Is the Key to Linux a Games-Based Distro? 860
An anonymous reader writes "If in the FOSS community we could only get our act together and launch a game-based distro, we will be home and dry. That, at least, is the view of one British games enthusiast, Ian Bonham, who says in the short Linux World article: 'I would be happy to help a group of volunteers create a distro based on games, because I believe that's where the next generation is - NOT in giving away copies of Linux or OOo. That's a short-term ideal. The PS2 and the X-Box(sic) run Linux, so let's create a distro that turns home PC into a console with development potential. Expand that distro to the consoles. And lets get some 'killer' games on that disk.'"
Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Games Based Distro (Score:5, Insightful)
There's so much missing structurally for that to even be considered. You know, silly stuff like reliable, robust video and sound drivers.
Cart before the horse.
Loki example? (Score:2, Insightful)
Bootable Americas Army CD (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't work for OS/2 (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, you couldn't just run OS/2 off of a CD with no install, and video was next to impossible to configure correctly when you didn't specifically know what video card was in the box, and networking didn't work, yada, yada, yada...
Anyway, it would certainly help to have a WIDE VARIETY of games, that rivalled ones on other platforms, etc.
Not killer games, but killer game compatibility (Score:4, Insightful)
Key (Score:5, Insightful)
It will take more than just any game, (Score:3, Insightful)
Make it so attractive, so kick-ass, so awesome and so LINUX that they will flock to it.
Don't let it out for M$ and don't copy a M$ or console game.
Nice (but unlikely) (Score:5, Insightful)
The Mac suffers from a shortage of games, albeit not as great as Linux, and those games sell for $$$. It's a nice thought but the reality is that you need the developers too. A whiz-bang platform without games leaves you... well... with a neat looking Linux box with a game controller.
Re:Games Based Distro (Score:1, Insightful)
Lot of work to be done.
Re:Bootable CD is the answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
Add games and you've got teen-geek heaven.
Um how about not? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a step forward will be to get some form of standard for graphics/sound/input ala DirectX style. sure opengl, oss, sdl are all good libs but they follow the unix philosophy. That is, do one thing and do it well.
There should be a unified development tool/library that includes them all. E.g. I can install "blah" and boom I got 3d graphics, sound support, joystick/keyboard support, timers/interrupt/callback etc...
Of course that doesn't stop people from just picking their fav collection of tools [e.g. ut2k4 which runs perfectly on my Gentoo box].
Tom
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Now a standard linux distro aimed solely at game developers to make their life easier might be a better way to go......
What planet is this guy from? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does he have any sort of clue what goes into the development of a modern "killer game"?
Programming is nothing. There are thousands of man-hours going into art assets, level design, animation, voiceover production, playtesting, etc..
The days of the kid making a neato race car game on his vic 20 are long, long gone.
And like every other twit in linux land, he offers to "help make a linux games distro, even though im not a programmer and have no appreciable skills". Which follows the standard OSS game production model:
1) Think up cool name for game
2) Open sourceforge project
3) wait for programmers and artists to come write it for you
4) ??
No way (Score:5, Insightful)
It requires two things:
Quantity of games
Quality of games
You don't need to make a gaming distro, you need a gaming distro with HUNDREDS (if not more) games already available to it. And not just net-hack and tux-racer, but big name gaming companies spitting out Linux based games.
What do you need to do this? A big-ass company with a ton of cash.
It is a proven plan. Just ask Sony how it broke apart Sega and Nintendo to get into the gaming console. Money, quantity and quality of games.
Re:It will take more than just any game, (Score:1, Insightful)
Gnibbles, KTris with over 5,000 backgrounds! (Score:3, Insightful)
woohoo!
My first Linux installation had me drooling at the list of games that were in the Games folder. Then, as I started each, one by one, I found the feeling similar to when you got your Burger King meal's get-the-bb-into-the-holes game.
Or, similarly, found the amazing Atari emulator only to find that those games that used to kick ass now keep your attention for about 30 seconds each - but there's 2,000 of them!
How about (Score:3, Insightful)
Although I'd bet a distro that could run games would be popular just for the piracy potential.
Chicken and Egg Situation (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is, no developer will be willing to develop said killer app until Linux becomes the gaming OS of choice.
Games? Yes. Games distro? Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:x-box run linux? (Score:4, Insightful)
You're wrong in that the XBox runs a highly modified version of the Windows2000, not CE kernel. Just enough of the OS for booting, hardware configuration (aka Live! config), and DVD autoloading is kept internal. The rest of the libraries required to run a game are loaded off of the game DVD.
If you read, "Inside the XBox" you'll know that the original spec was for a custom version of WinCE to be used, but that was scrapped since it would've required making a fork of DirectX that worked with CE.
A cross platform game would help (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Games Based Distro (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny, but Linux is in much better shape for video drivers than audio ones. Since the game-capable graphics market only includes two [ati.com] companies [nvidia.com], Linux is already adequately usable.
