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Will linux ever be viable?


crakkie

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I realize (as Feargus said) that Linux will never be more popular than Windows. If, however, it were to have 5-10% market share at some point, would it be worth making ports for it, as Bioware did with NWN?

Oh Jimmy, you were so funny.

Don't let me down.

From habit he lifts his watch; it shows him its blank face.

Zero hour, Snowman thinks. Time to go.

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It could be possible. However NWN is big successful title, like Diablo 2 that worth to translate into more than one OS.

 

To ultimately make Linux as suitable gaming platform, it to be needs as good as Windows for gaming. But focus for Linux so far is for server functions, scientific research, etc.

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There's been a lot of work making Linux a useful gaming platform. Nvidia and ATI have written opengl drivers for linux. SDL does most of what DirectX can do (except 3D). Civ2 and NWN used SDL to replace DirectX in the linux ports.

 

A lot of games work on linux, but they're emulated and run slow and shoddily.

 

Loki tried to push Linux gaming way too soon and folded. With a growing market share (3%, Macs in comparison are around 5%) is it a good time to start treating Linux like Macs as far as porting viability? Does writing a game for PC+consoles make this more difficult? (guess I'm asking dev's here)

Oh Jimmy, you were so funny.

Don't let me down.

From habit he lifts his watch; it shows him its blank face.

Zero hour, Snowman thinks. Time to go.

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It would be the next logical move, however I wouldn't expect to see anything serious happen for another 2-3 years at least.

 

Linux is still not popular enough among casual users for any developer or publisher to invest in porting a game to linux. And I doubt it will be for some time.

 

 

TripleRRR

Using a gamepad to control an FPS is like trying to fight evil through maple syrup.

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Like I said, the market share's growing and it's almost as popular as Macs. Epic released the Linux demo of UT2004 the day after the Windows version.

 

Anyway, the dev's don't seem to be answering. No such luck from Obsidian, eh?

Oh Jimmy, you were so funny.

Don't let me down.

From habit he lifts his watch; it shows him its blank face.

Zero hour, Snowman thinks. Time to go.

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I'll make some quick comments.

 

Windows development for video games has a some advantages over Linux. DirectX is pretty comprehensive and most importantly, standard among all graphics cards and ports easily to XBox. The downside is the cost of those tools.

 

Both the mac and Linux are OpenGL platforms--if you support one, it's very easy to support the other. The downside is that each graphics card vendor supports OpenGL differently--so you are back to the pre-DirectX days of rewriting certain low-level functions in your code to be card specific.

 

There are tools coming along (very slowly) to give Linux and macs the same kind of ease of programming that DirectX provides. During our interviewing, we've talked to people who have Linux only programming experience and the impression i've gotten is that it is just less game-friendly at the moment than windows. If the tools improve, as they have been, to the point where they can compete with DirectX, there is really no reason to believe that Linux can't be a viable platform. It is probably a few years away, however.

 

I have a feeling that if the market share doesn't top-out (like macs) then the tools will improve as the user base improves and that would lead to good things in the end.

 

Just my opinions on the matter. I would never say never. I'd just say not right now =)

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What needs to be done for Linux is that there needs a single standard, code wise, for audio and video applications like Direct X has for the PC. If that was accomplished Linux would have a stronger footing on the market place.

 

Of course when WIndows XP becomes open sourced like Linux, Linux days will be indeed few.

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Windows will only become open source over Bill Gate's dead body. Nice image now that I think about it.

 

But the problem with a single Linux standard would be that too many of the Linux gurus would be tempted to mess with their systems, creating differences that would still make it difficult to work with.

 

Or they could just start supporting DirectX.

 

 

TripleRRR

Using a gamepad to control an FPS is like trying to fight evil through maple syrup.

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They already have a standard for audio/video systems, I mentioned it already. It's called Simple Directmedia Library. It's a cross-platform library for abstracting the audio and video systems, just like directx (except for the cross-platform part). It's what Bioware used to make the linux port of NWN. It uses openGL for 3D, so you would be running into the same low-level problems FrankK was describing.

 

And thanks for the reply, FrankK

Oh Jimmy, you were so funny.

Don't let me down.

From habit he lifts his watch; it shows him its blank face.

Zero hour, Snowman thinks. Time to go.

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I think that if Windows XP went open source like Linux, Microsoft could focus on creating applications instead of upping the OS. They would have millions of other people tweaking their OS for free, making it more stable by standardizing the good stuff.

Thousands of people with access to MS's DRM code? Not bloodly likely.

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Thousands of people with access to MS's DRM code? Not bloodly likely.

DRM?

There are no doors in Jefferson that are "special game locked" doors. There are no characters in that game that you can kill that will result in the game ending prematurely.

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Thousands of people with access to MS's DRM code? Not bloodly likely.

DRM?

Digital Rights Management

 

I would say in general making Windows XP open source would be a bad idea. Just look at the news article about some source being leaked and supposedly some researchers looking at that and finding some potential security holes. If the entire source code was open, without question there would be a lot more viruses or worms on Windows platform exploiting holes hackers find in the source before MS has a chance to plug them.

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Thousands of people with access to MS's DRM code? Not bloodly likely.

DRM?

Digital Rights Management

 

I would say in general making Windows XP open source would be a bad idea. Just look at the news article about some source being leaked and supposedly some researchers looking at that and finding some potential security holes. If the entire source code was open, without question there would be a lot more viruses or worms on Windows platform exploiting holes hackers find in the source before MS has a chance to plug them.

Why then, I wonder, has there not been that many Linux worms? It's not like Linux isn't used on servers that are exposed to the internet.

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If Windows XP went open source alot of coding gurus would die laughing and MS would be very embarrassed

 

Linux is much more stable also most of the people that make viruses and worms are based on Linux and they don't wanna mess it up cause they like it

Define "more stable". I'm no Window zealot (in fact, I'm posting using FireFox under RH9 now), but I still dislike blanket statements like that. If we were comparing Linux to Win9x, I'd be inclined to agree, but we're not (not really, at anyrate, as Win9x is technically 'not supported by MS).

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