine recently decided he wanted to fiddle 'round with Linux. First thing he tried to do was Debian. After futzing around trying to get X working for about a week he gave up and wandered off.
He came back with RedHat 9 which did do a pretty good job of getting X working, but it was godawful slow. I suspected he needed the latest nvidia driver off their web site. He wandered off to get that, then wandered into the twisty maze of package dependencies he needed to get it working. RedHat could take some pointers from Debian in the package dependency arena (That's why I kicked them to the curb last time I used the distro.)
My friend wanted to be able to play assorted video in Linux too. Pretty sensible. So he started looking into mplayer. Now, I know there are a lot of legal issues surrounding mplayer, but it's kind of difficult to explain those issues to someone who's used to just having the ability to do all that stuff in Windows. He wants to just install the package and have it work. He doesn't want to have to locate DLLs in 18 different countries and compile code that may technically be illegal here in the States to get it working.
So there's step 1. If I can slap a Linux bootable CD into pretty much any system and have it boot reliably, detect all my hardware reliably, and provide accelerated 3D and play video without me having to compile a kernel I will consider step 1 a success.
Step 2 is providing the libraries necessary to write the software for Linux. Look at all the major consoles and Windows itself and what do you see? Those corporations sell a SDK to people who want to develop software on their platform. Do the software libraries that are available for Linux compare favorably to the ones for the other platforms? I'm pretty happy with the Linux application libraries, but games have specialized needs.
If you provide those two things, you've got the beginnings of a cross-platform gaming environment that a lot of gaming companies should find very interesting.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Linux will never be successful if it only makes games which already are made on other systems. No one wants another grand theft auto, and if you are going to make a racing game which i think is the worst type of game to make, it should be done better than any other racing game, have more features, and be the most fun.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Linux is free. It can be included on a bootable disk with your game. So while hardware remains an unkown, at least your game can run on a known kernel, known libraries, optimised X server etc. Swap space (if needed) can be automatically found in Linux partitions or Windows swap files.
Managing players' saved data is the biggest problem here. A nice solution might be to save it over the internet to central servers. Now they can load their saved games from anywhere, and play on any PC.
Of course the hardware detection would have to work more flawlessly than Knoppix, not an easy task. This method of distribution would not suit all games.
Linux does not need a games distro. It needs to be easy to use. I don't care how close it is. If I have to use google to find a device driver, it's too much work. If I have to edit a text file, it's too much work. If I have to manually compile programs, it's too much work. I'm lazy, because there's no reason I shouldn't be.
The key to Linux's mainstream success is offering the same services of other operating systems rather than offering services only a few people give a damn about.
This is an old argument. While I'm not entirely sure that I disagree with you, let me point out two of the commonly given counter-arguments:
Argument 1: Windows takes some effort to learn. You may not think that now because you already know how to use it and/or because you're lucky (e.g. as compared to the way that XP Home can't seem to remember my wireless card's ESSID between reboots). Thus the only/best way to get people to use Linux is to make it the default. In other words, it must come preinstalled on consumer-level hardware, and it must become the OS of choice for beginners (here's the ad: "No viruses, less crashes, and all the software you'll ever need for cheap or free!")
Argument 2: You set up a wireless network without even a WEP key for security, huh? This illustrates argument #2: that Linux needs to gain users from the top (power users) down to keep its image strong.
Remember, there are many different types of users out there. Linux is great for power users (obviously). After that, though, who should be the next adopters of Linux? Security is supposed to be one of the major advantages of Linux. If everybody stated using Linux, lots of them would do stupid things ("Firewall, why do I need that?" "Hey, let's turn on this 'NFS' thing and see what it does.") which would lead to more successful attacks on Linux systems, which would lead to bad press and ultimately a perception that Linux isn't so hot after all. Likewise, if Linux starts being used by those folks who like to delete random files from their hard drives, or who just ignore error messages, then before long people are going to get a bad impression of it. Thus perhaps the best thing for Linux to do is try to court more knowledgeable users. This allows Linux's strong reputation for stability and security to remain untainted.
As a major side-benefit of this strategy, those high-end users tend to be programmers, techies (aka computer purchasing consultants) and others whose mindshare can be valuable to the success of a computer technology such as Linux. The stuff that these "experts" like tends to get promoted by them and tends to get better support from them when problems arise.
So what's the point of all this "improving Linux's image" talk? The point is that in the long run, people are going to have to learn something new if they want to use Linux. Linux is new to most people, just like computers are still new to many people. In the end, there's no way for _any_ new technology to become popular if people are utterly unwilling to learn how to use it. Why should people take the time to install Linux in the first place if Windows is good enough (even if Linux were clearly superior)? Thus, the goal is to make Linux look like it's worth learning.
No one is going to use Linux just to play clones of their favorite games. Millions would play Linux however if Freecraft were better than Starcraft, or Linux games had more features, units, weapons or whatever than the typical game.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Windows games are not Free. What I mean by "Free" here, is Free as in Freedom. It doesn't mean zero price. Unless you can access the source code and compile these games natively on a GNU/Linux system, this would be a step back for the Free Software movement.
What you're suggesting here is trading freedom for convenience. It might be more convenient at the moment to play Windows games, but in the long run, this will hinder the Free software movement. A lot of people say:
"Games take a lot of money to develop, if game companies stopped creating games, no games would be developed at all, or at very least, worse quality games would be developed."
But I disagree with that. For one thing, look at Free Software. Free Software has come a long way by utilizing distributed development and sharing. The same could be done in the game arena. Talented graphics artists and musicians and animators could distribute their works online and coordinate with Free Software developers to create games. Perhaps this new (in terms of gaming development) method would also result in less focus on eye-candy and more focus on writing and gameplay.Linux needs some exclusive games, however the code is open, nothing stops Microsoft or any other company from porting the game if its really that good.
There is a difference between proprietary apps, and apps designed to run best on Linux. Of course Linux apps should be designed for Linux, but anyone can port the app if its open source, people port Linux apps to OSX and Windows now.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Can someone explain what in the hell the (sic) at the end of the Xbox word is supposed to mean? That word along with IANAL are two nerd terms on this site that seem silly in their use.
No what linux needs is a distro that works... windows has alot of problems and i am sure that we will find some new ones tomorrow..but it works..it installs..and it runs games.. if linux wants to be on the desktop someone needs to make a distro that works...connnects to the net..works with all the popular chat programs..views websites right...and runs the popular games just as windows does...and when you install some component it needs to install everything that it needs to work...no errors like oh you need this component to run that..and this component needs this one and this one needs this one... windows has alot of problems but when you install a program it comes with everything you need to run said program, is either built in or on the cd. that is linux's biggest problem...
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Ben
If the game studios would pump out java byte code using swt or wxjava for their platforms linux we be an awsome platform to run .. most jvms ive used run faster on linux/unix variants than on windows.. ... Ummmm bytecode ....
My grandparents.
Got them a Compaq a few christmai back. At first grampa wanted little to do with it; his Osborn (with manuals) being dubiously collectable and highly unused. Grandma was finding her typewriter and copier less than satisfactory in her pursuits of local history and geneology. Now they're installing all kinds of crap. My grandpa even put his own RAM in himself, with me a thousand miles away just encouraging him off-site. They've got a scanner, which she uses to do OCR. Have they had problems with worms? No. Sure maybe they haven't got the CD writer figured out quite yet. But hey, you should see fight with redhat over my soundcard, or my random mozilla crashes. Somehow I don't see grampa rolling his own KDE 3.2 and installing a multi-user mozilla 1.6 anytime soon.
Can they do everything I can? No. Can they figure out how to do everything they've wanted to? Yes. And they manage that with very little help from me.
Maybe if you spent less time channeling Nick Burns your family would surprise you.
The Amiga followed the same road.
I have to disagree on that: The Amiga proved to be on the forefront of many interesting game (genre) we have today/had yesterday. Just think about Lemmings, long gone now, but you can still see some of the ideas in current games (take the idea as "controlling a huge number of individual AI"). Or what about Dune 2 ? It wasn't exactly stolen from the PC either, which was a pretty blippy machine back then.
Sure, once the PC got it's SVGA, and sound went to 16-bits, the Amiga went in the section of 'been there done that', but not until it proved its merits in the current gaming world. Merits we still see today.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
and doesn't crash every five minutes like Gnome or give "Unknown error" for half of commands like KDE, and then forget all settings after a reboot.
How many of you have sat down with a new distro and within 3 minutes found 5 major bugs? We just need some basic quality control...
if it were a knoppix like boot cd, how would the average user update it? right now its as easy as applying a patch, but if it were a cd based distro, how would that work? almost all games are requiring a zillion updates, both for fixes and teasers to keep people playing the game (I am thinking specifically of new maps for BF1942) and updates to add-on systems like desert combat or punkbusters.
also a lack of support for winmodems, a lot of on-line games still use modems, and converting to linux would require a new modem or some other on-line access.
