I think that SEGA concentrated way too hard on moving arcade ports to the Dreamcast instead of focusing on more original content until late in its life. We got gems like JSR, Shenmue, Skies of Arcadia, but a lot of those came way too late. Most people didn't want to buy Dynamite Cop and House of the Dead. I must admit though... Sega Bass Fishing is a pretty fun game. Some of the original titles, like Rez and Samba de Amigo, just didn't click with most people. Other things, like PSO, revolutionized online console gaming.
By the way... I love FZero GX on the Gamecube. It just *screams* "SEGA arcade game", complete with cheesy '80s butt-rock music.;)
Dreamcast was an exceptionally well engineered machine with a large collection of excellent games that were exclusive until the company announced that it would become "platform agnostic".
As you mentioned, the major thing that killed the Dreamcast was the reactions to the older SEGA hardware. Dreamcast had a lot going for it though; great hardware, an impressive launch backed by support of many companies. Launch sales were exceptional. Cue Sony hype machine. Playstation 2 would be "15 times more powerful than any other console". Yeah, right. People are such tools.
Eventually, the games stopped coming and support got slim. Dreamcast still lives on though. There is still the occasional Japanese game release. It's still got a great community of independant software development. I've got 60 games, personally, and I've been very happy with most of them. It's the machine that won't die. "The legend will never die".
I used OpenOffice for a technical writing class a few quarters ago. I exported my files to PDF format. My instructor thought that my final formatting looked better than most of the other papers that were done on MS Office. I ended up getting an A in the class, and OpenOffice did the job well.
I asked her on the first day if she would take PDF files instead of MS Office docs. She had no problem with it. The original formatting that I created with OpenOffice was not lost in translation, and the finished products were readable on any platform/OS after I exported them to PDF.
For those that aren't familiar with the Microsoft security break-ins...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/998449.stm I'd imagine that it is possible that other people have gotten in as well. To my knowledge, this is the only one that was made public.
Re:Windows?
on
Gimp Hits 2.0
·
· Score: 4, Informative
You can just hit "Prt Scr" (Print Screen) and paste it into GIMP as a new image.
that said, I do take exception to one of your statements. If Linux can't do proper mixing, why do I need a better sound card to do it?
Once again, I'll restate that *it can* do proper mixing. You are dealing with is a limitation of your hardware, not Linux. It just goes with the territory. It's almost like the people that say: "Linux doesn't do 3D because my obscure video chip isn't supported. X sucks!"
DMIX is a mess. Unfortunately, that's the price you pay. It's not that Linux can't do the mixing that you ask. Maybe, given time, DMIX will improve. It's a relatively new component for ALSA though. You may want to consider paying for 4-Front's drivers that do it if DMIX doesn't float your boat.
http://opensound.com/
These drivers support softmixing reasonably well, but aren't free. They are not a proper alternative to hardware mixing, but they will work. They apparently have an ALSA emulation system, but it's just a "play project." I don't know if I would want an ALSA wrapper sitting on top of a sofware mixer though (their Virtual Mixer).
Your sound chip is essentially like a Winmodem, built specifically for Windows. Even some chips that do hardware mixing on Windows don't mix on Linux because of lack of proper programming documentation. What can the programmers do about that? Again, Linux's multimedia capabilities are not to blame for a driver issue. A good amount of other users don't have the same problem that you do because they have well-supported hardware.
It's not something that will change unless hardware developers take a different design approach, and a different approach to releasing their programming docs.
I must tell you that I understand how you feel though. Really - I am sympathetic to the problems you are having. It's a very frustrating situation to have to deal with this sound issue. I've been through it before, as well. This was before the CS46xx drivers were as mature as they are today. I used the 4-Front drivers to hold me over until my hardware got better ALSA support, and it paid off. If the sound issue is giving you that much of a headache, the $20 may be money well spent. That isn't to say that the 4-Front drivers are without problems though, but it is worth testing them before you fork out $20 for a version that doesn't expire after a period of time.
