StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Ace Pace wrote:

Darth Wong wrote: UT2003 looks great on Linux, but Linux right now is only good for gaming if you have an Nvidia card. And the larger problem, of course, is that very few software developers bother with Linux. Even most Linux users have a pirated copy of Windows so they can play games.

Nvidia card? thats my main problem, also, most games I play, don't have a linux version, since AFAIK, Morrowind dosn't have a linux version and etc.

I think Morrowind will run under WineX (5$).

Drooling Iguana wrote:

Ace Pace wrote:IIRC in the CD options, you can turn that off ... works for me

In Win98 it was. I couldn't find it anywhere in Win2k.

Here's a clue....try getting the latest version of Tweak UI.

Um, not everyone knows about TweakUI. And the fact remains that it's not easily configurable without a seperate utility. Also, TweakUI isn't supported by MS.

What do you mean it's not supported by MS? If it's available for download from their site, what exactly is the relationship between MS and TweakUI?

Pu, don't be a hypocrite. You complain that you have to look for a download to fix a relatively minor problem for Windows, but when confronted with the fact that Linux sucks for games you happily tell us that by spending 5 dollars on a program we can play a few more games (WineX is definitely not perfect).

EDIT: Typo

Hobot wrote:What do you mean it's not supported by MS? If it's available for download from their site, what exactly is the relationship between MS and TweakUI?

A team of Windows programmers made it on their own, more or less, probably for their own internal use at first. Then they likely cleaned it up and released it under a "it should work, but might not, so use at your own risk!" type deal.

phongn wrote:

Hobot wrote:What do you mean it's not supported by MS? If it's available for download from their site, what exactly is the relationship between MS and TweakUI?

A team of Windows programmers made it on their own, more or less, probably for their own internal use at first. Then they likely cleaned it up and released it under a "it should work, but might not, so use at your own risk!" type deal.

Makes sense, but I don't see how this would worry a proponent of Linux.

I said I think Morrowind might work under WineX, but I never advocated it, and the Windows people were being sarcastic first, such as the post 2 above yours. And I wouldn't describe "I think..." as happily, since it usually implies doubt.

Besides, under Linux, everything but the kernel would be third party, since everything is made by seperate groups by seperate organizations. Where do you draw the line?

If you want to limit third party to what's outside the distro, then there's Mandrake gaming edition with WineX included, so there (All distros besides Debian (and countless derivatives, such as Lindows, Knoppix, and Xandros), Fedora, or Gentoo suck, since they don't have something like apt/emerge, but that's besides the point).

Or you could get WineX from CVS and compile yourself. Anyway, I know perfectly well Linux sucks for gaming, but I don't play games in the first place, and my hardware sucks for anything recent (try gaming with a PII-450, eh?), except for some 3D space MMORPG (vendetta.guildsoftware.com) and IF games, which I'm quite happy with. Also, in theory, one can squeeze more performance out of Linux versions of a game by killing everything except the X server when running a game.

And there are other problems with Windows that are not so trivial, but everyone knows about those.

TweakUI's "unsupported" status means there's no obvious officially sanctioned way to change certain settings. On linux, most configuration files are well documented on docs installed on the system. Have never looked on MSDN, so does anyone know if they are on MSDN?

Have a clue before you start opening your trap and labeling people and making personal attacks.

Pu-239 wrote: Have a clue before you start opening your trap and labeling people and making personal attacks.

I do not recall making any personal attacks.

If just about every component of Linux is third party, and you're ok with this; what is so bad about Windows offering additional configuration options in a loosely supported program on their website?

I am well aware that Windows has more than its share of problems, but I have to agree that it is easier and more accessible than Linux.

Hobot wrote:

Pu-239 wrote: Have a clue before you start opening your trap and labeling people and making personal attacks.

I do not recall making any personal attacks.

Pu, don't be a hypocrite.

Kind of implied it. I guess I'm just paranoid then.

