From a Washington Post article: Lindows, a version of the open-source Linux operating system aimed at consumers put off by the cost of Windows, has been on the market for only a year or so, but it’s already made some impressive gains: It comes pre-installed on desktop computers from more than a dozen off-brand manufacturers, and its San Diego-based developers just released their fourth major update.
I’d like to read what the article said but all I get is some bloody feedback form to fill out before I can continue when I follow the link, like I’m gonna do that!
There’s nothing there really. Any of the other lindows reviews listed here on osnews.com had much more information than this one. I think the relevance of this post is that it was in the Washington Post, a popular newspaper.
The article just gives a high-level overview about lindows.
-Frank
I guess this is nothing new… It’s like every Lindows review.
I do not think the comments posted to this article earlier should have been moded down though, because they are actually a bit relevant when thinking about Lindows).
Lindows Click’N’Run has several programs that makes DVD playing easy as putting the disc into the DVD player (http://www.lindows.com/lindows_michaelsminutes_archives.php?id=74) in addition to the excellent Ogle (http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/) wich I adore
Also it has a lot of games available for click’n’running (http://www.lindows.com/lindows_products_categories.php?category=10&…) including Americas Army, Tux Racer Deluxe etc.
I do like what Lindows does…but I prefer Gentoo for the speed
Geeez, these games seems awfully similar to the stuff available somewhere in Win 3.x or maybe early w95 years.
Americas Army is a bit better, but look at what’s on the market
Delta force – Black Hawk Down, Raven Shield, Warcraft 3, GTA3 just to name a few.
Even mentioning Tux Racer is pretty tragic really, it’s quality and gfx is hardly comparable to what is out on the market.
If this is where it settles, who cares then? The gaming industry is one of the largest industries in the world, and Linux simply isn’t part of it. Anyone who buys a computer for home usage these days will at some point want games, GOOD games. Isn’t that the same reason almost all Linux users also boot into Windows every now and then?
Please reply me something like “Hey we have FreeCNC” too LoL
If this is where it settles, who cares then? The gaming industry is one of the largest industries in the world, and Linux simply isn’t part of it. Anyone who buys a computer for home usage these days will at some point want games, GOOD games. Isn’t that the same reason almost all Linux users also boot into Windows every now and then?
And this is the point where I say, go buy a friggin PlayStation 2 or X-Box.
Then you can have Linux and games, GOOD games.
IMHO lack of games is not a big deal when it comes to adoption of Linux.
“Anyone who buys a computer for home usage these days will at some point want games, GOOD games.”
Is that really true? Do you have any market data to confirm this statement?
My guess (with no data) is that it is true only of young male customers, and that for example a 55-year old married couple wanting to mainly do email and maybe print out a club newsletter will be satisfied with solitaire and Tetris.
Good software for use with digital cameras might be more important, for all ages.
I can’t speak for the entire market, but game support is a major component of what is keeping me from adopting linux.
The other is that I read that there is no intuitive way to easily change the contents of the Gnome/Ximian equivalent of the start menu. In general I’ve found the pane on the bottom in both Gnome and KDE infuriating when I decide I want to change things, something as simple as adding an icon to the buttons next to the K menu in KDE was difficult last time I used it.
“Anyone who buys a computer for home usage these days will at some point want games, GOOD games.”
Business users don’t need (and aren’t allowed for the most part) games. And the business user is where the desktop dominance is won or lost. I’ve been in this business since its very beginning and one thing I’ve noticed is that whatever people use at work is what they want (and buy) for home.
Games are nice and God knows (as well as my wife) that I love them. But game developers (I’ve been one too) won’t waste the millions of dollars developing for a “hobbiest” platform. First Linux has to get big in business. Then it will get big at home. After that, we’ll finally get “Good” games.
“Anyone who buys a computer for home usage these days will at some point want games, GOOD games.”
“Is that really true? Do you have any market data to confirm this statement?”
Not market data. Anyone who has been around long enough though will know that Macs would be bigger now had there been more support for games initially. There are many more games now, with more game developers doing a mac port with the windows version, but too late to capture the market.
For Linux some games are there and not advertised. For example, UT2K3 was released with a Linux installer on the 3rd CD, it was just not advertised on the box. RTCW runs natively on Linux as well thanks to ID, although the install is not as easily acomplished.