Browse through the ALSA soundcard matrix to get a good idea of a decent card that will do hardware mixing for you.
http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/
You can buy SB Live, Yamaha, and Aureal Vortex cards on ebay for $5.00, new and used. A newer Crystal Soundfusion or Audigy card will be more expensive, and may give you more features though. Santa Cruz runs about $40. Soundblasters are $20+ for a new one.
$5.00 is a small price to pay for proper sound support in Linux. It will make your headaches go away.
ALSA *DOES* have excellent mixing support. The problem is that people have crappy sound chips that don't do hardware mixing. Take the sound servers and throw them out the door. All of my soundcards do mixing in hardware, so I don't need the sound servers. That's because I don't have crappy sound hardware.
If you have a good soundcard, then your movies will be in sync. A common myth is that Linux cannot do proper mixing. The real issue is that people have junk sound chips that rely on DirectX-type systems to do the mixing. Death to Artsd and ESD. They are junk, and shouldn't be needed if people do their homework and buy the right hardware.
Buy a decent Soundblaster Live/Audigy, Crystal (Santa Cruz, Hercules Gametheater), Yamaha, Aureal Vortex, or any other card that can do hardware mixing. But don't blame Linux for your hardware's deficiencies.
The alternative is DMIX for ALSA or 4-Front's Virtual Mixer PRO. These are better than the Artsd/ESD software, but are far from perfect.
Wow. Media on Linux has never been better. With minimal effort, in most cases, MPlayer and the codecs can be installed with a simple RPM package. Same goes for XINE and all of the players based upon it.
MPlayer and XINE work so well, that even Windows-native formats play back with just a fraction of the CPU load. I have yet to come across a typical, modern audio or video file on the web that doesn't play better on Linux than it does on Windows. MPlayer is just too kickass.
Audio on Linux is fantastic as well. The ALSA subsystem is professional-grade, allows for plugins and has nearly no latency in routing.
Multimedia is becoming one of Linux's high points. It's no longer limited like it was a few years ago. The problem is that there are so many patented and closed-source codecs out there that don't have legitimate Linux versions. That's where it gets questionable, when you are required to install a hacked Windows DLL to get a format to play on Linux. Things like Ogg Theora will help to end that ridiculous concept, as Vorbis is slowly doing.
There ***are*** opensource ATI drivers from the DRI project. I don't know why people keep insisting that there are not. ATI donated programming docs to the DRI project to support the majority of the features in the older Radeon series chipsets. Thet haven't done it with the R300 cores (yet), but it is possible that they make it aviailable in the future.
Better yet, most Linux distributions come with these drivers preinstalled, since they are a component of X. In addition, almost all cores are supported, from the lowly R128 to many of those in the Radeon 8000/9000 series.
By the way... The Linux kernel, while a key part of getting the video modules to work, should not "include" video drivers for X. They are an X component, and most videocards have well-supported 2D and 3D. For nVidia, you only have 2D. For most ATI cores, you have 2D and 3D. Older Matrox cores have 2D and 3D while Parhelia only has 2D support. You get the picture.
Here's the problem. Average users can either "suffer" with generic 2D drivers that work with all cards, or take a moment to read some instructions to run a simple binary to install a driver module that has good 3D support. If you don't have the mental capacity to install nVidia's or ATI's drivers, by following a few instructions, then you shouldn't be using Linux anyway. It's not normally as hard as people make it sound. It just takes a few steps and a bit of following instructions.
I just picked up Twin Snakes yesterday. Fantastic stuff. It's especially a treat for anyone that hasn't played the original. Essentially, they've perfected what was already a fantastic game. If you liked the play and graphics of MGS2, but the better plotline of MGS, then this is just the right mix of both.
They changed a lot. They added a lot of controls from MGS2. You can now hang from walls and use lockers. Snake has more moves. They added a first person mode. They also totally redid almost all of the dialogue. Of course, the graphics have been overhauled, and look fantastic. There are a ton of other things that have been changed as well; too many to list.
