There was a time when all the 'good' games ran in DOS, and the crappy games ran in Windows.
To configure the DOS games was sometimes a real pain, involving custom config.sys files, memory managers, etc. They were difficult to configure because so many people had so many different graphic and sound cards, and because DOS was filled to the brim with limitations, that everybody and their great uncle had ways to get around...
Then MS released DirectX, and, pretty soon, games ran better in Windows than they did in DOS...
This seems to kinda be the flow that Linux is taking, with heavy exceptions:)
While configuring games for Linux/X isn't a matter of getting around limitations, it is a matter of getting 'around' a massive filesystem, cnfiguration files, security rights, differing hardware, etc.
We need something along the lines of a DirectX for Linux - no I don't mean something that allows a program to talk directly to hardware through a complicated all encompassing API, I mean, some thing that unites all that is needed to easily and simply allow a game to run (regardless the distribution)
Linux could become the predominant gamming system if this happened. Who would have thought that when clunky Win3.1 was around, that Windows would become the predominant gamming system a few years ago?? Certainly not me...
I'm sort-of a Linux newbie, I spose...but I have no trouble compiling source code, maintaining my Linux system, and moving around the tree editing files. I have no problems at the pompt, etc. I always have at least one shell window open, but (and this is a bigbutt, i'm lazy! I want to put a CD in, and just play!
I hate to hear crap like, "Linux is a SERVER OS!!". No, it's an OS that works good as a server - there's a difference. There is no good reason why Linux can't be great for games. None.
I disagree with you on particular points, namely I will eat cow (though I won't eat pig - I go by the 'smarts' of the animal, to the best of current knowledge, anyhoo), but i understand the two faced nature of society.
This is, alas, nothing new. "Don't play violent games", "but eat chickens" - which are processed and handled like bottles or any other non-living things in huge factories, being grabbed by mechanical devices and manipulated towards death...
Or, more generally and succinctly, in America, "porn is bad!", but, "prejudice is good!"..."don't judge people by how they look!", but, "make fun of fat people, and be sure to vote for your local prom King and Queen!"
'Big Brother' is us. Politicians go with public sentiment. Educate people, and bring day-to-day atrocities to the forefront; after all, it worked for the environmental groups.
Your characterization of Linux are oversimplified, at best, and wrong, at worst...
Linux need not be a server OS. Corel Linux (for better or worse), has been called the easiest OS to install, period, regardless of platform by a CNET review.
Linux is like any other OS in that it is the layer between the user and the hardware. It's a 'feature', in my opinion, that it can do 'server' type things. It's a feature that it can do these things and still perform graphically (especially with the new XFREE86 4.0).
It's nice to have something so versatile, that it can be used as a desktop and a server. I myself use it as a desktop (yes, a desktop). I'm running KDE, which is the most advanced GUI I have ever, EVER used. It un-ashamedly takes the best that other GUIs have to offer, and combines them. When I am in K, and I add a shortcut to my K startup folder, I'm not thinking about my Samba server that's running and allowing my WinPC to access my drives...
Linux, right now and today, could be used by a soccer mom...and I intend to prove it by setting up my mums pc with Linux running K. If my mom can do basic soccer mom functions using Linux, than anyone can!
By the way, you said Amigians were/are hobbyists, this is true...those 'hobbyists' turned to Linux...the people that turned to BeOs, at least in the context you yourself describe, sound like those people that used Macs and St's back in the day, not Amigas!
ok, if we're talking amiga vs windows, then it depends on the context. If you compare an amiga in its time/technology frame to a modern pc running windows95, of course windows95 wins, in almost all categories (because of the years of technology since...). If you consider what an amiga could do back in the day, as compared to what windows could only recently do, than of course the amiga wins hands down...
But! (and this is a big butt), the amiga wasn't the perfect machine, even in its day. IMHO, there was a price to pay for its advanced features. You may have had a piece of software that ran fine. I knew many bbses in my area that ran on amigas. In general, in my opinion, they crashed, and they crashed alot...when using them for a normal single user purposes, where one switches from app to app and does routine 'computeree' things and such, they were not that stable! In comparison, my old 166mhz with 95b, is pretty stable, all in all...provided I reboot it at least once every few hours (which is why I now run Linux on my new pc)...
Lets have some honesty about computers, even old favorites, instead of fanatacism.
i'm a linux lover myself...win95 is the most unstable thing i could think of, which is why i said that...did you ever use an Amiga? I'm sorry, they were way-cool, but the 16 bit OS it used was NOT stable by ANY means. having said all that, it was way ahead of its time, which is why it rocked.
What I meant by really-real is that the Amiga wasn't the nostalgic peice of perfection people make it out to be.
I agree that Amiga needs to be left to enjoy death in peace, and that we need all the OS competition we can get. This sounds contradictory, and it is! Seriously, I think of the Amiga like I think about the Newton and the 3DO - great, but ahead of their time (and lets face it, plagued with problems). Multimedia? Who isn't concerned with multimedia these days! I liked the old Amigas because they could do what everything can do now, multitask and multi thread. Remember Wordperfect for the Amiga? Remember how it beat the shit out of the Wintel version, at that time? Multimedia? So it could play good games, well, so could Nitnendo! Their focus on multimedia is what killed them to begin with. If they would have advertised the OS itself more, they mighta had something...after all, it wasn't until Windows95 that most people could easily do what the Amiga could do...(but in fairness, I'd call Win95 much more stable than the Amiga OS...hey, the truth hurts sometimes...) I loved the Amiga, but it has been surpassed in every possible way, alas...there isn't a market left for them to tap into.
