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The [GNU/Linux] thread, where 'Windows' is always spelled properly.

13468935

Posts

  • ImpersonatorImpersonator Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    Uh, I'm pretty sure you can say that about everything in the Linux world, so stop saying X or Y is better just because that's what you endorse and use in your distro.

    Anyway, the problem here is that the Ubuntu devs thought that it'd be better to lock down the panel only in the Netbook edition... Their solution is outright laughable as it just cripples usability.

    See: Convert GNOME session

    Their reasoning doesn't even make sense, it annoys me to no end.

    Impersonator on
  • darkphoenix22darkphoenix22 Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    Uh, I'm pretty sure you can say that about everything in the Linux world, so stop saying X or Y is better just because that's what you endorse and use in your distro.

    I include Xfce in my distro because I feel it is good. I do not feel it is the only good windows manager (though I do personally think it's the best ;) ). OpenBox is another good alternative that I have used on other projects that has a smaller footprint than Xfce (though it doesn't include very many utilities). I've tried Awesome as well. Not my thing, but it's good at what it does. FVWM seems really good for low end systems as well.

    I just really do not like Gnome or KDE as I feel they get in the way of the user. KDE less so, but KDE is a bit monolithic and doesn't integrate well into the Debian package system (ie. I can't install Kopete without installing every other KDE Network app).

    darkphoenix22 on
  • ImpersonatorImpersonator Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    Man, I'm trying out the latest MeeGo release and oh-eme-gee. Blazing fast, flash and html5 working flawlessly under Chrome and one of the best UIs I have ever seen. It's a shame you need to compile mp3 support, though. I'd love to have my EeePC 901 running this OS as it's lightweight and web-centric, while I'd have a bigger laptop more work-centric. :P

    I can't wait!

    Impersonator on
  • FremFrem Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    I just really do not like Gnome or KDE as I feel they get in the way of the user. KDE less so, but KDE is a bit monolithic and doesn't integrate well into the Debian package system (ie. I can't install Kopete without installing every other KDE Network app).

    Not to start a desktop environment war, but KDE has awful usability (in addition to lame packaging). Lots of options do not automatically a good user experience make. I avoided it rigorously in the 3.x days simply because I couldn't find the options I wanted in the sea of inconsistent (and abundant) control panels, and all the defaults were awful. The early 4.x builds were almost worse; one particularly memorable issue in 4.1 involved clicking through a menu and two dialog boxes in order to log out. It has gotten better of late. 4.3 has things tuned to an generally reasonable level, although last timed I used it there were still a number of rough edges here and here.

    Gnome tends to err in the general direction of "less is more", but they're actually pretty good at it. Most of the time I don't need any more options than the ones they give me, and we're mostly out of the dark days when you needed to use gconf or write Python scripts to make up for braindead lack of functionality. Gnome actually tends to have a sane feature set. Some things are complicated, but they make up for it with decent GUI design principles.

    Compare this to XFCE. The developers of the Thunar file manager decided that it should mimic the GTK file browser. This actually isn't a bad idea in itself; consistency is good. However, they decided that consistency was everything. To the max. You know how sometimes you like the list of files in your download folder to be sorted by date, to make it easier to find things? But how you generally like everything in your home folder to be sorted alphabetically, so your top level folders aren't constantly rearranging themselves? Too bad! XFCE to the rescue, Thunar doesn't (and won't) support that. The patch was written years ago and rejected because it went against their GUI design philosophy. Behold, XFCE gets in my way. Sure, I could use another file manager, although it won't integrate as nicely. Same is true of pretty much any component I dislike in Gnome too. Huh. ;-)

    Frem on
  • BarrakkethBarrakketh Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    KDE is a bit monolithic and doesn't integrate well into the Debian package system (ie. I can't install Kopete without installing every other KDE Network app).

    Sounds more like a Debian problem and how they choose to package it than a KDE problem. On Arch I can install kopete and am not forced to install the other KDE network apps.