You should almost *never* need to upgrade your kernel from the one that comes with your current distribution, assuming you are using a reasonably modern distribution...
This is why new kernels are "bleeding edge" for people that want to play until the distributions release them officially. This kernel release has *nothing* to do with why people are put off from using Linux. In fact, since 1997, when I've started using Linux, I've NEVER once upgraded my kernel because the official "standard" kernels have always been sufficient. Generally, if you have a resonably modern distribution, it's included kernel is enough. Those people that say that "normal users can't recompile their kernels" are missing the point... You NEVER need to recompile your kernel, in the majority of circumstances. Simply upgrading your desktop with the most recent major revision of your favorite distribution is simply enough, and these days, that is almost always as easy as simply popping in a CD and rebooting. The only time that I ever considered upgrading my kernel was due to a hardware flaw in the KT600 chipsets that hardlocks AGP in 3.0 mode. Kernel 2.4.22 doesn't support AGP 3.0, but kernel 2.6 does. Fortunately, I was simply able to use ATI's internal GART driver instead of the kernel's driver. This does not mean that I'm incapable of recompiling my kernel (I've done it several times for testing)- I just see no need to do it when the current *standard* kernel works so well on my machine. I'll update my machine to 2.6 when it is an official Slackware kernel.
I understand that you meant well by your post, but you are seriously missing the boat here. It's the myths about Linux difficulty, from *non-Linux users*, that make Linux seem difficult.
Agreed, but I tend to think that any magazine that knew anything about benchmarking on Linux would be using the fastest driver in the first place. They normally do use the best driver that is available on Windows. Often, they will even use "leaked" Detonators when testing a piece of hardware. Any reasonably intelligent reviewer would probably do the same thing on Linux - or even test it with both sets.
One such example is this comparison, which outlines the pros and cons of the various drivers available for ATI cores on Linux. One might find it interesting that some of the alternatives offer better performance than ATI's drivers in some instances.
From here, you will see that it is not entirely unlikely that an open source implementation of nVidias drivers could offer nVidia some insight into how to make their drivers perform better on Linux. I suspect that this will help ATI improve their OpenGL support across each supported, assuming they take this stuff seriously. I'd actually be seriously interested in buying some XIG Summit drivers, if they could only support the R300 cores (not likely right now since the programming docs aren't available).
Other than ATI and NVidia what else is out their that you can actually buy easily, that runs on linux?
Not that I disagree with you or anything, but I just want to note... PowerVR has had drivers for years now. XGI just released drivers for their Volari cards as well. Most other chips have opensource drivers.
Honestly though, one could question PowerVR's future on Linux or even the PC in general, since they've not had anyone license technology for their PC tech designs for several years. It's also looking like they will never release driver for a kernel above 2.6. XGI, on the other hand, seems to have a problem with low quality drivers on Windows (according to reviews). I can't speak for their Linux drivers though. Their cards are also very difficult to find in some parts of the world. In regards to the DRI supported hardware - much of it is aging. Matrox won't release information about Parhelia, even though the older cores are well supported. SIS has ignored Linux for the Xabre line, though the older cores work alright. Intel's graphics chips are well supported, and DRI has fully functional drivers.
Gernerally, where performance matters, you'll be able to find usable drivers from either nVidia or ATI. Some users have had problems with drivers from both sites, though most of it is error in user configuration. Others have had great success with ATI or nVidia. My Radeon 9500 PRO is great on Linux. So, where performance counts, those are the only two vendors that really matter.
In regards to the other hardware vendors, most of the chips have support through DRI. So, to answer your question, there aren't many chips out there that *don't* have Linux support. Most of them work quite easily by means of the DRI drivers.
Most of those "proprietary algorithms" are not essential to getting quality 3D support for most applications. Look at ATI's DRI drivers. Most of their Radeon lineup works very well with the DRI drivers. Only the recent cores do not have DRI support (in favor of closed source drivers). They gave programming documentation to the project, and the drivers have been very high-quality so far, in spite of missing a few features like S3TC (which can be implemented with a patch - probably legally).