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To configure the DOS games was sometimes a real pain, involving custom config.sys files, memory managers, etc. They were difficult to configure because so many people had so many different graphic and sound cards, and because DOS was filled to the brim with limitations, that everybody and their great uncle had ways to get around...
Then MS released DirectX, and, pretty soon, games ran better in Windows than they did in DOS...
This seems to kinda be the flow that Linux is taking, with heavy exceptions :)
While configuring games for Linux/X isn't a matter of getting around limitations, it is a matter of getting 'around' a massive filesystem, cnfiguration files, security rights, differing hardware, etc.
We need something along the lines of a DirectX for Linux - no I don't mean something that allows a program to talk directly to hardware through a complicated all encompassing API, I mean, some thing that unites all that is needed to easily and simply allow a game to run (regardless the distribution)
Linux could become the predominant gamming system if this happened. Who would have thought that when clunky Win3.1 was around, that Windows would become the predominant gamming system a few years ago?? Certainly not me...
I'm sort-of a Linux newbie, I spose...but I have no trouble compiling source code, maintaining my Linux system, and moving around the tree editing files. I have no problems at the pompt, etc. I always have at least one shell window open, but (and this is a bigbutt, i'm lazy! I want to put a CD in, and just play!
I hate to hear crap like, "Linux is a SERVER OS!!". No, it's an OS that works good as a server - there's a difference. There is no good reason why Linux can't be great for games. None.
This is, alas, nothing new. "Don't play violent games", "but eat chickens" - which are processed and handled like bottles or any other non-living things in huge factories, being grabbed by mechanical devices and manipulated towards death...
Or, more generally and succinctly, in America, "porn is bad!", but, "prejudice is good!"..."don't judge people by how they look!", but, "make fun of fat people, and be sure to vote for your local prom King and Queen!"
'Big Brother' is us. Politicians go with public sentiment. Educate people, and bring day-to-day atrocities to the forefront; after all, it worked for the environmental groups.
Linux need not be a server OS. Corel Linux (for better or worse), has been called the easiest OS to install, period, regardless of platform by a CNET review.
Linux is like any other OS in that it is the layer between the user and the hardware. It's a 'feature', in my opinion, that it can do 'server' type things. It's a feature that it can do these things and still perform graphically (especially with the new XFREE86 4.0).
It's nice to have something so versatile, that it can be used as a desktop and a server. I myself use it as a desktop (yes, a desktop). I'm running KDE, which is the most advanced GUI I have ever, EVER used. It un-ashamedly takes the best that other GUIs have to offer, and combines them. When I am in K, and I add a shortcut to my K startup folder, I'm not thinking about my Samba server that's running and allowing my WinPC to access my drives...
Linux, right now and today, could be used by a soccer mom...and I intend to prove it by setting up my mums pc with Linux running K. If my mom can do basic soccer mom functions using Linux, than anyone can!
By the way, you said Amigians were/are hobbyists, this is true...those 'hobbyists' turned to Linux...the people that turned to BeOs, at least in the context you yourself describe, sound like those people that used Macs and St's back in the day, not Amigas!
But! (and this is a big butt), the amiga wasn't the perfect machine, even in its day. IMHO, there was a price to pay for its advanced features. You may have had a piece of software that ran fine. I knew many bbses in my area that ran on amigas. In general, in my opinion, they crashed, and they crashed alot...when using them for a normal single user purposes, where one switches from app to app and does routine 'computeree' things and such, they were not that stable! In comparison, my old 166mhz with 95b, is pretty stable, all in all...provided I reboot it at least once every few hours (which is why I now run Linux on my new pc)...
Lets have some honesty about computers, even old favorites, instead of fanatacism.
What I meant by really-real is that the Amiga wasn't the nostalgic peice of perfection people make it out to be.
I agree that Amiga needs to be left to enjoy death in peace, and that we need all the OS competition we can get. This sounds contradictory, and it is!
Seriously, I think of the Amiga like I think about the Newton and the 3DO - great, but ahead of their time (and lets face it, plagued with problems).
Multimedia? Who isn't concerned with multimedia these days!
I liked the old Amigas because they could do what everything can do now, multitask and multi thread. Remember Wordperfect for the Amiga? Remember how it beat the shit out of the Wintel version, at that time? Multimedia? So it could play good games, well, so could Nitnendo!
Their focus on multimedia is what killed them to begin with. If they would have advertised the OS itself more, they mighta had something...after all, it wasn't until Windows95 that most people could easily do what the Amiga could do...(but in fairness, I'd call Win95 much more stable than the Amiga OS...hey, the truth hurts sometimes...)
I loved the Amiga, but it has been surpassed in every possible way, alas...there isn't a market left for them to tap into.