    Barrakketh on
    Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
  • darkphoenix22darkphoenix22 Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    Frem wrote: »
    Compare this to XFCE. The developers of the Thunar file manager decided that it should mimic the GTK file browser. This actually isn't a bad idea in itself; consistency is good. However, they decided that consistency was everything. To the max. You know how sometimes you like the list of files in your download folder to be sorted by date, to make it easier to find things? But how you generally like everything in your home folder to be sorted alphabetically, so your top level folders aren't constantly rearranging themselves? Too bad! XFCE to the rescue, Thunar doesn't (and won't) support that. The patch was written years ago and rejected because it went against their GUI design philosophy. Behold, XFCE gets in my way. Sure, I could use another file manager, although it won't integrate as nicely. Same is true of pretty much any component I dislike in Gnome too. Huh. ;-)

    Thunar has issues, no doubt. But a lot of these features that they refused to implement are now being put in, such as SMB and FTP support.

    The problem is there is only one real Thunar developer. And he rules the roost. With a bit of exposure and help, the piousness of Thunar will slip away, or it will be forked.
    Barrakketh wrote: »
    Sounds more like a Debian problem and how they choose to package it than a KDE problem. On Arch I can install kopete and am not forced to install the other KDE network apps.

    KDE is much better on rolling release source code based distributions then the binary distros. There's a pretty big institutional divide on this stuff. Many members of the board of directors of Debian are on the board of directors of Gnome. I believe most of the developers of KDE use Gentoo, Arch or OpenSUSE.

    I'd be the first to say that KDE on Debian (and hence Ubuntu) is an afterthought.

    This also stems though from how KDE is coded. KDE is developed in one SVN repo. Gnome and Xfce have separate Git repos for each subproject. KDE also doesn't really have it's backends separated from its frontends like Gnome and Xfce. This makes it very difficult for Gnome/Xfce to use code from KDE and for KDE to use code from Gnome. This is why none of the accessibility stuff from Gnome (like Orca and AT-SPI) works on KDE but almost all of it works near perfectly on Xfce.

    darkphoenix22 on
  • FremFrem Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    Frem wrote: »
    Compare this to XFCE. The developers of the Thunar file manager decided that it should mimic the GTK file browser. This actually isn't a bad idea in itself; consistency is good. However, they decided that consistency was everything. To the max. You know how sometimes you like the list of files in your download folder to be sorted by date, to make it easier to find things? But how you generally like everything in your home folder to be sorted alphabetically, so your top level folders aren't constantly rearranging themselves? Too bad! XFCE to the rescue, Thunar doesn't (and won't) support that. The patch was written years ago and rejected because it went against their GUI design philosophy. Behold, XFCE gets in my way. Sure, I could use another file manager, although it won't integrate as nicely. Same is true of pretty much any component I dislike in Gnome too. Huh. ;-)

    Thunar has issues, no doubt. But a lot of these features that they refused to implement are now being put in, such as SMB and FTP support.

    The problem is there is only one real Thunar developer. And he rules the roost. With a bit of exposure and help, the piousness of Thunar will slip away, or it will be forked.

    The reason SMB and FTP weren't supported is because the underlying library didn't support them directly, so they wouldn't have been implemented in a way which would have been automatically expandable for other types of remote shares. The developer(s) wanted a standard way of doing it that they didn't have to worry about maintaining, so they were just telling everyone to use FUSE manually. Which is crap for anything requiring a username and password. ThunarVFS was replaced with GIO, which does the remote filesystem stuff for you and can be considered a fairly standard GTKish way of doing things. That is why we now have SMB and FTP. The developers didn't actually change their mind, they just got a standard way of doing things.

    The only way we'll get a "remember file sorting options per directory" option is if the main developer changes his mind or if the GTK file browser adds it. I'm not holding my breath.

    Edit: But all this wasn't even the real point. I was trying to say that Gnome is about as extensible and flexible as XFCE is, give or take. You can use individual components of it with XFCE components or throw in Openbox or whatever.

    Frem on
  • darkphoenix22darkphoenix22 Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    Frem wrote: »
    The reason SMB and FTP weren't supported is because the underlying library didn't support them directly, so they wouldn't have been implemented in a way which would have been automatically expandable for other types of remote shares. The developer(s) wanted a standard way of doing it that they didn't have to worry about maintaining, so they were just telling everyone to use FUSE manually. Which is crap for anything requiring a username and password. ThunarVFS was replaced with GIO, which does the remote filesystem stuff for you and can be considered a fairly standard GTKish way of doing things. That is why we now have SMB and FTP. The developers didn't actually change their mind, they just got a standard way of doing things.

    The only way we'll get a "remember file sorting options per directory" option is if the main developer changes his mind or if the GTK file browser adds it. I'm not holding my breath.

