Quote:Original post by miminawewe
I've been thinking of moving to Linux, from windows, for a while now. In fact I was thinking of a reason NOT to move to Linux but I can't find many reasons not to.

Allow me to list a few of the possible reasons:

1) Less likely to have a good driver for your piece of hardware.
2) Harder to develop DirectX/Win32 using programs (which may be necessary for 3D windowed software of good preformance in the future, with M$'s next-gen OS)

Quote:the problem is Micro$oft.

Nope, the "problem" is our justice department is slow in breaking up monopoly powers and/or that the industry is still quite young. The first may be an unavoidable side-effect of balanced power in a sue-crazy country, the second is self correcting. In either case, Microsoft is a symptom, not a cause, and the problem will eventually come to an end :-).

As for me, I develop on both OSes as a hobby. I hope to be developing on OSX as well eventually - them i*s are sexy!

Quote:Original post by brulle

Quote:Original post by Oluseyi
That said, there is no guarantee that Linux will grow to double-digit desktop marketshare, simply because the system is designed around principles that range from opaque to incomprehensible to most users.

What principles would that be? Sounds like you are talking out of you ***, frankly. IMO Unix is well designed compared to Windows.

Well, for example, compare the process of installing new graphics drivers on Linx, and on windows.

Windows:

Log in as administrator
Run "Install driver.exe",
Follow instructions,
Done


Linux:

Edit some obscure file so that your computer boots up in console mode or whatever.

Reboot

Using the command line, navigate your way to the directory where the install program is stored.

If it isn't already, then use chmod to make the install program executable.

Run the install program.

Better hope you remembered the name of a text editor that works from the command line.

Use emacs or vi, or whatever it is to edit a bunch of options in some obscure text files, or at least attempt to, seeing as the command line interface for the program is absolutely awful, and completely unintuitive. Swear a lot.

Eventually after editing all those options, you can attempt to edit the obscure text file that you edited originally, so that your machine boots up in windowed mode.

Reboot.


My mother, who knows nothing about computers, could easily upgrade the graphics drivers on a windows machine. She sure as hell couldn't do the same on Linux.

i dont know how it is for nvidia's drivers, but i just installed ati drivers and it was literally
download
unzip
open console
run script
go through setup wizard
run script
reboot

only three of those steps are missing for a windows installation, and thats not counting double clicking as "run script" :) *and* i'd give your mother a less than 50-50 chance of uninstalling the old drivers first, and we all know how that can go...

seriously, though, linux as a gaming platform is getting quite a bit better. hardware vendors are starting to finally be responsive to the community (see old ati installation vs new installation), and as a result i get very close to my windowns performance in ut2004. i just need more games, damn it!

to the OP: dual boot/cross platform development is the way to go. with libs like SDL its really not hard (you can even develop primarily for linux and port it to windows later...most of the OS stuff is in initialization anyway).

Quote:Original post by Oxyacetylene
Well, for example, compare the process of installing new graphics drivers on Linx, and on windows.

[rolleyes]

That example is hardly representative, actually you are beeing outright ridiculous. I was running Fedora a while back and just installed an RPM-file to get nVidias latest drivers. Neither Windoes nor Linux are free of hazzles, you know that just as well as I do. I could easily come up with examples where Fedora outshines Windows in terms of usability but that would just be one single observation and not necessarily say much about the state of the Windows operating system as a whole.

Quote:Original post by brulle
That example is hardly representative, actually you are beeing outright ridiculous. I was running Fedora a while back and just installed an RPM-file to get nVidias latest drivers. Neither Windoes nor Linux are free of hazzles, you know that just as well as I do. I could easily come up with examples where Fedora outshines Windows in terms of usability but that would just be one single observation and not necessarily say much about the state of the Windows operating system as a whole.

How am I being ridiculous? That is my exact experience of installing drivers on Linux, and that's with (whatever the last release of Red Hat was) and SUSE Linux 9, which are supposed to be the more user friendly versions of Linux, aren't they? I am not embellishing anything, I'm not biased against Linux, if anything, I like Linux, and wish I could be more complimentary about it. I'd be thrilled if Linux were to become more popular. I don't care about software being free as in beer, but I think open standards, and sharing of information are a good thing, and that's what Linux represents to me.