On the whole, Like most of the commenters here, I would switch to linux if I could have my games as well. Hell, if the BF1942 series went to linux I would switch! odd that they have linux servers but not clients, i guess its all abotu directx..
The real pain with multiple distro's on the one PC and for that matter bootable CD's is the startup time. It's such a pain to reboot and wait..... If only M$ would make shutting down and rebooting faster then switching distros wouldn't be a pain anymore.....if only M$ would do this for us we could switch all the time ..... (hold on...light goes on!)
game that actually runs on linux?
Please don't use that terminology. What you are referring to as "Linux" is actually a variant of the GNU system with the Linux kernel in it. When Linus and the rest of the Linux kernel developers started looking around for OS components in the early 90s, it was no coincidence that most of the components they needed were there - the GNU tools. The GNU project predates Linux by 7 years, the project was founded in 1984, and most of the code comprising a GNU/Linux system is from the GNU project. So people are mistaken if they refer to the GNU system as "Linux".
Developers know the difference, they know that the Linux kernel is just that, a kernel, but the whole system should be called the "GNU/Linux system", but because "Linux" has become so popular with the media and with the end-user as a name, developers have stopped trying to correct people when they refer to the GNU system as "Linux". But please, try not to, and try to understand the difference.
It takes companies years, millions, and hundreds of megabytes to create successful games, and the success to linux is a game that actually runs on linux?
What about having Free games? Developed by hackers on the internet, with focus on gameplay and writing instead of millions of dollars worth of eye candy? Proprietry software, including games, hurts society. Please do not support it. Don't trade your Freedom for the convenience of playing a Proprietry game.
Unfortunately, Linux can't support good graphics and audio. You can blame the hardware manufacturers, the lazy driver writers, RMS, XFree86, monkeys, whatever. The bottom line is, graphics and audio are out.
In addition, a gaming platform is nothing without games (as Microsoft nearly found out -- there, but for the grace of bottomless pockets, goes the X-Box). Again, there are virtually no new games for Linux that are coming out (no, Tux Racer isn't new). Wine can run Windows games in emulation, but then you need to invest more in hardware, because emulation takes more memory and CPU... And, really, in that case there isn't much point, you might as well install WinXP.
However, I think there's a niche were Linux actually can be useful: emulators for old and low-powered game platforms, such as DOS, Win9x, Game Boy Advance, MAME, etc. I personally would love to have a little machine that can play C&C, Another World, Star Control 2, Final Fantasy Tactics, Defender, and other such games -- out of the box. So, while Linux will probably never become a widespread gaming platofrm, it may capture the emulation niche (like it's trying to capture the PVR niche right now), and that might be something to shoot for.
>|<*:=
I'm MrPlow - that's the name.
That name again is MrPlow!
If it's not Consolidated Lint, it's just fuzz!
Morphix ( www.morphix.org ) already does this (and Gentoo did). Two problems:
1. Hardware compatibility. Knoppix and Morphix are great at this, but not as good as Microsoft Windows. Yes, a good part of this is that hardware manufacturers support Microsoft more, but reasons do not matter; results do.
2. One has to reboot the computer to start or switch games.
As you note, consoles already do this. They have market penetration and pay for advertising to maintain it. Linux does not have market penetration and cannot (by its nature) pay for advertising.
Look at how much money Microsoft is spending to try to get into this market (XBox). Linux could never put this much money into a project. It's not just the development. The biggest problem is marketing. Linux is stuck with word of mouth and projects like sourceforge. Proprietary developers use proceeds from software sales. Games are horrid products from an open source perspective as they do not include any way to charge (beyond the initial sale; not of much use if only one in a hundred users actually gets it direct from the company).
Linux should stick to areas where its model does well: servers and workstations. Businesses will pay for support where individuals mostly won't. If some individuals get free rides as well, that's nice. However, that shouldn't be the focus IMO, as it is not sustainable.
He was called Flounder. Flounder is what the linux brats are doing right now while trying to promote linux. Linux is an excellent server OS! What is wrong with it being promoted for its strengths???
The future of Linux gaming is good solid games like UT2004 - ones that install and work as well in Linux as they do in Windows.
It installed trivially (I mean it - click install, get a K-menu icon when done) in Mandrake 9.1 and 10.0, it shows that good programmers can make Linux work just fine.
I'm buying my copy of the full thing when I get off work today - onslaught rules!
put a game on a bootable CD .. make linux invisible to the user. Embrace and extend .. consoles
GentooGames
http://www.gentoogames.com
From gentoo.org:
Today, we announce the creation of Gentoo Games, Inc., a gaming technology company created to deliver innovative Linux-based game technologies to the public. To kick off this new initiative, we are also announcing a full version of the very popular (Linux exclusive) America's Army military combat simulation on a self-booting Gentoo GameCD. Thanks to hosting services provided by Super Computer, Inc., the America's Army GameCD can be downloaded here. This CD includes the full version of the America's Army game and requires an NVIDIA or recent ATI (Radeon 8500 or higher) graphics card. Enjoy!
There is also a UT2K3 version...
Hardware is autodetected... and so just works... It boots straight into X. There is no configuration needed. You don't even need to install the game. Great for a LAN party as every computer that is reasonably new should boot straight into a networkable game...
No Linux Game Distro is needed when you have a Live Bootable CD like KNOPPIX or Lindows Live. Just bundle the game with the Live Linux CDR and have the user boot off of the CD-ROM/DVD drive.
:)
If they have non-standard hardware, or can't figure out how to boot a CD, then s*cks to be them.
Ok I admit that a Linux Game Distro would be a good idea, but you have to support so many different hardware choices that it would be near impossible to do so. So how do you deal with a user who gets the Linux Game Distro and then has an unsupported WinMODEM or Wifi network adapter that no known Linux driver exists for? Network gaming is then not possible and they will get very upset and move back to Windows. So what are you going to tell them, to buy Linux friendly hardware net time?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
The only huge high level problem I see with Linux on the desktop is that it is not easy to install programs. You compile most software and the rest all have individual, specific install instructions. As soon as that becomes more unified, joe average will have a lot less problem with Linux. really... think about it!
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
http://happypenguin.org/
Linux has adequate video and sound driver support. Not great, but adequate. You'd know that if you actually had a fucking clue about anything related to Linux, but you don't, not being a Linux user and all that.
Folks, stop modding this guy up. He does zero research about these topics, he's a known troll, and he's an inflamatory asshat. He used to troll all the SCO stores claiming to have insider information and such bullshit.
Now piss off, you insufferable moron.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Exactly what is the problem with having to compile everything? Should I, developer of application X, really distro binaries for every damn processor? Any idea how many there are? You can't just say, oh but do only the major ones, since the major ones are x86 and that leaves you out.
So you should love having to compile everything. The alternative is simply switching to "normal" hardware. Love having to go voting in pooring rain. The alternative is not to vote on any day.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
... putting it freakin' everywhere, so that by the time cpu's are being printed on paper ... linux is already running on it.
... well ...
...
you might note, that is happening. openzaurus, familiar, uclinux, rock, &etc.
diy-distro build systems are the next linux wave of attack. when you can target linux and its masses of software to 128 different processors, each with its own set of libs/build options/apps/gui-styles, and a plethora of libs/api's to choose from in your embeeded system, with a simple "make TARGET=nsa2"
build systems are the next onslaught. hardly anyone else can keep up with that organizational front, really, if you look at it
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
OS/2's programming API's were compatible with the Windows of the time (3.1), so in theory you could just recompile your source-code. You could even use Borland's compiler on both.
One problem: The screen co-ordinates were different! How can you port GUI code, when Windows measures from the top of the screen, and OS/2 measures from the bottom? Oy, how dumb can you get? This was undoutedly an IBM engineer saying "But this is the correct way to lay-out a positive Y-Coordinate".
OS/2 failed for the same reason the Amiga OS did: what few ads and commercials existed were brain-dead stupid! IBM did do a few things right, like giving away a free version of Presentation Manager for Windows 3.1, that gave you a taste of what OS/2 could do, but it wasn't enough.
OS/2 had a lead time over Windows 95, just as Linux now has over Microsoft's Little Big Horn, and they wasted it.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
before products spring up, how about some informational resources. A couple of years ago I wanted to code a game for linux (just for fun)...but had a hell of a time knowing where to begin. Has the situation changed. Does anyone know of any good linux gaming tutorials/texts?
Why would wide-spread distribution of Linux be good? Would it make games easier to install? Easier to install drivers?
Just because you don't like MS and/or Sony and/or Nintendo is not a good enough reason to push Linux for gamers.
