** well, let's see how many flames I can generate with this.. **
On Sun, 30 Sep 2001, Mike A. Harris wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Sep 2001, Carl Busjahn wrote:
>
> >Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 11:30:11 -0400
> >From: Carl Busjahn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
> >List-Id: <dri-devel.lists.sourceforge.net>
> >Subject: Re: Re: Radeon 8500, what's the plan?
> >
> >I have to disagree. If people are really concered about performance
> >they should be using Linux anyway.
>
> That is not disagreeing. ;o) I agree, people concerned about
> performance should be using Linux.
>
> >What David said is also true. I'm not going to reccomend a
> >company that doesn't support Linux. We also know that Online
> >games require good bandwidth, and the Linux tcp/ip stack just
> >tears up anything you can get from Microsoft. Linux could
> >EASILY become the de facto gaming operating system.
>
> Yes, it could become that. In order for that to happen though,
> certain things need to occur, including:
>
> 1) Companies such as Loki, and others need to have a large
> enough market to sell to in order to remain profitable.
> 2) People have to actually *buy* those games.
> 3) Drivers have to exist to push the hardware
>
> For it to truely be successful, drivers need to be released for
> the hardware at the same time as they are released for other
> platforms such as Windows. For that to happen, the hardware
> vendor has to believe they will see a return on their investments
> to write those drivers or pay someone to do so. If they do
> envision the market as being there, or at least recovering their
> development costs, then they wont likely write drivers. Simple
> economics IMHO. Any totally open source driven project to write
> such from the ground up, even with specs, is going to trail
> behind Windows-land in a game of catch up.
>
> There has to be a 'big enough' market to drive things to happen.
> I fully believe that Linux has the potential to become a
> screaming game platform, but that is something that is in the
> future - maybe 6 months, maybe a year, maybe 3 years. Who knows.
>
> Right now, there isn't a lineup of people outside Walmart running
> to buy Linux games though, and so it makes sense that hardware
> vendors are going to allocate less resources to making these
> things happen.
>
> Again, the potential is there, yes. The actual reality is that
> the people who are interested in Linux games succeeding right now
> seem to be a small group (yourself, and myself, and probably a
> number of people in the list here for example). Me and you, and
> the others who want to see games succeed, do not quite seem to
> stimulate enough interest, or revenue to make it worthwhile for
> someone to fund development. I have faith that this will indeed
> change. When is hard to say.
>
> What can we do to change this?
>
> 1) Buy all of Loki's games. If you plan on buying a new game,
> and a Linux version is available - get it instead of the
> Windows version. Same for other companies making games for
> Linux.
One point that I think has been missed is that while Open Source in
general (and Linux, in particular) improves a lot user and developer
experience, the binaries get even less value than in Windows.
The reason is that when I get binary-only game in Windows, I can at least
play it (and reasonably hope that it will still play in future releases).
With linux, it will say something along the lines of "works with Redhat
6.2". (take a look at many CAD packages, for example - they are _not_ very
graphics intensive). Games are even trickier. I have not bought a single
Loki game for this reason: once I upgrade to new libraries or X it will be
dead weight. And if it crashes because of incompatibility there is little
I can do to fix it. (And no, I am not going to waddle thru machine code to
fix something I paid money for).
I would say that with Linux, the proper business model should be not
"release binary game", but "provide artwork for an existing engine".
I.e. have Open Source game engine (bet it Q3 like or Civilization like)
and sell artwork for it - artwork which does not crash because of a newer
library version.
>
> 2) Buy hardware from vendors supporting open source, and let them
> know what you're using it for.
This I agree with - but I would add "supporting with Open Source drivers".
Even if you are not buying for Linux consider this:
* you might want to install Linux on it in a few years
* generally, hardware with Linux drivers is of higher quality - and if
not you can easily find snide comments from developers about it.
If source code to a driver is available you can take a look at it
and have the general idea about how well the hardware will perform.
without source the company is free to market it as they wish and
blame Windows for poor perfomance.
Vladimir Dergachev
>
> The more people who do #1 and #2, the sooner the market will
> expand to a mass that is critical enough for hardware vendors to
> envision making some serious returns for their investments in
> writing drivers, or funding driver development.
>
> Just some more food for thought..
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Mike A. Harris Shipping/mailing address:
> OS Systems Engineer 190 Pittsburgh Ave., Sault Ste. Marie,
> XFree86 maintainer Ontario, Canada, P6C 5B3
> Red Hat Inc. Phone: (705)949-2136
> http://www.redhat.com ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris
>
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