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  • Dragonlord
    replied
    Originally posted by gilboa View Post
    Following your (flawed) login, an iPhone or Android smartphone is simply a PC in disguise.

    PC's as we know them today (and contrary to the PC world in the early 80's) are:
    A. Manufactured by world+dog (as opposed to Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo).
    B. Uses extremely versatile hardware configuration (as opposed to a predefined, long running configuration, dictated by the sole manufacturer).
    C. Capable of running a user-selected operating systems (as opposed to custom highly optimized operating systems).
    D. Capable of running unsanctioned applications. (as opposed to being forced to install manufacturer sanctioned applications and/or jailbreaking the device)

    So unless your last machine was a Tandy Z80, having a CPU, memory and storage running some type of OS and applications no longer defines a PC.

    - Gilboa
    Sorry if you can't follow my "login" since I use "logic" :P . Anyways if your definition would be true than the Macintosh would be no computer nor would early computers like the Atari be one. Now please take first a look at the specs of current generation consoles and then come back honestly claiming they are not similar to an everyday computer. You can even run Linux on various consoles. And yes handhelds have become more and more computers too. Important for the definition of a computer is what is inside and how it works not the "login" of some Mr. Gilboa.

    Leave a comment:


  • V!NCENT
    replied
    Originally posted by gilboa View Post
    Following your (flawed) login, an iPhone or Android smartphone is simply a PC in disguise.
    At least for me, a Personal Computer is a device that is owned by me personally (so no rented server) that does computations for me that I decided to feed it. Some people call these instructions Operating Systems.

    ROFL

    Leave a comment:


  • gilboa
    replied
    Originally posted by Dragonlord View Post
    In fact no. Consoles don't beat the crap out of PC gaming since consoles are PCs in disguise (especially nowadays). The only advantage they have is that their hardware is predefined and static. I though would not consider it an advantage since whenever you want to improve the hardware you need to buy a new console. With a PC you can upgrade when you need it. Furthermore you can use it for daily-work and you can also dev/mod games on it. So under this light I don't think you can stake this claim.
    Following your (flawed) login, an iPhone or Android smartphone is simply a PC in disguise.

    PC's as we know them today (and contrary to the PC world in the early 80's) are:
    A. Manufactured by world+dog (as opposed to Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo).
    B. Uses extremely versatile hardware configuration (as opposed to a predefined, long running configuration, dictated by the sole manufacturer).
    C. Capable of running a user-selected operating systems (as opposed to custom highly optimized operating systems).
    D. Capable of running unsanctioned applications. (as opposed to being forced to install manufacturer sanctioned applications and/or jailbreaking the device)

    So unless your last machine was a Tandy Z80, having a CPU, memory and storage running some type of OS and applications no longer defines a PC.

    - Gilboa

    Leave a comment:


  • Yfrwlf
    replied
    Originally posted by gilboa View Post
    Beyond audio, most of your claims were either unfounded or simply pure FUD.

    - Gilboa
    I'm on a campaign to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Linux, spreading lies about the OS I use exclusively at home, you're right.

    My list of Linux problems comes from my experience with Linux, and comparisons against Windows comes with my experience with Windows. YMMV.

    I'd love to go through the dozens of responses about these things on this forum so far and compare and dissect things to find out what issues are caused by which culprits, which issues are restricted to my knowledge or particular software/hardware combinations, and other things, but I do not have the time at the moment. Hopefully can read a few at least sometime soon though.

    I will simply say for now that Linux has a lot of great things going for it, but still has some really rough spots that can turn off new Linux users and distract from the features which are total win over Windows. Anyone who knows someone who has attempted to use Linux would probably be able to attest to those challenges like I have, but of course that also completely depends on the individual trying it out. You could have an OS which is "perfect" in basically every way turn off someone due to them simply not liking it somehow. Even those cases can be "legitimate", at least for the one with the opinion, but of course I'm interested in the issues which turn off a wide number of users.

    Leave a comment:


  • Remco
    replied
    Originally posted by Dragonlord View Post
    In fact no. Consoles don't beat the crap out of PC gaming since consoles are PCs in disguise (especially nowadays). The only advantage they have is that their hardware is predefined and static. I though would not consider it an advantage since whenever you want to improve the hardware you need to buy a new console. With a PC you can upgrade when you need it. Furthermore you can use it for daily-work and you can also dev/mod games on it. So under this light I don't think you can stake this claim.
    Well, in that case Windows is just Linux in disguise... you can even program OpenGL and POSIX on it...

