Cedega Being Replaced By GameTree Linux

An anonymous reader writes "TransGaming Cedega, the software forked from Wine that allows running Windows games under Linux, is being discontinued and replaced by GameTree Linux. This new software is also free. From the new website: 'TransGaming is pleased to announce the continued development of Cedega Technology under the GameTree Developer Program. This repositioning of the technology that powered the Cedega Gaming Service will allow the entire Linux community to gain free access going forward. Cedega is a cross-platform enablement technology that allows for Windows-native games to be executed on both the Linux desktop and embedded Linux platforms.'"

Comments

frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

So is this a namechange or is any real change of stuff going on here?

Re:frosty piss

[hedwards]

Yes, they're discontinuing the subscription plan and will be working with developers. Personally, I will continue to not buy anything from them as they don't seem to give much, if anything, back. That may have changed, but Codeweavers at least contributes most of their patches back to Wine.

Re:frosty piss

[clump]

It should be noted that CodeWeavers employs both Jeremy White and Alexandre Julliard.

Re:frosty piss

[cbhacking]

I wonder if they're going to attempt to incorporate Wine code (assuming that licensing is made compatible)? The most recent versions of Wine are honestly just *better* at playing Windows games than Cedega is! Cedega had some advantages - convenience and commercial backing (CodeWeavers, the backing for Wine, usually seemed more interested in business apps). However, if you were willing to use Wine, you could actually game a lot better on it than on Cedega.

I'm reminded of EVE Online. They released a Linux version of their client, which was just a Windows version wrapped in Cedega. It was an immense download, and while it worked, the advanced graphics options were disabled - Cedega didn't support them. Most of us just continued using Wine, which aside from a few glitches and a more complicated setup was better in almost every way. CCP (makers of EVE) eventually discontinued the Linux client, saying that the game ran so well on Wine that there was no reason to pay Cedega for their version (the client was free to players; presumeably CCP was eating the cost of the Cedega license). At the time of discontinuation, Cedega still didn't support the advanced graphics options, but Wine did - and the glitches were all but gone.

Re:frosty piss

[korgitser]

A repositioning is the silver bullet that solves all of your problems. For what i gather, if a company has no clue, they will reposition themselves hoping they end up doing something that turns a profit. If it doesn't work, lathe, rinse, repeat. Of course a better strategy would be to try to figure out the '2. ???' before '3. profit!'. But competence is a rare beast.

Re:frosty piss

[jonwil]

I dont know if its changed but one thing Cedega was better at was support for copy protection used on games (the binary builds of Cedega include stuff licenced from the makers of those copy protection technologies)

IIRC Wine developers were reluctant to try to support these technologies because of concerns over the DMCA and lawsuits from DRM manufacturers.

Re:frosty piss

[cbhacking]

I'm not sure whether those concerns were ever addressed, but Wine implements just enough of the Windows kernel APIs to make the more common DRM schemes work. I'm not sure how it fares on the newest stuff - though it works fine with Steam, which is about as much DRM as I'll tolerate on a game these days - but Securom and so forth were specifically made to work.

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

You're much better off just downloading a cracked executable for those protected games. Less bullshit, more stability, no headaches.

Re:frosty piss

[_Sprocket_]

Yes, they're discontinuing the subscription plan and will be working with developers.

I thought that business plan was put in place years ago? Back when they started their Cider project, ignored Linux, but continued to collect subscription fees from those not wise enough to cancel their subscription.

Re:frosty piss

[LingNoi]

They do much more then just throw a few patches back..

1) They pay most of the main contributors on wine.
2) You can download their full source off their site
3) They host the wine website

Re:frosty piss

[hairyfeet]

Now be perfectly honest: Did you not buy from them because of philosophy, or because it cost money? Because despite what Linux users say about wanting things like gaming every time I see someone actually try to support Linux by catering to them, like Cedega or Loki, they end up going tits up. From where I have been sitting as an interested but on the sidelines observer, the only way to actually make money with Linux is to 1.-Sell support contracts to corps, ala Red Hat or 2.-Embed it into a device and sell that, ala every Router out there.

So why should all these companies that currently make Windows only consumer programs, like games and Photoshop and the nice picture app that came with the camera you gave grandma for Xmas, actually spend all that money to give Linux users product if they just don't buy squat? Because from where I'm sitting despite RMS saying it is about "free as in freedom" the only stuff I see popular on Linux is "free as in beer".

So answer honestly Linux guys, how much money have you spent on the software that is currently installed on your PC? Because hiring coders, constantly having to deal with the changes in the kernel, this I'm sure costs serious money. I've probably got at least a grand sunk into the software I use not counting the money I paid for Windows, and having that money sunk gives me motivation to learn to get the most out of it as well as that money motivating the developers to support me by writing more apps. Where is the motivation in Linux? Because you can't feed your family or pay your mortgage with pats on the back, and unless you are selling to corps that seems to me all you get from writing for Linux.

And while Wine is nice lets be honest: The average Joe isn't gonna jump through all those hoops trying to get the Windows software they need, which as I just pointed out has very little reason to come out natively on Linux, to run correctly. So like it or not you kinda need companies like Cedega that make it simple for the masses. So how is Linux ever gonna get the apps and the OOTB ease of use that the masses require, if one can't make a living supporting consumers on which is easily arguably the more difficult platform to write for?

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

We have codeweavers to provide the commercial easy to use wine product that's needed and to look after wine as a whole, i don't see them disappearing any time soon.
Many years ago i would have considered paying money for cedega, had they given me the option to do so, instead transgaming have always maintained this silly subscription based service and i've kept my distance.
Since transgaming started providing publishers with "ports" for the mac i guess they've come to the conclusion that EA has more money and less sense than your average linux gamer and so have given up trying to make money out of cedega.

Re:frosty piss

[walshy007]

So answer honestly Linux guys, how much money have you spent on the software that is currently installed on your PC?

Full ticket price? NWN set me back $80, quake 3 set me back $50, quake 4 set me back $60. Baldurs gate 2 set me back $80, mostly older titles I know.

Humble indie bundle I donated $25 to.

Thing is, if the game company tells me (ala ID software) that they will eventually open source the game engine code but not the art so you will still pay for it, I'm a hell of a lot more likely to pay for their stuff.

Closed source has far too many drawbacks to be worthwhile to me on most occasions, if the game engine is open it means so long as the game is semi popular it will always work on my platform of choice.

Money is not the issue, the issue is people (or at least me) don't want to fork out $60 for a game where you are screwed when the engine breaks because of lack of updates. Or in a couple years when the multiplayer servers get killed and you can't play online.

I've dropped about a grand on wii games simply because I'm guaranteed they will continue to work so long as they have a wii. Only way to ensure it will continue to work on the pc is to have the engine source open and have people actually interested in using it.

Added bonus is you get free labour for the port, and code improvements over time which the company did not have to pay a cent for.

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right for the most part. But if you happen to run across a cracked executable that contains a virus... you'll probably be fucked, just as you would be on Windows. Then again, you're also fucked if you put a legitimate audio CD published by Sony in your CD-ROM drive while running Windows as well, so I guess it evens out...

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not exactly that "Codeweavers at least contributes most of their patches back to Wine", it's that Codeweavers are entirely behind Wine, employing Alexandre Julliard and most of the important devs of Wine, hosting winehq.org etc. The proprietary parts of CXO/CXG are mostly related to ease of use, MacOS ports, copy protection and support. And Codeweavers is really a cool company with excellent (if a bit crazy) communication, friendly behavior towards their customers, etc.
I own and pay updates for CXO Pro (thus having access to Crossover Office AND Crossover games for about $30/year, and often less due to their occasional great promotions), and it's really worth every penny.
I just bought a lot of games on Steam/GOG during the holiday sales, and I've been really astonished at the number of games that run more or less flawlessly on CXG. Basically almost everything I bought runs, including Company of Heroes, Left4Dead 1/2, all the Half-Life, the Flatouts, Civilization IV and expansions, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.... Some actually run that are indicated by GOG as not running on Win7 (http://www.gog.com/en/mix/games_that_are_not_windows_7_compatibile_yet)... I get better compatibility for Windows games on Linux than on Win7, how ironic is that ?

