Games Knoppix is an entertainment-oriented version of the popular Debian-based LiveCD known as Knoppix. The idea behind Games Knoppix is excellent — a LiveCD that you can give to your friends to show them some of the more frivolous aspects of GNU/Linux. Disappointingly, however, many of the games on the CD do not work, many more are duplicates of the same game, everything is in German, and there are driver problems with both the 2.4 and 2.6 kernel options. Linux.com has the review.
I use the America Army Live cd (GENTOO) all the time it is great. So the idea behind the Games Knoppix Live CD is not new and if you ask me an overkill. The Americas Army Live cd uses a minimal xserver and de. To use KDE is just an overkill wich slow downs preformance.
I liked the way gentoogames did it they seem to have disapeard ..pitty.
A Linux live cd called “Knoppix ***Games***” with games that don’t work, duplicates of the same game… Amateurish things!
Did they test their own distro before they made it available to the public?
The two things I noticed that worry me the most about Knoppix 3.7 Games edition are the stupid xsnow thing, and more importantly, when I tell it to boot with the “alsa” flag, it can’t detect my soundcard. This is also true of the Knoppix 3.7 disk. I don’t know what happened, since it used to detect the i810 onboard sound just fine in all versions up to 3.6… Alsa certainly isn’t perfect but it’s much better than OSS
Does it automatically detect if you have ATi or nVidia and install GL drivers? If not what is the point?
It makes me wonder – if you’re the kind of person who’s main use for computer is to play games, why the hell are you using Linux? There’s such a thing as the right tool for the job.
You know, I get tired of reading all these amateur reviews about this Linux distro or that distro. This style of reporting is just plain, simple crud.
The reviewer’s network card didn’t work? How is that Games Knoppix’s fault? The distro works fine out-of-the box on my two home machines, both with Intel 10/100 cards and newer NVIDIA graphics cards… It also seems to work fine on *many* of the the 100+ Linux/Windows machines that I have to administer at work. I think that perhaps the reviewer is not as experienced in “all things hardware related.”
The time isn’t read correctly? Um, these people are from Germany, so do you really think they are going to cater to someone who lives in +06:00 or something? And, then, why do you think you can’t keep the time changes you make? Perhaps a READ-ONLY medium that you are running from could be the culprit? Also, do you think there might have been another reason why the time wasn’t able to be changed? Poke around a bit.
Same for the locale issues – this distro was created by a group of people from Germany. If you were German, would you by default, set your own distro up to take keyboard input in Kanji if you weren’t a native user? Why harp on this stuff?
The offending packages that the reviewer claim don’t work will work properly if used correctly. You only need to have appropriate roms, source files, etc. loaded into them to get them to work properly. I mounted a FAT32 partition, read my roms off of there, and they worked fine. Maybe some issues may be present on other’s machines, but you know, with any open source project or release, if you make a proper bug report instead of saying “this game doesn’t work – this sucks” perhaps someone will be able to address the very issues you are complaining about.
I’ve been using Linux for many years, a lot longer than the majority of readers of these forums. I have seen the rise of the OS, as well as the rise of the more prominent open source projects, and every time, some reviewer who has absolutely no real technical background will come along and ruin some other aspiring person’s attempts at making something on their own. Give the Games Knoppix guys a break, will ya?
Brian
People, you may be interested to know that Johnny Wood is currently considering porting his small Blakes 7-inspired game, “Liberation” to Linux. Development work on the Windows version has been quiet for some time now but please support this venture (and B7 was the best S. F. show ever made, in my wonderful opinion!)
If you are interested, the Windows alpha build of the game is at
http://www.shatteredmoon.com/blakes7/download.php
It is good that game developers, even small ones, are beginning to seriously contemplate this platform.
he reviewer’s network card didn’t work? How is that Games Knoppix’s fault?
It’s a goddamn Live CD for Christ’s sake. If he boots it up and his NIC doesn’t work, who’s fault is it, Casper’s?
and every time, some reviewer who has absolutely no real technical background will come along and ruin some other aspiring person’s attempts at making something on their own.
So then you agree that people who have no technical background shouldn’t be using Linux, yes? When people are lied to and told how wonderful Linux is and then they boot it up and things don’t work the way they were promised by their resident open source Parishioner, can you really blame them for trashing it? I’ve heard many times that if a person wants to try Linux, Knoppix is a great place to start. And if that doesn’t work, well … perhaps they should’ve tried Debian instead ?
For what it’s worth, I think about 3.6 knoppix became unable to detect my soundcard with the alsa flag as well. Before that it worked like a charm.
Alright; more (new 3D) games are running on win boxes but that will change. Linux is capable of running games with better performance. This CD should be considered an A for idea but simply a beta toword better days.
Today, Linux is only as hard as you make it. You must choose wisely. If you’re new to linux, pop in a MEPIS live CD ($3.89 burned and shipped to your door via LinuCD). Read http:\www.mepis.com .
Currently NVidia seems to be the best choice in video card that promotes linux.
