Got Linux?

Originally posted by hunteraz
taking Linux servers offline? They account for 10% of the servers? So what, that would hardly impact the gaming community, besides, Windows is better.
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i don't know the exact numbers. but i think the internet consists of more than 66- 80 percent of linux servers

Originally posted by hunteraz
Most servers aren't even full, there's ALWAYS boxes with 0/32 players.
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what does that have to do with linux servers? btw, linux servers are way better than windows servers( for sure depending on the admin maintaining the server)

Originally posted by hunteraz

Get over it, Linux isn't ready to be a steady gaming OS, it may be suitable in a networking environment, but in a gaming environment, won't be at the point Windows is at for at least 5 years.
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valid, at least for client software. the driver support still isn't half as good as the windows driver support. i know you can get every driver, but i mean the support for graphics cards, high performance drivers...

<edit> yes i have got linux. i'm running debian on 2 small servers in my home network..pretty stable ;) windoooze wouldnt have made the half year up time without a single reboot. both the small server and the linux router (fli4l)
the thrid one is the comp of my sister, with a non admin account for her and the internet, this one won't be affected by any virus, means less work for me ;) (i had to reinstall the damn xp of my brother 3 times within a half year due to the damage 3 viruses caused. not to mention 2 pcs of frineds,both running xp..)
 
i don't know the exact numbers. but i think the internet consists of more than 66- 80 percent of linux servers
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i meant for counterstrike.

linux is a great os, very stable, but it's just not ready to be a main gaming os, and when 90% (probably more) of valves customers are windows users anyhow, the 10% that want a linux port probably wont generate enough revenue for them to be motivated to do it.
 
What's all this crap that "Linux is not ready to be a main gaming OS"? It's every bit as capable as Windows (and even more so). It's just that many developers don't create native Linux builds of their software.

The fact that games like Unreal Tournament 2003 and Savage have been built for and run very well on Linux is enough proof for me that Linux is more than ready to be a prime time gaming OS.
 
While I use and love Linux it does need some improvement in some areas that pertain to games and multimedia. I know that they're implementing some of the changes in the 2.6 series though. The sound system that is currently in Linux is kind of shoddy. To be plain, it sucks ass. I know they're changing over to the ALSA system with the new kernel but it's going to take awhile to get that all up to speed.

I never use Wine to play games (although I did give Max Payne a shot and it ran better than it did in Windows, a shocker), if you want to play the game that bad just boot into Windows for it. Currently that is all that Linux lacks for true desktop acceptance. Every other application can be run or has an open source counterpart that works just as good.

As for the whole HL2 on Linux thing, Valve would never do it but I know of a few people already moving the leaked code over. It's not going to look as good because a lot of the shaders can't be ported until OpenGL 2.0. So don't be surprised if a torrent pops up on the web with at least a SP HL2 playable under Linux after the game ships.
 
from my understanding although the game uses direct X 9 it can run on systems with directx8. The resoning for this is that only the most current cards are directx9 cards, thus the Xbos is running hardware designed for directx8. Since Valve is porting HL2 to the Xbox, It should run fine with directx8. Most of the graphic libraries of directx 8 have an equivilant or can be emulated in opengl.

The funny thing is if Valve pushes the official release to April. The "unofficial" Linux port may be out first!
 
For those of you that use Winblows XP and say you don't have a problem with it you must only use it once a month! Just yesterday I was using my mothers computer to encode a movie but it took way to long on a computer with winXP 512mb of ram and 120gb hdd P4 2.54. Eventually it crashed because it ran out of ram and virtual memory. Those of you that say you have never crashed WinXp are either lying or you never use your computer for anything but the internet. My computer has been windows free for over a year now and I have no regrets. Linux is the most stable and fastest operating system I have ever used. I have only bought one computer game in my life HL1 and I will buy HL2 but if there was a linux port of HL2, I would gladly pay over a one houndred dollars for it (seriously). That sounds a little extreme but I prefer stablity over a bug filled enviorment.

p.s.
Linux is the fastest growing server operating system and is estimated to overtake the server market.
 
My wife has Windows XP on her laptop, and she hates it. It's slow and full of spyware.
 
Originally posted by Dr. Shim
I don't know much about either OpenGL or the DirectX 9.0 APIs, but I bet you my left lung (not really) that Microsoft's DirectX API allows Valve to do things that are not possible in other APIs, such as OpenGL. Take a look at these HL2 videos! Those eyes!
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Turn over that lung! :cheese:

First of all comparing OpenGL to DirectX isn't correct. OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is 2d/3d graphics only, DirectX consist of several modules including graphics, sound and networking. You should compare OpenGL to DirectGraphics.

