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The future of Linux


pbpersson
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Guest troubledmdkuser
devries, thanks a million for cleaning this thread up.

 

Everybody, can we keep this ON TOPIC please?

 

 

Steve, I agree and disagree.

 

The points you mention are good for those who _care_ about running Linux, and only Linux, and games.

 

_I_ don't care much about games. I have had Railroad Tycoon Gold for Linux on my shelves for ages, still haven't ever even installed it.

Did install and play Majesty, my wife still plays it now and then too. And it makes for a nice section in my reviews, showing off that there is no Linux forking.

 

On the other hand, there are people who just want to play cool games, the hot ones right from the cd presses.

 

Those people are not going to hold off. And asking them to hold off is a waste of breath/bandwidth, IMHO.

 

But you're right, the Catch 22 I mentioned is not really that strongly a true Catch 22 - there is a way out, namely not buying MSWin games, but spending money on Linux games. If there is a considerable market, there will be more game houses porting/making games. Simple economics.

 

BTW read also this:

http://games.slashdot.org/games/05/02/04/1...tid=206&tid=106

and the linked article:

http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?opti...id=984&Itemid=0

 

 

I don't believe that sending email and nagging about Linux ports will really help much - I would guess they treat that kind of email the same as spam.

 

BTW another good way to make Linux games more popular could be if you play lan/inet games of a type that exists for Linux. There will be some games to pick from, and if one of those is available for Win and Lin, and others only Win, the one that is available for Lin too gets the vote.

This implies that you are part of a group that actually has playing together at a higher priority than playing a particular game.

Not that I believe that this works for most people though....

 

 

In any case: those who want to stop dual-booting and those who just have Linux, should be pointed out that there are some Linux games of high quality, both FLOSS and proprietary.

If they care about high quality proprietary games, they should go out and buy Linux games.

 

That is all there is to it. If someone wants Splinter Cell, I'm not going to start on Frozen-Bubble. Get an XBox or

 

BTW I wonder how much of a problem many of those Linux?-not-in-a-million-years gamers would have with Linux if they couldn't copy/pirate MSWin games so easily...

 

 

Is this board affiliated with #MUSB ?

 

 

 

Seems odd...... :oops:

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Hi,

 

On the future of linux, it will be very intresting to see what direction it takes. There are all sorts of things going on - some positive, such as lots of distros and activity and some negative such as some countries signing into restrictive laws.

 

Me personnaly, I quite like linux. I have been using Mandrake linux since 9.0 when I used to dual-boot it with windows. Once I upgraded (and all my hadware was supported) in 9.1, windows was removed permanently. Once I decided to not install windows, I also decided never to install it again. Today, I simply do not want to use windows, in fact I really don't have much intrest in windows at all. Maybe that's the easiest way to defeat microsoft: to ignore them? :)

 

Right now I'm using Mandrake 10.0 official which works just fine with me -- only a small amount of hardware that I own won't work (such the video capture side of the matrox G400TV video card which is *very* complex to get to work unless you are running a 2.4 kernel; to date I've never got it to work with a 2.6 one). However there are some things linux lacks.

 

By and large there are two things linux lacks -- music/video software and games.

 

There is a distinct lack of either music/audio or video software to run under linux. Most apps are still quite simple (e.g. audacity) or only "mid-range" (e.g. ardour). To date, there isn't any high-end linux audio/music software avaliable. I have a friend who right now is trying to put together a PC as he is a musician; the software which I forget the name of now :( costs thousands of dollars --- one component of it is MIDI, but it is not the normal midi quality most are used to; in this software (which is windows only) evey note of each instrument has been sampled, for example. Also the software includes special composition/editing software too. This sort of thing just dosen't exist in linux and would not work under wine or would be too slow with an emulator (e.g. qemu). My friend says he would love to get away from the windows world, but that he is tied by these problems.

