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John Carmack on Linux
Jburkholder writes
"John Carmack
[?]
has
some complimentary things to say about recent Linux developments, including the
lastest Gnome and Matrox open-source drivers. Here's the best quote: -The cool part is that this driver is completely open source. I downloaded
the project code, browsed through it a bit, and changed
two lines of code to
fix the bug. That RULES. -" Comments on the new GLX stuff,
CodeWarrior for Linux, and other stuff. Worth a quick read.
All three have "Start" menus. I can't tell you how many times I've heard WinXX and KDE cursed over that thing, and now all three have it.
I can't tell you how many times KDE and WinXX have been cursed over their file manglers,...and now all three have just about the same thing, interface-wise (though Exploder sucks rocks in comparison to gmc & kfm).
Granted, KDE is much less unabashed about its roots, interface-wise, in Windows, but as far as I'm concerned the three are about equivalent.
And take a look at the default desktop for RH6 if you want to see something "reminiscent" of Windows.
Window Maker & AfterStep are genuinely different in interface from Windows; I'm not even sure you could make them look like Windows without adding at least the GNOME/KDE panel to them.
My random opinion,
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
I was just lookin' through the sunday ads from the paper (CompUSA, Computer City, Best Buy, etc) and I found that id is selling quake and quake 2 for linux packaged now..
"Short, tall, fat, skinny, from the highest king to the lowest man, everyone uses the potty." - Brak
If closed-source drivers come out that outperform open-source drivers, which one do you think 99% of the gamers out there will use? Now, don't misunderstand, I think OSS is great, but it's a means to an end for the majority of end-users like me. The goal is to produce the greatest software, and I don't care how you get there, OSS or closed, I just want it to be the best.
Let me tell you a little story about my little brother playing Quake2:
:). No more lockups. No more awkward scripts that require open and switchto to be setuid root.
He plays on a Redhat 6 machine, dual p3 450, 128 mb ram. He used to play on a Voodoo2 card. It would freeze. And I mean freeze BAD. Sometimes you could telnet in and "killall quake2" to fix things, but sometimes the machine would be locked up so bad YOU COULDN'T EVEN DO THAT! So, we both got pretty sick of this. We go to the Fry's in Tempe and buy a Mystique G200 AGP 8MB. As soon as I put the card in, install the g200-glx rpm, and switch quake2 over to ref_glx.so, we get NO PROBLEMS (other than the mouse not working, but that's quake2's fault
Let me sum it up for you:
voodoo2: weird, unpredictable lockups. retarded scripts.
g200: works perfectly (even after the driver has only been in development a very short time). no retarded scripts. no setuid open and switchto.
Any questions?
I suspect he understands that perfectly, he *is* somewhat of a genius. ;-)
I don't think that this was a statement of discovery, Carmack seems to always be very open and honest in his communications (see the self-depricating (sp?) passage about a mis-assumption he made for 3 years). The way I read this is he is more expressing his delight at having *experienced* the magic of open source.
The *really* neat thing about this is that all the 3D-gamers who follow Carmack like some messiah will read this and maybe understand a little about what the whole linux/open-source concept it about.
Cheers, John -- we lub ya!
Yup, that is the G200 project I started that he is pimping. ;)
http://www.on.openprojects.net/glx
You just know his mailbox must be filled by now with requests to try KDE ;-))
All in all, another good development. Remember when he came out, saying how he disliked Direct3D and loved OpenGL? The man has influence. Nvidia, take a hint, you did on OpenGL....
We can only hope that other Harware manufacturers will follow suit
Matrox are you listening? How about those Warp Engine Specs for the G200 ?
As a comparison of what's possible right now, I've got a Voodoo3 in a Celeron 300A@450, and am able to get 35 to 50fps in Q3Test at 1024x768 with all the quality options set to their maximum! (...under Linux, of course.)
Check out the www.linux3d.org site for more details on the Glide driver which makes this possible. It's not Open, but it's free and it's here now.
Disclaimer: I don't work for 3DFX, I'm just in awe of one of their cards.
I'm hoping this thread gets sent down...
Elitism is not something one should cherish; us vs them, we're better, nyaa-nyaa!
Linux will/can fork, so if you *really* insist on something arcane or bleeding edge, go for it!
Catering to the casual users also means catering to John Carmack, because he doesn't want to deal with minor useability issues, and learning things the hard way. He wants to program his games, and not learn how to use his OS any more than he needs to; are you willing to exclude Carmach from your elite group because he prefers more 'user friendliness' just so he can get his job done?
There are a good bunch of people who need their OS to just work, and has nothing to do with being an idiot; if they can get their stuff done in Linux because Linux 'just works', then power to Linux and to those users.
If Linux were to remain within the cadre of elite power users, then it wouldn't be very *useful* would it?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
You know, if Carmack really did ask Nvidia for the driver source for testing/programming/Open Source use, do ya think Nvidia may actually Open Source it?
I mean requests from thousands of users is much different than a request from The Man(tm) who helps to sell your cards with his games, right?
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
He knows what open source is, he has donated over $20,000 to the GNU project, for instance, and usually releases the source to his games after 4 years (though under a no comercial use licence). Also, he seems to have pioneered having games that were open enough for the users to come up with their own varients.
Plato seems wrong to me today