In order to take over in any market, you not only have to do EVERYTHING your competetor does, but you need to do it BETTER. This is true of Linux in certain niche markets, but has a long way to go before it'll take over the general desktop for any purpose, gaming or otherwise.
Games will never be a big deal for Linux. I'll tell you why.
First, have you ever tried playing a real game for linux? I'm not talking Tux Racer. For most games, you'd have to use WINE which will cut you to about 3fps. For games ported to linux, performance isn't so bad.
HOWEVER, if people are willing to shell out $50 to $80 per game, $100 for an operating system isn't a big deal. They're not going to try to skimp and save on the OS.
The problem with linux lagging behind the gaming scene is that it doesnt work out great for the average gamer.Problems with hardware support, not too many games available on Linux etc add to all this.
Once its easy enough of the average guy things will fall into place.The hardcore gamer can take care of himself by installing or buying the right hardware and he knows whats available on Linux before moving to the Linux platform.
If theres a good Distro that provides all this that would be just great.
Lord of the Binges.
One of the things that I loved best about my Apple II was its ability to boot software directly from the floppy without typing in commands.. I used to pick on my c64 friends for that!
Something happened along the way after the Apples dwindled as a gaming platform.. PC Games have always been a real bitch to get running properly.. I remember having at least three or four different DOS boot disks to configure my machine properly for whatever game I was trying to play that day.. Allocating as much of the 640k conventional ram as possible while still preserving the CD-ROM drivers and MSCDEX extensions for the cd-rom.. Sometimes it was more of a game to get the game to work!
So I see some real value to a self configuring linux distro that could nix all of the BS windows overhead and actually increase the peformance available for a given game.
Just pop the cd in like I did with a floppy on my old Apple II and get going. Now that would be cool.
www.lonseidman.com
I'm already in debian (type "apt-get install rockdodger") I'd love to be in another distro.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
Knoppix has done a lot of the groundwork involved with bootable distros.
IMO, if we can start out with a knoppix-based distro, cut out some of the less entertaining apps and replace them with the likes of Frozen Bubble, Wesnoth, Falcons Eye, Chromium, TuxRacer and some commercial demos we'd have it made.
That isn't the problem.
IMO, the problem is video drivers. We need to have 3D accelerated drivers, or no gamer will take us seriously, period. Unfortunately at the moment that means having to rely on closed source drivers.
Now that nVidia allows repackaging their drivers I don't see why Klaus Knopper couldn't integrate them into his Knoppix. Has this been suggested to him, or attempted by anyone else?
Ditto for ATi, but I'm not sure if their licence allows redistribution.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I remember seeing MD5SUM messages on the q3/rtcw console. I assumed that those were being sent to the server for client integrity verification. Are you sure that pb doesn't check its own integrity ?
It doesn't have to TCPA, but anti-cheat software must be able to authenticate (e.g. by md5sum) every gfx driver.
I don't think this constitutes a problem for linux games except for the fact that you just cannot compile and run your own set of ATi drivers. You have to use a pre-compiled one whose md5sum matches what's recognized by pb.
and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool. everyone out there can use linux at home to do work, type up assignments etc. but either them or there kids will want to play games on that same pc and there is stops. linux is shit for games and until it can do everything windows can it won't dominate.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
gameprogrammer.com is a decent place to start. So is icculus.org. If it's just general programming you need to learn, prior to jumping into a larger project, check out the Programming Howtos.
Why would I as a game developer want to target Linux as my main platform? As painful as it is for me to say, it does not offer me any advantages over Windows, Mac in terms of game development. I can use OpenGL on any of these platforms. As far as audio goes, I pretty much need to use OpenAL if I want to have any type of cross platform support.
I'm not really sure how a bootable CD distro really helps either. Most people expect games with at least some sort of persistence (save games, etc). Do you want them to save their games on a compact flash card, or something lame like that? I sure don't want to mount their drive and risk fubaring things. Assuming that my game will not be perfect, should I have them throw away the cd and burn a new one every time I need to release a patch, or for every cool mod that gets released?
I find it hard to think of a good argument for Linux as a choice gaming OS in it's current state.
And they have customer support lines. I called netgear, and d-link several times for my problems on Win2k. None of them officially support linux. Imagine tech support asking average Joe to perform rmmod, modprobe, etc...
Microsoft would be needing to develop DirectX for Windows CE now though, right? Now that ATI are making 3D accelerators for portable, it sounds like a good idea.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Some of the posters suggest a knoppix like idea so that you could have a selfbooting game. Pretty much like a console in fact.
So what is stopping that. First of all why the hell would anyone want to use linux to run a game in a console way? Linux is a multi-tasking multi-user kernel. Games are single task single user software. You could probably run Quake on a mainframe but some might just suggest it is a tad wastefull.
Writing a kernel/os to run games is not hard. Writing an OS is not hard countless are writting by students each year. Writing an OS that actually runs on different hardware with usefull software is the real trick. Getting it stable is an even bigger trick.
But the real gigantic almost impossible trick? Getting it to supply software developers with a whole bunch of routines that make their jobs easier.
This is the real trick behind DirectX from Microsoft. Turning the hodgepodge that is the PC into a single API. Use DirectX and you can more or less forget about the underlying hardware. Sure there is a performance hit wich is why MS itself does not use DirectX on the X-box but it is worth it for the ease of use.
Now not everyone needs Direct-X. ID is famous for using Opengl but that is just the same idea by another company and focusing on video while DirectX does everything. ID did use DirectX for things like input and sound if I remember correctly. This they missed when they ported it to linux but to people that can code 3D engines writing a sound engine is easy enough. All the Linux games are hardly sound wonders. Correct me if I am wrong please.
Now the idea of a self booting game can actually be attractive to game developers. Add copy protection and you can in one sweep disable daemon tools and similar. You also get around those ***** who run windows 2003. Games from 5 years ago would still boot and run despite the fact you got a new generation of OS installed.
But to do this you would need to create a directX like enviroment.
And this I think is going to be very very hard.
Yes if game developers were smart then they would work with linux developers in getting this underway. The knowledge is there since only a few years ago direct X was unheard off.
They would also realise that relying on Microsoft is not very smart. MS makes games so effectively this is like say ferrari using michelin tires if michelin had their own F1 team. What is to stop MS from keeping the best DirectX api calls to themselves or only reveal them to companies that do not port games to the PS2/gamecube?
The game industry is however not smart.
Only if somehow someone manages to come up with an easy self booting distro wich can detect the fast majority of hardware and have fast stable drivers and an complete api to handle core game functionality then maybe you will have something.
I don't think this is possible. Look at the infighting started when bruce perens wanted to start a linux distro and decided to include only 1 desktop. Can you imagine when it comes time to decide on 3D api? Binarie vs Source? Sound engine?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I've been playing the demo of Unreal Tournament 2004 on Linux, and it seems to run better than Unreal 2 (should be similar engine under the hood, if not the same) does in Windows XP. So, if we can just get this ball rolling, then Linux will be a popular game OS, more companies will make games for it, and Linux will win the hearts and minds of desktop users everywhere.
Business applications will win the Server front. I believe the desktop will be won not by the OS that is the fastest, or the most reliable, but by the one with the applications people want. The only applications Linux is missing, IMO, are all those flashy, expensive commercial games that now only exist on Windows. That's what makes money, and in the end, it's the money that matters. (Is that cynical enough for you?)
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Have had a Morphix Game-iso for nearly a year now, always was the least-used one. Game livecds are great for the kids or for some quick fun, but rebooting is just too much effort for a quick game.
:)
Included UT2003 and Q3A demos too, Enemy Territory in the last one, was planning UT2004 demo for this one. To be honest even I don't use them much, as you really want a lot of RAM or swap if you want to start ET. Livecds should be small and fast, you don't want to wait a minute for ET to load from cdrom every time
This sig is intentionally left blank
Here is the biggest argument I see from game development companies:
It is too much trouble to maintain multiple code bases for the same game - particularly for marginal markets (Linux)
They are interested, and one company I know did attempt a Linux version of my favorite game using OpenGL. For them, managing 3 versions of the code base (Windows DirectX, Mac OSX in OpenGL, and Linux OpenGL) was too much trouble. They opted to start with Windows only - the largest market, then more recently added Mac support. Linux support is not expected anytime soon - sadly (although you would think porting OSX to Linux would be trivial, as most of the legwork is done already).
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Something new wasn't as easy to use as something you've been using for years?! *Shock*!!! *Awe*!!! There's a reason people who try Linux stick with it. For adults it's not because they want to feel better about themselves or to brag to their friends. It's because it is a truely a useful and powerful OS.
...true ...false
"I'm lazy, "
"because there's no reason I shouldn't be."
