Linux Live Gaming Project

Convert to Linux in 12 easy steps by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-16 17:04 · Score: 5, Funny

Speaking of getting Linux more popular (more games...), Finally there's a how-to guide you can get all your friends and neighbors tuned-in to using Linux.

How to convert to Linux in 12 easy steps.

Check it out folks, this is very useful - as we edge ever closer to taking down Micro$loth!!!!

Re:Convert to Linux in 12 easy steps by dustinbarbour · 2005-01-16 17:10 · Score: 2, Funny

That was quite entertaiing.. having a hard deciding if its for or against Linux.

--
What is your penile percentile?
Re:Convert to Linux in 12 easy steps by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-16 17:27 · Score: 2, Funny

I see you have mastered step #12 already...

Wrong Games by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-16 17:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

WHen people say that they don't use linux because they cannot game on it, they are not talking about playing tuxracer. They are talking about playing HL2, Doom, the latest RPGs, etc. This distro couldn't be further from what people want.

Re:Wrong Games by tepples · 2005-01-16 17:10 · Score: 2, Informative

I'm not sure about Half-Life 2, but Linux is said to run Half-Life 1 just fine in Wine, and Doom 1 and 2 are ported. You can run the latest GBA RPGs in VisualBoyAdvance, which is ported.

Best of all, Linux can help you get in shape, as Pydance and StepMania are ported.
Re:Wrong Games by nukem996 · 2005-01-16 17:16 · Score: 2, Informative

Doom3 there is a native port which runs great. HL2 runs just as well through cedega. The latest games are being added to cedega support or being ported to Linux.
Re:Wrong Games by Tarqwak · 2005-01-16 17:17 · Score: 2, Interesting

What if the user could extract for example Unreal Tournament 2004 demo for Linux installation binary in Windows. Then boot the LLGP with all the 3D hardware detected like a charm, and run the demo from a readonly mounted NTFS/FAT32 partition...
Re:Wrong Games by thedustbustr · 2005-01-16 17:35 · Score: 3, Informative

"HL2 runs just as well through cedega"
LOL! Your definition of "just as well" is apparently 20 minute level loads, with a solid 5 fps (my GF4Ti4200 / 1.6Ghz / 512 DDR ram runs it at a playable 25 fps on windows). Read this review of halflife 2 under cedega. I'll post a quick excerpt that summarizes it for you:
The graphic looked pretty raw and 'edgy', gameplay wasn't smooth, the sound skipped every now and then. I opened the options again and reduced averything to 'low' or 'medium' were available. After applying the changes (which worked this time), it felt a little smoother but reducing graphic options didn't really help the raw look. After playing a while, I experienced a sudden drop in fps, I activated the fps-display to check and indeed, I've been to 10-20 frames the moment any NPC or another moving object came to view. I restarted HL and I'm able to reproduce this behaviour every time: Runs ok in the beginning, even if the framerate is far from beeing stable, at 30-70fps and after a while the framerate drops to the above mentioned 10-20 fps.

"The latest games are being added to cedega support"
Cedega is not the solution, stop hailing it as one.
"The latest games are...being ported to Linux."
By "latest games" you must mean (some) Unreal Engine 2 derivatives and Doom3? Certainly you realize that these two companies are among the few exceptions to the rule?

--
This sig is false.
Re:Wrong Games by Deliveranc3 · 2005-01-16 18:10 · Score: 3, Interesting

There are lots of people complaining that too many games focus on eye-candy.

Linux could do fine in terms of RTS Turn based strategy, adventure, etc.

The awsome multiple window features gives great possibility for hotseat gaming.

Why is Linux trying to be an FPS platform, that's just silly.
Re:Wrong Games by Magus424 · 2005-01-16 18:12 · Score: 2, Insightful

But even with those, your options are severely limited compared to Windows.

The fact remains that if you really want to be able to game, and not just play a small subset of games, you can not use Linux.

At least not entirely. Hurray for dual-booting :-)

--
-- Gone Crazy, Back Later
Re:Wrong Games by sahonen · 2005-01-16 18:44 · Score: 3, Insightful

Great, HL1 and Doom 2. Those are *so* equivalent to HL2 and Doom 3. I mean, it's just another number up.

Besides, maybe they work for some people, but for me, Wine won't run anything more complicated than Notepad. It might work better if I put some time into configuring it, but that's going back to "Linux is free if your time is worth nothing," and my time (and sanity) is worth far too much to me to be spending all of it trying to get all of the disparate components that make up a Linux distribution to acknowledge each others' existence.

Believe me, I've given Linux its fair shot several times. It all boils down to how the system shifts far too much of the effort onto the user. It is the *programmer's* job to make the system usable by the user, *not* the user's! I shouldn't have to touch a text editor. If I have to configure anything, which I shouldn't, there should be a graphical tool for it, and it should allow me to configure *all* of the available options, not just the common ones.

--
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
Re:Wrong Games by Jace+of+Fuse! · 2005-01-16 19:19 · Score: 3, Interesting

Linux might be fine if you like the top of the top First Person Shooters (and occassionally a port of something popular over a year later), but what if you like something less than mainstream?

For instance while all of my friends were getting absorbed in Half-Life 2 or World of Warcraft I was left out because everytime I went to the store to pick up a copy of WoW (and to a lesser degree, HL2) the stores were out of stock.

While looking for something to play I managed to stumble upon a gem that caught me totally off guard.

I noticed Pirates! on the shelf. After reaading the back I realized it was a remake of the old C64, Mac, Amiga, and PC title and I had to buy it, even though I hadn't heard that they were remaking it.

I can honestly say it was not a waste! The game captures so much of the feel of the original while still being made modern. They haven't overlaiden it with stupid features, nor have they made it full of some lame linear storyline.

A good game, and certainly not one I'd expect to find ported to Linux, or even Mac. I just can't see it being popular enough with most people to justify it. Still, games like this are the reason I play PC games at all. As for the top first person shooters, blah. Sure I play them sometimes, but it would take more than that to get me to ditch my Windows box as my primary gaming machine.

--

"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"

Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Re:Wrong Games by Pxtl · 2005-01-16 19:20 · Score: 5, Insightful

Yep. Many projects have taken an attempt at this meagre challenge, and they've all sucked. First of all, Super-Tux is an alpha game - their site screenshots still show the tiling grids. Not very impressive.

Want to make Linux Gaming cool? Get some better objectives. I've seen many of these "Linux Game Distros" projects, and they all do the same half-assed crap of grab a bunch've mediocre Linux games and throw them onto the main menu.