    Leave a comment:


  • Dragonlord
    replied
    Originally posted by gilboa View Post
    ... Should have added one last thing:

    Linux is not an ideal gaming platform, far from it, but Windows is just as bad (or good, depending on how you look at it) - and being a rotten gaming platform never stopped Windows from eating 99% of market share. *

    - Gilboa
    * Actually it did, consoles are beating the crap of out of PC gaming.
    In fact no. Consoles don't beat the crap out of PC gaming since consoles are PCs in disguise (especially nowadays). The only advantage they have is that their hardware is predefined and static. I though would not consider it an advantage since whenever you want to improve the hardware you need to buy a new console. With a PC you can upgrade when you need it. Furthermore you can use it for daily-work and you can also dev/mod games on it. So under this light I don't think you can stake this claim.

    Leave a comment:


  • V!NCENT
    replied
    Protip for Windows users if Ctrl+Alt+Del isn't working:
    Map a key to standby mode. IF all fails press this key and eventually your computer will go into standby.

    Just press enter/spacebar/mouse1 a few times and Windows will properly drag itself out of standby, you get a login screen and no single piece of data was lost

    This can be a real life-saver!

    Leave a comment:


  • gilboa
    replied
    ... Should have added one last thing:

    Linux is not an ideal gaming platform, far from it, but Windows is just as bad (or good, depending on how you look at it) - and being a rotten gaming platform never stopped Windows from eating 99% of market share. *

    - Gilboa
    * Actually it did, consoles are beating the crap of out of PC gaming.

    Leave a comment:


  • gilboa
    replied
    Originally posted by Yfrwlf View Post
    1) A GUI for terminating games which lock up. Switching VTs is not a solution for those who don't know the command line, i.e. normal computer users. System Monitor popping up as just another window may not be good enough if the program won't minimize. The Windows solution is to overlay the controls over the entire screen, over whatever is there regardless of if it's full screen or not. But perhaps it's just an issue with control-alt-delete not reaching the system and instead the game absorbing the keystroke, not sure.
    Ctrl-Alt-BkSpace is just as good or bad (depending on how you look at it) as Ctrl-Alt-Del.

    P.S. Both will fail miserably when a game misbehaves.
    ... At least in Linux I can use SSH remotely in-order to kill the game instead of pushing the all-mighty reset button.

    2) Standardized installation/removal system. Installers don't provide a way for removal many times, and don't integrate with the program manager to allow users to remove (or install) them the same way they do other packages. Packages themselves are not standardized, but could be. Every Linux project could push for standard packages of their programs, or the package system could be told where to get the special package from, there's just a lot of solutions for every issue here but few seem to care because most of the developers are stuck in the "oh they can just compile it" mindset, not giving a damn about binaries or normal computer users who can't compile. I feel this is the largest issue right now as I don't want a proprietary "appliance", I want standards, and all Linux users would appreciate that freedom.
    A. Windows doesn't have a standard installer.
    B. Even Microsoft's own MSI doesn't handle library dependencies. Windows developers are simply used to placing a copy of half of the system DLL's (E.g. msvcrt) in their local directory.

    Here's something for you to chew on: Microsoft has a ~3-4 year release cycle, and even with this is glacier release cycle, the term "DLL hell" is well known to developers and user alike. (I actually faced it, as a developer, 3 months ago with dbghlp.dll).
    In many ways, again, as a developer, I have far less library issues with Fedora (6 months release cycle) that with Windows XP/7 and 2K3/2K8.

    3) Monolithic kernel making any graphics glitches fatal. Yes, the process of the way Linux is debugged and how tight things are may help with bugs, but it also means graphics issues means that I have to hit the reset button when a game has graphics issues instead of just the game itself crashing or the kernel killing it. Whatever happened to Linux being uncrashable? Where are the failsafe mechanisms to prevent it, to restart a hosed graphics driver, or whatever it takes to deal with this kind of crashing? Better graphics drivers is one thing but Linux should be more bulletproof than to rely on that.
    While the Windows NT kernel is considered a hybrid kernel, when it comes to GUI, it's -just- as monolithic as the Linux kernel. The last Windows kernel to use user-mode graphics was NT 3.5.1. In NT 4.0 MS moved the GDI into kernel mode and since then Windows 2K/XP/Vista/7 is just as vulnerable to graphics driver issues as Linux is.
    Far worse, while Linux may be able to recover from crashed but non-OOpsed kernel driver issue by switching to init 3, rmmod and init 5, Windows will always require a full reboot.