On another note; if you're setting up a wireless network and don't know what an ESSID or WEP is... you shouldn't be doing it regardless of OS.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Then in 1990 ONE game changed it all
.... games, hardware ... piracy .... all Amiga.
... you name it and Amiga was just better.
........
....... linux expert
"Austin, Texas, North America Chris Roberts creates a computer game called Wing Commander."
I ran a computer store. We sold Amigas 20 to 1 over PC's. The gaming computer was absolutely dominated by Amiga users
The Amiga had better graphics better sound hundreds more games, was cheaper
Then came Wing Commander. PC ONLY!
Over night we had our ratio of Amiga sales versus PC sales change. Many Many Amiga users (regulars to our stores) were selling up and buying PC's. Everyone had to play this game and they had no choice....PC only.
Prior to 1990 the PC was the Linux of today for games.
Release DOOM3 on Linux only and the whole world will change.
Considering every serious gamer I know is hanging out for Doom3 and Halflife 2 and they will blow serious wads of cash on new graphics and processors after they are released it is not unrealistic to imagine.
I was an Amiga zealot
I changed my gaming rig from Amiga to PC in 1990. If a mega game like Doom3 was linux only
foramt c:
I'm working on a game Motorsport that is cross platform. The major issues are with C++ library linking incompatibilities. It's a nightmare and it's why Subversion was written in C. There is a lot of pent up potential that will be resolved when the driver dillema is resolved. I have a Radeon 9700 and it's slow with the ATI proprietary drivers. Tux Racer looks great though :)
Of course this post was a blatant call for C++ coders to help with our project if you hadn't noticed. Mod me up and you may see a kick ass driving simulator for Linux in a couple years.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Isn't this threat, of a games CD, why Microsoft canceled the win98 End-of-Life that was scheduled for last summer?
A few years ago, Microsoft EoL'ed win95. Seemed like a good idea. But a lot of manufacturers claimed their software would work under win95 on the box. Online games, such as EverQuest, required updates to play. And with the DirectX shenanigans that were going on... Well, Verant/SoE wound up offering full refunds -- at full retail price -- on their software to a bunch of pissed-off clients.
Fastforward a bit. Microsoft is about to EoL win98. Only this time around, those nutty penguin guys already have EverQuest working under Linux via Crossover. It's a lot cheaper to offer Knoppix-style bootable linux disks than forcing upgrades. Or giving refunds...
Strange how that win98 EoL got canceled. I was rather looking forward to watching it kick-start a massive linux migration for home-users. After all, when companies can bundle the OS with the game... Reduces development costs a bit, to say the least...
Is that it doesn't require MAC hardware like a MAC does. You already have all those IBM PC's out there that Linux can run on. But the problem with MAC was that you had to buy a whole new computer, not just an OS.
I would be surprised to see one "killer" OSS game. I know there have been source releases of old closed source "killer" games, but c'mon guys. I think it would be easier to rewrite linux entirely than to make something that could honestly compete with the newest hottest games from ID.
those md5sum messages are not pb integrity checks. they are 'punkbuster guid' which are different from the engine guid which is generated from your cdkey.
go poke pb in-memory and watch it blissfully continue to run unaware you've haxed it. we were also able to poke the pb.so files on disk and it didnt detect it.
maybe this will eventually change, but pb does not currently internally integrity check.
anticheat software can't authenticate every gfx driver. do your realize how many are out there? win95/win98/w2k/xp/etc, not to mention all the different service packs. multiply that by the # of different chipsets, and the # of different vendors out there.
it's just not practical to authenticate every gfx driver. hell, it's not even practical to do it on linux where there are a tiny fraction of the # of binary drivers that are out there for windows.
adding punkbuster to bf1942 was just part of some grand evil conspiracy to lock linux users out.
That seems a little paranoid. But you said it, not me. I'm more of the opinion that the publishers care more about protecting their Windows customers from cheaters than the fact that a handful of Linux zealots can't play the game without rebooting.
pb won't catch those. so much for "trusted" environment huh?
So you're saying that PB doesn't work, and that evenbalance is basically defrauding Activision et al?
Maybe PB has holes in it right now, maybe not. But if it's ineffective today, Evenbalance will improve it until the holes are gone. The philosophy of PB is clearly stated on its website: "* Real-time scanning of memory by PB Client on players' computers searching for known hacks/cheats".
Translated, that means "We will 0wn your box to watch everything you do". And that's incompatible with an Open Source Windows emulator.
What makes this any difference from a new console based on a Linux OS. The problem with this is that you have to standardize on a hardware set. I could see making something similar to the Knoppix live CD or something similar, with some customization towards gaming, but I think it'll miss its mark.
Now what would really be cool, is to develop a linux console, capable of pushing itself into the console market. But for that to happen, we're talking a mass of marketing and coordination, between game developers and publishers. If you could push console compatibility (think ol Mac/Win CDs) that you could purchase a single disc, playable in multiple console that would also allow interactive game play between the various consoles, that would kick ass!
think before you write, it'll save me moderator points.
Either the camera supports PTP, or it's a flash disk. Either way, the software out there can handle it.
it may not "identify" it, but it'll still talk to it, if there aren't bugs in the camera's firmware to work around.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Linux boot disk (knoppix extended with video drivers ) Works on over 95% of all pc. I use linux boot disks all the time to recover windows XP admin passwords(yep people keep on losing them) It is really anonying when I hit useable hardware then I have to open the case and take the harddrive out and move it so I don't have to delete data.
The final thing is that with linux there is no reason why a game cannot run on 95% of PC and all mod chiped Xboxs. A bigger market share Less disks to produce and track(if microsoft would come to the party it would be 95% of PC and 90+% of Xboxs. Basicly a Huge market.
Without a huge accessability effort,why bother
making any games? Programmers need to enjoy
using the environment just like everyone else.
How many programmers do you know who simply cannot
get their head around operating the OS?
I tried Mandrake (8.1), and it worked fine, even though it didn't support all my hardware. So, I managed to work around it. Then I increased memory to 1GB, and Mandrake refused to work. I went to Red Hat, and it supported more hardware, but not all. And configuring what it did support was a matter of tweaking those endless /etc text files. Not fun.
I'm currently on Suse 9. It runs all my hardware, and configuration is almost as easy as Windows, thanks to a GUI tool called Yast. It's still not as easy as I'd like it to be. Installing Oracle 9 was a real blast, in fact, but easier in Suse than in Red Hat.
The thing is, it seems to me that the people developing Linux don't see hardware support, drivers, or software installation as a problem. The attitude I've seen is "It works just fine for us. If you don't like it, go back to Windows". Perhaps that will change with IBM, Novell, and others trying to make a buck out of Linux. There's nothing like money to make someone sit up and take notice. I think games can be a big part of it, too, but only time will tell.
We have a few years (decades?) until Bill "Custer" Gates releases Little Big Horn, so there's still time.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
On Windows I only use CloneCD and Daemon-Tools (cd cloner and virtual CD driver respectively). Note that I don't pirate software, I just hate going through the pain of swapping CDs all the time. (I started this stuff after buying my third copy of AOE2 because the discs got scratched and couldn't be used).
However Linux doesn't have virtualised CDs (loop mounting an ISO only works for disks that aren't fair use prevented^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H copy protected. If I am not prepared to play stupid CD swapping games on Windows, I sure as hell ain't going to do it on Linux. I am aware of cdemu.sf.net but it doesn't support much (yet).
The next step is assuming that the games will even run ...
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
So you're saying that PB doesn't work, and that evenbalance is basically defrauding Activision et al?
No, I'm saying pb isn't perfect. Its beyond me how you can take my statement and conclude that i'm claiming PB is defrauding activision. Care to share what you're smoking?
Translated, that means "We will 0wn your box to watch everything you do". And that's incompatible with an Open Source Windows emulator.
your translation skills need work. everything pb does is done as a plain jane userspace program, it doesnt (yet) require anything unusual from the win32 api that can't be cleanly emulated.
the fact that bf1942 pb might break under winex doesnt mean winex can't be fixed, or that it's incompatible with pb's overall goal.
after all, pb does run on linux for those games (q3, rtcw, et, etc) which have a native client. sort of demolishes your theory of software publishers locking out linux in order to protect windows.
tony ray isnt stupid. pb has to be conservative lest it get bogged down with false positives and system crashes. this means that a kernelspace pb is rather unlikely. which means pb is likely to be emulateable for the forseeable future.
it sounds like you are extremely agitated by linux users trying to play bf1942 under winex. why does this bother you?
I wanted to add that open architecture games and F/OSS are a pretty good fit. There are lots of games (Escape Velocity, off the top of my head; Combat Mission: BO, BB, and AK also) with active user communities that create all sorts of plug-ins, graphics, extended episodes, game editors, etc.