Here's my dream project for an Opensource team:
FPS distro. Get one Opensource game that has tons of media available for it. That's pretty much the first 3 Id titles, plus Abuse and a handful of others. Quake and Doom are the only games to have complete media-replacement projects that turn them into standalone games, but I think there are a handful of Quake 2 and Quake 3 TC's that could be converted into standalones with a little trouble. Then, make a multi-CD package out of those games. Include all the major popular mods, models, etc. Second, take some of the configging out - Q3 and Doom were the only Id games that didn't require command-line hacking to get the mods working right.

Did you know that there are Doom Legacy maps reimplementing the Unreal Tournament 2003 gametypes? So you can play CTF Doom and Dom Doom? Very cool.

The key problem with these games, and Cube, is the installation and configging details. Handle that for the users with some nice Python GUI wrappers or something, similar to RedHat's config screens. Doom Legacy has this nicely nipped for Windows.

Now, set up a Gamespy-like GUI-oriented meta-server game-browsing service. That would be the "new feature" your gaming distro brings to the scene.

Then release a game-distro with a real featureset. Also, release win32 bundles of your game distros (like QPack and DPack) so that you can get win32 players playing with your players.

Yes, there are tons of games out there, but only Half-Life gives you tons of mods bundled in with their game package. If a person could order a QPack distro (which uses no Id IP but the GPL'd source data) with Weapons Factory, Slide, and whatever other mods you can get the mod devs to let you grab, then you're golden.

still, that option relies on a) getting permission to redistribute mods from the mod devs and b) what Id's exact license is for the Quake and Doom source.

Alternate plan: go for the oldschool people. Make the Linux Game Console for casual party gamers. There are an innumerate number of players out there who just want to grab a joystick and play Gauntlet again with their buds over a few beers. Just go for these basics: multiple joystick support, good graphics and sound configuration, TV out, and every multiplayer hotseat game you can cram onto the damn thing, even if you have to code them yourself (how freakin' hard would 8-player Spacewar be to make in PyGame?).

No, its not Halo, but neither is Mario Party, and people play the hell out of that.
Re:Wrong Games by Joe+Tie. · 2005-01-16 19:33 · Score: 2, Informative

It might not be relevent to your situation anymore, but for anyone else who's had bad luck with wine, Sidenet might help after wine's installed. It sets up the config file for some of the more tricky installs beforehand, installs some stuff from reactos, manages menus, and some other nice tricks. Though, on the other hand, I've never understood how people can have such different results from wine. I hear about people all the time not being able to run anything but notepad, but I've always had pretty good results from wine, even years back. Heck, my girlfriend, hardly a techy by any means, installed and uses photoshop with a vanilla build of wine. Are some of the major distros severly messing up wine when packaging or something?

--
Everything will be taken away from you.
Re:Wrong Games by Bill+Kendrick · 2005-01-16 19:50 · Score: 4, Informative

First of all, Super-Tux is an alpha game - their site screenshots still show the tiling grids. Not very impressive.

What, do you mean this?

That's the freakin' built-in tile editor! SHEESH!
Re:Wrong Games by Mold · 2005-01-16 20:17 · Score: 3, Informative

HL2 works fine under Cedega with no configuration, and Doom 3 has native Linux support.

So while the poster mentioned the wrong games, HL2 and Doom3 work just fine. And HL2 and Doom3 ARE "*so* equivalent to HL2 and Doom 3", interestingly enough.
Re:Wrong Games by sahonen · 2005-01-16 22:10 · Score: 2, Insightful

Because after all, what Linux really needs is for you, the master and director of all computing, to give it a shot...

I am the end user. I am the master and director of all computing, because I'm the person who is actually using it to get work done. An operating system is not an end to itself, it's what runs in the background and doesn't get in my way while I'm trying to run stuff on it. If I'm spending all of my time getting the operating system working, then that operating system is not doing its job. This is what Linux freaks don't get, they run Linux because it's Linux. I run Windows 2000 because it stays out of my way while I do what I actually want to do with my computer.

Text files are a superior configuration method

As long as you have every single option and its impact on the system memorized, and you are a perfect typist. I have no problem with using a text file to actually store the configuration, and in fact I much prefer it to Windows' godawful convoluted registry, but editing them by hand is a pain unless you are extremely familiar with the system. And you know what? I don't have time to become obsessively familiar with every aspect of the system, that's the programmer's job, I'm too busy getting things done instead of dealing with my OS. You shouldn't have to keep referencing the man page or beat your head against the desk for half an hour because you transposed something. And you can stick all of the less commonly-used options under an "advanced options" tab.

You're more than willing to complain about Linux, but not at all willing to learn it.

I'm perfectly willing to learn a new UI, a new directory structure, and everything else one would expect to be different in a new system, because it is a new system after all. If I use a Mac, I don't complain about the widgets being in different places and saved documents going in a different folder and stuff like that. But the difference is, I turn on a Mac and I can forget about it, except for maybe being more used to some Windows UI conventions. A Linux box simply isn't usable with the same degree of transparency of the operating system that you get with Windows and MacOS. The problem is not that the user isn't knowledgeable enough, it's that the operating system isn't doing its job.

--
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
Re:Wrong Games by sahonen · 2005-01-16 22:45 · Score: 2, Informative

I can name any number of apps that are free-as-in-speech and yet have the UI thing down. Going down my start menu, I see... Azureus, Filezilla, GAIM, Keepass, the entire Mozilla lineup, OpenOffice.Org, Putty, ScummVM, and The Ur-Quan Masters... All of which I use on a regular basis to get things done, or in the case of the last two, have some fun. The volunteer nature of open-source hasn't kept these programs from becoming strong, useful applications, and in the case of Mozilla, from being used by millions.

--
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
Re:Wrong Games by sahonen · 2005-01-16 23:13 · Score: 2, Interesting

No you are AN end user. A rather stupid one too.

I'm stupid because I want to get things done rather than waste my time? Insulting people isn't going to sway them to your cause. I'll ignore it, though, because I realize technical people aren't always the most socially adept. And hey, I'm not the most technically adept, either, but I'm still better than the people who are using their CD-ROM drive trays as cupholders and who can't grasp the difference between left-click and right-click. That's who is going to be using Linux if it becomes a widespread desktop operating system. Scary, huh?

Linux is much better at staying out of your way then windows 2000. You can't make it work but I can.

I'm just going by my experience, where I had to be familiar with all the refresh rates my monitor could handle of in order to use every screen resolution it was capable of. It's not all that difficult, if you have your monitor documentation on hand, but it begs the question, why should I have to deal with that? Why can't the system gracefully auto-detect it or use reasonable defaults? It's possible. Windows does it.

