I would love to see a desktop environment with helpful and everpresent cartoon-style documentation for beginners. Something that not only told you what widgets do, but gave you general advice about settings that might work well. There are plenty of people who could learn to use whatever wacky interface you throw at them, given good docs, but don't have the inclination to hunt down documentation and try to make sense of it. My ideal "n00b" environment would be a simple tiled window manager with a complete and actually helpful help menu. I'd love to have a Linux or BSD distro that I could just drop a beginner in front of, confident that it contained context-sensitive explanations as good as the ones I would give. When they advanced, it would be simple to switch to another desktop environment.
"Ubuntu seems to be about the right size for me, but if you really want a good-sized Linux install, you can start with a base Gentoo system or an Ubuntu-server install, then add packages to suit."
Anyone who wants a minimal Linux install should take a look at Arch Linux. It's an i686 distro with a KISS philosophy. The base install size is around 300 MB iirc (similar to a basic BSD installation, I gather) and includes only what you need to get up and running: a kernel and basic userland, including an excellent package manager called Pacman.
A fulfilling experience is the only thing that matters. As long as you get what you're after (or what the author was trying to give you), be that fun of the traditional type, something a little harder to get at, extreme difficulty for the sake of providing a challenge, or what have you, the game has done its "job." Fun is only one possible reason to play or make a game, unless you wish do define fun so broadly that it loses its normal meaning entirely.
It's interesting that you make a distinction between games simulations or learning tools, as if it's impossible to be in both categories. I predict that someday we'll all be arguing over whether something qualifies as a game or is merely a simulation as zealously as we're arguing over whether games can be art these days. "Game" is as nebulous a term as "art" is. When does "gamehood" end?
"Is highbrow merely a synonym for "pretentious and boring"? I can't find it in me to cry about pretentious and boring" not being well represented in gaming."
I think it is.
What I mean is that nothing will be accepted as highbrow (or even as Art-with-a-captital-A) unless you've got to work to enjoy it. Pretentious and boring is just what people who haven't found something to like will call it. Like someone else said, Nethack is pretty highbrow for a game, although it wouldn't be considered so in many circles since it's completely unknown there.
I have read it. You'd do better to read it, although I don't recall it dealing with your deficiencies specifically. I think it mentions capitalization.
Not for his house. Possible for a very small portion of his house, if nothing was reflecting the waves. Also, à la does not mean what you think it means.
Nope. That's why it's a MIDI guitar rather than just a synth guitar. I believe that some may also have an onboard synth, but they should all be capable of sending MIDI messages as well.
I've only used Wine, not Cedega, but I'd put this down to a failure to implement everything properly rather than adding a lot of overhead. I haven't had a lot of luck playing games under Wine, but when they do run they run as well as they do under Windows (except for System Shock 2, which runs not at all under Windows and slow as molassas in Wine). It's a kind of nitpicky distinction, but the upshot is that as the library improves we'll get native or better performance in most games, which might not be the case if Cedega/Wine caused a lot of overhead.
I don't know either, but I suspect that if it had to do with insufficient sales it was because of a lack of demand rather than because of piracy. I'd also like to know more.
I don't think Wine provides full acceleration in its default configuration. I think you may need to enable GLSL in the registry. I had to do it to get hardware acceleration in Heretic II. Of course, you'll still need harware acceleration working in X first. Have you modified X's configuration file to use fglrx yet?
What makes you think that Linux is unsuitable for gaming? Native games work great. It shouldn't come as a surprise that Linux is suboptimal for running Windows games. Of course mimicing Windows is a difficult thing to do. That's got nothing to do with Linux's suitability for games.
No, horrible comparison! DOS was painful (for both users and developers), but Linux bears absolutely no resemblance to it. Maybe you were confused by the popularity of the command line amongst Linux users? Rest assured, under that command line lurks much powerful hardware abstraction. Developers never need to touch the hardware directly. OpenGL is there for 3d graphics, and when you use it with SDL you get input, networking, and everything else you need to make a game. These aren't strange Linux specific libraries either; a program written using them can be compiled for Windows as well with no modification other than bug fixes.
Good to spot another Moon-buggy fan in the wild. I just wish there were more games I could play in my console. I don't want anything to do with this graphics stuff until I'm sure it's here to stay.
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I would love to see a desktop environment with helpful and everpresent cartoon-style documentation for beginners. Something that not only told you what widgets do, but gave you general advice about settings that might work well. There are plenty of people who could learn to use whatever wacky interface you throw at them, given good docs, but don't have the inclination to hunt down documentation and try to make sense of it. My ideal "n00b" environment would be a simple tiled window manager with a complete and actually helpful help menu. I'd love to have a Linux or BSD distro that I could just drop a beginner in front of, confident that it contained context-sensitive explanations as good as the ones I would give. When they advanced, it would be simple to switch to another desktop environment.