It is not beyond the pale that a group could create a F/OSS engine/architecture that would allow the same. Such games need not have all the bells, whistles, and complex graphics of the best sellers. They only need to be compelling enough to grow a user base.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Don't get me wrong, the boot CD with linux for games was actually the first thing to pop into my head too, though where to put the save games excapes me... for some game types. Why not a MMORPG? Yeah, okay you need a badass server that nobody wants to fork out for. But, there are ways around that. How about an MMORPG setup where each player donates some clock cycles to the processing in the world not on their own data mind you (can't have a person finding their random attack damage to be 8 trillion). The central server would mostly just store the saved information. There would be a lot of issues, like how do you parallelize the data well enough to make it effective, because its open source the world construction would need to be done in the world so the secrets don't leak out. Perhaps some engine to create the MMORPG and the rest of the data gets stored after construction/playing begins. Yadda Yadda. A boot CD so that other folks could play who don't have linux installed, and you'd be set. Besides linux geeks already love MMORPG's and making a free one with an open source engine would be just too sweet to pass up. Lotta technical issues I haven't thought through or care to, but the jist is "You want peep? Make game, run, fight, sleep."
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Put leisure suit larry on it and you can expect worldwide domination.
I assume this is your premise.
Okay, so Windows provides drivers for some peripherals that Linux doesn't. If you experienced the scenario the original poster had, then you'd just be hunting around the IBM site for Linux drivers instead of Win2K drivers -- same scenario.
See, now this is where you start to contradict your premise. I know you're technologically inclined, so a rebuild is no hassle. But you have to understand, all Joe User wants to do is click on the package EXE, or INF file to install the driver and then click "Yes" when asked to reboot. Was the rebuild a point-and-click affair? If not, Joe is already too intimidated.
Yeah, see -- here's another problem. Joe's also used to a GUI. He clicks on "Windows Update" to update his system, clicks on checkboxes to select the details, etc. This command prompt stuff isn't gonna fly with him.
Look, Joe isn't even going to call a simple parameter-based setup file (like "MTU=1500", etc.) "plain english." To him it's just as unreadable as Perl. In fact, why the heck would Joe want to hack settings for the TCP/IP stack in Windows anyway? Joe doesn't even know what TCP or IP mean, and sure doesn't know what "stack" means in the CS sense.
Although this post may sound anti-Linux, trust me -- it's not. I love Linux, and I use it just as much as Windows. I'm just saying that you greatly overestimate the capabilities of the average user.
- sm
Linux for years has been targeted at the Servers the large ones.
Basicly the low end and the desktop has been overlooked and handled badly. Now they are playing catch up and starting to fix the problems.
Xfree86 does it work yes does it work well no but is it a problem no why servers don't run Xfree86 as a desktop verry often. Now this was the way it was for about 3+ years at least this has now changed.
so, you want to do what, make a distro totally dedicated to Gaming? a full installable distro, or just another Morphix Games LiveCD, if the former i really see little point, while Games are lovely to have around, and most linux distros give you a good handful of nice games(Frozen Bubble is apparantly very popular among new converts) but also allow you to do plenty of useful tasks on the same operating system, with this idea of run the risk of relegating Linux to simply booting up and playing games.
of course, if you're looking to improve upon Morphix Games, that's great, making the overall user experience a little more pleasant, and ensuring that games are really good enough for the general public, that's a great idea, it's the kind of thing you can give away in addition to Gnoppix, TheOpenCD, or whatever else. infact, it might be something worth putting in the handout pack for SoftwareFreedomDay
Software Freedom Day!.
The only reason I even keep a Windoze box around is to play video games. The end of M$ is nigh!
Check the manpage for sched_setscheduler(2)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
If you create a Linux-only game and you include its source on the disk with linux, only thing that will happen is that 2 weeks later somebody is going to make a windows port of that same game.
What needs to be done is that people need to invest/code things like SDL or make a direct x clone (same interface, engine can be SDL or opengl), and ask companies like ATI to release their video drivers for Linux (either opensource or binary) at regular basis. This would give game developers an option which os to use to code the game if they include the latest video card features.
Second what needs to be done is to invest/code for Wine because if by some chance wine was fully compatible with windows directx, a lot of games that are already available would run on Linux, and that way people that like to play games would have a choice between free Linux OS or expensive Windows OS.
Third thing that needs to be done is make a simple frontend/binding for Wine to X Desktops so people can install their games with ease. For example, if somebody wants to install a windows game on desktop, all the need to do is mount the cd with a doubleclick and run the setup.exe or similar.
This is the only way! If some kid needs to compile wine with debug options and run the game with wine -winver -otheropt -opt1 -opt2 -loaddll one.dll second.dll etc then not many kids will do this. If they can simply follow the installation that they are used to, they will do so.
For those people that think that this will just allow game developers to code for windows since windows games would run under emulation/using wine under linux, perhaps there is another solution:
somebody should code a direct x frontend or perhaps a backend. I think this could be done since direct x is very documented. Another thing that could be done is to invest/work on SDL and make it a standard, good enough to compete with opengl and direct x. Of course, windows port would be required, but that way microsoft wouldn't have monopoly in game design standard.
Most of my older classic games have either been compltely re-written (doom gl, heretic etc) but unfortunately Syndicate won't work properly :( - damn was I upset when I actually made it in to the game and then it stalled just as I selected one of my units.
Sigh...
Tools. The one main reason X-Box wasn't killed by PS2 is the fact that the tools (including graphics API, debugger, development env, etc.) are TIGHT. You get some people to focus on the development environment, and you might have a chance... -B
Ya'll might want to write RMS and ask him not to put out witty editorials with potshots like "nVidious" and so on. Maybe the hardware companies would be more open to creating better drivers and Linux as a platform would actually be a possibility.
seriously. I admit, I'm a windows guy, but I'd say, this game is really cool for lunchbreaks :) -
And for the rest I'd say: games are the driving factor for a rather big part of the geek community and one of the things my friends and I still keep using Windows. Configuration here and there, using console - I don't mind. If and only if there is something to gain from these excursions through the software setup. Setup alsa takes 3 hours? No problem, if there is a kind of goal at the end: giving the finger to Bill Gates *and* be able to play some killer games.
Games are the bridge between serious geeks and the average computer-using person. Most other "home" tasks are pretty easy to do on either Windows or Linux systems, except maybe for using firewire-devices. But the games are the turning point. Hardware manufactures have realised this for years, beginning with the Origin *Commander series and continuing with the FPS genre...
Also, the MS page linked above is for their optional "Plus" pack, not for the base XP system (which comes with, what? Solitaire, hearts, minesweeper? Do we now have a more advanced MCSEHS qualification? - Minesweeper Consultant, Solitaire Expert and Hearts Shark). I do notice an ominous counter to one FOSS advantage, though, a "365 tips from users like you" section.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
* Its been done!
RTCW:ET
It was a killer game for a while
It was free
It was given away with a linux live CD and it was availible for free download for linux.
It didn't work.
Your wrong, linux needs lots of things.. and what we need from the gaming industry we're currenlty getting (we could do with more of it though).
What we need is more companies to release their games with either in the box linux binarys or do like they did for UT, and release linux binaries afterwards..
Most importantly we need Sierra to support linux.
Sierra has some of the best selling titles, but they have ALWAYS turned their back on linux.
batsards.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
Before linux has games, it NEEDS support for top of the line and new hardware.
As of now, many high end graphics cards, especially the ATI ones have very sketchy support, if any. Many sound cards are in the same boat.
Just seems to me like this would be the natural progression toward decent gaming on linux.
Another aspect to consider is system security. If every app on a linux system came with static libraries, then you have multiple libraries scattered all over the drive. Will all those application authors update their program to include library updates? What if a nasty buffer overflow turns up in libBlah...do you want to leave all the dependent programs around for crackers to stumble upon?
I am not saying that the convenience factor is not important; rather I think that an altogether different approach is needed, one that tackles the problem at a different level. Development on ports systems (Gentoo) is one interesting direction, autopackage another. Better that than applying static libraries to a problem they were never designed to fix.
===---===
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
What about setting up a fund for developing a linux game? It should have a concept, only rough, like the genre, set.
Then set up a website with a nice progress bar, and a target sum needed for the developement, like what? 5 Million Dollars? 10 Million Dollars?
Ok, that won't get us a completely new Half - Life - 2 developed, but maybe a nice RPG / Adventure built on an existing engine.
Maybe different Funds for different uses, like
- Make a cool RPG a 'la Deus Ex / System Shock
(Wizardry would be even better, but i don't know about the mass - marketing appeal...)
- "Make a good game developing environment based on Crystal Space"
Make an agreement with some game studio to get a cool engine for a guaranteed price for a free - as - in beer - game production use, let it be the UT or Doom 3 Engine. Or not, depends on the game's genre, i guess.
