As far as I can figure, minimum specs are a bunch of bollocks, made up by marketers in collusion with hardware manufacturers. This goes for operating systems as well as games. Case in point:
I have two boxen in my house at present: Toshiba Tecra 8000 Laptop (PII 233, 128MB, but now has 256), and a celeron 500 originally with 128MB, now with 256MB.
On the laptop, I've played Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate I and II, Quake I and II. They were slow, but playable.
On the Celeron (with 128 ram and a TNT2 with 32MB), I've played all the above games without trouble, plus Q3A and UT2k3 at reasonable (25+) framerates, Age of Mythology, Max Payne (I), Black and White, Deus Ex, NOLF, RTCW, Hitman and Ghost Recon (which was damn slow, I'll admit) and a bunch of others. I'm pretty sure all these games had minimum specs above what this box could offer.
The thing that gets me is how different linux distros determine their minimum specs. Lindows requiring a PIII-800? Fedora requiring 196MB? Even winXP isn't that bad...
But in theory, if you buy that XBox, then MS will order another one to be made. If they do this, they're spending more than if that poor, lonesome XBox just got left on the shelf there.
And by properly made, I mean made with an industrial-grade machine by a competent barista. There are reasons why those machines cost thousands of dollars, and they all boil down to the quality of the juice which comes out of them.
Just my not-very humble opinion as someone who spent years in the espresso mines, and whose brother runs a busy cafe.
L
All instant coffee is Wrong and Bad ...
on
Which Instant Coffee?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
... especially when it comes to flavour. My advice: give up the idea of actually drinking coffee and buy something with a strong secondary flavour - hazelnut, caramel, mocha/chocolate, whiskey if your boss will believe you're not a terminal alcoholic... and learn to love the decent coffee when you do get a chance to drink it. Though if you really do consider Starbucks a decent coffee, your taste is probably all in your arse anyhow.
In Korea, where I live, an espresso costs about US$4, it's invariably poorly made and sometimes artificially sweetened. 99% of Koreans drink coffee from a sachet - with milk powder and sugar pre-mixed, just add water. It's horrible shite, but if you put 3 or so in a cup, you can gag it down because it's sweet. Whatever you end up drinking, consider yourself lucky you're not here.
How often do you have to start it? Shouldn't you be more concerned about performance once it's running? And what's another 15 seconds on top of a linux boot anyway?
Not to diss your choice of XFCE4, though - that's my choice, albeit on 1997-era hardware:)
... is a FreeBSD-based liveCD. You can find it at www.freesbie.org. I downloaded it awhile ago but haven't yet checked it out, must get onto that.
So many distros, so little time.
L
I've gotta go with Spock, really. Logic, even if it's not real-world logic, is a must, because it enables you to actually learn and adapt new strategies to fit a game. A game has to be predictable, not in a plot sense, but in the sense that, once immersed in the game world, you should be able to expect certain reactions and consequences from certain actions.
There's not much more satisfying than grokking a game's engine or AI or setup well enough to use its own internal logic against it. But in a legitimate way, not cheap exploits like fake-talk or rocket-jumping.
L
Re:Lets hope that the result is progress
on
Google v. Microsoft
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· Score: 1
This is a good point. But the thing about FOSS is that its driven by its participators. If big-time commercial developers, and particularly game developers, start to work with the FOSS community rather than ignoring it, I think we'd see changed in the way linux (especially) is developed. If the companies start making available big chunks of code and entering into dialogue with the core developers about what they need from an operating system, I think we'd see a change to accomodate their needs for greater backward compatibility, ABI stability, etc. That can only be good.
You obviously don't have a very high opinion of the EOS-1Ds and its 11 megapixel image sensor if you think you won't see a difference between the original and a printout of the original...
Yeah, I just nuke the site from orbit. I back up any personal data, documents, email, etc. before doing so, so they don't actually lose anything. The I run through a little "This is your computer. There are many like it, but this one is yours" excercise showing them that the red dinosaur is your web browser, the little yellow dude is your MSN, etc. I've not yet come across an important operation they can't do under linux. Probably, at some stage, I will, but until then I just keep sending them press releases about MyDoom... about the time that I explain to them that they're no longer going to be vulnerable to windows viruxen is when they start thanking me.
