Not counting my PS2 and Xbox(which I'm ashamed of owning...) I exclusively run PC games on Linux. To have a good experience with Linux gaming, you need the right hardware, a sane configuration, and a little bit of knowhow and willingness to experiment.
If you are very familiar with Linux, you will likely be very satisfied with your experience, and even likely to have fewer problems than your Windows using friends(for games that run on Linux, that is).
So first off, you need the proper hardware. You _need_ an NVIDIA card. Don't bother with ATI, their drivers are unstable and perform terribly. With NVIDIA, you will be up and running in no time.
Second, you need a decent sound chip. If you have a laptop, chances are you're screwed, unless you're seriously willing to tinker. You will want a card that supports hardware mixing, all common audio frequencies(many newer cheap cards only support 48000). A SB Live is probably your best bet, unless you know of another card on the market today with those features that is supported well in Linux. If you use the alsa drivers, be sure to load the oss compatibility modules, and you may have to $ echo "binary 0 0 direct" >/proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss, to get some games to work. Google is your friend. Substitute "binary" with the actual name of the program, eg. "quake3.x86" or whatever.
Build yourself a custom kernel, do not include DRI or agpgart. The NVIDIA drivers have their own agp support, with better support for different/broken hardware.
Get yourself a gig of memory already, and you won't need to worry about your WM. Just don't have any silly CPU consuming applets running.
If you have to ask what distro to use... well, I don't know quite what to tell you. Any distro can be made to work if you know what you're doing. But since you're asking for a recommendation, I heartily recommend Gentoo. It will, hopefully, teach you a bit more about how your system works, and it is the most flexible of the mainstream distros, IMO.
Here at the office, we don't allow folks to install any of that sort of junk. We didn't police it in the past, but now that it's a problem, we don't allow it.
But malware still gets installed, or did, rather, until we mandated the use of FireFox and disallow using IE.
While many holes are fixed in XP SP2, our windows users are running 2000, and there are still many known holes. Allowing IE leads to malware infection. Disallowing IE prevents it. You do the math.
Another thing... "Trusted Computing" is NOT necessary to prevent the user from installing software that cannot be removed. This would really only require two things. Installation of packages via a Windows packaging system, so Windows could keep track of _everything_ that gets installed on the system. Disallow the execution of any executables not installed via the packaging system. Prevent the alteration of executable files, via permissions of some sort.
It would also help to have a single place for startup programs.
That software can be installed that the user can't remove is simply ridiculous.
War deaths - deaths in a volunteer military, fighting for our freedom and security.
Bullshit and more bullshit. A handful of voluntary soldiers, over a hundred-thousand conscripts in Iraq, and over 10,000 civilians.
Fighthing for oil, personal vendetta, whatever, it is perfectly clear at this point that it had nothing to do with freedom or security. Bush was aiming to invade Iraq using any excuse at all the first day he stepped into office. He then diverted our military strength away from a place where it was really needed, Afghanistan, if you'll remember, it's really in sad shape right now and could really use our help, and _started_ a major conflict elsewhere.
This is a drop in the bucket, an ice cube next to an ice burg, compared to price fixing by the RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft's monopoly abuse, etc. What about Enron goddammit?
What a fucking joke. Martha Stewart gets busted for selling $150,000 worth of stock on an insider tip, when she's got BILLIONS, and these guys get "busted", but the real perps with friends in high places get a free ride.
How many people did these guys, and Martha too, actually really hurt? RAM is still pretty cheap, AFAIK Martha wasn't found to have a history of insider trading... so WTF?
CDs cost $16 - $20, unreasonable by most peoples' estimation, and the RIAA has been found guilty of price fixing, but noone went to jail. If I want a new retail copy of 'doze XP, it's gonna run over $300, yet all MS's recent competition had to give their stuff away for free, and couldn't get OEMs to preload their stuff even though people were asking for it(BeOS). One of the Enron execs committed suicide out of guilt, and the other execs without a conscience have been given a free ride.
This is like putting weed smokers in jail for 5 to 10 and letting rapists out after 3 for good behavior. But shit, we do that too in this country, D'oh!
It seems to me that "Justice" is completely dead in America.
