So we're going to have a system that is derailed by a few tears and fluttering eyelashes?
Going to?? This sounds like the same system the male brain works on, and has since day 1.
At least the defect in the male brain serves a purpose (at least it dose for women, us guys are just stuck with it.)
That's why Nintendo's stance (avoiding online) seems so odd. They claim it's not ready for primetime. Clearly it is.
Unfortunately it's not really. The problem is most of us are still stuck with dialup. There just isn't the bandwidth for most people to play most online games.
Not this is stopping game companies from putting out games that require more bandwidth than most people have. While mostly ignoring the single player aspect.
Sounds pretty good, just one flaw though. If they have any brains at all they don't have a fax machine, just software to answer like a fax machine with thier modem and store the results. Possibly with settings, etc. to deal with faxes from angry people.
Still you'd at least tie up a modem for a while and possibly use alot of thier harddrive space. Just depends on how sophisticated a setup they have.
The other potential problem is the long distance bill you'd rack up doing this.
Of course if they do have an old fax machine hooked up to a '1-800' number the revenge factor scales quite nicely.
I've got a Logitec Trackball, the one with two buttons + wheel and the trackball placed for your right thumb. It wasn't easy to get used to (sore thumb muscles for the first week or so!) but it's been rock solid. droped, junk on it, and so on. it's outlasted everything else I've ever owned at least two to one. Of course it was almost $75 when I got it(it's now around $30-$40), so it cost about twice as much, but other than a faded logo, it's still in great shape. Come to think of it the mouse that only lasted half as long was a $20 Logitec, everything else died a LOT faster.
Actually hydrogens gotten a pretty bad rep explosion wise, which started because of the Hindenburg accident. Which turns out not to have been hydrogen related (shure the hydrogen burned, and so did all the wood fixtures in the cabins) Seems they painted the outer shell with a mixture rather simular to what the shuttle SRB's use for propellent.
It's a very light gas with a low burning temp. Safer than a nearly empty gas tank in most cases unless your hydrogen storage system has a really outrageous pressure.
It's so light it'll rise pretty fast, even when on fire. And the burning temp is so low it's a lot less likely to start any secondary fires.
Then again, the airlines used to offer phone service on planes, and that cost some incredible amount too...
Very expensive. My dad was flying home from visiting relatives in another state his sister (A travel agent so he got good ticket prices at least) with him on till the connectecting flight.
Well he uses the phone to talk this pretty lady he'd met and after a couple of minute my aunt starts waving the little info brochure at hime and says somthing like "that's getting to be an expensive phone call".
My Dad kinda brushes her off saying somthing like "I know" and spends 20+minutes on the air-phone with my aunt giving more and more incredulous looks.
No he figures it's gonna cost alot, like 35-45 dollars. My aunt says somthing like "she must have made some kind of impression". He "replies oh $45 or so isn't That much" that's when she shows him the price/minute in the brochure. It's not good to shock a man that badly when he's already had one heart attack. The bill was over $300.
Moral of the story, when someone who knows how much your spending looks at you like your crazy, find out why!
I just had a horrible concept hit me, combine the above post with the earlier one about accidently controlling the plane with a Flight simulater prog..... shudders... Slashdoting an airplane controll system....
The problem is riding a bicycle on a limited road where passing isn't likely to be possible.
When yo do this you are slowing down a lot of traffic. I don't know about your state, but in missouri you can get a ticket for obstucting traffic if you are travelling significantly below the speed limit and have six or more cars piled behind you give or take conditions. It's very rarely issued and some judgement on the part of the officer is expected, and checked by the judge.
And the real problem is when you take a lane of a 45 mph road where passing isn't possible, and you add 10-20 minutes to someones commute, possibly making them late for work, OF course they are angry, you are risking them thier job and creating a potentially dangerous situation(think curves, most people don't expect to come around a curve and find a vehicle doing 20 on a 45mph road.
And frankly I've seen bike riders do some stupid things. There is a road near where I used to live with a long downhill followed by a sharp curve with a blind t-junction on it followed a mile later with an industrial park. Every other year a handfull of bikers will discover this hill and start using it. Eventually they learn to stop (usually about the first time a semi, which CANNOT break fast on that steep a downhill, nearly runs them over. It has very little shoulder most of it's length. Anyone with common sense would see this is a STUPID place to bike.
