> because relatively "slow GUI"(eg explorer) runs just as fast and looks much better with faster CPU and more RAM.
When I can get 5-7 years of use out of a machine instead of about 3, a computer becomes substantially cheaper for what it offers or I can buy a lot more quality (better audio, video, disks etc) while spending the same amount of money over time
This is maybe not too much of an issue when looking at a single $450 POS x86 pc every 3 years, but it can be a substantial saving when dealing with a few thousand office machines as a business.
It does of course require the appropriate software in good enough quality, which can be a problem when using FOSS solutions, depending on what you need exactly.
> I'm a pragmatist. Microsoft's monopoly resulted in bad products. Apple's "monopoly" results in good products. Apple's "monopoly" is, therefore, good (for me) and Microsoft's is bad.
Monopolies often result in bad practises, which in turn may result in bad products.
Lack of competition (simple result of a monopoly) results in the monopolist being able to set prices to the highest their customers are wuilling to pay instead of the lowest that is possible while making a proffit.
The simple result of the later is that even if you get good products (as is the case with Apple according to you) you are paying way too much for them.
End result, when there is a monopoly the customer pays the price either directly as money, or as bad quality, or both.
> Did anyone sue Sony/Phillips because they invented the Compact Disc and another competing format couldn't get in without being a licensee?
Sony/Phillips basicly allowed everyone to create CDs and players for a small fee and did not bbother the consumer with licensing fees and restrictions. I do not know Apple's policies with regards to this, but it might just be where the difference is.
Of course they care more about selling their engine then their games (I always regarded their games as a demo of what their engine can do more then anything else)
The fact that it does make commercial sense for them to do this would suggest that it woudl make sense for others to do this as well. Why is ID still the big exception? And why are they also the exception with regards to releasing older engines as open source code?
I really don't see how that can be explained by them being an engine builder alone. Also, this does not explain why other games that use (modified versions of) their engines are available on Linux also (sure, it is not expensive to do it once then engine can do it so it may again make commercial sense, but why are they the only ones doing this?)
I guess I live in the future.. Doom 3 for Linux has been there for some time now in my world. Only problem is that it does not work with drivers for ATI hardware, but then, I use an nvidia card for playing anyway.
> Get an NVidia. While you will be completely dependent upon nvidia to provide drivers for the lifetime of your card, you get seriously butt-kicking graphics now, not several years down the road when ATI would have finally told developers the specifications.
While their drivers contain a substantial binary only component, your statement is not entirely true.
The layer of their drivers that interfaces with the kernel has sources available, and with some efford it can be adapted to newer kernels when it breaks (which it doesn't do that often)
They also provide drivers for FreeBSD and seem to be taking this idea of supporting such open source platforms very serious, despite their non-free drivers.
> What would drive the development of games on Linux is convincing the game manufacturers (e.g. Sony and its PS) to use Linux as the operating system and Apple to use Linux instead of BSD as the basis of MacOS.
Wether Apple uses Linux or BSD as basis for their OS really does not matter at all. For developer they are virtually identical, and there is extremely little effort involved in porting between the 2 (I have done it myself for quite a few programs)
The real issue is Apple using its own gui with its own api, and Linux, BSD and other Unix variations running X + some window manager as gui.
That said, in both cases the api used for 3D is OpenGL, so again this should not be much of a problem for the 3D graphics part of games. 2D graphics (when not done with OpenGL) and input devices are much more of a problem.
Apple wants control over their source and contributions to that source in a way that the GPL does not allow, which makes it at least somewhat difficult for them to use Linux.
So, it introduces extra problems for Apple and is not going to do shit for developers. You do have a point with the desire for an api that is available on both and would satisfy game devekopers, but your suggested solution is not going to solve anything.
It would help a lot more if Apple made the Quartz sources available as GPL, that would allow for a common api for graphics between Linux and Apple's OS X. Seeing how that is also one of their main selling arguments, which they would give away when GPLing it, this is not very likely to happen anytime soon.
A fast api that would be available with X and Quartz would be the second best option.
Om both cases a common api for controllers and other input devices is also required.
Noord Holland, Zuid Holland, Utrecht, Gelderland, Overijsel, Drente, Friesland, Groningen, Noord Brabant, Zeeland, Limburg and Flevoland together make up the kingdom of the Netherlands.
There are 12 provinces. Holland as such simply does not exist.
And to you moderators who think this is redundant, maybe it would be if for once the editors would get it right. So far they never do, so the information is not redundant.
> But Evolution is a buggy piece of crap. It cannot ever manage to close properly and doesn't shut down programmes that it starts up either. Like I really need a bunch of random Gnome programmes running after I close Evolution.
I have never had that happen. Maybe you need a proper instalation and configuration instead.
> No single app crashing has ever brought my XP system down.
Well, that might be true. It is however not true that it is impossible.
NT and everything since does a decent job at seperating applications from the OS, but it is nowhere impossible to crash the OS for a userland application, it does however require there to be a bug in the OS. The design prevents bugs in applications from doing this usually.