I don't know what this new thing from Cedega will give, but I for sure will stay a customer at Codeweavers as long as they keep their ways, and I don't see that changing in the foreseeable future. Long life Codeweavers !

Re:frosty piss

[shutdown -p now]

Just a reminder that Cedega is not a repackaging of Wine. It's a proprietary fork, from back before Wine went GPL (which it did precisely because Cedega - then WineX - felt entitled to use Wine as a solid base, but not so keen to contribute their improvements back to the community). For this reason, they cannot port code over from Wine, and has diverged a lot from it since.

I've bought Cedega back in the day when they were superior for Linux gaming, but abandoned them when their they started to noticeably lag behind vanilla Wine in most games that I care about. I haven't been running Linux-only for several years now and don't know how things are today, but from what I heard, the gap has only widened since, to the point that Wine is better for vast majority of games.

What I also recall is that one other reason why TransGaming was very much disliked is due to their "source available but don't dare use it" license. See, they used to provide the code to most of Cedega (IIRC the various DRM bits were excluded), and you could actually fetch it from a public CVS and build it yourself to get a working product for free. However, TransGaming has stated that the source code is made available for "community improvements", and not simply for people using it to get a free if not full-featured version for themselves (that despite the license for the code making no such distinctions!), and that, if source code access would be abused, they'd remove it completely. They especially hated how the various source-based distros (such as Gentoo) provided automated fetch-and-build scripts allowing users to get Cedega for free with a single invocation of the package manager. Given how the product itself was largely based on a community-developed, FOSS code base, it was seen as a particularly offensive slap in the face, more so than if the code was just closed.

Re:frosty piss

[shutdown -p now]

Oh yes, and if you want something to "make Wine simple", that's what CrossOver is for (and they have a special edition for games). Unlike Cedega, they do stay in sync with mainline Wine and contribute their fixes back there.

Re:frosty piss

[Kjella]

So answer honestly Linux guys, how much money have you spent on the software that is currently installed on your PC?

Quite a lot, if you total up my .wine directory. The problems is a catch 22, there's several things I miss to the point where I'd pay for it both when it comes to games and other software but there are no offerings. Of Linux natives I did buy World of Goo on Linux release day, beyond that I haven't found much worth buying to be honest. There hasn't been a mainstream game like "Neverwinter Nights" or "Unreal Tournament" once was released for Linux in years. Not even a sustained megahit like WoW that could easily afford to cover every platform has a native Linux client, it's wine all the way. Steam for Mac gave them a revival but the spillover effect to Linux as the other non-DirectX platform has been pretty much zero. Of course there are people who picked Linux because it's cheapest or are purists and that wouldn't pay much for a closed source anything, but I think many are pragmatic enough to see using a closed source app is not going to "infect" your platform and is no worse than using a Windows or Mac machine - which I'm pretty sure many of us must from time to time.

Re:frosty piss

[dotancohen]

I just donated to Anki last week. I've donated to Wine and KDE and at least ten other software projects that I use.

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

It should also be noted who the fuck they are?

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Mother fucker – do you use it?

Re:frosty piss

[TheRaven64]

CodeWeavers, the backing for Wine, usually seemed more interested in business apps

I'm not sure about their Linux version, but for the Mac they ship CrossOver and CrossOver Games, the latter (obviously) focussed more on gaming. I downloaded them when they issued the free download for a day because the CEO lost a bet. I don't use them anymore because the stock WINE is better (although the guy who was doing the Mac builds hasn't started on the 1.3 series yet and I'm too lazy to build them myself - last time I tried I eventually got something that worked, but didn't have OpenGL support...).

I've played quite a few games from gog.com in WINE on Mac. There's even a tool called WineBottler that will wrap a Windows app in a .app bundle, either with its own copy of WINE (for redistribution) or using the system version.

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

A Windows viruss will only shit the path configured into wine. If you set each application as a "bottle" using WINEPREFIX, It will only shit on that application installation. Only a Wine-aware Windows could potentielly damage files outside of it path. I doubt those exist. And even if Wine viruss exist, it would only shit on your home files. That a lot of IF, i would say it safe enough for games.

Re:frosty piss

[gnarlin]

Because despite what Linux users say about wanting things like gaming every time I see someone actually try to support Linux by catering to them, like Cedega or Loki, they end up going tits up.

GNU/linux users paid more individually then both Mac users and windows users for the humble indie bundle 1 and 2 (which included the games from bundle 1 as well) and they were about 1/4 to 1/5 of paying costumers. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Humble bundle

Re:frosty piss

[drinkypoo]

When you replace the entire executable the system tends to work pretty well. When you have to install a patch to a game it usually crashes. I no-CD all my games because having to have CDs is stupid, and because it does indeed make them work better in Wine. Notably to me, Simcity 4 is unplayable with DRM and works fine with No-CD. Right now I'm just hoping that Mechwarrior 4 Free will work properly one day... I was able to at least TRY to start the new, non-DRM version.

Re:frosty piss

[drinkypoo]

Almost all the software on my PC was Free except Nero CD, for which I paid twenty+ten bucks (3.0 + 4.0 upgrade, not that 3.0 was failing to meet my needs at the time.) And it's not like it's not easily downloaded, either; there's even a keygen. I ran a downloaded copy with generated key for a while until I proved to myself that Nero was as stable as the PC version, which for the record didn't happen until version 3 (2 was the original Linux release.) So basically, just like Windows!

I would buy games that I actually want to play for Linux, but none seem to be coming out, except for cute little games like the stuff in the indie bundles. None of it has turned out to have much replay value for me though. The Linux game I used to play most was freeciv until they reworked the AI and you had to basically cheat (do stuff you know it fails on) in order to beat it. Now I'm back to Civ 2 (which I did pay for) inside a VMWare Player (which is free) because Virtualbox's graphics drivers are total shit and the other options have PITA management tools.

Re:frosty piss

[drinkypoo]

Well, it has been confirmed that there will be Steam (and thus Source) for Linux. Possibly some non-Source developers will use winelib to make their program run properly there and pick up some of that new market. But I doubt it.

Re:frosty piss

[witwerg]

Actually I supported them for quiet some time and did buy a couple Loki games before they died. With Cedega, It was clear that people would only vote on the latest great games, which was great, but it was always a moving focus in my opinion and seems like a bad way to go unless you had tons to developers. Then it seemed like the subscriber community would berate anyone that voted for stuff like "work on old games", so I stop supporting them, and left the "ooo shiny people" to the fruits of their labors. I would prefer things get done well then leave everything half done, but maybe that was just my perception at the time.

Re:frosty piss

[tepples]

I've dropped about a grand on wii games simply because I'm guaranteed they will continue to work so long as they have a wii.

Wii discs get scratched; what'll fix those? Also, Nintendo has a history of rejecting indie developers with nontraditional business structures.

Re:frosty piss

[Machtyn]

I think there are enough people starting to move to Linux (or there was enough people moving that way when Win Vista came out) that these people didn't care about the whole open source / closed source debate. I've wanted to move to linux completely, and have finally done so. Ubuntu 10.10 has made it very easy. I still have issues setting up some games and apps in WINE (Quicken didn't load properly, PopCap games through Steam aren't working for me and I still can't tell if I'm getting full use of my graphics card... in WoW, I can't select the top options, despite having an nVidia 8800GT which ran the top options fine in Windows XP, Half-Life, HL2, TF2, etc are running just fine as well as Flash based games).