One myth is Linux has poor hardware support. It’s not that simple. Given popular hardware AND support from the chipset, linux AUTOMAGICALLY can set everything up for you (see MEPIS)…
…but wait! Try popping in a Liv e XP CD…wait….there is no live XP CD (from MS). So try installing XP! Does it automatically set up hardware like linux. No. You would find more driver problems with XP than linux even though things are supposed to be XP compatible.
But then XP come preinstalled. That is, IF you buy a new system which includes about $200 less hardware performance because the cash went to Microsoft for the “license”.
Nothings perfect but now I’ve migrated and boy, let me tell you, overall, Linux is better.
Besides all the multiple software purchases, what are you giving up to run XP? Freedom, stability, upgrade path, sharing, security, flexability, time (saved if you pick MEPIS), your future computer choices?
The word on the street is Linux has arrived. Do you see it?
…but wait! Try popping in a Liv e XP CD…wait….there is no live XP CD (from MS).
I’ve got something called Windows PE – not as flexible as Linux live CDs, but I can read/write reliably to my NTFS drives, so it does exactly what I need it to do.
So try installing XP! Does it automatically set up hardware like linux. No. You would find more driver problems with XP than linux even though things are supposed to be XP compatible.
The nice thing with Windows is that if it doesn’t detect my hardware automatically, 99% of the time I either have a Windows driver CD that came with the device or else I can just go to the vendor’s website and download a driver. I don’t have that luxury with Linux. If it doesn’t detect my hardware out of the gate, then I am absolutely fucked because I have no idea what to do about it. And yeah, I know … it’s the vendor’s fault about the lack of Linux driver support. Here’s a quater … call someone who cares.
IF you buy a new system which includes about $200 less hardware performance because the cash went to Microsoft for the “license”.
Yeah, $200 for an OEM copy of Windows – keep smoking the fattie, kid.
Besides all the multiple software purchases, what are you giving up to run XP? Freedom, stability, upgrade path, sharing, security, flexability, time (saved if you pick MEPIS), your future computer choices?
And about half a dozen apps I can’t run on Linux, but we don’t live in a perfect world, do we?
The word on the street is Linux has arrived. Do you see it?
Yeah, it has arrived … in the dumpster. Maybe in 2006 though …
Yes, the average idiot PC user who buys PC Live! will have heard of Linux. They won’t touch it with a fifty foot barge pole.
Look at how damn hard it is to get Joe User to change from IE to Firefox. Thats moving from something broken to something not broken. For games, Windows is not broken, Linux is.
Don’t expect a badly packaged distro of crappy freeware games to get gamers to Linux. Until every distro comes with working 3D drivers included for cards, don’t expect many games to go to Linux full stop – the gamers I know are usually technically inept, and I assume its the same elsewhere.
That said, Linux with 3D is a bit useless without games. On my iBook I can watch glxgears spin stupidly fast. No games though….
“Linux is capable of running games with better performance.”
How is that?
windows doesnt come with support for every 3d vid card, ive got a year old geforce (not exactly obscure), and no 3d acceleration when i install windows xp. dont see what the difference is between that and linux…
it also depends what kind of gamer you are. if you are under 20, chances are you rate games according to the polygon count. if you were once a zork fan, chances are that stuff means little to you.
im not defending linux as a gaming platform, but the things you mentioned are nowhere near valid reasons. how about that microsoft has poured billions into directx marketing and development? how about that windows has gained a monopoly in the market by dominating the distrobution channels? if you are a game publisher, would you go for the platform that is on 99% of the gamers machines? or for the server os that requires a high level of technical knowledge to run? and finally, what businessman in north america likes to take chances, when the best possible payoff is equal to a mediocre success if he goes the safe way?
but hey, enemy-territory beats the crap out of any online fps, cedega supports hl2 out of the box, and will support wow in the next release. wouldnt be playing anything else on windows anyways.
wouldnt have thought so either, but ut2k3 was noticably smoother on linux then on windows. pretty much the only commercial game ive used (natively anyways) on both platforms. openGL/openAL/SDL have come a long way. i would say directx is still superior, but what we have now is enough to give me hope.
Same for the locale issues – this distro was created by a group of people from Germany. If you were German, would you by default, set your own distro up to take keyboard input in Kanji if you weren’t a native user? Why harp on this stuff?
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99% of the people doing “reviews” of Linux distros are basically idiots who really don’t know anything about computers or computer hardware.
They got their start doing positive “reviews” of Windows Share/Crippleware for which they most likely got
some kind of kickback from (free reg codes or something similar) for basically saying what pretty screen colors
the program GUI used.
Notice that most of these “reviews” rarely if ever deal with
things like if the program they are “reviewing” destroys your data or uses some extremely nasty form of copy protection.
I’ve no idea what they compiled that on, but it’s very buggy here.
Windows get stuck and CPU goes 100% with half of the graphic games.
cntrl+alt+back, Nvidia splash and try the next one.
I played two levels of Foobilliard and my eyes started to hurt and I felt sick. I’m not testing this one further.
AMD 2600+, EPox 8KRAI (VIA KT600), 515 MB RAM, GeForce4 MX, Samsung 959NF
Foobilliard seemed to work fine. I played two levels of Neverball and started to feel sick.
Sorry, still dizzy.