Given the sheer siye of the win2k and XP kernels, it is extremely unlikely that such bugs do not exist.
With about 6 months to go for as far as the article is concerned, given the way extentions exist for Firefox and Thunderbird now, added to that the fact that users can add their own development and hence add the things that have priority for them, added to that the speed in which previous projects developed, I really fail to see the issue.
I am not saying that what you want is irrelevant, I'd love to have that functionality as well, but it in no way means that it can't be there by the middle of the new year.
The Moyilla team has its priorities quite right for as far as I am concerned. Make good core applications that are easy to extend with the specific features a user may need or desire.
Last time I checked it compiles and runs on about every posix complient system that also has an X server, not just Linux.. but point well taken, it does not run natively on Windows and that IS a problem indeed.
> One of the reasons why OSS is not being as succesful as it could be is because people look at Openoffice, Firefox etc. and it looks all nice, but there's no equivalent to Outlook. So people continue using Office (and Word and the whole Office stack
Unless you want to go all the way and use an open source operating system, or use some flavor of Unix.
The problem is OSS applications on top of the Windows operating system.
> Yes it was quite a funny read. Too bad the other three copies of this post were modded troll or flamebait;)
> To Mike, As no one seems to have pointed out yet, thanks for redefining an acronym (CSS) to mean something completely different. I love it when people do that.
Just also make sure to read my other reply. While funny as hell, this poser is a troll of course, and most likely not even called Mike.
While both may be true, that does not make the poster right because the article is talking about where it is going to be 6 months from now, and not about where it is now. You seem to have the exact same problem with reading as the original poster.
Too bad I already posted in this discussion so I can't moderate. The title of your post combined with its contents are hilarious and deserve a +1 funny in my opinion.
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> because relatively "slow GUI"(eg explorer) runs just as fast and looks much better with faster CPU and more RAM.
When I can get 5-7 years of use out of a machine instead of about 3, a computer becomes substantially cheaper for what it offers or I can buy a lot more quality (better audio, video, disks etc) while spending the same amount of money over time
This is maybe not too much of an issue when looking at a single $450 POS x86 pc every 3 years, but it can be a substantial saving when dealing with a few thousand office machines as a business.
It does of course require the appropriate software in good enough quality, which can be a problem when using FOSS solutions, depending on what you need exactly.
> I'm a pragmatist. Microsoft's monopoly resulted in bad products. Apple's "monopoly" results in good products. Apple's "monopoly" is, therefore, good (for me) and Microsoft's is bad.
Monopolies often result in bad practises, which in turn may result in bad products.
Lack of competition (simple result of a monopoly) results in the monopolist being able to set prices to the highest their customers are wuilling to pay instead of the lowest that is possible while making a proffit.
The simple result of the later is that even if you get good products (as is the case with Apple according to you) you are paying way too much for them.
End result, when there is a monopoly the customer pays the price either directly as money, or as bad quality, or both.
> Did anyone sue Sony/Phillips because they invented the Compact Disc and another competing format couldn't get in without being a licensee?
Sony/Phillips basicly allowed everyone to create CDs and players for a small fee and did not bbother the consumer with licensing fees and restrictions. I do not know Apple's policies with regards to this, but it might just be where the difference is.
Of course they care more about selling their engine then their games (I always regarded their games as a demo of what their engine can do more then anything else)
The fact that it does make commercial sense for them to do this would suggest that it woudl make sense for others to do this as well. Why is ID still the big exception? And why are they also the exception with regards to releasing older engines as open source code?
I really don't see how that can be explained by them being an engine builder alone. Also, this does not explain why other games that use (modified versions of) their engines are available on Linux also (sure, it is not expensive to do it once then engine can do it so it may again make commercial sense, but why are they the only ones doing this?)
> Doom 3 is coming soon
I guess I live in the future.. Doom 3 for Linux has been there for some time now in my world. Only problem is that it does not work with drivers for ATI hardware, but then, I use an nvidia card for playing anyway.
Radeon 9200SE, 128MB, 498.800 fps with OSS drivers, 532.200 fps with ATI binary drivers
nVidia 440MX, 64MB, 1292.200 fps
Video quality of the Radeon card is substantially better, but the performance of this card on Linux is just hopeless.
> Get an NVidia. While you will be completely dependent upon nvidia to provide drivers for the lifetime of your card, you get seriously butt-kicking graphics now, not several years down the road when ATI would have finally told developers the specifications.
While their drivers contain a substantial binary only component, your statement is not entirely true.
The layer of their drivers that interfaces with the kernel has sources available, and with some efford it can be adapted to newer kernels when it breaks (which it doesn't do that often)
They also provide drivers for FreeBSD and seem to be taking this idea of supporting such open source platforms very serious, despite their non-free drivers.
Many games based on their engines run pretty well on Linux (and *BSD for that matter)
In fact, games based on their engines usually run a lot better on Linux then on Windows (lower hardware requirements, better stability)
> What would drive the development of games on Linux is convincing the game manufacturers (e.g. Sony and its PS) to use Linux as the operating system and Apple to use Linux instead of BSD as the basis of MacOS.