Their hands are not tied from simply allowing the community to write quality drivers with slightly crippled 3D features. Basic 3D functionality isn't going to cost them a dime. In fact, the work that would go into it could help them to improve their closed drivers as well.
I personally thought that it was funny. Some may consider it a "publicity stunt", but it seems to be more like a play on words to me. LGP has nothing to gain but your attention, by associating itself with Loki in a joking fashion.
FYI: It's a different Epic. The company that the thread is about is Epic Interactive, who specialiazes in a lot of lesser-known (but good) games. Recently, they've been doing Linux and Amiga (and MorphOS) games in addition to their Windows and MacOS publishing.
Epic will be bringing Divine Divinity (GameSpy runner up for PC RPG game of 2002) to alternative operating systems as well. Here's hoping that LGP gets to publish it.;)
This is actually no joke. Mod parent up. Kodak has been bleeding money for some time as the traditional camera market has been depreciated in favor of digital technologies. This is another good example of a company that was too late to change, unable to adapt, and now has resorted to tactics like SCO's.
It's sad to see Kodak take this route, actually. After their layoffs of many employees (I heard >12,000), it was unclear what might happen to the company. I guess we know now.
It's not unlikely that he put several hours into it. I've read that it can take at least a hundred hours to make a sword with the traditional methods. If you think about it from that perspective, a custom sword, at 100 hours, at $30 an hour, seems reasonable. It's a one-of-a-kind blade, and looks to be quite well made.
Ben Crowell, you just made my day. Some of these books look like great choices for refresher calculus. I'm a bit disappointed that I'm not using calculus more often, where many of my classes favor algrebra for many things. I absolutely hated learning from Allyn J. Washington's books, and really wanted some alternatives. I wish I had known about these free texts earlier.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that SEGA concentrated way too hard on moving arcade ports to the Dreamcast instead of focusing on more original content until late in its life. We got gems like JSR, Shenmue, Skies of Arcadia, but a lot of those came way too late. Most people didn't want to buy Dynamite Cop and House of the Dead. I must admit though... Sega Bass Fishing is a pretty fun game. Some of the original titles, like Rez and Samba de Amigo, just didn't click with most people. Other things, like PSO, revolutionized online console gaming.
;)
By the way... I love FZero GX on the Gamecube. It just *screams* "SEGA arcade game", complete with cheesy '80s butt-rock music.
Dreamcast was an exceptionally well engineered machine with a large collection of excellent games that were exclusive until the company announced that it would become "platform agnostic".
As you mentioned, the major thing that killed the Dreamcast was the reactions to the older SEGA hardware. Dreamcast had a lot going for it though; great hardware, an impressive launch backed by support of many companies. Launch sales were exceptional. Cue Sony hype machine. Playstation 2 would be "15 times more powerful than any other console". Yeah, right. People are such tools.
Eventually, the games stopped coming and support got slim. Dreamcast still lives on though. There is still the occasional Japanese game release. It's still got a great community of independant software development. I've got 60 games, personally, and I've been very happy with most of them. It's the machine that won't die. "The legend will never die".
I used OpenOffice for a technical writing class a few quarters ago. I exported my files to PDF format. My instructor thought that my final formatting looked better than most of the other papers that were done on MS Office. I ended up getting an A in the class, and OpenOffice did the job well.
I asked her on the first day if she would take PDF files instead of MS Office docs. She had no problem with it. The original formatting that I created with OpenOffice was not lost in translation, and the finished products were readable on any platform/OS after I exported them to PDF.
For those that aren't familiar with the Microsoft security break-ins...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/998449.stm
I'd imagine that it is possible that other people have gotten in as well. To my knowledge, this is the only one that was made public.
You can just hit "Prt Scr" (Print Screen) and paste it into GIMP as a new image.
Unfortunately. I do not believe that the USB sound devices do hardware mixing, but then again - I do not own one.
