Project David is the codename for a new middleware program that sits on top of Linux to enable it to run Windows based applications seemelessly. Flexbeta has more. Editor’s Note: With no proof and no source code, there’s little reason to regard this as more than a hoax. However, if it’s true, it would be a huge development.
Windows Programs on Linux?
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Adam Scheinberg
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The only way I see them able to accomplish this feat is if they actually had the source code to the Windows subsystems.
Wait, wasn’t there a leak a while ago?…
Even though, I still call this bunk until proven.
s/stability .* os/incorporate the operating system into the web browser/
Damn links, no copy & paste in the X11 version…
There’s no reason to run windows’ programs under linux.
Linux is excellent and has its grate programs, that’s not my idea it’s a fact.
Absolutely! I love their video editing software, the multiple DVD authoring packages, all of the games you can pick up at CompUSA.
Wait…That’s not Linux at all.
http://www.specopslabs.com/david_development.htm
lol.. they have just finished 10% of the planning phase…
Their product is not ready (at least not according to their webpage).
It seems that they are looking to get investors and promising the moon.
<quote>
“David version .01 is a functioning prototype, and we have also developed the low-level architectural framework for David. David is currently 25% completed with the Systems Design Phase of development.”
</quote>
If you look at their timeline you will also see that it only says they have proved the concept and expect to take a few months to actually implement it … good luck I say.
Somebody redoing all the work that has already gone into Wine! Film at eleven.
Just pickin’, no foul
I can see why some would want to run Windows Appz on Linux, but it’s not needed. Personally, I beLIEve OO.o is a superior product. Compatibility is getting much better with Office too.
Currently running Fedora Core 2 test 2, and I want to convert my MP3s to .ogg files. Is there a tool that can allow me to do this easily?
wait…….
what about wine?
is this guy reinventing the wheel??
Take an mp3 player and pipe the output into oggenc.
That’s the nice thing about Unix-like systems. You can pipe almost everything.
Isn’t this exactly the same as WINE?? The David-team added tons of marketing fluff to what is essentially nothing more than WINE.. or am I missing something important?
I’ve been working in technology for quite a while and I don’t see any benefit in this project. If I want to run Windows programs, I have a much simpler and less risky way to run them. It’s called Windows, it’s from Microsoft. CodeWeavers has it right – they’re filling the gaps in the cost of switching argument by supporting major Windows applications. Project David is doomed, not because they don’t have any code, but because their vision is not practical. On the other hand, they’ve made their website nice and polished.
As far as I understand this, it’s more like win4lin than Wine. It tries to get the normal Windows libs to run under Linux, but from the NT series, not from 9x series, like win4lin does.
The link to page “About SpecOps Labs” is labelled “About Soft Labs”. A bit weird. And the page title is SOFT LABS Software too. Haven’t they decided yet what to call themselves?
“The WINE project had been too faithful in reverse engineering the Windows Environment Subsystem, that it also inherited the architectural flaws in Windows. Among these flaws is when a problem is experienced by an application running in a Window, it can crash the whole operating system, causing it to either hang or reboot.”
Unless the people writing the copy are that far removed from the people doing the software engineering, I’m pretty skeptical about this whole project, given claims such as the above. They also claim that the development period (which hasn’t yet begun) will take in the region of 6-8 weeks. The people behind Wine must be wholly incompetent
“Wait…That’s not Linux at all.”
You’re right, Linux is not like Windows…spymare, malware, worms everyday, MS’ prototypes for DRM, etc.
You want games, get an X Box.
This is nothing but a big hoax…
If the time they say they need to complete the project is that short, why are they announcing it without proof???
It would have been better to wait the 6-7 months it will take to finish the thing, (acording to their website) and show some proof rather than making a bold announcement.
Veredict: HOAX!
No offense, but if in your opinion the pinnicle of OS achievement is when you can buy it (and programs for it) at CompUSA, then I feel sorry for you.
I mean pinnacle. I hate typing.
I can run ALL my Windows programs under this neat OS called Windows XP right now! Best of all, I can do this in an environment that just WORKS, and works quite well. Does anyone know of a Linux emulator for Windows? I sure could use that 5 or so gigs of disk space back on my Windows partition…
I hope it’s real and I wish this will run apps faster and more stable than wine.