But since soundcards are technically easier to make, there's many more brands still in active use. Many gamers who buy the latest NVidias to squeeze a few more FPS or pixels might still be satisfied using motherboard audio output, or a $2.50 PCI soundcard.
Linux audio support is close to adequate... but unfortunately, the Alsa Project [alsa-project.org]'s longstanding philosophical refusal to move software mixing [opensrc.org] into the central driver means you still can't expect Linux to run games on any random piece of desktop PC hardware.
Re:It will take more than just any game, (Score:5, Insightful)
1.- Develop a game locking out 90% of the market.
2.- ???
3.- Profit!
I believe... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ideally what Linux needs to do for game developers is offer them something more than what Windows gives them.
What could this possibly be? Imagine putting a game you just bought in your computer and it booting up with an OS which is minimalistic with regards to the game in question. Everything it needs and nothing more. Whatever overhead there might be in Windows is irrelevant, this OS is there and just does exactly what you as a game developer needs.
The system boots from the CD (ie knoppix), mounts your windows Hard Disk read/write for game saving, and loads the game. If it's a network game, it brings up your network interfaces too. Everything is detected, and the OS is configured the way the game needs it.
TO BOOT (no pun intended), you can also install the game as a normal windows game and run it from the windows environment if that's what you want, as a user.
Where could one obtain an operating system where they could build this bootable CD from and redistribute free of licensing fees??
What the OSS community who is interested should be focusing on is providing this technology for game developers, giving them a clean and robust migration path out of Windows. Then, miraculously, this framework can be put on top of your existing Linux install with no effort.
Call me crazy. ;)
Re:It will take more than just any game, (Score:1, Insightful)
One of these things is not like the others...
Re:x-box run linux? (Score:5, Insightful)
The inherent open-ness of Linux and its various development kits allows developers to create software and games software without the costly restrictions and control console manufacturers seem to place over their respective hardware.
It should be noted however that Sony have released a Linux based distro specifically for Playstation 2 for exactly this purpose.
My own personal belief is that it is extremely difficult to create next-gen games without the kinds of near-hollywood budget software houses have to throw at it. Im not saying its impossible, but small scale bedroom coding aint gonna produce the kinds of masterpieces that Lionhead or $GAMESTUDIO_OFCHOICE are producing.
I think a better twist on this idea would be to produce bootable CDROM's ala knoppix, bundled with a specific game. This way you remove the notion of operating system dependancy. Linux enables you to build a very low-level OS, with just enough required to boot the game. If something along these lines were to be introduced it would allow mainstream software studios to sell games to anyone who has an x86 machine, regardless of OS.
Probably not... (Score:3, Insightful)
There are probably over a million people running OS X now that have no idea they're running a Unix based OS :). So I think the chance of attracting people to an alternate OS remains slim.
In the end we need something that is easy to use and operate. Say what you want about Windows, but it's still much easier to learn than Linux. Especially if you want to do more than the standard user stuff (install software, etc).
Not yet (Score:3, Insightful)
"Cart before the horse" was the best quote I saw here. I think getting Linux ready for a corporate desktop should be easier, and based on my little involvement with UserLinux (Bruce Perens' new distro), I think Linux is not quite ready yet for corporate. Close, but little things keep poping up.
OTOH, I think it's good that people keep working on Linux gaming. Parallel software development and all that. I just don't think it's on the critical path right now. :)
Re:Games Based Distro (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Key (Score:5, Insightful)
I couldn't agree more. Linux needs to be MUCH more user friendly. It needs to be much more intuitive. And I don't just mean the OS. I mean all the apps you get as well. Fortunately, there's been a good deal of progress in this area and over the last few years, Linux has improved dramatically, but it's still way behind Windows and Macs in terms of ease of use for your average technophobe.
Games? Why? If games are what draws people to a system, then people are going to buy game consoles. That's why game consoles sell so well. If people want a computer, then make them want Linux by doing the above.
The author's idea is that we should get people using Linux so that people are using Linux. So let's come up with whatever cheesy plan it takesto get them to use it. At least that's the idea I get from it. I think that's stupid. Make people want to use Linux by making Linux the best alternative to Windows for more people. Then you're on to something.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Chicken V Egg, Round 300 (Score:4, Insightful)
If Halo had come out for only Linux, do you think there'd be a million more Linux users? No, because nobody is going to ditch their OS just to try out one game. And no game developer is going to spend the millions it takes to make a AAA game on an OS with low yield.
Maybe, just maybe, if there was an excellent hobbyist community and development platform then as amatuer productions like FPS mods and the like get more and more mainstream Linux could get a bit of rise up, but nothing serious I'd imagine.
Linux should just keep the long slow road it's been on. Get prettier, get friendlier.
Re:I'm sorry... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently you haven't heard about DirectX or OpenGL, eh?
Now they want to replace our thin OS-like layers with a complete business/research oriented OS.
Whatchew talkin bout? Microsoft(tm) Windows(r) is a "business oriented" OS; Linux has no orientation at all.
Seriously, the OS doesn't *do* anything for a game.