Heh. I've ended up doing free techsupp for my immediate family and in-laws ever since they figured out I knew more than nothing about computers. Until recently, I'd be nice and do their bidding, maintaining their beloved win95 boxen and whatever. Nowadays, I just do a Knoppix HDinstall, make sure their kppp, mozilla and OO.o setup is good, then do whatever maintenance I need to do via ssh. And because they're all the same kit, I can just write a script for it...
More work in the short term, but far, far less in the long term. And you know what? They're even HAPPY with it...
Bollocks to all of this. I vote we just use "viruxen". The "-x-" insert and "-xen" ending have a noble pedigree in the computing world, and in this case there will be no doubt that we mean computer viruxen, rather than biological viruses or linguistic virii.
I'm going to use it, anyway, and I bet nobody misunderstands me...
Yeah, pretty extreme. I heard about a Korean high school kid, a year or so ago, who died (dehydration?) after an 84-hour gaming run at a PC Bang - this freaked out Korean society enormously, and noises were made about doing something about the "gaming problem".
IANAK, but I am an English teacher working here, so I'm half-qualified to comment. I think there are a few things in play.
The Korean government and Korean society in general is pretty hands-on, what you could call interventionist. There's also a massive generation gap. Things like technology are a two-edged sword in this country, and Korean society is constantly pointing the finger at "foreign" problems such as this, while ignoring "traditional" vices like prostitution, alcoholism, domestic violence. Also, Koreans are incredibly competitive, and kids work their arses off to beat one another at their game du jour. Young people spending more time playing games mean young people spending less time becoming Good Upstanding Citizens.
So, yeah, while this is an extreme case, it's just the sort of thing which will hit the hot buttons to get kneejerk public reactions backed up by law.
Knoppix and Mepis are both good, but Morphix seems like it's best suited to this sort of thing. It is designed to be modular, meaning you can *very* easily build an iso to custom requirements. It has solid hardware detection, and has the built-in capacity to execute a script once it's finished booting, so you could write an installer script to install, configure and reboot the box without intervention. Hell, you could even have it apt-get update && apt-get -y upgrade if you wanted.
Amongst South Korean school children, the word "hack" (usually in the form "hacking") is used in both English and Korean with the meaning "to cheat". As in "Teacher! Min-Su [is] hacking!!" (Yes, I am an ELT in Korea:)
Apparently this usage comes via a Japanese influence, but it's used (with the -ing ending), even by students who otherwise speak NO English at all.
Chalk up another level of confucion to an already midunderstood word.
For many people X _is_ as important for their Linux boxes as the GNU toolchain
Sure. For many people, it's MORE important. But it's not fundamental to the actual OS.
What sets the GNU tools apart from other useful subsystems like X is that the GNU tools are (by and large) the tools with which the linux environment was created, and upon which its contiinued development relies. That's not to say there aren't alternatives, but the ease of development which distinguishes linux from other systems derives from these tools. While others COULD be use, they weren't, and generally aren't, and in this linux owes a debt to GNU.
I'm actually quite happy with the benign chaos of the current naming conventions: GNU/Linux is clunky and makes for an awful product name, so most people just use Linux. Purists like the FSF, debian, &c. use GNU/Linux to ensure that the GNU toolchain is not forgotten. Neither party seems especially happy because their way isn't the ONLY way, and this tension makes for a good compromise.
other notable components (like X) without which Linux would be nothing
Linux is nothing without X?
Come off it. It's not quite like a fish needing a bicycle, but what about the hordes of webservers, router boxen, scientific application and 3d modelling clusters to which X would be nothing more than useless overhead?
Slashdot Mirror
As far as I can figure, minimum specs are a bunch of bollocks, made up by marketers in collusion with hardware manufacturers. This goes for operating systems as well as games. Case in point:
I have two boxen in my house at present: Toshiba Tecra 8000 Laptop (PII 233, 128MB, but now has 256), and a celeron 500 originally with 128MB, now with 256MB.
On the laptop, I've played Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate I and II, Quake I and II. They were slow, but playable.
