Personally, I'm a little dubious of the WINE project. In many ways, it's always felt like a open-src version of Sun's WABI, and we all know where WABI ended up -- nowhere fast.
The problem I see is that MS will always fiddle with the OS-level APIs, in order to improve things for their applications. There's no way around this, and it's MS's proprietary API, so the WINE guys just have to play catch-up.
I seem to remember another Win-on-UNIX attempt years ago with Locus Merge, which at the time was pretty cool, as it did a full DOS+Win3.1 compatible environment in UnixWare. I thought it was pretty neat watching Win3.1 run inside an X-Window. But I always had DOS/Win systems available at the time, so I never really used Merge, and, after a while, forgot all about it.
Hmm. If I understood what I saw at the demos at GDC 2000, the PSX2 will have USB, not Firewire. It will also only have the HD sold as a separate unit (with their networking stuff).
Also, it's really the PSX2 Dev stations that boot and use Linux. Not many home users are going to be able to get one of those.
With consoles, it's all about getting games that you wouldn't, or couldn't get on a PC. MS knows this, and is trying to garner 3rd party developer support early, so they can come out with some really good titles. PSX2 came out in Japan with only a few titles that anyone really was interested in. Then again, they sold 1 million in the first weekend. Don't write off MS too quickly...the XBox will have good hardware and be easier to develop for. However, MS vs Sony (vs Nintendo, etc) is going to be a serious battle.
Yech....I got Yggdrasil free with some other software purchase from Programmer's Paradise many years ago (gosh, what was I buying...an editor? Can't remember). I was using SCO at the time, so I figured, can't be much worse.
After much install pains, I tried to get X working, and it failed miserably, on a relatively generic video card (Trident, I believe). I basically gave up.
The one nice thing I remember about Yggdrasil at the time was that it was the first dist. of anything I had seen that you could actually run the OS off the CD without installing. Incredibly slow on my double-speed CDROM, of course, but still a neat idea.
Slackware's a good dist., but then again I haven't had any real issues with RH either. Personally, though, I run Sol x86 anyway.
It's interesting you mention the PSX2 -- given the (somewhat overdone, IMHO) hype surrounding the X-Box these days, what's your take on working with OGL given that there will no doubt be a easier migration path to the X-Box from DX?
Granted id is focused more on PC games, but at least from a mass-market viewport, consoles seem to be in the lead. When you say portability, the Linux and OSX markets seem pretty small compared with the 1-out-of-4 household PSX market.
At the OpenGL SIG at SIGGRAPH last year (mostly SGI folks leading this), it did appear that Farenheit was effectively "over". SGI was concentrating their efforts on helping out in bringing OpenGL to Linux, which resulting in some open source releases of some SGI code, and not much else (AFAIK).
As far as the scare about OpenGL in Win2K, it's true that it was blown somewhat out of proportion. OpenGL sits along side DX7 in Win2K, and both sides seem to be happy...for now. The one thing I did take away from the whole "statement" from MS was that (obviously) their efforts for the future would be concentrated on DX. Well, duh...
The Game market is definitely the smart route to take. High-end 3D markets are pretty flat -- a typical film effects house will buy a few copies of soft and be done for the year.
I have to point out however that both Maya and Houdini are actively trying to get into the Game market. A/W, in particular, is actively pushing Maya into the game market with "discounts" for current 3DS MAX users, almost to the point of annoyance. GameBlender should be pretty cool.
not sure you would count this or not. but rhino3d works fine via wine (with a slight performance hit)
Hmm...I consider Rhino more of a modeler, less of a full-fledged 3D Animation app. It's a great modeler, btw. You can't do animation in it, however.
Based on what I garnered from Bob, Michael and other folks at McNeel during Rhino beta testing, I doubt they're planning on making a non-Win32 port anytime soon...
A/W only makes a maya renderer for Linux. I wish they ported the whole thing. Ah, I didn't realize this...thanks for pointing this out. Seems odd that they'd make a big deal about porting Maya to MacOS, but wouldn't port to Linux, given that a Linux port from IRIX sources would probably be easier. Oh well.