Let somebody develop a cool game from this money for the community.
If the community wants a new cool game developed, everybody transfers a few bucks to a new proposed game fund of his choice. I think there are enough gnu / linux / bsd / mac etc. fans out there to invest a few dollars each to get a big enough budget, it's mostly a marketing question, i guess.
Kind of like the effort for opening the Blender source?
The fund should be handled by a trusted entity, of course.
Its not the operating system that lets the console games work so well its the console. PCs are always an unkown because the hardware is wide and varied now you can help matters by abstracting things with the operating system, like OSS for sound and Open GL for video and SDL on top of all that to make it even simpler but even with the best abstraction to solve the portablity problems software wise, you run into an issue of you can't optimize for anything so it runs like crap even on the fastest hardware. Console gameing will always be a step above PC gaming and HD TVs becoming ubiquitous will be the finaly nail in the coffin for PC games, as resolution was the only remaining advantage the PC had. Now certain things like MPROGS can benifit from a keyboard but even keyboards are becomeing availible for consoles now so its over people. Start using your PCs for development ofnovel projects and actual work. Let the console do what it does best play.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
No, most people don't know what it is. The people who dismiss it are those who have tried a couple distros and are sick of it. Hardware support is always hit or miss. You can say oh with distro x my device Y works so anyone complaining that using distro X with any hardware is an idiot or using device Y with any distro is an idiot too.
/. of people responding back to these zealots and telling them to shut up because linux is a pain in the ass. And the command line always comes up in some way or another on linux installs, I don't care what you say. Maybe not in the beginning, but for the video card or the sound card or something, it's going to be required.
I'm so sick of people chanting that linux is the greatest and easiest thing to use. If it were, then lots of OEMs would be putting it on their high end machines and not their lowest price pc's to save $40.
I've tried a bunch of distros on a bunch of computers and every time into it after a couple weeks I get sick and tired of it and I go back to windows cause it works a lot better and it's a lot easier. I'm seeing this more and more around here on
Before you'll get a ton of games, you need reliable 3d drivers for lotsa cards, and then you need a stable 3d library to match. Does OpenGL compete well with DirectX?
I spent far too long fighting with Nvidia drivers,(crash 4 times a day) then ATI drivers last week (Ah, no support for Xfree86 4.4 yet).
Perhaps a game distro would help bring these issues into more focus...
Bavarian Purity Law of Rice Krispie Squares: Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter, Vanilla.
...was that it was marketed mainly as a gaming platform.
May we live long and die out
you could make a distro that could just be for gaming.. in the sense of it just sitting there and loading them up via emulation. or whatever..
as in.. the behind the scenes crap that makes the games go.
Has anybody tried Kurumin games (in Portuguese)? AFAIK, it is a game-oriented distro, based on Knoppix.
...when John Dvorak said precisely the same thing in his column. I guess this guy liked what he read there too.
-Tom
Yeah, see -- here's another problem. Joe's also used to a GUI. He clicks on "Windows Update" to update his system, clicks on checkboxes to select the details, etc. This command prompt stuff isn't gonna fly with him.
You can do GUI based updates of Linux systems. I just discovered this a moment ago when I actually launched the GUI.
Look, Joe isn't even going to call a simple parameter-based setup file (like "MTU=1500", etc.) "plain english." To him it's just as unreadable as Perl. In fact, why the heck would Joe want to hack settings for the TCP/IP stack in Windows anyway? Joe doesn't even know what TCP or IP mean, and sure doesn't know what "stack" means in the CS sense.
Gosh, I figured everyone would want to tweak their machines. I routinely adjust filesystem parameters, buffer sizes, and application settings in Windows and Linux. I'd liken it more to adjusting the seat of the car you're driving than a real "mod". In some cases these adjustments lead to 50% increases in performace, and in rare cases sometimes even more. But the funny thing is that I'd consider myself an average technical user. I'm not Joe User certainly, but there are millions of users like myself (power user, prosumer, whatever).
But, from what I can tell, the average user (read: practically anyone who doesn't know what slashdot is) really wants a few things:
nothing.can.stop.me.now
Two more games I've played recently on my linux box:
Starcraft (incl. Brood War)
And how could I forget...
Pydance!
But you can put Pump it Up (Korean DDR clone with 5-button pad) on the list of games I wish I could play in linux. Oh well, can't win 'em all.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
I didn't say it was going to be quick and simple, and yes, there are 100s of driver files. But it is practical. Once you get it going, you only need to update your list maybe once a week. Vendors don't release drivers every day.
It's all about the LiveCD!
I'm determined to reclaim my karma. Now, if I can only find a groundbreaking article and something witty to say....
binary authentication of driver files wont save you either. there are other, more straightforward ways of cheating. the extreme effort required to implement binary authentication of video driver files isnt worth the 2 or 3 out of 1000's of cheats out there. hardly any cheats use hacked drivers.
the pb client could prove itself to the server if it used crypto exchanges -- something it doesn't do now.
you get more bang for your buck going after general cheat techniques, not checking for specific binary fingerprints.
and there are cheats which will be extremely difficult to detect, such as cheats which diddle the x86 hardware debug registers in order to stealth themselves.
This picture has been around for a Loooooong time. It's not new by any *stretch* ;)
Un-news
First a bit of Linux history reiterated, just to set the scene... Linux has gained the widest adoption in the server arena, probably the largest segment being dedicated Internet/Firewall boxes. Running without a GUI or even headless (without attached monitor/etc), configured via Web interface, even using "lower end" hardware. These are perfect canidates for adding more server software to, in this case we'd add a simple way to install and configure game servers.
/. games section. Anyone super interested can email me.
The advantages are obvious, we can sidestep the entire issue of "does Linux support the latest games" since most modern games come with a Linux server component that is superior to running a server/client at the same time on your Windows box. (added server overhead usually only if you are serving the game of course)
Considering the wide variety of dedicated firewall distros out there (my own favorite) and how easy they are for even Linux newbies to setup, there isn't much of a leap to create such a distro. One of the main issues of course is getting the needed copyrighted content from the game CD to the Linux box, something that is both a manual and painful process in many cases.
I've discussed this project with a few friends who are familiar with Linux firewalls/game servers also, but unfortunately we haven't had time to do more than brainstorm on it. If we do end up putting together a basic distro like this you can be sure I'll submit it to
Jonah Hex
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
Well maybe not. I don't see how you can say that NT is not a "serious" OS. The DOS/Windows kludge, sure, but NT isn't based on that. It's a completely new OS, architected by one of the industry's leading OS engineers.
I know what you're saying: "OK, NT is a real OS, but Microsoft has screwed it up so much it's beyond saving." Well, if you think of Windows as that bloated bundle you buy at CompUSA, you're right. But that's because you're forced to deal with a huge pile of crappy software -- IIS, IE, etc., etc, etc -- that Microsoft won't let you not buy and install. If you could install just the basic (and actually rather well-designed) OS and build on that, life could be a lot saner.
Indeed, there are people who do this. There's a componentized version of Windows that's specifically designed to be integrated on a "pick and choose" basis. Only problem: you can't buy a copy. You can only license it for use in embedded applications.
If I were in charge of the DoJ anti-trust departments, that's something I'd work very hard to change. There's no reason people shouldn't be able to get access to all this stuff just by paying Bill some reasonable licensing fees. You'd see a competing OS that was still NT at its core, but used non-Microsoft stuff for most GUI components. (Probably a lot of the GUI would be taken from open source projects like KDE and GNOME.) And compatibility would be much less an issue, because the competitors would be offering the same fundamental platform.
That is serious competition.
"Have you ever tried configuring Windows for commodity hardware (i.e., not bought from a big name manufacturer?). It's near impossible to find drivers that work properly. Under Linux most stuff "just works". Edit text files? Ever try to clean up spyware and adware from a Windows machine before Adaware existed? You're talking serious registry hacking there. Let's not forget all the little tweaks to the TCP/IP stack under Windows that requires, that's right, more registry hacking"
Huh? Are you completely insane or are saying "Windows" but mean "Linux"? Can't get drivers to work for Win2k? Er, for what? Every manufacturer provides Windows drivers. Tweaking the stack? You mean like changing the MTU and stuff? Er, how it is harder to "hack" the registry to change the values rather than editing a text file?
Is everyone insane around here or is it just me?
I would be far more into learning Linux if it were a serious gaming platform. I use Windows now, and im trying to learn Linux but...i really have no use for it so when i hit a wall and cant figure something out i just give up.
Whereas:
:)
1) Given a sufficient amount of resources/programmers, any Windows game can be made to run under Wine.
2) Many games run *more* quickly under Wine than they do under Windows.
3) Linux has a lot of free games that don't run under Windows.
4) Transgaming has access to proprietary software and partnerships that give them near-monopolistic control over the Windows-games-on-Linux market.