If just about every component of Linux is third party, and you're ok with this; what is so bad about Windows offering additional configuration options in a loosely supported program on their website?

The stuff in Linux can be configured without looking outside the distro, by editing documented config files rather than obscure cryptic registry keys. However, I also ave a problem with GTK... gtkrc files are horribly undocumented, just like the registry. GConf also resembles the registry... ugh. Changing themes and such for GTK is unsupported outside GNOME, requiring manual editing of .gtkrc files, which by itself is okay, but the lack of documentation makes it unacceptable (then again, most people prefer KDE anyway)
When thinking about autorun, I was thinking about the ability to manually edit mount options, so I'm wrong here.

I am well aware that Windows has more than its share of problems, but I have to agree that it is easier and more accessible than Linux.

It varies from distro to distro... I've seen an novice/intermediate user install and use Lindows... but not properly with root as the default user, but he was still able to use (and maybe install, need to ask) (it was pretty fast during usage, but the problem was that it takes 10 minutes to load... probably due to broken laptop hardware). Windows might be easier, but not more accessible, since under Linux there are nearly endless customization options (then again, you probably mean accessible as in usable unconfigured to the noob, on which I would agree).
Linux is getting toward a noob usable state, it just needs a bit more polishing.


BTW I find well commented config files easier than some dialog boxes for config. Too bad lots of Linux GUI programs use obscure formats to store config.

Pu-239 wrote:

Pu, don't be a hypocrite.

Kind of implied it. I guess I'm just paranoid then.

I'm sorry, I did not mean it as a personal insult.

Pu-239 wrote: Windows might be easier, but not more accessible, since under Linux there are nearly endless customization options (then again, you probably mean accessible as in usable unconfigured to the noob, on which I would agree).

You're correct, I did mean the latter.

Pu-239 wrote:Changing themes and such for GTK is unsupported outside GNOME, requiring manual editing of .gtkrc files, which by itself is okay, but the lack of documentation makes it unacceptable (then again, most people prefer KDE anyway)

XFce 4 comes with a GTK2+ theme switcher.

Pu-239 wrote:Have never looked on MSDN, so does anyone know if they are on MSDN?

Yup. Almost every reg key and setting TweakUI alters is documented in MSDN.

The trick is finding it, I recommend google pointing at the msdn website to search the sucker.

the only other thing that Windows is good for is games.

Windows isn't even good for THAT.

Windoze is a peice of crap- DirectX is horrible. I regularly play Star Trek and Star Wars games. One of my games (Starfleet Command 3) has been patched to run on DirectX 9 (which I have). But...guess what? Several times a day I get an Unhandled Exception in which an error occured in d3d8.dll...the DirectX 8 DLL file...when I'm not even using DirectX 8! I intend to try deleting/moving the file and seeing what happens.

On the other hand, theres Mac OS X. Oh and please, please don't start with "Macs suck!"...you know how it is when unknowledgeable Trekkies do the "Star Wars sucks!" thing. Okay, I agree, old Macs sucked, the OpenGL system was really bad, they were ugly and gray, and OS 9.0 and 9.1 could hardly even play the games.

They threw the old MacOS out the Window and started out from scratch, using FreeBSD's core, and made OS X, a UNIX-based system. It has the stability and power of UNIX, FreeBSD, and Linux, but has an incredibly easy to use interface. You wouldn't know it was UNIX unless you open up Terminal.

The OpenGL system is extremely well implemented- on my old 800 MHz G3 iBook laptop (G3's are outdated and iBook's are the budget laptops, not performance), with a 32MB Radeon 7500, Jedi Knight 2 ran beautifully. I can't imagine an old Radeon 7500 doing that good on a PC. Mac games in general have very good 3d performance, except when games are ported from DirectX badly (which is often).

The ultimate system is a dual boot with Mac OS X and Linux-PPC on a dual G5

I like Mac OS X because it is a combination of the good and bad parts of each. It has the Ease-of-Use of Windows, but if you want to get down and dirty in the Terminal, it has the accessibility of Linux.