Wow, the next Xbox will be able to play FMV. Amazing. Maybe next they'll add DVD playback capability, sure must require some really beefy hardware for something like that.
Yeah, that's an old story at this point. Been going on for two years or so. One problem is, it often cost less to just buy a new PC and have a friendly geek save all their old stuff. This is, of course, because most PCs don't come with full copies of Windows. Most PCs come with a disk image on CD that will overwrite _everything_.
So that leaves people with the option to purchase Windows at retail for roughly the price of a cheap PC, or they can spend 50% more and get a newer, shinier one. I know plenty of people who have "been there done that."
And the problem continues to get even worse. Now we've got spyware "companies" selling spyware removal tools that only remove competitors' spyware. People need to go to jail for that.
Nowhere in the original EULA did it say "you can run this game forever without us ever changing the EULA"
That is ridiculous. You can't change a contract or license later down the line without either, a) both parties agreeing to the new contract, or b) the contract saying so explicitly that it can change and in what way it may change. The law even sets limits on this sort of thing.
But these days we don't let years of legal precedent get in the way of companies with lots of money doing whatever they want.
Given the market pressure to downsize, and the significantly different mindsets/environments between Solaris and Linux, I can't see how embracing both is really very feasable without a bunch of developers and support staff who are capable of severe split personality.
That is ridiculous. You're saying it's not possible for professionals to work on both Linux and Solaris. Please...
That's not enterprise class usage, and the attempts I've seen at enterprise class usage of Linux only rarely work (yeah, trot out Google. Good example. A shame more companies don't run like Google. Fact is, though, they don't).
What are you basing that on? Akamai, Burlington Coat Factory, many POS systems, Hollywood effects studios, etc. Those are not enterprise class?
Wow, +5 insightful for pointing out a single, admittedly nice, feature Solaris has that Linux doesn't.
What, exactly, does a 1 element feature comparison of Solaris vs. Linux have to do with anything, BTW?
It seems to me you are also implying that embracing Linux would require abandoning Solaris, which is patently ridiculous.
Sun has a problem, a big one at that. While they continue to attack Linux, they are doing nothing but scaring away possible customers. Most people are deploying Linux on web servers and such running on Intel hardware, while Solaris really shines on "big iron." What is Sun selling on the lower end that is competitive with Linux/Intel? Nothing, AFAICT. So what are they afraid of? Why not have a price competitive offering for the lower end, instead of spreading FUD, which will only serve to scare people away. If I were in the market for some big iron, I'd look to IBM before Sun, now that Sun is concentrating on FUD while IBM concentrates on business and technology.
I sure didn't buy Windows, partly because of the ridiculous activation, partly because of the cost, and partly because I do not like Microsoft.
Half-Life 2 runs in cedega, however, so I _could_ play it, but I am choosing not to.
I don't think it is right that these companies should hold paying customers at their mercy. What happens in 5 years if I want to install and play Half-Life 2 again, and Valve is no longer around or is no longer maintaining their activation servers? Ditto for Windows.
It may well be worth the price and some headache dealing with activation, but it is unethical, IMO.
Hey, jackass, notice the quotes around "emulator" in my post? I know wine isn't really an emulator, dipshit.
(or you have no idea on how to optimize a tbird 900mhz box, via 4 in 1 drivers maybe?)
Again with the idiocy. No amount of tuning is going to make iTunes run nicely on a 900Mhz tbird. It may run ok, but I'll take nearly any other music player any day over iTunes on Windows. iTunes is nice on OS X, but the Windows port is garbage.
As for the iPod, the interface is highly overrated. It is slick and shiny, nothing more. It has the "wow" factor, but it is still form over function. And no matter how how many orgasams it gives you, it still uses annoying proprietary garbage to transfer data. I've used plenty of mp3 players that had more intuitive interfaces than the iPod, supported more formats, stored just as much data, and were cheaper.
And trust me if you had an ipod or a mac you would know better.
I never said anything about Macs. I work with Macs every day. There's nothing wrong with them, 'cept being a little out of the price range of less well off folk. So why do you mention Macs?
Thanks for helping make my decision to buy or not to buy your game, Valve. Apparently, even if I buy it, I may not be able to play it. So guess what? I just won't buy it.