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you have some circular reasoning going on here.

- There isn't any commercial software for Linux because Linux users don't buy software.
- Linux users don't buy software because there isn't any commercial software for Linux.

Loki went under because they suck at business, basically. They ported games long after they were released, published them on CDs (which retailers basically wouldn't carry), and didn't advertise. Even if you wanted to buy a Linux port of a year-old game (and hadn't already bought the Windows version), and were aware that Loki had released one, you'd have a hell of a time actually finding a copy.

TransGaming are the opposite. They're still going. Despite the fact that they pissed off the Wine developers enough that the Wine developers re-licensed Wine under the GPL to prevent TransGaming from using newer versions of it. Despite having to maintain their own version of Wine for years, resulting in their fork lagging further and further behind. Despite the fact that Wine actually works better than Cedega, completely wiping out their entire market. They're still going and, apparently, still making money. Somehow.

> So answer honestly Linux guys, how much money have you spent on the software that is currently installed on your PC?

Around about nothing, unless you count games.

On my Linux machine, I have no need for any commercial software. There's very little of it available, and that tends to be very specialized tools (particularly development tools). Everything I actually use the machine for is covered by open-source software that comes with the distribution. So, not only haven't I paid anything for the software, I haven't pirated anything either.

I have bought maybe half a dozen games though.

On my Mac, same deal. There's the OS (came with the machine), and a bunch of free software (much of which is actually open source / Free, and the same stuff I use on Linux). Most commercial Mac software is either specialized in something I don't care about, or complete garbage that's worse than the free alternatives.

On my Windows machine, same deal again. Aside from the OS (which I did actually buy), I have no commercial software whatsoever. I don't need any of it. An even larger proportion of Windows software is complete garbage, or at least worse than the free alternatives. The remainder is, again, specialized stuff that I don't care about.

I do have games though. More than I do for Linux, admittedly.

> Because hiring coders, constantly having to deal with the changes in the kernel, this I'm sure costs serious money.

Then you don't know squat. Normal applications don't need to interact with the kernel, and there haven't been any major ABI breaks in either the kernel or userland over the last eight years or so.

For example, take Ubuntu. If you'd been maintaining an app since Ubuntu 4.10 came out, you might have had to deal with the GCC C++ ABI change (once, and I think that may have actually been before Ubuntu 4.10 came out) by recompiling on a newer version, you might have had to tweak your app to work with PulseAudio, and you might have had to release a 64-bit package. That's about it. If you're maintaining an app over the course of seven years, that's absolutely nothing. It's more work to update a C++ app to work with newer versions of GCC (or, for that matter, Visual Studio).

In some respects, it's actually more difficult to develop for Mac OS X. There are fewer versions, but there are far more incompatible changes between versions. Supporting even two versions of Mac OS X is hard, even if you don't want to use features introduced in newer versions. Have a guess why most Mac applications only support 10.5 and 10.6, with increasing numbers (including Apple) shifting to 10.6 only...

As for Windows... eugh. Actually distributing a Windows application is a complete nightmare. For Linux, you can build a native package, and stick it up on a website. Sure, you might need to build different packages for differe

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. One of my all-time favorite games is a stealth game from 1998. The engine was never made available and I paid for the game. There are lots of bugs affecting modern systems like crashes on dual-cores and other things. This game runs "ok" (not perfectly) in wine. Luckily we have The Dark Mod to carry on the legacy and be truely cross-platform. Notice how the FOSS guys actually fix their stuff, while the commercial guys' only goal is to take the customer's money and then leave them with a broken, unfixable binary product.

Re:frosty piss

[CronoCloud]

Wii discs get scratched; what'll fix those?

Game discs get scratched? Yes, I'm being facetious, but anything newer than PS1 games are hard to scratch. Keep games in their cases when you're not playing them, and don't use them as frisbees and they won't scratch. Also there are devices designed to fix scratches in discs:

http://www.amazon.com/Excelerator-Motorized-Automax-Scratch-Repair/dp/B0009834M4

Also, Nintendo has a history of rejecting indie developers with nontraditional business structures.

No one cares about the axe you constantly grind about that.

Re:frosty piss

[David Gerard]

This is really not safe - in the default setup, for instance, the Z: drive is Unix / (file tree root). Wine DOES NOT SANDBOX in any actually effective manner.

People have run viruses with Wine. Wine is compatible enough to run malware!

Any binary running in Wine can do anything that user can do, like trashing the home directory or filling /tmp .

If you want to be cautious, run it as a different username (with access to your X11 screen). Wine is compatible with toxic waste too.

Re:frosty piss

[h4rr4r]

So chroot it.

Re:frosty piss

[siride]

What are the drawbacks of closed source, specifically? You don't sound like you are actually a programmer, so I can't see OS giving you much, if any, benefit, except for the fact that it's likely to be free-as-in-beer.

Re:frosty piss

[Kjella]

No, Phoronix (the champion of verified news) has repeated a rumor from an equally unreliable source which was based on a few strings that showed a script had a case for linux - as if that couldn't just mean it was a standard cross platform script, no cleary this is rock solid proof that Steam is coming to Linux. They've also later denied that any such thing is in the works.

Re:frosty piss

[siride]

Windows XP was released in 2001. Try running modern Linux programs on distros from 2001 and tell me that it's easier than Windows XP. The dependency issue is really a non-issue: just include the DLLs in the app directory and you are done. If you want to make it complicated, you can, but you don't have to. It generally just works. Again, tell me that's harder than autotooling a project and having it correctly build and install on even modern Linux distros. I've made software for both Windows and Linux and I've ran into problems just being able to build simple C apps across distros, but rarely any problems running apps on different versions or architectures of Windows. MS does that well and let's not pretend otherewise.

Re:frosty piss

[David Gerard]

If you've done this, please post a HOWTO to the Wine wiki, or at least the forum!

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

Use a USB loader, problem solved. Sure they are commonly used by pirates, but they are also used for people keeping legitimate backups of their discs. The games have shorter load times from USB, and you don't have to switch discs. The list of games that can't be ran from USB is very small, if you have one of those, just leave that disc in there.

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever buy a used game? Apparently not. Many times they have zillions of scratches on them. Ever rent a game? Again zillions of scratches. PS3 games are 'harder' to scratch but that is because they actually have a scratch guard coating (but they can still be scratched). Also that device would be bad to run on a ps3 game (unless you dont like the game). Also that is 180 bucks for removing a scratch from a game you can pick up for 10-15 bucks used. Or you can take it somewhere and get it done for 5 bucks (many independent shops have these things).

I take *care* of my discs and scratches still get in there once and awhile. It just happens. They are just plastic after all. Some people you see their discs and you wonder if they rub gravel over them first though...

Re:frosty piss

[DavidTC]

Windows XP was released in 2001. Try running modern Linux programs on distros from 2001 and tell me that it's easier than Windows XP.

You're counting from the wrong direction.

Windows Vista was released in 2007. That means everyone was using XP until then. The stupid installer issues existed on new computers until then.

So at the least you mean 'Try running modern Linux programs on distros from 2006 and tell me that it's easier than Windows XP.'

This is, of course, pretending everyone upgraded. Windows upgrades still have a lot more resistance than Linux distros because of several things: 1) Linux upgrades are free, 2) Linux upgrades actually work in-place where you can keep all your data, 3) Linux upgrades usually have no hardware problems. (You can talk about whether Linux supports new hardware all you want, but the number of times distros have dropped support for any piece of hardware can probably be counted on one hand.)

So there is functionally no one using Ubuntu 8, and probably no one using 9. There's simply no reason to stick to old stuff.