 

Video editing is a problem too -- drivers can be a problem (such as the G400TV I mentioned earlier) and some of the software dosen't exist yet either. Programs such as kdenlive are really only just starting out; Mainactor (though it's propietary) is expensive and won't open many video formats. Finally there is cinelerra, which is certianly an impressive job, but the GUI is non-intuitive, making it hard to learn. Having said that what there is (e.g. command line programs) such as mencoder even though the command line options are hard to learn actually do a very good job. On the system I am using now (which is an ancient athlon 700) at best I was, while doing video capture with a bt848 card would only manage anything under 320x200, and even then it was jerky. Mencoder not only encodes with modern codecs, but on this system is good to 512x384, no jerkiness or framedropping.

 

I think though one thing that would help out - at least a little - would be to sort out the RPM/software install problems. RPMs are one of those things that are great when they work, but when they don't they are a nightmare. How many times have you thought "I'd like to download that program", you download it as an RPM, but find it requires another RPM, which needs another, and another? Or worse: you download a program as an RPM which complains that it depends on another, but you download the other RPM and it depends on the first! So how could you have ever installed it?!

 

Urpmi is not an answer too I think unless it is better managed. I have used urpmi, but almost always find either the urpmi sites don't have the software in their archives - or if they do, it is some ancient version many versions down the line. Also sometimes urpmi will get things wrong too and complain it cannot do one thing or another :( .

 

I find linux games to be the worst on this count too. To date (apart from drivers) linux games are some of the hardest to install programs on linux. Confusion about what 3d driver you need, rendering engine, will it work on X or only from a console, compiling errors, unknown libraries you need, etc. How many of us have seen a linux 3D game only to download it and find it requires a whole raft of missing libraries - half of which when you do a search on you can't find and even when you do get them all sorted it won't run because you have to edit a 5 page configuration file - either that or it just crashes :( . I have tried to install some 3D linux games in the past, and to date not one of them worked and were hard to install. All most windows users have to do is to drop in a cd and click "next" a few times.

 

Programs such as wine or qemu might be an answer I guess for a few - but it is a very tiny few! For example, my younger brother says he can't switch to linux because there is absolutely no way he can run windows games on linux. Unfortunatly it's true too -- neither wine nor winex are capable of running that much unfortunatly, and qemu is just too slow. You can run some games, but you're never going to get full performance. Neither wine/winex or qemu can run the latest games adequately; in fact they barely run older windows games properly :( .

 

Games then might be at least one key to linux's future. Games have often sold a computer - it's happened in the past. For example if I go into a car-boot sale (I am in the UK) I can still find several old Amiga 500s with mountains of floppy disks - all containing games all starting from almost 20 years ago -- a testiment to how popular the amiga was once because of the sheer amount of games for it. Though I'd be wrong to say games were the be-all and end-all of success.

 

One reason why microsoft windows has got where it has isn't because it is any good(!) it's also down to a lot of other things such as accidents in (recent computer) history and the fact MS realised that a little bit of piracy = free advertising (ever wondered why win9x CDs aren't copy protected, or why it was so easy to just DISKCOPY A: A: win3.11)?.

 

And then finally there is 3D (again). Noone really knows precisely what will be in the next version of windows (though I've heard rumors that it might use some 3d). But could this be bad news for windows - not neccerially microsoft using 3d in their oses, but a whole combination of things: propietary drivers, hard to install 3d in linux, companies not wanting to/ignoring linux or locked into microsoft. Could linux miss the 3D boat? :(

 

I hope linux has a good future :) !!!

 

ljones

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Hello to the new board members.

 

ljones, good very first post!

It's nice to see _on topic_ contributions here... :P

 

Anyway, yes, you are right: for professionals, in terms of video and audio editing, there is not enough in Linux. Some would go as far as to say that even for photography there is not enough, since there is no PhotoShop.

 

The point is, pro users know which program they need, and based on that they choose their platform. Some will get a Mac, others a Win pc.

 

But this doesn't mean much. At work I just got a Linux workstation. It's not even a truely fast pc (P4 3GHz, 2GB RAM), but it's faster than any of the very expensive HP servers we have, as long as the job fits into the RAM memory. If it doesn't, there are Opteron Linux servers that also run circles around the HP machines.

