Linux Rising

[Wolfie]

Actually, M$ has now made sure that only THEIR OS can run on any new Windows PC ( in other words, 95% of all new computers).

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=96449

[cichlidfan]

Actually, M$ has now made sure that only THEIR OS can run on any new Windows 8 Certified PC

 

At least include all of the relevant words when you are trying to incite a panic! :P

[EtherealN]

If someone needs to be convinced that Windows is bloated then the conversation is hopeless.

 

Sir, that's a cop-out.

 

If it is that easy to dismiss, surely it should be very easy to explain as well?

 

You see, there's a lot of established "wisdom" getting repeated, often without cause. So what is the bloat in this case, specifically, and how does this compare to specific alternatives (OSX, Solaris, Linux flavors, BSDs etcetera etcetera)?

 

This is an opportunity to educate someone rather than just dismiss them for asking questions. :)

 

You mean a viable tool to run the internet, chinese satellites, military hardware, the city of Munich, and a million things in between?

 

Explain why any of that is relevant to a desktop user.

You see, I'm a Linux fan myself, I love proper Linux where I have power over my own system. But that argument right there is invalid. What's good for running servers and satellites is not automatically good for a consumer. Why aren't you running QNX? It's clearly superior since it's running both fission and fusion... Right? ;)

 

(Side note, seriously: QNX actually is pretty nice. Do check it out. Just don't expect to be playing computer games on it. :P )

Edited November 2, 2012 by EtherealN

[agrasyuk]

If someone needs to be convinced that Windows is bloated then the conversation is hopeless.

who was talking about convincing? can i first understand what is "bloat" because it is not a technical term.

so, based on your vast experience developing software of very high complexity what is it that you have issue with? unneeded modules and subsystems taking up space? inefficient use of system resources hurting performance? QA level below industry standards?

 

i really believe in a concept of right tool for the right job. you can smash nails into wood with pipe wrench, but a hammer would be the most proper tool for this task. linux used to run my file server just fine. i guess after some tinkering i could run my HTPC with it as well. but a desktop? no thanks! and in close to med future i don't see getting into high performance gaming (such as our sim) either.

[winz]

We all know what the reason is. M$. $$.

No, not realy.

http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/60544/why-do-game-developers-prefer-windows/88055#88055

[Slayer]

Sony could have had something special if they would have continued allowing Linux on Playstations that could double as computers... would have made it available to a lot of people and they could have created a whole new niche for themselves. Instead they chose the draconian/corporate greed/Microsoft mode ditched it and proceeded to sue kids that wanted to jailbreak their PS3 to run Linux...

 

The time for innovation in gaming and OSes is past. All there are now is heavy hitters with a seemingly endless supply of cash fighting over market share. MS won and they have so much money that they will either buy or stifle anything that could compete with them. MS doesn't like PC gaming anymore they want us to forget about it so they can spoon feed us their XBOX garbage and DLC's...

[EtherealN]

Instead they chose the draconian/corporate greed/Microsoft mode ditched it and proceeded to sue kids that wanted to jailbreak their PS3 to run Linux...

 

You are aware of the fact that most consoles are sold at a loss, right?

It is "corporate greed" when they don't want to subsidize your PC? ;)

 

That's the whole gig with consoles, pretty much always was - sell the console as cheap as possible, usually at a loss, and then make it back through the license fees on the computer games. But of course, if you buy the console not in order to purchase games for it, but rather to use it as a PC, then they've made an actual loss on the sale. Not a loss as in incurring an opportunity loss - an actual financial loss building hardware that they then sell to you cheaper than the value of the parts...

 

MS doesn't like PC gaming anymore they want us to forget about it so they can spoon feed us their XBOX garbage and DLC's...

 

Except they're losing money on their Xbox business, and they don't hate PC gaming - they actively support it.

 

What happened is that gaming went mainstream. "The market" isn't us grade school nerds anymore. "The market" is the high school football jocks. What's made for the market adjusts to the market. Classic case of "be careful what you wish for" - we all wished our hobby would go mainstream. Well, it did. Now we complain that we got our wish? ;)

[Slayer]

Except they're losing money on their Xbox business, and they don't hate PC gaming - they actively support it.

 

I take that back...they like it as long s they can sell it to you via their "app store" on Win 8 :P

 

Technically yes they sell at a loss on the hardware, but they quickly make it back on advertising and licensing fees. You pay aprox $3 - $10 per game as a kickback to the platform owner be it MS, Sony or Nintendo.