And only one mouse button.

And people will question your masculinity for using one.

* runs *

Praxis wrote:Windoze is a peice of crap- DirectX is horrible. I regularly play Star Trek and Star Wars games. One of my games (Starfleet Command 3) has been patched to run on DirectX 9 (which I have). But...guess what? Several times a day I get an Unhandled Exception in which an error occured in d3d8.dll...the DirectX 8 DLL file...when I'm not even using DirectX 8! I intend to try deleting/moving the file and seeing what happens.

It's likely that your game is still using DirectX 8 calls as well as DirectX 9 calls. Furthermore, that is probably a fault of the game coders rather than of DirectX itself.

They threw the old MacOS out the Window and started out from scratch, using FreeBSD's core, and made OS X, a UNIX-based system. It has the stability and power of UNIX, FreeBSD, and Linux, but has an incredibly easy to use interface. You wouldn't know it was UNIX unless you open up Terminal.

MacOS X is built on the Mach microkernel and not FreeBSD. That shouldn't be too surprising, since it is essentially descended from OpenStep. That said, it does have FreeBSD 5 components in it.

The OpenGL system is extremely well implemented- on my old 800 MHz G3 iBook laptop (G3's are outdated and iBook's are the budget laptops, not performance), with a 32MB Radeon 7500, Jedi Knight 2 ran beautifully. I can't imagine an old Radeon 7500 doing that good on a PC. Mac games in general have very good 3d performance, except when games are ported from DirectX badly (which is often).

At what settings? I'd imagine that a P3EB/800 with an R7500 would compare quite favorably to a G3/800 with an R7500 at the same resolution.

JK2 ran smoothly with most settings on medium and the rest set on high at 1024x768 (but noticeably better at 800x 600) in my old P3 700 RageMobility Dell laptop.

Edit: I actually have a Radeon 7500 in my new lap, i could do some benchmarks, maybe.

Windoze is a peice of crap- DirectX is horrible. I regularly play Star Trek and Star Wars games. One of my games (Starfleet Command 3) has been patched to run on DirectX 9 (which I have). But...guess what? Several times a day I get an Unhandled Exception in which an error occured in d3d8.dll...the DirectX 8 DLL file...when I'm not even using DirectX 8! I intend to try deleting/moving the file and seeing what happens.

Given that they released a patch in order to address the problem of the game not detecting DirectX 9 when I've seen no other games do this, I would suspect the fault lies with the game and not the operating system.

Windows isn't even good for THAT.

Sure it is. There's simply a greater selection of games for the platform. You can cry about Windows' faults overall, but quite frankly the library of games available makes it a better OS for the man who wants to use his computer to play games. Plus, I as a Win2K user don't have to worry about such shenanigans as poor DirectX ports to the Mac or needing to have an nVidia card with Linux.

Crayz9000 wrote:

Pu-239 wrote:Changing themes and such for GTK is unsupported outside GNOME, requiring manual editing of .gtkrc files, which by itself is okay, but the lack of documentation makes it unacceptable (then again, most people prefer KDE anyway)

XFce 4 comes with a GTK2+ theme switcher.

But XFCE4 sucks, so I use enlightenment, which doesn't have one.

I've also heard ATI drivers are getting better for Linux. Anyone have performance benchmarks for OpenGL on ATI vs. Nvidia?

Drooling Iguana wrote:And only one mouse button.

And people will question your masculinity for using one.

* runs *

Not really...
You can plug a two or three or five button mouse in and whammo it works without configuration (though you can EASILY configure the extra buttons to do different things). The right mouse button brings up a menu exactly like in Windows and Linux. Or you can use a one button mouse and hold Ctrl to right click. Either way, I right click all the time on my Mac.

Sure it is. There's simply a greater selection of games for the platform. You can cry about Windows' faults overall, but quite frankly the library of games available makes it a better OS for the man who wants to use his computer to play games. Plus, I as a Win2K user don't have to worry about such shenanigans as poor DirectX ports to the Mac or needing to have an nVidia card with Linux

I don't think you get what I'm saying.