So here's the point: the software we use (very professional I might say, all license cost totalled and divided over all designers leads to around 50K US$ - you can see that the license cost of MSWin/Office or RH is nothing around here) does _not_ run on MSWin.

So? So what?

Exactly my point.

And for these niche users/markets, it doesn't matter much that Linux doesn't serve them. Games have a much larger impact, everyone wants to know that they are not limiting themselves too much. With MSWin you just keep your options open.

 

On the other hand, Linux is quite ready to use for most tasks, even (simple) audio editing and video editing (you mentioned kdenlive, whatabout kino?), and dvd authoring - today still a bit hard, but I've seen some nice results from a colleague of mine, quite a few things there that you can't (or at least, not easily) do with the software for Win that he compared with (which I think he got with the camera).

 

 

On urpmi: you seem not to be using it as it's meant to be used. No offence, and I may be misunderstanding you, but here's what I can tell you.

1) normally you don't have to download an RPM. If anything is remotely interesting, it will be in 'contrib' or 'plf' - if it's very interesting, it will be in 'main'. Just a matter of configuring urpmi properly (see this board or my site for more info).

2) if you download an rpm that is properly made, you should be able to do

urpmi [downloaded rpm]

and urpmi should solve all dependencies for you. This works fine, even if the package is not built for Mandrakelinux (suse, fc packages). But frankly, see point 1.

3) if urpmi finds a circular dependency on 2 packages you download, you tell it to install both:

urpmi [package 1 with deps on package 2] [package 2 with deps on package 1]

and it's solved. No big deal.

 

I must admit you're not the first with this kind of problem, and I have not seen this, so I just can't know for sure.

Maybe you did find some game/program that's really great and that was not in the repositories but there was an rpm (for which distro?) available that gave you a headache even though you did everything correctly. But from some of the remarks you made about urpmi I conclude that in any case you don't know all the ways in which to use it (yet)....

So your problems may fall into the 'user error' category.

 

 

Games: you should not have to compile them yourself, and getting the graphics to work fine is a matter of hardware setup - with nvidia (the only graphics hardware that works nicely with linux), it's not hard to do, and if you buy any kind of linux, this config will be done at install time. Either you spend the money or you put in the effort.

Anyway, any interesting open source game should be available as RPM via the urpmi repositories.

Makes it easiest to install them.

 

You say that for windows it's easier, people can just click and install them. But for games that are in development, they can't even compile those - MSWin doesn't have a development system integrated.

For games that are not in development, there should be an rpm within the distribution, and if there isn't, there should be an rpm that is general enough to be used with urpmi as in 1) above.

 

 

I cannot say that I have seen the issues you mention about 3d games. Config files and the like? The only thing I can imagine is /etc/X11/Xorg.conf (or its predecessor XF86Config-4 )

Maybe I'm not trying to run the same games? If you have some examples, I can have a look.

 

 

In any case, your email did get me to think about some issues around Linux:

some things are not as easy as can be imagined: how to handle proprietary drivers, install certain software, etcetc.

With other systems they aren't either though, think of registry issues on MSWin.

 

But those things will be improved on within Linux.

 

I see the big issues in preloaded Linux machines and PR, mostly...

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No doubt there are things that need to be improved on within Linux, but alot of the gripes are about hardware, games, other software. It does no good to sit around bitching about it and not emailing the hardware manufacturers or software distributors with the excuse of "they'll never read the email". Well, they certainly won't read it if you don't send it. As aRTee said, it's simple economics...if there is no demand, there is no product. Get out there and demand.

Who's gonna do something about the future of Linux?

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Who's gonna do something about the future of Linux?

 

We all are. Some of us just disagree where to start.... :)

 

 

But sure, you're right in that if you voice your wishes, the chances they will come true are not slimmer than if you don't voice them.

 

I don't believe in emailing software manufacturers so much, but sure, go ahead...

