My Linux Gaming Article - Comments please :)

[Seeruk]

http://www.gug.erzz.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24&Itemid=32

Let me know what you think, anything I should have included or maybe some useful info for any problems mentioned would be great to add!

 

[bersl2]

Edit: I see that you address some of my initial reactions later in the text.

Complaint number one... why the hell would I want 3 or 4 different media players, 2 Different office environments and duplication of all kinds of applications?? Once installed and booted into the desktop (KDE) I was a little under whelmed. It seems like someone has put a lot of effort into creating a desktop that looks and feels just like windows!

It's called "choice." If you don't like one program, you can use another that performs the same function, but with a different look and feel. You shouldn't need to install 4 versions of the same program, but they're there if you want other choices.

As for desktop, well, KDE does hover closely to Windows' look and feel and other philosophy (such as being rather monolithic). If you want something wild, go see what's been done with Enlightenment. If you want something minimalist, look at one of the *box WMs (blackbox, fluxbox), or in the extreme, ratpoison. If you really must have a desktop environment, you can look at GNOME or Xfce, and the next version of Enlightenment will be a full DE.

And if you're looking for the really cool bells and whistles enabled by 3D acceleration, Xgl is coming along.

My refresh rate was 60hz on my 19" IIyama CRT and the resolution was 1024x768 using a VESA driver! Well time to research and get the ATI drivers installed I guess.

ATI's support for Linux is in name only. Don't complain to us, we're doing all we can do (the reverse-engineered driver for R3xx-series chips just hit CVS on 07-22.

At which point I hit problem number two... my wlan NIC doesn?t work and thus no internet access.

What chipset is this WLAN hardware? Again, some hardware companies won't even talk to us, so don't complain to us in those cases, because we can't do a thing about it. You can even cheat and use ndiswrapper.

Some of the more common G cards are supported, but certainly not anything like the Pre-N PCI cards I use for their fantastic range and rock-steady connection under Windows.

Again, please tell the manufacturer to either put in the effort to make quality drivers for Linux too, or freely give us access to the necessary documentation, like all manufacturers should be doing in theory.

Because of the way some of these companies act, you absolutely cannot be haphazard with your choice of hardware.

On returning from holiday I check over all the forum posts I made, mailing lists I posted and other sources I had posted to and seen that I had a grand total of '0' replies from the supposedly great Linux community!

Which forums? This one?

Ummmmm no. Turns out that formats such as MP3, WMA, ATRAC and other of the most popular formats are not supported out of the box and now I have to go and hunt for a grand total of 15 different packages and apps to get to such a stage. I get there eventually but at the cost of many hours more research and implementing.

MP3 - patent-encumbered, therefore some distros do not include support for it by default.
WMA - you're kidding me, right?
ATRAC - proprietary (I've never used it)

There is usually a package of many binary codecs available for every distro.

The only problem I really had with it was trying to update Firefox... its apparently not possible and you are stuck with 1.02 until Ubuntu provides the next release dubbed 'Breezy Badger which will include Firefox 1.06 at the time of writing.

Some distros decide to use slightly older versions of software, but with many of the critical fixes backported. This is usually done for the sake of stability (less new code makes things less likely to break; this maxim is true for all platforms).

A correction for page 7: "WineX" is the old name for Cedega. What you were going for there was "WINE".

However all games running in a pseudo environment like this obviously take a big performance hit and will run slower than under Windows.

I'm not so sure that the performance hit is as big as you make it sound, and if it is, it is probably not due to the API wrapping directly.

There are so many competing standards, so much politics, so much repetition of work as various factions re-write the wheel with almost identical software, competing protocols and the resultant compatibility issues that it frustrates me

This is what happens when you let engineers run things. Most differences in opinion get ironed out smoothly, and those that don't blow up in everyone's face. And then there's the various metaphors, like the airline metaphor

Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own airline. They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee to cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself. When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the seat-HOWTO.html. Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful. You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, "You had to do what with the seat?"

It's a way of ensuring that the best technical decisions are made, and that if a fork needs to be made for mutually-exclusive goals, it is done.

 

[drag]

What I am suprised is that Ubuntu doesn't have the default kernel using "high memory support" enabled. However installing a optimized kernel for your platform is pretty common experiance.

But other then that seems like the experiance of a typical newbie struggling with random hardware whose manufacturers have provided no decent Linux support for. ATI, your Belkin (not the belkin company, but the chipsets that your card is using), etc.

Funny how you thought that alsamixer is hidden and the option for Audigy 2's digital out was hidden. It's pretty standard fair.

The volumes on the desktop are in abstract generic form.. if you want direct access to hardware and such you use alsamixer. That's also why on those audigy cards have about 10 thousand different sliders in alsamixer, because thats what creative has built into the hardware.

Seems pretty standard Linux experiance otherwise. Realise though that you've been using Windows for pretty much the majority of the past 10-15 years, but Linux for a few weeks so of course it's going to be confusing and difficult.