The fact that the majority of games are MADE for Windows does NOT mean that Windows plays them better. What I am saying is that if you take a Mac game and a PC game that was WELL PORTED, the Mac would equal if not beat the performance, and the Mac would likely be less buggy as well (no magic Windows button to crash the game in an instant).

If we pretend that Windows, Mac, and Linux all had the same apps available for them, then Mac would probably be the best gaming platform of all. Mac would also be the most userfriendly, and Linux the most customizable. No where in there would Windows fit. The only reason Windows rules this world is their market share- it's a catch 22. You can't make Mac programs without a large user base to buy them, and you can't have a large user base unless you make more Mac and Linux programs.

Shogoki wrote:JK2 ran smoothly with most settings on medium and the rest set on high at 1024x768 (but noticeably better at 800x 600) in my old P3 700 RageMobility Dell laptop.

Edit: I actually have a Radeon 7500 in my new lap, i could do some benchmarks, maybe.

My Mac told me I had a RageMobilityM7, and I was told that was a Radeon 7500. Maybe he was confused though.

Anyway I sold that Mac, and now I have a G4 12" PowerBook with a Geforce FX 5200

Actually for gaming, Linux would be best, since you can kill everything but your X server to run the game. Then again, with the power of today's computers it really doesn't matter.

Praxis wrote:
(snip) ...make Mac programs without a large user base to buy them, and you can't have a large user base unless you make more Mac and Linux programs.

The UT2k4 demo supposedly ran better in Linux than in XP. That's just something I read in Windows vs Linux thread from the Atari forums`

I'm not really up to date with Linux gaming. From what I hear, nVidia cards get about the same framerates in Linux as they do in Windows, while ATi cards are horribly sucky in Linux.

Linux is probably great for gaming (I'm not sure how well integrated OpenGL is), but the problem is that with all the different distros running on different processor types (x86, x86-64, PPC, 680x0, PocketPC even), the only way to ensure compatibility is to release the game in source code so that no matter what Linux distro you're running it'll be optimized for your system. The problem is that most companies REALLY don't want to release the source code for the games

The more I think about it, the worse it seems.

For Linux, there are three ways games can be released:

1) Different versions of the game for each version of the Linux kernel

There's obvious problems there. You'd have to be a technogeek knowing your exact kernel version to get the game, and they're probably be lots of problems among different processor types. Most people don't want to go through a lot of work to play their games.

2) Packages.

This would work but the games would still be limited to processor type. Linux-PPC users would be left out completely. It also doesn't have the same optimizations as building from source code would give you.

3) Source code.

This would be THE BEST way, but you'd have to know how to compile. Maybe they could invent an autoexecutable Linux script to compile it for people who don't know how and have GCC installed. This would guarantee that a game would work on Linux-PPC (Linux on a PowerPC processor), Linux-x86, Linux-x86-64, and all the other types out there. However, most companies would be reluctant or completely unwilling to release the source code for their games.


How would Linux gaming work?

Um... I'm sorry to say most games are released for x86 (and for UT2004 and maybe Doom3, x86_64) only already, and nVidia doesn't support PPC..., so this point is moot. Also, binaries are small compared to data files, so they can ship packages for most important architectures easily if they want to.

Also, stuff can run between different versions of the kernel (binary drivers can't, but that's solved with a binary object file linked with a source stub which is compiled).

Also, vender compiled packages would run faster if compiled with ICC or IBM's PPC compiler than a user source compile. Seperate binaries could be shipped for i786/K7/AMD64/PPC seperately. Or just use lowest common denominator like I assume is used for normal PC games.

Also, autocompile scripts are already used with the nVidia drivers, so this wouldn't be a problem.

What a company could do is send out a semi-compiled version of something, which is completely compiled on the user's computer, like .NET. Then again, the methods above would work perfectly fine.