And note I never said I couldn't make it work. Wine, yes, that never worked for me, but as for the rest I eventually got a nice stable system that I could install or compile software on and use. But it's more work for the same result I can get from Windows with literally zero configuration. I don't even have to know what a command prompt is, though I realize its usefulness and use Cygwin to get a bash shell under Windows.

[Talking down to clueness n00b about comments]

But the comments are nowhere near a thorough documentation of all the configuration possibilities. For example, the Xorg.conf said nothing about how to get my multi-head setup going. It took the help of the guy who introduced me to Linux to get it working, and even then neither of us could figure out how to get the PCI card higher than 1024x768, when it is capable of up to 1280x1024. And of course, a bad config file could keep X from starting up at all, something which would never happen with a well-designed GUI configuration applet.

--
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
Re:Wrong Games by __aamkky7574 · 2005-01-17 00:02 · Score: 3, Funny

The circle of life:

* Linux weenie: Linux is GrAtE!
* Non-linux weenie: But it took my 2 days
to install Firefox!
* Linux weenie: Linux is GrAtE! U'Re St00pid!
* Non-linux weenie: Um, OK *Fires up Windows again*

P.
Re:Wrong Games by __aamkky7574 · 2005-01-17 00:14 · Score: 2, Interesting

I would hope that everyone would mod the parent up. Not that I agree with it - I vehemently disagree with it. But hopefully the more people who see this kind of attitude, the more people will realise that advocating Linux boxes as gaming machines is really just pie-in-the-sky thinking. For god's sake, people - PC gaming is declining because people think installing and configuring games on Windows is too complicated! And then here comes the usual zealot whose response to some well-founded criticism is "Well, nyah, you're stupid".

At work, I use Linux and Windows; at home, I use Windows. Let me tell you, it's a relief to get home, away from the pain of having to endlessly search forums in order to do the simplest things. It took me two hours the other day to install Firefox! A frickin' browser!

P.
Re:Wrong Games by SComps · 2005-01-17 01:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

Actually, no he's not a stupid end user. He's an average end user, and one I happen to agree with on many levels; and I'm not stupid either.

I'm not a software engineer, and I'm certainly not some high brow programmer with a fuck the user--if they read the damn source code they'd see that cryptic note in line 15295--attitude.

Yes, being familiar with the operating system is any administrators job, but the original poster *does* have a good point. Text file configurations are difficult to deal with. ESPECIALLY if the sample configs don't actually describe all of the available options and are only described on some godawful university ftp server in some backwater state with a 2 concurrent user limit an a 9600 baud USR Sportster for bandwidth. Exaggeration yes, but still. It's not just linux though. It's development in general. Commecial products tend to not want to piss off the end users (even though they do) and Open Source, freeware, shareware etc have this habit of saying "Can't make it work, read the manual ask in 17 newsgroups, read the manual again. Google on the terms you didn't find in the manual, ask in the newgroups again. If you don't find it, send us an email so we can savage and humiliate you for bothering us in our ivory castle. Oh yes your question. RTFM luser."

But this is seriously off topic. Tuxracer? when the hell did that become a game? If linux wants games, there has to be development of *real* games, not penguins on crack. Before there will be development there's gotta be serious users. In another posting somebody said something about the percentage of linux machines on the internet, and then added... "how many of those have monitors?" Count 3 linux machines on the net without monitors in my house alone. They do the bulk of the bull work, but are largely unsuitable for day to day interaction. That's my opinion, and it may not coincide with yours.

Telling somebody they're stupid for having an opposing opinon only makes you the stupid one.

--
The world according to SComps
Re:Wrong Games by Jearil · 2005-01-17 02:37 · Score: 2, Informative

Just a small note if you hadn't been paying attention for the last oh.. decade or so..

Linux *IS* a major operating system on the x86 platform. It has backing by *major* companies such as IBM. It has a solid background derived from the *NIX world which makes all of those "oh so difficult" configuration text files, quite standard.

Now as for the "Every setting should be in a GUI" mentality, I'll express why at least I believe that would be a downgrade for any OS.

Linux is a *very* versitile and flexible system. It can be made to run on very old hardware, small devices, supercompters, or the average Joe User's desktop. Linux provides basically the kernel, which you can then run any number of applications under. The default and easiest user interface for Linux just so happens to be a shell prompt (of which even that there are several varieties.. it's all about choice). Now this is not to say that Linux is purely text-based and you must now a bazillion arbitrary text commands to do any actual work on a Linux system. There's also a nice graphical interface that you can run (Several actually), such as X.org or FreeX86.

Now as we all know, graphical environments have settings.. things such as your screen resolution, refresh rate, or bit depth. In most OS's these options are chosen by the user, or maybe the beginning settings are set by the OS upon install. I've recently had an upgrade to a newer graphics card (Nvidia GeForce 6800 GT) which has drivers for both Linux and Windows. Now in windows, after installation and a reboot it mysteriously set my monitor to 115x4000, which my monitor cannot display at all so it turns itself off.. I can't just close the graphical part of windows and change the oddly chosen starting numbers in a simple text file from a text prompt.. in fact I cannot change any settings at all because I don't have any of my pretty buttons on the screen. The only way to fix such a problem is to reboot into "Safe Mode" and change the values from there or uninstall the defunct drivers.

Granted Linux may be a small bit more work.. I have to actually open up a config file and type in my resolution numbers into the heavily commented xorg.config file. It's not easy for the Joe User to find where that xorg.config file is if they've never touched Linux I'll admit.. and maybe they won't know how to follow the directions as well.. but will the same Joe User be able to know that he's going to have to boot into Safe Mode (or that even it's a driver problem and maybe something windows did didn't just destroy his hardware) ?

This is just about a simple graphics configuration. It may not seem so benifitial to Joe User, but a system admin with over 100 systems may need to implement changes to all users desktops in some arbitrary fashion, and being able to telnet or ssh into all computers and run scripts to change *any* setting because they're in easy standard text files... well let's just say it's better than changing a radio button 100 times in a graphical box.

GUI's definatly make certain tasks easier.. generally for the actual desktop user.. but for a system admin or any sort of technical department, text files are a lot easier to work with. And it's not like Linux will take away the GUI functions completely... the daily work tasks can be done perfectly fine with a mouse and icons in X.

This is already longer than I wanted it to be.. but in short: keep config files in text files.. it really *is* easier when you understand why they're like that.

And nothing is holding Linux back.. it's already a major player. It may not be what you want it to be, but it's still here to stay.