Although don't call it "linux gaming", you hae almost nothing about gaming in the article. Call it "linux misery" or something like that. It's much more accurate.

 

[doornail]

Well, kinda juvenile.

You fell back to sarcasm when you encountered issues that were beyond your skills. Sarcasm and negativity without humor is like being stuck in line behind a whiner at the DMV -- an all around unpleasant experience for your audience.

Like many novice writers, you used too many exclaimation points! Often a couple a once!! That's a problem! It makes it sound like you only know how to yell! The reader loses interest! If you're using more than one per article something is wrong!

You also heaped a lot of ridicule just because Linux is different. For example, you called vi "awful", but if you understood it's history and purpose, you'd know better.

 

[Sunner]

After reading it, I've concluded that I feel sorry for "Some of the largest organisations on the planet", that supposedly employ you.
While I wouldn't recommend Linux(be it Ubuntu, Fedora, or Slackware) to my parents, anyone who claims to be a professional in the IT field and has such huge amounts of problems as you obviously had has probably made a wrong turn somewhere.

Linux sure wasn't easy back in...95 or whenever I started using it, and I wasn't even 18 back then, and I had very little experience with things such as TCP/IP, and yet it seems like my first ride was far smoother than yours.
Does that say something about Linux, or you?

 

[bersl2]

Originally posted by: doornail
You also heaped a lot of ridicule just because Linux is different. For example, you called vi "awful", but if you understood it's history and purpose, you'd know better.

Let's make him use ed for a week. He'll learn to appreciate vi that way.

 

[sourceninja]

First you made the number 1 mistake. You made the assumption x86 hardware is x86 hardware. Even with windows you should still check to see what is involved with using your hardware before installing an OS or even buying it. A quick post of your hardware on any linux forum would of told you that you were not going to have a easy time. ATI drivers are getting better, but they still suck. Wireless card makers wont release linux drivers (this is also slowly changing). You also made the mistake of going 64bit. Even windows xp 64bit isn't 100% perfect yet, I suspect you would of hand a much easier time with ubuntu 32bit. You make a few comments about apt. But it appears you didn't even bother to read/learn about how ubuntu and apt work. Most of the issues you have with packaging could of been solved with the ubuntu backports project repositorys. Yes, I know its extra work, but its easy to figure out www.ubuntuguide.org and would fix your problems. You also seem unaware of how ubuntu worked because you make it seem like they do not update their software. This is in correct, they do update inbetween versions, but they update security features only (via backporting). So you do have to wait 6 months between new features, but remember that their version is testing a lot more then the latest bleeding edge version. Also, as long as you setup the right repositorys for apt, you can not install software not desigend for your arch. Also, you make no mention of the graphical way to install software synaptic. Which is much easier to use then apt.

The high mem support problem is an issue in most distro's. Its just not common enough for people to have over 1 gig of ram, and by turning on himem support in the kerenl, you could cause I/O problems and a general slowdown if you do not have over 1 gig of ram. So yes, this would suck and I do not think that any normal user should ever have to compile their own kernel. As for your cpu running slow, this is because ubuntu uses cool n' quiet to scale down your cpu while it is idle. If you watched the cpu speed while doing cpu intensive things you would see it scale up. I use this on my own system, and I have never had a problem, it scales from 1ghz to 2.2 as needed. I'm not sure why it didn't scale up for you. Its possible something is weird in your bios or a bug in ubuntu (I use gentoo). Also in regards to gentoo, it would take about 7 hours to setup on your pc. But I do not recomend it due to your problems running ubuntu. You would fail. Gentoo is not a linux distro, it is a meta distro that you use to build your own linux distro. This makes things at least 2 times more complicated and definatly not for the average pc user.

One last thing is you did not mention a lot of the native linux games.

UT2004
NWN
almost any game based on the quake 3 engine
Savage
a ton of games listed at tuxgames.com
Doom 3
etc

Linux may not have the volume of games, but it does have some very good ones that run native and run very well.

So in my feeling you made some fatal flaws.

1) You did not do any research
2) you expected a platform change to just work without doing any research


I feel you misrepresented how linux would work for a normal user. And you also managed to state the obvious, that trying to change your OS as a normal user is a lesson in futility. You need to do homework, you need to know what your doing. You can not just download ubuntu and install it and expect every single thing to work. No more so then trying to run solaris on a x86 machine you built out of spare parts with no solaris exp. Its like buying a new pc with pci-e and sata and ondering why windows 95 has trouble installing. Your going to need to do homework. Like it or not an OS is serious buisness. You also stated the obvious that most windows games will not run on linux (or mac for that matter). So yes, linux would never be a good choice for a windows gamer. But for a gamer like me, it works just fine.

Just to give you my rundown on my last PC install.