“You want games, get an X Box. ”
This is one of the lamest comment i’ve ever heard. If you really want Linux to compete with Windows, you need games. Period. I wish people who thinks like that stay very close to the bottom of any decision chain.
I can’t find any contact information on the site (not that I’ve been searching that well), and the contact information in the whois database gives me a lot of yahoo mailboxes… Well, it might not be a hoax, but it’s too early in the developement to tell if it will ever become anything usable.
Wine looks like some competition these days, though. It will be hard to start from scratch and top their work before Longhorn comes out.
Ok I’ll agree that CompUSA isn’t the pinnacle of application availability, but the intent behind the statement was “readily available applications for the genres previously mentioned in the post”. I meant that you couldn’t buy them for Linux even if you wanted to…
You must have missed the coLinux stories. http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=6698 There’s your linux emulator, but I don’t think it will save you any drive space.
What if this is just an April Fools Joke? we are after all still in APRIL.
This is one of the lamest comment i’ve ever heard. If you really want Linux to compete with Windows, you need games. Period.
I think it’s lame that people think you need games to compete. Not everyone is a gamer. A lot of people have a gamecube or playstation or xbox for their gaming needs. Others don’t play video games at all. Gamers do not drive the market for computers. Most people now either want an appliance that plays, records, and burns different forms of media or they want email and word processing. That can be done in Linux. It may need more polishing before more people use it, but Linux can do everything most computer users would ask of it.
Damn, that’s funny as hell! LOL!
He’s right, though.
In phase 4 (6 to 8 weeks)
“During this phase David is fabricated, built, integrated, tested, and evaluated.”
Wow. Eight weeks to recode the entire Win32 API. Good luck guys.
I think they should look at the 11 years and 300 developers taken to create over a million lines of code for the Wine project and reconsider their timescale.
By the way, the comment about Wine allowing windows applications to crash the system is a little strange. Surely Wine only needs to run with the priveleges of a normal user?
I worked on Windows for over 10 years. Creating a middleware layer that runs most Windows applications is impossible without the source code to Windows. The Windows team itself spends most of its time trying to make applications run from OS release to OS release. I like how on the last page of this site they say their design has been validated by Price Waterhouse Coopers, like that will make your Windows app run.
Total and complete b.s. They might believe it strongly, however they will never reach the goal they are aiming for. It is amusing however!
“I think it’s lame that people think you need games to compete. Not everyone is a gamer. A lot of people have a gamecube or playstation or xbox for their gaming needs. Others don’t play video games at all. Gamers do not drive the market for computers. Most people now either want an appliance that plays, records, and burns different forms of media or they want email and word processing. That can be done in Linux. It may need more polishing before more people use it, but Linux can do everything most computer users would ask of it.”
Not true, and I agree with Richard and MrJEep. CompUSA is a bit overpriced, but is a good source for PC games.
No, you’re right. Gaming isn’t necessary to compete in this industry, but to be COMPETITIVE, especially on the home desktop, it is. And that is mainly why the average end user would pick Windows over Mac, or Linux at this point. Because the support is just not there, not enough to keep SERIOUS gamers happy.
And it is a fact that gaming pushes the technology.
Check this out from their competition section.
http://www.specopslabs.com/market_competition4.htm#competition
“Instead of simply using the WINE project as our basis, David has incorporated into its architecture the best features of all the windows compatibility projects such as WINE, WABI, TWIN and the others. David therefore is not a reinvention of the wheel. Rather, it takes the best of breed pieces from previous attempts to simulate the Windows Subsystem, and integrate it into a single product. This is among the reasons why SpecOpS Labs and technical experts who have reviewed its design have no doubt as to its feasibility.”
So they are expecting to just swipe a bunch of code from different projects, mash it together, and expect everything to work better than any of the individual projects. There *might* be some merit in that approach, but it would certainly take longer than their schedule would indicate.
Looks as suspicious as the Phantom game console.
anyways…
Linux… I would use Linux purely at home if it were not for Games and Music Apps being few and far between. I know there are some game companies that port to Linux, but if you look carefully, you will see that MS is steering a lot of game companies to produce XBox only games (take Jade Empire from BioWare as an example). Kill two birds with one stone: Sony’s dominance and the possibility of game makers porting to Linux.