 

As for emailing hardware manufacturers, I have repeatedly communicated with them about Linux compatible devices, either to thank them (epson in my case), got a very nice reply, or to inform them about linux compatibility (Hama USB 2 cardreader), which lead to a nice discussion with their rep, who was interested in hearing my point of view.

Oh, just remember, I have also emailed canon when I bought my epson scanner to tell them I just went for the competitors product, motivated by clear Linux compatibility and support (epson even has it's own GUI for scanning under Linux). They never replied, but surely they got the message.

I think that would help, then they see a lost sale.

 

The problem with game houses is that Linux users have no habit of paying for software, or at least they are in the books like that.

 

Maybe you can do the same: buy a Linux native game of a certain class, say DoomIII and then email the software houses that make competing games and tell them you (and your friends!) chose DoomIII for the game itself but also for the availability of the Linux version.

 

 

Anyway, many users already have the windows version of a certain game, and if it would be released for Linux, they would likely just pirate it, saying: I already paid my license. No extra sales made to those people...

 

 

About getting out there and demand - would it be an idea to have sort of presales for some game, taking only creditcard info, and then saying: "as soon as the game is there, we can sell this many".

Then get them to put in the effort to port the game, or collaborate with LGP or so.

 

If there's money to be had, nothing is impossible. Green paper is the bottomline.

I wonder how much money people would actually be able to get together.

 

 

Lastly, I just made this one up:

Linux isn't about the desires of the users. It's about the needs.

 

 

Think about it: it would be nice to have lots of things. But anything that users/developers really need will be there. This includes semi pro audio and video editing, not necessarily the really high end stuff (yet).

Anything that would be nice to have is just lower on the list.

 

Besides, there's just not enough money going around in Linux for the home desktop yet.... in some parts of the world people cannot even watch a dvd legally on Linux (save for using the lindows dvd plugin).

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Thank you aTree, for that! I guess I might be using or viewing urpmi in the wrong way. I always treated it as a program to simply download RPMs(!). On kino, I completely forgot about it !!

 

On the linux games, I can't name a specific game off the top of my head, but I can name a website: I was thinking of http://www.happypenguin.org/ . What I was meaning was not just the actual config. of linux for 3D it was the configuration of the games themselves which can be a nightmare.

 

Anyway I am getting OT here (sorry) x.x; Back to the future of linux (is there a film somewhere that line? hehe!).

 

I'm not sure that the old line "Nobody knows about linux" is completely true any more. It probably is for Mr and Mrs Joe Bloggs who have the family PC in their living room which the two kids play on - but for at least some online I think they are well aware of linux. By and large they're tied to windows as my friends are -- to date, I have only managed to get one person to at least stick with linux and give it a go (I forget exactly what they were trying to do though!). Most though ask "Can I run x program or game on linux", and when I say "no, not directly" they turn right off :( . Helping the future of linux is breaking that, but without the software it's going to be a very tough fight.

 

Some of the things linux will need for the (short-term) future are just smaller minor things. For example I'm using mandrake 10 here and it is very good at messing up the mounting of CDs and even floppy drives. I can quite quickly mess up mandrake's system by not closing an open cdrom file window, ejecting the cd and putting in another one. That just shouldn't happen -- there should be no need for me to go to a command line, log in as root and type "lsof | grep cdrom". It can be very frustrating to have this happen!

 

Another thing that might be useful to have on a future linux is more GUI tools to aide text-file configuration. Unless something exists already(!) it would be useful to have something to ease the editing of xf86-config's, /etc/fstab's and soforth.

 

Long term though we are looking at things such as 3D desktops (maybe even one day VR?) and better software and drivers. How well that comes to pass is dependent on the willingness of hardware manufacturers though, and not having microsoft hanging around our necks like a 10-ton lead weight :( .

 

How well linux does in the future though will be intresting to see -- how well will linux stand up against such laws as trusted computing and other over-restricted laws. I just hope linux comes through :) .