    That sounds to me like a very similar problem. The best solution would likely be a way to customize the display of metadata for each folder in Thunar. So music folders show the music metadata (like song title and length) and video folders show the video metadata. At that point, an option to sort folders based on attributes would be a requirement. ;)
    Frem wrote: »

    Edit: But all this wasn't even the real point. I was trying to say that Gnome is about as extensible and flexible as XFCE is, give or take. You can use individual components of it with XFCE components or throw in Openbox or whatever.

    Where it gets killed is there are certain problem application and components that like to install all of Gnome if you install them. This includes the menu editor (even though it just uses the standard freedesktop menu), Gwibber, and Rhythmbox.

    Applications and utilities on Xfce are more much modular. The applications are not dependent on each other like they are in Gnome, so you can mix and match components from other DEs. When you chose Gnome as your DE, you have to use Gnome everything, as it is all dependent on one another.

    darkphoenix22 on
  • darkphoenix22darkphoenix22 Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    -double post-

    darkphoenix22 on
  • FremFrem Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    Frem wrote: »

    Edit: But all this wasn't even the real point. I was trying to say that Gnome is about as extensible and flexible as XFCE is, give or take. You can use individual components of it with XFCE components or throw in Openbox or whatever.

    Where it gets killed is there are certain problem application and components that like to install all of Gnome if you install them. This includes the menu editor (even though it just uses the standard freedesktop menu), Gwibber, and Rhythmbox.

    Applications and utilities on Xfce are more much modular. The applications are not dependent on each other like they are in Gnome, so you can mix and match components from other DEs. When you chose Gnome as your DE, you have to use Gnome everything, as it is all dependent on one another.

    This sounds a lot like the issues you have with KDE. It's poor packaging. I mean, Gnome applications can pull in a lot of dependencies, but stuff like Alacarte (aforementioned menu editor) doesn't actually need them. If that's a problem for you, either use the package manager to override nonessential dependencies or use a distribution that packages it better. Here's the Fedora package spec. Note how it only needs pygtk2, gnome-python2-gconf, and gnome-menus. Gwibber's "real" requirements don't look too unreasonable either.

    It's when stuff actually depends on things like the Gnome panel that things get hairy. Rhythmbox is admittedly somewhat on the heavy side, but it doesn't need all of Gnome. Mostly Gnome multimedia abstraction libraries and some GVFS stuff.

    Having an 160 GB hard drive and a TB of backup space, I personally don't really sweat having extra packages like that. I use Gnome anyway, and all the Gnome-specific stuff takes up maybe a gig or two, tops. Heck, it's still smaller than a full install of StarCraft, a game ten+ years old. If I feel like using XFCE for a while, I have the comfort of knowing it's not actually taking up as much space in RAM as the package manager downloaded.

    If you've got a really small drive or like all your packages lined up just so, you probably should be using a different distro anyway. Go mess around with Arch, where you can drop unneeded dependencies before building the package. Maybe Fedora; they seem to have sane package managers.

    Edit:
    Frem wrote: »
    The reason SMB and FTP weren't supported is because the underlying library didn't support them directly, so they wouldn't have been implemented in a way which would have been automatically expandable for other types of remote shares. The developer(s) wanted a standard way of doing it that they didn't have to worry about maintaining, so they were just telling everyone to use FUSE manually. Which is crap for anything requiring a username and password. ThunarVFS was replaced with GIO, which does the remote filesystem stuff for you and can be considered a fairly standard GTKish way of doing things. That is why we now have SMB and FTP. The developers didn't actually change their mind, they just got a standard way of doing things.

    The only way we'll get a "remember file sorting options per directory" option is if the main developer changes his mind or if the GTK file browser adds it. I'm not holding my breath.

    That sounds to me like a very similar problem. The best solution would likely be a way to customize the display of metadata for each folder in Thunar. So music folders show the music metadata (like song title and length) and video folders show the video metadata. At that point, an option to sort folders based on attributes would be a requirement. ;)
    The best solution would be to implement a feature standard on most any popular file manager. No need to wait for the GTK file browser to start getting cutesy with metadata (although that would be nice). If that's what the developers are waiting for, it's just turning a blind eye to the problem and stalling.

    Edit 2:
    Anyway, the problem here is that the Ubuntu devs thought that it'd be better to lock down the panel only in the Netbook edition... Their solution is outright laughable as it just cripples usability.

