HL2 to linux petition

[Mountain Man]

Originally posted by derby
Even after all the crisitcism and new oportunities to fix it, ms windows is about as secure as chaining the door to a dog pound with a string of sausages.

That's one of the more interesting analogies I've heard in recent memory.

 

[Micand]

Before you make any comments on the state of the Linux desktop, look at the following screenshots from the upcoming Redhat 9.1 release:

http://people.redhat.com/glesage/screenshots/bluecurve_nextgen-preview.png
http://people.redhat.com/glesage/screenshots/bluecurve_nextgen-preview-slate.png
http://people.redhat.com/glesage/screenshots/bluecurve_nextgen-preview-purple.png
http://people.redhat.com/glesage/screenshots/bluecurve_nextgen-preview-orange.png
http://people.redhat.com/glesage/screenshots/bluecurve_nextgen-preview-green.png
http://people.redhat.com/glesage/screenshots/bluecurve_nextgen-preview-gnome.png

That is how Redhat 9.1 will look out of the box, with no configuration by the user. Open source projects tend to innovate much faster than their closed, commercial counterparts. While you may have tried a Linux-based desktop two years ago and were unimpressed, it has come a long way since then. And while it may still not suit your needs today, in 6 months, it may well have improved to the point that it does.

If you are curious about Linux but have been confused about trying it, download the latest version of Red Hat and give it a shot. Up until recently, I had been using nothing but Windows for the six years of my computing life. Nine months ago, I decided to become educated on alternatives to Windows, so I tried several different Linux distros, including Mandrake, Suse, Redhat, Slackware, and Debian. Of all that I tried, I found Redhat to offer the most painless transition from Windows. Over time, if you become comfortable with Linux, you may decide to try out a different distro; by then, you may be knowledgeable enough to appreciate some of the technical merits that some distros have over Redhat. But as a newbie totally ignorant of Linux, I found Redhat offered the most enjoyable installation and initial use of all distros I tried.

Potential Linux users may also be interested in Knoppix. It is a Linux-based desktop run entirely from the CD. You simply pop the CD into your drive and reboot. You will get a fully-configured Linux desktop, without your harddisk having been touched. Simply remove the CD and reboot again to get back into Windows. As another poster mentioned, Gentoo Games is a similar project, but with a focus on games. They have released CD's for several games, including Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, the Unreal Tournament 2003 demo, and America's Army (although I believe their AA CD only includes v1.7 at the current time, not the latest v1.9). To play, you just pop the CD in and reboot. You will boot up right into the game, with the OS fully optimized for running it. No installation or configuration required.

Windows and Linux were designed with radically different philosophies in mind. Windows was designed with ease of use as the primary goal. While they did end up with an OS that 90% of the population could understand well enough for basic use, other areas suffered, such as stability, security, and flexibility. On the other hand, Linux began as an engineering experiment of sorts. The intended goal was certainly not to create an OS that 90% of the population could use. While it has always been extremely stable, secure, and flexible, it has not always been easy to use. But over the last few years, ease of use has improved greatly, while the other aspects that make Linux great have remained and even improved. These days, for regular desktop tasks in Linux, it is not necessary for the user to know what the console is, much less how to use it.

Even if you are perfectly happy with Windows, it is in your best interest to support Linux ports of games. A viable competitor to Windows as a gaming platform will benefit just about everybody other than Microsoft. It will force Microsoft to innovate if they wish to hold their dominant position in the market, as well as drive down the price for users that decide to stay with them.

Emulation of Windows as a means of running Windows apps is not an acceptable alternative to native ports. Emulation, particularly when it comes to games, is inconsistent. The task of emulator developers is exceedingly difficult: they are essentially given a black box, told what goes in one end of it, and what needs to come out the other. They must figure out how to create the internals of that black box from scratch. To make their job even more difficult, they must duplicate even the idiosyncrasies of those internals, so that it makes the same mistakes as the real one. Emulation only works for some apps and games, and when it does work, it can be inconsistent. Wine and WineX as a means of running games on Linux are, at best, a stopgap solution. We can hope that emulation of Windows will get enough gamers on Linux to convince major developers that there is a Linux gaming market, so that they will port their titles over to run natively. Porting over games does not need to be an excessively large or expensive project, particularly if the game is designed from the ground up to be portable between operating systems.