    Last and not least, while in theory, a micro-kernel based OS could recover from a graphics card driver crash (at least in theory, it'll most likely fail due to state-loss), the performance hit of using user-mode graphics card drivers will make video/2D/3D performance immeasurably slower making it impractical.

    Driver development is -hard-, and debugging is even worse. There's nothing you can do about it.

    Though in the long term, IO virtualization might solve this issue once in for all. (You'll lose the guest but not the hose)

    4) Audio problems. Galore. But oh, Pulse Audio is the BEST EVAR. Maybe it is the whole Linux audio system though, but regardless, there's a lot of problems here. Things are slowly getting a bit better though at least.
    I fully agree.

    Not sure that PA is best for games, but they are -slowly- getting there.

    5) Lag, with everything. Audio lag, mouse lag, you name it, Linux has always had this problem. Some of you may be used to it by now, but try running a Windows game sometime to remind yourself of the tight responsiveness that Linux is missing. I don't need to tell anyone how horrible this is for gaming. Luckily, I think this may be improving as well, but it's still noticeable in many games. In any case, Linux audio is still really lacking in basic things. In another year, I think many of these will be solved though, hopefully.
    Audio aside, I assume that beyond simply stating your own experience you actually have number to back your claim (as opposed to simply FUDing?)

    6) Gaming while multitasking. You can't. Disk I/O kills everything else. Try installing a program while gaming sometime. Linux is very bad at multitasking, or doing it in a way that desktop users need, i.e. not completely freezing up everything else and dedicating every CPU cycle to an I/O process.
    *Cough Bullshit *Cough

    I play X3 on my development workstation that usually runs:
    1 x 32bit CentOS 5.4 VM. (2 vcpus, 2GB)
    1 x 64bit CentOS 5.4 VM. (4 vcpus, 6GB)
    1 x 32Bit Windows XP VM. (2 vcpus, 2GB).

    Granted, it's a Xeon machine with 2 x 5530 and 12GB (Signature below) but if you do the numbers, I'm over-committed on both CPU and memory (Did I mention that I'm also using a software RAID5?). An OS that sucks at multi-tasking (your words, not mine), would not have survived this load.

    As for pure I/O performance, well, Windows (including 7 and Win2K8) does tend to behave better under medium load (E.g. on-line virus scan) at the expense of lower throughput, but tends to behave -far- worse under heavy load. (Full system virus scan, installing updates, etc).

    E.g. My 1201N (2C/4T) netbook has Windows 7 pre-installed on it (which I rarely use). Each time I reboot it AVG starts scanning the disk and for 5-10m I can barely move the mouse, let alone do anything productive...
    The irony is that the same netbook runs Fedora 12 -with- Windows 2K VM without a problem...

    [quote]Currently, Windows offers solutions to all these issues, while Linux still has a ways to go. This is very bad. While Windows is not perfect with some of these things, in general it's in a lot better shape than Linux is.[/qoute]

    Beyond audio, most of your claims were either unfounded or simply pure FUD.

    - Gilboa

    Leave a comment:


  • Svartalf
    replied
    Originally posted by Yfrwlf View Post
    ...like this problem. Linux is not the superior gaming platform in some ways, but is in other ways. I hope these get addressed.
    I don't know if you're going to be honestly happy with anything. Many of the "lacks" are no better than under Windows- they just look like they exist because it's "different" than on Windows in several ways.

    1) A GUI for terminating games which lock up. Switching VTs is not a solution for those who don't know the command line, i.e. normal computer users. System Monitor popping up as just another window may not be good enough if the program won't minimize. The Windows solution is to overlay the controls over the entire screen, over whatever is there regardless of if it's full screen or not. But perhaps it's just an issue with control-alt-delete not reaching the system and instead the game absorbing the keystroke, not sure.
    As if Windows has any better in all honesty. I've wedged up boxes such that Ctrl-Alt-Del did no good on Windows. I've had spontaneous reboots doing code development over time in XP (pretty impressive, really... ). I think you will find, if your HONEST about it, that this is the case and if you don't have ctrl-alt-backspace shut off, that it's the closest thing to what you're looking for under Linux.