A year ago I bought an Xbox to play HL2, because my PC simply was not "up to snuff." Now that it was released more than a year late, after so much bullshit about it being "almost ready to ship," I have a seriously kickass PC. But I'm not going to put up with forced online activation that may take all day to do.
In fact, I think I won't even buy the Xbox version(when/if it ever comes out), just for pure spite.
For once I completely agree with you. I am so confused these days by so called "geeks."
I have used the 'doze version of iTunes a few times, and I plan never to touch it again. On a 900mhz t-bird, with 512MB system memory, it was slow as could be.
Why would anyone want to use that horribly bloated piece of turd running in an "emulator?"
And the iPod...? No thanks. There's cheaper players that support more music formats, and don't use proprietary bullshit for transferring data.
Maybe I'm just not as easily wowed as some, but I still don't understand why, with all Apple products, people act as if it gives them orgas... OOOH SHINY!!
Ok. Next time your company gets audited by the BSA(another beast we can thank MS for), and they find one or two pirated copies of software, that employees installed without authorization, and use that as justification to charge you for the audit, to the tune of several millions of dollars, remember what you just said today.
I agree. The GP definately seems to be implying that truth is subjective, open to interpretation, and requires "faith." These are, as you say, silly word games.
Truth is simply what is true. True is defined as being conformable to fact; in accordance with the actual state of things; correct; not false, etc. Truth and fact are essentially one and the same. Truth is not debatable, open to interpretation, dependent on human intuition, etc. There are not multiple truths. Truth is not up to a person to decide. Truth is simply what is. Truth, like fact, can only be discovered, not invented.
There is a god or there isn't. Etc. There isn't one truth for each individual. Human intuition, speculation, and philosophy are irrelevant.
However, how many more of them are out there that don't know one of us, or are unwilling to try something new? I say many. Too many.
I understand your frustration, but what are you saying?! My God man, killing innocent people is not the answer!
... or is it </evilgrin>
"Bungie has done it again!"
on
Halo 2 Reviews
·
· Score: 1
Am I the only person on Earth who was absolutely and thoroughly underwhelmed by Halo? The gameplay was extremely repetitive, even for an FPS. The graphics were good, the weapons were so-so, the levels were repetitive as fuck all. The multiplayer levels left a LOT to be desired. It definately had its moments though. Vehicles were fun, some parts were challenging, and the story was there. All in all, it was a pretty good game, but not anywhere near deserving of the accolades it received.
From what I've seen of Halo 2, it looks like it's much improved. I'm playing some other games right now, so I'm not getting it on opening day, but I definately plan to get it. I'm even marginally excited about it(I don't get too excited about games, because you really have to play them before you know whether they're any good...) So, I hope "Bungie has done it again!" doesn't prove to be an accurate statement for myself, as after hearing so many goddamn gamer newbies tell me how great Halo was, I was terribly unimpressed with it.
Sorry for the interruption, let the hype machine continue.
Slashdot Mirror
If you are very familiar with Linux, you will likely be very satisfied with your experience, and even likely to have fewer problems than your Windows using friends(for games that run on Linux, that is).
So first off, you need the proper hardware. You _need_ an NVIDIA card. Don't bother with ATI, their drivers are unstable and perform terribly. With NVIDIA, you will be up and running in no time.
Second, you need a decent sound chip. If you have a laptop, chances are you're screwed, unless you're seriously willing to tinker. You will want a card that supports hardware mixing, all common audio frequencies(many newer cheap cards only support 48000). A SB Live is probably your best bet, unless you know of another card on the market today with those features that is supported well in Linux. If you use the alsa drivers, be sure to load the oss compatibility modules, and you may have to $ echo "binary 0 0 direct" > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss, to get some games to work. Google is your friend. Substitute "binary" with the actual name of the program, eg. "quake3.x86" or whatever.
Build yourself a custom kernel, do not include DRI or agpgart. The NVIDIA drivers have their own agp support, with better support for different/broken hardware.
Get yourself a gig of memory already, and you won't need to worry about your WM. Just don't have any silly CPU consuming applets running.
