Seems to me that saying Linux will succeed on the desktop is just as ignorant as saying it won't. Speculation is just a waste of time, no matter which conclusion you come to.
If you want Linux to succeed on the desktop, then spend some time working on some projects to make it better, or maybe just use it. Don't waste your time trying to predict the future.
I'll still buy Blizzard games, assuming I can find them for under $10.
I hope if you're really concerned, you sent an email to Blizzard's marketing department containing the above text. It's not like all the people at Blizzard are going to be browsing Slashdot and happen to see this post.
I hope they don't preload all kinds of annoying and crappy inhouse software on the Linux boxes like they do for Pavilions. I doubt they preload stuff like that on business machines, which is good. Keep that crap on Windows please.
Konq and Opera are both excellent browsers and neither has succeeded in killing Moz/Netscape on Linux. I don't know why people use Moz anyway, probably fear of change. Same reason people don't use Opera on Windows I imagine (it's faster than IE, as I mentioned further down in this thread)
Opera is the fastest (full-featured) browser on most platforms.
Using wine to compare speeds on anything is a pretty bad idea. The comparison you suggest is far from equal. Mozilla is a native app on Windows, by the way.
There are people who only leave their computers once every year or two to vote in elections. The exercise they get from voting is probably the only thing sustaining their little Internet lives. Why do you want to take that away from these people?!
Seriously folks, the Internet isn't for everything, and we're all fortunate that it's not.
For a second, when I read the topic, I thought this would be a confrontation between RMS from gnu.org and Miguel from fatchicksinpartyhats.com. That would be a Slashdot link worth reading.
Re:this couldn't work
on
A Loki Timeline
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· Score: 3, Informative
True, but then the next problem arises: the Windows version of Tribes 2 was sold everywhere for a reasonable price, the linux version was much harder to find and usually with a hefty price tag.
No computer game is sold for a "reasonable price" ever. Warez drive up game prices, then more people warez so as not to pay such unreasonable prices. Such is the PC gaming spiral of death. Lots of people point out the price differential between Windows games and Linux games, and I'm sure it was a valid reason for many people to not buy from Loki, but every birth comes labor pains. The birth of commercial Linux gaming is no exception.
Continued patching is indeed an annoyance of simultaneous Windows and Linux development. Luckily, Dynamix had some excellent coders. In most cases, the lag you noticed was due more to communication between companies than it was to converting the patch. Loki's understaffing later in its life cycle certainly contributed some also, considering they were working on Kohan, Postal, FAKK2, Deus Ex, and various patches with a programming staff that hovered between two and three persons.
Re:Not insane... actually happening.
on
A Loki Timeline
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· Score: 1
Among his famous Loki work is a port of Serious Sam, a port of the Build engine of 3dRealms/Duke Nukem/Shadow Warrior/...
I think the word you're looking for is "Besides" not "Among".
Re:this couldn't work
on
A Loki Timeline
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· Score: 4, Informative
Tribes 2 was announced long before the Windows version was out. There was a slight delay shipping it, but if you bought the Windows version instead of the Linux one, it's your own fault.
The real people who should be complaining about Tribes 2 are those that had to spend an extra $100 on a video card to make it even run.
I'm not privy to information regarding the financial situation surrounding Unreal Tournament, but I believe Loki was paid by Epic for their involvement with the game. The real loss for Loki on UT was the time of support staff spent helping people get a charity product running.
They get pirated all the time, but what they lose in piracy they make up for in legit sales. Lots and lots of legit sales.
They raise prices in the Windows market to counteract the effects of warez. It's not so much the legit sales that keeps PC gaming alive, it's more the insane prices. We just don't notice because we're used to paying far too much for our games.
I just decided that I'm never, ever, ever signing up for TransGaming simply because you posted this. I might have considered it before, but not any more.
If you think that there are only 2 ways to get games in Linux, the Loki way and the TransGaming way, you are mistaken. Open your mind and you might end up better off in the long run.
1. Even if the source is released, you can still use the original game on Windows. No one needs MSVC to install a commercial game on a "proper gaming OS."
2. Even if the source is released, the publishers still make money off of every game sale. Even if someone else tries to make profit off the source code, they will have to create their own data. Anyone that would pay for just a source modification that came without data deserves whatever they get.