    See: Convert GNOME session

    Their reasoning doesn't even make sense, it annoys me to no end.
    I'm going to guess that it's probably just easier to load a system-wide config that doesn't change than to keep two separate configs for the same user. In other words, it's a horrible, glorious hack. After the changes on that page have been applied, can you revert back to the normal Gnome config with all your old applets and their positions preserved?

    Frem on
  • darkphoenix22darkphoenix22 Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    Frem wrote: »

    This sounds a lot like the issues you have with KDE. It's poor packaging. I mean, Gnome applications can pull in a lot of dependencies, but stuff like Alacarte (aforementioned menu editor) doesn't actually need them. If that's a problem for you, either use the package manager to override nonessential dependencies or use a distribution that packages it better. Here's the Fedora package spec. Note how it only needs pygtk2, gnome-python2-gconf, and gnome-menus. Gwibber's "real" requirements don't look too unreasonable either.

    It's when stuff actually depends on things like the Gnome panel that things get hairy. Rhythmbox is admittedly somewhat on the heavy side, but it doesn't need all of Gnome. Mostly Gnome multimedia abstraction libraries and some GVFS stuff.

    Yes, it's one package that's causing all the trouble with alacarte: gnome-panel. Which is odd, as the Debian package does not require gnome-panel, just the Ubuntu one.

    The problem with RhythmBox stems from the gnome-media dependency, which brings in unneeded stuff like PulseAudio.

    Gwibber requires almost every Python library in Gnome to function, regardless of distribution. This is why is being replaced with Pino in Fedora.

    Ubuntu needs to get it's dependencies in order, as right now they are a gumbled mess. The dependencies in Debian are much more tolerable in the case of alacarte and RhythmBox. The sad thing is it seems to be caused mostly by the gnome-panel and the gnome-media packages, which seem to have been made dependencies of everything in Gnome on Ubuntu, even when they are not needed.
    Frem wrote: »
    Having an 160 GB hard drive and a TB of backup space, I personally don't really sweat having extra packages like that. I use Gnome anyway, and all the Gnome-specific stuff takes up maybe a gig or two, tops. Heck, it's still smaller than a full install of StarCraft, a game ten+ years old. If I feel like using XFCE for a while, I have the comfort of knowing it's not actually taking up as much space in RAM as the package manager downloaded.

    It's more about RAM usage than disk space. Aside from Thunar (which does have some features missing), Xfce has essentially every feature of Gnome. Yet, Gnome takes up 2x as much RAM.
    Frem wrote: »
    The best solution would be to implement a feature standard on most any popular file manager. No need to wait for the GTK file browser to start getting cutesy with metadata (although that would be nice). If that's what the developers are waiting for, it's just turning a blind eye to the problem and stalling.

    You're right, but the metadata stuff will be my focus.

    darkphoenix22 on
  • ImpersonatorImpersonator Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    Frem wrote: »
    Anyway, the problem here is that the Ubuntu devs thought that it'd be better to lock down the panel only in the Netbook edition... Their solution is outright laughable as it just cripples usability.

    See: Convert GNOME session

    Their reasoning doesn't even make sense, it annoys me to no end.
    I'm going to guess that it's probably just easier to load a system-wide config that doesn't change than to keep two separate configs for the same user. In other words, it's a horrible, glorious hack. After the changes on that page have been applied, can you revert back to the normal Gnome config with all your old applets and their positions preserved?

    I refuse to try it, but I think that that's expected behavior. You'd just need to select Ubuntu Netbook Edition (2D or 3D) instead of GNOME when you login.

    Impersonator on
  • VistiVisti Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    Dear developers of Awesome. Fuck your update-method.

    Visti on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • RSPRSP Registered User regular
    edited May 2010
    What update method, the one where they break everything in the config on each release?

    RSP on
  • VistiVisti Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    That's the one. I restored some of my stuff, but now there's some core functionality missing and it's pretty frustrating. Oh, also, way to overwrite my old config, so I can't even see what I did back then.

    Also, looking at the changelog, I have no idea why it was even necessary to use a new config.

    Visti on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • BarrakkethBarrakketh Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    I've never had that problem with Awesome. See, you're supposed to have your configuration file in your home directory, not the system one (which is what you said you used the last time you were all QQ about this). The global config is just a temporary resource until you copy it/make your own. Basically, you're doing it wrong.