If you have to ask what distro to use... well, I don't know quite what to tell you. Any distro can be made to work if you know what you're doing. But since you're asking for a recommendation, I heartily recommend Gentoo. It will, hopefully, teach you a bit more about how your system works, and it is the most flexible of the mainstream distros, IMO.
Cheers, and good luck.
But malware still gets installed, or did, rather, until we mandated the use of FireFox and disallow using IE.
While many holes are fixed in XP SP2, our windows users are running 2000, and there are still many known holes. Allowing IE leads to malware infection. Disallowing IE prevents it. You do the math.
Another thing... "Trusted Computing" is NOT necessary to prevent the user from installing software that cannot be removed. This would really only require two things. Installation of packages via a Windows packaging system, so Windows could keep track of _everything_ that gets installed on the system. Disallow the execution of any executables not installed via the packaging system. Prevent the alteration of executable files, via permissions of some sort.
It would also help to have a single place for startup programs.
That software can be installed that the user can't remove is simply ridiculous.
Bullshit and more bullshit. A handful of voluntary soldiers, over a hundred-thousand conscripts in Iraq, and over 10,000 civilians.
Fighthing for oil, personal vendetta, whatever, it is perfectly clear at this point that it had nothing to do with freedom or security. Bush was aiming to invade Iraq using any excuse at all the first day he stepped into office. He then diverted our military strength away from a place where it was really needed, Afghanistan, if you'll remember, it's really in sad shape right now and could really use our help, and _started_ a major conflict elsewhere.
What a fucking joke. Martha Stewart gets busted for selling $150,000 worth of stock on an insider tip, when she's got BILLIONS, and these guys get "busted", but the real perps with friends in high places get a free ride.
How many people did these guys, and Martha too, actually really hurt? RAM is still pretty cheap, AFAIK Martha wasn't found to have a history of insider trading... so WTF?
CDs cost $16 - $20, unreasonable by most peoples' estimation, and the RIAA has been found guilty of price fixing, but noone went to jail. If I want a new retail copy of 'doze XP, it's gonna run over $300, yet all MS's recent competition had to give their stuff away for free, and couldn't get OEMs to preload their stuff even though people were asking for it(BeOS). One of the Enron execs committed suicide out of guilt, and the other execs without a conscience have been given a free ride.
This is like putting weed smokers in jail for 5 to 10 and letting rapists out after 3 for good behavior. But shit, we do that too in this country, D'oh!
It seems to me that "Justice" is completely dead in America.
So that leaves people with the option to purchase Windows at retail for roughly the price of a cheap PC, or they can spend 50% more and get a newer, shinier one. I know plenty of people who have "been there done that."
And the problem continues to get even worse. Now we've got spyware "companies" selling spyware removal tools that only remove competitors' spyware. People need to go to jail for that.
That is ridiculous. You can't change a contract or license later down the line without either, a) both parties agreeing to the new contract, or b) the contract saying so explicitly that it can change and in what way it may change. The law even sets limits on this sort of thing.
But these days we don't let years of legal precedent get in the way of companies with lots of money doing whatever they want.
The guy has some very valid complaints regarding games he already bought before Steam even existed.
That is ridiculous. You're saying it's not possible for professionals to work on both Linux and Solaris. Please...
That's not enterprise class usage, and the attempts I've seen at enterprise class usage of Linux only rarely work (yeah, trot out Google. Good example. A shame more companies don't run like Google. Fact is, though, they don't).
What are you basing that on? Akamai, Burlington Coat Factory, many POS systems, Hollywood effects studios, etc. Those are not enterprise class?
Wow, so a couple people shit in your cornflakes, and you want US ALL TO SUFFER?
What can I say to that? I guess there's really only one thing TO say... Fuck you too, asshole.
What, exactly, does a 1 element feature comparison of Solaris vs. Linux have to do with anything, BTW?
It seems to me you are also implying that embracing Linux would require abandoning Solaris, which is patently ridiculous.
Sun has a problem, a big one at that. While they continue to attack Linux, they are doing nothing but scaring away possible customers. Most people are deploying Linux on web servers and such running on Intel hardware, while Solaris really shines on "big iron." What is Sun selling on the lower end that is competitive with Linux/Intel? Nothing, AFAICT. So what are they afraid of? Why not have a price competitive offering for the lower end, instead of spreading FUD, which will only serve to scare people away. If I were in the market for some big iron, I'd look to IBM before Sun, now that Sun is concentrating on FUD while IBM concentrates on business and technology.