Exactly! Which is why Linux might (in a few years, if all goes well) be a better platform for PC gaming than Microsoft(tm) Windows!
If Microsoft continues to screw up with DirectX "upgrades" that fix one game and breaks another, then game publishers might just start shipping their installation media as bootable Linux DVDs, so their support costs can be cut away. ("Put in the disc and hold down the power button of your computer")
That's much the reason why MSDOS (save for the 640K barrier) was such a great gaming platform.
Some users might've liked it, but the programmers who had to manually support each possible piece of hardware had different opinions. Back when there were only 4 video cards and 3 soundcards, it was painful but possible. Today that the complexity of the hardware has multiplied, it's no longer an option.
Re:Games Based Distro (Score:4, Insightful)
I do think the games distro is a good idea. More and more, people are starting to want the ease-of-use of a console, but it will not be easy to pull off, especially since there is yet to be a distro with the ease-of-use of Windows.
Needs a robust, portable, multimedia layer. (Score:2, Insightful)
Window managers, glibc, OpenGL, etc close the gap somewhat, but there's way too much hardware out there in PC land that isn't supported to its potential under most environments. Also, what about sound (some consoles do 5.1 surround, and others don't) and input devices (light guns, DDR pads, keyboards, mice may or may not be present)?
IMO, An gaming/multimedia-oriented OSS middleware/API similar to DirectX would go a *very* long way to help build better games in a platform-neutral manner; This is exactly what a project like this needs.
Re:Key (Score:2, Insightful)
As bad as this may sound, we may need to aim for the lowest common denomenator when it comes to GUI design.
Re:Key (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets not compare Windows XP to RedHat 6.2 shall we?
Digital cameras work fine. Find a valid example. Most people dismiss Linux because:
a) Windows came with their computer. They already paid for it. WHat's the point??
b) Lack of warez for Linux. A shamefully low percentage of Windows users have totally-legal software installs.
c) usability DOES factor in, but the average person just needs a Lindows-like PC.. email,. web, office app, and oh yeah support for USB cameras and pen drives. Linux does that with great ease of use.
I can't see involving the "command line" in any of those activities... not anymore than the same job requiring regedit.exe use on Windows.
Not that I'm saying Linux is as easy for mom as XP (it's not... but it's not a huge leap).
Poor pattern recognition (Score:3, Insightful)
What's the problem with PCs?
(everybody chimes in, a bored monotone)Crap hardware.
And how do consoles aviod this problem?
(again, a bored chorus)Standardized hardware.
And what's the difference between a PC running Windows XP, some crap video card, crap sound card, and strange Taiwanese motherboard, and Linux distro running the same thing?
(bored chorus)When it comes to games, nothing really.
Re:Not killer games, but killer game compatibility (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd like to see the day when the free software community can provide not only the code for a smashing game engine (come on, surely you can replicate the unreal!), but also the work of convincing voice actors, motion-capture animators, map designers, plot authors that could write a reasonably well selling book and patient texture designers.
Killer games require megabucks.
I'm still waiting for my free Ghost Recon game.
Re:This is a great idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, whatever! (Score:4, Insightful)
If the people who run around holding forth on what "we" need to do actually did a tenth of what they're calling for, we'd be "home and dry". For that matter, if they did anything useful, it would make all the difference.
Honestly, we've been hearing "What we need to do is make the bestest game ever and only sell it for Lunix and then everyone will use Linux!!!" for years. And what "we" have to show for it is Tuxracer and 500 libraries in search of developers.
Re:Just perfect Wine/WineX (Score:5, Insightful)
The most important new PC games coming out are multiplayer online games, and they're starting to standardize on Evenbalance's Punkbuster library as the way to prevent cheaters from hacking their local environments with transparent walls and magic maps.
Punkbuster works by examining the entire memory environment where the game is running. If it detects something that could be a cheat attempt, it shuts you down (optionally blacklisting you with the publisher's master server). It's constantly updated to respond to new threats.
What this means is that game publishers soon will not want you to run under Wine, and will pay programmers to ensure that you don't. (For example, Battlefield 1942 used to work in WineX. Since Punkbuster was added to the game, it's no longer usable)
To prevent cheaters, game makers have decided to allow playing only under a "trusted" environment. They won't allow you to play from an Open Source OS or emulator, because that opens up the possibility that you've changed the graphics driver to make wireframes instead of solid textures.
What's missing from Linux games? ORIGINALITY! (Score:4, Insightful)
Back when the Apple IIgs was dying, and I paid attention to that system, there was a similar pattern. Oh so many programmers wanted to prove that the gs was an awesome system, so what did they do? They wrote clones of games that were available for other systems. Really, this was cool for the people who only owned a gs, because they couldn't play those games otherwise. But as an outsider looking in you saw all these versions of Tetris and Lunar Lander and so on. Some were spiffy, yes, but wow did it make the gs seem stale. The Amiga followed the same road. It would have been much better for the programmers of those systems to lean hard on creativity rather than getting in a pissing contest with other computers.