 

http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/ads-up-games-down-the-ugly-profitable-truth-about-xbox-live-advertising

 

Gives you some idea of the millions they make on selling adspots.

 

Anyways I didn't mean to diverge OT with a rant. IMO it just seems like Sony had the right idea in the first place regarding Linux then changed their mind later....

[EtherealN]

But when people bought PS2s specifically as a cheap Linux box, how much license fees did they get then? That is the point.

[Wolfie]

MS doesn't like PC gaming anymore they want us to forget about it so they can spoon feed us their XBOX garbage and DLC's...

 

Couldn't have said it better. It's part of their Master Plan.

[Nash]

Hey Guys,

 

Any news on Valve endeavors to bring PC Games to Linus ? :noexpression:

[sobek]

Look at the date of the last article on Valves Linux blog. :(

[BitMaster]

It's a long way to go for Linux.

 

Imagine DCS was on Linux, How would this forum be ? Full of kernel questions and compile errors, people trying and finding their way into Linux which is somewhat other than what people

experience when trying out Ubuntu first time.

 

The basic knowledge you have to assume from a Linux Gamer a user has to have is a magnitude higher than what you need to expect from a Windows Gamer.

 

If "apt-get install DCS" but a "configure -mp -HDR -NTTR -a64 -f -b -32" is needed you will want your Windows back...from the point of the guy at the other desk providing help or ED imho.

 

There is so much Hardware around, software based ( which Linux hates ) chips instead of hardware, etc etc that I can only see frustration on the average users end unless you provide

a bootable image with all one could need on it ( TIR, TM, Saitek, Logitech, TS, Skype etc etc. )

+ DCS that can deal with any common CPU, Chipset, LAN and WAN ( not USB please ), GPU etc etc..not to forget Software RAIDs....etc...

 

I use Linux in servers for over a decade now, Love SuSE Linux Wollmilchsau, use Ubuntu Servers

for clients, install them for fun in VMware etc... I dont see gaming as a sweetspot of Linux anytime soon, sorry. too much hassle for the novice that never wanted to see a console and compile a driver or even kernel...cause that's where it will lead to for the first years if it ever starts mass adoption.

Edited January 29, 2016 by BitMaster

[sobek]

Yup, although Linux as a whole has made huge advances in usability, it still remains essentially an OS that only rather IT savvy people will appreciate.

[BitMaster]

...what I could see coming instead is a standalone Linux Based DCS-Server, as it was with BF1942 and BF2....lower rental fees, less trouble than Win counterpart.

[SharpeXB]

Reality check here. Nobody will be making games for Linux with a market share of less than 1%

[Nash]

It's a long way to go for Linux.

 

Imagine DCS was on Linux, How would this forum be ? Full of kernel questions and compile errors, people trying and finding their way into Linux which is somewhat other than what people

experience when trying out Ubuntu first time.

 

The basic knowledge you have to assume from a Linux Gamer a user has to have is a magnitude higher than what you need to expect from a Windows Gamer.

 

If "apt-get install DCS" but a "configure -mp -HDR -NTTR -a64 -f -b -32" is needed you will want your Windows back...from the point of the guy at the other desk providing help or ED imho.

 

There is so much Hardware around, software based ( which Linux hates ) chips instead of hardware, etc etc that I can only see frustration on the average users end unless you provide

a bootable image with all one could need on it ( TIR, TM, Saitek, Logitech, TS, Skype etc etc. )

+ DCS that can deal with any common CPU, Chipset, LAN and WAN ( not USB please ), GPU etc etc..not to forget Software RAIDs....etc...

 

I use Linux in servers for over a decade now, Love SuSE Linux Wollmilchsau, use Ubuntu Servers

for clients, install them for fun in VMware etc... I dont see gaming as a sweetspot of Linux anytime soon, sorry. too much hassle for the novice that never wanted to see a console and compile a driver or even kernel...cause that's where it will lead to for the first years if it ever starts mass adoption.

Yeah Mate... I understand that but I am too much of a Linux fan to know that DCS will never make it to it... I am sad .

 

Hope someone will be crazy enuf to get around these issues and find a great solution to gaming on Linux...

 

Thanks for the great explanation mate...

 

Nash

[javelina1]

Reality check here. Nobody will be making games for Linux with a market share of less than 1%

 

True, for home use and consumers, naw...

 

But for Math, Science, and Engineering usage, it's got quite the foothold.

[cichlidfan]

True, for home use and consumers, naw...

 

But for Math, Science, and Engineering usage, it's got quite the foothold.

