Gaming Linux has game

well first of id like to say thanks for "supplying" me with some free games that will work on my meger hardware, and ive been toying with the idea for some while (after a rebuild) of a linux only gaming pc, the only thing i havnt been able to do is setup steam. All the guides refer in the exe where the current downlaod is a msi, and i get errors left right and center trying to use msiexec /i SteamInstall.msi . Looking forward to future articles

 

Uh. 99% of games from a decade ago, maybe. Otherwise, that statement is nowhere near true.

 

stick with windows if thats your view you are perfectly welcome to

I think your "statement is nowhere near true" if you would like to look at this cedega database and as you will be able to see theres alot of recent releases including c&c3 and stalker

 

The problem is that until developers work like the UT teams at Epic and make a Linux installer that works off the bat gamers aren't going to change, that's why Microsoft have such a stronghold over gamers, developers won't make stuff work better on Linux until there's a demand for it, There won't be a demand for it until they work easily and properly on Linux.

If you work it out, each cycle of Windows should have a 5 year cycle, so assuming you buy an OEM copy of Windows Vista for your new machine, you'll be looking at around £115 (call it £120 inc delivery). So that works out at £24 per year.

If you buy a Cedega subscription you're looking at £33 per year, so over the same product cycle you're paying £165, that's £45 more

And if you don't want to fork out more and use Wine, then frankly it's a lot of hassle which in todays society gamers don't want, gamers are becoming fast paced, arcade action junkies, they want quick easy and get straight into the game.

And yes, Linux has games, but if you want to play against your friends, you'll need to say to them "Have you got X?" "Err, you what?", so you'll have to explain to them, get them to download it, fiddle around with it and get it to work.

Ease of use > *

 

Does World of Warcraft run on Linux?

 

Yep it does, even through wine
http://www.blizzplanet.com/content/459/

 

i would love to use linux as my main OS, we have a mythtv box in the living room, and its just amazing, compared to windows media center, which just sucks ass so badly.

My housemate runs linux on his spanky ASUS A6 series laptop, and what that means is his onboard VGA camera doesn't work, the ACPI is buggy and crashes when he switches between PSU and battery power, the bluetooth doesn't work, etc etc etc.

So he uses windows for WoW, and i just use windows full stop. I tried to get Battlefield 2 working under linux - and did, but then with limited overclocking potential for my graphics card under linux - i just had to go back to windows.

Most, if not all things can be done in linux now, its come a long way from the old days - but in this day and age, with Vista being such a highly stable and solid OS, it makes more sense for me to virtualise my Linux experience.

VMWare player, with a nice tidy Ubuntu installation running mythfrontend, and i'm away, watching HD streams recorded live on the box downstairs, and accessible to all the linux boxes in the house. Very cool.

However, its nice to come out of that, and return to windows, where, lets face it, everything just works, first time, no config, no restarting of x, in most cases, a reboot is all thats required.

 

i can confirm this is the case, although memory management is an issue, and as my housemate alt-tabs out to firefox to check on prices on various geek-related WoW sites, he uses windows as linux tends to crash x when alt-tabbing backwards and forwards.

 

If you were on linux and wanted to run windows games dual booting is still the way to go. You could even get an oem vista basic licence, and over the two three years it would be cheaper than cedega and run all your games flawlessly.

Although I've tried linux I couldn't get on with it (at the end of the day, it *isnt* as easy to use and configure as windows for the average person), but I was excited to see Mandriva 2007 include gaming support. Although as soon as I installed it I couldn't get the nice cube thing because ATI have problems with linux or something (the mandriva install blurb said it would install drivers itself, but it didnt, so I downloaded something from ATI and tried double clicking to no avail - everything must be done from the console!).

So, getting there, but still not there. I think you still need to have a good knowledge of computers to use it properly, whenever I've asked a simple question 'how do I get my wireless card to work' then normally the linux geeks just reply with commands . Why can't it be interface driven . Whilst the console gives you a lot of power, it is an old way of interacting with software, and it cant be that hard to just make options screen for everything that does it for you?

Ubuntu has the right philosophy - it should just work.

p.s. you were saying in the article that Vista has a lot of bad press, which in a way it does, but personally having been using it it's one of the best OS I've ever used. It does just work, plug something in and the drivers are there straight away.

