Anders Johansson wrote:

On Thursday 31 October 2002 01.33, Jeff lists wrote:

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even some of us goofy Windows users recognize the efficiency of native apps.

This is a common misconception. Applications running under wine are running native. There is no runtime translation of instructions in wine. Wine Is Not an Emulator :) wine is a reimplementation of the windows libraries. There is no technical reason why applications linking to the wine libs couldn't run as fast as under windows proper, or even faster. There is anecdotal evidence that certain games running under wine run faster than under windows.

Anders

If you'ld like some benchmarks of games running in Wine in Linux compared to games running in Windblows I'd be more than happy to set up a few (e.g. 1/2 a dozen or more) and post the findings. Mostly if the game will run in Wine (which most will if you fine tune/tweak those that are difficult) they tend to run faster and since the graphics in linux do better OpenGL calls (at least in my opinion), they then to be a bit more resolute and defined, not to mention smoother. Also, if you run said games/apps in a simple, or sleeker GUI such as black box, windowmaker, or similar the performance only gets better. WINE stands for "W"ine "I"s "N"ot an "E"mulator. The work of Transgaming focuses on DirectX calls while the lastest CVS for OpenGL in Wine is the slickest of the two. I just patch the OpenGL Wine CVS into an existing Wine install and BAM..., nice and crisp OpenGL for Windows based games. Ya, I'd prefer vendor support and writes for Linux base games, and I have bought or dl'ed games/patch made for Linux. I find no problems with this at all. But, since that schister at Loki games screwed his employees, vendors, games makers, client/gamers, and the Linux gaming community in the process, Linux gaming has been at a virtual stand still. Just get the M$ junkies into the Linux box, then work on fully converting them to "native" Linux apps. I would rather see an Office Suite made for and by Linux, but in the interim I think getting more than just your foot in the door is what this is all about. Cheers, Curtis.

On Wed, 2002-10-30 at 19:41, Anders Johansson wrote:

On Thursday 31 October 2002 04.37, Curtis Rey wrote:

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Linux gaming has been at a virtual stand still.

Note that the recent release of Unreal Tournament 2003 from Epic came with both Windows and Linux binaries in the box.

Things are happening, slowly but surely

Slowly but surely :). At least larger companies (id is and always has been an exception) have been slowly joining the band wagon. For those interested in NeverWinter Nights, well once it comes out I may make a module...Quest for the Chamleaon :). Be fun to have NPC's named like Grub, Lilo, Manpage, chmod etc. Matt

Ben Rosenberg wrote:

* Anders Johansson (andjoh@rydsbo.net) [021030 19:41]: ->On Thursday 31 October 2002 04.37, Curtis Rey wrote: ->> Linux gaming has been at a virtual stand still. -> ->Note that the recent release of Unreal Tournament 2003 from Epic came with ->both Windows and Linux binaries in the box. -> ->Things are happening, slowly but surely

Yes, but if you are like me. Your perfectly good 64M DDR ATI card is as useless as telling Shrub that it's "Fool me once..shame on you..Fool me twice..shame on me." This game has to use nVidia cards w/ their binary only drivers to work under Linux. Oh sure you can get it to run with ATI cards but you must purchase XiG's $99 closed source Xserver. That's rich..a $99 Xserver for a $40 game. :)

I will NEVER understand why all these 3D specs are not open source. After all game companies make money selling games..chip makers with chipsets and card makers with the cards. If the API's and specs were open for the world to use then the people who put a lot of effort into XFree couple build in support for it. More games and cards would be sold.

Oh well..guess I just play games with my PS/2 that's attached to my nice 36' T.V. w/ surround sound. :)

Oh, sure. Kill the PC gaming market. Use our PS2 with you big screen TV and you nice Dolby/THX sound system and see if I care. Now, you wanna explain to my wife, who already thinks I'm addicted to PC games, my rationale for buying a PS2 and hogging up the TV??? Well, well, how to I solve this conumdrum??? Lotta help you are (hehe). :) Curtis

On Thursday 31 October 2002 08.21, Ben Rosenberg wrote:

Yes, but if you are like me. Your perfectly good 64M DDR ATI card is as useless as telling Shrub that it's "Fool me once..shame on you..Fool me twice..shame on me." This game has to use nVidia cards w/ their binary only drivers to work under Linux. Oh sure you can get it to run with ATI cards but you must purchase XiG's $99 closed source Xserver. That's rich..a $99 Xserver for a $40 game. :)

That's one way of looking at it. Another is "$99 for an X server that works, under which my $40 games actually run." You could use the X server for more than a game couldn't you? btw I have an nvidia card. nvidia may be binary only but they have traditionally given the linux community outstanding support. I like that and will continue to support them, binary or no.