The only tarnish that comes to a company's name is when people use the source code to create cheats. But really, is the company to blame for the existence of cheaters?
To all the people replying and saying "id didn't get any problems for releasing Quake and Quake 2!!!!!", you are wrong. Carmack took a lot of crap over the Quake source release. He just seems to not be intimidated by a subculture of adolescents that can't type.
Remember Windows 95 coming preinstalled on every computer you bought around that time? I'd say that had more to do with acceptance of Windows 95 than what games it did or did not run. A larger user base will help native games, but I'm not convinced wine is the answer. I don't think the Transgaming people really want to write self-depricating software.
Transgaming will fail in the same capacity. This is not something I rejoice in or look forward to, but it is inevitable. They have already overestimated the size of the market. Their goal of 20,000 subscribers is laughable. Considering that their money is coming from Mandrake, who likely paid for the Sims contract, whenever Mandrake realizes that TransGaming is a financial burden, they will be dropped. At that point, their 300-400 subscribers won't be able to keep them alive.
I guess it's good that TransGaming is cool enough to be posted on 3 times. I thought 2 was overkill, but whatever. It's good to remind people of what they should already know every few weeks I guess.
Now for my opinion. TransGaming's wine, or forkx as I call it, will be cool for running legacy apps like Thief and other good games that will likely never be ported, but at the same time it has the potential to completely kill commercial Linux gaming. That is, if it ever stops sucking and runs something cool (like... Thief)
I don't think anyone should be happy with their "hostage source code" method of operation, but I give them points for creativity on how to make money off open source. All I know is that I would definitely be pissed if I was a wine developer.
All in all though, as far as I can see they've made some fairly good progress with the DirectX stuff in wine. I look forward to the day when this thing actually runs stuff that is useful to me, but if we never see another native port of a commercial game because of TransGaming, it will need to go.
Re:Going Postal is a very good term.
on
Loki Goes Postal
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· Score: 1
I don't understand your logical progression. Besides that, not all your points are factually correct. DooM runs on a P166, does this mean it is useless? WordPerfect 5 runs on a P166, does this mean it useless? The Postal engine is not crap, and it has been used in around 20 games. The fact that Tribes 2 doesn't work on anything but NVidia cards is not Loki's fault.
First of all, you didn't pay for the Wolfenstein test, although I realize that your complaint goes a bit farther than just that thing.
Perhaps no one else has found the feature you request useful. That is the deal with open source. If you want a feature that no one else does, you can add it and everything will be just dandy. You can even get someone else to do it for you if you are persuasive enough.
Anyhow, the comparison to commercial software falls down a little bit on this specific issue. I'd hexedit a commercial program before I gave it my root password.
I agree with you to an extent. I don't believe DirectX is needed. In fact, I believe a DirectX for Linux would hinder rather than help Linux gaming. Do to the great variety of flavors of Linux and system configurations out there, I doubt that a closed product would work as well as an open product like SDL. As more and more developers see the value of portability, fewer will see the value of DirectX. Look at Tribes 2 for instance. The Windows development team used NASM for their assembly at the request of Loki. They cared about portability, and it worked out for them.
But you are right without a shadow of a doubt on point number 2. Linux users have been spoiled by the generosity of Mr. Carmack and others that have followed his example. But the simple fact of the matter is that not every company will release source to all their games. If you want continued Linux ports of new games, you will have to shell out some cash. Loki and companies like them are the only way to get quality games fast, and paying for those games is the only way to keep companies like Loke afloat.
If you warez Linux games, you are only preventing yourself and others from getting more games for Linux.
By the way, Tribes 2 is not 12 month old crap, it is a new game that everyone who paid attention knew was going to be ported almost from the very beginning. SMAC may be old, but it is not crap.
you're all missing it. Several people have already pointed out that this article is satire. It was clearly marked as such on the Linux.com page, and I'm frankly surprised that the/. news team thought it was real. But that's not the sad thing. The sad thing is that Ryan has pinpointed all the negative aspects of the Linux community... things we should be working to IMPROVE. But instead of seeing this, you're all busy patting yourself on the back for figuring out that it's not from Bill Gates. Congratulations to all, you've successfully missed yet another point. It's okay though, I've learned not to expect much more.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want Linux to succeed on the desktop, then spend some time working on some projects to make it better, or maybe just use it. Don't waste your time trying to predict the future.