But I have to wonder...how well is this going to work-out for NaN? The 3D Animation market as it currently stands is a relatively small market. Home users in general aren't 3D-savvy, and probably aren't going to become more-so any time soon. Production and Game houses typically have already invested time and money in a particular setup, and don't like to change. Giving it away free, or almost free, may actually work against NaN, believe it or not. A lot of houses equate free to "not well supported" I'm dubious of NaN's strategy, although I like the app, and I wish them luck.
Small point of contention -- POVRay is mainly a renderer. Blender is a full 3D Animation application. In the graphics world, that's comparing apples with, well, apple-pie, perhaps. Folks interested in POVRay should also check-out Blue Moon Rendering Toolkit, an excellent free (well, okay, shareware, but free for non-commercial use) renderer that does radiosity.
Granted VSlickEdit is pretty nice, but I still have to agree that the price is too high. They may have done things originally for high-end UNIX's, but why did they put out a Linux port and expect folks to pay $200+ for an editor, when the build and compile tools are free? If they charged $50, I'd probably buy it.
Assuming your statement that KDevelop and the like will catch up to MSDEV (a reasonable assumption), and likewise assuming that compiler technology will even-out (here I actually think MS needs to do some catchup to gcc), I'd agree with your statement that the "environment" (the operating system really) becomes the deciding factor. However, I'd have to disagree that Linux is more powerful. It _really_ depends on what you're trying to do. If you're doing networking, or server apps, Linux is probably going to have an edge. However, things like 3D graphics and game development (my area), MS Win2K, and things like Direct3D (which is starting to really jump away from OpenGL) really would swing the favor to Microsoft. As usual, everything depends on what you want to do. Start with that, and then govern which dev-tool, operating system, etc. fit your needs, not the other way around.
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Personally, I'm a little dubious of the WINE project. In many ways, it's always felt like a open-src version of Sun's WABI, and we all know where WABI ended up -- nowhere fast.
The problem I see is that MS will always fiddle with the OS-level APIs, in order to improve things for their applications. There's no way around this, and it's MS's proprietary API, so the WINE guys just have to play catch-up.
I seem to remember another Win-on-UNIX attempt years ago with Locus Merge, which at the time was pretty cool, as it did a full DOS+Win3.1 compatible environment in UnixWare. I thought it was pretty neat watching Win3.1 run inside an X-Window. But I always had DOS/Win systems available at the time, so I never really used Merge, and, after a while, forgot all about it.
Hmm. If I understood what I saw at the demos at GDC 2000, the PSX2 will have USB, not Firewire. It will also only have the HD sold as a separate unit (with their networking stuff).
Also, it's really the PSX2 Dev stations that boot and use Linux. Not many home users are going to be able to get one of those.
With consoles, it's all about getting games that you wouldn't, or couldn't get on a PC. MS knows this, and is trying to garner 3rd party developer support early, so they can come out with some really good titles. PSX2 came out in Japan with only a few titles that anyone really was interested in. Then again, they sold 1 million in the first weekend. Don't write off MS too quickly...the XBox will have good hardware and be easier to develop for. However, MS vs Sony (vs Nintendo, etc) is going to be a serious battle.
The mother was lying. Anakin's father is Darth Maul. This will be revealed in "Epsiode II:The Plot Gets Re-used".
Indeed...I saw they left the goto statement around, and was immediately turned off.
:-).
Edsger Dijkstra does not approve
Yech....I got Yggdrasil free with some other software purchase from Programmer's Paradise many years ago (gosh, what was I buying...an editor? Can't remember). I was using SCO at the time, so I figured, can't be much worse.
After much install pains, I tried to get X working, and it failed miserably, on a relatively generic video card (Trident, I believe). I basically gave up.
The one nice thing I remember about Yggdrasil at the time was that it was the first dist. of anything I had seen that you could actually run the OS off the CD without installing. Incredibly slow on my double-speed CDROM, of course, but still a neat idea.