Once again, I'll restate that *it can* do proper mixing. You are dealing with is a limitation of your hardware, not Linux. It just goes with the territory. It's almost like the people that say: "Linux doesn't do 3D because my obscure video chip isn't supported. X sucks!"
DMIX is a mess. Unfortunately, that's the price you pay. It's not that Linux can't do the mixing that you ask. Maybe, given time, DMIX will improve. It's a relatively new component for ALSA though. You may want to consider paying for 4-Front's drivers that do it if DMIX doesn't float your boat.
http://opensound.com/
These drivers support softmixing reasonably well, but aren't free. They are not a proper alternative to hardware mixing, but they will work. They apparently have an ALSA emulation system, but it's just a "play project." I don't know if I would want an ALSA wrapper sitting on top of a sofware mixer though (their Virtual Mixer).
Your sound chip is essentially like a Winmodem, built specifically for Windows. Even some chips that do hardware mixing on Windows don't mix on Linux because of lack of proper programming documentation. What can the programmers do about that? Again, Linux's multimedia capabilities are not to blame for a driver issue. A good amount of other users don't have the same problem that you do because they have well-supported hardware.
It's not something that will change unless hardware developers take a different design approach, and a different approach to releasing their programming docs.
I must tell you that I understand how you feel though. Really - I am sympathetic to the problems you are having. It's a very frustrating situation to have to deal with this sound issue. I've been through it before, as well. This was before the CS46xx drivers were as mature as they are today. I used the 4-Front drivers to hold me over until my hardware got better ALSA support, and it paid off. If the sound issue is giving you that much of a headache, the $20 may be money well spent. That isn't to say that the 4-Front drivers are without problems though, but it is worth testing them before you fork out $20 for a version that doesn't expire after a period of time.
By the way...
8 10 &cat=SND
Browse through the ALSA soundcard matrix to get a good idea of a decent card that will do hardware mixing for you.
http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/
You can buy SB Live, Yamaha, and Aureal Vortex cards on ebay for $5.00, new and used. A newer Crystal Soundfusion or Audigy card will be more expensive, and may give you more features though. Santa Cruz runs about $40. Soundblasters are $20+ for a new one.
$5.00 is a small price to pay for proper sound support in Linux. It will make your headaches go away.
http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=AU8
ALSA *DOES* have excellent mixing support. The problem is that people have crappy sound chips that don't do hardware mixing. Take the sound servers and throw them out the door. All of my soundcards do mixing in hardware, so I don't need the sound servers. That's because I don't have crappy sound hardware.
If you have a good soundcard, then your movies will be in sync. A common myth is that Linux cannot do proper mixing. The real issue is that people have junk sound chips that rely on DirectX-type systems to do the mixing. Death to Artsd and ESD. They are junk, and shouldn't be needed if people do their homework and buy the right hardware.
Buy a decent Soundblaster Live/Audigy, Crystal (Santa Cruz, Hercules Gametheater), Yamaha, Aureal Vortex, or any other card that can do hardware mixing. But don't blame Linux for your hardware's deficiencies.
The alternative is DMIX for ALSA or 4-Front's Virtual Mixer PRO. These are better than the Artsd/ESD software, but are far from perfect.
Wow. Media on Linux has never been better. With minimal effort, in most cases, MPlayer and the codecs can be installed with a simple RPM package. Same goes for XINE and all of the players based upon it.
MPlayer and XINE work so well, that even Windows-native formats play back with just a fraction of the CPU load. I have yet to come across a typical, modern audio or video file on the web that doesn't play better on Linux than it does on Windows. MPlayer is just too kickass.
Audio on Linux is fantastic as well. The ALSA subsystem is professional-grade, allows for plugins and has nearly no latency in routing.
Multimedia is becoming one of Linux's high points. It's no longer limited like it was a few years ago. The problem is that there are so many patented and closed-source codecs out there that don't have legitimate Linux versions. That's where it gets questionable, when you are required to install a hacked Windows DLL to get a format to play on Linux. Things like Ogg Theora will help to end that ridiculous concept, as Vorbis is slowly doing.