I'll still buy Blizzard games, assuming I can find them for under $10.
I hope if you're really concerned, you sent an email to Blizzard's marketing department containing the above text. It's not like all the people at Blizzard are going to be browsing Slashdot and happen to see this post.
Carmack also tends to forget to take out code he has no right to release under GPL from the codebases he gives away, but that's a different matter.
I hope they don't preload all kinds of annoying and crappy inhouse software on the Linux boxes like they do for Pavilions. I doubt they preload stuff like that on business machines, which is good. Keep that crap on Windows please.
Konq and Opera are both excellent browsers and neither has succeeded in killing Moz/Netscape on Linux. I don't know why people use Moz anyway, probably fear of change. Same reason people don't use Opera on Windows I imagine (it's faster than IE, as I mentioned further down in this thread)
Opera is the fastest (full-featured) browser on most platforms.
Using wine to compare speeds on anything is a pretty bad idea. The comparison you suggest is far from equal. Mozilla is a native app on Windows, by the way.
There are people who only leave their computers once every year or two to vote in elections. The exercise they get from voting is probably the only thing sustaining their little Internet lives. Why do you want to take that away from these people?!
Seriously folks, the Internet isn't for everything, and we're all fortunate that it's not.
For a second, when I read the topic, I thought this would be a confrontation between RMS from gnu.org and Miguel from fatchicksinpartyhats.com. That would be a Slashdot link worth reading.
True, but then the next problem arises: the Windows version of Tribes 2 was sold everywhere for a reasonable price, the linux version was much harder to find and usually with a hefty price tag.
No computer game is sold for a "reasonable price" ever. Warez drive up game prices, then more people warez so as not to pay such unreasonable prices. Such is the PC gaming spiral of death. Lots of people point out the price differential between Windows games and Linux games, and I'm sure it was a valid reason for many people to not buy from Loki, but every birth comes labor pains. The birth of commercial Linux gaming is no exception.
Continued patching is indeed an annoyance of simultaneous Windows and Linux development. Luckily, Dynamix had some excellent coders. In most cases, the lag you noticed was due more to communication between companies than it was to converting the patch. Loki's understaffing later in its life cycle certainly contributed some also, considering they were working on Kohan, Postal, FAKK2, Deus Ex, and various patches with a programming staff that hovered between two and three persons.
Among his famous Loki work is a port of Serious Sam, a port of the Build engine of 3dRealms/Duke Nukem/Shadow Warrior/...
I think the word you're looking for is "Besides" not "Among".
Tribes 2 was announced long before the Windows version was out. There was a slight delay shipping it, but if you bought the Windows version instead of the Linux one, it's your own fault.
The real people who should be complaining about Tribes 2 are those that had to spend an extra $100 on a video card to make it even run.
I'm not privy to information regarding the financial situation surrounding Unreal Tournament, but I believe Loki was paid by Epic for their involvement with the game. The real loss for Loki on UT was the time of support staff spent helping people get a charity product running.
Look for the Activision games at cheapbytes or tuxgames.com
They get pirated all the time, but what they lose in piracy they make up for in legit sales. Lots and lots of legit sales.
They raise prices in the Windows market to counteract the effects of warez. It's not so much the legit sales that keeps PC gaming alive, it's more the insane prices. We just don't notice because we're used to paying far too much for our games.
I just decided that I'm never, ever, ever signing up for TransGaming simply because you posted this. I might have considered it before, but not any more.
If you think that there are only 2 ways to get games in Linux, the Loki way and the TransGaming way, you are mistaken. Open your mind and you might end up better off in the long run.
1. Even if the source is released, you can still use the original game on Windows. No one needs MSVC to install a commercial game on a "proper gaming OS."
2. Even if the source is released, the publishers still make money off of every game sale. Even if someone else tries to make profit off the source code, they will have to create their own data. Anyone that would pay for just a source modification that came without data deserves whatever they get.
The only tarnish that comes to a company's name is when people use the source code to create cheats. But really, is the company to blame for the existence of cheaters?