As is mentioned earlier what a 55 year old couple may want is valid, however that is not the demographic purchasing most PC’s for home use. The demographic age buying PC’s is much lower, in the 20-30 year old range.
“And this is the point where I say, go buy a friggin PlayStation 2 or X-Box.”
Not for me. The good games that I like are not available on those platforms, with no plan to release for them either. Specifics would be first person shooters in my case. It is cheaper in the long run to buy a PC, that can do more, versus having to get the console for $200, then a TV for it for another $200-$400 depending on size, that will only function for the games and nothing else. Home PC’s anymore are for both business type use and entertainment use.
“Business users don’t need (and aren’t allowed for the most part) games. And the business user is where the desktop dominance is won or lost. I’ve been in this business since its very beginning and one thing I’ve noticed is that whatever people use at work is what they want (and buy) for home. ”
I disagree with this statement. The opposite is true. Generally, what people use at home or at school is what they end up using in the work force. That is why bundling software with new PC’s is so important to Microsoft and why Microsoft is practically giving out their OS to educational institutions. Just look at the server market and try to explain why Windows Servers took off in the IT environment even though most servers at that time were Unix.
“then a TV for it for another $200-$400 depending on size, that will only function for the games and nothing else.”
What have you been smoking boy? Everyone on this site got a normal TV, so can’t we use that one you troll?
chuck97224 is absolutely correct. What people use at work is what people will use at home. Why do you think everyone uses Office these days? There was a time when Office was just a fledgling suite competing with the likes of established products like Word Perfect. However, many companies (and the US government) standardized on Office, which is why everyone runs Office today. If you remember back when computers weren’t common in homes, you’ll remember that early PCs were terrible at games or other home user-y type stuff. They were bad at graphics, sound, multimedia, etc. Macs and Amigas owned that segment of the market. The only reason PCs they took over the home market is because they made sensible business machines for the word processing/spreadsheet crowd. To this day, UNIX is relatively common on the desktops of CS students, because university CS departments tend to be UNIX oriented. People will use at home what they use at work.
“What have you been smoking boy? Everyone on this site got a normal TV, so can’t we use that one you troll?”
Sorry, no trolling here. I own a TV, but it would not be used for video games as that sits in the family room and would interfere with the others in the house, like my wife. So in my case, no, I would not use that one.
Now go do your homework and let your parents back on the PC
you will be able to read the article. It also si not like other LOS aritlces because it is quite negative and I think even false in soem ways, like saying all CNR programs are OSS.
I will have to come out on the side of “who cares” for the games. As a family man, when it comes to home and family life, I have neither the time nor the patience to spend a 30 hours a week perfecting my skill at super-complex, hyper-realistic games. What I look for is something that
1. saves me time. The less I have to troubleshoot my wife’s computer or my daughter’s computer, the better.
2. provides my wife with all the ability to do all the digital camera stuff she loves, as well as publishing her websites, chat online, etc…
3. allows my daughter to click around, play Flash games on the web, and education/creative kid stuff. She is almost 4 years old, and her main computer is a Linux station, where I log her in with restricted priviledges, and let her click around in KDE to her heart’s content. She has already found at least 20 games that she likes, as well as TuxPaint, XPaint, etc… and there are literally thousands of sites with excellent Flash or Javascript games, such as http://www.orisinal.com, barbie.com, disney, etc…
So far, my wife uses Windows 98 (and daul-booting to 2000), which I have to troubleshoot at least twice a week, while my daughter’s umm… interesting experiments at reorganizing the KDE desktop, or seeing how many Xeyes she can have open at the same time have still resulted in zero hours maintenance/troubleshooting time for me ;-). I am just looking for enough Linux software to replace my wife’s needs, and then it will be good-bye Windows, thank you.
As for my own home computing needs, I am a developer, so I will keep my preference from polluting the careful market statistics being formed here ;-).
All I’m saying is that advanced 3D games are not the deciding factor for everyone. There are quite a few of us (whole families) who use computers a lot and couldn’t care less about the 3D games.
“To this day, UNIX is relatively common on the desktops of CS students, because university CS departments tend to be UNIX oriented.”
Absolutely true. If you work on a particular system/platform for 40 hours/week, then you are likely to feel most comformable with it and use it at home, too, unless your home needs absolutely demand a sysrem with the functionality the system you use at work is lacking.