    My Awesome updates have been painless. Copy custom rc.lua to a different file (rc.lua.4.4.5 or whatever), copy global rc.lua to ~/.config/Awesome/rc.lua.{newawesomever), run kdiff3 on them and merge the files together. Symlink the new one to rc.lua and away I go.

    Barrakketh on
    Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
  • ImpersonatorImpersonator Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    So what you're saying is that the problem is still in awesome, it's just that you came up with a solution that works around the problem?

    Impersonator on
  • theSquidtheSquid Sydney, AustraliaRegistered User regular
    edited June 2010
    You should never have to run something like kdiff3 just to get your shit working after every update.

    Although he's right to say that you shouldn't really be editing stuff in /etc for something as personalised as a WM.

    theSquid on
  • VistiVisti Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Barrakketh wrote: »
    I've never had that problem with Awesome. See, you're supposed to have your configuration file in your home directory, not the system one (which is what you said you used the last time you were all QQ about this). The global config is just a temporary resource until you copy it/make your own. Basically, you're doing it wrong.

    My Awesome updates have been painless. Copy custom rc.lua to a different file (rc.lua.4.4.5 or whatever), copy global rc.lua to ~/.config/Awesome/rc.lua.{newawesomever), run kdiff3 on them and merge the files together. Symlink the new one to rc.lua and away I go.

    Argh, I know. It's just that the first Awesome guide I ever read told me to just edit /etc/xdg/awesome/rc.lua and that's what I've been doing ever since.

    Anyway, are you running the latest awesome? For some reason, my mouse-over doesn't focus clients, modkey+shift+c doesn't kill clients, modkey+mouse1 doesn't drag clients and modkey+mouse2 doesn't resize clients.. These are all defined in the rc.lua as usual..

    edit: wait a minute, are you still sym-linking them to /etc anyway?

    Visti on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • Apothe0sisApothe0sis Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    So, at work tonight, I thought "I should install another firewall, a VM and a firewall distro should be ideal"

    I didn't go for m0n0wall or pfsense because Untangle has a free version which has far more intriguing reporting options (almost like, but not as good, as the reporting of the Solarwinds Netflow reporting module).

    Yay me, right? Nope, the it defaulted to the IP address of the gateway for the office environment, and thus it took everything out. I was so pleased.

    Apothe0sis on
  • BarrakkethBarrakketh Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    So what you're saying is that the problem is still in awesome, it's just that you came up with a solution that works around the problem?

    No, it's not a problem with Awesome. The /etc/xdg/awesome/rc.lua file is going to be clobbered by the package manager because it isn't intended to be modified.
    theSquid wrote: »
    You should never have to run something like kdiff3 just to get your shit working after every update.
    Technically my stuff still worked (verified with awesome -k and actually using it), but the developers do change some defaults in each release (or do some things "better") and it is much easier to port changes like that with a program that helps you merge the differences between two files. Major releases break things, though.
    Visti wrote: »
    Anyway, are you running the latest awesome? For some reason, my mouse-over doesn't focus clients, modkey+shift+c doesn't kill clients, modkey+mouse1 doesn't drag clients and modkey+mouse2 doesn't resize clients.. These are all defined in the rc.lua as usual..

    Yep. Everything works fine. Did you make sure that there aren't any wonky syntax errors (check with awesome -k).
    edit: wait a minute, are you still sym-linking them to /etc anyway?

    Nope. Basically for every version of awesome I've used I have an rc.lua.version in ~/.config/awesome. There is an rc.lua symlink to rc.lua.version in the same directory. When I upgrade to a new version of awesome I copy the default rc.lua (the one you've been editing) to the same directory with the new version number (rc.lua.4.4.5) and then merge my changes in the previous version (rc.lua.4.4.4) with the new rc.lua. Once that is done I update the symlink to point to the new rc.lua and restart awesome after checking it with awesome -k.

    Barrakketh on
    Rollers are red, chargers are blue....omae wa mou shindeiru
  • VistiVisti Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Alright, that sounds pretty good. Well, seeing as I have to redo my stuff (luckily my themes are safe and sound), I'll start doing that instead. I actually have a real WM wanderlust right about now, but all the other tiling WMs do things a little different and I don't think I can go back to a floating manager now.