AMD64 3500
1 gig ram
dfi nforce4 ultra-D
300 gig sata drive
nec 16X dvd burner
nvidia 6800 GT 256meg
dell 2001fp monitor

Gentoo Linux

I opted for a stage 1 on stage 3 install. This is a little more complicated then a normal gentoo install, but improves speed over a stage 3 install and stops a few fatal flaws that happen with a normal stage 1 or stage 2 install.

This required me to take extra steps including recompiling the tool chain no less then 2 times (at about 1-2 hours each time) Then recompiling the base system no less then 2 more times (again about 1.5 -2 hours)
I then compiled my kernel with all the required drivers intergrated into the kernel and a few rare things (loopback support, joydev, a few file systems, etc) built as modules. Setup grub and rebooted.

Everything worked, no problems at all. All my hardware functioned. I then installed alsa and my sound began to work with no problems. I then install the nvidia 3d drivers and xorg-x11. Again, no issues. I copied over my old xorg.conf file and used it with resolution 1600x1200@60, 5 buttons enabled on my mouse, and 104 key keyboard. I then installed gnome-light and a few other packages I use (java, firefox, evolution, etc) Again no issues (although you do have to download java from sun.com which is a pain) I then use portage to install UT2004 (put my dvd in and type emerge -va ut2004) it installs for me and patches it to the current version with the patches needed to make it have all the offical extra content as well. Finally, I use a script I wrote to install nwn from the platinum DVD. Install cedega and point2play (emerge -va point2play) and then use that to install hl2. I'm now ready to go. Total time 11 hours. Yea its long, and I wouldn't want to see a normal user do it, but it works and my system is rock solid stable.

Now on my wife's box, on her second partition, I just put in the ubuntu disk and went to town. It installed fine detected all hardware with no issues. I did a server install and then installed the packages I wanted her to have to avoid the 4 media players, 3 word editors, etc problem that you had. In the end, she had a stripped down gnome with abiword, thunderbird, firefox, and a few other apps she likes. She still can't make the fulltime switch (she uses MS money) but she is getting there and likes gnome a lot more then windows xp.

her box

Shuttle nforce 2 machine (can't recall model number)
amdxp 3000
onboard sound
nvidia fX5900
100 gig ide drive
lite-on 12X dvd burner

In both cases, I spent time learning how the OS worked. I read the user forums. Looked at common gotcha's. And even tried them in vmware. When I was ready, I knew how the sytem worked and what I was likley to come up against with my hardware. That is why I had no problems. I feel this is even a common problem in the windows world. How many people buy whatever we tell them to buy on this forum and then can't build a stable windows PC? The reason is they dont know how windows works, they dont know what they are doing. They just think they can stick that windows xp CD they downloaded off the internet in and everything will work. They dont read the howto from ati's website on how to install the drivers. They dont lookf or gotcha's or tools. They dont read dfi's user forum to see what kind of issues they may have with their ram and that board, or what bios update they need for said feature. They may over patch, make unstable tweaks, use the wrong drivers, update the bios when the new one doesn't fix any bugs they have. This is why most people dont need to switch OS's. They should use what they buy. And they should buy it from people who know what they are doing and have done this kind of research. So thats what I get from your article, that you didn't know what you were doing, and you failed because of it.

I dont mean for this to be harsh, I really wish you well, I think you address valid issues that really happened to you. But I feel the problem was not a fault of linux, but a fault of your own doing. (With the exception of himem support)

 

[Seeruk]

Thanks for the feedback - even the childish stuff is valued

A crap load of questions and a crap-load of counter points to make - but let me start with 3 basics.

First of the review was meant to be on Linux gaming, however getting Linux into a state for gaming especially for the noob looking to try it out (like me!) takes a huge amount of involved work to get hardware working and configured correctly... that's what I discovered and thus why article ended up being on that experience. Yes a bit of shellscript could be hacked here and there to get things working.... but would a typical user be remotely capable of that???

Second, I did not find a great deal of things to write about in Linux gaming, it takes up one page of the article and can be summed up as 'emulated windows gaming' (using paid for software for best results) with some very basic games truly OS. I did mention some of the major native games such as UT2004.

And 3rd - it is intended as a noob experience... I glossed over a hell of a lot of issues that coulda painted Linux a hell of a lot worse... but to I was trying to take the viewpoint of a complete Linux noob and the likely problems they would encounter.


So on to other stuff

Bersl - Duplication of software by default is bad, Why would I possibly need both Evolution and Open Office?? 2-3 different browsers?? It's a waste of space and requires some un-installation actions that can actually lead to some dependency hell.
I look forward to XGL and its bells and whistles... I do intend to revist the article in 6 months time with any improvements and
The NDISWrapper world is probably now as well known to me as you - as mentioned I spent a full 3 weeks working with it to get one WLan Nic working. I posted on ubuntu forums, 3-4 generic linux forums, 3 different newsgroups and even eventually mailed one of the devs of NDISWrapper. We hacked code, we turned stuff inside out ..... response zero... ..example http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=43511

Because of the way some of these companies act, you absolutely cannot be haphazard with your choice of hardware.