Winamp has a WAV out plugin that comes with it.
There ***are*** opensource ATI drivers from the DRI project. I don't know why people keep insisting that there are not. ATI donated programming docs to the DRI project to support the majority of the features in the older Radeon series chipsets. Thet haven't done it with the R300 cores (yet), but it is possible that they make it aviailable in the future.
Better yet, most Linux distributions come with these drivers preinstalled, since they are a component of X. In addition, almost all cores are supported, from the lowly R128 to many of those in the Radeon 8000/9000 series.
By the way... The Linux kernel, while a key part of getting the video modules to work, should not "include" video drivers for X. They are an X component, and most videocards have well-supported 2D and 3D. For nVidia, you only have 2D. For most ATI cores, you have 2D and 3D. Older Matrox cores have 2D and 3D while Parhelia only has 2D support. You get the picture.
Here's the problem. Average users can either "suffer" with generic 2D drivers that work with all cards, or take a moment to read some instructions to run a simple binary to install a driver module that has good 3D support. If you don't have the mental capacity to install nVidia's or ATI's drivers, by following a few instructions, then you shouldn't be using Linux anyway. It's not normally as hard as people make it sound. It just takes a few steps and a bit of following instructions.
I just picked up Twin Snakes yesterday. Fantastic stuff. It's especially a treat for anyone that hasn't played the original. Essentially, they've perfected what was already a fantastic game. If you liked the play and graphics of MGS2, but the better plotline of MGS, then this is just the right mix of both.
BTW: Eternal Darkness is kickass.
They changed a lot. They added a lot of controls from MGS2. You can now hang from walls and use lockers. Snake has more moves. They added a first person mode. They also totally redid almost all of the dialogue. Of course, the graphics have been overhauled, and look fantastic. There are a ton of other things that have been changed as well; too many to list.
You should almost *never* need to upgrade your kernel from the one that comes with your current distribution, assuming you are using a reasonably modern distribution...
This is why new kernels are "bleeding edge" for people that want to play until the distributions release them officially. This kernel release has *nothing* to do with why people are put off from using Linux. In fact, since 1997, when I've started using Linux, I've NEVER once upgraded my kernel because the official "standard" kernels have always been sufficient. Generally, if you have a resonably modern distribution, it's included kernel is enough. Those people that say that "normal users can't recompile their kernels" are missing the point... You NEVER need to recompile your kernel, in the majority of circumstances. Simply upgrading your desktop with the most recent major revision of your favorite distribution is simply enough, and these days, that is almost always as easy as simply popping in a CD and rebooting. The only time that I ever considered upgrading my kernel was due to a hardware flaw in the KT600 chipsets that hardlocks AGP in 3.0 mode. Kernel 2.4.22 doesn't support AGP 3.0, but kernel 2.6 does. Fortunately, I was simply able to use ATI's internal GART driver instead of the kernel's driver. This does not mean that I'm incapable of recompiling my kernel (I've done it several times for testing)- I just see no need to do it when the current *standard* kernel works so well on my machine. I'll update my machine to 2.6 when it is an official Slackware kernel.
I understand that you meant well by your post, but you are seriously missing the boat here. It's the myths about Linux difficulty, from *non-Linux users*, that make Linux seem difficult.
You can see a full listing of their up-coming games (including Divine Divinity) here...
p rojects.html
http://www.epic-interactive.com/english/projects/
Agreed, but I tend to think that any magazine that knew anything about benchmarking on Linux would be using the fastest driver in the first place. They normally do use the best driver that is available on Windows. Often, they will even use "leaked" Detonators when testing a piece of hardware. Any reasonably intelligent reviewer would probably do the same thing on Linux - or even test it with both sets.
o ct03/ati_linux_comp_oct03.html
One such example is this comparison, which outlines the pros and cons of the various drivers available for ATI cores on Linux. One might find it interesting that some of the alternatives offer better performance than ATI's drivers in some instances.
http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheidegger/atilinux_
From here, you will see that it is not entirely unlikely that an open source implementation of nVidias drivers could offer nVidia some insight into how to make their drivers perform better on Linux. I suspect that this will help ATI improve their OpenGL support across each supported, assuming they take this stuff seriously. I'd actually be seriously interested in buying some XIG Summit drivers, if they could only support the R300 cores (not likely right now since the programming docs aren't available).