Re:Key (Score:5, Insightful)
But I think you are cracked off your rocker if you think Windows is EASY for technophobes. Have you even SEEN 'phobes trying to use a Windows machine?
Just over the weekend I was flipping through a CD full of digital photos for a couple family members. Any OS can handle this easily, but I happened to have to use WinXP (because they're multimedia POS machine had XP on it). Double-click the first image, and it almost automatically starts up a slide show.
Pretty simple right? The amazement of said family members was depressing. They had NO IDEA what I was doing; it might as well have been magic.
In the end, I figure you can only take "ease-of-use" so far. At some point you have to say "yep, it's easy enough" and move on, because some people, NO MATTER HOW EASY YOU MAKE IT, will never figure it out.
Gnome 2.4, KDE 3.2 are both easy enough for anyone with half a brain and a few weeks of computer use under their belt. However, there are VAST NUMBERS of Americans who haven't a CLUE, and never will. They just don't care.
You will never make a computer easy enough for them to use. Never.
If you want to get Linux on the desktop .... (Score:2, Insightful)
Act!
Quickbooks
WinFax (client)
AOL
Get the companies that make these programs to make shrink wrapped Linux versions and I'll have them up with Mandrake 10 in a day or two.
It's the APPS, stupid.
And please - to all you pointy heads out there - I know that there are workarounds, compatibility layers, converters, etc. If your first reaction was to point this out, then YOU are one of the people who are part of the problem. Get a clue; users don't grep. And they never will. Understand that and STFU.
Re:Enterprise first (Score:2, Insightful)
Fun first... business last. That's how everything developes (because the zombie like suits and Corporations can't create these things).
Juuust sayin'
Re:Didn't work for OS/2 (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The vendors don't have a clue. "We want to be a desktop distro. No wait! A server distro. No wait! An "enterprise" distro. No wait! We need a one-click installer. No wait! We need a remote installer. No wait...
2) Windows emulation. No one bothered to write OS/2 applications because native Windows applications ran just fine under it. Then Microsoft changed the APIs, and OS/2 finally sunk under the frigid waters. Why should I run my applications under Linux/WineX when I can run them under Windows?
3) Arrogant advocacy. This is the worst one. OS/2 died in part because most people in Team OS/2 were assholes. Linux advocates are no less impolite. Face it, no matter how much you argue the point, the average consumer will NEVER believe that Linux is the holy salvation of mankind. Yet you still continue to argue that. "Linux? Oh yeah, that's the OS with all the arrogant jerks..."
Re:I'm sorry... (Score:1, Insightful)
Not to mention good input support from a plethora of devices, a stable API for accessing video and audio support (not just to access low-level devices, but to provide a stable API that works with all hardware), and the ability to do something BESIDES play games on the finished system. MS-DOS lacked all of the features.
Finally, even if you wanted to make a new gaming console, Linux would not be the worst choice you could make (though you would want to avoid X). It's not difficult to strip out the features you don't need; Linux 2.6 even has config options for removing unneeded features in embedded devices. This is akin to the use of a stripped down Windows 2000 kernel in the XBox; an MS-DOS like OS would just have made game development more difficult for the programmers.
But no, you go back to your MS-DOS game development. Go ahead and write a TCP/IP stack that supports all the features I need to connect to my convoluted networking setup. Go ahead and design 2D, 3D, and sound libraries, and then write drivers for each popular hardware device. And then make it easy to switch to a useful OS once I'm done gaming. I'll be over here making games on a platform that already has all that.
Re:Interesting (Score:2, Insightful)
Round and round we go.
Re:Woo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Um how about not? (Score:1, Insightful)
Besides, SDL already is a unified library. You get 2D graphics, input devices, timing, audio, etc. It provides 3D graphics via, guess what, OpenGL. And we know it works, since it was used for the Linux port of Civilization: Call to Power.
Okay, if that's what you want... (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay then... I'll just take OpenGL, SDL, and ALSA, put them in one Debian meta-package, call it Universal Games API or "blah" or whatever makes you happy, and there you go.
SDL, OpenGL, ALSA all solve one problem well. They also work together well. Writing OpenGL apps using SDL is simple.
I'm not really sure what you want or why you want it. Yes, all of these libraries are "UNIX philosophy". That means that not only do they do one thing well, they are designed to be easy to make work with other programs that do other things, so you can easily get one program that does both.
What more do you want?
Lots of games (Score:2, Insightful)
I've got Quake 3, UT 2k4, and Americas Army all sitting on my computer right now. Things are getting there, it just takes time.
Re:Games Based Distro (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why I don't run Linux (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm certain that there was a learning curve, and for some of the higher end NLE's, it's pretty damn steep, and for me, "too much work." But then again, I've used Linux for a long damn time, and *to me* it's actually easier to set up a wireless card under Linux than a Mac(*). So, in the end, what "too much work" means is different for us; just because you are used to one way doesn't mean that different == useless.
And if you can afford 10k$ + 1.5k$ a year for Shake, give the Linux geek down the street a couple of hundred bucks to set up your cluster
(*) Granted it was a Proxim Skyline w/ crappy drivers.