    2) Standardized installation/removal system. Installers don't provide a way for removal many times, and don't integrate with the program manager to allow users to remove (or install) them the same way they do other packages. Packages themselves are not standardized, but could be. Every Linux project could push for standard packages of their programs, or the package system could be told where to get the special package from, there's just a lot of solutions for every issue here but few seem to care because most of the developers are stuck in the "oh they can just compile it" mindset, not giving a damn about binaries or normal computer users who can't compile. I feel this is the largest issue right now as I don't want a proprietary "appliance", I want standards, and all Linux users would appreciate that freedom.
    The only computing environments that actually HAVE this sort of thing that you allude to is the Consoles right at the moment. Windows sure as hell doesn't have a single unified thing like you mention. MacOS doesn't either. Many installers, no consistent uninstall.

    Now as for Linux... If you use the distribution packaging system (some brave souls at studios do this right at the moment... ) you have uninstall pretty much handled. If you use Loki/LGP Install, you have a consistent, clean uninstall. If you use MojoInstaller, it's the same story, as it is with InstallJammer, BitRock, and a host of other binary installers. Only Autopackage really doesn't provide good clean uninstall capabilities.

    3) Monolithic kernel making any graphics glitches fatal. Yes, the process of the way Linux is debugged and how tight things are may help with bugs, but it also means graphics issues means that I have to hit the reset button when a game has graphics issues instead of just the game itself crashing or the kernel killing it. Whatever happened to Linux being uncrashable? Where are the failsafe mechanisms to prevent it, to restart a hosed graphics driver, or whatever it takes to deal with this kind of crashing? Better graphics drivers is one thing but Linux should be more bulletproof than to rely on that.
    I've not seen this. More to the point, I would love to know what your credentials are that you can make this sort of claim and can you provide examples thereof. If you're not a device driver developer, kernel level code developer, or a game developer, I would strongly hesitate to take your word for this out of hand without any proof thereof- and if you're not and don't have proof, I would advise refraining from making remarks like this as it weakens any position you might think you have to the point of near irrelevance.

    We won't get into what Microsoft's answer does for things. And before you remark that I don't know about that or I've got bias...I used to work for one of the Big Two and I do know that it's not all roses there either- and people still develop for that platform.

    4) Audio problems. Galore. But oh, Pulse Audio is the BEST EVAR. Maybe it is the whole Linux audio system though, but regardless, there's a lot of problems here. Things are slowly getting a bit better though at least.
    Sound problems are somewhat due to Pulse, yes. I think Pulse and some of the other "servers" are going in a direction that causes issues, yes. However, are the the reason studios are not doing work or is that just another excuse and some gripe you're pulling out of thin air?

    Considering that FMOD, IrrKlang, Miles, OpenAL, SDL/SDL_mixer all work largely okay once you've found what the right config is, and then just largely work on all systems once you do, I have difficulty accepting your remarks as being as big a problem as you're making it out to be- much like your graphics remarks.

    5) Lag, with everything. Audio lag, mouse lag, you name it, Linux has always had this problem. Some of you may be used to it by now, but try running a Windows game sometime to remind yourself of the tight responsiveness that Linux is missing. I don't need to tell anyone how horrible this is for gaming. Luckily, I think this may be improving as well, but it's still noticeable in many games. In any case, Linux audio is still really lacking in basic things. In another year, I think many of these will be solved though, hopefully.
    "Tight responsiveness"...heh... I won't remark on that. You just told several game devs that this isn't there on Linux.

    6) Gaming while multitasking. You can't. Disk I/O kills everything else. Try installing a program while gaming sometime. Linux is very bad at multitasking, or doing it in a way that desktop users need, i.e. not completely freezing up everything else and dedicating every CPU cycle to an I/O process.
    Interesting that I don't seem to have this problem in the large, unless I'm **HAMMERING** the disk with I/O- and then Windows would have similar or WORSE problems. More to the point, the only places I've been able to hammer a machine that hard that way is at the current and one previous day-job where I was dealing with massive levels of I/O from things like OC3 stock feeds.

    Currently, Windows offers solutions to all these issues, while Linux still has a ways to go. This is very bad. While Windows is not perfect with some of these things, in general it's in a lot better shape than Linux is.
    Actually, Windows DOESN'T have solutions for all of these issues.

    Which Installer? There's dozens- and they don't all clean up after themselves nicely.

    Sound subsystem? DirectSound? OpenAL? Others?

    Graphics? Heh...don't kid yourself.

    Lag? There's lag in Windows too. You might just be used to it.

    Leave a comment:

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