I will NEVER understand why all these 3D specs are not open source. After all game companies make money selling games..chip makers with chipsets and card makers with the cards. If the API's and specs were open for the world to use then the people who put a lot of effort into XFree couple build in support for it. More games and cards would be sold.

Get back to me when the old ATI *open* specs get good implementations. I heard so much about the ATI community support, and yet I could never get any to work worth a damn. nvidia's drivers just work. Anders

Anders Johansson [Thu, 31 Oct 2002 16:39:31 +0100]:

You could use the X server for more than a game couldn't you?

Yeah, and have a Xserver that'll possibly break when I switch to another kernel or other libraries. No thanks!

but they have traditionally given the linux community outstanding support.

What, please, do you call outstanding support? I don't want to recall the troubles I had with the Nvidia drivers. And looking at the trouble, binary only drivers have caused for SuSE, I've decided to plainly refuse to run binary only drivers if I can avoid it. Binary only apps I can live with (grudgingly), but bo drivers are just simply BAD. Even some core XFree86 developers agree that it was a bad idea to introduce the modular design, given the way vendors have abused it to create bo xfree modules.

I heard so much about the ATI community support, and yet I could never get any to work worth a damn.

Oh, my Radeon 7500 @work is running beautifully without a problem. Philipp -- Philipp Thomas work: pthomas@suse.de Development SuSE Linux AG private: pth@t-link.de

/"I have no ideological reasons for using linux, I use it because it's better than windows, but I really want my hardware to work. Whether it's by binary only drivers or with open source drivers, I really don't care as long as it works. / / //Anders " / I couldn't agree more. If converting M$ drones is going to happen then the "I really don't care as long as it works" is going to be the attitude of Joe and Jane Average. They lead fairly busy lives and really don't want to have to tinker with things like a PC --they just want them to work-- and that's their bottom line. Look at things from Joe and Jane Average's point of view. I don't have to program my TV, I just turn it on, and as for my VCR... well my brother set that up and now it works fine. As far as my cable box from my cable tv subscription, well the guy that installed it said to turn on the TV and the Box on and it would take about 1/2 hour for all the stuff to link up with the cable company and then I would be able to watch my new cable TV and if it didn't to call the support and have them fix it. Linux has the talent in the programmers and the ability to do essentially anything anyone else is doing, that goes for the GUI, hardware, an Office Suite, etc... I't just a matter of will and focus. Most people don't want to think about how things work, they just want them to work.... after all, why should they? It's their money and they'll spend it on "what ever works". Cheers, Curtis.

