Ubuntu and CoX?
By
AncientGuardian,
Posted on: 2010-11-28 15:27 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
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CoH works under W.I.N.E., Crossover Games, and Cedega. Just read my sig for CoH on Cedega.
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Originally Posted by Jawbreaker
Thinking about dumping windows for Ubuntu, but only if i can still run CoX on it. ANyone?
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Currently it works best under Linux if you've got ATI graphics. If you've got Nvidia graphics, CoH won't detect your card properly and you can't use Ultra Mode; if you've got Intel graphics, it's unlikely that you'll be able to play.
Intel mode works with some serious effort, not for the layman. nVidia works, ATI is the best, yes.
bah, i have Nvidia and am a layman. guess i'll skip it for now
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Nvidia's not THAT bad...
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Originally Posted by Jawbreaker
bah, i have Nvidia and am a layman. guess i'll skip it for now
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... yea it is.... especially under linux. |
Originally Posted by je_saist
Nvidia's not THAT bad...
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ive gone through several of the distros, and it is a PAIN to get nvidia drivers to wrap, much harder just to get 3d aps to see it.
last time I worked Linux and ATi. I had a good rig within 5 minutes of getting the distro updated.
Ive used:
Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandrake (which is now mandriva), PC linux, and a little bit of slackware and centOS.
Fedora is total crap for getting any drivers to work right anyway, i just use it b/c im an idiot and like to follow the children of redhat
I note that of those you listed only one is .Deb based, and, well, I've got my own opinions about Ubuntu... driven mostly from having interacted with Mark Shuttleworth and what passes for the Ubuntu developers. Given that, I can understand the perspective that Nvidia is that bad on Linux.
However, an Nvidia Fanboi, (and trust me, I call him a fanboi because he's met all of the criteria, including defending the NV driver as a legitimate open-source strategy) has collected together various scripts and wrote some of his own to simplify installing various graphics drivers under Linux. His webpage can be found at http://smxi.org/
SMXI is largely a series of Debian scripts meant for APT and .Deb systems, but according to the SMXI documentation, the scripts also work on RPM based Fedora and PACMAN based Arch: http://smxi.org/site/faqs-sgfxi.htm#...tros-supported
SMXI can largely be installed by opening a terminal, swapping to root, and then posting:
- cd /usr/local/bin && wget -Nc smxi.org/smxi.zip && unzip smxi.zip
- telinit 3
- root
- root password
- sgfxi
Granted, things can get a little more complex. Case in point: If you are using an ATi system with a recent X.org ATi driver, you'll actually have to run SGFXI twice for fglrx to install.
The Nvidia side is, well, worse. The first problem is that the xorg.conf file created by Nvidia's installer may, or may not, give you a proper resolution. The solution is pretty simple. After the SGFXI scripts have finished, quit out of them (it'll give an option) and simply type in
- nvidia-xconfig
- 71.86.xx series - Geforce 3 and Previous
- 96.43.xx series - Geforce 4 and Previous
- 173.14.xx series - Geforce FX to Geforce 9x00, GTS 250, GTX 260, GTX 280
- 260.xx.xx series - Geforce 6 to Current as of this posting.
While AMD users have been dealing with this kind of cut-off since 2006 (when the Radeon 8500 series was retired), and then again in 2009 (when the Radeon 9x00 - x1x00 series was retired), the reality is that the X.org ATi driver is faster than Fglrx in most 2D desktop tasks... and lets be honest... you probably aren't planning on running a cutting edge Linux desktop complete with 3D compositing, or play Half Life 3 and Portal 2 (oh yes, native clients are in development), on a graphics card that was brand new in 2005.
So the lack of 3D / OpenGL performance in the X.org ATi driver probably isn't a big issue to most users. Things like tear-free video and video hardware acceleration are probably much more desirable on older graphics cards.
Now, in all fairness, there is a significantly advanced Open-Source effort to reverse-engineer and produce a fully-functional driver for Nvidia graphics cards: http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/
Thanks to impatience on Linus's part, Nouveau's profile has been raised much further than Nvidia would rather prefer, and several distributions are already including the driver.
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Originally Posted by je_saist
blah blah blah...... or play Half Life 3 and Portal 2 (oh yes, native clients are in development), blah blah blahhh .
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while your post had a lot of good info, you got me at the above... Half Life 3!.. I know Portal 2 is comeing soon, but HL3!!!!
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... wait... |
Originally Posted by je_saist
Nvidia's not THAT bad...
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je_saist saying "Nvidia's not THAT bad?"
