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Games Drive Wider Linux Adoption
Will in Seattle writes "C-Net has a story about how the bundled-in games on newer Linux pre-installed boxen may drive the rapid adoption of Linux in the mainstream. Which, naturally, all the coders fear above all else. Who let in these gamers? (Reminds me of my days at SF and Comix cons back when I was a SMOG and a SMOF - will we ever learn?)" The story also says that Penguin Computing is now building Linux computes specifically for gamers, too. Enjoy!
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Indeed, that flood *did* destroy the Internet as we knew it - it drove innovation, swelled the Internet's infospace exponentially and led to Internet access becoming a simple matter instead of the complicated mess it was at the time.
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If by 'innovation', you largely mean 'dumbing-down and pretty pictures', yes.
I can think of two benefits of the invasion of the GUM - cheap home dialup access exists at all, and you can buy stuff on-line. The price of this is Eternal September on Usenet, Skript Kiddies rampant, web sites that take hours to download on a modem and are almost totally free of any actual content, banner ads, corporations trying to monopolize the namespace, namespace pollution to try and create 'kewl' URLs ("come.to" et al), search engines that turn up more porn than useful hits of any kind... (unless you're looking for porn, of course)
The amount of Useful Stuff on the net has increased since the GUM came. The trouble is that the amount of dross has increased many, many times faster, to the point where you're searching for pennies in a mountain of shit.
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... and with time, those clueless newbies became experienced users...
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No. *A few* of those clueless newbies, those who have any interest in learning and are prepared to work at it, become experienced users. The vast majority remain clueless, but because they've been here so long now can make it seem to clueless newbies that cluelessness is the natural and correct state of the net.
To get back on topic, I do worry that the same could happen to Linux. Imagine Linux newsgroups, web sites and mailing lists being full of the whinings of the people who can't manage to understand the difference between 'left click' and 'right click' under Windows, who now face the possibility of having to *shock* type something. (Those of you who have done tech support will know what I mean).
No, you shouldn't need a CS degree to run Linux (or to use a computer at all). But like driving a car, you should be prepared to learn a little in order to use it properly.
Bah, humbug.
Tim.
I really don't see what's bad about Linux becoming a "gaming box" alognside with being a regular workstation. I mean... it's a lot more fun playing quake ona linux box thatn a windows box isn't it?
I though that anything that lets Linux gain a wider acceptance would be good
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Killroy Woz Here
Why do we have to worry about games being included in the distributions?
Games are just another type of applications. If Linux is good enough for other types of applications, Linux should be good enough for games.
So why worry?
Instead, we should rejoice that at last the game producers (coders ?) are recognizing the true value of Linux - A stable and robust operating system that is backed up by thousands of volunteers all over the world, as coders, as those who dispense answers, as someone who really cares.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
"...the bundled-in games on newer Linux pre-installed boxen may drive the rapid adoption of Linux in the mainstream. Which, naturally, all the coders fear above all else."
What exactly is it that the coders are afraid of? Bundled-in games? Rapid adoption of linux? The article said nothing about coders fearing the adoption of Linux. In case you haven't noticed, most programmers actually *like* it when people use software that they have worked on -- an awful lot of us are proud of the things that we put our time and effort into.
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"Go Metallica. Die RIAA." -- Linus Torvalds
I think will_in_seattle made a casual comment about elitist attitudes, and everyone's picking up on it as gospel and the entire point of the piece. Not so.
Just as SMOFs miss the halcyon days when everyone read every SF book available, so will we soon reach the day when it's no longer possible to buy every Linux game; the rabble will well and truly have crashed the party.
No-one except those with the most severe case of elitist-assholism thinks this is a Bad Thing.
Back to the point. Two lines in the article struck me:
The Penguin Computing gaming machine, which is based on a 500-MHz AMD Athlon chip, comes with a 3Dfx Voodoo 3000 video card and a Sound Blaster PCI128 sound card. It also has a Logitech Wingman Extreme digital joystick.
What can I say? Cool. Beyond cool.
Loki also has been working on open-source projects to improve how well Linux handles JPEG graphics files.
Eh? Can someone explain this one to me?
I can see why many long term Linux users would fear an announcement of this sort. Linux is being dragged kicking and screaming in the the realm of consumer O/S and with that comes the threat of even more clueless newbies.