On the Celeron (with 128 ram and a TNT2 with 32MB), I've played all the above games without trouble, plus Q3A and UT2k3 at reasonable (25+) framerates, Age of Mythology, Max Payne (I), Black and White, Deus Ex, NOLF, RTCW, Hitman and Ghost Recon (which was damn slow, I'll admit) and a bunch of others. I'm pretty sure all these games had minimum specs above what this box could offer.
The thing that gets me is how different linux distros determine their minimum specs. Lindows requiring a PIII-800? Fedora requiring 196MB? Even winXP isn't that bad...
L
But in theory, if you buy that XBox, then MS will order another one to be made. If they do this, they're spending more than if that poor, lonesome XBox just got left on the shelf there.
Still, it was a facetious comment.
L
Except that XBox hardware is a loss-leader, and being as he already has the games and the Live! pack, he'll actually be costing MS money.
So, let's recap: Costs him money, costs MMS money. Who gets the money?
L
... that you measure your beverages in the same way you measure RAM?
Yes, bartender, I'd like 64 ounces (4x16) of your finest beer, if you please...
You must freak when faced with spirits. What, 40 ounces? Where'd the other 8 go?
L
but nothing, beats properly made espresso.
And by properly made, I mean made with an industrial-grade machine by a competent barista. There are reasons why those machines cost thousands of dollars, and they all boil down to the quality of the juice which comes out of them.
Just my not-very humble opinion as someone who spent years in the espresso mines, and whose brother runs a busy cafe.
L
... especially when it comes to flavour. My advice: give up the idea of actually drinking coffee and buy something with a strong secondary flavour - hazelnut, caramel, mocha/chocolate, whiskey if your boss will believe you're not a terminal alcoholic ... and learn to love the decent coffee when you do get a chance to drink it. Though if you really do consider Starbucks a decent coffee, your taste is probably all in your arse anyhow.
In Korea, where I live, an espresso costs about US$4, it's invariably poorly made and sometimes artificially sweetened. 99% of Koreans drink coffee from a sachet - with milk powder and sugar pre-mixed, just add water. It's horrible shite, but if you put 3 or so in a cup, you can gag it down because it's sweet. Whatever you end up drinking, consider yourself lucky you're not here.
L
How often do you have to start it? Shouldn't you be more concerned about performance once it's running? And what's another 15 seconds on top of a linux boot anyway?
:)
Not to diss your choice of XFCE4, though - that's my choice, albeit on 1997-era hardware
L
As at 2004/02/02 22:59 KST, both return the same page...
L
... is a FreeBSD-based liveCD. You can find it at www.freesbie.org. I downloaded it awhile ago but haven't yet checked it out, must get onto that. So many distros, so little time. L
I've gotta go with Spock, really. Logic, even if it's not real-world logic, is a must, because it enables you to actually learn and adapt new strategies to fit a game. A game has to be predictable, not in a plot sense, but in the sense that, once immersed in the game world, you should be able to expect certain reactions and consequences from certain actions.
There's not much more satisfying than grokking a game's engine or AI or setup well enough to use its own internal logic against it. But in a legitimate way, not cheap exploits like fake-talk or rocket-jumping.
L
Oh, Google definitely wouldn't sue about that ...
L
Nono, that's where technicians come in...
Junior Sanitation technician is a perfectly respectable title until you think about it.
L
This is a good point. But the thing about FOSS is that its driven by its participators. If big-time commercial developers, and particularly game developers, start to work with the FOSS community rather than ignoring it, I think we'd see changed in the way linux (especially) is developed. If the companies start making available big chunks of code and entering into dialogue with the core developers about what they need from an operating system, I think we'd see a change to accomodate their needs for greater backward compatibility, ABI stability, etc. That can only be good.
L
You obviously don't have a very high opinion of the EOS-1Ds and its 11 megapixel image sensor if you think you won't see a difference between the original and a printout of the original...
L
Yeah, I just nuke the site from orbit. I back up any personal data, documents, email, etc. before doing so, so they don't actually lose anything. The I run through a little "This is your computer. There are many like it, but this one is yours" excercise showing them that the red dinosaur is your web browser, the little yellow dude is your MSN, etc. I've not yet come across an important operation they can't do under linux. Probably, at some stage, I will, but until then I just keep sending them press releases about MyDoom... about the time that I explain to them that they're no longer going to be vulnerable to windows viruxen is when they start thanking me.