Reboot? by tepples · 2005-01-16 17:07 · Score: 2, Insightful

A big problem with live CDs is that because few residential users can justify spending money for vmware, it takes a reboot to use a live CD. A lot of users leave their PCs on all the time, and many just minimize apps instead of closing them before they start a game. How will they get used to 3-minute task switch times, with mandatory closing of all applications?

Re:Reboot? by thenefariousone · 2005-01-16 17:53 · Score: 4, Insightful

Nein! A lot of people on slashdot leave their PCs on all the time.

Regular people shut off their computers once they're done with them. Just like they turn off the light when they leave the room.

They're not running servers. Uptime doesn't mean anything to them.

And those are the people you need - like it or not.

--
http://hughgordon.com/

Vendetta by MouseR · 2005-01-16 17:08 · Score: 5, Interesting

I've been playing Vendetta (vendetta-online.com) for a while now and it's superb.

I've been playing it on a Mac, but there's also a Linux and Windows version wich is equally beautiful.

No one doubts Linux could be used as a gaming platform. You guys simply have to sell the idea to game developers.

Re:Vendetta by dave420 · 2005-01-17 00:53 · Score: 2, Interesting

And the Mona Lisa could be used as a doorstop - doesn't mean it's financially viable.
Linux on the home desktop (where games are predominantly played) is a tiny, tiny, TINY percentage of all users out there. Even Macs have a hard time getting good games, and their market share is much highers, with less open source and fewer companies involved (so production is easier/more efficient).
Expecting a tiny share of the market to dictate what the major players do is arrogant. I'm not being rude, but why would a games company spend countless thousands of dollars porting/developing for linux, when at best they'll sell 200 games? Unless those games are VERY expensive, they'll lose a bunch of money, and waste time they could have spent making their games even better, which helps the entire company.

And the official Torrent: by chadw17 · 2005-01-16 17:09 · Score: 3, Informative

http://www.tlm-project.org/torrents/llgp/llgp-0.1p re0.iso.torrent

Re:And the official Torrent: by chadw17 · 2005-01-16 17:11 · Score: 4, Informative

Sorry, didn't make it a link. Here it is in clickably delicious form.
LLGP 0.1 ISO

Thats all well and good by tuxter · 2005-01-16 17:09 · Score: 5, Insightful

But I want to play half life. I understand that OS projects take a huge deal of time to get off the ground, but lets face facts, PS2/Cube/Xbox/PC are all gaming platforms. Linux is not, it was never designed as a gaming platform and probably never will be as long as video card manufacturers refuse to open source their drivers. What is the point of porting games to a platform if the likelyhood of them working is minimal. I fully support the idea of trying to make linux a gaming platform, and would dearly love to see it. But IMHO it's not going to happen.

Re:Thats all well and good by Trillian_1138 · 2005-01-16 17:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

Correct me if I'm wrong (and, as this is Slashdot, I have no doubt someone will), but I don't believe Windows was *designed* as a gaming platform. Rather, as it became obvious that PC users desired the ability to do more graphic-based applications, often meaning games, Windows tools such as DirectX became available.

There is no reason something similar can't happen under Linux. I agree, video card manufacturers keeping closed-source drivers and the ever-present 'which came first' issue of companies not publishing to Linux until companies publish to Linux are issues. As you say, you support the ideas behind this project. I don't think you're trying to be negative, but it comes off as if you felt these guys wasted their time.

I recently aquired a bigger harddrive and am thinking of configuring it for dual-booting. As much as I suspect I'll have to go into Windows for World of Warcraft and such, it's still nice to know that I'd be able to have similar time-wasting games on Linux like I do on Windows.

-Trillian
Re:Thats all well and good by k98sven · 2005-01-16 17:57 · Score: 3, Insightful

PS2/Cube/Xbox/PC are all gaming platforms. Linux is not, it was never designed as a gaming platform and probably never will be as long as video card manufacturers refuse to open source their drivers. What is the point of porting games to a platform if the likelyhood of them working is minimal.

Being 'designed' as a gaming platform doesn't mean anything. Windows was not designed as a gaming platform either. In fact, games were the last of the old DOS programs to make the shift to windows. That happened because Microsoft cleared the way for them by creating DirectX.

The open-or-closed status of drivers has relatively little to do with it. It's not a big problem for the graphics card people to recompile their drivers for the major distros. Games are a mass-market thing. So only mass-market Linux (i.e. major distros) are really relevant there anyway. You don't see them releasing drivers for NT 4 either.

The issue is the API:s. While Direct3D and OpenGL are pretty much on par, DirectX provides quite a lot of other stuff which OpenGL does not. And in those areas, the alternatives like SDL just aren't good enough.

So what are the options? Develop for DirectX, and you have Windows and the Xbox covered. Develop for OpenGL and you'll probably need to write your own code for networking, keyboard/mouse/joysticks and so on. And rewrite it if you want to support other platforms.

What the world would really need is a gaming API which could compete with (or be better than) DirectX in every respect, and which is cross-platform. Ideally, you would have a collaboration between Red Hat, SuSE, Apple and Sony. An API supporting Windows and Linux and Apple and the PS2 would certainly be a DirectX-killer. You could develop for four platforms for the price of one.

Given that scenario, who wouldn't put out a Linux port (even an unsupported one)? It's certainly technically possible. I'm just waiting for someone important to 'get it'.
Re:Thats all well and good by WIAKywbfatw · 2005-01-16 19:46 · Score: 4, Insightful

Windows may not have been designed to be a gaming platform, any more than it was designed to be any other kind of platform, but gaming has been around on PCs since way before Windows was around.

We've evolved past the point where you needed to know how to configure autoexec.bat, config.sys and QEMM to get a DOS-based game to run properly and we've now progressed to the point where you install a game, it self detects your hardware, tells you if it needs updated Windows components (requires DirectX version x, installs that other software once you give it the go-ahead, and is ready to run.

From hours of messing around to a few simple clicks: don't underestimate the amount of credit that sort of simplicity deserves for the PC gaming market being so big today. Even so, that's a heck of a lot more interaction than is involved in getting a PS2 or other console game up and running.

Yet compare that to the situation under Linux. If you're an expert, have plenty of time on your hands and enjoy a challenge then I'm sure you've got no problem trying to get games to work. But if you're not an expert, or don't have the time or don't enjoy hitting your head against a brick wall a few dozen times then Linux is not the gaming platform for you.

--

"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg

so... by ltwally · 2005-01-16 17:09 · Score: 5, Funny

So, judging from this article, we're supposed to convert people to linux for the games?!