:-)
However, I would point out that exactly the same thing happened 4-5 years ago with the Internet. I remember the cries of horror and the constant allegations that the influx of newbies would destroy the fabric of the Internet as we knew it.
Indeed, that flood *did* destroy the Internet as we knew it - it drove innovation, swelled the Internet's infospace exponentially and led to Internet access becoming a simple matter instead of the complicated mess it was at the time.
... and with time, those clueless newbies became experienced users, the effects of the newbies were distributed around the expanded infospace and those of use who use the Internet as a serious tool created our own communities and areas where we can get on with using the Internet in the way we want to.
IMHO, anything which drives Linux development is a "Good Thing"(tm), in time Linux will spawn more new distributions that make it easier of the newbies to get on their feet, while those of use who use Linux because it is the best tool for the job at hand will still have the option to hand-install and tweak to our hearts content. And in those rare moments of relaxation, we'll also have the option to kick back with a round of whatever game of the moment has just reached shipping
A little planning goes a long way...
Would somebody please explain to me why this attitude is good for Linux? It is not the first time I have seen such sentiments. Kind of reminds me of a couple of friends I had back in my college days with regards to their favorite bands. As soon as one of the tunes got some airtime on the radio, the group quickly fell of their list never to be listened to again -- not even the old, "unpopular" stuff. I guess you can only like a group if nobody else knows about them!? Sure makes it difficult for them to continue producing music if nobody ever buys their CDs. People have to eat... Newbies are not newbies forever -- just think, Smoke, you were once a newbie too. It's only natural to believe that the more people who run Linux on their machines, the more chances you will have to be able to find "really" interested people in your software products. In order to have popular software that is of excellent quality, you must have users first!
Most of you probably have NO idea just how often Windows 98 becomes unstable, crashes or spontaneously reboots when you are running a games application in development. Glide, OpenGL, Direct3D, Directsound and the Windows system itself are ALL crash- and corruption-prone in this platform.
How would you like trying your modifications in runtime and know that you will probably have to restart the computer if your change was a bad idea?
I'm just glad I still have most of my hair!
/ per
/ Per
Aarrrggghhh!!!! No!. Mesa is an implementation of OpenGL (although it's not officially OpenGL compliant). OpenGL is a generic graphics language, which works fine in 2D. It just happens to excel at 3D as well.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
This is a horrendous idea. Package distributions, like RPM, .deb, and SysV's packages are far superior to self installing executables like the ones installshield produces. They're easily verifyable with digital signatures, for a start. You can easily list which packages are installed, uninstall or upgrade packages with a single command, none of which are available with the installshield method. The route we should be going down is the one used by the GNOME (and probably KDE) people -- double click on a package in your file manager to bring up a user friendly GUI to install that package.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
$2200-$2500 for a gaming box? I thought Linux was supposed to *reduce* hardware costs! Their PC's are a goor 25-30% more expensive than a comparable Dell or Gateway (which themselves are a good bit more expensive than home-built PCs).
I guess that blows a hole in the theory that Microsoft bundling inflates prices...
All this time I thought people were joking when they put a (tm) next to "Good Thing". I just did a trademark search, and guess what. The mark is owned by Martha Steward! Why am I not surprised?