Any company making games for Linux at this stage will have a hard fight. The game industry is not simple and players are hard to please… They will want games that perform and look like Halo, or FarCry, or WarcraftIII, or Half-Life, or whatever you name it to be… In one way the “Buy an XBox” twit is right, in another he is just as dupped into thinking XBox is anything more than PC market leverage for MS.
Anyone want to start a gaming company with me that will develop for Windows, Apple, and Linux? Need 30 people to fill various roles with the understanding that they won’t get paid more than peanuts till after the company starts to turn a profit. ressev@hotmail subject: Game Company or you are spam.
They’re talking total smack. Wine does not suffer “architectural flaws” which let it “crash the entire OS”. It does not need a “major rewrite”. I can’t think of a more ridiculous notion. This looks like a classic scam to get money out of people who don’t know any better.
He can’t include WINE code without releasing it GPL. This is total vaporware.
Ok I’ll agree that CompUSA isn’t the pinnacle of application availability, but the intent behind the statement was “readily available applications for the genres previously mentioned in the post”. I meant that you couldn’t buy them for Linux even if you wanted to…
Video editing is covered by kino for home users, and a myriad of high-end professional packages – how do you think the big boys in Hollywood do their film editing/cgi on linux? DVD authoring – got me there – never done it, maybe k3b? Games – playing UT2004 at home at the mo on linux – there are anumber of other titles released for linux, in addition there is winex.
As for your second comment – buying software is not the be all, end all of software availability. Those accessing the debian repositories must be cursing themselves at how inconvenient it is to use apt-get from the comfort of their own homes, rather than having the joy of going down to the store in their cars to shell over cash for overhyped, overpriced software.
Matt
This sounds like a hoax to swindle money out of venture capitalists. No contact info on the website, the “validation letters” are not there.
Anyone in Phillipines care to run whois specopslabs.com and visit the addresses listed there?
And I despise the website design, with the smiling people in suits and stuff. Total PHB bait.
@Ken
“…And it is a fact that gaming pushes the technology….”
True to an extent, but what about better quality porn? You know those 640×480 res. movies just don’t cut it for me anymore!
Is this border line abuse for this thread?
David is most likely a hoax, probably to collect investors’ money and run. After all we know about Windows, it doesn’t seem too likely any such project (including Wine) will ever be able to catch all the issues “Office 95 frees a random pointer at startup”. We have to face the fact that the Windows world is very different from the open source world: When something is broken in a open source program, it’s fixed, even if it is a very popular program and the error pops up on new versions of (say) Linux because older version never triggered the error. On the other hand, in the Windows world, the operating system adapts to the exisiting software. If the old version of Windows were able to run a buggy program, the new version must run it too. For that reason, every version of Windows contains quite many workarounds for those bugs in existing applications. Do I have to mention that these workarounds are required in Wine, too, to make these applictions run?
“Absolutely! I love their video editing software, the multiple DVD authoring packages, all of the games you can pick up at CompUSA.
Wait…That’s not Linux at all. ”
Actually there is video editing software. I usually use a really basic one called avidemux2. DVD authoring I believe is possible, I think the drivers and software for burning is finished and we have an *illegal* DVD decryption/compression library to use to get the video off the DVD and back on a new one.
As for games, any game written to use GL should work, and WineX emulates Direct X pretty well from what I’ve heard. Personally I use Windows for gaming because I am far to lazy not to, and I get Windows free(legally) anyway.
Now some advanced tools may be missing, like flash designers. But you can hardly blame free developers for a company (Macromedia) not making it’s software widely available. And as a $1000 program I doubt many people on here legitimately use Flash tools. They key word is legitimate meaning you bought it. Besides, Apple just released a new editing software that isn’t gonna be running on Windows; so maybe Windows is missing some software too.
I think Wine was X11 licensed ’till some time ago, so they could use the last snapshot with that license
(using a later version and offering sourcecode and selling support and a nifty installer only would be nice, too).
OTOH, I think that’s bullsh*t – but we should know more after tomorrow’s presentation of the prototype…
“Gamers do not drive the market for computers.”
If that was the case, I think Falcon Northwest, Voodoo PC, Alienware, nVidia, ATi and many other would pretty much be out of businness. Try telling that to people in Korea. Most everybody hates consoles there (because of old rivalries with Japan) and just about everyone plays PC games. They even have Video Game trading cards of the top players. And tell that to thousands of people that go to the CPL (of which I am one) or QuakeCon or other huge gaming tournaments/LANs. You would be hard pressed to find a console in sight.