Re:What planet is this guy from? (Score:1, Insightful)
*pulls numbers from ass*
80% of all game projects on Sourceforge are exactly as described.
80% of those projects are just someone's idea for doing a previously existing game slightly differently with their cool new twist.
80% of these projects will never have any code because...
80% of programmers don't want to waste their time on a project that is 99.44% unoriginal and has 0% of the coding in place and is the brainchild of someone who is 100% inexperienced with design and management and is 100% certain to come up with "improvements" everytime 1% of the project is completed.
Re:Games Based Distro (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody have any Loki games that still work ? I don't !
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
I think there're a couple of games that need to be playable on Linux - UT, Half Life, C&C, Max Payne...
The "classics," basically. If you're a die hard fan of Billy Bob's pro Stamp Collector, then I doubt you will convert to Linux, but there're certain games that would get people thinking - when coupled with a few new games released for Linux.
It may be possible to boost confidence by getting programmers to port games to Linux as quickly as possible, releasing the ports as near to the release date of the Windows version as possible. This would then convince people that new games are coming out for linux, hopefully converting some, meaning that the professional developers would consider releasing a linux version as well, not just 3rd party programmers.
Personally, I'd be happy on Linux with UT, Hitman 2, and the promise of Thief 3 and Half Life 2.
SDL (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Didn't work for OS/2 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a man who has really thought this one out.
We need some "killer'"games on the CD.
We need the source for the games on that CD.
We need that CD in places like Electronics Boutique and GAME.
We need kids able to pick up that CD (or DVD, with respect to another learned friend posting here) and turn their PC into a games console, without ruining Mum's or Dad's official documents.
Ok, to sell this as a platform, you have to add the words "exclusive" after the word "killer." Otherwise, you just have a platform that can play the games that are already available on Windows, and there is no incentive to switch. But making a "killer" exclusive game requires more than just 80 hour weeks and a 10 million dollar budget: it requires both of those things many times over to create a single "successful" title. A "killer" title might require 30 or 40 fully-funded projects that reach the store. If effort was enough, we would have 100 "killer" titles every year.
Good luck with source. If you though cheating in online games was rampant before...
Besides, most videogames don't lend themselves very well to open sourcing. The industry just moves too rapidly, and games aren't something you're going to improve because you use it every day. There is, of course, NetHack and other Open Source games that do incredible things. But let's be real here, would you buy a box with NetHack on the cover if it was sitting next to a box of Doom 3?
Getting on the shelf in E.B. is not that difficult once you have actual street cred and some cash to back it up. E.B. loves cash. But as this seems to be lacking a business model (or, for that matter, a plan), I don't know where they would get either.
As for transitioning to consoles... That doesn't make any sense. If the Phantom and ApeXtreme are such bad ideas, why would a Linux based ApeXtreme be any better? Why do you need a console when you can have a computer with TV out and hit the mass market? Or, conversely, why would the average person want to run Linux on the PS2?
He fails to mention that the CD would need to be bootable, ALA Knoppix, or else the formatting process would "ruin Mum's or Dad's official documents." Because, as we all know, official documents require Rockin' graphics cards left in public spaces or they get lonely. Likewise, you will need to be able to install to disk, like Knoppix, or else there can be no platform transition. You need to support a large amount of hardware, like Knoppix, and have a lot of available games, like Knoppix. Oh, and you want it based upon the most solid binary distro available with the clearest licensing, like Knoppix. Are you seeing where I'm going with this?
No. What he really should be doing is going to game development companies and pushing the idea of entirely self-contained games running on Linux. It would be significantly harder to cheat in a MMPORPG game if it ran as its own OS, booting without a HDD, and then you could offload the action processing to the individual clients without fear of modification. Lag would be a thing of the past, and MMP twitch games could be released. Ask for a hash key of random length of the CD every now and then, and you would have a very tough nut to crack. And if people did crack it by learning to hack through Linux, all the better for the platform. He could also push Linux to Sony and Nintendo as a way to quickly create a solid development system for next-gen gaming. Unlike Windows, Linux's multiprocessor kung-fu is superior, and would probably like the Ps3's 18 processor architecture in a way that nobody else would. It might even make it a bearable system to work on.
In short, this guy doesn't have a firm grasp on the industry. It would be great to push Linux to the people who control the standards, but pushing the OS without codifying it into the gaming ecosystem somehow is suicide. At least Sisyphus got near the top of the hill before the boulder rolled back down.
I Disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
Friend of mine recently decided he wanted to fiddle 'round with Linux. First thing he tried to do was Debian. After futzing around trying to get X working for about a week he gave up and wandered off.
He came back with RedHat 9 which did do a pretty good job of getting X working, but it was godawful slow. I suspected he needed the latest nvidia driver off their web site. He wandered off to get that, then wandered into the twisty maze of package dependencies he needed to get it working. RedHat could take some pointers from Debian in the package dependency arena (That's why I kicked them to the curb last time I used the distro.)
