hhhhmmmmm. We could call it the LBOX :). Great idea.
If history serves as any kind of predictor the Linux
world would start to be driven by game technology.
That would be a terrific way to bring more hardware
vendors into the fold, but we would need a very
standard way for the hardware vendors to provide
proprietary modules for their devices. I think we are
almost there now with dynamically loadable kernel
modules. The hangup seems to be a choice of 2d/3d
accellerated API and a good graphics language... I
think OpenGL would be the best (Yes, I know about
MESA, but without a buy-in from SGI an industry
standard would not be complete). As you describe it
though, it seems like a really novel way to light a
fire in the Linux community.
Do you have any links, suggestion for someone to be
able to research how to set something like this up?
--- Mario Lombardo <mario@alienscience.com> wrote:
> I was having a discussion once with Ronan about game
> developers
> including a cut-up distribution strictly for gaming
> so that the
> consumer would only need an x86 or whatever hardware
> platform to play
> the game. What if game developers got together and
> picked their
> favorite APIs, etc and put them on a bootable CD and
> made their own
> distribution with all of the performance tweaks for
> multimedia that
> most of the mainstream Linux distribution publishers
> miss? I believe
> that would satisfy both the developer and consumer
> audience. A full
> running operating game environment and game in a
> box! They could
> bundle some proprietary software in the box as well
> as the game
> itself, so the only way to get the update on, let's
> say, The
> LingamerOS would be to buy the latest games that
> included
> it...something like that. The CD would deposit some
> swap files on
> the HD (FAT, ext2, reiserfs, NTFS, HFS, or whatever)
> and use the
> adequate RAM of these days (256MB and up) to run the
> gameOS w/o any
> performance hit as to not being natively installed
> on the hard disk.
> Then, consumers would have the option of selecting
> it as a dual boot.
>
> Anybody's thoughts?
>
> /mario
>
> >On Tuesday 10 December 2002 09:45, Mario Lombardo
> wrote:
> >> Ronald, I've never heard of such a product (the
> $150 one). I am very
> >> interested if you can show us a link or two.
> I'm going to dig into
> >> http://www.google.com/linux to see what I can
> find. I'll post if I
> >> do. From what I understand previously about
> windows versus X, I hear
> >> that's true, but I'm not convinced now that I've
> heard Ian's plee.
> >> Hmmmm.
> >
> >Transgaming's WineX product will run many Microsoft
> based DirectX games.
> >Unfortunately, it also incurs a 30-50% speed
> penalty. If you're really
> >interested in Windows gaming, I still recommend a
> dual-boot workstation for
> >the time being.
> >
> >> Here's something cool I've found DirectFB.
> Looks pretty (and promising?).
> >> http://www.livingroomlinux.com/
> >
> >Wow. Yeah, that project has come along.
> Unfortunately (?), it's Yet Another
> >API.. If there were One True Gaming API for Linux,
> many things would be
> >better. At the moment, SDL probably comes the
> closest to a "standard" gaming
> >development API.
> >
> >> Here's a gamemaker that's advocating support for
> Linux (Neverwinter
> >> Nights). This seems like a first to me. I've
> never seen a full
> >> production underway for a Linux game yet; except
> ID with Doom &
> >> Quake. Anybody else?
> >>
> http://nwn.bioware.com/downloads/linuxclient.html
> >
> >Unreal Tournament 2003 was just released with Linux
> support. New games come
> >out on a regular basis. http://linuxgames.com is a
> good place to check for
> >them (I hate their new theme though).
> >
> >There are new games coming out with Linux support
> due largely in part to the
> >developers using Linux as their coding/development
> environment. When
> >developing a game engine, it helps if your dev box
> doesn't need to be
> >rebooted every 15 minutes.
> >
> >The viability of Linux as a gaming platform isn't a
> technological hurdle. It's
> >a marketspace problem. How many Linux gamers are
> there vs how many Microsoft
> >PC owners that buy games and never really play
> them? The numbers are
> >staggering - Linux is not the reason for the
> multi-billion dollar gaming
> >market, it's that simple.
> >
> >--
> >- Ian C. Blenke <icblenke@nks.net>
> >
> >(This message bound by the following:
> >http://www.nks.net/email_disclaimer.html)
>
__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Fri Aug 01 2014 - 19:00:20 EDT