* Curtis Rey (crrey@charter.net) [021102 00:10]: ->I couldn't agree more. If converting M$ drones is going to happen then ->the "I really don't care as long as it works" is going to be the ->attitude of Joe and Jane Average. They lead fairly busy lives and ->really don't want to have to tinker with things like a PC --they just ->want them to work-- and that's their bottom line. Well. Windows doesn't "just work" in a lot of cases it's a lot of work. To keep running...depending on what you do with it. ->Look at things from Joe and Jane Averages point of view. I don't have ->to program my TV, I just turn it on, and as for my VCR... well my ->brother set that up and now it works fine. As far as my cable box from ->my cable tv subscription, well the guy that installed it said to turn on ->the TV and the Box on and it would take about 1/2 hour for all the stuff ->to link up with the cable company and then I would be able to watch my ->new cable TV and if it didn't to call the support and have them fix it. This argument doesn't wash. When TV's can play MP3's, browse the web, let them do their taxes.etc..etc..all from the same "unmodified" singular device then it would hold water. As it stands a PC is capable of 1000's of tasks. TV's, VCR's and the other things mentioned are singular, specialized devices that are task specific. Of course they don't have to configure their T.V..and as far as the cable box is concerned that's all remote control. And I guess since the slapping of MS's wrist...PC's will be come remote controlled devices as well. ->Linux has the talent in the programmers and the ability to do ->essentially anything anyone else is doing, that goes for the GUI, ->hardware, an Office Suite, etc... It's just a matter of will and focus. ->Most people don't want to think about how things work, they just want ->them to work.... after all, why should they? It's their money and ->they'll spend it on "what ever works". Yes, there are a lot of talented people out there..trying to figure out how to make something complex smart enough for people who don't actually care about what their using enough to learn about what their using. Maybe McNealy is right. There should be dumb terms installed in each house connected to some big brotherish mainframe that people who have 1/2 a thought in their heads control. Then again maybe not ..who knows. I do know this. A computer isn't' comparable to any other household item...not TV's..not VCR's. It's a complex system that was sold to the general consumer as a dumb device. I don't care what system you use..Mac, Windows or Linux. It takes some brain cells to use correctly...otherwise they should get Web-TV and be done with it. *grumble* /end rant. -- Ben Rosenberg ---===---===---===--- mailto:ben@whack.org Tell me what you believe.. I tell you what you should see.

On Saturday 02 November 2002 08.42, Curtis Rey wrote:

/"I have no ideological reasons for using linux, I use it because it's better than windows, but I really want my hardware to work. Whether it's by binary only drivers or with open source drivers, I really don't care as long as it works. / / //Anders " / I couldn't agree more. If converting M$ drones is going to happen then the "I really don't care as long as it works" is going to be the attitude of Joe and Jane Average.

Thank you for putting me in that category. Please don't take what I said too far. I was primarily talking about hardware drivers. When a regular program crashes I, being a trained programmer, can usually find if not the exact problem, then at least close enough to be able to put together a good enough bug report so that a person familiar with the source can fix it. For this open source is brilliant. With a hardware driver things are a little more complex. It's not enough to be a programmer, you also have to know a thing or two about the exact specifics of the hardware. It helps if you know about algorithm optimization too. Some programmers know about this, most don't, at least not very much. Hardware issues can be extremely complex, cf. the recent IDE/ATAPI debacle in the kernel. Hardware drivers also don't have the functionality of a user space program. More often than not they're just slinging data to and from the hardware. In the case of the nvidia driver there's a specific API, openGL for example, that needs to be implemented, and there's not much room for extra features. Bug fixes and optimizations perhaps, but features belong in user space programs not inside drivers. The exception being winmodems, winprinters and the like, but the less said about them the better. Some people say that with the nvidia kernel modules being binary only, it's almost impossible to debug kernel issues. Supposedly it's difficult to determine if a crash comes from the nvidia module or from something else. To this I say if a crash is repeatable, just repeat it without the nvidia driver loaded. Couldn't be simpler. If it isn't repeatable it's almost impossible to debug with or without source, so it doesn't matter, as far as I can see. Of course, if open source is a political/religious thing for you, none of the above matters. Fair enough, that's up to you. I prefer having drivers to not having drivers. Anders

Anders Johansson wrote:

On Thursday 31 October 2002 01.33, Jeff lists wrote:

...

even some of us goofy Windows users recognize the efficiency of native apps.

This is a common misconception. Applications running under wine are running native. There is no runtime translation of instructions in wine. Wine Is Not an Emulator :) wine is a reimplementation of the windows libraries. There is no technical reason why applications linking to the wine libs couldn't run as fast as under windows proper, or even faster. There is anecdotal evidence that certain games running under wine run faster than under windows.

Problem is not in speed :-) Problem is in quality.

Salman Khilji wrote:

...

...

offerings also and decide on using those instead of Ms Office.

I'd like to add a comment regarding MS Office. There is no way that OpenOffice (or ANY other office product) is ever going to beat MS Office. Even if Open Office were to be better than MS Office some day, it still wouldn't.