My friend wanted to be able to play assorted video in Linux too. Pretty sensible. So he started looking into mplayer. Now, I know there are a lot of legal issues surrounding mplayer, but it's kind of difficult to explain those issues to someone who's used to just having the ability to do all that stuff in Windows. He wants to just install the package and have it work. He doesn't want to have to locate DLLs in 18 different countries and compile code that may technically be illegal here in the States to get it working.
So there's step 1. If I can slap a Linux bootable CD into pretty much any system and have it boot reliably, detect all my hardware reliably, and provide accelerated 3D and play video without me having to compile a kernel I will consider step 1 a success.
Step 2 is providing the libraries necessary to write the software for Linux. Look at all the major consoles and Windows itself and what do you see? Those corporations sell a SDK to people who want to develop software on their platform. Do the software libraries that are available for Linux compare favorably to the ones for the other platforms? I'm pretty happy with the Linux application libraries, but games have specialized needs.
If you provide those two things, you've got the beginnings of a cross-platform gaming environment that a lot of gaming companies should find very interesting.
Game disk (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux is free. It can be included on a bootable disk with your game. So while hardware remains an unkown, at least your game can run on a known kernel, known libraries, optimised X server etc. Swap space (if needed) can be automatically found in Linux partitions or Windows swap files.
Managing players' saved data is the biggest problem here. A nice solution might be to save it over the internet to central servers. Now they can load their saved games from anywhere, and play on any PC.
Of course the hardware detection would have to work more flawlessly than Knoppix, not an easy task. This method of distribution would not suit all games.
Re:Woo (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah. (Score:1, Insightful)
Got them a Compaq a few christmai back. At first grampa wanted little to do with it; his Osborn (with manuals) being dubiously collectable and highly unused. Grandma was finding her typewriter and copier less than satisfactory in her pursuits of local history and geneology. Now they're installing all kinds of crap. My grandpa even put his own RAM in himself, with me a thousand miles away just encouraging him off-site. They've got a scanner, which she uses to do OCR. Have they had problems with worms? No. Sure maybe they haven't got the CD writer figured out quite yet. But hey, you should see fight with redhat over my soundcard, or my random mozilla crashes. Somehow I don't see grampa rolling his own KDE 3.2 and installing a multi-user mozilla 1.6 anytime soon.
Can they do everything I can? No. Can they figure out how to do everything they've wanted to? Yes. And they manage that with very little help from me.
Maybe if you spent less time channeling Nick Burns your family would surprise you.
I really like this idea with a few exceptions... (Score:2, Insightful)
also a lack of support for winmodems, a lot of on-line games still use modems, and converting to linux would require a new modem or some other on-line access.
On the whole, Like most of the commenters here, I would switch to linux if I could have my games as well. Hell, if the BF1942 series went to linux I would switch! odd that they have linux servers but not clients, i guess its all abotu directx..
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
If you were disappointed with the 'Linux' version, most likely you were disappointed with the game in general...
Re:Interesting (Score:2, Insightful)
I remember when floppy disks were $50 for a box of ten (5.25"). I watched the price drop as the volume of sales went up, and I knew for sure what was being stored on them, because I was one of the people buying them (along with everyone I knew). Same applies to CD-R blanks and burners, larger hard drives, more RAM, better video cards, faster processors, etc - but also the OS platform to use it all. People often wonder why the computer market grew if all people wanted was a machine fast enough to run a word processor (however bloated). Here's your answer - that isn't what they were doing with their time.
People take OSes for granted as a way to play all the free games they share. Historically "free" has meant "pirated", but Linux presents other possibilities. A few open-source engines and quality user-supplied mods could create a fertile gaming community - people have amply demonstrated that given the tools, they'll develop these for free. Once that market is established, commercial developers will begin to move in too. They may pursue more typical proprietary models in which case their work will be widely copied without licence, but they'll still make money, as piracy is largely just free marketing rather than representing much actual lost sales.
So the way out of the catch-22 in the past has been to end-around "not enough people willing to pay for games" by turning a blind eye to free copying and allowing piracy to develop the market. In the future, Linux may be able to do the same thing with free copying that really is FREE.
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
You just need to get out of the "if you want something, compile it yourself" mentality. I am a software developer myself, but I hate downloading source code that I have no interest in reading. I hate looking for Mandrake RPM's on the net, too. I hate when RPM's require other RPM's. I just wanna be able to download whatever binary and run it as soon as the download finishes. And no, I don't even wanna know about apt-get, rpm, or whatever else is the proper tool.
Just like it's in the Windows world, when I click on an application's Setup.exe, it should just install. I don't care if you'll have to statically link everything, or implement another scheme.
In the OSS world, the itch that gets scratched is the one that the developer has. This is the itch that belongs to people who either don't have the time or the talent to solve it.
Re:Key (Score:3, Insightful)
[...]
c) usability DOES factor in, but the average person just needs a Lindows-like PC.. email,. web, office app, and oh yeah support for USB cameras and pen drives. Linux does that with great ease of use.