Whereas I'm typing on XP right now because I don't trust anything later to actually work on this laptop. A laptop from 2006, I must point out. Windows XP still has about 50% of the web traffic, although no one's sure how many computers it's still installed on.

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignoring completly that i said BOTTLE. I never claim it was a sandbox. It is safe enough to contain Windows virus that expect a Windows system. All majors software publishers will do native Linux port way before we begin to see Wine aware Windows malware.

Re:frosty piss

[walshy007]

You don't sound like you are actually a programmer, so I can't see OS giving you much, if any, benefit, except for the fact that it's likely to be free-as-in-beer.

You'd be wrong, linux user of over ten years now and when things don't work I tend to 'make them' work. (latest was for a friend, ported bristol audio synth to mac os x, usually just little things).

That being said, I'm a lazy person and while I can fix things myself it's far better if I can spend that time doing something productive instead.

What are the drawbacks of closed source, specifically?

The biggest problem for me is dependence, using closed source software you are being dependent on a vendor for future code updates, if the source code is open under a non-restrictive license you are free to continue development of it or if it's popular someone else likely will.

If the source is open you can get it going with gnu toolchain and from there start working on portability and overall general maintenance.

Point is you don't have to be a programmer to benefit, but if you are you have more options.

Re:frosty piss

[h00manist]

Remove all Windows users who haven't paid for anything, and how many are left? 100% of Windows users are not within US borders, but mostly in the rest of the world, where the word piracy doesn't mean much, it just means free. Microsoft created Starter Edition just because of this issue. Many, many users buying cheaper computers without the Windows costs, factory preinstalled with Linux, just because of costs. Most of those were formatting the PC with XP when they got it, but some kept Linux on, plus all users got a Linux CD and some Linux experience. And that alone was a concern for Microsoft.

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

"Wii discs get scratched; what'll fix those?"

Backups.

Re:frosty piss

[siride]

I don't see how any of what you said negates my point. Software from today works on Windows released over 9 years ago. Software from today DOES NOT WORK on Linux released 9 years ago, let alone 5. Most software from XP works on Vista and 7. A lot of software on Linux from the mid-2000s will not work on modern Linux without a recompile or hunting down ancient versions of libraries.

Sure, MSI was missing early on. There are and were other ways to install software. The dependency issues are orthogonal to MSI and easily solved except for the very few programs that need their DLLs to be in system32 or some other shared location. The same is not true on Linux. Linux does not have good forward and backward compatibility outside the kerneluserspace ABI and shell scripting.

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

The comparison to Wii doesn't make any sense. Any PC software from 30 years ago will work perfectly provided you have a 30-year-old PC to run them on. This makes at least as much sense as saying that all Wii games will work as long as there are Wiis to play them on.

Why is the PC the only platform (I should say -- platform category, as "PC" actually refers to dozens of different platforms) that is expected to carry legacy support for older software? If you really want to guarantee the availability of your old software, why don't you simply use an old computer, the exact same deal you are taking on with the Wii?

Ironically, 30 years from now you'll probably have some trouble finding a working Wii, but it will be emulated on PC.

Re:frosty piss

[Bert64]

While many viruses can be executed by wine, most of the methods they use to insert themselves to run at bootup won't work on wine, and once the wineserver processes is terminated so is any of the malware.

As for having the root filesystem mapped, this is more for convenient but can (and usually should) be disabled, that said unless your running it as root it won't have access to anything outside your $HOME or /tmp, and even if it wanted to trash your homedir most malware is not wine aware and wouldn't know where to find your homedir under a unix filesystem hierarchy anyway.

It also is possible to sandbox wine, by removing the default convenience mappings such as Z:, most windows malware will try to put itself in the systemroot which in the case of wine is a fake area, possibly even a "bottle" which is specific to a single application. Chances are if the malware does decide to trash anything, it will only trash that one wine bottle.

Because the malware is unable to start itself at boot (and therefore is only running when wine is running), wont be able to hook into the kernel to hide itself, and is most likely only contained within a single wine bottle, the malware itself poses far less of a problem than it does under a native windows install, and is much easier to remove

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

He gets bonus points for not being an absolute fucking idiot by NOT saying, "Citation Needed".

Re:frosty piss

[David Gerard]

Oh, definitely, the risk is much less. And running something with a virus attached is very unlikely to trash your home directory as much as doing the same on Windows would do to your whole system.

The "Risks" section of the Wine FAQ answers canonically.

Re:frosty piss

[Bert64]

"the nice picture app that came with the camera you gave grandma for Xmas"

Aside from the fact that most software bundled with devices is pretty crap, the answer is because the company selling the camera wants to sell cameras, the software is just a freebie to sweeten the hardware. Adding linux software in the same package, or even just claiming linux compatibility on the packaging will at best increase sales and at worst do nothing at all.

If you look at the recent sales of the humble indie bundle, when given a choice linux users on average are willing to pay more and there is quite a considerable number of them.

So answer honestly Linux guys, how much money have you spent on the software that is currently installed on your PC?

None, because all my day to day needs are perfectly well covered by free software. I am quite happy to pay for software, but only when that software provides value for money. It has to provide sufficient value over and above what i can get for free. If a commercial program is only marginally better than a free alternative, is the difference alone worth the price? If a commercial program provides exactly equivalent functionality to a free program, then its worth exactly the same as the free version to me - ie nothing.

Having no money sunk into software doesn't mean i don't have motivation to get the best from the software i have, but what it does mean is that i won't stick with what i have if something better comes along... People often stubbornly stick to something inferior because they feel they should get their monies worth, i will gladly switch software if something better comes along. The lack of vendor lock-in with free software is also a factor here.

Where is the motivation to write software for linux? Plenty of individuals as well as companies do write software for linux, perhaps you should ask them?
Companies write software because it supports other areas of their business such as consultancy or hardware sales. Writing open source software is often much easier than commercial, simply because in many cases there is so much code that you can build on instead of having to start from scratch. Look at all the embedded devices which run linux, 99% of the code they need is already written and the manufacturer may only need to write a few hardware drivers or tweak the interface a bit. How expensive would these devices be if each manufacturer had to write their own software from scratch or pay a third party to supply some (which would still require as much customisation as linux does if not more).

Eventually, most software will become commoditised with only a few niche products still costing money... Most software will be free, or supplied with hardware. Hardware has gone as far towards commoditisation as it can, but it will always have a physical per unit cost, the only thing stopping software going even further is inertia and the immaturity of the market. As things settle down, become standardised and provide all the features most people need the prices will start to plummet and software has a lot further to fall than hardware.

As for the average joe running through hoops, they already do that with windows, or get someone else to do it for them. Sure, they shouldn't have to, but general purpose software is simply too complex for the average joe. An ipad is actually a far better fit, and while linux isn't perfect modern distributions are actually much easier for such people than windows (anyone saying different isn't counting actual usability, but is basing their argument on prior experience).

Re:frosty piss

[Bert64]

Well said...

I still play quake (the first one) on a regular basis, i have an original cd with the data files but i haven't touched the original program binaries in years, i use quakeforge which runs nicely on my modern gentoo box. I play online with a handful of friends and we run our own server - most other quake 1 servers have long since been shut down.

I'm sure it will still be possible to play quake online for years to come... If we ever move over to ipv6 fully, how many old games will still be playable over the internet for instance?

Re:frosty piss

[Bert64]

Wii games are good for kids, but kids are very good at scratching games...
Thankfully pirates come to the rescue and provide a very useful function that is missing from modern consoles - the ability to copy the media and play the copy, thus giving you the ability to make another copy when the first one becomes damaged.
Years ago, when music came on cassettes it was standard practice to make a copy and play the copy.

Re:frosty piss

[Bert64]

Among other things...