Secondly, everything which DirectGraphics can do OpenGL supports too. They are just two different interfaces to the same underlying hardware. There are some minor differences but these are usually just two different ways to accomplish the same result.

Because OpenGL supports extensions of the standard, OpenGL usually is faster to support new features. But DirectGraphics is always quick to catch up.

About the spyware and crashing programs on Windows: There are just more crap programmers writing software for Windows compared to Linux. Spyware would also exist on Linux if this OS was just as popular among 'ordinary' users. By the way, securing Windows is a piece of cake IMHO. It's all a matter of knowledge about the OS.
 
Originally posted by azz0r
Lets face it linux sucks, hardcore.
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except for the fact that the internet, most industrial mashines and many otehr stuff is running on linux you either never used it really, or you simply were too lazy to look a bit further out of your flowery colorful winxp gui environment :D. hence you aren't able to judge it objectivly, as your post proves.

there's more out in the it world than games and flash internet sites.
 
I work for a large (15 million subscribers) telecoms company, and we use Unix for all the important stuff, and Windows for anything which is seen by the end-user.

Seems like a good arrangement to me: let each of them stick to what they do best.
 
I use xp and use 98's look...does the job, so dont class me as a "flowery colorful winxp gui environment " lover :p

win2k was pretty good.
 
GNU/linux rocks, but let's face it, X doesn't. And neither does Gnome.
 
The X server does what it needs to. I have few complaints about it and it seems to do the trick for what most people need to do. It's integration with games seems to also do what it is supposed to since it hardly touches it. The games need to rely on glx support on the video driver level on which both Nvidia and ATI have made tremenous strides in. As for the Window Manager (WM for short), KDE is a good transition for newbie Linux users since it tends to follow the windows scheme that most ppl are acusomed to. Gnome is a good cross between MacOS 9 and below and Windows and has some great ideas on font management and multimedia. As for me, I run Kahakai (kind of like fluxbox) with an autostart script that launches 'gnome-settings-daemon' in order to get my gtk+ apps going with really nicely antialiased fonts. It is all a matter of preference.
 
True, X has progressed greatly. But look at it this way - if explorer.exe were to die on me, I could recover by doing a quick kill process and run it again. Usually if X dies you're practically screwed.
 
Originally posted by jonbob
True, X has progressed greatly. But look at it this way - if explorer.exe were to die on me, I could recover by doing a quick kill process and run it again.
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And pray that the explorer.exe crash didn't destablize your whole system, which is usually the case.
Usually if X dies you're practically screwed.
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Nah, you just log into a console, type "startx" and you're back in business. Or if you're running KDE, it can automatically restart x and restore your desktop. But I have yet to have x crash on me, so only have a theoretical knowledge of this particular feature.
 
I have yet to crash X. But this one time my virtual resolution got bigger. It got bigger cause I was playing Half Life in linux (just logged out and back in and let X fix itself). For HL2 I don't want to have to use wine or winex to play it. I would rather enjoy the high quality of the game in a native client. It would be well worth it for valve to have a native client for linux.
 
It would be nice if we could get a Valve rep input on a linux port. I think there is some valuable arguments in this forum.
 
While a native Linux version of Half-Life 2 would rock and would send a loud and clear message to all game developers that Linux is a serious contender in the desktop gaming arena, I don't think Valve will create such a port for a couple of reasons:

1) Financial: They may not recognize Linux gaming as a viable market.

2) Political: Valve doesn't exactly hide the fact that they're in Microsoft's back pocket.
 
While we're at it, let's argue over the price of eggs in China...

Were we not in the process of convincing Valve to port Half-Life 2 to Linux, and OpenGL? :eek:
 
I think that we should have a strike and take our linux servers offline for one day. Just to show everyone how much linux affects the gaming community. It would interesting too see how many servers go offline. I'm not saying to just take down any server that deals with half life or its mods. I'm suggesting that we take down any game server that runs linux for one day. I don't care if it accomplishes anyhting but it would be nice to show all of you winblows users how much linux affects you.

gabebster
 
Originally posted by Dr. Shim
While we're at it, let's argue over the price of eggs in China...

Were we not in the process of convincing Valve to port Half-Life 2 to Linux, and OpenGL? :eek:
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The price of eggs in China is way to high I say!

And the source code for HL2 already has OpenGL in it. It looks like they were planning on adding an OpenGL 2.0 renderer whenever that gets ratified (there are no GL shaders in the code though).