L
Heh. I've ended up doing free techsupp for my immediate family and in-laws ever since they figured out I knew more than nothing about computers. Until recently, I'd be nice and do their bidding, maintaining their beloved win95 boxen and whatever. Nowadays, I just do a Knoppix HDinstall, make sure their kppp, mozilla and OO.o setup is good, then do whatever maintenance I need to do via ssh. And because they're all the same kit, I can just write a script for it...
...
More work in the short term, but far, far less in the long term. And you know what? They're even HAPPY with it
L
Bollocks to all of this. I vote we just use "viruxen". The "-x-" insert and "-xen" ending have a noble pedigree in the computing world, and in this case there will be no doubt that we mean computer viruxen, rather than biological viruses or linguistic virii.
I'm going to use it, anyway, and I bet nobody misunderstands me...
L
Yeah, pretty extreme. I heard about a Korean high school kid, a year or so ago, who died (dehydration?) after an 84-hour gaming run at a PC Bang - this freaked out Korean society enormously, and noises were made about doing something about the "gaming problem".
IANAK, but I am an English teacher working here, so I'm half-qualified to comment. I think there are a few things in play.
The Korean government and Korean society in general is pretty hands-on, what you could call interventionist. There's also a massive generation gap. Things like technology are a two-edged sword in this country, and Korean society is constantly pointing the finger at "foreign" problems such as this, while ignoring "traditional" vices like prostitution, alcoholism, domestic violence. Also, Koreans are incredibly competitive, and kids work their arses off to beat one another at their game du jour. Young people spending more time playing games mean young people spending less time becoming Good Upstanding Citizens.
So, yeah, while this is an extreme case, it's just the sort of thing which will hit the hot buttons to get kneejerk public reactions backed up by law.
L
Hot-swapping an IDE HDD on my winXP box. Not sure what I was thinking, but I burned two HDDs and a motherboard doing it...
Oh, you mean WITHOUT destroying your system? Sorry, can't help you...
L
There are 3 in my city of 100,000.
There are about a dozen in my town of Daesan, South Korea, pop. 30,000.
Seosan, pop 150,000 (about twenty minutes away), has hundreds. As many PC Rooms as bars, easily.
L
Knoppix and Mepis are both good, but Morphix seems like it's best suited to this sort of thing. It is designed to be modular, meaning you can *very* easily build an iso to custom requirements. It has solid hardware detection, and has the built-in capacity to execute a script once it's finished booting, so you could write an installer script to install, configure and reboot the box without intervention. Hell, you could even have it apt-get update && apt-get -y upgrade if you wanted.
MHO.
L
Amongst South Korean school children, the word "hack" (usually in the form "hacking") is used in both English and Korean with the meaning "to cheat". As in "Teacher! Min-Su [is] hacking!!" (Yes, I am an ELT in Korea :)
Apparently this usage comes via a Japanese influence, but it's used (with the -ing ending), even by students who otherwise speak NO English at all.
Chalk up another level of confucion to an already midunderstood word.
L
Exactly where does Eric Stallman come in?
Yeah, I want to know this, too. And what's his relationship with Richard Raymond?
L
For many people X _is_ as important for their Linux boxes as the GNU toolchain
Sure. For many people, it's MORE important. But it's not fundamental to the actual OS.
What sets the GNU tools apart from other useful subsystems like X is that the GNU tools are (by and large) the tools with which the linux environment was created, and upon which its contiinued development relies. That's not to say there aren't alternatives, but the ease of development which distinguishes linux from other systems derives from these tools. While others COULD be use, they weren't, and generally aren't, and in this linux owes a debt to GNU.
I'm actually quite happy with the benign chaos of the current naming conventions: GNU/Linux is clunky and makes for an awful product name, so most people just use Linux. Purists like the FSF, debian, &c. use GNU/Linux to ensure that the GNU toolchain is not forgotten. Neither party seems especially happy because their way isn't the ONLY way, and this tension makes for a good compromise.
L
other notable components (like X) without which Linux would be nothing
Linux is nothing without X?
Come off it. It's not quite like a fish needing a bicycle, but what about the hordes of webservers, router boxen, scientific application and 3d modelling clusters to which X would be nothing more than useless overhead?
L