3) Programmers seem to be somewhat underemployed these days.
Why is it that Transgaming has yet to fill this niche? Is there not enough capital? Go public. Is there not enough income? Get WineX to run on more games; more income will follow (at an exponential rate, even). Not every IPO is a scam. There really are quite a few software companies that are poised on the brink of a huge market, without the capital to, um err, capitalize on it
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
..are the only reason why this isn't a windoze-free box. I know that there's Flight Gear, but it's a long ways from my favorite flight sim, European Air War (by Infogrames). I also love the MechWarrior game series (I own all the MW-3/MW-4/Mercenaries+expansion packs). I just wish that somebody other than M$ had the rights to it. USB joysticks are a pain to get working in linux, also. *IF* a linux-gaming distro came out with anything close to the same quality/quantity games available, and better support for joysticks, graphics cards, etc., I'd be grabbing a copy pronto, and saying a permanent goodbye to windoze. The biggest problem is game makers not porting to linux, which a new distro, no matter how good a gaming platform it may be, won't affect until the game makers see enough of a market for it to be worth the effort/expense.
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Most people don't care what operating system they run. All they care about is that it works and runs the programs they want.
As pointed out in another post.
Download->Install->Run whether it's an OS, an application, or a game.
The problem is that you generally have choice, standardization, or bloat.
Standardization is a console system. Here's the hardware, and maybe an OS, etc.. Deal with it and any limitations that have been imposed.
Bloat is you wanted it to do almost anything without having to do anything yourself.
Choice is you having to choose what you want. The problem being that no one wants the same thing. That's why there are so many Linux distros.
If you want Linux to be mainstream, give up your distros. Windows isn't popular because it's the best OS for a specific task. It's popular because it does most things ok. If there was only one distro, it would slowly become more mainstream.
1. Get Games developers to start writing for linux.
This is a difficult one. It's a bit of chicken and egg. People are more likely to use linux if there are good games being made for it. Games developers are more like to develop linux if there are people using it.
As far as I'm aware games developers want to be able to code the game once and then have a compiler which will spit out the files for Xbox, PS2, PC and Gamecube. So integration with existing compilers in this way would be needed.
2. Enable existing and older games to run under linux. (This will happen as wine and dosemu development continues and improves).
But I see another thing which will drive linux and linux games is that businesses, governments are gradually migrating to linux. As more of this happens home users will follow. this will help achieve point 1.
ID software have been gracious to release their old games to the community, but for the latest "killer" games you need Windows.
False dichotomy. Software that runs on Linux doesn't have to be "release[d] to the community.
I really believe that when we get our act together and launch a game-based distro, we will be home and dry.
This is an intriguing idea. Though let it be noted that this is a different model from either PC or console gaming.
With PC gaming, you buy games to run on hardware and software that you already have and use for other things. With console gaming, you buy hardware specifically to run games you couldn't otherwise run. In both cases, basically no setup is required.
What a games-based distro would ask of its customers would be to run a more or less arduous setup on hardware they already have that already runs games fine.
In order to compensate for that tradeoff (lost uptime even if no effort or thought is required) you'd have to have some pretty frickin' sweet games that couldn't be gotten in another way.
* We need the source for the games on that CD.
So this about more than Linux vs. Windows/console gaming: it's about free vs. proprietary gaming.
* We need kids able to pick up that CD (or DVD, with respect to another learned friend posting here) and turn their PC into a games console, without ruining Mum's or Dad's official documents.
Now this is an interesting angle. I guess he's envisioning something like Knoppix? But how often do PC games fsck up official documents?
As those games are played, kids will be encouraged to learn how they work and maybe work on their own. AMOS and Blitz basic on the Amiga formed a huge range of great games, but getting people learning C++ from an early age would lead to great things for the future, I'm sure.
Most modern commercial-grade games are of a level of complexity much greater than AMOS or BlitzBasic oldies.
Linux games sites at the moment are not brilliant, let's be honest.
True dat.
I snipped the rest, but here's my main doubt with a free-game-based anything distro: Okay, all software is art, but games - good games anyways - are much more art than other software. Much of software is becoming commoditized, but the sort of artistry it takes to come up with tight gameplay or appealing and immersive visuals are not being commoditized, are unlikely to, and probably never will.
Look at the OSS games out there: mostly clones: either simple clones, or clones that have metastasized far beyond their progenitors (NetHack); but still clones. Will a CD full of clones "promote *NIX to a new generation"?
Google confirms: Ruby is the world's most beloved programm
Well, not exactly; but day dreaming in my high school classes I came up with the idea for an operating system coded just with gamers in mind.
I had not thought about Linux, I really did not know much about it at the time (still do not). But my idea was basically an operating system that was totally optimized for games, no fancy GUI just a simple menu system for launching a few programs and games.
It lingered with me for some time, but ultimately I moved on to engineering as a career path and just left the computer world as a hobby. Could be really cool, hope to see this sometime in the future.
There is no spork.
Man if I can play games windows quality or better on any linux distro... I am certain to kiss windows good bye.
But how in the world can they get directX ported to linux with M$ guarding the door.
x-winders sucks!
The point is to get people to try out and continue to use Linux... not try out and continue to use a cd that boots into a game... bypassing Linux altogether... with a live CD (especially one booting into the game)you normally wouldn't have write-access to the HD, and if you're just booting into the game anyway, who needs linux? just make a bootable windows version, or even invent a language to run the game... my point is that booting directly into the game bypasses linux, which is the whole reason for this anyway... otherwise the bootable CD isn't doing much good. The only reasons KnoppixMAME is awesome is the fact that it's so easy to operate... great hardware recognition, and easy to create a CD full of every rom you have and run it on a pc without a HD... but it doesn't help anyone learn linux...
I think a family oriented distro would be really cool. Strip out all the duplicated developer stuff and put in just the basics...perhaps oo.org and mozilla for mom n dad, but focus on games for the kids. The beauty of kids games is that they don't have to be cutting edge! there's lots of simple games you can't "legally" get for new shiny windows xp anymore that have Linux "clones"...and that's good enough. Just get more schools to see that their spending wads of money on stuff they'll never actually USE and we'll be all set. The bootable CD concept works great for getting new people involved with it. There are some issues with older PCs that dont' like their boot orders messed up, but most PCs do great with something like Knoppix.
makea bootable CD that turns a PC into a Linux Gaming Console that plays games built for the LGC. thats the hook get developers to release games for this one console. instaid of getting a linux version of a pc game we get a linux gaming console versoin of all games realeased. if we can show a large enough installation base we could market it. perhaps phantom 2? ;)
this is not a Sig.
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That's why Linux and OSS need the RIAA and Product Activation!!! Once people realize that they can't just get stuff for "free" anymore they will flock to stuff like Linux. As long as "stealing" windows software is easier than paying full retail for it why should anybody change over? That's why Linux's growth has been in small/medium companies...they HAVE to pay for software or the lawyers will get them!!!
As a Windows user and professional developer, it'd take more than games to make me switch. At one point I thought games were the only things holding me back, turns out I was wrong.
:)
This past weekend I installed Fedora.
Installation compared to WinXP? Comparable.
Post installation (configuring things, tweaks, etc.) not even close.
I got some help in forums from some long term Linux users, but quickly realized the need for help wasn't going away anytime soon. I've installed Linux with each new major version since around version 5 or 6 if memory serves correctly. The distros I've tried the most were Redhat and Mandrake. I prefer Mandrake, but Fedora was suggested by the forum Linux users.
Immediately I became aware that my ATI Radeon 9700 Pro wasn't going to have solid drivers under Linux. Argue all you want, but in WinXP I never have stability issues with it, and it's as fast as can be.
My Logitech MX500 worked in the most basic sense of the word, but wasn't nearly as full featured as it is within WinXP. I could tweak a few things, but that meant hacking up files with a text editor. Not something I, or most any other Windows user is willing to do to change some simple settings on a mouse.
It didn't take long to figure out that almost everything that didn't work out of the gate was going to take some text file tweaking. Windows computing has surpassed that, and to capture more users, Linux is going to have to as well. Long time Linux users see this as a more powerful setup, but Windows users (even those who WANT to convert) see this as a solid brick wall.
Some of the other posters here mentioned issues regarding support for joysticks. Add to that almost any controller I'd be buying at Best Buy or Circuit City, and you've got another decently sized issue to overcome.
Screw-ups. This is a major pet peeve of mine. If I install the wrong video drivers in Windows, it's smart enough to realize it, and drop me to 640x480x16. Note that I'm still in the GUI, and have access to the net from any installed web browsers, etc. If I do that in Linux, I'm staring at a non-GUI based UI and am there until I can figure out how to hack through things via a command line to get up and running again. This sucks big-time IMO.