I have no idea how representative my experience is, as I have only had Red Hat and SUSE Linux 9 installed on my machine. Given that they are supposedly meant to be the more user-friendly versions of Linux, it doesn't really give me much hope for the other distributions.

Windows isn't free of hassles, but I still think that Linux is not for non-technical users.

Don't get me wrong, I have Linux on my machine, and very much enjoyed using it, but I don't think it's anywhere near as easy to use as Windows. It's great if you're a technical user, but you'd better be a technical user if you want to do anything more complicated than word processing on it. That's my own personal opinion.

I've been a linux advocate for a long time now. Infact I don't have a windoze box. I play Doom III, World of Warcraft, GTA, and many more games on nix. Infact for my final year project as a BEng Software Engineer, I developed a game which would run on both linux and windoze. It was suprisngly easy, as I had to give no consideration to platform independance, as the SDL library and ANSI C++ did that for me.

Quote: To Raghar:
If either Linux or Windows NT/2000/XP goes down, something must be really wrong. A good solution for such problems might be a disk imager.

Linux has also it's quirks, if you never messed with arts server you know nothing. Also viruses will come to Linux as well, so some precautions are neccessary. Not to mention of HD/memory failures that could mess Linux really hard. Of course there are some windoze quirks that could make you sure you must learn how can you bakup your work, so all you need is deleting windoze, and part of program files directory, and after 2 hours of installing have stable system again. And if your programs never needed installation, simply restory links to the desktop and continue where you left. No point in being afraid of reinstalling XP SP2, when they are in butt ugly status.

Best thing is to have not only dual boot system, but also no important data on the same logical disk as windoze.

Of course windoze works much better when not connected to the internet... and no stupid copy protections messed the system.

Quote:Original post by nmi
To Guimo:
Which IDEs were you talking about ? I'm using Eclipse with CDT, which runs fine under Windows and Linux on the same project.
The Problem with SDKs is correct. As long as vendors like nvidia or ati don't see a market for games on the linux platform, they will not create an SDK for this platform. However there are libraries like SDL or fmod and compilers like gcc(mingw under windows), which are cross-platform.

Hi nmi,
Maybe that works for you and thats fine. The idea is to be comfortable with your tools. Its the only way to get the best from you. In my case, I've tested almost every IDE and think Visual Studio is the best one around... followed by NetBeans (which by the way gets a lot of its feel from Visual Age for Java while Eclipse, even being an ofsspring from VAJ never got the same feel). Anyway thats MY preference. But at least from what I see, Linux may have a lot of choices but a lot of them are too primitive to be considered.

I use regularly Windows (XP/2000) and Linux (Fedora Core 4) at work and home. I like both but Windows still runs in circles around Linux in ease of use (while Linux runs in circles around W2K in security). Many people cries Linux is more stable, but I must say its not 'that' stable. We still have to reset it from time to time.

So, we have a more stable platform but with a steeper learning curve (something final users hates). But it is getting better.

Some people say the reason Linux has an advantage because its free are not looking around them. Price has nothing to do about people moving to Linux. They move into Linux because it slowly gets better and more user friendly. Unfortunately I feel the problem is that everyone wants Linux 'its own way'. Then we get RedHat, Suse, Fedora, etc etc etc. Everyone pulling on its way. That means it is always on the move, but the advance is slower.

Now consider this, we already have an excellent and totally free OS in Sun Solaris 10, with a proven Unix core and open source code (check www.opensolaris.org). The code is managed by a single organization in order to integrate efforts. But, if its so much a good OS, then why isn't everyone moving to Solaris? Why isn't everyone programming games for Solaris?

I may risk to say its the same reason why everyone isn't programming games for Linux.

Now, to the thread starter. If you want to program a game for Linux, go for it. In fact, I encourage you to test and compare OSs, IDEs, APIs and tools for each plataform. Its the best thing you can do in order to find your own tools. When you find your tools you will find your way. But if you read my previous post and this one, my point is not to say this OS is better than this other. The point is that 'price' is not a so strong argument as some people say, so don't take price as one of your arguments for changing OSs.

Luck!
Guimo

Quote:Original post by Oxyacetylene
Windows isn't free of hassles, but I still think that Linux is not for non-technical users.

I agree, Linux is not for non-technichal users. But unfortunately many non-technincal users i know have huge problems with their Windows installations too that they cannot sort out themselves. [depressed]