With open source:

If you are a programmer you can fix things, if you aren't then there is still a much wider range of people who can fix or improve things than with closed source. If a piece of software is really important to you, open source always gives you the opportunity to hire programmers to work on it for you.
With closed source only the original vendor can fix anything for you, they might be unwilling or unable to do so. Quite often they will leave their old products to rot and expect you to buy new ones, wether you want to or not. Many users out there are now stuck with data in proprietary formats, only readable by closed source applications which for whatever reason are no longer being supported by their original vendors. This is not a good situation to be in, especially for a business. An old application may also necessitate running other old software such as an old OS, making the problem even worse.

As for how non programmers can benefit from open source, look at Quake or Doom for instance, originally written for DOS, there are now versions for virtually any platform including modern ones, and many of these versions have enhancements not available in the original. Compare that to games from the same era which have not been open sourced, many don't run on modern platforms without using emulation, and those that do often suffer from bugs. Emulation also often isn't perfect, and even if it is all you get is an exact copy of how the game was over 10 years ago with no enhancements. You don't have to be a programmer to benefit from things like this.

If a piece of open source code is still useful to people, then at least you have the option to do something about it. The more people who find it useful, the greater the chances that some of these people will either have programming skills, will know someone who does or will be willing to pay someone that does. If your using an old unmaintained open source package, form a user group with other people who are using it and work together to recruit developers to make any changes you need.

User hostile features - that is any feature which provides no benefit to the user, and is often detrimental to the user... Such features include DRM, license codes, expiry dates etc. Open source never has features like this, closed source developers often go out of their way to implement features for the benefit of the developers but detrimental to users. Another such detrimental feature is proprietary formats or protocols, designed to lock you into that vendor's products.

Even if you aren't a programmer, you can work with those who are and provide them useful services, you can work on documentation or translation thereof, you can provide feature suggestions or bug reports and if you find a piece of software useful you have the option to donate to those who are working on it.

The fact that open source is typically available free of charge is undoubtedly a benefit, but it is by no means the most important one. There are massive benefits to open source for non programmers, and even bigger benefits if you are a programmer.

Re:frosty piss

[Bert64]

Your supposed to play freeciv online against other humans, it's much more fun that way...
Drop me a message if you'd like to play sometime.

Re:frosty piss

[Bert64]

Some linux software written today would work on a 2000 linux distro, and some windows software written today does not work on xp.
Most linux software is distributed as source, so a recompile is not a problem. I still run xv every day on my modern linux machines for viewing images, xv was written in 1994.
If you really must run old precompiled software that depends on old libraries you can bundle those libraries in with the software - like many windows apps do.

The differences however, are...
XP was current in 2006, any linux distro from 2001 was very much obsolete by 2006.
Linux upgrades come out more frequently and are free, so there is little or no reason to be running old versions.
Most of the software is also open source and free, meaning again there is no reason to run old versions.

Linux has extremely good forwards and backwards compatibility, especially at the source level. I am able to compile and run unix programs from the 80s (ie before linux existed) on my modern linux system. Backwards compatibility also works well assuming you don't use features that weren't present in old versions, linux has not changed so much as been added to, the same basic APIs are still there and modern software still uses them.
Windows is actually far more of a mess, although the same APIs are present there are often multiple functions with the same name, and which one gets called depends on which version of the SDK you compile against. If you write your code to use the new versions, it may not work (or compile) at all if compiled against an older SDK, and if compiled against the new sdk still probably won't work.

Re:frosty piss

[grumbel]

If you really want to guarantee the availability of your old software, why don't you simply use an old computer, the exact same deal you are taking on with the Wii?

It is far harder to keep an old PCs in working conditions then a Wii or any other console for that matter, as with the Wii you have one single technology on which all games released for it will work, with PCs on the other side you have a ton of different and constantly changing technologies, OSs, soundcards, graphic cards, input devices, etc.

Have the PC of the right time for a game, but lack a 3Dfx card? Your favorite game might not run at all. Have an old PC, but miss a driver? Good look finding that. There are simply far more variables and no clear boundaries that tell you if a game will run or not. Its certainly not impossible to get an old PC running some old games, I did that and have a nice Win98 machine here, but I ran into plenty of games that caused issues as some component was to young, old or otherwise not quite what the game wanted. I mean, heck half the games where troublesome to get running properly back when that stuff was brand new, trying to recover all the necessary information to get something more obscure running in perfect working order can be really tricky, not impossible for sure, but far harder then just inserting a module in an old console.

Ironically, 30 years from now you'll probably have some trouble finding a working Wii, but it will be emulated on PC.

Yeah, but so will you do with todays PCs. When I want to play an old DOS game I use DOSBox, not a real installation of DOS.

Re:frosty piss

[evilviper]

Selling support contracts won't work out for you any better than selling games would if you keep the same mindset that's failed so many 'Linux' companies...

RedHat said it best, there's about 1/10th as much money to be made in Open Source as their is in proprietary software. If you go in charging the same prices as Microsoft, and have as much expensive overhead that you can't cut out, you're not going to make it, with support contracts or anything else.

There's no question at this point that Linux will dominate the computing world for decades to come. One servers and high-end clusters, the majority of competitors has died off entirely, and the rest have been badly bruised...

In the embedded space, Linux has been a major force for a long time, and now with Android looking like it will dominate in the smart phone/PDA space, and possibly in the tablet market as well, and a good chance it will make inroads in the netbook space as well, the question is only HOW developers will learn to live with it, because its a major player in all areas of growth.

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing to keep in mind is that probably 70+ PERCENT of Photoshop users have stolen the product from Adobe.

To say that this makes Linux users less appetizing for developers is really moot. The reason Linux users aren't paying for software is because the commercial software producers aren't programming for Linux. Make commercial software for Linux and you'll find plenty of people to sell to.

Re:frosty piss

[DeVilla]

I can't answer for the comment you replied to, but I've bought quite a bit of software. Even though I can legally download for free (no-cost) my OS i've bought it before to get money back to developers. I can look on my shelf and easily count the the cases of over a couple dozen games I've bought. Given the recent trend of download only games by Indy developers I suspect I've bought another couple dozen games that have no cases. For both the Humble Bundles, I beat the average price several times over.

When Transgaming started out claiming that they would be releasing their code when they reach various threshold amounts of money, I was eager to support them. I like the idea of subscriptions to develop Open Source Software where requirements are taken from the subscribers. Once it came out that Transgaming was going to renege and that their software could not be released as Open Source, I lost interest. I will never pay a subscription for any Proprietary Software (otherwise I would also have Vendetta on my shelf).

I do value Open Source but I will tolerate Proprietary for certain uses and under certain conditions. Transgaming did not meet my conditions. Frankly, I no longer care to emulate a windows runtime, so they are too late. They've missed their opportunity with me.

Also, if you only see an interest in "Free as in Beer" from where you sit it might be that you need a better seat. I know several Windows (and Mac) users who pirate software. If they migrate to Linux, it wouldn't surprise me if all they (continued to) care about was getting things for free. Likewise I'm sure Proprietary companies that fear and bad mouth GPL-like licenses in favor of BSD-like licenses are only interested in the "Free as in Beer" nature of Open Source as well. Just because you look around yourself and only see unprincipled cads does not mean there isn't a wealth of folks with principles elsewhere.

Re:frosty piss

[gottabeme]

As a dual-booter, I'm curious, what's the performance like under CXG compared to running in Windows? I'd like to not have to dual-boot.

Re:frosty piss

[gmhowell]

Which means very little. PC and even Mac gamers have more choices for their entertainment dollar than Linux users.