I have nothing against bike riding, and used to do so a few years ago, but you've got to use common sense and not be arrogant idiot who thinks if fun to deliberately interfere with regular traffic on a road. It's just asking for trouble. Especially when there are plenty of roads in most urban areas that are plenty safe to bike, and don't screw with other people just for the sadistic pleasure of it.
So I sincerely hope you were just joking about deliberately obstructing other drivers. With rare exception a vehicle shouldn't be on road when it can't maintain a reasonable speed, those exceptions mostly being big rigs on steep hills, and emergency conditions and so on. And in that case extra effort to as visibly signal an unusual condition be taken. Any thing else is dangerous to all concerned.
That said people who honk at, or swerve at bikers on the shoulder for no good reason get the same contempt from me as well, I've been on both sides of it and my attitude comes the many near tragedies I've seen because of sheer stupidity.
Thanks, Much appretiated. I'll keep my eye out for it (and thier other stuff) next time I go by the local gaming shop. Actually thier a small chain with 6-7 stores in St. Louis area, though the owner was talking with a someone seriously considering opening a franchise in the Chicago area.
Much better than the troll, a real answer and not BS allegations that require people to be holding offices they didn't.
I'm glad someone with credibility (presumed not proven admitedly) answered it.
I think that at this point, any reasonable copyright reform is going to require that any otherwise infringing acts which are not for commercial gain, which are performed by natural persons, is not infringing.
This is how it used to be. I believe it was more a matter of judicial precedent, but I could be mistaken. I do clearly remember hearing about people being taken to court for infringement and being found not guilty because they didn't do it for monetary reasons, or on a large scale.
Kinda like how being in the only country with nukes did. Except that didn't last. I suspect that other nations will eventually develope thier own, simular, tech. Just knowing somthing can be done is half the battle.
While this tech currently tactical, I would like to see it become strategic as well. The only thing that worries me is if it's very, but not perfectly, reliable.
Then with reduced fear of an all out armegeddon, a couple of coutries (once the tech is copied, stolen, whatever) decide to go at it. Even with 99% of the nukes shot down the one or two on each side to do go off make a big mess for all concerned.
We definately live in 'interesting times'.
I have no clue about the second espansion. It was listed as forthcomming and the rpg shops could order it. But, IIRC, Phage went dodo just a month or two after it shipped, so I doubt there are many copies out there. One printing at best. I'm pretty shure I saw it on a shelf at one time. Your best bet is eigther your local gaming shop or the online bookstores that specialize in used/out of print/hard to find stuff.
In the long run money spent on the space program has always come back to the economy multiplied, not directly, but it has.
Powdered orange juice, microwave ovens,velcro,Kevlar,solar blankets,hand vacs, some of the early impetus in miniaturizing of electronics, artificial satalites,and lots of other things are a direct or indirect result of fundamental research and developement done for the space program.
And if I've missremembered and one or more of those isn't a result of the space program I'm shure some idiot will try and use the error to disprove what I've said, but before that happens I'll just point out that the list I gave is just the tip of the iceberg.
Those were great books.
While a computer rgp like you describe doesn't exit, there was a "zork with slideshow" style game based on the first couple of novella's in the original series. However this was a long time ago and for the life of me I can't remember if it was for Dos or Commodore 64.
There is also a regular, pen and paper, roleplaying game based on the two Amber series of novel put out by Phage Press, the game was diceless, based on some interesting concepts.
For example it was a point buy system for most things. Including attributes, but your relative rank to the other players in primary attribues was decided in an auction, this also determined how many points you needed to go up later.
And you could even spend more points than you had, or save some. Of course being in the hole on points meant you had bad karma (if your in debt to the cosmos,it WILL extract interest till you pay off).
Sadly I think Phage press went dodo, so finding the main book or either of the expansions might be a bit hard. It was however really cool.
The first book was main rules and covered the stuff in the Corwin saga. The first expansion had all the new stuff from the Merlin stories, and the second expansion was supposed to be about Atrifacts of science and or magic and related things. (I want my own Ghostweel please!)
Sorry for the off topic drift down memory lane, but Nostalgia kinda took over.
Well I ease your mind somewhat on item 1. Seem the hole in the ozone layer has been there a long time, and it's size varies over time. growing for a while then shrinking for a while.
This is just another datum that got turned into 'sky is falling' mantra for a few years untill scientific analysis showed it to be perfectly normal.
Eh no you can't. 1/2 hour of Uncompressed video at 640*480*24fps is about 37 gigs. this is without sound added in. but then sound doesn't take up much space compared to video.