 

That's for vista ultimate, which if you just wanted windows purely for games, is a waste of money. For £55 you get vista basic which will run any windows only apps you need, and crucially, still has dx10 support. Of course you don't get Aero, media centre, or the advanced networking tools - however if you're using linux and just switch to windows for the purpose of running a game, then it makes perfect sense.

p.s in the article you say about the bloat in vista, and I've found it does use more memory, however - it uses more memory to speed up the computer, so doing the same things in Vista is faster than in XP (except for memory or cpu intensive single things). I can be running media centre, encoding a dvd, msn, internet explorer, with no slow down, and be using 800mb ram (which when 1gb can be had for £50 now, isn't that bad).

 

Why do people say that Vista eats up memory? Memory is there to be used

 

Well, CLI is the power of Linux... Ok, I might be considered a power user, but there is nothing easier and faster then managing and editing files through the CLI. Regular users might be affraid of this, but I can't live without it anymore.

Ubuntu is indeed moving more and more towards the regular user. Alltough I really really really hate Ubuntu, they put Linux in good light.

 

Time to burst another bubble Linux has been doing this for ages...

Top to bottom:
Dual Xeon 2800 Server with 1GB RAM ECC as web/ftp/mail/... server
My laptop, Pentium M 1.5GHz with 512MB RAM
Gateway with 500MB RAM
Fileserver with software RAID 5 and 256MB RAM
Dual Xeon 2800 Server with 1GB RAM ECC as MySQL database server

As you see, Linux uses the unused RAM to buffer and cache data... So Vista's way is nothing new...

EDIT: Damn, my first double post

 

Glider,

thanks for that great article, I can't wait to get home and try out some of those games!

I switched from Windows XP to Ubuntu 6.10 about two months ago, and haven't looked back since. Initially, I had dual boot, but then when my XP went pear shaped (hard drive failure) I didn't bother to reinstall Windows. Friends that have seen Beryl running have admitted that it shows up Aero glass for the overhyped crock of sugar that it is...

Yes, I have had some issues with it, but nothing that hasn't been resolvable by having a look on the forums. An easy to use CAD package along the lines of Alibre Xpress or SketchUp would be nice as well...

One thing - any chance of a gander at your conky.rc script?

 

Sure thing, check your PM

 

I never said OpenGL was dead, just it seems to be updating to what Direct3D is doing these days.

Gamers should def check the latest beta of ubuntu for ease of graphics driver support.

to be honest I like linux for more retro style games and console emulators. (mainly because there is less chance of getting infected with c**p from websites). The only modern game I play on it is UT2004.

I respect your defence of the platform Glider and it has come a long way but there is still a lot to be done. I do hope games companies start to take notice. If Linux could crack the games sector they would really push into the mainstream and give ms a run for their money.

My games course at Essex tries to use linux as much as possible but even we have to give in the ms and visual studio for someof the projects. Using Linux on a ps2 is an interesting experience but it really does take a lot of effort developement wise over other platforms (mobile java games, windows).

 

One issue with the CLI in Linux is that it is incredibly difficult for a new user to get used to bash.

I remember when I first started messing with it, I had a hard time trying to figure out what the syntax structure was and what the available commands were. A comprehensive guide that opens the first time a user accesses the CLI would a long way to making any Linux distro more user freindly.

as my freind put it, "knowing bash is the key to the golden gates as far as linux is concerned"

 

A often used line in Linux (often used in an unfriendly way, but not meanth that way) TRFM (Read The <curseword> Manual>. Just type "man <command>" at a prompt and you'll mostly get detailed information about the command, including syntax and examples.

 

A good friend of mine runs this site:
http://www.tuxgames.com/

Might be worth a look around if you are thinking of going linux and gaming

 

I find that hard to believe from what I've read, but alright ..as I said I might not know what I'm talknig about since I'm a linux noob

Well, I guess we disagree here.. I read the article very thoroughly and it struck me a very fair picture of what the average computer-savy user would do when trying things out in Linux... I mean..he digs through message boards, does several command line fixes for things ..and tries out all sorts of pieces of hardware and software...hell, at the end he even says he'll keep Ubuntu install because he likes it a lot for general productivity (besides gaming)...

but that's my *shrug* feeling

Yea, I might have come off as blaming linux, but I didn't mean to.. Linux does many things very well.. I just get the feeling that with their current state of hardware support and the lesser game development support, game-playing is better done on windows [shrugs]