On RedHat 9, you have to manually load a kernel module to make Linux recognize when a digital camera (or other usb hard drive device) has been plugged in. I had to google for the answer, and then go to the command line and load the module. That is not user-friendly.
Re:Woo (Score:5, Insightful)
they suck.
I'm sorry, but a million clones of warcraft II and Quake 1 does not a gaming environment make. Still, there are Tux games that have real futures. I'm a windoze user and I can think of a few free software games that I play incessantly. Now, as I understand it, Tux Racer is not multiplayer. At this point, I stop giving a shit. There are some good ones like Cube and Armagetron, but even they are only skeletons of games - they have the minimum "get online and play" gameplay, and graphics that would be current for 1997. Still, I love them to death and have sunk countles hours into Cube (wouter.fov120.com).
The fact is that there is not a complete free software offering to counter the Quake and Unreal engines. Yes, crystalspace is nice, but it just doesn't have the complete feature-set and complete game to build a model of a full game onto.
Think about this - all of the retail engines have heaps upon heaps of mods that a) completely replace all of the in-game media and b) replace tons of code. Linux does not have a similar free alternative to these frameworks. As such, people that would like to develop for a free platform are instead relegated to retail world, and games that could become the basis for a free software community stay fringe.
Look at the best offerings of the free software community for gaming engines - CrystalSpace and various flavours of the Quake 1 and 2 engines - tell me that they really come close to the Unreal or Quake 3 engines, much less the current generation.
now, one thing I can't help but notice - free software games do not seem to be aware that I own a joystick, much less many joysticks. People who talk about "linux as a console" seem to neglect this little detail. I have a windows 98 box and an old gravis multiport wired to my TV set, and I have a handful of games that I play on that. The PC selection for games that support multiple joysticks for multiple players on a single screen is damn small, and all of them are DirectX-based games (blaster disaster rulz). None of the SDL-based offerings have shown me anything in that department.
Take the Quake II engine, give it a non-shitty modeling system, some physics, and some real shader support and convert it over to a Python or some other script-based framework so people can develop for it easily. Then re-implement a basic online CTF+DM game for people to start their work from. Then, maybe, Linux games will be able to compete. I haven't seen anyone succeeding at that. Even Doom engine ports are still painfully primitive in terms of script support and other features you'd expect them to get after so long.
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
Or does it just come with every single dependency that it could ever possibly need and "dump" it all into a single directory? Suddenly a 500mb game becomes a 1000mb game and we run into issues of bloatware that plague other operating systems.
Either way you look at it, you're either going to run into dependency hell or bloatware until you create a standardized distro.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Half the time when you download some simple program you end up needing a dozen other libraries for it to run. Why the hell don't people staticly link this stuff? The APIs for many libraries are so unstable that the idea of "What if I wanna update libBlah later on?" doesn't work and it's not all that important that save on transit or hard drive space any more.
I write quite a few free programs, and I always staticly link them with everything they need. It might mean downloading an extra few hundred KB, or even a few MB but in the end the user is not put out of the way and it "just works". As the developer of the program I know what version of what my program needs, and I am more qualified than any one else to determine that. It should be my responsibility that my program includes it.
Why I don't even try to play games on Linux (Score:3, Insightful)
On Windows I only use CloneCD and Daemon-Tools (cd cloner and virtual CD driver respectively). Note that I don't pirate software, I just hate going through the pain of swapping CDs all the time. (I started this stuff after buying my third copy of AOE2 because the discs got scratched and couldn't be used).
However Linux doesn't have virtualised CDs (loop mounting an ISO only works for disks that aren't fair use prevented^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H copy protected. If I am not prepared to play stupid CD swapping games on Windows, I sure as hell ain't going to do it on Linux. I am aware of cdemu.sf.net but it doesn't support much (yet).
The next step is assuming that the games will even run ...
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Because I seem to remember the days of the Commordore 64, the Apple ][ and the PC Jr, when EVERY game was on a bootable disk.
And I remember being very happy when DOS reared its mighty head, and I no longer had to reboot my machine to start a new program.
Why should we take a step back in time JUST so developers can have a Linux based platform when they already have a ubiquitous development environment in the Windows PC?
Re:Interesting (Score:2, Insightful)
Having said that, it's my understanding that games like Unreal Tournament or Enemy Territory install fairly easily under linux because the only libraries they need to access are fairly standardized - X, GLX, OSS, tcp/ip support. The game installer doesn't actually resolve these dependancies itself. It just assumes that the user has a working system with graphics, sound, and network support. Enemy Territory is a modest download, considering all of the maps, graphics, and sounds that are packed into it's 258 megs.
By having minimilistic dependancies, it avoids the situation you're describing. I think many of us would agree that commercial games install on linux fairly easily, even though they're not made for any specific distribution.
Some code bloat can't be avoided, but considering the size of all the data shipped with a game, the executable size is trivial either way.
that game is fun (Score:2, Insightful)
And for the rest I'd say: games are the driving factor for a rather big part of the geek community and one of the things my friends and I still keep using Windows. Configuration here and there, using console - I don't mind. If and only if there is something to gain from these excursions through the software setup. Setup alsa takes 3 hours? No problem, if there is a kind of goal at the end: giving the finger to Bill Gates *and* be able to play some killer games.