 

ljones

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How well linux does in the future though will be intresting to see -- how well will linux stand up against such laws as trusted computing and other over-restricted laws. I just hope linux comes through

 

The computer has always been about the motto:

"I can do that with my computer"

 

Now with things like TCPA and DRM, the motto would be:

"I cannot do that with my computer"

 

Of course the industry players try to make it sound less

ominous by technical mumbo-jumbo, vague reassurations

and reassuring names like 'Plays for Sure' *cough*

(which should be: "plays only when WE allow it to").

 

Computer users would be quickly informed by what you CAN

do by their peers running something else. This is already happening

with Firefox. I recently switched over 2 collegues of mine because

of the extra features. But also, because of the overly restrictive

web profiles, a lot of useful sites the employees surf to are inaccessible

through Internet Explorer. While this is a 'feature' for the IT people probably,

it is a burden on the actual USERS of the PC environment. When I said that

with Firefox I don't have these problems, one immediately asked me to install

it for them (the other collegue asked me to install it 2 months ago when she

realized the technical merits). Another example in case is Limewire... lots of people

are installing it because Kazaa in its current form is not useful anymore. Word

gets around about these pieces of software. OpenOffice, I think, is slower on the

uptake, since there aren't THAT many more things you can do with it that MS Office

cannot. BUT only for things like 'export to PDF', 'Export to Flash', ... etc. people

would consider switching -or using it alongside MS Office.

 

When realizing the options, customers will always choose the product that gives

you the most possibilities, freedom and features (if they are useful). My dad loves

ripping his CD collection, making his own playlist and burning that on a CD to listen

to in the car. You really think he'll give that up just because M$ tells him to? No, instead

he'll turn to something that CAN do that. In this case, he'll probably even allow me to

install a Linux/WinXP dual-boot just so he can perform this task! In this case, ease-of-use

is not that important anymore and he will even be willing to learn some new things. And

if I explain it well and make it easy for him to do with Linux what he used to do with Windows,

he'll be satisfied. Maybe he doesn't 100% understand what all of this has to do with freedom

and choice, but he sure as h*ll understands that if M$ makes it difficult or impossible for him

to perform an important (for him) task, that he'd better get over it and use something that won't

restrict him this much.

 

The real danger is, like you say, in overly ambitious and restrictive laws, which

often fail to take into account the issues like freedom, collaboration, fair use, ... .

 

Once the snowball gets rolling it will really GET to a point where it is near unstoppable.

At this point commercial entities will actually actively help overcoming these problems and

making Linux on the desktop a reality, since at this point there is money to be made for them. But when we get to this point, it is important to at least have some structures worked out so the system keeps running smoothly.

 

At this stage, however, M$ is still being considered by many as some kind of half-god company with divine powers... but under the right conditions, this climate can dissappear very soon!

 

As aRTee says, pre-loaded PC's, along with smart and proper marketing, is the way to go. This way we will be able to convert (or if it's their 1st OS: sign up) at least a percentage of users that will be high enough to make a difference. And at that stage, hopefully games will come as well.

 

Linux spreading the way Firefox is spreading now? It could happen! B)

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Just a quick reply:

 

again, those who don't find their software desires and needs fulfilled on Linux are not a target for migration.

If people are interested, first check the needs, and if satisfied, check the desires. If not satisfied, they may want to try dual booting - some people find out there are other things than what they wanted to do, like substitute games or so.

 

There are loads of people out there who don't care about games, video or audio editing etc. but who are fed up or downright incapable of keeping their machine clean and secure. If they are fed up, they will usually not be too upset during the initial Linux phases, if they are incapable, they will need help one way or another. If you can help them to get started, that's fine.

 

Gui tools for text file config:

- I don't think you should have to hand edit XF86Config / Xorg.conf - the distro should do this for you, or better: a preloaded box should have you not worry about any hardware config.

- /etc/fstab : use harddrake and other gui tools to get your partitions and shares in there.