Half-Life 2 runs in cedega, however, so I _could_ play it, but I am choosing not to.
I don't think it is right that these companies should hold paying customers at their mercy. What happens in 5 years if I want to install and play Half-Life 2 again, and Valve is no longer around or is no longer maintaining their activation servers? Ditto for Windows.
It may well be worth the price and some headache dealing with activation, but it is unethical, IMO.
Posting with +1 in defiance of idiot mods on apple.slashdot.org! YOU CAN KEEP MODDING ME DOWN, BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE FROM YOUR OWN STUPIDITY, BITCHES*!
No, modding up complete drivel simply because it praises Apple is not acceptable, even for simpletons like many Apple users here on slashdot.
* Steve Jobs's bitches, apparently.
Hey, jackass, notice the quotes around "emulator" in my post? I know wine isn't really an emulator, dipshit.
(or you have no idea on how to optimize a tbird 900mhz box, via 4 in 1 drivers maybe?)
Again with the idiocy. No amount of tuning is going to make iTunes run nicely on a 900Mhz tbird. It may run ok, but I'll take nearly any other music player any day over iTunes on Windows. iTunes is nice on OS X, but the Windows port is garbage.
As for the iPod, the interface is highly overrated. It is slick and shiny, nothing more. It has the "wow" factor, but it is still form over function. And no matter how how many orgasams it gives you, it still uses annoying proprietary garbage to transfer data. I've used plenty of mp3 players that had more intuitive interfaces than the iPod, supported more formats, stored just as much data, and were cheaper.
And trust me if you had an ipod or a mac you would know better.
I never said anything about Macs. I work with Macs every day. There's nothing wrong with them, 'cept being a little out of the price range of less well off folk. So why do you mention Macs?
A year ago I bought an Xbox to play HL2, because my PC simply was not "up to snuff." Now that it was released more than a year late, after so much bullshit about it being "almost ready to ship," I have a seriously kickass PC. But I'm not going to put up with forced online activation that may take all day to do.
In fact, I think I won't even buy the Xbox version(when/if it ever comes out), just for pure spite.
Fuckers.
2. "no kernel support for XML" is complete gibberish.
3. "cut-n-paste" between apps works just fine these days.
Obviously there are reasons people don't get a Mac, cost often being #1.
I have used the 'doze version of iTunes a few times, and I plan never to touch it again. On a 900mhz t-bird, with 512MB system memory, it was slow as could be.
Why would anyone want to use that horribly bloated piece of turd running in an "emulator?"
And the iPod...? No thanks. There's cheaper players that support more music formats, and don't use proprietary bullshit for transferring data.
Maybe I'm just not as easily wowed as some, but I still don't understand why, with all Apple products, people act as if it gives them orgas... OOOH SHINY!!
Bravo!
Truth is simply what is true. True is defined as being conformable to fact; in accordance with the actual state of things; correct; not false, etc. Truth and fact are essentially one and the same. Truth is not debatable, open to interpretation, dependent on human intuition, etc. There are not multiple truths. Truth is not up to a person to decide. Truth is simply what is. Truth, like fact, can only be discovered, not invented.
There is a god or there isn't. Etc. There isn't one truth for each individual. Human intuition, speculation, and philosophy are irrelevant.
Goddammit! Happier customers maybe?! Would someone PLEASE think of the customers!
Heh. Seriously, does the customer really mean so little these days?
I understand your frustration, but what are you saying?! My God man, killing innocent people is not the answer!
From what I've seen of Halo 2, it looks like it's much improved. I'm playing some other games right now, so I'm not getting it on opening day, but I definately plan to get it. I'm even marginally excited about it(I don't get too excited about games, because you really have to play them before you know whether they're any good...) So, I hope "Bungie has done it again!" doesn't prove to be an accurate statement for myself, as after hearing so many goddamn gamer newbies tell me how great Halo was, I was terribly unimpressed with it.
Sorry for the interruption, let the hype machine continue.