So figure you need about 40 of your 4.7gig to hold a two hour movie, uncompressed.
You did know that movies on DVD's (like you get at Blockbuster) are compressed right?
I'm not shure how to reply to that and not look like I'm bashing or flaming. But you have really gone way out from the original point.
I was specifically talking about Linux on the Desktop with Apps from the big vendors and Games and all the other stuff that tells Joe six-pack to buy windows. I specificaly said I would like to see linux go past being primarily for geeks and big, we can afford an IT department, compainies.
In retrospect I probably shoudn't have wrote that last paragraph, As I can see how it could muddy my overal point a bit whilst I was trying to make a specific sub-point. It was an attempt to show how little backwards compatability is somtimes maintained in linux distros. This looks very bad to anyone thinking of deploying linux or developing a comercial app for it.
Try reading back over this thread. I'm honestly NOT trying to be an ass.
And if you are in the subset who does not want Linux for the masses. Well that's the good thing about oss you can have it that way AND I can have it mine and we both win.
The KERNEL may be the same in many distro's, but not the rest of linux, different versions of libc, diferent versions of other core libs, some vary thier directory layout a bit (including where X is).
Short of including copies of the various versions of the libs they need to run (gotta be careful here if they don't want to violate the GPL), or writing thier install to check for all these and install a set of binaries to match the specific collections of version on your distro. or rewriting all the functionality included in the various just for thier one app.
I have no clue where you got the flase impression the only differance in linux distro's that might affect software install was pakage management.
I've had major issues trying to install a pakage that was target to the SAME distro I was using at the time, but a.1 difference in distro version. (and no x.9 to x+1 eigther, more like x.4 and x.5)
Well thats certainly a step in the right direction. They don't have to be 100% as fast as the windows versions, (though I would think linux drivers would be easier to write if anything), but they need to be close, and at least as stable.
Now if we can get some coheasiveness on dir structure, primary library versions and stop breaking backwards compatability. On non major releases it looks very beta ware level if every new ver of a semi major lib simply won't run stuff written for the previous versions and you have to re-compile a third or more of your distro if you want to add a piece of software to it.
I like Linux, and would like it to be a valid desktop OS for more than a handfull of geeks. But untill it's possible to write just one version of a piece of software and know it'll run on most (in terms of installs, not distros) home Linux systems, it's not gonna happen, most vendors are not going to take it serious.
It's not so much which windows version was better. win2k is nt based which is generaly considered a better codebase than 9x.
The problem is win2k's win9x compatability wasn't very good or robust by all acounts (no personal experience), and thus a lot of stuff written to work on win9x had issues on 2k, a few don't even run. It's my best guess this is your problem in this case.
If you can you might try XP as it's win9x compatability is much much better and you can even tell it to run a prog as if it were win98se or some other windows version. And you still get an nt basd kernel.
I found Morrowind to be amazing an game in many ways, especially with all the options for creating your own content. You can literally transform into a whole new game with sufficient effort.
I consider it one the very few games worth $50 or more. I generaly refuse to buy a game till it's droped in price at least once if not twice.
I for one hope the next installment in the elder scrolls series is as good. If they clear up the few remaining issues (rain is a good one, if it's raining it goes right through overhangs, etc.) and of course the fact that there is no hidden poly removal eating up cpu time. The engine they used is pretty good without that, with it sight range could have been greatly extended and you could have some amazing vistas.
So, in essence, expecting software to "just work" on all distributions makes about as much sense as expecting Windows software to work on a Mac. The whole point of having distributions and package systems -- indeed, of having an OS at all -- is internal cohesiveness, not interoperability. If you want the latter, I refer you to the aforementioned gcc/make. But if you want the former, your choice of distribution is important.
The problem is people DO expect software to just work.
Also comparing two Linux distros is not like comparing XP to Mac OS. it's more akin to comparing win98se and win2k. Linux distro's ARE related os's like windows flavours are related. Mac OS pre OSX was it's own thing, and as of OSX is *nix related.
You should be able to simply run the installer for a piece of software and have it ready to go when done. And if you should want major game and software developers to support Linux they are going to have to be able to write a single installer that works on most major flavors of linux.
Without this linux is pretty much stuck to geeks and places that can afford to hire professionals to run thier systems.
Big corps can do this as they're likely to hire an IT staff anyway and they might as well get some stability and ditch enormous liscence fees anyway.
