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Pushing Linux Adoption Through Gaming
An article on CNet questions the viability of using games as part of a strategy to increase Linux adoption. It points out a blog post by Andrew Min which suggests:
"... Linux companies also need to start paying attention to the open source gaming community. Why? It's lacking. However, gamers can get excited about free games. They just have to be up to par with commercial games. The problem is, commercial companies pay hundreds of employees to build a game for several years, while many competing gaming projects only last several years before the developer moves on. It's time for open source developers to start getting paid for their jobs. Who better to pay them than the companies that benefit most?"
*thunk*
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Ok, now that that's out of my system... your statement is completely and utterly incorrect. Memory usage is generally not a major factor in performance unless the system becomes memory constrained. In that case a system that is not starving for memory will absolutely outperform a system which is not. But in today's world of 2GB+ systems, explorer.exe is not exactly the biggest memory hog. (Try your web browser for a good start.) Video games often worry more about the space available in the GPU's memory than the amount of main memory available.
Secondly, the vast majority of Linux users are going to launch their game via their favorite desktop environment. Since the feature-rich KDE and GNOME desktops are the most popular, there's a good chance that their Linux-based desktops are eating just as much if not more memory than Windows XP's explorer.exe. But no one is really concerned about that on today's multi-GB systems, so I recommend you either not worry about it or run something slimmer like XFCE.
Thirdly, am I the only one who remembers the late 90's where much of the Linux community took it for granted that Linux was faster than Windows? That is, until benchmarks came out in '99 that showed that Windows had a significant performance advantage, especially in I/O heavy areas such as web serving. The news did result in a newfound focus to make Linux highly competitive, but it seems to me sir that your post needlessly repeats history.
Learn from history, least you repeat it. ;-)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
And now that the PS3 browser has Flash 9, you can make Flash games on the PS3 and tell everyone they work on the computer as well!
Except for the minor issue of: WHY?
Using the Flash games example, there was a push to make flash gaming happen on the Wii simply because of the Wii's more interesting control scheme. First developers tried to understand mouse motions in a way that would evoke a new experience with the Wii remote. Then they managed to get a hold of development information to target the motion and multiplayer capabilities of the remote. So there was a valid reason to target the system. Despite the superior flash support of the PS3, no one is falling over themselves to create a "PS3Cade" because there is no special access to the hardware. You simply hook up a keyboard/mouse and use it like a PC.
Besides that, there's the issue that Sony has locked out the GPU on the PS3 specifically so that owners don't use Linux as a cheap development platform for PS3 games. Without GPU access, you're going to be limited to more crude games than would normally be possible on a PC. And with web gaming working its way up the low end, there's little room in-between for PS3-targeted games.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
There's nothing wrong with making money off of apps, especially games. I for one am happy to pay for games and have them open-sourced after 3 to 5 years like all the good companies have been doing. Games aren't like other apps where you can charge for support or there is a need for interoperability and backward-compatibility. Yes, game publishers should compile Linux (and BSD) versions of their games. No, it doesn't really matter if they are initally released as open-source or not!
Not to detract from your point, but you have a rather rosy recollection of DOS, my friend! ;-)
The way I remember it, the first step for every new game I got was to spend a half-hour working out a custom boot-disk that provided enough low-mem while loading all the drivers required by the game. After which I'd throw the disk in the box for the game so that I was only a reboot away from playing the game. God, what a pain in the arse that was! :-P
Honestly, it's the chicken and the egg problem. No game developer is going to spend the money to make Linux a first-class release unless there's a significant user base. And I imagine their market research currently tells them that the Mac is a better prospect than the Linux community.
In short, it's not a technological problem. It's a business problem. And the greater Linux community is not a business. It does not react to the nuances of the market, but rather provides an OS that appeals primarily to its user-base of developers and contributors. :-)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
PC gaming has been increasing - not declining. However, the growth rate was slowing/stagnating for a few years there, while at the same time it was going up massively for consoles.
That was partly due to the lackluster games being shoved at us, favouring graphics over gameplay and stability. After all, pushing bleeding edge graphics is the most important factor - who cares if the game crashes every 30-80 mins!
It's also partly due to the expensive Vista/DX10 upgrades required to play new games. Most people required whole new systems, so before they could buy "new" games, they needed to spend $1000 getting up to date hardware.
But now that people have their new hardware(which will stick around for 5 years, just like a console), they're ready to buy games again - and they're in luck, since the past half-year has been great for quality games.
I predict in ~3-4 years we'll have another "death of PC gaming" era. It's a cycle
I need citation? The other guy didn't give any.
Go read a report like this one:
http://www.marketresearch.com/product/display.asp?productid=1911800&g=1
Or articles like this (more aimed at consoles):
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081223.wgtyearinreview1222/BNStory/PersonalTech/home?cid=al_gam_mostview
Or read Gamasutra.
Most of the "doom and gloom" PC game sales figures are for retail outlets, and fail to factor in the tens of millions(?) of sales done online, through services like Steam, Stardock, Direct2Drive, etc.
There's lots of articles out there stating that 2008 was a good year for gaming.
> Linux would be great for gaming, since the OS itself uses so little memory, it means there's a good chance that games are going to run faster than on Windows (XP) with explorer.exe taking up a large chunk of memory.
Linux is terrible for gaming; the driver support makes Vista look like heaven. As a result, assuming you can even get drivers for your card, and you can get them to run with the distro you use, and you can get the accelerated mode to work, they're still probably going to be slower than the Windows drivers.