I am not a Linux zealot or anything, but since I spend 50+ hours at work at a Linux workstation, it felt natural to have linux at home (I do not play games). It is a perfectly usable desktop with everything I need, except for one single piece of software: it is the bibliographic reference manager Endnote, an indispensable tool in my work. It is the only piece of software that forces me to reboot into Windows occasionally.
There are plenty ways of Linux gaming for the average joe, if he cares enough to look around. Since I am not the gamer freak kind, console games emulated through some of the emulators listed below are satisfying enough:
ePSXe: http://linuxberg.mirror.ac.uk/games/preview/260635.html – Good Playstation 1 emulator. Games like Klonoa, Tekken 3, Pocket Fighter, Gran Turismo 2 and the likes can be played in a Linux box (sometimes unacceptable slow, mind you).
ZSNES: http://freshmeat.net/projects/zsnes/ – Excellent Super NES emulator. Games like Alladin, Lion King and others run flawlessly and very speedy.
Gngeo: http://membres.lycos.fr/frogus/gngeo/ – My favorite… Gngeo is a Neo Geo emulator, like NeoRAGE for Windows. It can run classic arcade games like the King of Fighters series, Fatal Fury Garou, Metal Slug and many, many others nearly at the same speed of NeoRAGE (Sometimes, it seems even faster). Also, the author is a very nice guy.
XMAME: http://x.mame.net/ – Linux port of the famous MAME emulator. MAME claims to be able to run more than 2000 classic arcade games (including some NeoGeo/MVS ones). Also, there are some ROMS available in abandonwares sites all over the Internet. It is great for some old games.
UAE: http://www.freiburg.linux.de/~uae/ – The Unix Amiga Emulator. Some die hard fans still might have old Amiga games lying around but their machines are long gone. Unless the game have some specific hardware binding (common on some Amiga software), it will run in UAE perfectly. OSNews had a very enlightening article about it writen by Mike Bouma some time ago.
And there are many other emulators besides these ones. Also, like some people already stated before, there are some good native games for Linux and WineX is making some positive strides with its Windows API emulation. LinuxGames.com offers a extensive catalogue of Linux games and news about games-oriented software like SDL, Allegro and such.
Cheers,
DeadFish Man
Well regardless of what it concluded on the technical side (insecure, interface mishmashed, etc), it is actually a very high profile newspaper saying something not bad about Linux.
Whether we, the power users, agree with them or not, at the end of the day the article is good for the linux push. A few more like it and newbies will start saying to shop keepers “what’s this linux thing?” Heck, they may ask for a demo. They may even like it – gasp!
I never used it but if they say it’s a polished Linux product I might, eventually
“To this day, UNIX is relatively common on the desktops of CS students, because university CS departments tend to be UNIX oriented.”
Absolutely true. If you work on a particular system/platform for 40 hours/week, then you are likely to feel most comformable with it and use it at home, too, unless your home needs absolutely demand a sysrem with the functionality the system you use at work is lacking.
I am not a Linux zealot or anything, but since I spend 50+ hours at work at a Linux workstation, it felt natural to have linux at home (I do not play games). It is a perfectly usable desktop with everything I need, except for one single piece of software: it is the bibliographic reference manager Endnote, an indispensable tool in my work. It is the only piece of software that forces me to reboot into Windows occasionally.”
I used to have the same problem. Endnote now runs with Crossover Office.
“something as simple as adding an icon to the buttons next to the K menu in KDE was difficult last time I used it.”
In current versions, just right click on the panel, pick panel menu-add-and then select what program you want to add a button for onto the panel.
The problem with telling a PC gamer to ‘just go by a console’ is that, by and large, the PC and consoles offer a completely different type of gameplay experience. Notice I didn’t say better .. I said different. It all really boils down to personal preference and what you’re into. For multiplayer, the PC owns, because it is much more mature in this area, and because many people just flat out refuse to pay the console makers 3 times for the privilege. (Once for the ‘network kits’, once for the game, and once for a monthly fee.) No
What I’m saying here is that telling an avid PC gamer that he’ll either have to go out and buy a PS2/Xbox or dual boot in order to use Linux is just one more reason for them not to make the switch.
Well, CodeWeavers web page still claims Endnote is unusable with CrossOver Office:
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/office/supported_applications.p…
Eu, if you have more up-to date info, please let me know. It would be great if it worked properly.
First ofa ll, linux does not need great game supprot to increase it’s amrket share. Linux penetration in the corporate world does not need games. There are also consoles too which hav esold millions, just the PS2 has sold 55 million copies worldwide.
