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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!!!!
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).
When you get to hell -- tell 'em Itchy sent ya!
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,
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
gentoo already has bootable game cds, one with americas army, and another with ut2003 demo
Maybe this is what's stalling Duke Nukem Forever.
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
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.
1.- Develop a game locking out 90% of the market.
2.- ???
3.- Profit!
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
I think that the poster is obviously refering to the X-Box linux project, which via a buffer overflow exploit in certain games, enables linux to be installed without requiring a mod-chip.
The inherent open-ness of Linux and its various development kits allows developers to create software and games software without the costly restrictions and control console manufacturers seem to place over their respective hardware.
It should be noted however that Sony have released a Linux based distro specifically for Playstation 2 for exactly this purpose.
My own personal belief is that it is extremely difficult to create next-gen games without the kinds of near-hollywood budget software houses have to throw at it. Im not saying its impossible, but small scale bedroom coding aint gonna produce the kinds of masterpieces that Lionhead or $GAMESTUDIO_OFCHOICE are producing.
I think a better twist on this idea would be to produce bootable CDROM's ala knoppix, bundled with a specific game. This way you remove the notion of operating system dependancy. Linux enables you to build a very low-level OS, with just enough required to boot the game. If something along these lines were to be introduced it would allow mainstream software studios to sell games to anyone who has an x86 machine, regardless of OS.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Tux Racer II: Grand Theft Penguin
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
First off,
Please do some actual research before you state something as a fact. An accrual informed write-up of multi Monitor support in windows
And that review focuses solely on gaming under multi monitor situations in windows, there are even more options available if you are not trying to game. So your "only 2" options in windows statement is quite false. Thanks for your time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.