Linux has already beat Windows in several ease of use areas. Installation of software is one that is particularly impressive. In distributions such as Gentoo and Debian, you can download, install, and configure any one of thousands of different pieces of software with a single command. As an example, say you wanted to install the Mozilla web browser. It would be possible to go to the Mozilla web site, download the latest version, and install it, just as you do with Windows. Or, under Gentoo, you can type the following command: "emerge mozilla". The latest version will automatically be downloaded, uncompressed, and installed, along with any other software it needs to run. Maybe you decide you don't like it, and you want to remove it. Rather than running an uninstaller custom-coded for that one application like you do in Windows, you go through the same standard interface: "emerge unmerge mozilla". The truly amazing thing about such a system is that you can update every application on your system to the latest version with a single command: "emerge world". This will download and install the latest version available of every single piece of software on your system, ranging from your web browser to your e-mail client to your firewall to your instant messenger. If you find yourself uncomfortable working at the console with these short commands, there are a number of GUI's which make doing any of the above tasks as simple as clicking a button. There is nothing comparable in Windows, whether you are looking at ease of use, simplicity, or power.

Linux has great potential as a gamer's OS. As the OS is so completely open, you can tweak it to your heart's content. Unlike Windows, you can mess with just about any part of the system to improve it for your requirements. Gentoo, for example, compiles every piece of software on your system and optimizes it for your particular processor, so you can squeeze a little more performance out of your hardware. It is possible to run a Linux-based gaming system out of the box, just as you do with Windows, but the possibilites for more advanced users are much greater. Linux has the potential to radically improve the gaming experience for everyone, even if it just keeps Microsoft on their toes. Support Linux gaming for a better gaming experience.

 

[LoneDeranger]

Oh god :upstare:

 

[Tr0n]

Sweet jesus almighty!!!!!How can anyone type that much!!!OH THE HORROR!!!

 

[Koldfire]

http://www.linuxsucks.com/

 

[Deadline]

Originally posted by Micand
Before you make any comments on the state of the Linux desktop, look at the following screenshots from the upcoming Redhat 9.1 release:

http://people.redhat.com/glesage/screenshots/bluecurve_nextgen-preview.png
http://people.redhat.com/glesage/screenshots/bluecurve_nextgen-preview-slate.png
http://people.redhat.com/glesage/screenshots/bluecurve_nextgen-preview-purple.png
http://people.redhat.com/glesage/screenshots/bluecurve_nextgen-preview-orange.png
http://people.redhat.com/glesage/screenshots/bluecurve_nextgen-preview-green.png
http://people.redhat.com/glesage/screenshots/bluecurve_nextgen-preview-gnome.png

That is how Redhat 9.1 will look out of the box, with no configuration by the user. Open source projects tend to innovate much faster than their closed, commercial counterparts. While you may have tried a Linux-based desktop two years ago and were unimpressed, it has come a long way since then. And while it may still not suit your needs today, in 6 months, it may well have improved to the point that it does.

If you are curious about Linux but have been confused about trying it, download the latest version of Red Hat and give it a shot. Up until recently, I had been using nothing but Windows for the six years of my computing life. Nine months ago, I decided to become educated on alternatives to Windows, so I tried several different Linux distros, including Mandrake, Suse, Redhat, Slackware, and Debian. Of all that I tried, I found Redhat to offer the most painless transition from Windows. Over time, if you become comfortable with Linux, you may decide to try out a different distro; by then, you may be knowledgeable enough to appreciate some of the technical merits that some distros have over Redhat. But as a newbie totally ignorant of Linux, I found Redhat offered the most enjoyable installation and initial use of all distros I tried.

Potential Linux users may also be interested in Knoppix. It is a Linux-based desktop run entirely from the CD. You simply pop the CD into your drive and reboot. You will get a fully-configured Linux desktop, without your harddisk having been touched. Simply remove the CD and reboot again to get back into Windows. As another poster mentioned, Gentoo Games is a similar project, but with a focus on games. They have released CD's for several games, including Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, the Unreal Tournament 2003 demo, and America's Army (although I believe their AA CD only includes v1.7 at the current time, not the latest v1.9). To play, you just pop the CD in and reboot. You will boot up right into the game, with the OS fully optimized for running it. No installation or configuration required.