I agree with you entirely and is perhaps the main point of the article in the end!

A correction for page 7: "WineX" is the old name for Cedega. What you were going for there was "WINE".

My bad Thanks

And finally ... I value your time to add some explanation and when I am not so tired I will see what can be incorporated into the article by way of defence But on the subject of defence.... that airport analogy... if it came out of Bill Gates mouth as a defence for an operating system the internet would come to its knees as Linux people leapt to ridicule him

Drag -

What I am suprised is that Ubuntu doesn't have the default kernel using "high memory support" enabled

Spot on! And its little things like this that would enable a lot more of the average userbase to easily migrate to Linux.

Doornail -

You fell back to sarcasm when you encountered issues that were beyond your skills

Care to qualify???

Sunner -

After reading it, I've concluded that I feel sorry for "Some of the largest organisations on the planet", that supposedly employ you.

While I wouldn't recommend Linux(be it Ubuntu, Fedora, or Slackware) to my parents, anyone who claims to be a professional in the IT field and has such huge amounts of problems as you obviously had has probably made a wrong turn somewhere.

Thankyou for defining the typical Linux expert response to any problem. "Its not linux its you." Whilst it may feel like it enlarges your e-peen it does little to advocate the spirit of open source to potential new users and shows a complete arrogance that will turn a lot of people off Linux.
Like it or not, I run a system using modern hardware, Linux as a whole does a sh*t job of supporting modern hardware... whether that is Linux's fault or the hardware company's... I cant help feeling that if the effort that goes into creating the 996th Linux distro to be released this month went into driver development it would leverage the whole OS to the next level. I do not want to goto a shop and buy 18 month old hardware to have a chance of it working. Im a gamer FFS and as such buying OLD hardware is not physically possible for me!

Let's make him use ed for a week. He'll learn to appreciate vi that way.

Alas I do ... all day every day It doesnt make it any better... it's still crap

sourceninja - I know how backports work and made a point of mentioning them. We have created our own backports at work for our deb systems. I had them all enabled and from the excellent (worth repeating) www.ubuntuguide.org you can get a lot of this done. I should correct it a little to make it more positive about apt, but it still needs to be highlighted as a 'to-do' for anyone setting up their system.

However to say that working with solaris for approx 4 years, to have experimented with distros for 2-3 of those years (albeit in a VM environment) and to have read 3-4 books on the subject is doing no research is faintly ridiculous. I run two webservers at home using Damn Small Linux, Apache 2, PHP, Mambo on one box as a CMS and Postnuke on the other, ......

The point is simple I think and maybe I need to emphasis it more.... this is an article on the uselessness of Linux for gaming, for two reasons

1. Poor support for any relatively new hardware
2. Poor support from publishers/developers

But still anyone with similarities in hardware will hit the same snags - its valid, its true and its something I can't see changing in the near future

 

[drag]

Linux has great support for new hardware. I don't know what your talking about.

Linux just doesn't have great support for _random_ hardware.

I can go to a online store and pick out a nice brand new machine with all brand new parts and have it work almost perfectly. I can go and get a centrino laptop that would work perfectly with Linux right out of the box and would probably outperform windows on many games to boot.

Ya just need to have much better taste in hardware, that's all.

 

[doornail]

Originally posted by: Seeruk
Whilst it may feel like it enlarges your e-peen it does little to advocate the spirit of open source to potential new users and shows a complete arrogance that will turn a lot of people off Linux.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think saying "e-peen" in your rebuttals really conveys that authorative flair.

The whole thing read like an obnoxious, opinionated slam against Linux from some windows fanboy who was determined not to succeed in this experiment. The fact that you respond all criticism with "nah, I'm right anyway" cinches it for me.

Can you run Windows apps under Linux with varying degrees of success? Yes.
Can you run Gnome and KDE apps on Windows with any degree of success? Nope.

 

[Sunner]

Originally posted by: Seeruk
Thankyou for defining the typical Linux expert response to any problem. "Its not linux its you." Whilst it may feel like it enlarges your e-peen it does little to advocate the spirit of open source to potential new users and shows a complete arrogance that will turn a lot of people off Linux.
Like it or not, I run a system using modern hardware, Linux as a whole does a sh*t job of supporting modern hardware... whether that is Linux's fault or the hardware company's... I cant help feeling that if the effort that goes into creating the 996th Linux distro to be released this month went into driver development it would leverage the whole OS to the next level. I do not want to goto a shop and buy 18 month old hardware to have a chance of it working. Im a gamer FFS and as such buying OLD hardware is not physically possible for me!

