one Linux EXCLUSIVE killer game could "make" Linux

[woodsmoke]

Very interesting interview with Lars Gustavsson and mention that his comments are a followon to stuff by Steam, hardware makers..

woodsmoke

[zeeone]

I hope so, been waiting for a long time.

[GreyGeek]

Then after Valve’s Steam Box announcement, AMD and Nvidia announced improved driver support for Linux gaming. AMD's new low-level Mantle technology could also encourage developers to port their triple-AAA titles to Linux to accomodate Steam Machines.

Ya, Nvidia sure "improved" driver support for Linux alright. NOT!
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTQ3NDE

While the proprietary NVIDIA Windows driver has features not found in the NVIDIA Linux driver, it seems the company will not support Linux-only hardware driver features. At least one feature has been removed from the NVIDIA Linux driver over "feature parity between Windows and Linux."

So, for years Windows had better Nvidia support than Linux did, but once Linux got an edge in some small area Microsoft puts some heat on and Nvidia caves for reasons of "parity". With friends like that who needs enemies?

I don't use Win8 but I've heard that it isn't the game machine XP or Win7 is, which was the reason for the interest in Linux as the "next big" game OS. Now that Microsoft has been bludgeoned back into reality (letting Ballmer go probably did that. I've heard he was arrogant beyond belief) and released 8.1, I expected that they would also apply muscle to vendors to stay in line "or else". Nothing like the good old spirit of fair competition and level playing fields, right? It's time vendors grew some nads and told MS to go to a much warmer region. They are separate corporations with their own boards and stock holders, and requiring consumers to buy a 3rd party product is still against the Sherman-Clayton Anti-Trust Acts. Wait, maybe it's time for our DOJ to stop feeding guns and grenades to Mexican drug cartels and enforce our own laws.

[woodsmoke]

GG
I am always LEARNING something from you!

feature parity between Windows and Linux."

I had never heard of that!

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

Another article with more explanation. AN EXTRA feature for the Linux driver was removed to "downgrade" it to Microsith

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTQ3NDE

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

mmmm...

Looks like the same link, to me.

[woodsmoke]

lol you're right, I just read what you posted and didn't look at the linky.
my bad!
please delete that and this post.
woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

This whole thing is just irritating to me and it got me to thinking, and that is not a good thing.

Some interesting dates:

+++++++++++++++++++

DOJ acting against Microsoft:

The DOJ suit against MS started in 1991 and George Bush was President.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...Microsoft_Corp.

We have another thread in which Microsoft has "bullied" Nvidia to DOWNgrade the Linux driver for "video parity" and this is under President Obama effectively the "open source" community takes a hit.

**********

Low Power Radio

The "present situation" to promote Low Power FM radio stations (transmit with antenna) was begun, in broad stroke by Bill Clinton.

However, in 2000 he "reluctantly" signed this bill:

This act was meant to tighten standards for LPFM stations, in an effort to make it harder for stations to be approved in order to protect full-power FM stations.

Under Bush The largest single increase in the number of stations, 13,000 in 2003

Under Bush in 2005 Republican Senator John McCain ordered "a study"..

to test if there was significant interference from LPFM stations on the full-power stations, the study showed that the interference of LPFM is minimal and won't have a significant effect on other stations.[6]
According to Sen. Leahy, "This bill will open up the airwaves to truly local broadcasting while protecting full-power broadcasters from unreasonable interference and preserving important services such as reading services for the blind."[7]

In 2010 President Obama:

The Local Community Radio Act of 2010 (based upon legislation originally introduced in 2005) was signed into law by President Obama on January 4, 2011 as Pub.L. 111–371, after passage in the House on December 17, 2010, and the U.S. Senate on December 18, 2010. In a statement after the bill became law, Federal Communications Commission Chair Julius Genachowski said, "Low power FM stations are small, but they make a giant contribution to local community programming. This important law eliminates the unnecessary restrictions that kept these local stations off the air in cities and towns across the country.

Under Pres. Obama in 2011:

the FCC issued an order to low-power broadcasters that effectively requires all remaining TV transmitters to vacate channels 52 to 69 by December 31, 2011. In that same order, the FCC effectively requires all remaining analog transmitters to shut down by September 1, 2015.


