Right On!
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| globalliteracy Nov 10, 2005 7:36 AM EDT |
Don Parris is my favorite Linux Evangelist! I am close to using Linux as my primary OS for all my work. There is one application (Macromedia Captivate) that must be run under Windows for support of my customers. If I can find a Linux replacement for it, I will get rid of Windows. On my laptop, I am running SuSE 9.1 (plan to upgrade to SuSE 10) and have Windows 98 running inside SuSE using Win4Lin. Captivate runs great there and I don't have to be concerned about Windows viruses/worms as Windows is running inside the Linux firewall. By 12/31/05 (hopefully), I will find time to format the boot disk on my Windows 2000 desktop and install SuSE 10 on it. I will use Win4Lin to run Windows 2000 as long as I have any need to run Windows apps. Talking about Windows and Linux games, I had an interesting experience last month. I was at a Historical Society open house where I took my laptop with SuSE which had the free games that come with SuSE Linux. A friend took his laptop running Windows XP. We had the laptops there for children of visitors to play games. My Linux laptop was the favorite game machine. The kids (who only had previous Windows experience) had no trouble adjusting to the the KDE desktop. I didn't have to tutor them, they figured it out for themselves. |
| dcparris Nov 10, 2005 8:53 AM EDT |
Interesting about the games. One of my nieces came to visit some time ago, and I let her play one of the games (where the penguin runs along the icescape, jumping from ice block to ice block), and she was addicted. I have heard about children and GNU/Linux games, but that was my first experience with that. It's an amazing experience. |
| dinotrac Nov 10, 2005 9:17 AM EDT |
My kids managed to find tuxracer and supertux both. The game that will amaze you, though, for how much very young children like it, is tuberling -- The Potato Guy. Too cute for words, but...?? Must be the same kind of thing that keeps the TeleTubbies going. |
| tuxchick Nov 10, 2005 9:20 AM EDT |
Can't we go ONE DAY without inserting gay subtext?? Sheesh, next you'll be telling me Ernie and Bert are "just friends." |
| dinotrac Nov 10, 2005 11:13 AM EDT |
tuxchick -- Gay subtext? Hey -- that's a MANLY purse Tinky-Winky carries. As to Ernie and Bert, I think they are just friends. OTOH, they were named after the cop and cab driver from "It's a Wonderful Life." Those two, I wonder about. Didn't they seem just too ready to help out with the romantic dinner at the old dilapidated whatsis place? |
| Tsela Nov 10, 2005 11:22 AM EDT |
OK, to bring back this thread on topic (and yet add to its gayness by my presence ;) ), I've had the same experience with Penguin Racer lately. We had invited very good friends of ours and their children (age 7 and 5) over for dinner and during the evening I showed Linux to them. Because the children were around, I decided to show them Penguin Racer (that's the ice belly-skating penguin game). They were so impressed that a week after their father asked me why he couldn't find the game for Windows. When I explained, he told me he would think about installing Linux on his computer. Given that it's very old hardware, it would make sense anyway. Maybe I should just copy my Knoppix CD and hand it over to him. Does Knoppix have Penguin Racer? |
| tuxchick Nov 10, 2005 11:44 AM EDT |
oh, there's a topic in this thread? boy howdy, whaddaya know, there is. There are some cute Linux games, and of course grumpy oldtimers do text Nethack. Realistically, though, what's in it for game vendors to port to Linux? The free-as-in-freeloader ethic is pretty powerful, and it's no small task to code games to run on variety of hardware, let alone operating systems. I would love to run my fave bloody games, like Quake and Doom, on Linux. But the Linux releases for them are painful to get up and running. Sometimes I think a gaming console makes more sense. Maybe santa will bring me something cool. |
| nicsmr Nov 10, 2005 12:49 PM EDT |
A few years ago my mother (then 79) decided it was time she had a computer and after a couple of days of searching bought a compaq running win 98. A most expensive deck of cards. Just recently she came to our house to visit for a few days. One morning I went down to the basement to find something in the home office and walked by my mother playing Freecell on my computer just outside the office and thinking nothing of it walked right past her a few steps then backed up. My computer was running red hat 9 at the time. So if this 80 something mom, with virtually no computer experience, can figure out on her own how to find freecell on a linux computer it must say something about ease of use. Things my mother does with the computer... play solitaire, freecell, and connect to he internet to check her email AFTER she call me to tell her how to do it about once every 2-3 months (win 98). Nick |
| Tsela Nov 11, 2005 12:20 AM EDT |
tuxchick: I am definitely of the opinion that computers are *not* the right platform for gaming. I am definitely a console guy (I'm even a one company guy. Nintendo forever! ;) ). I even only have games on my Debian box to show off to other people :) (I hardly ever play them myself). And as for people who think that FPS and strategy games can only be played right with a mouse and keyboard, I point them out to the new Nintendo console, the Revolution, coming sometime next year, and its revolutionary controller. 2D mouse control is so passé ;) . As for coding games on a variety of hardware and OS, the simple fact that many console games appear on all three current consoles proves that it isn't that difficult. However, it would be a place where an Open Source game engine framework would be a good idea. Standing between the hardware and OS and the developer, who would see the same API whatever the platform. There is OpenGL already but that's only part of the solution. Given today's hardware possibilities, it just doesn't make much sense anymore to create a brand new game engine for each new game. It just artificially keeps prices high. |
| salparadise Nov 11, 2005 12:37 AM EDT |
Cedega is your friend when it comes to Windows games.
Install it and invoke the WIndows setup.exe on the command line. $ cedega /path/to/cdrom/setup.exe Check out the list of "known to work with cedega games" here. http://transgaming.org/gamesdb/ |
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