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, you are using the PC's own robustness against it. If you are willing to keep a console (black box) and treat any loss as a total loss (graphics, power supply, whatever) of the console, you can do the same with any computer. Buy a $300 eMachines and add a gaming video card. From that point, it's a black box. Keep it for 30 years. If it works then, great. If it doesn't, too bad. It's the same proposition with any console. You might not be able to replace a specific video or sound card in an old PC but neither can you do that -- ever -- with a console. The only difference here is that you CAN sometimes do it with a PC, but you can never do it with a console. Somehow, that equates to the console having more longevity. It makes very little sense.

It's great you have one Win98 PC, but that's not what was specified for all of your older games. Some of them specify DOS, some of them specify Win95. If you can keep 3 old consoles (e.g. an NES, a PlayStation, and a Wii) then you would do the same for each PC platform you wanted to maintain. You can't just put together any old PC and then expect it to run ALL older software, that's just a reduction of the original problem (to expect any PC to run anything ever made).

If you consider emulation then it's even less sensible. Today you emulate DOS with DOSBox, and decades from now you'll be able to emulate Windows XP/Vista/7, so again what was the point of buying Wii games to ensure long-term compatibility?

Re:frosty piss

[iiiears]

I use GNU/Linux for everything except gaming. Pay developers for the applications you use. Offer donations for bug bounties and above all be polite and grateful when something new turns up. Even a token amount is welcome and helps to recover the cost of bandwidth and that makes developers happy. Until GNU/linux reaches a sizable amount of users. Remember a dollar spent is a vote cast for better software.

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

I run linux programs as old as you state pretty easily on the latest up-to-date distro. I even run new software on rhel4 which is soon to be 7 years old too. Sure there are quirks, but linux is far more straight-forward than windows unlike what you are stating.

Re:frosty piss

[grumbel]

You can't just put together any old PC and then expect it to run ALL older software,

Yes, and thats exactly the problem. I can do that with a console. If I have a SNES I can say exactly what will work and what will not. With a PC it is a whole lot of "maybe" and suboptimal experiences (slow framerates, crashes, etc.). Also if I upgrade from SNES to N64. I still have my SNES around. If I upgrade from XP to Windows7, I no longer have a Windows XP PC around.

If you consider emulation then it's even less sensible. Today you emulate DOS with DOSBox, and decades from now you'll be able to emulate Windows XP/Vista/7,

The problem is that there are quite a few games released past-DOS but pre-XP. Yes, in 10 years that won't be an issue and can be solved with emulation, today on the other side it can be really hard or even impossible to get some old PC games working properly. Also its not just about games, there are a lot of drivers that break in the progress of OS updates, a lot of the old Sidewinder joystick/gamepads for example are either useless or very limited in modern Windows.

Anyway, all that said, as problematic as PC upgrades can be, I wouldn't go all the way and start buying Wii games for exactly that reason. It takes some years for PC stuff to run into major compatibility issues and half the time there are decent workarounds. And if all else fails, one can always get an old PC, not as easy as dragging a SNES out of the closet, but not all that impossible either.

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the lack of software purchases in Linux compared to Windows is primarily a matter of user base. If Linux had 95%+ market share of "ordinary users," then we'd see plenty of money to be make. The current problem is that Linux users tend to make more educated decisions about non-free (cost) software and are often able to use open source (or free) alternatives. For example, the average user (running Windows), when wanting to find e-mail software, would be more inclined to buy Microsoft Outlook than use say, Thunderbird. A typical Linux user, forced to use Windows for whatever reason, might decide instead to go with Thunderbird. In this case, knowledge of the options and alternatives is what led him/her to use Thunderbird over Outlook, and this has nothing to do with being "cheap" or piracy.

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Pulp Fiction quote adaption

Re:frosty piss

[cbhacking]

Wait, people even still use Nero, much less pay for it?!? Wow... last I checked (admittedly years ago) K3B was strictly better, and included with KDE for free. You can of course install it separately too, though it'll need QT and some other KDE dependencies.

Re:frosty piss

[petteyg359]

I prefer to pay CodeWeavers for CrossOver Games, since they contribute back to Wine. Last time I checked, Transgaming had contributed all of three minor patches over a period of five years. It's definitely a philosophy thing, not a money thing.

Re:frosty piss

[petteyg359]

So answer honestly Linux guys, how much money have you spent on the software that is currently installed on your PC?

Both open and closed:

SuSE 6.1 retail box - $50
Crossover Games - $40
over 200 Steam games, most of which run fine - $WTF
Starcraft 2 - $60
Warhammer Online for a few months - $50
EVE Online for years - $WTF

Combined WTF entries probably total around a few thousand, I'm not going to bother to add up receipts.

I try to make donations occasionally, but I'm an unemployed college student with the standard unemployed college student cash flow. The bits of code I write end up on various websites where others can take advantage of them. I use free code, so I provide free code in return, until I can "pay for" free code.

Because hiring coders, constantly having to deal with the changes in the kernel, this I'm sure costs serious money.

Yes, but some people actually enjoy programming, and are perfectly willing to do it for free, because it's a fun thing to do for them. I'm not going to write a "for fun" program if some for-profit CEO wants to sell it, but if I see a bug in some open source package, or something that could be done more efficiently, and I know how to fix it, I'll do it because I enjoy doing it.

Also note that there are thousands (or millions) of others paying similar amounts, so these developers have had quite a lot more than my pitiful few thousand to distribute among themselves over the past decade.

Where is the motivation in Linux? Because you can't feed your family or pay your mortgage with pats on the back, and unless you are selling to corps that seems to me all you get from writing for Linux.

That's a societal entitlement problem, not a FOSS problem. Fix the stupid arrogant fucks who think that they deserve everything at no cost to them and that problem is gone. Monetary appreciation (A.K.A. cash donations) need to be more common.

There's always money in support. Users always have been stupid, are stupid, and always will be stupid, unless some mass-enlightening miracle occurs. Selling support will always be a viable revenue source. Also, the code and support itself need not be the sole product. Combine lots of separate programs, install them on a system, and sell the "SaaS" buzzword.

Re:frosty piss

[robsku]

Z drive to / can be removed you know? That's what I did... If I wanted something that was not under my home directory, which is the only place I allowed sometimes a wine drive to be attached (usually I only used dedicated folder(s) for wine drives though) I just symlinked the directory I wanted to use in wine under one of "wine drive" directories.

The Z drive was a surprise for me when I first time noticed it - wine did not always have that as default, it came couple years ago.

Btw, last time I read about test of running viruses under wine, most would not run (crashed) and those that did not crash did not manage to do harm either. I guess wines API implementation was not perfect enough for them at that time ;)

Re:frosty piss

[David Gerard]

Yes. The Wine FAQ, "Risks" says approximately that.

The real answer, of course, is "consider not running dubious and possibly-infected cracks" ...

Re:frosty piss

[hairyfeet]

Bah you CAN do that with a PC, and at a hell of a lot cheaper and easier than those old consoles! Right now I have a closet FULL of dead consoles...two PS 1, a SNES, a Sega CD, A Genesis, and an original Xbox that works but it is too much of a PITA to mod the thing. Trying to find games and parts? A PITA unless I wwant to deal with the "fun" that is the ripoff land known as eBay.

Compare that to the PC side. I have a pair of 733MHz PCs that dual boot Win98 and WinXP. Cost? Nothing for the machines themselves, as I found a school that was doing an upgrade and talked them out of the machines for giving them a hand on a lazy afternoon. If I were to have bought them? Maybe $20 off of Craigslist. Cost to turn them into gamer PCs for old games? I paid $10 for an MX400 64MB and $15 for an FX5200 128MB, both PCI. If anything short of the motherboard goes? Prices are so cheap for things like HDDs and RAM it is a joke to even mention them. Hell even if I blow a cap I got a neighbor that will happily change caps for me in return for keeping his PCs going. Added a couple of Soundblasters I got for a whole $0.50 at a yard sale, and one $20 4 port KVM I bought for work.