"Challenge your friends on LLGP, and convert them to Linux!"

What... was the author of this article making some sort of sick joke? Converting people to linux for the games. Right. What mental asylum did you break out of, pal?

Next thing, this guy will be telling us to steal OSX users 'cause linux is easier to use...

--

/dev/random

We've got the gaming distros. by desplesda · 2005-01-16 17:09 · Score: 4, Interesting

What the community needs in order to show that 'Linux has game' is to have a group create and publish a full game that people would buy in the shops.

We have plenty of 'game distro' CDs that contain Neverball, Wesnoth, SuperTux, et al, but we don't have anything that you could get attached to like people get attached to Half-Life, Deus Ex, Diablo.

Give me a singleplayer game with a plot for Linux! Yes, sir, I am willing to contribute.

Re:We've got the gaming distros. by nomadic · 2005-01-16 17:24 · Score: 3, Insightful

Give me a singleplayer game with a plot for Linux!

And make it CHALLENGING. I can't believe how much they've dumbed down games. I remember back in the day where if you didn't solve the damn puzzle, you didn't go any further. And they were HARD. And if you talked to someone in the game you had to use the keyboard; none of this pre-selected sentences to choose.

Yes, sir, I am willing to contribute.

I'd definitely contribute to a nice, long, mind-numbingly hard single player game, maybe a System Shock/Deus Ex type FPS. Wouldn't even be that hard, there are available open source 3d engines, not cutting edge anymore but who cares if the game is good.

The problem, of course, is the same one you always run into in OS projects; the art. Just not enough artistic talent available in the OS world.

Not a winner by Staplerh · 2005-01-16 17:10 · Score: 4, Insightful

Hmm, I think Linux should be promoted as much as possible, but this avenue will probably be a dead end. I dug around on the website, and found this list of supported games... admittedly it is the 'old' list, but still apparently rather accurate. Here is the URL: http://tuxgamers.altervista.org/llgp/games-0.0.1.p hp

Now, the simple fact remains that this is insufficient, and Linux can simple not be promoted as a gaming platform at this time. This may be promising news for software developers who may elect to use the Linux platform, but I don't think I'll be able to 'convert my friends to Linux'.

Although, I must admit such samplings as 'Penguin Solitaire', 'Penguin Minesweeper', 'Galaga' and 'Pingus - Enhanced Lemmings' do sound tempting.. especially the last. I just don't see it as a show stopper, or anything special.

--
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan

Commercial Linux Games by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-16 17:11 · Score: 2, Insightful

The mission of LLGP (Linux Live Game Project) is show to Wintendo users that also Linux can be used to game.

Many of these open source games for Linux are really great, but what we really need is to attract more commercial companies to develop games for Linux. All jokes aside Doom 3 has great graphics and shows what OpenGL is capable of; So the only exuse companies have to not develop for Linux is sales. Hopefully they would do better then Loki this time around...

Tux Racer by dicepackage · 2005-01-16 17:11 · Score: 3, Interesting

I have tried out tux racer on both Windows and linux and I have noticed that the Windows version runs significantly better. I have a computer with a AMD 3.2 Ghz processor and a Nvidia 6800 GT. When I run Tux Racer on Windows it runs very smoothly. I then tried it in Fedora and it was unbearable. I had the updated drivers for my card installed and all the packages were up to date but it still ran horribly. I wanted to confirm that this was a fluke so I tried this out on my laptop (which runs Mandrake) and got similar results. If people want linux gaming taken seriously then the games will have to be built more reliably. I have also noticed that in order to get anything with 3D support there are often several packages that need to be installed and these aren't always included with most distributions.

Re:Tux Racer by mboverload · 2005-01-16 17:33 · Score: 2, Insightful

Gentoo? You totally lost the WHOLE POINT. People dont want to compile stuff from source or edit text files to get something to work when it installs and plays in windows in less than a minute.
Re:Tux Racer by theguitarizt · 2005-01-16 19:09 · Score: 2, Informative

there's a script that you can get here called nvcheck to see if your nvidia drivers are installed correctly. You might have to tweak it a bit to make it recognize an Xorg config file if you're using a newer distro, but it should mostly still work and may help you figure out the source of your problem. Tux racer ran fine for me back when I used a TNT2, so it should work just fine on the 6800.

List of games included in LLGP by cgenman · 2005-01-16 17:18 · Score: 4, Informative

This is from 0.0.1, but the maintainers claim that it basically hasn't changed.

[Damn lameness filter, had to re-write post]

Arcade

imaze, Abuse SDL, Amphetamine, Armagetron, Atomic Tanks, bomberclone, Bugsquish, Bumprace, bzflag, Chromium, Circus Linux, Egoboo, Galaga, gl-117, Heroes (SDL version), KAsteroids, KBounce,KFoulEggs, KGoldrunner, Kolf, KSirtet, KSmileTris, KSnakeRace, KSpaceDuel, KTron, lbreakout2, Mad Bomber, mangopeeler, mangoquest, Neverball, Neverputt, pinball, Powermanga, Starfighter, SuperTux, Thrust, Toppler, Trophy, Tux: A Quest for Herring, Tuxkart, TuxRacer, WING, X Abuse, Xboing, Xbreaky, Xkobo, XKoules, Xracer racing game, XScavenger, Xscorch, XSoldier, ZBlast

Adventures

Falcon's Eye, GGZ, GGZap, Completition Calendar, Fyrdman, Keepalive Control, KGGZ, KTicTacTux, ModSniffer

Board games

XBoard-ICS, Atlantik, GnuChess, GtkAtlantik, KBackgammon, KBlackBox, Kenolaba, KMahjongg, KReversi, KWin4, Muehle, Penguin Taipei, Shisen-Sho, Xboard

Card games

KPoker, Mah-jong, Penguin Canfield, Penguin Freecell, Penguin Golf, Penguin Solitaire, Penguin Thornq, PySol, Solitario, Tenente Skat, Xmahjongg, Xskat

Games for children

Potato guy

Brain-teasers

Codebreaker, Enigma, Gtans, Imemory, MirrorMagic, Penguin Mastermind, Penguin Merlin, Penguin Minesweeper, Penguin Pegged, Xjig

Shooter

Cube

Sport

CannonSmash, Foobiliard

Strategy

Freeciv, GNU Gaming Zone, Pingus - Enhanced Lemmings

Tactics and Strategy

Boson, Katomic, Kbattleship, KJumpingCube, Klickety, KLines, KMines, Konquest, KSokoban, SameGame

Tetris and similar

Cuyo, Frozen-bubble, LTris, Netris , Quadra

--
The ______ Agenda

Re:List of games included in LLGP by flamearrows · 2005-01-16 18:22 · Score: 2, Insightful

No Nethack?