 

I agree that there are things to be improved, but there are still lots of things that are good enough for a large part of the desktop users out there that are still on MSWin but who would find all their needs _and_ desires fulfilled with Linux. Maybe not a high number in percentage (10%? 20%?) but in absolute numbers and compared to the current number of Linux desktop users a very high number. Currently I guess there are 5% Linux desktop users, so about 20x as many MSWin users. Or less.

 

Linux will come through, if only because there are too many big corporations with a vested interest in Linux - IBM, Novell, HP, etc, but also all Streamium devices of Philips run Linux.

In the embedded market, Linux is really getting big - mobile phones etc. Linux is not there in terms of marketshare, but of projects in development Linux does have a large 'market'-share.

 

 

On happy penguin games - I have not had big issues to get those games with urpmi normally - but then again, I haven't tried so many...

And again, if you have trouble compiling, don't compare that to the MSWin easy of point and click - the Linux equivalent for that is urpmi, the MSWin equivalent of compiling is compiling, and I have yet to meet a regular MSWin user who could and would actually do that, even with instructions on what needs to be done. ./configure && make && make install is really a walk in the park compared to whatever is necessary on MSWin after a clean install...

 

 

BTW, it's aRTee, not aTree - I feel like your monkey (from your icon) is hanging on to me now.... :P

 

 

[edit]

of course, Darkelve's post wasn't there just now - this one is a reply to ljones

Edited by aRTee
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Darkelve, what's with the pyramid text? ;)

 

One thing on tcpa and drm and such:

 

people will not be confronted with machines in the shop that don't rip cds, check before playing back videos if the viewer has paid or whatever.

 

They will introduce it more gradually. IBM (of all corps) has been selling tcpa capable laptops for what, 3 years now?

 

They will introduce it gradually and slowly. Then all hardware will be tcpa capable.

 

MS has big interests that viruses and trojans stick around for a bit.

 

At some point, it will be adviced to enable tcpa, against all trojans, viruses and other malware.

This will create positive press - no more updating of virusscanners, great protection for the user, hooray.

At some point, those not using tcpa will be classified with the pirates and hackers/crackers (well, the word hackers gets abused for that anyway).

 

Then some law will pass that says all hardware must be tcpa capable, or you, as a manufacturer, will not be allowed to sell in the US. That's right, they will force vendors to make ALL relevant hardware that they sell ANYWHERE in the world tcpa capable.

 

Then, at some point, they will enforce the use of tcpa, without it you may not even be able to go on the internet.

 

Or at least, that's the dark plan.

 

In any case, they won't be so stupid to directly put tcpa machines against non tcpa machines in the shops:

"look, this one has no issues with viruses ever, but if you want to play any media, you do need an internet connection so it can check if you have purchased the right license. That one needs virus scanners and firewalls and updates, but you can do as you please..."

 

It will be like this:

"Look, these are essentially the same, but this one has one extra nifty feature, that allows you to forget about virus scanner updates and firewalls. You may have to switch that feature on and off, since it might conflict with some programs, so during that time, just sever your internet connection, no problem. Hey, never to worry about viruses anymore, wouldn't that be nice!"

 

 

So how to counter? Get Linux desktop user marketshare in the 10+ % worldwide, or at least in the rich countries.

 

We are working towards that.

 

Ps darkelve - about 2 more months or so... :)

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Here: http://www.againsttcpa.com/tcpa-faq-en.html

 

point 23, they dispute the fact that it would make it safer against viruses though:

 

23. But isn't PC security a good thing?

 

The question is: security for whom? You might prefer not to have to worry about viruses, but TC won't fix that: viruses exploit the way software applications (such as Microsoft Office and Outlook) use scripting. You might get annoyed by spam, but that won't get fixed either. (Microsoft claimed that it will be fixed, by filtering out all unsigned messages - but you can already configure mail clients to filter out mail from people you don't know and putting it in a folder you scan briefly once a day.) You might be worried about privacy, but TC won't fix that; almost all privacy violations result from the abuse of authorised access, and TC will increase the incentives for companies to collect and trade personal data on you. The medical insurance company that requires you to consent to your data being shared with your employer and with anyone else they can sell it to, isn't going to stop just because their PCs are now officially `secure'. On the contrary, they are likely to sell it even more widely once computers are called `trusted computers'. Economists call this a `social choice trap'. Making something slightly less dangerous, or making it appear less dangerous, often causes people to use it more, or use it carelessly, so that the overall harm increases. The classic example is that Volvo drivers have more accidents.