Games are the bridge between serious geeks and the average computer-using person. Most other "home" tasks are pretty easy to do on either Windows or Linux systems, except maybe for using firewire-devices. But the games are the turning point. Hardware manufactures have realised this for years, beginning with the Origin *Commander series and continuing with the FPS genre...
Static is not a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Another aspect to consider is system security. If every app on a linux system came with static libraries, then you have multiple libraries scattered all over the drive. Will all those application authors update their program to include library updates? What if a nasty buffer overflow turns up in libBlah...do you want to leave all the dependent programs around for crackers to stumble upon?
I am not saying that the convenience factor is not important; rather I think that an altogether different approach is needed, one that tackles the problem at a different level. Development on ports systems (Gentoo) is one interesting direction, autopackage another. Better that than applying static libraries to a problem they were never designed to fix.
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What killed the Amiga... (Score:3, Insightful)
My 2 Cents (Score:1, Insightful)
But, from what I can tell, the average user (read: practically anyone who doesn't know what slashdot is) really wants a few things:
Re:Woo (Score:4, Insightful)
www.moddb.com will blow your mind with the amount of projects under way - most die early, but alarmingly many run to completion making a full game from nothing but an FPS codebase, replacing all other content and adding all relevant code. If ever there was a community that _needed_ to harvest this power, it was OS.
We need an OS answer to Half-Life. Not interms of plot or gameplay, but interms of the mod community around it. Then you'd have enough games on Linux that no-one would ever complain about Linux not being a game platform.
Re:Woo (Score:2, Insightful)
There is a solution - you need to have an engine for as many genres as possible, and you need to have major features of those engines be easy to change. You also need to make adding/replacing content easy; WarCraft III, by virtue of its design, is fairly easy to modify (content-wise), but it could be easier. A very important thing to do is make Blizzard-quality map editors, with as much power as possible - although you might want to include differing display types, with varying levels of detailed options.
On the topic of engines, you'll want to include a powerful language to change aspects of the game like items/weapons (FPS), spells/abilities (RTS, RPG) and such. Ideally, you would be able to tie this to the editor; for instance, you could define a function in the language (let's say "freezing"), and then use the editor to assign that effect to one or more weapons. In WarCraft III modding, the most difficult part is making new unit abilities, and a careful design can eliminate that difficulty.
You definitely want the big companies to port to Linux. Gamers don't think "I wanna play an RTS", they think "I wanna play StarCraft". I guarantee you, if you make an RTS engine, eventually you will have a group of people trying to make StarCraft. While the open-source community strengthens their offerings (which will take a while. Mods take a long time to make), big names like Half-Life and WarCraft will attract new users. Let them get acquainted with Linux.
There's also one extremely important factor in building a mod community: You need tools to make content. GIMP already covers Photoshop, but there's more to games than textures. You'll need a 3D model-making progam a la 3DS Max, and a good sound manipulation program (I don't do sounds, so I wouldn't know about that). All you need is to make them work for a few different games - at least a few of the modders will also be coders, and therefore could help improve the programs they use.
The last responsibility lies on the game companies. If they port their games to Linux, and someone makes a mod for the Linux version, it will have to work for the Windows version. There will always be a large number of gamers using Windows, and being able to capture them will be important to would-be modders.
Static *and* dynamic is best (Score:4, Insightful)
"What about security? What about performance?"
The app should be designed to give the end user a choice: Do you want to use a dynamicly linked library? Fine -- tell us where it's located and we'll ignore the stuff we thoughtfully bundled for you. Do you just want the damn thing to work? Yes? Fine -- you don't need to do anything further, and we'll just use the bundled libraries.
"What about disk space?"
Given the benefits of software that just works, a few extra MBs of space is not even worth wasting brain cycles on. For those that feel otherwise, I suggest they figure out a way for apps to be packaged such that undesired bundled libraries could be easily jettisoned.
This isn't La-La Land that we're talking about here -- just look at Mac OS X. Most applications there aren't even "installed" in the *nix/Windows sense of the word; the end user downloads the package and drags the application icon into the Applications folder. Done. Any dependencies are contained within the
If application developers would all agree to do this, the world would be a much better place.
Re:Woo (Score:3, Insightful)
But more importantly, none of the game companies that make the games I like are 1/10th as evil as Microsoft, nor are they convicted monopolists. Proprietary software in a competitive market is not nearly so bad as stagnant monopoly-ware, and since games are fun but not really important I don't judge their freedom to be nearly so critical as that of office suites and C libraries.
Re:Woo (Score:2, Insightful)
could people please stop treating multiplayer like the second coming? unless it can put me against pitiful opponents that don't care that (ie, in startcraft) cruisers are a waste of resources and easily countered, because i don't want to know the hotkeys of every RTS game that i come across.
For me, MP is a non-issue to: i don't care for it, i much prefer time invested in a good story.