I find it strange that many open source advocates tend to look at big corps as 'The Enemy', yet the shining star of open source is pretty much geared exclusively for them and the geek community.
Slashdot Mirror
And I thought I got a few wierd moderations on some of my pots........
Mycroft
Unfortunately it's not really. The problem is most of us are still stuck with dialup. There just isn't the bandwidth for most people to play most online games.
Not this is stopping game companies from putting out games that require more bandwidth than most people have. While mostly ignoring the single player aspect.
Mycroft
Sounds pretty good, just one flaw though.
If they have any brains at all they don't have a fax machine, just software to answer like a fax machine with thier modem and store the results. Possibly with settings, etc. to deal with faxes from angry people.
Still you'd at least tie up a modem for a while and possibly use alot of thier harddrive space. Just depends on how sophisticated a setup they have.
The other potential problem is the long distance bill you'd rack up doing this.
Of course if they do have an old fax machine hooked up to a '1-800' number the revenge factor scales quite nicely.
Mycroft
I've got a Logitec Trackball, the one with two buttons + wheel and the trackball placed for your right thumb. It wasn't easy to get used to (sore thumb muscles for the first week or so!) but it's been rock solid. droped, junk on it, and so on. it's outlasted everything else I've ever owned at least two to one. Of course it was almost $75 when I got it(it's now around $30-$40), so it cost about twice as much, but other than a faded logo, it's still in great shape. Come to think of it the mouse that only lasted half as long was a $20 Logitec, everything else died a LOT faster.
Mycroft
Actually hydrogens gotten a pretty bad rep explosion wise, which started because of the Hindenburg accident. Which turns out not to have been hydrogen related (shure the hydrogen burned, and so did all the wood fixtures in the cabins) Seems they painted the outer shell with a mixture rather simular to what the shuttle SRB's use for propellent.
It's a very light gas with a low burning temp. Safer than a nearly empty gas tank in most cases unless your hydrogen storage system has a really outrageous pressure.
It's so light it'll rise pretty fast, even when on fire. And the burning temp is so low it's a lot less likely to start any secondary fires.
Mycroft
Very expensive. My dad was flying home from visiting relatives in another state his sister (A travel agent so he got good ticket prices at least) with him on till the connectecting flight.
Well he uses the phone to talk this pretty lady he'd met and after a couple of minute my aunt starts waving the little info brochure at hime and says somthing like "that's getting to be an expensive phone call".
My Dad kinda brushes her off saying somthing like "I know" and spends 20+minutes on the air-phone with my aunt giving more and more incredulous looks.
No he figures it's gonna cost alot, like 35-45 dollars. My aunt says somthing like "she must have made some kind of impression". He "replies oh $45 or so isn't That much" that's when she shows him the price/minute in the brochure. It's not good to shock a man that badly when he's already had one heart attack. The bill was over $300.
Moral of the story, when someone who knows how much your spending looks at you like your crazy, find out why!
Mycroft
I just had a horrible concept hit me, combine the above post with the earlier one about accidently controlling the plane with a Flight simulater prog..... shudders...
Slashdoting an airplane controll system....
Mycroft
The problem is riding a bicycle on a limited road where passing isn't likely to be possible.
When yo do this you are slowing down a lot of traffic. I don't know about your state, but in missouri you can get a ticket for obstucting traffic if you are travelling significantly below the speed limit and have six or more cars piled behind you give or take conditions. It's very rarely issued and some judgement on the part of the officer is expected, and checked by the judge.
And the real problem is when you take a lane of a 45 mph road where passing isn't possible, and you add 10-20 minutes to someones commute, possibly making them late for work, OF course they are angry, you are risking them thier job and creating a potentially dangerous situation(think curves, most people don't expect to come around a curve and find a vehicle doing 20 on a 45mph road.
And frankly I've seen bike riders do some stupid things. There is a road near where I used to live with a long downhill followed by a sharp curve with a blind t-junction on it followed a mile later with an industrial park. Every other year a handfull of bikers will discover this hill and start using it. Eventually they learn to stop (usually about the first time a semi, which CANNOT break fast on that steep a downhill, nearly runs them over. It has very little shoulder most of it's length. Anyone with common sense would see this is a STUPID place to bike.
I have nothing against bike riding, and used to do so a few years ago, but you've got to use common sense and not be arrogant idiot who thinks if fun to deliberately interfere with regular traffic on a road. It's just asking for trouble. Especially when there are plenty of roads in most urban areas that are plenty safe to bike, and don't screw with other people just for the sadistic pleasure of it.