To all the people replying and saying "id didn't get any problems for releasing Quake and Quake 2!!!!!", you are wrong. Carmack took a lot of crap over the Quake source release. He just seems to not be intimidated by a subculture of adolescents that can't type.
Remember Windows 95 coming preinstalled on every computer you bought around that time? I'd say that had more to do with acceptance of Windows 95 than what games it did or did not run. A larger user base will help native games, but I'm not convinced wine is the answer. I don't think the Transgaming people really want to write self-depricating software.
The article is Scott's response of "They suck, we're better" to TransGaming's statement of "They suck, we're better". This isn't a one-sided thing.
Don't you have anything better to do?
Transgaming will fail in the same capacity. This is not something I rejoice in or look forward to, but it is inevitable. They have already overestimated the size of the market. Their goal of 20,000 subscribers is laughable. Considering that their money is coming from Mandrake, who likely paid for the Sims contract, whenever Mandrake realizes that TransGaming is a financial burden, they will be dropped. At that point, their 300-400 subscribers won't be able to keep them alive.
I very much doubt that there are more than 200 people that would pay even $5/month for this.
I guess it's good that TransGaming is cool enough to be posted on 3 times. I thought 2 was overkill, but whatever. It's good to remind people of what they should already know every few weeks I guess.
Now for my opinion. TransGaming's wine, or forkx as I call it, will be cool for running legacy apps like Thief and other good games that will likely never be ported, but at the same time it has the potential to completely kill commercial Linux gaming. That is, if it ever stops sucking and runs something cool (like... Thief)
I don't think anyone should be happy with their "hostage source code" method of operation, but I give them points for creativity on how to make money off open source. All I know is that I would definitely be pissed if I was a wine developer.
All in all though, as far as I can see they've made some fairly good progress with the DirectX stuff in wine. I look forward to the day when this thing actually runs stuff that is useful to me, but if we never see another native port of a commercial game because of TransGaming, it will need to go.
I don't understand your logical progression. Besides that, not all your points are factually correct. DooM runs on a P166, does this mean it is useless? WordPerfect 5 runs on a P166, does this mean it useless? The Postal engine is not crap, and it has been used in around 20 games. The fact that Tribes 2 doesn't work on anything but NVidia cards is not Loki's fault.
First of all, you didn't pay for the Wolfenstein test, although I realize that your complaint goes a bit farther than just that thing.
Perhaps no one else has found the feature you request useful. That is the deal with open source. If you want a feature that no one else does, you can add it and everything will be just dandy. You can even get someone else to do it for you if you are persuasive enough.
Anyhow, the comparison to commercial software falls down a little bit on this specific issue. I'd hexedit a commercial program before I gave it my root password.
I agree with you to an extent. I don't believe DirectX is needed. In fact, I believe a DirectX for Linux would hinder rather than help Linux gaming. Do to the great variety of flavors of Linux and system configurations out there, I doubt that a closed product would work as well as an open product like SDL. As more and more developers see the value of portability, fewer will see the value of DirectX. Look at Tribes 2 for instance. The Windows development team used NASM for their assembly at the request of Loki. They cared about portability, and it worked out for them. But you are right without a shadow of a doubt on point number 2. Linux users have been spoiled by the generosity of Mr. Carmack and others that have followed his example. But the simple fact of the matter is that not every company will release source to all their games. If you want continued Linux ports of new games, you will have to shell out some cash. Loki and companies like them are the only way to get quality games fast, and paying for those games is the only way to keep companies like Loke afloat. If you warez Linux games, you are only preventing yourself and others from getting more games for Linux. By the way, Tribes 2 is not 12 month old crap, it is a new game that everyone who paid attention knew was going to be ported almost from the very beginning. SMAC may be old, but it is not crap.
you're all missing it. Several people have already pointed out that this article is satire. It was clearly marked as such on the Linux.com page, and I'm frankly surprised that the /. news team thought it was real. But that's not the sad thing. The sad thing is that Ryan has pinpointed all the negative aspects of the Linux community... things we should be working to IMPROVE. But instead of seeing this, you're all busy patting yourself on the back for figuring out that it's not from Bill Gates. Congratulations to all, you've successfully missed yet another point. It's okay though, I've learned not to expect much more.