The first rule of choosing a desktop Linux distribution: User, know thyself

IT World ^ | 22 August 2013 | Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

[Bikkuri]

downloading PlayOnLinux now

Lol.. we are having game flashbacks (and withdrawals) now :D

[Bikkuri]

Believe it or not.. I loved DOS.. Part of the reason is because so many COULDN’T use it :D (I am so evil ;^))

[GeronL]

PlayOnLinux has a lot of interesting stuff

Warzone 2100 drives me nuts, lol

have you tried 0AD?

[Lazamataz]

The first rule of choosing a desktop Linux distribution: User, know thyself

The first rule of choosing a desktop Linux distribution is, nobody talks about choosing a desktop Linux distribution!

The second rule of choosing a desktop Linux distribution is, nobody talks about choosing a desktop Linux distribution!

[GeronL]

will I need to download Internet Explorer?

[Durus]

I dispise consoles too, they are for tourists not hardcore gamers. Porting games to consoles or even worse developing games for consoles and then porting them to PCs has been the primary reason for games design sucking for the last 10 years.

Any emulator including wine is going to have issues. Add that to the required overhead and games that require absolutely top end specs aren't going to run well period.

What is needed is a suite of APIs that completes with DirectX but is easier to develop on.

[Bikkuri]

Warzone, once you get into it, is a real challenge.. Can’t count how many times I’ve beat the darn thing now.. can’t get the hardest lvl though :p

When I play it (last time was probably about a year ago), I set up skirmishes anymore :p

(BTW, make sure you have the sound and vids downloaded too.. a bit low tech (I believe it was originally made in 1989, or so), but the Linux game gurus have updated it a LOT since the original).

0 A.D. .. hmm, I think I tried it out a year or 2 ago.. (Like Civilization, right?)

Will look into it again. (Sadly, between reading the news (keeping up on the destruction of morals) and work, not too much time to play anymore :/

[zeugma]

All,

One thing I really haven't messed with a while lot in linux beyond getting it working is sound.

A month or so ago, I loaded up Fedora 18 on my main desktop. At first I had issues getting sound working at all, and finally managed, after poking around a bit to at least get my mp3s and stuff to play.  I have a harman/kardon speaker system, and the sound is really freaking muddy. It's like there is a bunch of sound processing going on behind the scenes, and the speakers are interpreting it as reverb or other surround sound stuff.

I realize there have been several evolutions of how sound is handled over the years, and would not be at all surprised if I have some artifacts of that in my .kde, .local or other user-based config directory. (could even be a system config somewhere.

To make matters somewhat worse is that I apparently have two audio controllers, and the system has been inconsistent with which it prefers. I'm assuming the "HD Audio Controller" below is the contoller on the motherboard, and the NVIDIA one is relating to the HDMI out on my video card (I just dug around and located a spare HDMI cable - I'll deal with testing that out some other time)

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) HD Audio Controller
02:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)
 

The KDE 'mixer' program seems to adjust the volume sometimes, but when I run VLC, it's like there is a completely different volume control that is independent of that.

It appears I'm running pulse audio

zeugmaamp      13868     1  0 Aug07 ?        00:18:28 /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start
 

But I've seen messages indicating some programs expect 'alsa' in addition or in place of that.

Do any of you guys have a good resource for getting this stuff cleaned up, so it will be more straightforward going forth?

 

[GeronL]

The people at the forum claim it works “one click” but my computer won’t even unzip it

[Bikkuri]

will I need to download Internet Explorer?

OMG.. hope that was a joke ;^) Can't remember the last time I had to use that to download FireFox.. I was Netscape, until they went bye-bye and became Mozilla.. been with them since then too.

[GeronL]

right-click, OPEN WITH... WINE

I am so stupid sometimes

[GeronL]

could not nstall Mono or Gecko or something

now for DirectX
lolz

[GeronL]

Yes, to play WOT I will need some version of IE which is loading now.

[Bikkuri]

Actually, I get more FPS running WoW on Linux than I had on Windows.. The setback was the crashes, because WoW was originally made for less than 2 gig RAM.. and happened on both Linux AND Windows, was overcame with someone that made a small indy patch that changed the original WoW.exe to use the +LMB of the PC’s full RAM (in my case 16 gig).

The Biggest difference when running a game (or a heave resource app like Photoshop), is the background. Windows has A LOT of stuff running in the background, whereas Linux doesn’t.

The DirectX is still an issue (most replace that with OpenGL, but it is also becoming aged).
It IS possible to run either the Linux replacements D3D OR the DirectX(WIN) (DX9-DX11), but is a real pain to get it working. I actually had it working perfect once (DX11) and was amazed in the difference between Win and Linux... I wish I could remember how I did it (was about a year ago.. and reinstalled/upgraded since then).

[Betis70]

I learned a lot just attempting a Linux from Scratch install.

Still fall back to Debian w/o X windows—don’t usually use my Linux machines for typical desktop activities.

[Bikkuri]

OH.. (off topic, sort of).. WINE = Wine Is Not an Emulator

:D

[GeronL]

WOT looks like a big big download

[Bikkuri]

If you are having sound issues, I recommend trying Mint Mate (or my personal favorite, KDE).. 99.9% will work from the LiveDisc

[Bikkuri]

For Gecko, usually it will be installed with the game/app... but, if not, make sure you have WineTricks installed also, so you can get the needed DLLs

[novemberslady]

bkmk