 

Unfortunately, after many years (I have been using linux on and off for at least 23 years) it still just has a 'foothold'.

[javelina1]

Unfortunately, after many years (I have been using linux on and off for at least 23 years) it still just has a 'foothold'.

 

me too... I started with SunOS, then Solaris, have used FreeBSD and OpenBSD, and then succumbed to Linux after it started knocking off the 'NIXes in the Engineering tools and application space.

 

Used to be a common joke. "There are only (2) things that came out of Berkley, UNIX, and LSD...." :) We can thank Bell Labs for giving the UNIX source code to Berkley, (1970). It really spawned a lot of opportunities for IT...

[SharpeXB]

http://betanews.com/2012/08/13/will-windows-8-make-linux-the-new-gaming-os/

 

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/

 

Interesting times. :)

 

Screw M$. They've ruled and held us down long enough.

You know those articles and OP are from 3 years ago, right?

[cichlidfan]

You know those articles and OP are from 3 years ago, right?

 

You know the person you replied to is banned, likely permanently, and has not posted in 2 1/2 years, right? :P

[paulca]

I just have to debunk a few myths here as I find them.

 

1. WINE = Wine Is NOT (an) Emulator.

 

It's what the name stands for.

 

So, regarding comments like, "Yes, but we want performance so that's wine out" are just poorly educated rubbish.

 

Wine is a reimplementation of the Windows API. Wine is FASTER than native Windows API in a lot of cases. The downside is it does not yet implement 100% of the Windows API or the DX APIs. So if your game calls an API function that is still just a stubbed method you get a log statement just saying "Not implemented". Sometimes this is benign but other times it will crash the game.

 

You 'can' import native DLLs to fill the gaps, but those DLLs depend on other unimplemented functions in other Wine DLLs so you have to import those too. I have gone down this road several evenings and given up after the mess got too great.

 

I ran 2 Eve Online clients simultaneously on my Linux machine using Wine for quite a few years and it exceeded Windows performance. The trouble was that various things began to change in the game as offical Linux support was dropped and the process of getting each update to work got harder and harder. I eventually had no choice but to retreat to windows.

 

2. Linux has always had OpenGL support, certainly for the last 15 years! I have fond memories of "Tux Racer" in OpenGL as one of the smoothest running games at the time. DirectX support was only via Wine and in more recent years.

 

A SERIOUS advantage to Linux as a gaming OS is that the OS is 100% customisable. I once had a boot CD which did nothing more than run a low-latency gaming Linux Kernel, an optimized X Server display and spawn Unreal Tournament. No shell, no desktop, no pesky background services. Just kernel, display and game. Oh and a RAM disc so the CD was not used after boot.

 

Windows on the other hand is a jack of all trades, master of none and quite annoying and invasive in what it decides it should or shouldn't be doing at the worst possible time.

[paulca]

The reason Linux has not taken off as a gaming OS is mostly eco-political. The market share chicken-and-the-egg. Studios don't spend the effort to support Linux as it only has about 5-10% of the desktop market while Windows has 75-80%. Yet, if Linux has good games supported on it the market share would certainly increase.

 

There is also the fear of open source, not just the licenses and the Microsoft initiated rubbish about viral licenses and dynamic linking, but the warranties (lack of) and the danger posed to £££ companies not getting the support they need from the developers. One aspect that scares £££ companies is that components they need support for in Linux are often not even developed by one team, but multiple different teams around the world. This is alien to their ways of working. They want a small number of "Partner" companies who have a shared interest in £££ who will sign NDAs and Partnering agreements and what not and the Linux culture does not provide this or even support it in a lot of cases.

 

What WILL change this is if Valve or some other company release a physical gaming console that runs Linux. Last I heard Valve were making a hash out of their SteamBox machine and it was running slower than Windows, but if they manage to get it working properly and manage to make some good sales, the amount of games supporting Linux will sky rocket.... or Valve will fail and it will flicker out again until someone else has a good go at it.

[Hadwell]

Or... someone comes out with an API that's so much better than DirectX that nobody in their right mind would continue using it.

 

DX games are the only reason I don't use linux.

 

if the games and software people use in windows, especially games, could be used in linux, then more people would use it definitely, and it could even replace windows at this point, but nobody wants to make that kind of software for linux because nobody uses it.

 

sooo... more software and games for linux that don't require you know c++ and python = more people using it...

 

less people using linux = nobody making that kind of software.

 

it's like that microsoft thing

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Edited April 13, 2016 by Hadwell