--
The indiscriminate use of vulgar language is the linguistic crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker

Deus what? by tepples · 2005-01-16 17:21 · Score: 2

we don't have anything that you could get attached to like people get attached to Half-Life, Deus Ex, Diablo.

You could put a whole bunch of DivX porn on a CD, put some sort of plot around it like the crappy Sega CD FMV games did, and call it "Deus Sex".

Or more seriously, you could make a new DDR mix based on the StepMania engine if you manage to score some song licenses. Roxor Games is doing this with In The Groove, an arcade version of StepMania.

Wrong genres? by tepples · 2005-01-16 17:24 · Score: 3, Informative

Yeah, the first-person shooters get ported to GNU/Linux rather quickly, but what about things other than FPS? Yes, other game genres exist, even though someone who took his/her nick from the name of the hero of a popular FPS may consider such an idea blasphemous.

The Torrent by cgenman · 2005-01-16 17:25 · Score: 3, Informative

And if you're going to try it out, be nice on them and use their torrent link.

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The ______ Agenda

Actually, yeah, there are good games for Linux.... by Zombie+Ryushu · 2005-01-16 17:25 · Score: 2, Interesting

There are good game for Linux. In particular Vega Strike and FreeDroid RPG

But you know what? It doesn't mean a damn to the commercial industry, the General Public wants its Half Life, and its Halo. Why? Because the commercial gaming industry floods the market with them. I do wish that FOSS Would band together and work to really push the good FOSS games out there and get Linux some exposure, but it won't happen until the Linux distributors get their heads out of their asses and realize that they need to really REALLY promote these games to their residential customers and stop shovelling them off in 'contrib' where you have to know what to look for to find them.

You know what? When I was 8, my mind was absolutely captivated by 'Star Master' from Atari. when I was 15? Descent and Doom.

Vega Strike would have made my crap my pants!

Do you realize how many Commodore 64 'Paradroid' fans were Orgasmically enthused over Freedroid RPG? We need to appeal to this emotion in people. and Promote our greatest accomplishments

Self-booting games? by cgenman · 2005-01-16 17:34 · Score: 2, Insightful

I've always wondered why people don't combine Knoppix with retail games. Doom 3, for example, could boot from the CD directly into itself, no matter what system or OS you ran. The interface would be dirt simple, and boot times could probably be optimized to be bearably fast. You wouldn't have to worry if your game was Longhorn or Win 98 compatible... it just would be.

Now, you would have to keep your drivers up-to-date, which might be a pain, but it would probably be a smaller pain than supporting every OS and software combination under the sun.

--
The ______ Agenda

Where is Quake? by yem · 2005-01-16 18:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

One, Two and Three. Could probably squeeze in the UT2004 demo as well or even the Doom 3 demo. Show em something they may actually recognise.

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No, I did not read the f***ing article!

You know, I used to agree by einhverfr · 2005-01-16 18:31 · Score: 2, Interesting

However, I must say that I have changed my mind.

The game that changed my mind was Wesnoth. It is a superb game and one which has challenged my ideas of on the limits of what open source can accomplish in content-rich areas such as games. Wesnoth is an *awsome* game as far as turn-based strategy games go. The competition doesn't even come close. If Wesnoth was sold in stores, people would buy it. Only thing is-- it is not even 1.0....

Wesnoth offers days of game play or more. And each release sees new campagns being added. In the end it will beat the pants off many established turn-based strategy games.

Tux racer is fun too but it is a very different kind of game than the games that get sold in stores. The games that get sold in stores are the epic games which offer hours and hours of game play and which take a long time often to get from one break to another. Tux Racer is pretty good for those 10 min. breaks. TuxRacer is the sort of game you would expect to see at an arcade.

I have not played SuperTux. It doesn't look compelling, but it could be. I don't know.

--

LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP

Game Support on Linux is Sub-Par by Mystic0 · 2005-01-16 18:38 · Score: 5, Interesting

Unfortunatly, while Linux does have support for games such as Doom 3, UT2004, and Half Life 2, the quality of the support is almost always lower.

Here is an example. In both Doom 3 and UT2004, Windows gives you tight integration with the built in editors. In the Linux versions of these, games, however, the editors are both MIA.

In addition, while Cedega boasts a wide range of supported games, the quality of that support is even lower than the native games. For example, to get pixel shader support, you need a Geforce 5 class card or better. In Windows, you only need a Geforce 3 class card or better. And while ATI arguably has some of the best hardware, they also have the worst driver support in Linux . And while people say that they got game X, Y and Z working perfectly under Cedega, it probobly took them X number of hours to configure, hack, and crack the game before it would actually run. (Trust me, I've been there.)

The obvious solution is to dual boot. This becomes a problem, however, for people who can't afford to buy Windows. But then again, if you can't afford Windows, maybe you shouldn't be buying games either. ;)

The bottom line is that we won't get good game support until publishers believe that Linux is a viable consumer market. Furthermore, most developers use DirectX, which is a Windows tehnology, not an open standard.

I enjoy Linux for it's other benifits. I don't mind that it's not the ultimate gaming platform, although it would be nice if it was. I instead enjoy that it has a stable enviorment for me to explore UNIX, program, and explore free software.

Re:Game Support on Linux is Sub-Par by bersl2 · 2005-01-16 18:50 · Score: 2, Interesting

A key to getting games to come to Linux may be to convince game developers to use OpenGL and SDL. This will surely eliminate some of the cost of porting (YMMV). Anything that reduces the cost of a port makes a port more likely. So if any of you out in SlashLand have it in with some game developers (hey, it could happen), see if you can put in a good word for OpenGL and SDL.

And we really need more than hot air from ATI.
Re:Game Support on Linux is Sub-Par by the+angry+liberal · 2005-01-16 21:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

So if any of you out in SlashLand have it in with some game developers (hey, it could happen), see if you can put in a good word for OpenGL and SDL.

That's why! None of these developers have ever heard of OpenGL and that is why most games are written for DirectX.

I would suggest running with your revelation and post messages on all the game dev forums you can find. Let them know about this fancy, new OpenGL and how great it is!

And we really need more than hot air from ATI.

They don't care enough to even invest the energy in generating said hot air. ATI is spending massive resources competing with nVidia in the GPU market. The percentage of users who would actually buy a different brand due to Linux driver support is probably like 1% if you think about it. Sure, people say Linux boxes make up ~13% of the Internet but I'm willing to bet most of those don't even have a monitor attached.