Word Mark GOOD THING
Owner Name (REGISTRANT) MARTHA STEWART LIVING OMNIMEDIA LLC
Owner Address 20 West 43rd Street, 25th Floor New York NEW YORK 10036 LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY DELAWARE
Attorney of Record HOWARD J SHIRE
Serial Number 75-516347
Registration Number 2272142
Filing Date 07/09/1998
Registration Date 08/24/1999
Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING
Register PRINCIPAL
Published for Opposition 06/01/1999
Type of Mark SERVICE MARK
-- Virtual Windows Project
Hello... I personally think the price range Penguin proposes is quite fair for what you're getting... all high-quality top-notch Linux-compliant components that are rigorously tested... I believe Penguin was the first of the hardware-software-support "linux solutions providers" to offer a 72-hour burn-in process. And what the previous Slashdot poster said is right... Try putting together a box like Penguin's on your own. First of all, I doubt you can get parts as cheap as a VAR like Penguin... Secondly, you can simply compare Penguin's pricing with say, Dell, and you'll realize that Dell is the one forcing huge (seems like 50!% margins) for less-than-perfect hardware... Penguin prides itself on not only using purely high-performance top-of-the-line components, but it uses the creme de la creme, those kick-ass high-performance components that ritually survive its rigorous 72 hour burn-in process. I think if you objectively compare (1) pricing, and (2) components, between Penguin and other Linux hardware or complete solutions providers, you'll see that Penguin stands better than most when it comes to excellence in performance, reliability, service, and pricing. I'm a firm believer in the saying, "you get what you pay for". When I get my gaming system, I'm going to have Penguin build me a 3DFX Athlon system, one because I love Penguin hardware, Red Hat Linux, Penguin's customization of the Red Hat software, and the service you get when you have any questions about your system... I've known (personally) support staff happy to help Penguin customers, and even some non-customers who visit the Penguin support page, with all sorts of set-up, troubleshooting, upgrading, configuration problems... How do I know all this? I worked for Penguin full-time from early may 1999... now i'm at UC Santa Cruz full-time, and working on an IDG Book for Turbolinux, but I would be honored to be invited back by Penguin to work as a full-time employee after I graduate... I've never worked among a finer staff in all my life... Way to go Penguin!!! You're leading the way for Linux and you're making major strides for Linux desktop computing market share! Woo-hoo! Justin (justin@nospam.mathix.com)
Is linux really a viable gaming platform ? How many of the latest games run under linux ? And how many of them run with hardware acceleration ? Are we going to have to wait till tomorrow to get yesterday's games, which will run at the day before yesterdays speeds on tomorrow's hardware ?
Linux is not viable as a platform for gamers now. It lacks accelerated drivers. The only hardware acceleration that works worth a damn is GLIDE. We're not going to have DirectX any time soon. OpenGL drivers are work in progress, but still don't give the kind of performance that a gamer would hope for.
Why push linux as a gaming platform ? It's great for a lot of things, but someone who asseses it based on it's use for gaming is going to become a rabid anti-linux envangelist.
There are a couple of things that are changing in the way games are handled for Linux.
The first is perception. As more and more games become available, the Publishers will start to realise that Linux is a viable platform to port software to - the desktop marketshare isn't there yet but more games arriving means a virtuous circle of more gamers making the switch means more games arrive....
The second is libraries. Loki (amongst others) are doing an admirable job of creating software libraries to support games production. I'm assuming more and more libraries will become available, from handling different video cards to whole 3d engines. I don't think Linux libraries can compete with DirectX yet at least in terms of mindshare, but it's only a matter of time and with the increasing availability of OSS engines the cost of market entry becomes substantially lower for developers. There will be little need to pay six figure sums for a 3d engine.
With reduced costs, hopefully the publishers will be a little more adventurous in the projects they green light.
stty erase ^H
It may sound silly that having Linux becoming a bonified gaming OS is one of the most important things that could happen to this little OS.
Why?
If my memory serves me correctly 50% (or greater) of all software sold is for entertainment purposes, and the majority of that is games. Linux is stable (duh) and because of its lower overhead may be able to get better framerates. I know I am upgrading to a dual celeron system for Gaming/Linux SMP goodness. (No Athalon duals yet!) NT will do SMP, but its not the best gaming OS.
What do we need? An easier method of installing games now if we... wait... What was that that Loki just released? Hmm, we seem to be working on that.
Mesa? Well thats coming soon too! Hmmm.
It seems we just need a better sound API.
I also expect many gamers to migrate over to Linux without too much difficulty - Remember many gamers are used to the DOS days and messing about with all of DOS's annoyances.
You may call me crazy, but I think that an excellent selection of games for Linux will be one of the major driving forces behind Linux.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
A few weeks back, Linus Torvalds was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Stockholm (the story was right here). Before the actual decoration took place, Linus held a one-hour Q&A at the University. While I didn't take notes or anything, I was there and listened hard. At the end of the session, the topic had drifted towards games and gaming, and Linus clearly stated the opinion that games help drive technology, since games tend to place very high demands on the machine they're running on. I tend to agree with this position myself, having written a game or two for other platforms (nothing commercial, though) and working full-time with real-time 3D graphics development under Linux. So, if Linus has realized this about games, I don't see him standing in the way of more games on Linux. After all, they will put higher technical demands on the kernel, at what else does a kernel hacker desire? ;^)
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
One word: Q3. The fact that ID is making a Linux-version from the start is a good sign for the future. If there is any game that will make linux more accepted among gamers, thats the one.