 

Of course I know it'll be marketed as such. Same with the Belgian e-ID card, where BillyG suggested programming MSN software to make use of the Belgian e-ID would result in the holy grail of safe messaging... :screwy:

 

PS. aRTee, don't forget Belgium! :beer:

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From that article:

ATI, on the other hand, has only recently started pushing for better drivers under Linux. Earlier, if you wanted to have good 3D-Acceleration under Linux, the choice of card was a no-brainer. NVIDIA ruled the roost mainly because of poor driver support from ATI. ATI has made it a priority now, however, and have a dedicated Linux driver team. Still, in terms of drivers, NVIDIA has the upper hand as of now.

I wonder why they created a Linux team?

 

How can we, as users, help to accelerate this? The answer is simple. Buy more games for Linux. Let the big companies know that you are a Linux gamer. We suggest that you e-mail them, call them and write to them. If a company does release a native port, make sure you buy it or at least let them know that you appreciate the effort. We have to make game developers aware of the fact that there is in fact a market out there. If they build it, we will play it. And if we play it, they will build it. With a little bit of luck and some synergy between the users and the developers, Linux gaming can really take off.

I like this guy.

Edited by Steve Scrimpshire
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Again I'll get back to laziness.

 

Gaming is a small part. Yes games could be part of the problem, some apps could be another but the big problem is maybe not laziness, but the "why the hell do I want to do that?"

 

XP came out what, 4-5 years ago. One install, (even though you should reinstall once a year to keep a really nice clean running system, which by the way "Joe Blow" home pc operator is not going to do) and thats it. Linux updates and upgrades every 6 months. So what are your options with that will you have two or three.

 

One, backup your /home dir. if even you have that on a seperate parition, which by the way "Joe Blow" home pc operator is not going to have, especially if the computer came with Linux pre-installed. Now to backup your home system. How do you go about that? Well you can't back it up while logged in cause the parition is "busy". (If I'm correct on that). So the next choice would be log in as root and then tarball up your /home and then burn it. So whats the problem with that? Well you supposedly should never log in as root.

 

Two get a live cd throw it in and then tarball up the home parition and then burn it. Tell me how many "Joe Blow" home pc operators are going to do that?

 

Three: Try and I say try to use the "upgrade" option when upgrading to the next release. How many times has this failed? Even if its low, its still not acceptable. You tell me how much "Joe Blow" home pc operator is going to know about fixing, if possible, broken packages for the upgrade option.

 

Also for us who use Linux think its easy to install vid drivers, which seem to be one of the biggest complaints, next to " I have not sound", but for "Joe Blow" home pc user who does play games, even simple 3 D games is not going to nor will he want to go through the hassel, when all he has to do in XP/Windows is double click and reboot.

 

I like and use linux for everything but gaming, cause most of the games I play are not linux compatiable. Don't give me anything about Cedega either, been down that road, not worth the time and work. I want to PLAY, I don't want to "work" to get the game/controller working in order to play. Two I run Roger Wilco or TeamSpeak and I can do both on windows. Game and use voice chat. Linux supposedly you can, but you have to have a high end card, and then even then you have to jump through hoops. "Joe Blow" home pc operator isn't going to do that.

 

For the person who just surfs the net, reads email. Linux is great, as long as they are happy running outdated apps and packages in 6 months.

 

Like I said I like and use Linux but the only advantage I see Linux having over Windows for "Joe Blow" home pc operator has is "choice, free, and viri/malware free". Not much else.

 

So until those problems are fixed, Linux will not ever match Windows and if it does, it will be years down the road.

Edited by FX
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