Since I more or less started by saying that I wouldn't recommend Linux to my parents(or my grandparents, or my newbie neighbour, or....) does it sound like I care a whole lot if I turn people off from using Linux?
Fact is, for people used to Windows, that's still the better option on the desktop, unless they're willing to unlearn and then learn some new stuff instead, and if they are, they wouldn't have the kind of problems you were having.
Lots of people have tried Ubuntu and succeeded where you failed despite not being IT pros for large organisations.

Point being that by the sound of the article you obviously didn't venture into this task with the right mindset, sounded more to me like you wanted to be yet another blogger making a whine about xyz.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

This article is pretty crappy. It just sounds like you wanted to fail at Linux to make Windows a way better O/S.

 

[Boztech]

Originally posted by: drag
Linux has great support for new hardware. I don't know what your talking about.

Linux just doesn't have great support for _random_ hardware.

I can go to a online store and pick out a nice brand new machine with all brand new parts and have it work almost perfectly. I can go and get a centrino laptop that would work perfectly with Linux right out of the box and would probably outperform windows on many games to boot.

Ya just need to have much better taste in hardware, that's all.

Just how exactly does one quantify "random" hardware??

 

[Boztech]

Originally posted by: doornail

Originally posted by: Seeruk
Whilst it may feel like it enlarges your e-peen it does little to advocate the spirit of open source to potential new users and shows a complete arrogance that will turn a lot of people off Linux.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think saying "e-peen" in your rebuttals really conveys that authorative flair.

The whole thing read like an obnoxious, opinionated slam against Linux from some windows fanboy who was determined not to succeed in this experiment. The fact that you respond all criticism with "nah, I'm right anyway" cinches it for me.

Can you run Windows apps under Linux with varying degrees of success? Yes.
Can you run Gnome and KDE apps on Windows with any degree of success? Nope.

Attacking the syntax of his reply is hardly going to hold any more weight either.

Truth is he's right, most of the replies have been very typical of the Linux user attitude, which is based around the misnomer that users who are new to Linux are unqualified or unjustified in criticizing the operating system or even the setup process because of the inherent fact that they lack the technical experience or knowledge to use it correctly.

It's a self-contradicting point. Of course new Linux users are going to have difficulty, they're new to Linux! Their general negativity really stems from the fact that Windows XP has such a comparitivaly low learning curve and infinitely easier setup process and support for x86 hardware of all generations. They have every right to complain about the forboding setup process, learning curve, and ultimately inadequate hardware support - it is a MAJOR, in reality THE CRITICAL selling point for any software product. It is the first experience you have with any software product you use - it can either turn you off of the product or lead you quickly and easy into a useable environment in which you can then adequately quantify it's useability.

It matters not how secure, stable, or extensible your software product may be if the setup and learning process is so overbearing as such that the user gives up long before he can even see or enjoy the benefits that it may have.

 

[TGS]

Short Version:

Honest opinion, it's a poorly written border line flamebait article. The kind you see to up page impressions. I use Windows for gaming, based on the simple fact that developers give MS 98-100% of their driver support. You need only to follow the money trail to find out why. You could probably skip the rest as you probably don't even care what type of responses you get from here.


Long Version:

[Boring stuff follows, even more boring afterwards *BEWARE* actual critique]

When the title reads:

Linux Gaming ... Mission Aborted!

and then leads in with...

"Yes I know" I scream into the face of the latest Linux evangelist to harass me into giving it a try.

The serious reader can stop. Why would you try *anything* car, food, movie when you are screaming in the face of the latest * evangelist, who is harassing you to try it.

Honestly, like I said the serious reader can really just stop at sentence one and get 100% of the message you are trying to convey.

Statements that convey a negative message towards, (certainly not the topic, which is supposedly gaming on Linux) so I don't know why you would even add it.

Amongst the many claims of Linux are:

Apparently it's cool to be anti-Gates

grammatical error:

Bare in mind I am an IT Professional to some of the largest organisations on the planet.

Complaint number one... why the hell would I want 3 or 4 different media players, 2 Different office environments and duplication of all kinds of applications??

With the combined creativity of the open source community, I was expecting something as fresh and clean as the Mac. Then after 30 seconds I started to get a headache, and from this point on I realised really how terrible Linux is with hardware unless you are using some ancient laptop.

My refresh rate was 60hz on my 19" IIyama CRT and the resolution was 1024x768 using a VESA driver!

Strangely enough my windows 2000 fresh install does the same thing... It only took them getting to XP to fix simple startup problems. Though I digress...

Well time to research and get the ATI drivers installed I guess.

Everything seemed to go OK with the boot except I was left with only the command line and no desktop! Crap, back into windows and more research finds I need to rewrite my Xorg.conf file with all kinds of information such as Horizontal and Vertical refresh rates for my monitor, add drivers to it, remove another part to enable switching resolutions and more...

Grammatical usage again:
Good job I know how to use the awful 'vi' text editor from my Unix experience eh?