*checks temperature, looks up warily for early flying pig warning, tosses a snowball into the Abyss, buys a lottery ticket*
(OK, yes, I know it's not a big deal "in context," but it's still funny to me.)
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Basically Valve has been running a private and extremely closed build of Steam on Linux for... probably about 8 months now. Most of Valve's games built on the Source Engine are already compiled / patched / updated to run native code across Windows, OSX, and Linux. Unfortunately for fans of Valve games, games prior to Source (Half Life 1, Counter Strike 1.6, Op-For, Blue-Shift), aren't likely to receive ports.|
Originally Posted by AncientGuardian
while your post had a lot of good info, you got me at the above... Half Life 3!.. I know Portal 2 is comeing soon, but HL3!!!!
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Half Life 3 itself is probably the worlds worst kept game secret by this point, everybody knows Valve is working on it, but nobody knows exactly what the development status is, or what the launch date is.
Warning: the next segment is long, over-analyzing, and possibly boring.
My guess is that the launch won't be soon. Valve's keeping their cards close to their chest on when, or what, HL3 will be. My suspicion is that Valve will likely announce and / or show off Half Life 3 at the Portal 2 launch party.
Now, I don't put too much stock into the rumor that Valve is waiting for the Linux Client to be ready for public use before unveiling HL3. While doing so would be swift kick to the pants of all of the publishers and developers that have slagged off Linux over the past however many years, it would only be a brief PR spike.
My opinion is that Valve is prepared for most of it's Linux OS sales of games to be indy-games that are already thriving on Linux, games like World of Goo. Valve wants a slice of that independent platform developer pie. Most developers and publishers don't think about cross-platform releases and building platform-neutral code, and bean-counters are hung up over retail box sales and short-tail market presences, rather than the extremely long-tailed market opportunities that Steam presents.
Think of like this. Most publishers, like EA or Activision, only count on major titles like Call of Duty or Madden to sell strongly for a few months. After 3 or 5 weeks in the top 20 games, the publisher is content for the game to slide off the market.Valve, as a publisher and a developer, is aware of what happens when the games industry makes knee-jerk reactions. Valve is very much aware, through the already released OSX client for Steam, just how poorly major publishers and developers are positioned for multi-platform releases. Valve themselves were in such a position not that long ago either, as Gabe's comments on the PS3 revealed. Valve didn't have anybody internally who was versed in OpenGL or Linux, which severely hampered Valve's ability to work with the PS3.
Publishers like Nintendo count on games having a long retail life-span. Nintendo fully expects Mario, Metroid, Donkey Kong, Zelda, and all their other franchise titles to still be posting sales numbers 8 to 10 months down the line, if not longer. If you look through NPD's sales tracking figures, you'll see Nintendo franchise titles still in the top 20 sales long after other publishers franchise titles have plummeted below the top 100 mark, and some still in Top 50 sales long after other publishers have pulled franchise titles from the retail market.
The concept to publishers that old games released 5, 6, 8, 10 years ago still selling, and selling in volume, is, well, unthinkable. Yet, that is what happens on Steam. Titles like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic drive healthy sales, long after LucasArts and Bioware moved on.
Given Valve's practical market experience, and their long-term goals with Steam, my opinion is that Valve is prepared for actual sales through SteamLinux to be less than SteamOSX, although the potential market to sell into is... well... according to Valve's own install figures when they can detect WINE, Crossover Gaming, or Cedega, is in fact larger.
Many Linux gamers have gotten tired of the slagging from major third party publishers and developers, hence the vibrant Indy community. I think Valve realizes that very few Linux gamers are going to take overtures from any major publisher or developer without barrels of salt in hand.
In this light, that of trying to repair the damages done by companies like EA, Activision, Take 2, and so on, Valve might possibly reserve Half-Life 3 for unveiling when the Linux client is launched, just as it saved Portal 2's unveiling for when the OSX client was ready.
* * *
Bill: the oddity of ME defending Nvidia is NOT lost upon me.
Thinking about dumping windows for Ubuntu, but only if i can still run CoX on it. ANyone?
Virtue: Sistah Powah, Afrodizziac, NeutronBlonde,Distortionist,IonMaiden,BlindFaith,M adwoman, Vital Signs,Yzzorrdrex,Diesel Mage, Defend, Glasshouse,Rescue I, Bootytrap, The Experience, AE Virus, Drawback, Daytime, Nighttime, Chamberwraith, Invincible Ink, Monster Mitts, Hex Object, Hexperiment, Frightningbolt, Spooky Deville, Scream Weaver, Cackler, Shocktopus, Ogrekill,Road Hazard,Fahrenhate,Duotherm,Black Lung, Horrorculturalist,Foulmouth,