    Oh, by the way, do you do auto-starting from the rc.lua? I've been trying to figure out the best way to do it.

    Visti on
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
  • darkphoenix22darkphoenix22 Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Not directly Linux related, but the guy who made the multi-threading and ordered chapter patches for MPlayer has been kicked off the MPlayer Dev Team.
    Moin,

    The MPlayer Team has decided that due to long standing differences,
    Uoti Urpala is no longer a member and developer of the MPlayer Project.

    The MPlayer Team would like to ask Uoti, that the fork he has been
    working on for quite some time, is labled as such with an clearly
    distinguishable name.

    The MPlayer Team

    His branch includes features such as multi-threading and is about twice as fast as the mainline SVN build of MPlayer. MPlayer development has stalled due to politics. Honestly, the atmosphere is very similar to the one the XFree86 project had before it was forked to create X.org.

    darkphoenix22 on
  • Apothe0sisApothe0sis Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    My abortive attempts to get a virtual environment are not going ideally.

    VMWare vmmod won't compile on Debian.
    Xen takes over your whole computer it seems, which is going to be an issue.
    virtualbox-ose-modules are not available for the kernel I just installed on debian.
    The non ose version might work, perhaps

    FUCKING WHAT

    Apothe0sis on
  • FremFrem Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Worst comes to worst... try Qemu? It's a software-based solution so it'll be a tad slower than other virtualization... virtualizers? What I'm trying to say is that it doesn't have special hardware requirements, so it might be easier to get working without kernel modules. Although it does have a kernel module. For speeding things up.

    Anyway, you can do some neat stuff with it that might not fly in other VMs. Like allow you to run instances of qemu within other instances of qemu so you can qemu while you qemu.

    Frem on
  • TincheTinche No dog food for Victor tonight. Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    So, I have a little problem with Compiz hot corners.

    I switched to Lucid pretty much full time after my XP partition crapped out on me again and my recovery CDs didn't work. It was easier than I thought, I'm actually very happy with it. Got Compiz set up with two hot corners, up-left for Scale and down-right for Expo. This works great for me.

    Except when I play a game in Wine. It's very annoying when I play RTS games and moving the mouse to corners will show me my windows or workspaces. Can anyone suggest a work-around except disabling the hot corners before playing manually?

    A little Googling didn't suggest anything useful, I thought I'd ask here before looking into it further, since maybe some of you have had the same problem.

    Tinche on
    We're marooned on a small island, in an endless sea,
    Confined to a tiny spit of sand, unable to escape,
    But tonight, it's heavy stuff.
  • DedianDedian Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    How about something like the script in this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=588497

    Dedian on
  • darkphoenix22darkphoenix22 Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    I think Valve should wait a year before porting Steam. The multimedia and audio frameworks and APIs on Linux are currently a mess. The APIs and frameworks need to be stablized before any sort of large scale professional game development can begin on Linux.

    http://braid-game.com/news/?p=364

    If Value ports Steam to Linux in its current state, I'm afraid it will become unprofitable and they'll quickly abandon it. If that happened, there would be virtually no professional Linux games for years.

    Linux needs to be ready before we fall under the spotlight. :P

    darkphoenix22 on
  • ImpersonatorImpersonator Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    I believe that Valve is able to change the current Linux gaming world. If it's currently a mess then someone needs to step up and do something.

    edit: Damn, that's an old post. Many Linux games have been published after that post was written.

    Impersonator on
  • darkphoenix22darkphoenix22 Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    I believe that Valve is able to change the current Linux gaming world. If it's currently a mess then someone needs to step up and do something.

    edit: Damn, that's an old post. Many Linux games have been published after that post was written.

    It's still true. I tested around 20 games and e-words on Ubuntu. Although, some of them worked (they usually still needed a bit of configuration), most required you to remove PulseAudio. Many games using the Allegro framework with SDL also required me to tell SDL to use OSS.

    darkphoenix22 on
  • ImpersonatorImpersonator Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    I have no issues whatsoever running stock Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.04. I installed all of the games that were part of the Humble Indie bundle and they all ran without a hitch.

    Maybe it's just me, but I don't recall having had any issues at all with Pulseaudio.

    Impersonator on
  • darkphoenix22darkphoenix22 Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    I have no issues whatsoever running stock Ubuntu Netbook Edition 10.04. I installed all of the games that were part of the Humble Indie bundle and they all ran without a hitch.