Furhtermore not everyone with a computer really plays games. According to various statisitics just 1/2 of computer users use their computers for gaming. as Linux’s market share increase it wil gain better support, btu this is not a priority.
Besides, it alrady has a number of awesome native games liek unreal Tournament 2004, Neverwitner nights, Doom 3 and the like. tuxgames.com
And a lot of Windows games will run at a decent speed without many crashes using WineX.
20+ year old people playing games. Get a life, infact, get a job, partner (either male of female) and stop being such a reclusive tosser.
You want to know what is more pathetic than an 18 year old still riding a skate board? a 20+ year old playing computer games.
As for the so-called “demographics”, god help us if that is the future of society, brain dead 20 somethings whose only form of entertainment is to be amused by flashing pictures and bass booming sounds.
Yeah, if all an adult does is play games, thats a problem, but whats wrong with someone coming home from a long day of work and playing a video game for an hour or two? Nothing.
Its just another past time, just because kids do it doesnt mean its immature. Kids read and watch TV as well.
I mean, I find people watching sports all the time pathetic, but I dont say they should have “grown out of it”.
That’s very nice of you to judge others, and to think that you know what’s best for everyone, but once again you’re wrong. There is nothing wrong with enjoying a game (OMFG!). Just as there is nothing wrong with having broadband, and there is nothing wrong with wasting your life on OSNews (you). So get over your ego trip.
It takes a truly small-minded person to think that he or she knows what is best for everyone.
The truth is the situation could be a 1000 times better. The problem being that the market penetration of Linux is not enough for major game publishers to market to it. For now we have a few big developers, some shareware developers and heaps of freeware developers.
Which means we get less glitzy games but much better variety. We also tend to get games that are a lot less polished than the windows ones.
I argue that variety is better than glitz at this time. I play heaps of games and I can tell you that most modern games on windows are clones or sequels.
Here are several LindowsOS 4.0 reviews:
http://lindows.com/reviews
Atari and Amiga were great games machines.
The problem was that that was all they were seen as – so now you can find Ataris and Amigans at the dump, etc.
It’s hard to get respect in the business world when you’re starting from that end of the continuum – I think chuck97224 is absolutely correct.
That’s very nice of you to judge others, and to think that you know what’s best for everyone, but once again you’re wrong. There is nothing wrong with enjoying a game (OMFG!). Just as there is nothing wrong with having broadband, and there is nothing wrong with wasting your life on OSNews (you). So get over your ego trip.
And you think you’re a REALLY big man buy claiming that the nick name you chose is “original”. Here is a hint sunshine, if you worked for me you wouldn’t leave work alive he next day.
If the sole purpose in your pathetic and useless little life is to get the highest score on a computer game then you really are a waste os space and resources. Do everyone a favour and remove yourself from this earth.
Listen, pal. This isn’t the 1980s anymore: games are a legitimate, accepted form of entertainment, like movies, television, music and books. You wouldn’t say that someone going to movies is a pathetic loser, a waste of space and resources, would you? Or that an avid book-reader is a useless recluse?
As previously mentioned, demographics for video games have changed a lot. The pac-man generation has become older, but they still play games. Note that the great majority of gamers are what we call “casual” gamers, meaning that they don’t spend that much time playing, but rather that it’s a distraction that shares leisure time with other entertainment forms. Similarly, “high scores” are rarely the goal of computer games these days.
Looking again at demographics, one can see that most adult gamers are not unemployed, but that a lot of them are professionals. An increasing number of them are women. And most casual gamers play games with friends instead of by themselves, so it is an increasingly social activity.
Finally, games are big business – it’s not kid’s stuff anymore. You would do well to get out of the 80s and find out what’s really going on here…
where are you from mister ?
I think the root of your problem is that you are just crap at games and your 4 year old gread-granddaughter whips yer ass at all games you have ever tried.
“the more complex the mind, the greater the need for play” Captain James T Kirk
I think the root of the problem is that he is an angry accountant stuck in a crappy job, with a crappy haircut. He has a lot of pent up anger, so he likes to judge others to make himself feel better about his own shortcomings. Hahah! My life doesn’t suck as much as someone who plays games all the time!
*sigh*
Well to add something relevent. I believe that soon NetZero, and one other (can’t think of the name) will soon support Lindows.