There is hope with a package called NDISWrapper that allows you to run your Windows drivers, but again only for certain chipsets and if the wind blows in the right direction.

I had a grand total of '0' replies from the supposedly great Linux community!

opped in Fedora Core 4, but found that the 4 apparently means you will have 4 screens during the installation process and once booted into the desktop, plus your mouse (which is going through a KVM) will be completely uncontrollable and randomly clicking on things. Scratch that one ? if they can?t get the basics right!

I considered Gentoo until I realised I would have to spend days compiling it.

Well 5 weeks (including 2 weeks hols) and I am finally hooked up to the net wirelessly in Linux! WOW!!!

After much reading around I find that in fact ALSA (one of the gazillion sound protocols in Linux it seems) has a hidden switch in a hidden command line mixer that by default has digital output selected, and needed to be switched back to analog. So after finding this nugget and tracking the app down I can indeed use this awful mixer to make the switch, whilst also pushing up a dozen or more sliders to get all 5.1 speakers working. Hurrah at last! Sound! Maybe I can now listen to some soothing MP3's whilst going through the next adventure in hardware Linux land.

Ummmmm no. Turns out that formats such as MP3, WMA, ATRAC and other of the most popular formats are not supported out of the box and now I have to go and hunt for a grand total of 15 different packages and apps to get to such a stage. I get there eventually but at the cost of many hours more research and implementing.


... I know what the problem with the CPU speed is, Ubuntu seems to be under the impression that my desktop is a laptop and as such has setup and configured PowerNow CPU scaling to save power... still even giving it strenuous tasks doesn?t even manage to get the CPU speed to increase - but ya know what?? I AM PAST CARING!!

The last one is actually cool & quiet, which if is enabled in the bios will be detected from within the OS.

Other popular choices for the Cedega world seem to be anything using ID?s engines, and indeed Quake 3, Doom 3, Unreal Tournament 2004, and others based on popular mega engines like those have Linux installers to actually run the game natively!

Those would be the games with OpenGL ports or native modes.

Some people say this isn?t Linux?s fault as hardware companies are simply not supporting Linux by writing drivers. Nvidia and ATI both have drivers out for Linux but (as with everything) take a ridiculous amount of configuration.

Certainly, why would we cop out on the developer when a device doesn't work 100% we always jump at MS. Well that would be because we don't. If MS says Device A will not work with Windows 98, and only has drivers for Windows 2000. Whats the call? Will MS make you a 98 driver? No, they grin widely and hand you a boxed copy of Win2K or XP and say we can give you an upgrade discount.

The devices you mentioned do not take a great deal of configuration, IF (big if here) you know what hardware you are running before you jump into a particular distro (IE the kernel may or may no support your particular hardware)

You are going to be heavily dependent on the paid-for Cedega for most of it to emulate windows in order to play the latest games

*sigh* It's not emulating a thing, it's program that runs the APIs the games require to run. There is no emulation. I'll give you a cookie if you can tell me what WINE stands for and why it's funny to call the commericalized branch WineX now Cedega an emulator.

Alas that seems like a distant dream as every week (see www.distrowatch.com & www.sourceforge.net ) more releases hit the FTP servers repeating verbatim the work of releases the week before.

Yes there has never been a single improvement since 1.0. I think we can all sleep easier at night knowing we aren't missing anything.

If you are looking for a more basic desktop purely for surfing, email and some of the more mundane tasks then Linux could be a great alternative for you.

Well honestly I could have just copy and pasted the entire "review" and labelled it uninformative garbage, but I just wanted to point at some serious weak points in your "writing".





The key is, you want to build an enthusist setup, but you don't want to get it setup with the tools you have.

Please just buy some new hardware, without grabbing the latest drivers from the included CD or the manufacturers website and tell me how that hardware performs. I bet, some how that it's going to A) not run or B) run in some horrible compatibility mode.

A real gamer doesn't haphazardly toss components together. S/He does the research for 100% compatability, overclockability, and stability. They want an unobstructed gaming experience, if they have to buy specific memory to suit thier board then they will get it. It's called research, much like jumping into a new OS. You should research a product, not base it off word of mouth. That's the entire purpose of writing articles, based on research and experience. Some wanton tripe that clearly shows your lack of knowledge on the subject matter does not convey any type of message other than the one, that you are by no means qualified to write an educated review on a product.

One, Possibly two of your eight pages actually dealt with the subject matter. It gets so off topic, that by the time you reach what the article should be about the reader has long since lost interest.

It poorly written, barely on topic, the grammatical structure is horrible at best, and the obnoxious puncutuation is just out there. Though that would fall under the lines of structure, I thought it would stand on it's own as a seperate fault.