DOT DOT DOT

On August 13, 2009, the CBA announced in a statement that it would shut down after 20 years of representing LPTV stations. One reason given was the "restrictive regulations that kept the Class A and LPTV industry from realizing its potential".

******************

streaming internet radio:

In 1998 Clinton was in office and the congress issued the Digital Millenium Copyright Act .

In 2007 under GWB there was the "day of silence" when many of the streaming radio stations turned their streams off, with the exception of stations like Last fm which had been bought by CBS and was in the middle of "liscencing" negotiations.

In 2009, under Obama, the Copyright Royalty Board, notice a board, not the congress and not a court of law, issued

"it will apply royalties to streaming net services based on revenue."[34] Since then, websites like Pandora Radio, Mog, 8tracks and even recently Google Music have changed the way people discover and listen to music.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_radio
****************
Now, according to the people who are smarter than everyone else, a Democratic President "is for the folks" and a Republican is "against the folks".

I make no comment and merely leave it to the gentle reader to consider the dates of when things were done, and under whose Presidency.

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

That's fairly accurate except for one thing: The DOJ was successful in prosecuting Microsoft and won both the lower court battle and the appeal. Then GWB took office and replaced the victorious DOJ team with his own picks. They immediately snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. First MS lobbied to get Judge Jackson thrown off the case and then the new DOJ team, with the hypenated judge now ruling, allowed convicted MS to pick two of the three "Monitors", whose offices were on Microsoft campus where their email and other traffic could be monitored and their LAN connection bugged. The deck was stacked against a level playing field the moment GWB took office.

Not only that, the new DOJ team allowed the MS lawyers to include rulings which gave MS a pass for every other illegal act they did before the DOJ trial, so none of their panel stuffing, illegal EULAs, etc., can now be brought up in court. In addition, while the new "agreement" prohibited MS from forcing OEMs to sign agreements prohibiting them from putting other OSs on their desktops, it didn't stop MS fron using NDAs to hide their next OEM control technique -- bribing OEMs to keep only WinX on their desktops by "re-embursing" the OEMs ads for their hardware if their ads showed an MS desktop on an OEM display, even for a second.

When OEM margins got razor thin it was ad "re-imbursements" that kept them afloat. If any dared to put on Linux or other OSs, their ad revenue would stop and their unit price for WIndows would severly escalate. The Combs vs MS trial released documents that showed that MS extorted Walmart by threatening their per unit costs if they didn't shut down their Linux powered laptops. Remember those. Data from the court records showed that Walmart was selling over 200,000 laptops a week and that their returns were only 1/4th those of XP during the period. Walmart was forced to limit sales of Linux laptops to their website and then took that site down after a couple months, claiming that demand was "poor", a statement which the Combs documents revealed was a lie. Then, there is the OLPC fiasco. And the ISO committee fiasco. Then the extortion of license fees from Android smartphone mfgs. MS made more money from that extortion scheme than they made selling Win8Phone. The lists go on and on but our DOJ just sits on its thumbs.

Obama talked a good game but played a different game plan. What happen to the "most transparent administration" the country would ever see? Obamacare? If you were in insurance company how could you increase profits? How about forcing everyone to buy stripped down corporate insurance policies at 3X the price and get two thirds of the policies paid for by Uncle Sam. A direct hand into the US treasury. There is little doubt about it. This admin and country are run by a major corporations in collusion with unelected gov agency heads. Elected representatives are feckless or have other agendas, if they are not simply out to pad their own pockets ASAP. When they ask a cabinet secretary to appear before them and explain their behavior and the secretary says "go fish" and our "reps" to nothing about it they have effectively destroyed their legislative power and, since Obama can now declare which parts of a law he will enforce and which he won't, with impunity, they've also destroyed their constitutional control of the federal purse. We now live in a quasi dictatorship which will only get worse. Just compare how things are going in this country with how they went in Venzuela.

[woodsmoke]

Again oh Grey Geekness!

I learn something from you every day!

Thanks for the extra materials which I did not see from my myopic viewpoint.

woodsmoke

[Robtygart]

This is great news! Gaming is a big thing that keeps people waya from Linux.

I want a stable Morrorwind games, more so Oblivion and Skyrim.

[whatthefunk]

I dont buy it. One game isnt going to entice millions of pc users to switch to Linux and ditch their extensive Windows game libraries. Console gaming doesnt work like this so why should pc gaming?