Today, even if companies wanted to use OpenOffice or some alternative product, they will be forced to use MS Office. The reason being that the US goverment (or at least the DoD that I am aware of) requires on government subcontracts for all documentation to be delivered in MS Word format. It used to be WordPerfect a few years ago. Back in those days even if you wanted to use Word, you had to use WordPerfect because that is what you customer wanted.

If the customer (the government in this case) had been satisfied with Word Pefect for so long, then why switch to Word all of a sudden? What happened to all the investment that they had made in WordPefect? Clearly Bill Gates all upper management people in M$ have the power and contacts up there to influence such decisions. Who knows---they might have paid several individuals big $$$ to make the decision to switch to Word and dump WordPerfect.

So unless the OpenOffice community can come up with some magic like that, I am afraid, we'll have to live with the piece of crap for the rest of our lives (Have you ever tried to create a large document in Word with Graphics?) What we need is the government make a decision for all documentation to be delivered in "XXXXX Office for Linux". Untill that happens, all of us will be slaves to Bill Gates.

Salman

All you have to do, at least in Star Office 6 is to save you work in "Word" format - it does that. So, what would stop you from submitting something then? It is done simply because they are all running M$ Office and don't want to worry about incompibility - aka not being able to open the document and then getting someone's State Rep or Senator calling them up giving them a bad time ( Generals, Colonels, Majors, etc... hate dealing with politicians or the public for the matter). So, since all the government work stations are using M$ Office (and hence why all the things need to be in word/doc format) they mandate that so they can open the dumb thing. And for your info the presidents web sitie is running on Linux. Also, read Open Source is good for America - US military advised at http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/27822.html . To quote" "The report recommends the DoD create a "safe list" of approved products, encourage interoperability with commercial software, and promote it all round as A Good Thing. " And to read the official report, go to: http://www.egovos.org/pdf/dodfoss.pdf "The main conclusion of the analysis was that FOSS software plays a more critical role in the DoD than has generally been recognized. FOSS applications are most important in four broad areas: Infrastructure Support, Software Development, Security, and Research. One unexpected result was the degree to which Security depends on FOSS. Banning FOSS would remove certain types of infrastructure components (e.g., OpenBSD) that currently help support network security. It would also limit DoD access to--and overall expertise in--the use of powerful FOSS analysis and detection applications that hostile groups could use to help stage cyberattacks. Finally, it would remove the demonstrated ability of FOSS applications to be updated rapidly in response to new types of cyberattack. Taken together, these factors imply that banning FOSS would have immediate, broad, and strongly negative impacts on the ability of many sensitive and securityfocused DoD groups to defend against cyberattacks." Also: "...Create a "Generally Recognized As Safe" FOSS list. This list would provide quick official recognition of FOSS applications that are (a) commercially supported, (b) widely used, and (c) have proven track records of security and reliability--e.g., as measured by speed of closures of CERT reports in comparison to closed-source alternatives. Initial applications for consideration would include, but not be limited to, the set of 115 already used applications identified by the survey in Table 2, plus other widely used tools such as Python (http://www.python.org/) that did not appear in this first set of results. In formulating the list, quick consideration should be given in particular to high value, heavily used infrastructure and development tools such as Linux, OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Samba, Apache, Perl, GCC, GNAT, XFree86, OpenSSH, bind, and sendmail." And in the report it mentions 115 OSS programs, including Open Office. Most if not all programs are found in the SuSE Distro, as well as other Linux distros. Now, I'm not saying the the DoD is going to contract directly with SuSE (being that it's built and maintained in a foriegn country). However, IBM does alot of things with the DoD and has a "LONG" history with the DoD. I wouldn't be surprised to see having a SuSE distro in an IBM machine used in the DoD. Most likely anything that has to be sensitive is running on the NSA developed "Secure Linux". So, my friend. It's all about funding and contract cycles. The DoD and Congress go by the generally accepted 5 year plan with yearly budget adjustments. Ya, their more than likely backroom money deals going on. But if Bin Laden's buddies crack into an M$ machine and cause a problem, you and I may never hear about - but somebody will. Not to mention the money they will save by not buying per seat licenses for... you know who! Especially in the present economic climate (and the forth coming budget balanced against new mandates involving security). Just MHO, Curtis