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.

Comments

quake and quake II

[Justin Norman]

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..

Re:What did he expect

[Jburkholder]

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!

G200

[Crow-]

Yup, that is the G200 project I started that he is pimping. ;)

http://www.on.openprojects.net/glx

Carmack

[Scipius]

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....

G200 3d

[_Gnubie_]

Nice to see a major player and influence in the 3d gaming scene not only promoting linux, but actively helping out in the development. I'm subscribed to the g200-glx developers list and have been very pleased to see the amount of posts from John ( several a day ) with ideas and patches. Nice one ! Congrats to the other developers too , the module works really nice - an excellent speed increase over software mode. Ive being recommending the G200 to newbies asking for a good agp card to use under X because (a) Very fast 2d (b) 3d support ! (c) Matrox did the Right Thing(TM) and released a decent chunk of the specs.
We can only hope that other Harware manufacturers will follow suit

Matrox are you listening? How about those Warp Engine Specs for the G200 ?

Interesting re: G200 driver vs. Voodoo3.

[chalsall]

Just thought it worth commenting on... John mentions that he's testing Q3Test on a G200 Linux box, and that it's only "bordering on playable with all quality options set to the minimum on a fast computer."

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.

Carmack and GPL

[Chaostrophy]

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.