Slackware's a good dist., but then again I haven't had any real issues with RH either. Personally, though, I run Sol x86 anyway.
It's interesting you mention the PSX2 -- given the (somewhat overdone, IMHO) hype surrounding the X-Box these days, what's your take on working with OGL given that there will no doubt be a easier migration path to the X-Box from DX?
Granted id is focused more on PC games, but at least from a mass-market viewport, consoles seem to be in the lead. When you say portability, the Linux and OSX markets seem pretty small compared with the 1-out-of-4 household PSX market.
Quake III Arena rules, btw.
At the OpenGL SIG at SIGGRAPH last year (mostly SGI folks leading this), it did appear that Farenheit was effectively "over". SGI was concentrating their efforts on helping out in bringing OpenGL to Linux, which resulting in some open source releases of some SGI code, and not much else (AFAIK).
As far as the scare about OpenGL in Win2K, it's true that it was blown somewhat out of proportion. OpenGL sits along side DX7 in Win2K, and both sides seem to be happy...for now. The one thing I did take away from the whole "statement" from MS was that (obviously) their efforts for the future would be concentrated on DX. Well, duh...
The Game market is definitely the smart route to take. High-end 3D markets are pretty flat -- a typical film effects house will buy a few copies of soft and be done for the year.
I have to point out however that both Maya and Houdini are actively trying to get into the Game market. A/W, in particular, is actively pushing Maya into the game market with "discounts" for current 3DS MAX users, almost to the point of annoyance. GameBlender should be pretty cool.
not sure you would count this or not. but rhino3d works fine via wine (with a slight performance hit)
Hmm...I consider Rhino more of a modeler, less of a full-fledged 3D Animation app. It's a great modeler, btw. You can't do animation in it, however.
Based on what I garnered from Bob, Michael and other folks at McNeel during Rhino beta testing, I doubt they're planning on making a non-Win32 port anytime soon...
A/W only makes a maya renderer for Linux. I wish they ported the whole thing. Ah, I didn't realize this...thanks for pointing this out. Seems odd that they'd make a big deal about porting Maya to MacOS, but wouldn't port to Linux, given that a Linux port from IRIX sources would probably be easier. Oh well.
- Maya
- Houdini
- Realsoft4D
- (others?)
But I have to wonder...how well is this going to work-out for NaN? The 3D Animation market as it currently stands is a relatively small market. Home users in general aren't 3D-savvy, and probably aren't going to become more-so any time soon. Production and Game houses typically have already invested time and money in a particular setup, and don't like to change. Giving it away free, or almost free, may actually work against NaN, believe it or not. A lot of houses equate free to "not well supported" I'm dubious of NaN's strategy, although I like the app, and I wish them luck.Small point of contention -- POVRay is mainly a renderer. Blender is a full 3D Animation application. In the graphics world, that's comparing apples with, well, apple-pie, perhaps. Folks interested in POVRay should also check-out Blue Moon Rendering Toolkit, an excellent free (well, okay, shareware, but free for non-commercial use) renderer that does radiosity.
Granted VSlickEdit is pretty nice, but I still have to agree that the price is too high. They may have done things originally for high-end UNIX's, but why did they put out a Linux port and expect folks to pay $200+ for an editor, when the build and compile tools are free? If they charged $50, I'd probably buy it.
- Development environment (read: IDE)
- Development tools (read: compiler)
- Operating System
Assuming your statement that KDevelop and the like will catch up to MSDEV (a reasonable assumption), and likewise assuming that compiler technology will even-out (here I actually think MS needs to do some catchup to gcc), I'd agree with your statement that the "environment" (the operating system really) becomes the deciding factor. However, I'd have to disagree that Linux is more powerful. It _really_ depends on what you're trying to do. If you're doing networking, or server apps, Linux is probably going to have an edge. However, things like 3D graphics and game development (my area), MS Win2K, and things like Direct3D (which is starting to really jump away from OpenGL) really would swing the favor to Microsoft. As usual, everything depends on what you want to do. Start with that, and then govern which dev-tool, operating system, etc. fit your needs, not the other way around.