[Robtygart]

I dont buy it. One game isnt going to entice millions of pc users to switch to Linux and ditch their extensive Windows game libraries. Console gaming doesnt work like this so why should pc gaming?

I think it is more about showing what Linux is doing, and where it is going, something to bring peoples attention, maybe more towards the hardcore gamers who know how to play with their systems. They can dual boot so there is no real reason not to try.

Also this might bright peoples eyes towards the "Steam Box"

[GreyGeek]

I dont buy it. One game isnt going to entice millions of pc users to switch to Linux and ditch their extensive Windows game libraries. Console gaming doesnt work like this so why should pc gaming?

I agree. The surge toward Linux since the disastrous release of Win8 will abate as Win8.1 and subsequent "updates" turns it into a "Super Win7 part duce". Besides, except for a few OEMs, most still put only Windows on their PCs, so most Linux users have to continue to do what they have always done -- get or make a LiveCD or LiveUSB and install it themselves.

As more and more Joe and Sally Sixpack users move away from laptops to tablets and smartphones PC sales will continue to fall. Microsoft won't benefit much from the movement, but neither will Linux, except as users choose tablets and smartphones running Android (Linux). Meanwhile, since OEMs are still putting only Win8 on their devices other laptop users are searching for good quality used laptops on which to install Linux. I've found that laptops containing dual core and older, like P4 cpu's, are selling for over $150 each.

We are seeing the end of an era.

[oshunluvr]

One false (IMO) presumption here is that most PC buyers use their computers primarily for games. As the father of 3 (now adult) sons that I introduced to gaming back in the Warcraft II days, I am willing to bet that a vast majority of serious gamers do not even own a PC, much less use it for gaming. All my sons own several game consoles of various ages and brands. Not only do they not care what OS they run, they don't even know what OS they're using in most cases. One exception: one of my boys still plays some PC based games. He's more like me in the geek department than the other two. He dual boots.

In the gaming world, the device purchased is directly connected to the most desired game. Several of the "kids" my sons age bought the Playstation for one game and the Xbox for another. Clearly, game makers collude with console makers; marketing genius IMO.

Of the non-gamers I interact with; most don't care what OS they're using either. They use what came with the computer they bought on sale. The common consumer looks at price, availability, warranty, familiarity, and function. This is why MS wins in the PC market. Most consumers do not want to deal with installing anything, don't believe that there is a choice that does not involve cost or virus checkers or that a choice exists at all, don't want to wait for their new purchase to arrive, don't want to learn anything new, I can go on.

When you start talking about "geeks" like us or professionals who know about choices and care about actual function, it's a different story. But I think it's faulty logic to apply what we feel to the over-all market.

Personal example: My wife uses the internet and email and plays solitaire, period. When were dating, she encountered a virus and asked for my help. I converted her machine to PCLinuxOS. She was happy. Fast forward a half-a-decade, she needed and I bought her a new laptop and handed it to her - Windows Vista still on it. She handed it back a week later and told me to "Get rid of this crap and give me back Linux." Once she knew there was a choice, she made the smart one. Today, running Kubuntu 12.04 on yet another laptop -as long as here email works, she can get on Pinterest, and she can print recipes from Epicourious.com she's happy.

I really think the cast majority of computer users are more like my wife and much less like me. If Linux was to really become a choice for the average consumer, there would have to be a vast campaign by one or several PC makers to thrust Linux into the consciousness of the public. As long as our politicians can be purchased (via Citizens United - what a disaster) and corporate profits over-ride consumer protection, I doubt Linux will ever make it very far on the desktop. Android may actually make it possible for consumers to see Linux as a choice, once they figure out Android is Linux, but not in it's (Linux's) current state. Too many variables for the public market place.

To bad Shuttleworth is such a dumba$$ and spends time splitting Linux into his own vision rather than actually producing a viable hardware/software alternative to MS crap. Canonical may have had a chance to actually sell Linux to the public.

Honestly, without a real business model, Linux fails. An example: try and play a Blu-Ray movie on your laptop. Linux world: better roll up your sleeves and get to work. Windows world: plop $29 on your credit card. Average Joe prefers #2. If we had a "real" Linux OS on the market, we could have the best of both worlds. Opt for #1 when you feel like it or #2 when you're more interested the watching the movie right now. [/soapbox]