Just load the APM module and be done with it.
It's this easy... Put:
"modprobe apm"
In your startup script. Some distributions, like Slackware, leave it disabled by default. It has nothing to do with your Athlon.
Not that I disagree with you or anything, but I just want to note... PowerVR has had drivers for years now. XGI just released drivers for their Volari cards as well. Most other chips have opensource drivers.
Honestly though, one could question PowerVR's future on Linux or even the PC in general, since they've not had anyone license technology for their PC tech designs for several years. It's also looking like they will never release driver for a kernel above 2.6. XGI, on the other hand, seems to have a problem with low quality drivers on Windows (according to reviews). I can't speak for their Linux drivers though. Their cards are also very difficult to find in some parts of the world. In regards to the DRI supported hardware - much of it is aging. Matrox won't release information about Parhelia, even though the older cores are well supported. SIS has ignored Linux for the Xabre line, though the older cores work alright. Intel's graphics chips are well supported, and DRI has fully functional drivers.
Gernerally, where performance matters, you'll be able to find usable drivers from either nVidia or ATI. Some users have had problems with drivers from both sites, though most of it is error in user configuration. Others have had great success with ATI or nVidia. My Radeon 9500 PRO is great on Linux. So, where performance counts, those are the only two vendors that really matter.
In regards to the other hardware vendors, most of the chips have support through DRI. So, to answer your question, there aren't many chips out there that *don't* have Linux support. Most of them work quite easily by means of the DRI drivers.
Most of those "proprietary algorithms" are not essential to getting quality 3D support for most applications. Look at ATI's DRI drivers. Most of their Radeon lineup works very well with the DRI drivers. Only the recent cores do not have DRI support (in favor of closed source drivers). They gave programming documentation to the project, and the drivers have been very high-quality so far, in spite of missing a few features like S3TC (which can be implemented with a patch - probably legally).
Their hands are not tied from simply allowing the community to write quality drivers with slightly crippled 3D features. Basic 3D functionality isn't going to cost them a dime. In fact, the work that would go into it could help them to improve their closed drivers as well.
I personally thought that it was funny. Some may consider it a "publicity stunt", but it seems to be more like a play on words to me. LGP has nothing to gain but your attention, by associating itself with Loki in a joking fashion.
FYI: It's a different Epic. The company that the thread is about is Epic Interactive, who specialiazes in a lot of lesser-known (but good) games. Recently, they've been doing Linux and Amiga (and MorphOS) games in addition to their Windows and MacOS publishing.
;)
Epic will be bringing Divine Divinity (GameSpy runner up for PC RPG game of 2002) to alternative operating systems as well. Here's hoping that LGP gets to publish it.
This is actually no joke. Mod parent up. Kodak has been bleeding money for some time as the traditional camera market has been depreciated in favor of digital technologies. This is another good example of a company that was too late to change, unable to adapt, and now has resorted to tactics like SCO's.
It's sad to see Kodak take this route, actually. After their layoffs of many employees (I heard >12,000), it was unclear what might happen to the company. I guess we know now.
It's not unlikely that he put several hours into it. I've read that it can take at least a hundred hours to make a sword with the traditional methods. If you think about it from that perspective, a custom sword, at 100 hours, at $30 an hour, seems reasonable. It's a one-of-a-kind blade, and looks to be quite well made.
Ben Crowell, you just made my day. Some of these books look like great choices for refresher calculus. I'm a bit disappointed that I'm not using calculus more often, where many of my classes favor algrebra for many things. I absolutely hated learning from Allyn J. Washington's books, and really wanted some alternatives. I wish I had known about these free texts earlier.