Gaming on Linux [news and developments]

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

This is interesting, the Orbis OS used in the upcoming Sony Playstation 4 is based on FreeBSD 9.0: http://www.vgleaks.com/some-details-about-playstation-4-os-development/

So whatever CDPR is planning to release for PS4/Orbis will be using OpenGL, no doubt about it.

 

[volsung]

Excellent. I am very fond of FreeBSD, used it as my main home system for a while.

The irony is, since GOG.com doesn't distribute Linux games, where will we get our Witcher for Linux? Steam?

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

I suspect if they'd ever release Witcher for Linux, GOG support would immediately follow. Potentially Valve's console can boost their interest in Linux.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Look what I just found - all games from the Humble Store: http://calvein.github.io/humble-games/

 

[volsung]

Wow, great find!

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

It looks like GOG is interested to start working on the Linux support: http://gog.com/work#senior_software_engineer_desktop

 

[Glaroug.531]

Its not really news since its been around for a bit, and its not exclusive to linux as its on OS X and Windows, but it is cool and useful. Its called Minitube and its a youtube client written in qt that lets you listen to youtube nativley in linux without flash! And, it lets you listen to whatever you want without having to log into youtube because Gaahl is not age appropriate for everyone. And it has a handy built in download fucntion.

EDIT: Woops! The thread is GAMING news, not news in general

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

I switched to HTML5 mode in Youtube, so Flash is used less and less with it: https://www.youtube.com/html5

 

[volsung]

Hey! If anybody likes turn-based tactical combat/strategy games, Expeditions: Conquistador is on sale 50% off at Desura right now.

The game comes with the Linux client in a tarball (which I am downloading right now) and is DRM-free.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Thanks for the pointer, though I just bought such a load of games on recent GOG sales, that I'm taking a break for some time

 

[volsung]

By the way, excellent job packaging the game. I simply extracted it from the tarball and ran the binary ending in x86_64. All worked perfectly

 

[Glaroug.531]

KDE development cycle is burning rubber, possibly.

From article.

The time elapsed between big releases (4.12, 4.13, 4.14...) will be of 3 months (instead of 6) having the following structure:

Two month for merging features
One month to prepare the release

I wonder if the introduction of Wayland is influencing this decision?

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

It's a good development. I don't think it's tied to Wayland in particular. So far KDE releases were too far apart in my opinion. By the way, 4.10 is coming to Debian testing at last: http://bjorn.haxx.se/debian/testing.pl?package=kde-baseapps

 

[volsung]

I used to love KDE back in 3.5, but ever since I was disappointed with the look of 4.0 I stopped using KDE and switched to Gnome. I am now pretty content with Gnome 3 as it is simple enough to just work and not get in the way of things. However, it is very limited. For example, I didn't find an easy way to simply use pure ALSA as audio backend instead of going through Pulseaudio. I did manage to make applications that use OpenAL use pure ALSA, and the result is much crisper and rich sound.

So... what is so good about these "new" KDE releases? Tell me what I am missing and why I should give them a try. I don't normally care for too much eye candy (in fact I hate wobbly windows and things like that) but I like have a smooth hardware accelerated desktop that makes it easy and fast to switch between several open programs like latex editors, function plotters, a few terminals, PDF readers and web browser.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

I like KDE configurability. I think it's simply unmatched in Gnome. I can adjust tons of parameters, color themes, widget styles and so on. It's not so much about the eye candy (even though KDE offers lot's of effects), but about making it look the way you want. Also I like their architectural approach. They use the same base to develop Plasma Desktop and Plasma Active (mobile interface). But they clearly differentiate these use cases. Gnome decided to use "one size fits all" approach, that's why Gnome windows lack minimize buttons and the interface feels "tabletish". KDE avoids that by addressing each design use case independently (but still uses common base for developers benefit).

About KDE 4.0 - I've heard people complaining about it. KDE had lot's of rough edges in that release, which are all gone already. I didn't see any of those, since I started using KDE since 4.6 or something. Before that I was using Gnome 2 and decided to switch to KDE once Gnome got a radical shift in Gnome 3.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

OpenMW 0.25 is released: https://openmw.org

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTKQaXibMTA

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

SDL 2.0 is officially released! http://wiki.libsdl.org/moin.fcg/MigrationGuide

OpenGL 3.0+ means anything from 3.0 and up (so 4.x is covered).

 

[volsung]

I hope these improvements reflect on more and better linux support.

Does Unity (the game engine) for Linux use SDL?

So listen up companies, SDL + OpenGL are supported by all game relevant PC plaforms!

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

I'm not sure about Unity, but I suspect it has its own codebase and doesn't use SDL.

 

[bcheero]

I hope I'm still allowed to talk about my general GNU/Linux experience aside from gaming...so with that said long story short I tried going from Windows 8 to Windows 7 using the HP recovery disks my laptop came with and I couldn't get Windows 7. I had the Linux Mint KDE live cd and I managed to install the entire distro on my hard drive.

Here's the thing though, I'm anxious about leaving Windows and everything I'm familiar with. idk I'm still in college and I feel I might face issues with docx files on Libreoffice and general issues with the pptx extension on the Libreoffice version.

Am I worrying unnecessarily? Any advice for my rather trivial worries? On a lighter note, I really love KDE though I still have much to learn about widget customization and how package installation/uninstallation works. I feel this could be a rather fantastic experience.

I have another question as well. Can someone explain why my root directory and user directories have to be on separate partitions? I just went with the default "install over entire hard drive" during installation for Linux Mint KDE.