John Carmack on Linux ports

[deanjo]

All and all, not a surprise at all. Carmack basically just confirmed what I said months ago. http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16332

[Yomp!!]

All and all, not a surprise at all. Carmack basically just confirmed what I said months ago. http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16332

Yep, and the recent ZeniMax deal I think put this one to bed.

[Svartalf]

It makes perfect sense or have you forgotten how the Doom 3 release went?

The game ran fine on nVidia hardware but crashed to desktop on ATi in Windows and Linux. ATi, now AMD, has never been good on the bleeding edge rendering technology that Carmack likes to program.

That's less due to the silicon (which is as good or better than NVidia's...) and more due to the drivers. Their codebase has been historically unstable and finicky. AMD's GLSL/HLSL compiler has always been quite a bit more picky on what was fed to it, for example. When it was done "right" (which is typically a slavish insistence on explicit compliance with the OpenGL and DirectX standards documents...) it works WELL and no issues. Otherwise...heh...

As for crashing, etc. I can't say that I ever noticed that with my dual screen setup I had during that era when I worked for Nexa Technologies (stock trading software company...)- my setup before it cooked itself (poor heatsink on the Dell OEM ATI adapter in it...) ran WELL with Doom3 under Linux, albeit strung across BOTH my screens. I ended up getting an NVidia part because it was actually cheaper than the comparable ATI part because of a sale that week.

Having said this, the drivers really aren't where they need to be. They haven't been there for a while (When I can't switch users without being black-screened with an R600 part, but before the drop of R300-R500 support, the R420 I had COULD do it right... Something that is still with the current fglrx drivers... It's not "there"- what else did they miss/break?) and they need to do SOMETHING to get them back on track. I'm not wholly sure what they need to do, but...

Perhaps Larrabee will be as good as the reports are. It's alleged that Intel will FOSS the stuff they're making for the Linux side on it- if so, it'll be a second answer and maybe present a more appealing situation for iD. As it stands now, I can't fault them for saying they're not going out of their way for us, but it's not a "no" on Rage at this point.

[Svartalf]

All and all, not a surprise at all. Carmack basically just confirmed what I said months ago. http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16332

Heh... Before this, there wasn't any real reason to think that you'd be right, deanjo- they'd not made any statements along the lines of what John just said there. YOU didn't have anything other than a gut level feel to go on- something you've not been 100% good on any more than I.

Moreover, I think this is a combination of our 3D story not being there right at the moment, coupled with their recent merger. If there's no money to be had (hey, you can get the rubes to buy the Windows version and run it in WINE, so why do the extra 10% for that platform, especially when the adapters aren't there...) in the parent's estimation (whether it's wrong or not matters little- they're the ones in control...) then why go to that extra effort?

[yogi_berra]

@yogi_berra:
Which is bull. I'm deving on ATI stuff on bleeding edge tech. That's not what is the problem. A crashing app is simply one which doesn't do things properly. Granted ATI had some crash-worthy parts in their drivers but so does nVidia. If it crashes it is first a problem in the game not doing their pointer arithmetic correct not the graphic card doing something wrong.

I highly doubt you are pushing rendering technology the way Carmack does, but whatever helps you sleep at night.

btw - if you want a definitive answer as to whether a game will be ported, ask TTimo, not Carmack. Quake 4 was a raven game and we got the native client in the same week.

[deanjo]

Heh... Before this, there wasn't any real reason to think that you'd be right, deanjo- they'd not made any statements along the lines of what John just said there. YOU didn't have anything other than a gut level feel to go on- something you've not been 100% good on any more than I.

I disagree, all the signs have been there for people to view for quite some time. Over the last year Carmack has expressed his disappointment with how openGL 3 was handled, deflecting queries about linux versions of future games, his views on where the future of gaming lies with consoles and portables, and his replies to interviews saying iD and him are not as interested in linux as they once were. The writing has been on the wall for a while.

[yogi_berra]

That's less due to the silicon (which is as good or better than NVidia's...) and more due to the drivers. Their codebase has been historically unstable and finicky. AMD's GLSL/HLSL compiler has always been quite a bit more picky on what was fed to it, for example. When it was done "right" (which is typically a slavish insistence on explicit compliance with the OpenGL and DirectX standards documents...) it works WELL and no issues. Otherwise...heh...

There shouldn't be any divorce between the hardware and drivers in this situation, because without a good driver the hardware may as well be a piece of corrugated cardboard glued in the pci slot, which is to say a useless waste of space.

[L33F3R]

There shouldn't be any divorce between the hardware and drivers in this situation, because without a good driver the hardware may as well be a piece of corrugated cardboard glued in the pci slot, which is to say a useless waste of space.

well now not quite. Perhaps if you have a clear sided case you could view beautiful artwork on that cardboard.

[Dragonlord]

I highly doubt you are pushing rendering technology the way Carmack does, but whatever helps you sleep at night.

Carmack pushes in a different way than I do. You can't compare the two directly. But no matter which way you push a crash in a game is to 99% of the case a problem in the code base not the driver. OpenGL is rather strict there and I only got things to crash so far if I did not comply with the specs.

[BloodyIron]

Methinks the visionary is losing vision.