You are the same decaying organic matter as the rest of us.
I think they must mean MPEGs - Loki's smpeg works pretty well and far better than xanim. Now if I could just find a DGA wrapper for all my regrettably windowed movies and games -- full-screen stuff always looks better, and Loki's player doesn't do it.
The best way to get drivers for Linux is to have a lot of cutting edge games. Companys have a lot of profits on the "gamer's new fancy gadgets" ,market, so it will became commercially sound to port the drivers to Linux in order to get a little more units sold. Also, the "Linux compatible" ckechbox is becoming more common in gamer's hardware reviews.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
I'll add http://www.golgotha.org/, which isn't as dead as it looks, and will toot my own horn in a subdued manner *toot* :)
Return Of The Son Of Spacewar (ROTSOS) is my codename for a collection of GPLed sample programs that do terrain generation, with some very impressive possibilities. There is a lot of information on what the algorithms/hacks are and why, and more to come, and GPLed code (think of it as pseudocode, it's 'REALbasic' Mac code) for everything, and there are pictures and movies there too. I made a special effort to make MPEG video despite not being able to afford the real tools (ASTARTE Mpack) to do it- anyone who was able to view the Phantom Menace trailers will be able to see longer movies in Sorenson Quicktime format. There are pictures illustrating the concept behind the terrain generation, and plots of the distribution of the universe generation algorithms.
Who else is working on stuff that can be used for GPLed games? Come on, go public, the time is now! The more we can use good bits of each other's ideas, the better the whole field will be, without too much effort on any one developer's part. For instance, it's dead trivial to take the object placement variation on my terrain-gen code and use it to produce a consistent, godawfulhuge 2D map- and you could easily scale down the large dataset I use to produce a fairly large map from a very small datafile. You'd be basing it on tiles and getting specific index numbers for the tiles from the big virtual map- and would set up the distribution so that the result emerged with a style you liked. In some circumstances this could produce a map too large for any person to explore, so you might have a Warcraft-like thing in which network players would explore the world and discover neat clearings or forests or juxtapositions of natural resources and features like rivers or lakes- potential map situations that you the designer did not specifically put there, but which were emergent from the algorithms.
Put stuff out there! Mix and match
This is way good news. One of the problems of Linux has been that some/much of bleeding edge hardware just wasn't supported. If companies see a gaming scene develop around Linux, then they will realize (much more so than the do already) that ignoring Linux (and thus not getting their hardware supported) will eat into their sales/profits.
... this would be the last step Linux needs to really applicable to the masses ...
Maybe within a year or so we'll be able to buy PCs with all the modern hardware available and have all of it work without anymore headaches about hardware compatability
Microsoft is working this angle already. They know that gaming is an important market in it's own right. The ability to play games well gives also gives the platform a lot of credibility. As others have pointed out, a lot of low-cost-but-high-end graphics development is done to support games too, which in turn benefits the platform in other areas.
If my memory serves me correctly Linux has been adopted as the development platform for the Playstation II.
Looking back at the success of the PC/Windows/DOS etc... it is probably safe to say that games was the driving factor. Consumers purchase PCs for home use and their main reason is for games, they might justify their expenditure, because the PC can be used for Word Processing, Spreadsheets and Internet Access (versatility), but I believe that the main reason is entertainment and that means games.
So, what can we do to encourage the expansion of development and the production of games titles that will eventually guarantee the adoption of Linux?
We must make the development of entertainment software for Linux as easy as possible. We have to support the latest dedicated hardware accelerations to keep up with the competition, which will shortly be engulfed by further console releases.
I think we should also support the entertainment corporations who have already started developing entertainment software for Linux (Loki for instance) perhaps even arrange communication lines between the developers of the games and the developers of system projects within the Linux development teams to ensure that we minimise the use of proprietary routines which could be GPLd and made available to all.
I still think there is still space for platform emulators, at least going as far back as the 16-bit console era (some of those games were really playable and still are!)
I hope someone will come forward to manage such projects I have described, and sadly, I wish I had mroe time.