Koules was a neat Linux game. by bob+beta · 2005-01-16 19:17 · Score: 2, Interesting

The one unique and compelling game that I've ever played on Linux was 'Koules' which was a two-D 'push piece around in frame' game with great sound effects and addictive gameplay.

Does anybody else remember playing Koules? I have tried bringing the old source tarball for it 'forward' into a modern Linux distro, and it just won't build anymore. It might even be time to take a spare machine and roll out an old Slackware, something like Slack 3.4 (with a 1.2.13 kernel) just to play that game. I remember it playing great back when all I had was a Pentium 75 box with a SoundBlaster 16.

Does anybody else remember Koules? Has anybody built it successfully to run on a current Linux?

--
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"

Games, and Linux and Content of them by Zombie+Ryushu · 2005-01-16 19:44 · Score: 3, Insightful

We are Linux users, and as Linux user we should stop complaining that the commercial industry that cares nothing for us isn't porting games.

Games are nessessary for this OS to market itself. I really wish we had more people. As someone who has contributed time and energy to Linux gaming I know something very VERY important. We need the Human capital to pump out good games. They don't have to be masterpieces, just reasonably well done, and those of us who are able should contribute more to this OS.

We really REALLY need Human being pumping out better quality (conservative) code.

What I mean by conservative code is code that does more with less resources. We need artists and we need ideas. The technology exists and I honestly don't think that it is a lack of Linux's ability to be a good gaming platform, I just don't think people are taking advantage of the green and unharvested pastures that are the potential for Linux games.

We need volunteers producing quality GPLed content to create a desireable product. Its time that the people step up to the plate and show what they are capable of when the effort is put forward.

Stop asking the commercial gaming industry to do it for us, they won't.

Re:Defendguin by Bill+Kendrick · 2005-01-16 19:47 · Score: 2, Funny

(Notice how I was on the Internet within minutes, registering my disgust!)

Re:missed one by Bill+Kendrick · 2005-01-16 19:56 · Score: 2, Informative

Not being at all familiar with Settlers of Catan, I did a quick search at The Linux Game Tome and found Gnotan.

Perhaps you can suggest the LLGP folks add it...?

absolutly no games run on linux by killerface · 2005-01-16 20:28 · Score: 3, Funny

well while all you are complaining about how you can't play games in linux im gonna go play quake 3 arena or maybe doom 3 or maybe HL2 or maybe UT2004. I dunno there are just too many choices esspecially with cedega.

No no you guys are right linux doesnt run games, dont even try. just stick to windows. please. It'll at least keep #linuxhelp clean.

Actually that _is_ the real "mainstream" by Moraelin · 2005-01-16 20:35 · Score: 3, Interesting

That was more or less what I was thinking too.

I would however disaggree about "mainstream". Die-hard in-your-face online FPS clansmen are a very vocal minority. But make no mistake, the keyword is: minority.

The fact is, The Sims outsold any FPS ever made, including any Epic, Id or Valve game. Ever. (And for that matter, any other game.) Think about it.

Or how about these quick facts: Quiz games routinely outself FPS. EA's cash cows aren't some FPS franchise, but sports games. And between the N64 which had FPS games, and the Playstation which had Final Fantasy and Grand Turismo, the Playstation won by far. And for every single online FPS player, there are tens of PS2 and GameCube systems sold _without_ the broadband addapter.

As I've said, online FPS clansmen are awfully loud, but they're a minority. The majority of the world's gaming (or gamers) is off-line and _not_ FPS.

Either way, you're not alone. Some of the best PC games I've played over the last year include:

- yes, Pirates

- The Fall - Last Days of Gaia (third person post-apocalyptic RPG)

- Crusader Kings

- Vampire Bloodlines (based on the HL2 engine, but a third-person RPG. Well, more like action-rpg.)

- The Sims 2 (well, after disabling aging. Never liked that addition.)

- Evil Genius

None of them is a FPS or RTS. So, yeah, I'll fully aggree with you. I'd like to see more of _those_ supported on Linux, rather than yet another "but you have Doom 3 and UT2004" argument.

--
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.

Wrong question by Osty · 2005-01-16 20:41 · Score: 3, Interesting

Having games like tuxracer and supertux is a huge improvement over the linux gaming situation 3 years ago, and they are necessary to prove to people that yes, games *can* be written for linux, which is necessary before big games will be.

Games can be written for linux, just as games can be written for pretty any computer ever made. Hell, Spacewar was written on a PDP-11, and there are numerous games for handheld calculators and the like. The question here is can commercial games be profitable on linux. At the moment, the answer would appear to be, "No." Why? Well, big developers like id and Epic have ported their games to linux, and even though those two developers provide the engines for probably 90% of the non-sport, non-RPG games out there, you rarely hear of licensees porting to linux. Where's Splinter Cell or Rainbow Six 3 for linux? Both of those (actually, most of Ubi's current lineup) are based on Epic's Unreal engine, which has been ported to linux several times over if you consider the engine "new" for different games like Unreal Tournament, UT2003, and UT2004. You won't see them, because the money's not there. It doesn't matter if it's possible or even easy to port. The fact of the matter is that it takes some amount of time to target another platform (even if the engine itself is written in a platform-neutral way, which really is the case with many commercial games these days since many target multiple consoles as well as PC). More time means a later ship date and more money spent on development (and potentially lost money in sales, if they have to slip significantly to accomodate the port), all to support a platform with a very small marketshare. It's all numbers. For PC gaming, you're talking ~95% of the market on Windows, ~1-2% on lnux, and ~3-4% on Mac (and that's probably generous). Is it any wonder that both linux and Mac get shafted on games?

Loki tried to make a business out of porting games for developers that didn't have the time or expertise to do it themselves. They failed. Granted, it's been a few years since Loki imploded, and we did get some good technology out of the endeavor like SDL, but I think it's a pretty safe bet that a similar effort today would die just as Loki did before. Games have a very short half-life (pardon the pun), and if the ports don't ship at the same time, nobody will really care. (Yes, I know there will be the few platform zealots that will wait and wait for a port to their OS, but by and large if you can't buy the game within six months of release, you're probably never going to buy it.)

I'm not even going to mention the difficulties surrounding multiple distros of linux (how should commercial games be packaged? RPM? deb? tarballs? some proprietary installer that doesn't play nice with any distro?) or multiple platforms (it's nice that your game works on linux, but is that for x86, PPC, sparc, alpha, or what?). I'll leave that for a different post, except to say that even if the linux market was large enough to matter, the test matrix for such a game would be hell.

