That's quite a step backwards, back into the early 80's where games --now ancient classics-- such as Pinball, Frogger, Jet Fighter and many others had their own boot floppy (which were unreadable under MS-DOS ...).
So the innards of the virtual machine would be always the same ... But such a virtual machine would have to be open source then, or else it will impossible for packagers to re-compile and re-package it for every possible distro. This stuff being open source (e.g. a la Xen?) would allow each distro's maintainer to grab the sources and package it whatever way is right for their distro ...Boo wrote: so why not use a virtual machine. games could run in a virtual machine that is specifically for running games.
Well, as I wrote before: This platform or whatever it is would have to be open source so it can be adapted by the Linux community for each distro, no matter how exotic or how much "mainstream" or "fringe" it is; if it isn't open source, you'd run into the "too many distros" problem and you could just as well drop the development for this virtual machine as it would then be easier to develop the games to run natively for a select set of distros. BUT: This thing being open source also means that anyone armed with a C-compiler will be able to change it! So what sense would there be to include any DRM-type features into open source software when any motivated hacker will be able to remove the feature again? So I don't think that this will be appealing to game developers. And BTW, I think we already have such a virtual machine. If you look at all this then basically "Cedega" is exactly what we describe herewhare1 wrote: Right scorp you are talking about being able to suspend a virtual platform would it not be possable to creat a platform that you could not do this
Well ... as always: Some people don't agree with this and that (e.g. Fedora), or they don't care (Gentoo, Slackware), or they interpret some of the wording differently than others (Ubuntu + Debian vs. SUSE), so that even distros that claim to adhere to the LSB standards are still different from other distros in a number of aspectswhare1 wrote: So with that in mind Im wondering why distros are not adopting the LSB faster
Because if you know one UNIX-like OS it isn't that hard to pick up any other UNIX-like OS. And if you do it right then any program will run anywhere ... There are some very useful GNU scripts that can do this which may serve as example, e.g. the auto-configure and auto-make scripts which will run anywhere and find all your libs regardless on which distro they are installed. I've seen other installers on Linux which regardless of the distro will make the correct guesses install OK, no matter if you execute it on Debian, Fedora, SUSE, Mandriva or Ubuntu ... ) <== Just leave their oh so friendly diplomacy away and you get what they really mean (basically what I wrote above!)The future of Linux? It will continue to evolvewhare1 wrote: But it leaves me wondering about the future for Linux
(Linux isn't "intelligent design" as Torvalds once put it ... it's "evolution" )Not exactly true. At my work we more or less have a 99.99% Microsoft-free zone. And also at home: All serious stuff I do is done on Linux. Microsoft isn't but a toy for me, something I use in order to have fun. Ahemmmm ... Like a condomwhare1 wrote: Question: Will Linux ever have the freedom it wants?
Answer: No because it will always have to comply to microsoft in some way be it using an emulator, dual booting or some other way of running the software
You use it, you have fun, then you throw it away and get back to serious business again. But Microsoft wants a full-time relationship with 100% commitment ... Sorry dear, not with me. I use Windows when I want to play ... and that's it. No kisses, no hugging, no hand-holding there. I have my share of fun with Windows but my commitment goes to Linux And more and more people think like this. So there can't be a question about the "future of Linux". Not 100% accurate. Look at Epic Games and their Unreal Tournament series of games. They wrote their own installer which will guess all the correct values and then install itself correctly on each distro I tried so far. So if a small company like Epic can do this then I guess it can't be that hard. It's just a question of doing the first few steps and taking the learning curve. And not to forget: There is quite a number of decent and promising open source games in the works, so even though the current situation isn't ideal right now, I guess it will improve. Maybe not today (as I wrote in my previous postings), maybe not tomorrow, but with Linux there is always so much stuff going on that manages to take everyone by surprise.whare1 wrote: Question: Will the games companies create new games for Linux users?
Answer: Again No because there is no standard way of doing this so by creating a game of other application you would need a standard way to do it or you would encounter countless problems when running on different platforms
This is something you don't even need to get me started withwhare1 wrote: Question: So ultimately will Linux ever be more than just a toy:
Linux as a whole is pretty far away from being "just a toy". It's rather that Microsoft is getting this image more and more: Microsoft is the OS you need to play games. So it's getting more and more this association: "Windows = Games = Toying around; "Wintendo"; not fit for serious business use". Well, in the server room Microsoft has been hit pretty hard in the past few yearswhare1 wrote: With all that in mind it appears to me that Linux will always have problems in becoming a operating system capable of giving Microsoft a run for its money
And with Dell offering Ubuntu pre-installed now for Average-Joe Desktop-User I'd say the situation can only get worse for M$. Yes I agree it will get worse for "Microcrap" if we can get some better linux games/applications on itscorp123 wrote: with Dell offering Ubuntu pre-installed now for Average-Joe Desktop-User I'd say the situation can only get worse for M$.
Again, you have to separate the home user market segments from the professional areas. In the professional areas nobody, and I really mean nobody, would dare to release a piece of professional hardware without having it supported under Linux toowhare1 wrote: mainly in the markets of hardware support
It's more or less just the "cheap" home user hardware and their vendors who don't want to release the technical specifications so that the kernel hackers (all the folks around Torvalds & Co.) could write a driver. But this situation is improving too.Can't agree with that. There is not one single Windows application I "miss" on Linux, I find all the open source alternatives (GIMP, Amarok, MPlayer, Firefox, Inkscape, Kino ...) superior and more stable to their Windows counterparts. And you can't beat the price: Free. And legally so, as with open source there is no need for software piracy. As for the professional market, e.g. 3D rendering, graphics, CAD/CAM, and so on: Linux is pretty well covered there.whare1 wrote: and well applications.
I can agree with that as I do miss some of my stuff on linux but what I am going to really miss is my games because I do enjoy my games ALOT helps keep me sane when the other half is moaningscorp123 wrote:
All in all this "there are applications missing" argument comes more or less exclusively from recent Windows-converts who couldn't yet adapt to their new OS of choice and who can't let go of the applications they're accostumed to; hence they perceive their once favourite applications as being "missing".
But i will change it from a no to it will be a long process still requiring the main distro's to work together more to create something that everybody is happy to use and to create things for
Question: So ultimately will Linux ever be more than just a toy:
Answer: Well based on the current state of things and there being no standards I will have to say No to this also because it there are to many different ways of doing things no companies will be prepared to support it due to the amount of variations between Distro's causing great problems for Linux as an operating system due to it not having the commercial support from application companies as well as software support from the hardware companies
To that I would agree. And from that POV I can understand the "there are too many Linux distros!" argument, as I too sometimes fail to see the necessity for so many distros. But then again, this is open source and if someone wants to create their own distro ... they have all rights to do sowhare1 wrote: it will be a long process still requiring the main distro's to work together more to create something that everybody is happy to use and to create things for
It's just that I sometimes whish that people would not "reinvent the wheel" for the x-1000th time or so and come up with e.g. yet another exotic location for the same config file or yet another program to do the same thing a dozen or so programs were already written for. But again: this is freedom It still leave the point of that there needs to be more cooperation between say the top 10 Distro's (Check Distro Watch for that)Me wrote: still requiring the main distro's to work together
(If I remember right from when I last checked Mint was 9th)
The very thought of that sends me reeling. But I talk to people every day who only use their computers for "business" applications (you know, like email and surfing the web for p*rn).Yes am one of them... (except for the pr0nLolo Uila wrote:Aonther thing to consider here is that there are a LOT of people who don't play games on their computers. I know it's shocking.
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