So I sincerely hope you were just joking about deliberately obstructing other drivers. With rare exception a vehicle shouldn't be on road when it can't maintain a reasonable speed, those exceptions mostly being big rigs on steep hills, and emergency conditions and so on. And in that case extra effort to as visibly signal an unusual condition be taken. Any thing else is dangerous to all concerned.
That said people who honk at, or swerve at bikers on the shoulder for no good reason get the same contempt from me as well, I've been on both sides of it and my attitude comes the many near tragedies I've seen because of sheer stupidity.
Mycroft.
Thanks, Much appretiated. I'll keep my eye out for it (and thier other stuff) next time I go by the local gaming shop. Actually thier a small chain with 6-7 stores in St. Louis area, though the owner was talking with a someone seriously considering opening a franchise in the Chicago area.
Mycroft
Much better than the troll, a real answer and not BS allegations that require people to be holding offices they didn't.
I'm glad someone with credibility (presumed not proven admitedly) answered it.
Mycroft
This is how it used to be. I believe it was more a matter of judicial precedent, but I could be mistaken. I do clearly remember hearing about people being taken to court for infringement and being found not guilty because they didn't do it for monetary reasons, or on a large scale.
Mycroft
And to think I wasted my mods point on the gpu article.
How about an Honorary +1 Insightful/informative?
Mycroft
Kinda like how being in the only country with nukes did. Except that didn't last. I suspect that other nations will eventually develope thier own, simular, tech. Just knowing somthing can be done is half the battle.
While this tech currently tactical, I would like to see it become strategic as well. The only thing that worries me is if it's very, but not perfectly, reliable.
Then with reduced fear of an all out armegeddon, a couple of coutries (once the tech is copied, stolen, whatever) decide to go at it. Even with 99% of the nukes shot down the one or two on each side to do go off make a big mess for all concerned.
We definately live in 'interesting times'.
Mycroft
It's been a while since I've seen a troll with so much false psuedo logic. Unfortunately it's still a pretty obvious troll.
Mycroft
I have no clue about the second espansion. It was listed as forthcomming and the rpg shops could order it. But, IIRC, Phage went dodo just a month or two after it shipped, so I doubt there are many copies out there. One printing at best. I'm pretty shure I saw it on a shelf at one time. Your best bet is eigther your local gaming shop or the online bookstores that specialize in used/out of print/hard to find stuff.
Mycroft
In the long run money spent on the space program has always come back to the economy multiplied, not directly, but it has.
Powdered orange juice, microwave ovens,velcro,Kevlar,solar blankets,hand vacs, some of the early impetus in miniaturizing of electronics, artificial satalites,and lots of other things are a direct or indirect result of fundamental research and developement done for the space program.
And if I've missremembered and one or more of those isn't a result of the space program I'm shure some idiot will try and use the error to disprove what I've said, but before that happens I'll just point out that the list I gave is just the tip of the iceberg.
Mycroft.
Those were great books.
While a computer rgp like you describe doesn't exit, there was a "zork with slideshow" style game based on the first couple of novella's in the original series. However this was a long time ago and for the life of me I can't remember if it was for Dos or Commodore 64.
There is also a regular, pen and paper, roleplaying game based on the two Amber series of novel put out by Phage Press, the game was diceless, based on some interesting concepts.
For example it was a point buy system for most things. Including attributes, but your relative rank to the other players in primary attribues was decided in an auction, this also determined how many points you needed to go up later.
And you could even spend more points than you had, or save some. Of course being in the hole on points meant you had bad karma (if your in debt to the cosmos,it WILL extract interest till you pay off).
Sadly I think Phage press went dodo, so finding the main book or either of the expansions might be a bit hard. It was however really cool.
The first book was main rules and covered the stuff in the Corwin saga. The first expansion had all the new stuff from the Merlin stories, and the second expansion was supposed to be about Atrifacts of science and or magic and related things. (I want my own Ghostweel please!)
Sorry for the off topic drift down memory lane, but Nostalgia kinda took over.
Mycroft.
Well I ease your mind somewhat on item 1. Seem the hole in the ozone layer has been there a long time, and it's size varies over time. growing for a while then shrinking for a while.
This is just another datum that got turned into 'sky is falling' mantra for a few years untill scientific analysis showed it to be perfectly normal.
Mycroft
Eh no you can't.