    Maybe it's just me, but I don't recall having had any issues at all with Pulseaudio.

    I wonder how much work it took to get those games to run correctly. They would not be able to depend at all on sound timing due to how PulseAudio works.

    https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2010-May/011343.html

    PulseAudio sacrifices latency for power consumption. High latency, low power consumption. The power saving is also why your computer makes those clicking noises when running Ubuntu. That's PulseAudio shutting off your audio chip.

    I'm not sure how beneficial low power consumption from your sound chip is to battery life anyways. It's your CPU, GPU, WiFi, Bluetooth, and LCD panel that take up all the power. Not really sound.

    Note: My tests were done with the latest ALSA drivers IIRC.

    darkphoenix22 on
  • ImpersonatorImpersonator Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Oh, now that I recall, I could never get sound working with Alex the Allegator 4. Does the game even have sound? I've tried it with so many distros and for so long that it simply annoys me.

    Impersonator on
  • darkphoenix22darkphoenix22 Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Oh, now that I recall, I could never get sound working with Alex the Allegator 4. Does the game even have sound? I've tried it with so many distros and for so long that it simply annoys me.

    That's an Allegro game. ;)

    http://www.allegro.cc/depot/AlextheAllegator4/

    darkphoenix22 on
  • ImpersonatorImpersonator Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    What does that mean? The game installs fine.

    Yeah, I just saw that it indeed has music and sfx. I simply never heard them. :P

    Impersonator on
  • darkphoenix22darkphoenix22 Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    What does that mean? The game installs fine.

    Yeah, I just saw that it indeed has music and sfx. I simply never heard them. :P
    most required you to remove PulseAudio. Many games using the Allegro framework with SDL also required me to tell SDL to use OSS.

    :P

    darkphoenix22 on
  • SeeksSeeks Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Jesus christ we're stuck with games called "Alex the Allegator 4".

    If it wasn't for... a certain type of interactive video entertainment whose discussion on these forums is forbidden, you could count the number of linux games worth playing on one hand. Maybe two.

    Whatever happens, I really hope that Valve doesn't take the route that too many others do and assume that linux is just Ubuntu.

    Hmmm... maybe I could fuck around with the OP and include an extensive list of linux games worth playing.

    Seeks on
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  • TincheTinche No dog food for Victor tonight. Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Dedian wrote: »
    How about something like the script in this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=588497

    Interesting, that script simply replaces Compiz with Metacity while the desired program is running. I don't think I'd need to go that far, I could simply disable the hot corners with a DBus call to compiz while the game is running, and enable them when it finishes. This is far from ideal, though.

    I'm not at my home computer now, but the first thing I'll do when I get home is install some of the games from my humble bundle and see if they exhibit the same behaviour. I managed to get the game running normally by unticking the "Allow the window manager to control the windows" box in Winecfg, but doing that has side-effects too (can't alt-tab nor switch workspace nor do basically anything other than interact with the Wine window, so no instant messaging). Maybe I'll play around with the settings there a little.

    What would be great is I could make Compiz not trigger hot corners while a certain class of window is focused; for example windows tagged FULLSCREEN. Don't know if this is possible without writing a plug-in.

    Tinche on
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  • darkphoenix22darkphoenix22 Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Seeks wrote: »
    Jesus christ we're stuck with games called "Alex the Allegator 4".

    If it wasn't for... a certain type of interactive video entertainment whose discussion on these forums is forbidden, you could count the number of linux games worth playing on one hand. Maybe two.

    Whatever happens, I really hope that Valve doesn't take the route that too many others do and assume that linux is just Ubuntu.

    Hmmm... maybe I could fuck around with the OP and include an extensive list of linux games worth playing.

    There's a reason for this. Programming games on Linux is a bitch. ;)

    darkphoenix22 on
  • ImpersonatorImpersonator Registered User regular
    edited June 2010
    Seeks wrote: »
    Jesus christ we're stuck with games called "Alex the Allegator 4".

    If it wasn't for... a certain type of interactive video entertainment whose discussion on these forums is forbidden, you could count the number of linux games worth playing on one hand. Maybe two.

    Whatever happens, I really hope that Valve doesn't take the route that too many others do and assume that linux is just Ubuntu.

    Hmmm... maybe I could fuck around with the OP and include an extensive list of linux games worth playing.

    That'd be nice. :)

    Impersonator on
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