Windows and Linux were designed with radically different philosophies in mind. Windows was designed with ease of use as the primary goal. While they did end up with an OS that 90% of the population could understand well enough for basic use, other areas suffered, such as stability, security, and flexibility. On the other hand, Linux began as an engineering experiment of sorts. The intended goal was certainly not to create an OS that 90% of the population could use. While it has always been extremely stable, secure, and flexible, it has not always been easy to use. But over the last few years, ease of use has improved greatly, while the other aspects that make Linux great have remained and even improved. These days, for regular desktop tasks in Linux, it is not necessary for the user to know what the console is, much less how to use it.

Even if you are perfectly happy with Windows, it is in your best interest to support Linux ports of games. A viable competitor to Windows as a gaming platform will benefit just about everybody other than Microsoft. It will force Microsoft to innovate if they wish to hold their dominant position in the market, as well as drive down the price for users that decide to stay with them.

Emulation of Windows as a means of running Windows apps is not an acceptable alternative to native ports. Emulation, particularly when it comes to games, is inconsistent. The task of emulator developers is exceedingly difficult: they are essentially given a black box, told what goes in one end of it, and what needs to come out the other. They must figure out how to create the internals of that black box from scratch. To make their job even more difficult, they must duplicate even the idiosyncrasies of those internals, so that it makes the same mistakes as the real one. Emulation only works for some apps and games, and when it does work, it can be inconsistent. Wine and WineX as a means of running games on Linux are, at best, a stopgap solution. We can hope that emulation of Windows will get enough gamers on Linux to convince major developers that there is a Linux gaming market, so that they will port their titles over to run natively. Porting over games does not need to be an excessively large or expensive project, particularly if the game is designed from the ground up to be portable between operating systems.

Linux has already beat Windows in several ease of use areas. Installation of software is one that is particularly impressive. In distributions such as Gentoo and Debian, you can download, install, and configure any one of thousands of different pieces of software with a single command. As an example, say you wanted to install the Mozilla web browser. It would be possible to go to the Mozilla web site, download the latest version, and install it, just as you do with Windows. Or, under Gentoo, you can type the following command: "emerge mozilla". The latest version will automatically be downloaded, uncompressed, and installed, along with any other software it needs to run. Maybe you decide you don't like it, and you want to remove it. Rather than running an uninstaller custom-coded for that one application like you do in Windows, you go through the same standard interface: "emerge unmerge mozilla". The truly amazing thing about such a system is that you can update every application on your system to the latest version with a single command: "emerge world". This will download and install the latest version available of every single piece of software on your system, ranging from your web browser to your e-mail client to your firewall to your instant messenger. If you find yourself uncomfortable working at the console with these short commands, there are a number of GUI's which make doing any of the above tasks as simple as clicking a button. There is nothing comparable in Windows, whether you are looking at ease of use, simplicity, or power.

Linux has great potential as a gamer's OS. As the OS is so completely open, you can tweak it to your heart's content. Unlike Windows, you can mess with just about any part of the system to improve it for your requirements. Gentoo, for example, compiles every piece of software on your system and optimizes it for your particular processor, so you can squeeze a little more performance out of your hardware. It is possible to run a Linux-based gaming system out of the box, just as you do with Windows, but the possibilites for more advanced users are much greater. Linux has the potential to radically improve the gaming experience for everyone, even if it just keeps Microsoft on their toes. Support Linux gaming for a better gaming experience.

No... linux sucks... looks horrible... end of story.. get windows... NOW!

 

[Guest]

yeah I feel bad for the guy who typed that up, I sure as hell didnt read it

i say screw hl2 to linux, lets get a hl2 to dos petition goin

 

[Deadline]

Originally posted by Bass
yeah I feel bad for the guy who typed that up, I sure as hell didnt read it

i say screw hl2 to linux, lets get a hl2 to dos petition goin

That probably has more of a chance. :cheese:

 

[Tr0n]

I say they should port to both mac and linux reason why:more money. just because they only make up 10 to 15 percent of the computer market don't many anything.It's the money, if they did port it they would be making thousands and thousands of dollars(don't know how many euros).

 

[LoneDeranger]

Originally posted by Tr0n
I say they should port to both mac and linux reason why:more money. just because they only make up 10 to 15 percent of the computer market don't many anything.It's the money, if they did port it they would be making thousands and thousands of dollars(don't know how many euros).

It would cost more to develop the port.

 

[GRIMEY]

Here we go again.

 

[Tr0n]

Originally posted by LoneDeranger
It would cost more to develop the port.

