Linux Has Better Windows Compatibility Than Vista 347
Several readers have written to tell us about one users rant in which he tells the story of being so frustrated with gaming on Windows Vista that he tried comparing gaming on Vista to that on Linux using Wine, with surprising results. "This post is clearly a bit biased. What shocked me though was how easy it was to find games that didn't run under Vista but did in Linux by using Wine or DOSBox. I'm not a huge gamer, so I don't have a huge collection of games to try out, but even still with just a few hours of frustrating work, I have been able to show that not only is Linux a reasonable alternative to Vista for gaming (XP is still king though), but also that Linux handles application failures more gracefully than Vista. Every game but Blackthorne crashed my Vista box, this didn't happen a single time under Linux."
Everyone keeps saying... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm Hearing Year of the Linux Machine around here a lot again (again, or continuously... you decide).
Strangely, I've yet to hear a kind word from the normals in the real world.
Maybe this Linux thing isn't catching on quite as much as you think it is.
(not trying to troll, just an observation)
WoW (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Everyone keeps saying... (Score:5, Interesting)
At the moment I am running on one of these [fit-pc.com], Ubuntu, everything just worked when I turned it on including sound, Youtube, several different browsers including firefox 3. Runs KDE like a champ, very smooth. While I type, KDE 4 is installing. Not bad for an embedded box I brought in to be my always-on (5 watts!) server and just thought I'd try running KDE on it for fun, which turned out to work really well.
Oh right, time to install openoffice too, you never know when you might need that on a server
Re:Cant even start wine (Score:5, Interesting)
Icewind Dale 2 (Score:2, Interesting)
I couldn't play Icewind Dale II in Windows XP. There are issues with many laptop input drivers screwing with the keyboard in that game. I couldn't resolve the problem, so I switched to linux, copied the Icewind Dale II directory, which was patched and had a no-CD crack, and it runs swimmingly. The only issue is that my linux cursor still shows on top of the game, but I rarely notice it.
I also remember trying to play Escape From Monkey Island(tm) in Windows XP, but there was this one part of the game that you couldn't get past (rowing up to Pegnose Pete's swamp shack). When playing The Curse of Monkey Island(tm), the cut-scenes would blaze past in seconds. I had to install Windows 98 to play the games. Compatibility mode didn't cut it. Other games that won't work in XP are Myst and Riven.
Laptop drivers are a bitch in Windows, and so I blame laptop manufacturers like Sony and Dell for making quirky hardware that need special drivers. I blame Microsoft for allowing such stupid driver issues to exist. Finally, I blame the developers for not using the APIs that they're supposed to be using, like DirectX, OpenGL, or SDL.
How will emulators etc. deal with Vista? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder how projects such as Wine will ultimately deal with this issue.
WoW on Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
The only thing which does not work is the Microphone - but it won't work the Linux version of Skype either so the trouble is elsewhere.
See my installation aid: http://martin.krischik.com/index.php/Main/WoWOnLinux [krischik.com]
Martin
Re:hardly a good test (Score:3, Interesting)
The test was designed to test Vista`s compatibility, so the choice of games wasnt bad.
It included an old DOS-title, several Indie games (not optimized for Vista, but made for XP) and pretty recent well known game (CIV 4).
Im also pretty sure that DOS-compatibility is at least equal on linux as compared to Vista, based on my own experience.
I dont know about the coding quality of the indie games but i guess point is, Vista is not compatible to XP. Ok who would have guessed that?
And to find out that even a recent game such as CIV4 doesnt work without the latest patches and fiddling around, well talk about compatibility.
Re:Cant even start wine (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft bought VirtualPC from Connectix(?) a few years back; they now give it away. So just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, I just popped up a DOS 6.22 window with Masters of Magic, a Win98SE window with Starcraft, and for giggles a Debian window running Americas Army. All run fine, simultaneously.
Of course, this is on Win2k. and Americas Army didn't have a great frame rate. but thats probably because the machine only has 1gb of ram and a Geforce4 MX 4000 card.
It also works on XP. I've had my XP-MCE Core Duo / Nvidia 7300 Laptop running 6 simultaneous "Alien Armageddon" games.
Vista....wouldn't even think about trying it.
Re:Everyone keeps saying... (Score:5, Interesting)
Y'know, the odd thing is that I have.
For instance, we hosted several young British missionaries (these were religious missionaries, mind you, not Linux missionaries ;-) at our house last summer (I'm in North America), and they all had laptops (nat'chully). To my surprise, one of them was running Ubuntu. I asked him why he chose Ubuntu over Windows, and he replied with admirable British conciseness, "It doesn't crash so much."
I've run across several others in my church who were using Ubuntu when I met them (and that one Suse guy ;-). Yes, it's a big church, but it's a church, not an engineering conference or engineering club. Nor is it a high-tech firm such as where I work, where Linux is a rather commonplace choice, even for the spouses.
I'm no longer surprised to meet "normals" using Linux. I'm more surprised nowadays to find someone like you who hasn't. :-)
Filesystem (Score:5, Interesting)
Merits of the OS as a whole aside, the windows world has seen pretty much nothing new except unmaterialized promises in the filesystem arena, whilst 'nix filesystems have experience regular updates and steady growth.
Wayback Machine (Score:2, Interesting)
From the article: "Could 98 really be the year Linux breaks into the main stream corporate world in a big way?".
Really, it's not funny anymore.
Re:Everyone keeps saying... (Score:1, Interesting)
Just to make sure you understand my level of expertise, I am the electronic hardware engineer who designed the 845GBV motherboard (over a million shipped), as well as many other motherboards while at Intel. No, I am not an Intel fanatic (they laid me off with 3,000 other Americans one day in fall of 2002). Nor am I a Windows fanatic. I am always thankful when the latest windows annoyances book comes out. I think we need a linux annoyances book. My level of familiarity with linux? I have been running and supporting a majority of the unix and linux operating systems for over 15 years. Yes, I could have gotten it to work. I just do not have that much time to devote to fussing with it right now, and no compelling reason to do so. Give me a reason to waste my time on it.
Re:Everyone keeps saying... (Score:3, Interesting)
The tendency for its partisans to distort the truth regarding the flaws of Windows systems has made me gun-shy of any OS that has these kinds of advocates. The article itself, and its easy debunking, are case-in-point. Running Windows games in either Linux or OS/2 (back in the day) was a fraught, troubled exercise. I wasted a great deal of time trying to get things to run, while reading fantastic stories like the original article about the disastrous experience of running games (or other applications) in Windows.
It isn't that I'd expect Linux or another OS to run Windows games well or even at all. Rather, it is the claims that are made that deeply erode the credibility of an advocacy base that are a problem. When I started to run Windows and found myself less, rather than more frustrated, for desktop and entertainment applications, that credibility vanished.
Nowadays, I have a Windows-based gaming system and use a MacBook for my work. If I were in the appropriate field of work, there are applications for which I would definitely use Linux (running large-scale simulations, infrastructure, hosting large amounts of data, web-based services etc.) But I know see the hobbyist community (not the open-source community, who I consider latter-day heroes, but the "DIY"/PC-as-plaything group) as unreliable, unsophisticated and unbalanced. The author of the original article sets off all those alarms for me.