"Ubuntu seems to be about the right size for me, but if you really want a good-sized Linux install, you can start with a base Gentoo system or an Ubuntu-server install, then add packages to suit."
Anyone who wants a minimal Linux install should take a look at Arch Linux. It's an i686 distro with a KISS philosophy. The base install size is around 300 MB iirc (similar to a basic BSD installation, I gather) and includes only what you need to get up and running: a kernel and basic userland, including an excellent package manager called Pacman.
Pressing shift+F8 during the proper part of the boot sequence will take you to a menu with which you can boot Windows to a command line.
That would be, "Linux, does it run?"
Can't they both boot to a command line?
A fulfilling experience is the only thing that matters. As long as you get what you're after (or what the author was trying to give you), be that fun of the traditional type, something a little harder to get at, extreme difficulty for the sake of providing a challenge, or what have you, the game has done its "job." Fun is only one possible reason to play or make a game, unless you wish do define fun so broadly that it loses its normal meaning entirely.
It's interesting that you make a distinction between games simulations or learning tools, as if it's impossible to be in both categories. I predict that someday we'll all be arguing over whether something qualifies as a game or is merely a simulation as zealously as we're arguing over whether games can be art these days. "Game" is as nebulous a term as "art" is. When does "gamehood" end?
"Is highbrow merely a synonym for "pretentious and boring"? I can't find it in me to cry about pretentious and boring" not being well represented in gaming."
I think it is.
What I mean is that nothing will be accepted as highbrow (or even as Art-with-a-captital-A) unless you've got to work to enjoy it. Pretentious and boring is just what people who haven't found something to like will call it. Like someone else said, Nethack is pretty highbrow for a game, although it wouldn't be considered so in many circles since it's completely unknown there.
It's even more likely that "rogue" was intended.
I have read it. You'd do better to read it, although I don't recall it dealing with your deficiencies specifically. I think it mentions capitalization.
Not for his house. Possible for a very small portion of his house, if nothing was reflecting the waves. Also, à la does not mean what you think it means.
Nope. That's why it's a MIDI guitar rather than just a synth guitar. I believe that some may also have an onboard synth, but they should all be capable of sending MIDI messages as well.
I've only used Wine, not Cedega, but I'd put this down to a failure to implement everything properly rather than adding a lot of overhead. I haven't had a lot of luck playing games under Wine, but when they do run they run as well as they do under Windows (except for System Shock 2, which runs not at all under Windows and slow as molassas in Wine). It's a kind of nitpicky distinction, but the upshot is that as the library improves we'll get native or better performance in most games, which might not be the case if Cedega/Wine caused a lot of overhead.
It wouldn't be a problem. MIDI controllers send the exact same data that a MIDI file contains.
Might make transcription a little difficult though.
Hey! Don't mix those dirty new-age hippies up with us dirty open-source hippies!
I'm not actually offended by this, but why is is modded offtopic when a simple "idiot" response was modded flamebait?
Hah! Glory and honor for you maybe!
I can't believe I saw this and thought we were talking about Klingons until my brain caught up.
I don't know either, but I suspect that if it had to do with insufficient sales it was because of a lack of demand rather than because of piracy. I'd also like to know more.
Performance? Bullshit. Even with my shitty video cards I still get better performance under Linux than Windows, both in native games and in Wine.
I don't think Wine provides full acceleration in its default configuration. I think you may need to enable GLSL in the registry. I had to do it to get hardware acceleration in Heretic II. Of course, you'll still need harware acceleration working in X first. Have you modified X's configuration file to use fglrx yet?
What makes you think that Linux is unsuitable for gaming? Native games work great. It shouldn't come as a surprise that Linux is suboptimal for running Windows games. Of course mimicing Windows is a difficult thing to do. That's got nothing to do with Linux's suitability for games.
No, horrible comparison! DOS was painful (for both users and developers), but Linux bears absolutely no resemblance to it. Maybe you were confused by the popularity of the command line amongst Linux users? Rest assured, under that command line lurks much powerful hardware abstraction. Developers never need to touch the hardware directly. OpenGL is there for 3d graphics, and when you use it with SDL you get input, networking, and everything else you need to make a game. These aren't strange Linux specific libraries either; a program written using them can be compiled for Windows as well with no modification other than bug fixes.
I think the cost of QA for multiple platforms is the real answer.
Good to spot another Moon-buggy fan in the wild. I just wish there were more games I could play in my console. I don't want anything to do with this graphics stuff until I'm sure it's here to stay.