Subj : Re: Why Linux is NOT for everyone
To   : comp.os.linux
From : Pandora Xero
Date : Fri Aug 20 2004 10:56 pm


Minderbinder wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 18:47:57 -0700, Identity/Crisis wrote:
>
> <snip>
> > I dual-boot
> > with Winxp and SuSE, and I wouldn't have to if there was faster
> > development with X11 and better 3D acceleration. If these
conditions
> > were met, Linux would be viewed as a vialble OS to deploy games on,
and
> > I'm quite sure most large game companies (except Microsoft, of
course)
> > would start deploying games for Linux.
>
> Nonsense. Linux is already a viable games platform from a
technological
> perspective, as evidenced by the existence of native versions of
Quake 3,
> America's Army and so on, as well as the imminent release of Doom 3.
It
> would be helpful to have a good cross-platform set of game APIs with
a
> solid development/deployment environment, like DirectX. Well, this
does
> already exist in SDL, for example, but given SDL's lack of
overwhelming
> popularity...
>
> The status of 3D accelerated drivers for X11 really depends on the
card
> manufacturers (a) releasing programming specs or (b) writing some
decent
> drivers themselves. However, this has nothing to do with game
> availability. Do you really think that any improvements in X will
somehow
> induce Windows game developers to port hundreds of thousands of lines
of
> code full of Windows APIs to X APIs, just to satisfy about 2% of the
> desktop gaming market? (slaps forehead)
>
> Sheesh...
> Minderbinder.

Actually, what would be so hard about porting games to Linux? like you
said "thousands of lines of code" but what if someone were to write a
DirectX clone, or a DirectX emulator. We see clones and emulators of
other things (Freeciv, LBreakout, probably over 1000 pong clones, and
emulators like ePSXe, PCSX, ZSNES). Is it physically impossible for
someone to write something to "translate" DirectX commands to SDL or
something? Thats how all the game console emulators came to be, by
making a translator for graphics and sound commands from that
particular console. I would think that if one could add something like
that into WINE, perhaps Linux would be able to play higher-end games,
such as those made for Windoze.

At any rate, I'm gonna leave this post to itself, this is not the place
for a flamewar. I hope everyone else (Including "Identity/Crisis") does
the same. flamewars belong in comp.os.linux.advocacy, not here, thank
you.

--Pandora Xero

.