Don't forget more Half-Life fans

 

[LoneDeranger]

Originally posted by Tr0n
Don't forget more Half-Life fans

Well I guess a Mac port might make sense. Very few people run linux on desktop, and those who do have a dual boot (like me).

 

[Tr0n]

I should be getting Red Hat linux soon.I got to use Red Hat linux at my school and it actually ain't as hard to get use to as everyone says.Of course it's going to be hard to learn when you switch operating systems.But when I used it at my school it was really cool.Also I like the fact that it had 2 times more games that came with it than windows.

 

[dbsynergy]

Thank you Micand, I agree with most of your points however try to shorten it next time. Some ppl don't have huge attention spans

 

[zakl]

Originally posted by MrD
lol! whatever

I used it for 4 years at uni.

UI = user interface (eg. console)
GUI = graphical user interface (eg. KDE, AfterStep etc.)

that is the difference.

Points of note about linux:

1) having to compilie downloaded software (!)
2) terrible copy&paste support, limited support from apps
3) extendible GUI? lol, try right-clicking a file and clicking "add to zip" like you can in windows
4) drag&drop, again i laugh - this is non existant
5) editing system settings from GUI - limited, most advanced settings must revert to using console

Now, I will openly admit its been a few years since i used it. But as far as I am aware it hasn't changed that much.

At least you admitted it... Your previous "Points of note about Linux" are all outdated aside from add to zip and system settings.

1. Compiling software is a choice now, not required. Most of the more popular distro's have pre-compiled binaries which are downloaded and easily installed via package managers. Another distrobution: Gentoo(what I use) you compile everything, but at the same time, the system runs on a package management system called portage allowing you to easily install new software with simple commands... ex:

#emerge gnome

would download gnome, as well as ALL of it's dependencies (xfree, GTK and any others, as well as all it's accessory packages) and compile/install them in the order needed. That's the great thing about it, I don't have to go out to the net and search for/download setup files, I can just emerge programname and it's done.

2. Copy & Paste while not perfect has been dramatically improved over the years and more than well suits my needs.

3. Konqueror (KDE's web browser based on mozilla) is a superb file manager(like My Computer in windows), and while it doesn't have an "add to zip" shortcut, there are many other useful shortcuts built-in and others added by programs installed. I can move/copy a file/folder from one place to another on the system buy right clicking(and I'm not referring to cut and paste). There are many other useful right-click options in Konqueror.

4. Drag & Drop is no longer "non-existant". It is implimented and extremely functional.
Ex: I can easily drag and drop files from Konqueror to a K3B cd burning project to be burned. I can also add them to a project via the right-click shortcut menu in konqueror.

5. Not much arguing that can be done here, but I will say that gui's for configuring system config files have been created and are improving. There are even web-based applications like webmin that allow you to administer almost any part/program on a linux machine from a web-based GUI. I don't use this myself but it does seem to have gained some popularity in the linux community.

KDE has the Kontrol Center(much like the Windows Control Panel) for configuring almost every feature of KDE. Which to be honest, is all a typical "desktop" user is going to configure anyway.
Click Here to see the KDE Kontrol Center. (if the server lags, it's because I'm seeding a new anime release on bit torrent)

Simply to say, Linux changes a LOT every year, and TONS of new features are added, while older features become more mature. I too use to be one of the people saying "why use linux? windows is easier and more compatible" But that's not the complete truth anymore.

 

[Dr. Freeman]

Originally posted by Micand
Even if you are perfectly happy with Windows, it is in your best interest to support Linux ports of games. A viable competitor to Windows as a gaming platform will benefit just about everybody other than Microsoft. It will force Microsoft to innovate if they wish to hold their dominant position in the market, as well as drive down the price for users that decide to stay with them.

Linux has great potential as a gamer's OS. As the OS is so completely open, you can tweak it to your heart's content. Unlike Windows, you can mess with just about any part of the system to improve it for your requirements. Gentoo, for example, compiles every piece of software on your system and optimizes it for your particular processor, so you can squeeze a little more performance out of your hardware

about the first part of the quoted section, im glad u brought this perspective into the Linux vs Windows discussion.. very intelligent and yes.. Microsoft better get their act straight, Linux is becoming more user-friendly and still offering a level of stability, and security that Microsoft hasn't really been able to match.

second part quoted, yup, we gamers should be a little happy as Linux and other like O/S's are improving to the point where games run better on them instead of Windows.. but some of us are too busy defending Microsoft for what? i don't even know! we should be happy that someone is trying to give Microsoft some sort of competition albeit at a lower level right now.. but the winds of change are starting to set...