The latest wine..... by HogynCymraeg · 2005-01-16 20:50 · Score: 3, Interesting

....has been running a lot of windows OpenGL demos that I've downloaded at very good speeds. Even the Torque SDK runs over wine (Not that you need to as there is a native version, but it was amazing to see nevertheless). I know l33t users look down their nose at wine, but seeing a windows opengl demo running with music at 568fps in a linux window in X is pretty impressive.

Quake 3 experience by morbiuswilters · 2005-01-16 20:56 · Score: 2, Interesting

When I bought Quake 3 for linux several years back (had already owned the windows version for sometime), I installed it but apparently didn't get my drivers straight as it would default to the software OpenGL driver instead of my shiny new Geforce3. Of course my frame rates were atrocious (2-3 fps, vs. 100+ on windows). Of course it was unplayable and I eventually got it the nvidia driver to work and enjoyed a bit of fragging on linux before giving up gaming for awhile. The thing I find odd, though, is how nice it looked in software mode. Everything was much more crisp and clear than it was in hardware accelerated windows or linux. This might've been the result of some nvidia driver hack to sqeeze more fps out, but I have to admit I was surprised. On windows you couldn't even run the game without a 3d accelerator, and it had never occurred to me that other operating systems might be capable of such "magic". I still wish I could have had the great looks of the software driver with the performance of the windows configuration.

Anyway, about the live cd--it looks decent, but I really don't see any hardcore windows gamers being that impressed. However, this might server as a further bit of enticement for the friend or family member who just wants some simple, generic games and isn't loyal to a particular developer or game franchise. Of course, there is always cedega. But as far as gaming on linux goes, I figure it will pick up when it needs to. Mainstream linux is far from critical mass. However, the increasing prevalence of online gaming might bode well for the linux user who misses mass market games, as these systems 1) generally have to be more standards-minded to function on the internet, 2) many times have backends running on non-microsoft code and 3) can handle automatic updates which would help with "tuning" the game for linux. I definitely hope we see a shift towards broader gaming markets. Of course, any game that relied on TC would exclude linux users.

Personally, I have to admit I'm a bit surprised that PC gaming is as strong as it is, because when I started gaming (10 years ago or so) most PC gaming magazines were predicting their own obsolesence and death at the hands of the almight PLAYSTATION. As someone who enjoys PC gaming much more than console gaming (jesus, please, no flames--its just my preference) I was worried at the time, but the pc gaming industry seems very vibrant (thank you valve!). Also, let me just say that I would marry Sid Meier if he would but have me, even though I'm not gay and would even be willing to undergo the necessary "kernel recompile" to give him the heterosexual relationship he most likely desires. Okay, christ, now I know why I quit gaming for so long, serious issues....

--
I have come here to chew memory and kick ass... and malloc() is returning a null pointer.

But are "Wintendo" people looking for games? by Glowing+Fish · 2005-01-16 21:37 · Score: 2, Interesting

I am a pretty hardcore Wesnoth player (I've beaten TRoW and HttT! Which probably doesn't mean much to many of you.) I've been playing TBS for ten+ years, and Wesnoth is one of the most involving and challenging games for people who like strategic concepts. (Its also a nice if somewhat cliched RPG).

But Wesnoth is not what the average Windows or console gamer is looking for. Because for the most part, "games" are not "games" in the sense of a ruleset and concept to be mastered. Most games are not even tasks at hand eye coordination. Most "games" are interactive adventures with small aspects of both rulesets and hand-eye coordination, but mostly depending on graphics and sound to make the player feel immersed. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but for people who are looking for games that immerse them in a world, playing a game like Wesnoth, which is based around mastering a ruleset, and mostly projecting the world with your imagination, is going to be a disappointment.

--
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.

Gaming on Linux by redjupiter · 2005-01-16 21:46 · Score: 2, Informative

I am a gamer and I always play Americas Army Operations (www.americasarmy.com). It is a free FPS game. Before Linux I was playing it on Windows, and like most people here I was sceptic about the Linux Version. 1) I wasn't sure that Liux and openGL is up to the task in Graphics, 2) Sound quality. That is until I installed it on Linux. It Runs exactly the same, and the sound is eactly the same. The virtual memory in Linux helps it to run faster. I have now ditched the Windows Version and play it on Linux only. I do my part my talking to other on-line users who uses Windows and how over time it slwos down; things llike application runnings, daemon running the background and they don't understand enough to close some of them. Windows give you no hint about these background processes; spywares, adwares, and the virtual memory and filesystem performance itself. The hard of this is convincing them that Linux is not really difficult. You just need to learn what you have Learned on Windows. For example how to find the services and close some of them. On Linux at least it gives a couple of lines of description. Get a Distro, install everyting, get the game and install. The bad thing is that you have to learn how to get a new driver for your card, such as Nvidia and compile and install it (although it is simple, it scares some Windows users). I haven't tried other games, but AAO does a fine job of installing and no configuration necessary except what is in the game itself. Furthermore, it works on every distribution I tried, Fedora, Yoper, Mandrake and Suse. The nice thing about Yoper is that the nvidia driver is installed for you. Just install the game and go. I ditched Windows, unless of course there is a game I want and it is not on Linux. I think game developers need to have a look at Linux and developing a Linux version. Most games are willing to pay for their version. In my experience Linux is a much more stable platform for games. It just need a chance and if game developers work together with Linux vendors they can produce a very competitive gaming platform. My small opinion :-)

it's not in Linux's nature by Blitzenn · 2005-01-17 02:24 · Score: 2, Informative

As per another recent Liux gaming post and an article on Tom's Hardware Guide, Linux may not becomae a gamer's platform for a long time. The problem is that 1) most games are written around Microsoft's DirectX, which cannot be ported to Linux without a blessing from MS. Games need to be written in OpenGL, right now, to be linux compatable.

That piece of cake is 'iced' with a another problem, the graphics card driver sets. We already see a 'leadout' type of problem with later release cards where the Windows based game is released and some late release higher end cards cannot support the game, due to a compatability issue with the graphic cards driver sets. Companies such as ATI and Nvidia have a decent sized group of coders to resolve those issues in a resonable amount of time, but they have very very small Linux staffs (with respect the drivers sets), to handle Linux issues with games. This is justified on their part due to their sales in each catergory. It is going to take a lot more Linux based higher end graphics card sales to push the manufactures further in the right direction. Of course without the support for gaming in Linux, the sales aren't going to be there. There is a BIG chicken and egg problem with gaming on this platform that needs to be overcome before it's going to be prevalent.

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