Just to give you something to think about if you've made it this far. Windows 2000 fresh install, my OS of choice. I install W2K, without any slipstreamed patches. Where is my gaming going to be? In the gutter is the answer there. Why can I patch up my system and get to gaming after a bit of configuration? Microsoft provides me with all the DirectX patches I need, and the hardware developers have all the neccesary drivers that I need to get the full functionality of my hardware. *NOT* I repeat NOT microsoft. Microsoft either writes a generic driver, or bundles one to get basic functionality out of the device. MS isn't writting drivers for each piece of hardware, though through some odd thinking you are crediting MS with that very thing.

Telling people that Linux is for mundane tasks, because they *Linux people (whatever that means) can't reverse engineer drivers that are provided directly to MS is completely garbage.

If you have a problem with hardware support, where is the distain for devices that aren't supported under *Unix, *BSD, Mac, etc...? Do all these OS developers just slack around all day? No they try the best they can with the tools they have or create. While MS gets all the support they could ever want.

So please if you have something worth while to tell us, by all means share the wealth. If you have no idea of the development in OSes please feel free to avoid showing us how ignorant you are on that topic.

 

[drag]

Lifes not perfect. Anything that is worthwhile takes work.

Windows is easy for most people because they've been using it for 10-15. There is a huge learning curve to it, but for the vast majority of people that was taken care of years ago. It wasn't a big deal; either they learned to use Windows or they didn't use anything. They didn't have a choice. Windows was the only choice.

Now it's not, but everybody knows how to use Windows.

Just look at it this way:
It's been over five years since
1. I had to deal with authencating my OS or the majority of software I use.
2. Ever had to worry about spyware.
3. Ever had to worry about viruses, or install anti-virus software.

I don't have to go thru a verification proccess to be able to download updates in any manner that I feel like.
No cd keys, no calling big brother for permission to install my OS when my registration gets borked.
I don't have to wait 5 years between new OSes.
I don't have to pay another hundred bucks to upgrade.
And I can give all the software that I want to whoever I want in pretty much anyway I want.
No per-seat licensing, no OEM licensing restriction, no paying for upgrades, no NDA's for access to source code, no NDA's to play around with beta software.
No 30-day licenses to deal with.
No having to belong a special club or pay subscriptions to get access to beta software or developement tools.
I can access and modify any aspect of the OS that I feel like.

To me it makes sense for technical people to get familar with Linux. It's way to usefull to ignore and remain ignorant of.

As for Windows you might as well get out
while
you
can, because MS is doing everything it can to make it more and more difficult to get away from Windows.

anyways, the way the article was written it was specificly designed to get a negative response. There are plenty of people that criticize Linux's many flaws in a much more constructive manner.

 

[TGS]

Take a look here at a decent Linux distro review, and see how the "gaming" review fails to be anything but uninformative.

Text

Edit:

For the record, if you replaced every instance of Linux in your piece with Microsoft Windows I would say the same thing.

I use Windows 2000 SP4, as my gaming OS. Due to the fact that it rides the coat tails of XP for driver support from hardware and software developers. Once a software package forces me to use XP, they will lose a customer. So far that has happened twice, since I've started to use 2K. I will not go on some inane rant on how MS should support those software packges, because I can clearly see that the software developer is to blame.

 

[Seeruk]

Quick points only at the moment because I am at work...

Random hardware is a strange description for:

The most common CPU for gaming
2GB of high quality RAM is random??
One of the 3 most common motherboard chipsets for gaming
The 2nd most common graphics chipset for gaming
The most common sound card chipset for gaming

Needless to say all of the components were chosen at the time the rig was built for performance, and compatability has not been an issue outside of Linux. It scores ~6000 in 3dmark 05 and runs any game in windows at 1600x1200x85 with 4 fsaa and 6xaf, even using things like dynamic shadows in BF2.

I could start the article by saying I must go out and replace most of my components... it wouldnt really help the defence of Linux though would it? In fact those that have actually read it will see that in fact every problem was solved eventually bar the Pre-N Wlan nic. I did go out and buy a 2nd WLan card specifically for linux. But even that required the use of NDISWrapper to get any security in this 'secure' OS.

So really the insulting posts above are a little idiotic to say the least and typical of the Linux fanboy. REAL linux folks don't take criticism of the OS as something personal and a chance to abuse people... they a little more professional than that and will see it as a point of improvement, point you in the right direction, or offer some explanation and it's these people that earn my respect. Bersl2 being a good example

Just because an article criticises Linux, it does not mean I am a Windows fanboy. As a consultant I am in the business of choosing the best tools for the job for customers and not forcing a preferred solution upon them. For most enterprise servers I do tend to recommend Solaris, for more personal server solutions such as web servers, database and so on I do tend to recommend a flavour of Linux, apache etc. However when it comes to gaming the last OS on earth I would reccomend at the moment would be Linux.

Seriously take off your attitude hat and argue to me that a typical user would have none of these problems with this COMMON gaming hardware when migrating from windows ?? It's report of an experience and whether you like it or not.