Originally posted by LoneDeranger
It would cost more to develop the port.

okay, not to sound like im jumping all over ur statement and really, u could be right, but i'd personally like to see some evidence of that.. and certainly even if only 15-20% of the computing world uses O/S's other than Windows, its safe to say that they can turn up a small profit.. i mean 15% of the whole computing population? surely theres some money to be made there.


one last thing, those screen shots look good
i won't be able to get a Linux O/S running until probably this time next year, but im excited to see how good it looks and read how easy the installations have become since i lasted installed Redhat in '95

good stuff!! :thumbs:

 

[simmo]

Anyone heard of "Damn small linux" ? its a fully workin version of linux with a DESKTOP and everything! only 50mb!!!!

 

[TheRook]

Originally posted by Mountain Man
Really? Click me.

with |file|somehtingelse| up the top it reminds me of windows 3.11 nostalgia



oh and on with this post... i didnt sign the position becuase i dont use linux... if i did i would sign it...

p.s what is stopping everyone to use double boot?

p.p.s windows xp in my opinion is an amazingly good OS!


THeRook :afro:

 

[simmo]

If there was more support for apps/games on linux....then cya in HELL windows!!!

 

[derby]

The only reason that HL2 is not coming to Linux/Unix/Mac is that the engine was written in DirectX. Rather than port that to Unix (effectivly what the new version of Wine will have to do) they would have to re-write the engine for OpenGL, which would be a huge ammount of work.

Doom3, on the other hand is written using OpenGL and will be available for Linux, Unix, Mac etc. Ahhh native Linux version of doom3.....

Er, I mean Half-life 2 rocks! Phew.

 

[simmo]

There is an emulator called WineX which can emulate DX , it can play VC BF and stuff....i'm thinking of gettin linux I dont know....is Red Hat or Mandrake better ?
Also do they support a ATI Radeon 9600 pro ?

 

[derby]

Ati have released drivers for Linux, so your 9600 should work. WineX doesn't support DirectX 9 yet, but as soon as it does you'll be able to run HL2 (faster).

 

[Guest]

this thread makes my head hurt. why cant we just let MS have a monopoly over O/S's.

 

[Shirow-DG]

There really isn't any point in continuing this thread. When people respond to an excellently written, multiple paragraph post with postslike 'uhh linux sux0rs use windows it rox lol' it just makes my brain hurt

I dunno about newbies using Redhat - it's a good way to start I guess, but after having messed with Gentoo I think it's great. The installation (all being console based) may be a little hard for some people, but the instructions on the site are so detailed and easy to follow that only the most illiterate would find it a problem, I think

I'm very tempted to build a second box to run Gentoo on so I can truly retire this Windows machine to my gaming box only. Dual booting sucks.

 

[derby]

Arguing on the internet is like running...

You'll not solve the MS vs Linux battle here, but it is still therapeutic for us enlightned users to vent our collective spleen on a thread that will at least recieve attention from the Half-life community to which we belong.

 

[zakl]

Originally posted by simmo
There is an emulator called WineX which can emulate DX , it can play VC BF and stuff....

Yes, WineX does in fact offer DirectX support, but does not always give good game performance depending upon your hardware setup and drivers.

And for those of you who keep saying "why not just use wine?"...

If you haven't been keeping up with things, Valves latest VAX security update for the Half-Life server now prevents Linux players running half-life or any of it's mod's to connect to a "secure" server, as the server see's wine as a "cheat". Evidently it blocks users who run hl.exe or cstrike.exe from inside of another program such as OGC(the main cheating program for half-life and it's mods) does. Since running HL on wine is essentially opening HL inside of a nother program, well you see where the problem comes in... Supposedly Valve is suppose to be working with Transgaming Technologies the organization pumpin out winex, to come up with a solution so linux players can get HL back online. It's been about 2 months since this happened and still no solution, so obviously that's my answer to your question. While I do think this is a good enhancement to security (since it makes it all that much harder for the cheaters to figure out ways to get their code into the game) it does make things a little more difficult for the people running linux.