1/2 hour of Uncompressed video at 640*480*24fps is about 37 gigs. this is without sound added in. but then sound doesn't take up much space compared to video.
So figure you need about 40 of your 4.7gig to hold a two hour movie, uncompressed.
You did know that movies on DVD's (like you get at Blockbuster) are compressed right?
Mycroft
I'm not shure how to reply to that and not look like I'm bashing or flaming. But you have really gone way out from the original point.
I was specifically talking about Linux on the Desktop with Apps from the big vendors and Games and all the other stuff that tells Joe six-pack to buy windows. I specificaly said I would like to see linux go past being primarily for geeks and big, we can afford an IT department, compainies.
In retrospect I probably shoudn't have wrote that last paragraph, As I can see how it could muddy my overal point a bit whilst I was trying to make a specific sub-point. It was an attempt to show how little backwards compatability is somtimes maintained in linux distros. This looks very bad to anyone thinking of deploying linux or developing a comercial app for it.
Try reading back over this thread. I'm honestly NOT trying to be an ass.
And if you are in the subset who does not want Linux for the masses. Well that's the good thing about oss you can have it that way AND I can have it mine and we both win.
Mycroft
The KERNEL may be the same in many distro's, but not the rest of linux, different versions of libc, diferent versions of other core libs, some vary thier directory layout a bit (including where X is). .1 difference in distro version. (and no x.9 to x+1 eigther, more like x.4 and x.5)
Short of including copies of the various versions of the libs they need to run (gotta be careful here if they don't want to violate the GPL), or writing thier install to check for all these and install a set of binaries to match the specific collections of version on your distro. or rewriting all the functionality included in the various just for thier one app.
I have no clue where you got the flase impression the only differance in linux distro's that might affect software install was pakage management.
I've had major issues trying to install a pakage that was target to the SAME distro I was using at the time, but a
Mycroft
Well thats certainly a step in the right direction. They don't have to be 100% as fast as the windows versions, (though I would think linux drivers would be easier to write if anything), but they need to be close, and at least as stable.
Now if we can get some coheasiveness on dir structure, primary library versions and stop breaking backwards compatability. On non major releases it looks very beta ware level if every new ver of a semi major lib simply won't run stuff written for the previous versions and you have to re-compile a third or more of your distro if you want to add a piece of software to it.
I like Linux, and would like it to be a valid desktop OS for more than a handfull of geeks. But untill it's possible to write just one version of a piece of software and know it'll run on most (in terms of installs, not distros) home Linux systems, it's not gonna happen, most vendors are not going to take it serious.
Mycroft.
It's not so much which windows version was better. win2k is nt based which is generaly considered a better codebase than 9x.
The problem is win2k's win9x compatability wasn't very good or robust by all acounts (no personal experience), and thus a lot of stuff written to work on win9x had issues on 2k, a few don't even run. It's my best guess this is your problem in this case.
If you can you might try XP as it's win9x compatability is much much better and you can even tell it to run a prog as if it were win98se or some other windows version. And you still get an nt basd kernel.
I found Morrowind to be amazing an game in many ways, especially with all the options for creating your own content. You can literally transform into a whole new game with sufficient effort.
I consider it one the very few games worth $50 or more. I generaly refuse to buy a game till it's droped in price at least once if not twice.
I for one hope the next installment in the elder scrolls series is as good. If they clear up the few remaining issues (rain is a good one, if it's raining it goes right through overhangs, etc.) and of course the fact that there is no hidden poly removal eating up cpu time. The engine they used is pretty good without that, with it sight range could have been greatly extended and you could have some amazing vistas.
Mycroft
The problem is people DO expect software to just work.
Also comparing two Linux distros is not like comparing XP to Mac OS. it's more akin to comparing win98se and win2k. Linux distro's ARE related os's like windows flavours are related. Mac OS pre OSX was it's own thing, and as of OSX is *nix related.
You should be able to simply run the installer for a piece of software and have it ready to go when done. And if you should want major game and software developers to support Linux they are going to have to be able to write a single installer that works on most major flavors of linux.
Without this linux is pretty much stuck to geeks and places that can afford to hire professionals to run thier systems.
Big corps can do this as they're likely to hire an IT staff anyway and they might as well get some stability and ditch enormous liscence fees anyway.
I find it strange that many open source advocates tend to look at big corps as 'The Enemy', yet the shining star of open source is pretty much geared exclusively for them and the geek community.
Mycroft