Of course now that the code is out there it makes little difference whether Valve wants to support Linux or not. If someone wants a port bad enough they'll make it work themselves.

I personally don't care anymore, one way or the other. Doom 3 will ship cross platform and that is likely to keep me busy for awhile under Linux.
 
The whole logic of "If you don't like it then don't use it" seems to mistakenly believe that you can't take advantage of a product while at the same time recognizing its defencies.

I keep a Windows partition because of its superior game support even if I believe it to be an inferior OS. However, I'm hoping future support of Linux will make a duel-boot system unecessary.
 
I am not a laywer nor do I pretend to be, but to the best of my knowledge there isn't any proprietary algorithims in the code. The only thing proprietary is the textures, voice, and maybe the name "Half Life". So if someone was to make a port. They would not be violating any law. Even though the code was stolen, it was projected to the public area, thus anyone who used it, used it from the public area.

If anyone is a lawyer, could they comment on this subject?
 
nvidia vs ati
amd vs intel

and now......for your computer geek enjoyment

LINUX <VS> WINDOWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DAHN DAHN DAHHNNNNN!!!!
 
Originally posted by jabberwokk
I am not a laywer nor do I pretend to be, but to the best of my knowledge there isn't any proprietary algorithims in the code. The only thing proprietary is the textures, voice, and maybe the name "Half Life". So if someone was to make a port. They would not be violating any law. Even though the code was stolen, it was projected to the public area, thus anyone who used it, used it from the public area.

If anyone is a lawyer, could they comment on this subject?
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Well, I'm not a lawyer, but I have a feeling things don't quite work that way.
 
Originally posted by jabberwokk
I am not a laywer nor do I pretend to be, but to the best of my knowledge there isn't any proprietary algorithims in the code. The only thing proprietary is the textures, voice, and maybe the name "Half Life". So if someone was to make a port. They would not be violating any law. Even though the code was stolen, it was projected to the public area, thus anyone who used it, used it from the public area.

If anyone is a lawyer, could they comment on this subject?
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I'm not a lawyer either but I think it works something like this:

When producing new software you are allowed to place a liscense on the source code for that software which makes it illegal to obtain the source code unless you obtain the liscence for it. This ability to make you able to liscence your code instead of having it as open source is probably something that is done as soon as work is started on the project. It would probably be done at the beggining of the project in order to make it illegal to distribute it even if it isn't finished yet.

Or it may work something like this: All source code for a program is illegal to distribute unless it is authorized by the owner of the source code. So in Valve's case, they did not authorized the code to be distributed therefore the code is illegal to distribute.

Once again im not a lawyer so I really don't have a clue of what I am talking about.
 
hmmm

I understand that textures, voice, and names can be copyrighted. But the code is nothing more than widely used algorithms. How can one copyright the use of bubble sort unless it is patented?
 
Re: hmmm

Originally posted by jabberwokk
I understand that textures, voice, and names can be copyrighted. But the code is nothing more than widely used algorithms. How can one copyright the use of bubble sort unless it is patented?
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This is actually the debate behind the whole SGO(Unix) vs. IBM(Linux) case.
 
Re: Re: hmmm

Originally posted by iamironsam
This is actually the debate behind the whole SGO(Unix) vs. IBM(Linux) case.
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Actually it's not. SCO is trying to sue claiming they have the rights to certain Unix code (which they don't) that IBM released into the open source Linux community. It's worth noting that despite repeated appeals from Linus Torvolds and other open source advocates to reveal exactly what portions of the Linux code are allegedly copyrighted so they can be promptly removed, SCO has not been able to produce a single piece of compelling evidence. In a press conference where they claimed to reveal their "smoking gun", it turned out the code in question wasn't even theirs to begin with and had been in fact been in the public domain for a few decades.

In short, the SCO vs. Linux case is nothing like someone taking stolen source code and creating an illegal port of Half-LIfe 2.
 
Re: hmmm

Originally posted by jabberwokk
I understand that textures, voice, and names can be copyrighted. But the code is nothing more than widely used algorithms. How can one copyright the use of bubble sort unless it is patented?
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Well im pretty sure that source code would have been leaked for MANY different apps if it didn't have any legalities attached to it. Windows would probably have unwillingly become open source if no laws could be applied to the source code to make its distribution illegal.
 
hmmmm.

Originally posted by Clay
code is text just like a book and you can copyright a book
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Funny...I don't see that many lawsuits over "Hello World."

Code is text, but based on algorithms. At what point do basic algorithms become privately owned?
 
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