To those of you who keep saying dual-boot, please correct me if I am wrong, but I have read somewhere that it is a violation of the Microsoft Windows End User License Agreement to "dual-boot" or have the bootloader boot to any other OS besides windows(or something to this extent). Never the less I and half the world does it anyway

Also, the statement

Well I guess a Mac port might make sense. Very few people run linux on desktop, and those who do have a dual boot (like me).

That is not true, of the few people I know personally who run linux, 50% of them and some of their friends run Linux only, and don't even have a windows installation CD around.

The ONLY reason I dual-boot is because I'm a Counter-Strike addict, and with the latest VAX update as I discussed, I can't play in Linux anymore, so I am forced to boot to windows to get my fix ;(

 

[Guest]

Microsoft must make you stupid/linux must make you smart, cus there are some damn looooooooooong posts in here, and I cant be assed to read them being an XP user

 

[Tr0n]

I thought I heard that Longhorn was going to be using some Linux code in it's operating system.

 

[nw909]

Originally posted by Bass
Microsoft must make you stupid/linux must make you smart, cus there are some damn looooooooooong posts in here, and I cant be assed to read them being an XP user

You lost me right after "must", damn long message.

 

[Guest]

Linux sucks, I hope no game will ever be released on that amature OS :dozey:

 

[Guest]

Originally posted by Bass
Microsoft must make you stupid/linux must make you smart, cus there are some damn looooooooooong posts in here, and I cant be assed to read them being an XP user

What in the blue ƒuck are you talking about ? learn some English buddy :bonce:

 

[Fallout2man]

WineX is the best you'll get, I imagine a native Linux port will not exist for a long time if ever. If you use Linux then you should've known full well before you decided to use it that its game support is non existent, even worse then the barely there Mac's game support.

If you want to play HL, then either use WineX or use Windows. You can't expect a developer to make a fully native port, which would require totally re-writing the renderer in OpenGL since it uses DirectX, for a minimal group of users.

 

[supangr]

Originally posted by Tr0n
I say they should port to both mac and linux reason why:more money. just because they only make up 10 to 15 percent of the computer market don't many anything.It's the money, if they did port it they would be making thousands and thousands of dollars(don't know how many euros).

10 to 15 percent? Try 3 or 4 percent, and yes, that's the market share of BOTH linux and mac together, it is beyond insignificant, only people who see OSes as religious idols bother to port to or develope for those OSes. John Carmack can lose another few million porting doom 3 to those OSes like when he ported Quake 3 to them, but Gabe seems more grounded in the real world and concerned about money rather than "sticking it" to Bill Gates, or being a member of the cause of the week.

I thought I heard that Longhorn was going to be using some Linux code in it's operating system.

I heard the moon is made of cheese too. (In case that was too subtle for you, there will be NO linux code anywhere NEAR longhorn.)

 

[Tr0n]

Originally posted by supangr
10 to 15 percent? Try 3 or 4 percent, and yes, that's the market share of BOTH linux and mac together, it is beyond insignificant, only people who see OSes as religious idols bother to port to or develope for those OSes. John Carmack can lose another few million porting doom 3 to those OSes like when he ported Quake 3 to them, but Gabe seems more grounded in the real world and concerned about money rather than "sticking it" to Bill Gates, or being a member of the cause of the week.



I heard the moon is made of cheese too. (In case that was too subtle for you, there will be no linux code anywhere NEAR longhorn.)

Ok for one linux and mac together take up about 15% of the market share you think to small because Windows takes up 85% percent and linux and Mac together take up about 15%.If you don't believe me go and search about it at geek.com.Another thing I was guessing on that last part.Becuase a couple months back they accuried a linux company(forgot who)So I thought maybe they bought them so there coders could help make Longhorn more stable and secure.

 

[MrD]

Originally posted by zakl
At least you admitted it... Your previous "Points of note about Linux" are all outdated aside from add to zip and system settings. etc...

3. The thing about "add to zip" is that it is not built-in to the OS. An application can add new items to these shortcut menus, ie. if a new file-type came along such as mp4 then an MP4 player can register a "Play in xxx" item to be added to the shortcut menu. Does linux have anything of this type (I would assume the problem here is lack of standards, ie. so many window managers and a lack of standard interfaces to support things of this type).

Don't get me wrong I hate Windows, but what I have used of Linux hasn't impressed me much either.

So, to update, I installed VMWare and I have had a bash at sticking Gentoo on a virtual machine so that I can play with it. Still working on it.