What I hope it has done is raised a lot of the issues for anyone concerned so that they know what to expect and perhaps learn from the experience. An example may be someone looking at it and saying hey maybe I'll update the kernel as a 1st step in order to avoid having to recompile all my applications.... see every cloud has a silver lining

 

[drag]

The only issues you had was with the Wifi stuff and Video card, right?

I mean you didn't like having to go thru alsamixer to turn on the digital out for your audigy, but that's about it, right?

Next time buy a Nvidia card and be a bit more carefull with the Wifi stuff.

Maybe buy a Via motherboard next time, but I dont' think you had any issues with the nvidia stuff once you disabled the onboard audio.

That's not realy _that_ difficult isn't it?


In fact Linux had native 64bit operating system ready for AMD before they even released the Opteron proccessors to public. It's not until just recently that windows has been able to do that.

People have been playing 64bit version of Ut2004 on Linux for quite a while now...
(and actually for native 64bit you can get hardware working in Linux by default that is still difficult in Windows)

 

[Sunner]

No kidding Linux isn't the OS for the heavy gamer, I doubt anyone here will tell you differently.
In fact, you could have asked and saved yourself the trouble, only a delusional Linux fanboy would claim that Linux is an optimal gaming OS, it just isn't.
Maybe you should read the posts more, they're not so much saying that your conclusion in itself(and without the fluff) is wrong, but rather than your attitude in the article is.

My to-be-replaced-today rig is based on an nForce2 and a Radeon 9800, neither WinXP nor Linux will have drivers for these two, so in either case I'll be out downloading drivers.
I'm assuming the situation is the same with an nForce3/X800 combo, but I'm assuming the situation is the same considering they're both newer than my counterparts, yet you whine about Linux not having drivers for these as if that was something Linux specific?
Come to think of it, who would expect that any OS would have drivers for hardware that's newer than the OS itself, the guys writing the OS aren't seers, they're programmers.

Oh well, enough ranting, the reason why I responded like I did is not because I feel personally offended that you don't like Linux for gaming(in fact I work with a guy who doesn't like Linux much at all, and we get along very well), I responded the way I did because there's no reason to respond in any other way to such a childish article.

Had the article been written in a more objective and professional way I know I'd feel far more inclined to help with and/or discuss the problems you ran into.

 

[Seeruk]

The only issues you had was with the Wifi stuff and Video card, right?

Nope... using less than half the installed memory, CPU scaling, the inability to switch between sound cards (though this is ubuntu specific I think), enabling UDMA is something I forgot to add, mounting of drives, the numlock key, the insistence of using IPV6.... all ridiculous little niggles that have no place in a modern OS.


Sunner - Actually WinXP SP2 does have native drivers for all you have mentioned, perhaps not 'optimized' but still functional.

And come to mention it so does Windows Vista beta 1.

I don't think I was either unprofessional or unbiased, it is simply a blow by blow account of an experience that was meant to highlight Linux gaming as it is possibly the one element of a desktop OS that the everage user is perhaps unable to do if they are considering the switch. I also felt I gave credit where it was due e.g. the installation procedure, the gnome desktop, reminding people this is a voluntary effort, etc

However after 6 weeks of fannying around with hardware that is commonplace and even required for modern games, I need to write up where its at rather than waste more time!



Anyway an update will be made some point today/tonight incorporating some of the useful things (mainly from bersl2) and perhaps giving more points of reference for help on topics like ubuntuguide and some of the newsgroups.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Seeruk
I don't think I was either unprofessional or unbiased, *snip*

And finally went back to Ubuntu (32 bit this time as app support for 64 bit is still shaky so much so that you cant even get flash for firefox!).

haha

 

[Seeruk]

And the problem with that is?....

 

[Sunner]

Haven't put much thought into why, but my build in NIC has never worked on a fresh install, slipstreamed Sp2 or not, but that's beside the point anyway.

Maybe it was unintentional, but to me, it came off as both immature, and whiney.
More like a rant from your average Windows user about Linux, or from a Linux user about Windows for that matter.

Seems like I'm not the only one, so either we're just a sensitive bunch(unlikely given how stuff gets posted here) or you should revise your writing style.

 

[drag]

pretty much my thoughts.

It's pretty common knowledge that you have to be carefull about what hardware you use for Linux for best results sometimes. Go to any Linux forum on the internet and people will tell you to avoid ATI products.

Same thing with games. There are plenty of games for Linux to keep a normal person occupied. A lot more if you take cedega/wine into account, but if you want to play the latest titles you either have to use a console or Windows.

Command line knowledge is very handy and I think that's a good thing generally. But other people disagree with me.

And going from windows to Linux is difficult at times. If your using Ubuntu you have to read the FAQ and the documentation and their they state quite plainly what you need to do to get restricted formats working.. in a few different places.

So on and so forth.

I pretty much say all that everytime person enquires about Linux and games or is thinking about making a switch.

Despite all that I think it's worth it.