Installs - Why is it that with a lot of Linux software, immediately after the install I have to hack up some configuration files? Why can't the installer give me a couple of screens with the necessary options and allow me to choose then? From there, it can install the software with the settings I've chosen. If I have to configure the stuff via a command line after the fact, what's the installer for? Heck, I'll just copy the files myself and save half the download.
Chip[sets] - Why is it that in Linux I have to know what chip/chipset is being used in my NIC, or modem, etc. but in Windows I don't? In Windows (assuming it doesn't just work on it's own) I locate, download, and install the drivers. At most, I reboot, and my new hardware is now working. In Linux, I need to damn near know how to build the thing to get it to work. That's gotta go.
With regards to drivers, as someone who's technical, I realize companies don't always create Linux drivers for their hardware, and creating drivers isn't the easiest task in the world. As a user however, I could care less. If you want me to use Linux (and I think that's the main point of the topic here) you need to have drivers for everything Windows has drivers for. And not just barely working hack 'em in vi drivers, I'm talking drivers comparable to their Windows counterparts.
I realize that Linux is often viewed as being more stable, secure, and even faster than Windows. But, if I have to be a mechanic to drive the best car, I think I'll take the bus.
My Tech Posts on Twitter
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"Is the Key to Linux a Games-Based Distro?"
No. The key to Linux is getting to the point where hardware support has the same width and depth as XP does, and with the same or better performance.
This is NOT where we are currently at (by a long shot). Support alone isn't the only point, either: under XP, things (generally) just work. Under (insert your favorite flavor of *nix here), even if it CAN work, it takes someone experienced / intelligent / trained / willing-to-read-countless-HOWTO's to MAKE it work.
You get hardware support up to speed, then the gamers will follow. A "gamer's distro" will attract some number of users, but getting hardware support up to speed will get them, their friends, and my mother, and my friends, and...and...etc.
No gods, no demons, and no masters. Secular Humanism!
(A prediction of future technology that becomes
completely outstripped by what actually happens.)
I'm wondering if the plague of lib updates that's necessary these days is something that will ultimately work itself out: that more and more libs will approach stable forms as the years go by.
Seems like there's little point in worrying about it. What seems like a pain now is just an artifact of having so much distributed development going on regarding stuff that will just be completely done for all time some day. There will always be new libraries, but will glibc2 *always* be changing month to month or whatever? How many ways are there to do printf() or sqrt() or GLX_whatever()?
Or am I completely off my rocker, meaning that some conscious giant collaboration is really required to nail things down once and for all?
One way to characterize the situation: are the libs we have today like early machine parts in the first stages of the Industrial Revolution, when it must have been a pain to have to standardize a million different things like bolt sizes and the thread spacing on wooden mop handles? Or are they like a human natural language in the early stages of its development (Old English, say, during the first generation after the Battle of Hastings.)
In the Industrial Revolution machine part case, things did get easier, probably with nothing more than laissez-fair, market driven forces - you know, who's making the best screws this year? But with the first generation of standardized screws available it was easier to construct the lathes which made the second generation of standardized screws. And so on, until no one is worried anymore about the bare challenge of finding standardized screws: you're worried more about getting good like automated valve regulators, speed governors. You don't care about the screws in the regulator: they're all good enough now. You only care about the assembly. The pain is the same, just the focus is different. Since it happens slowly, you don't notice.
In the case of human natural language, things are always bending and changing. The double negative in English winds up being more or less legitimized as an emphatic negative. More complications are always arising which continually upset the structure to its core: you never get to a point where all your verb tense rules are stable, and so on.
Which way? Do we need an Academie Francaise, or no?
Did he say giving away linux long-term won't work? I don't think he has had is morning dose of econ.how do people like this get mentioned on slashdot?
Free Lesson: policing software distribution costs more than developing software. That is a fact that gets better with time. What a wanker.
Best way to get market share?
:). When parents are shopping to buy a computer for Johnny's school work, Linux maybe impressive to them due to the current lack of games.
Go through the Enterprise first
Of course, once market share picked up games will start appearing more and more.
Really do not see the point of making a gaming distro, like Mandrake did.
So many posters mentioned standards without elaborating. You mean FHS, LSB?
One of the biggest problems with *nix systems are dependencies. This is a problem that would go away if all applications were distributed as self-contained packages, a practice that should be the default behavior when distributing software applications. With few exceptions, anything that requires the end user to download pre-requisite software when it could be easily bundled is, quite honestly, just plain silly.
.app bundle. This is the way all software should work.
"What about security? What about performance?"
The app should be designed to give the end user a choice: Do you want to use a dynamicly linked library? Fine -- tell us where it's located and we'll ignore the stuff we thoughtfully bundled for you. Do you just want the damn thing to work? Yes? Fine -- you don't need to do anything further, and we'll just use the bundled libraries.
"What about disk space?"
Given the benefits of software that just works, a few extra MBs of space is not even worth wasting brain cycles on. For those that feel otherwise, I suggest they figure out a way for apps to be packaged such that undesired bundled libraries could be easily jettisoned.
This isn't La-La Land that we're talking about here -- just look at Mac OS X. Most applications there aren't even "installed" in the *nix/Windows sense of the word; the end user downloads the package and drags the application icon into the Applications folder. Done. Any dependencies are contained within the
If application developers would all agree to do this, the world would be a much better place.
...my laptop's graphics card does not have 3d acceleration support under Linux :-(
:-((
I can not enjoy Tux racer
FYI, my game based distro is Morfix Game edition live CD
~Aha~
Low latency is indeed the issue in audio performance, and prior to 2.6 it verged on the attrocious. The new (semi)preemptive kernel has brought massive improvements in audio latency with the userspace mixers, and to my mind has negated the pressing need for a kernelspace mixer.
Prior to 2.6 I would have agreed that the kernel was the only place that could be able to provide vaguely realtime (ie low latency) performance, now I feel it is less certain.
I hope things improve, currently I cannot replace my win2k home studio with anything but a mac (like the studio at work), and I have tried.
Q.
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well, if there was such a thing I'd immediatelly get down to downloading it and spreading it around to at least 10 people :P
SDL is what you're looking for; it's been around for several years. It's mature and in use in many projects. I don't know everything that DirectX does, but I believe most of it can be handled by SDL combined with OpenGL. Not only does SDL run on many platforms (including Windoze), it has bindings for various high level languages, so one isn't stuck with C or C++.
it has to do with software support more. I finally talked my parents into letting me dual boot their system just so they can try linux. They like the fact that they don't have to worry about all these e-mail worms going around. Only real question they had was "will my saved word/excell files work on linux?" "Sure with Open Office", I replyed.
I think that if you could goto your local computer store and their software section has as large of linux selection as windows then it will help mega tons.
Yeah yeah I understand you can just download most of linux software for free however most people don't know this due to the M$ brainwashing effect.
If there was a nice GUI for Gentoo that would an image of each package when searching/listing it would help new people.
i have yet to hear a compelling reason why a software mixer in the kernel is a better solution than a software mixer in userspace.
i have yet to hear a compelling reason why a file system in the kernel is a better solution than a file system in userspace. Sounds like a microkernel advocate. A software mixer mixes multiple audio streams on one audio device; a file system mixes multiple data streams on one block storage device.
the conclusions resulted in artsd and jack
If Grandma wants to run a JACK app, and an aRts app is holding /dev/dsp hostage, how will Grandma know that she needs to kill the aRts app?
/me assumes grandparent poster was trolling or didnt understand he needed to install some 3d accelerated drivers to play
Dingdingding, we have a winner! Even a lot of Linux geeks can't figure out how to compile the proper kernel drivers, install the proper libraries, tweak their X configuration, and whatever else is necessary to get games to work as well under Linux as they do under Windows out-of-the-box.
I read a couple years back that game companies had to make games such that people never called their support lines. If somebody called support once, they essentially made $0 on that sell; if they called support twice, they lost money on it. Even if that's not strictly accurate today, it's still a useful lesson: if you sell a relatively cheap product (under $50), you don't want a relatively large portion of your audience calling for tech support.
Now, why would your favorite game company want to jump into a market where people aren't used to paying for software, and need to help newbies compile their kernels?
When I can do an install from a Linux CD on a blank hard disk of my favorite distro, go get lunch, and come back and have everything needed to run programs with hardware OpenGL acceleration and ready to go, then we can talk about games for Linux.
Why be so proper? Why not just call them "underwear?" But, seriously, I'm not at all clear on what should be called "lower," "base," and "middle." Would you say that SDL and DirectX provide interfaces at a similar level of abstraction? I haven't used either of them myself yet, but what I've read suggests that they do.
Freshmeat lists a number of game frameworks, some of which are Free Software. I wonder if any of them provides capabilities similar to Renderware.