So as you can see for BOTH machines I have a whole $50 invested, and not only do they play every single game I've thrown at them from the DOS era up to around 2001 thanks to being able to boot into DOS from Win98, but they have plenty of other uses as well. For example when the youngest had his PC blow a PSU I was able to hand the MX400 one as a spare until I could get his new PSU in, and the FX5200 one isn't even in my possession ATM as my GF is having to live 2 hours away to help with the family farm after her dad had a heart attack and so she has it as a spare in case anything goes wrong while she is up on the mountain.

But with those machines I am already able to play ANY consoles OR PC game up to the N64 via emulation, and even with the original controllers if my youngest wouldn't have snatched my USB console adapter for his PC. Thanks to the dual core and 4850 he got for Xmas (his brother wanted and got a laser printer) he can play ANY console or PC game up to and including Gamecube via emulation, and it is a hell of a lot easier than dealing with scratched discs or switching consoles around due to limited TV connections and space. In most places one can simply walk down the street if you want an old PC to game on and find one on the curb that just needs a wipe and reinstall, or simply spread the word and you'll end up with more than you can deal with. I have friends keep an eye out for PCs for me at junk and yard sales and the MOST I've ever paid is a whole $10 for a PC. Frankly there are just so many no longer wanted desktops the pickings are good and cheap.

So frankly unless you are living in a closet there really isn't a point in emulation for older games, not when so many good used machines can be had for nothing. There are plenty of places one can get a two port KVM for under $10 (such as this) and I can add a speaker set that plugs into a CD ROM slot for a whole $8. Even if you are short on space something like that 733MHz in a SFF that sits under a monitor is easy to find and again cheap. And as for lasting? Lets see, my first 100MHz PC is STILL running, now as a DOS 3 CNC controller, with my 233MHz running as a backup, my 1GHz Celeron is running an XP Lite install with a cousin as a Nettop, I am typing this on a 1.8GHz Sempron I got for $40 off a build from a client, and my last 4 P4s are with my oldest, my youngest, my mom, and my GF. Out of those I had to replace a grand total of one mobo and one PSU, both of which were again cheap.

So again it really isn't hard to put together a PC that WILL run all older software, and console games as well. My advice from experience would be to add a cheap soundblaster (which the site I linked to above has them for a whole $2) along with a cheap AGP or PCI GPU, any older Radeon or GForc

Re:frosty piss

[cloricus]

They probably haven't.

I tried to confirm this for a WWN story last year (year before?) and couldn't get a single virus to execute without failing. I tried to run 30 common viruses that had been suggested due to simple Windows requirements and not a single one caused damage. In all of the discussions regarding what should be done when viruses do start working no comment has been made about a single one running to a point where it would be a concern.

I was unable to trace the origin of this claim either. People just seem to assume that since it runs complex applications now that it should run a virus too. This assumption is flawed for a few reasons.

Re:frosty piss

[David Gerard]

That's interesting! I have this January 2007 post to wine-devel. That's linked from the Wine FAQ.

Did you write up and post the results of your experiment somewhere? That would definitely be worth a FAQ link too.

Re:frosty piss

[pxc]

Did you read the post GP was responding to? The point was not that Linux users will be forever generous. The example was provided as evidence against the idea that GNU/Linux users are unwilling to pay for what they want. In fact (making the same observation that you did), their desire to have more games has inspired them to pay _more_ than they might otherwise do. GP's point was that GNU/Linux users do want games, and that they've showed us so. That point stands.

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

but the windows way while being evil is just enough for users.

you talk about having the source for keeping the program working in spite of kernel/driver/x11 changes

this is all good and well for slashdoters, as most of them could cope with that.

users just prefer the windows way: I've this program, I bought 20 years ago, and I can still launch it in windows *just fine*. no recompilations, no dependency, no libraries...

the most messy thing users have to do on windows is to dig up an older direct x version (and there is the direct x 9 small updates flurry nightmare)

that is: I can see an average joe just using that, which is suboptimal but working, instead of your friend which could benefit from open source just because he knew someone knowledgeable enough for that.

not everyone could rely on a friend to fix their linux apps up.

Re:frosty piss

[walshy007]

users just prefer the windows way: I've this program, I bought 20 years ago, and I can still launch it in windows *just fine*. no recompilations, no dependency, no libraries...

The problem is windows users CAN'T do that. Try playing thief the dark project on a modern windows machine, it will chuck shits, and no-one can fix the original engine because it is not open source.

the most messy thing users have to do on windows is to dig up an older direct x version (and there is the direct x 9 small updates flurry nightmare)

No, the most messy thing windows users have to do is emulate an entire system from the era and hope to god it doesn't need something like glide support for 3d acceleration which the VM won't do.

Re:frosty piss

[DaVince21]

While Z: is accessible, it is no more writable to Wine as it is to any other application not running as root. That means just your home directory (granted, this can be dangerous) and tmp. But here's the thing: you can easily remove the Z: drive association in winecfg. Heck, there's even an option in the winetricks tool that lets you sandbox Wine like this.

Re:frosty piss

[DaVince21]

I thought Valve explicitly confirmed that there won't be a Steam for Linux, and that before the news it was just Phoronix speculating there may be one? Or has that news changed now and has Valve started making a Linux port after all?

Re:frosty piss

[exomondo]

despite RMS saying it is about "free as in freedom" the only stuff I see popular on Linux is "free as in beer".

Likely because if it conforms to the 'Free Software' (free as in free speech) definition it is free (in terms of cost).

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

so this one is a big fat liar?
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1492096

Re:frosty piss

[walshy007]

No, but the cpu affinity thing is one of the things I was talking about, are you saying it is a _good_ thing that you have to force cpu affinity for a process for it not to crash and burn?

Kind of helps that they practically included a vm'd xp with it too, which brings back to my point about basically emulating the entire system and still hoping for the best.

Kludges upon kludges are bad, having an open source engine allows people to fix this.

Re:frosty piss

[Anonymous Coward]

are bad from an engineering standpoint and I do agree with you.

still which is easier for a user who can turn the computer off if the button is not red?

the solution stands on a post written in plain english, and is just a couple of clicks away from a working game.

even if it *is* super easy to apply a patch and recompile an open source program, you have to consider the "freezing effect" uncertainty has on people brain.

Re:frosty piss

[walshy007]

still which is easier for a user who can turn the computer off if the button is not red?

The easiest thing for them to do is download a new binary, and run it.

even if it *is* super easy to apply a patch and recompile an open source program,

They would not need to, someone else (likely the person who coded the patch and sent it to the program maintainers) would do it for them and they would download a normal binary that just works.

Bad summary

[the linux geek]

Is it supposed to be GameTree or TreeGame? Who knows.

Re:Bad summary

[Aliotroph]

GameTree says their website.

Re:Bad summary

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's TameGree but i'm not sure

Re:Bad summary

[OneAhead]

Guess the OP suffers from lysdexia...

Re:Bad summary

[Anonymous Coward]

wonder if they're a member of the DNA? (National Dyslexic Association) :)

Re:Bad summary

[Cougar_]

no, no, TameGrue

Re:Bad summary

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, You eat Grue!

Re:Bad summary

[Anonymous Coward]

GameTree says their website what?

Re:Bad summary

[siride]

Uhh, I fail to see the problem with what the parent posted.

Re:Bad summary

[geminidomino]

Is GameTree the answer?

"GameTree," says their website.

Or the "speaker"?

GameTree says their website <foo>

Re:Bad summary

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's pretty obvious that it's the former. For normal human beings, context almost always resolves ambiguities like this one.

Re:Bad summary

[geminidomino]

That the meaning could be sussed out doesn't imply that there was "nothing wrong" with the post.

Gaming in a Tree?

[Gizzmonic]

Cedega is
clearly part of the SCO alliance.