 

[zakl]

MrD,

KDE does have the support you speak of. If you emerge KDE and then emerge K3B(the best linux cd writing gui available) you'll notice that K3B shortcuts are added to teh shortcut menu in Konqueror which is KDE's file manager. If you right click on an ISO image it will show "write to CD with K3B". The support is there, just not all programs are taking advantage of it.

And Acidtrip, all your doing is trying to piss people off, pushing buttons. I'm not even gonna waste my time arguing with you.

BTW, if you follow the install guide very closely you shouldn't have any problems getting your system up and running. But should you run into an issue with hardware or compile errors go visit the Gentoo Support Forums. Very few people have ran into problems that were not helped and solved in teh forums. Gentoo has a healthy community of linux users and Gentoo "guru's" who browse the forums frequently to try to help others with problems.

 

[MrD]

Thanks zakl,

I think the Virtual Machine technology that VMWare uses is designed to be fairly compatible with things. I certainly haven't had any troubles yet, my IDE, ethernet and display are all working thus far.

Its more my understanding thats lacking. I don't understand why I have to have three partitions on my (virtual) disk, I'm not a big fan of partitions (just more calculations to fling into the pipeline).

Anyways, I have the partitions created & mounted and I downloaded and extracted the stage3 "tarball" so tonight hopefully I can continue from where-ever it was I got to (presumably I just boot of the CD again and remount the hda partitions I created last time).

Thanks for all the help so far people.

Originally posted by Shirow-DG
"There really isn't any point in continuing this thread. When people respond to an excellently written, multiple paragraph post with postslike 'uhh linux sux0rs use windows it rox lol' it just makes my brain hurt"

It makes mine hurt too but they seem to get everywhere so I just ignore them now.

 

[supangr]

Originally posted by Tr0n
Ok for one linux and mac together take up about 15% of the market share you think to small because Windows takes up 85% percent and linux and Mac together take up about 15%.If you don't believe me go and search about it at geek.com.Another thing I was guessing on that last part.Becuase a couple months back they accuried a linux company(forgot who)So I thought maybe they bought them so there coders could help make Longhorn more stable and secure.

"About 15%" huh?

Further underscoring Windows' dominance are findings from OneStat.com. The company reported in September 2002 that Windows accounts for 97.46 percent of the global operating system market. The second most popular operating system, Apple's Macintosh, trails dismally at 1.43 percent, followed by Linux with 0.26 percent.

Quoted from http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/2205811 - this study is similar to the many others I've seen, as far as numbers go.

Let me break out my calculator, hmm let's see, 1.43 plus sign 0.26..hmm, nope, I'm don't get "about 15%" maybe the batteries are dead in my calculator..

If you don't like those numbers (and I know you won't), there's also http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html - slightly better for linux and mac which combined are used in _4%_ of google accesses, but you have to remember, google is going to be biased towards mac and linux, it is the prefered search engine of non-windows users, whereas windows users overwhelmingly use MSN search engine since it is the default when you hit 'search' in IE which is included with all versions of windows.

Onestat's are desktop market share numbers, linux is going to be a little higher if you add servers, but you aren't going to be playing halflife 2 on a server, so those are the numbers that you'd go by if you wanted to know if some OS was worth porting to. Porting to 0.26% of the market = an OS fanatic, not a man with business sense.

And MS did not buy Corel to get their linux, they invested some cash in Corel, Corel then sold it's linux off to some other company so they could pursue something profittable for a change. The trolldot.org conspiracy spin of course was "M$ paid off Corel to kill Corel linux cuz they were scared of it!" ya, sure. whatever. :dozey:

 

[supangr]

Originally posted by zakl

To those of you who keep saying dual-boot, please correct me if I am wrong, but I have read somewhere that it is a violation of the Microsoft Windows End User License Agreement to "dual-boot" or have the bootloader boot to any other OS besides windows(or something to this extent). Never the less I and half the world does it anyway

Not correct, the closest thing to what you are thinking would be the business deals MS has with OEMs where they negate their discounts on windows if they dual-boot, probably because MS doesn't want the clueless users calling them and tying up their support lines when something goes wrong with the other OS. The user will think it's MS' fault, expect MS to fix it, etc etc. If they are going to be put through that trouble, the oems can pay the full price to help offset some of the costs.

Once you have the machine you can install anything you want on it. If you know how to install another OS and dual boot, you probably know better than to call MS when your linux barfs all over the hard disk..