Wether Apple uses Linux or BSD as basis for their OS really does not matter at all. For developer they are virtually identical, and there is extremely little effort involved in porting between the 2 (I have done it myself for quite a few programs)
The real issue is Apple using its own gui with its own api, and Linux, BSD and other Unix variations running X + some window manager as gui.
That said, in both cases the api used for 3D is OpenGL, so again this should not be much of a problem for the 3D graphics part of games. 2D graphics (when not done with OpenGL) and input devices are much more of a problem.
Apple wants control over their source and contributions to that source in a way that the GPL does not allow, which makes it at least somewhat difficult for them to use Linux.
So, it introduces extra problems for Apple and is not going to do shit for developers. You do have a point with the desire for an api that is available on both and would satisfy game devekopers, but your suggested solution is not going to solve anything.
It would help a lot more if Apple made the Quartz sources available as GPL, that would allow for a common api for graphics between Linux and Apple's OS X. Seeing how that is also one of their main selling arguments, which they would give away when GPLing it, this is not very likely to happen anytime soon.
A fast api that would be available with X and Quartz would be the second best option.
Om both cases a common api for controllers and other input devices is also required.
Noord Holland, Zuid Holland, Utrecht, Gelderland, Overijsel, Drente, Friesland, Groningen, Noord Brabant, Zeeland, Limburg and Flevoland together make up the kingdom of the Netherlands.
There are 12 provinces. Holland as such simply does not exist.
And to you moderators who think this is redundant, maybe it would be if for once the editors would get it right. So far they never do, so the information is not redundant.
That is a part of the name of 2 provinces in the country called the Netherlands. (north and south Holland), it is not a country on its own.
Lets all call the USA New York...
> A few loud, public complaints of "Why should I pay for a system that screws me? I'm taking my allmightly dollah somewhere else!"
Why should it give you the right to prevent others from enjoying what they payed for?
When the number of 'others' is big enough, the company will care more about them then about you.
> But Evolution is a buggy piece of crap. It cannot ever manage to close properly and doesn't shut down programmes that it starts up either. Like I really need a bunch of random Gnome programmes running after I close Evolution.
I have never had that happen. Maybe you need a proper instalation and configuration instead.
But then, better just use what works for you
It might just be that some 90% or so of the people use windows, and as a result cannot use korganizer or evolution.
Also, what is bad about competition?
> No single app crashing has ever brought my XP system down.
Well, that might be true. It is however not true that it is impossible.
NT and everything since does a decent job at seperating applications from the OS, but it is nowhere impossible to crash the OS for a userland application, it does however require there to be a bug in the OS. The design prevents bugs in applications from doing this usually.
Given the sheer siye of the win2k and XP kernels, it is extremely unlikely that such bugs do not exist.
With about 6 months to go for as far as the article is concerned, given the way extentions exist for Firefox and Thunderbird now, added to that the fact that users can add their own development and hence add the things that have priority for them, added to that the speed in which previous projects developed, I really fail to see the issue.
I am not saying that what you want is irrelevant, I'd love to have that functionality as well, but it in no way means that it can't be there by the middle of the new year.
The Moyilla team has its priorities quite right for as far as I am concerned. Make good core applications that are easy to extend with the specific features a user may need or desire.
> Which is the problem - it only runs in Linux.
Last time I checked it compiles and runs on about every posix complient system that also has an X server, not just Linux.. but point well taken, it does not run natively on Windows and that IS a problem indeed.
> One of the reasons why OSS is not being as succesful as it could be is because people look at Openoffice, Firefox etc. and it looks all nice, but there's no equivalent to Outlook. So people continue using Office (and Word and the whole Office stack
Unless you want to go all the way and use an open source operating system, or use some flavor of Unix.
The problem is OSS applications on top of the Windows operating system.
> Yes it was quite a funny read. Too bad the other three copies of this post were modded troll or flamebait ;)
> To Mike,
As no one seems to have pointed out yet, thanks for redefining an acronym (CSS) to mean something completely different. I love it when people do that.
Just also make sure to read my other reply. While funny as hell, this poser is a troll of course, and most likely not even called Mike.
*chuckle*
:)
Much better analogy indeed
Just for the record, the real Mike Bouma is here.
> Yeah, but Evolution isn't cross-platform(yet?)
Indeed.
> We need Sunbird(lightening) to be able to do it on Windows before people will switch away from Outlook.
That would be a nice to have indeed.
GPLed code for doing this seems to exist so it should be possible to achieve without too much trouble.
While both may be true, that does not make the poster right because the article is talking about where it is going to be 6 months from now, and not about where it is now. You seem to have the exact same problem with reading as the original poster.
Too bad I already posted in this discussion so I can't moderate. The title of your post combined with its contents are hilarious and deserve a +1 funny in my opinion.
Evolution seems to do szncing with my pda pretty well (PalmOS based tho)
Hmm, good question indeed. I suppose you can get it to work with cygwin at least, but that isnt an alternative for many windows users.
A native port? I don't know, sorry.