Sittin' in a tree.

K-I-S-S-I-N-G-E-R!

Freestyle!

Or how about support the real WINE developers?

[tlhIngan]

TransGaming did some really nasty things back in the days - after all, it was so bad that the WINE devs decided the best thing to do was relicense WINE from BSD to LGPL. While TransGaming is legally in the right since they forked the code prior to the license switch, what they did still doesn't sit well.

Why support them when you can support the WINE guys by buying CodeWeaver's Crossover product? At least CodeWeavers directly supports WINE, and all the patches CodeWeavers make to support new games and apps make it back into WINE for everyone to enjoy?

Even the WINE guys recommend CodeWeavers.

Re:Or how about support the real WINE developers?

[Deorus]

Technically speaking, TransGaming could very well not be "in the right" since the copyright holders also have the right to revoke previously granted licenses. This is a common misconception that I believe needs to be addressed as it's too widespread among developers (another example where this mistake manifests itself is in OpenSSH).

Re:Or how about support the real WINE developers?

[lwsimon]

Can you cite a precedent here? A written license is a written license.

Re:Or how about support the real WINE developers?

[Bert64]

Depending on the wording of the specific license, the copyright holders may have given up their right to revoke the license.

Re:Or how about support the real WINE developers?

[zzatz]

I don't know where you got that idea. Previously granted licenses operate under the license terms that applied at the time that they were granted. The copyright holder can change the terms for future licenses, but not for already granted licenses.

If the earlier license included a time limit or a revocation clause, then that could apply. But you can't retroactively and unilaterally change the terms of an already issued license.

Re:Or how about support the real WINE developers?

[ByteSlicer]

Copyright owners can only revoke a license as stipulated by the terms of the license.
Basically if a licensee breaks the terms of the license, then the licensor can revoke the license.
Some licenses like the GPL contain terms that automatically revoke the license when terms are broken.
TransGaming is legally "in the right", since the BSD license basically means "Do whatever you want with the code, even close it up and sell it, just leave the license header in the sources".
That may not have been what the Wine developers intended people to do with the code, but that's the license they released it with. No good reason to whine about it.

Re:Or how about support the real WINE developers?

[DaVince21]

That's like saying even Apple recommends OSX, though. But yeah, having a commercial version of Wine with great support is always good.

AKA How not to make money off of OpenSource.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, it is not like CodeWeavers is rolling in cash, but Cedega took a product and ran it straight into the ground, hurting the Linux community with it. If CodeWeavers had had that support (and been around) way back then, we would be MUCH further along in making Windows an annoying legacy performance problem.

Thankfully, the web has places like Mozilla and Wikipedia that have had total support both in terms of community and financial health. Without their work, the web would be MUCH worse off today.

Linux confuses me.

[commodore64_love]

>>>"TransGaming Cedega, the software forked from Wine that allows running Windows games under Linux, is being discontinued and replaced by TreeGame Linux."

Huh? What?

Re:Linux confuses me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Clue.

Get one.

You should give it another try!

[madhi19]

Linux and wine have come a long way in the past few years sometimes I swear wine run some Windows application better than Windows does.

Re:You should give it another try!

[shutdown -p now]

I always maintain a dual-boot environment on my primary desktop, so that I can keep an eye on how things are in Linux land, and dabble with development for those things which work better on a Unix-like system (e.g. Common Lisp). But my primary desktop OS has been Windows for the last 4 years (after 2 years of Gentoo and then 2 more of Debian), simply because it works better for me.

FWIW, I've built a new box recently completely from scratch, and it looks like Linux is still struggling with hardware support that "just works". I had to spend some time in front of the shelf at Fry's to find a wireless card that would work smoothly in Linux - just googled them one by one, and if I saw any mentions of ndiswrapper, or the requirement to download & build source for a third-party driver, I immediately moved on. Of all the options they had, there was precisely one that matched my requirements, and it's the one that I purchased - but, damn, when I was promoting Linux back in 2004, I surely didn't expect that kind of thing to still be commonplace in 2010! Back then, I cared about "Free" etc enough that I could be bothered to do all the mucking around with drivers and configs and HOWTOs. These days, I don't have time to waste on that, and want my stuff to just work - and Windows does that for me, not perfectly, but definitely much better than Linux in my experience.

Re:You should give it another try!

[iiiears]

Exactly. WiFi is a problem sound cards are a problem. firewire is a problem, dual display resolution can be a problem even ocassionally the boot loader. (read the sad stories of people that don't have a reinstall disk after their restore partition is reformatted.)

Sell X volume of program, then open the source

[h00manist]

I believe this is one of the best formulas I have seen for paying developers for their time. The developers can charge for the product, then eventually when they believe sales have paid for their time already, open source the thing. Users with some money or urgency can encourage open source, just buying the products while it's new. Other users can get it when it becomes open, after X amount in sales is achieved. It's kind of similar to listener funded radio.

Re:Sell X volume of program, then open the source

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. This is a great system. Couple this with a commitment to open-source once revenue is mostly out of the picture (x number of years), and we'd have open source bliss.

Linux needs a mass-users-attraction strategy

[h00manist]

Linux and other open source OS's appear to be needing a coordinated mass-users-attraction strategy, or group of strategies. I think too many a lot of us tend to be too idealistic of "what users should", and design things for that. Some observation and study of "what users do", frequently are very surprising and simple things, leading to only very slight adjustments of how something is presented or works, leading _huge_ numbers of people to change their behaviour. Companies make tiny adjustments in the color or consistency of soap based on customer feedback, for example, and gain or lose market margins.

Why?

[Bert64]

If they're going to give it away free, why not simply contribute anything they have which is still of value back to the mainline wine codebase....
Mainline wine is already way ahead in many areas, so it makes sense for development to continue here rather than on cedega's old fork.

Wine is not an emulator

[Nurgled]

Given that "wine is not an emulator" but rather a library that mimics the Windows API and a loader that understands the Windows executable format, the code that is running is native code for your architecture and can potentially do anything a native application can assuming it's been written with that in mind. So you should expect a Windows application running under Wine to be able to do anything a native application could do running under the same user account.

There is one aspect of running under Wine that leaves you in a better situation than running on Windows XP: on Wine, the entire Windows filesystem lives under your home directory as far as the native OS is concerned, so you never end up running things as Administrator (or root) to get them to run, which means if someone does make a rogue Windows app that detects when it's running under Wine and tries to do something mean it'll be constrained by the access rights of your user account in all cases.

pooling resources would strengthen FOSS

[K10W]

I thought it would be a name change at first until I read the "free" bit and also thought so why not simply just support wine? Too many FOSS projects suffer from groups failing to pool resources for no (good) reason I can see. I've noticed it a lot in terms of photo and graphics design programmes. If people got together and combined forces then it would be win win IMO since the product would become more successful and refined for it and due to that stand its ground more effectively against the real opposition (ie. running in native windows environment). So why not unless you're somehow trying to compete against fellow projects with similar goals and thereby giving MS an easier ride than if skills were combined. Cedega I never thought much of since wine I generally found better and free so I didn't use it for long (admittedly was some time back). Other bonus point for wine for me is using single application in place of 2 since I use wine for none game stuff too.

Re:Why?

[DaVince21]

The WINE project and derivatives is a solution looking for a problem.

Wrong. The problem is obvious and actually relevant. In fact, it can be explained with a single line:
Someone, for whatever reason, has an exe file they need to run for whatever reason.

Just because YOU don't have a reason to use it doesn't mean other's don't. Plenty of people do. I enjoy my never-released-on-non-Windows-platforms games very much thanks to Wine. Oh, and the occasional bit of incompatible software that others send me, or that I find and want to try out.

Hooray!

[DaVince21]

With this, GameTree will finally die out!