There are very few reasons to buy a new /upgrade your computer today. If the computer dies, you need more power for Audio/Video, you do 3d rendering, you play games, or you want that new Microsoft OS. Now which of these options pertain to most of the PC userbase?
BTW, I like console games too, but each has there place. I love firing up Final Fantasy X or Tactics on my PS2 or Metroid Prime on my GC, but there is nothing like playing a round of CS, BF:DC, a round of Warcraft 3 or Rise of Nations. (Linux really needs more RTS games, CNC 1 and Warcraft 2 doesnt cut it)
MS is steering a lot of game companies to produce XBox only games (take Jade Empire from BioWare as an example). Kill two birds with one stone: Sony’s dominance and the possibility of game makers porting to Linux.
Well, to be fair, Sony has about 10x the number of exclusive titles that MS has.
MS is steering a lot of game companies to produce XBox only games (take Jade Empire from BioWare as an example). Kill two birds with one stone: Sony’s dominance and the possibility of game makers porting to Linux.
Well, to be fair, Sony has about 10x the number of exclusive titles that MS has.
Steering as in away from Windows and to XBox. MS would love to steer things away from PS2 – you are quite right.
I googled Caslon Chua, and tracked down a few things:
— He is an Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at De La Salle University in the Phillipines.
— He has some coursework related to Wine
— His email address is [email protected]
— His work with “David” is mentioned in a couple of 2003 articles from the Manila Times:
http://www.inq7.net/inf/2003/nov/14/inf_1-1.htm
in November 2003, and
http://www.inq7.net/inf/2003/jun/11/inf_2-1.htm
in June 2003.
That’s the limit to my research.
Jim
Wine is licenced under the LGPL so technically, they wouldn’t have to licence their application under the GPL/LGPL as long as it only uses the Wine libraries and that they didn’t made any modification.
I’m from the Philippines. I too doubt if this is for real. A quick google reveals some new links from our local papers here:
http://www.mb.com.ph/INFO200404207565.html
http://www.inq7.net/inf/2004/apr/05/inf_1-1.htm
These are big newspapers here, I wonder how much research they did on this one.
The buildings and street addresses based on whois specopslabs.com exists afaik, but I haven’t confirmed if an office for a company actually exists there.
I have also seen some job postings by specopslabs somewhere off the web/paper sometime ago (cant remember though).
Yes, of course it is LGPL. But, to get the level of compatibility they claim, they would have to make major modifications. So, they would have to give them back.
But: they could use an old snapshot, like Transgaming does…
Hey simplefix, don’t look at me, man. Start at the top if you’re gonna do that – “Linux is excellent” By nizar.
This is a thread about windows progs on linux and some linux user feels the need to bash windows again?
Chill man. =)
Tuxracer, frozenbubble…? You’ve got to be kidding, right?
“As for your second comment – buying software is not the be all, end all of software availability.”
Your joking?
Nothing happens in this world UNTIL someone sells something.
Exactly right. CREAM
Why would I be kidding? Games on ANY PC platform are worthless anymore. As much effort as companies put into them you would think that errors like “EXCEPTION: Attempt to read from NULL at 0x00000000” would not exist, and that error was from a Microsoft game on Windows XP! NOTE: This EXACT SAME error occurs on Mechwarrior 4 Vengeance (hmm deleting my saved game fixed that one go figure), Black Knight expansion, and Mech Commander 2 on TWO different machines with all the patches, and two different video driver revisions. So to those that say Linux is worthless because it does not have games I say BAAH.
maybe they licensed MS code, and are providing a service to Linux, the way SFU is for Window before and after MS purchased them?
Well, I see what you’re saying. But,
Gaming problems in windows is virtually non-existent for me. (You know, come to think of it, I cannot remember the last time any game actually crashed on me.)
More and more modern games usually require faster hardware, and cooler running components (i.e. – more fans in their cases). It is usually a problem of neglect, I say USUALLY though, as I know this is not always the case.
I have helped many a friend out who was in the middle of playing UT2003 or whatever graphically intense shooter with the settings cranked up so he can run through the 3D looking grass with his flak cannon pumping shards into some poor noob getting raped by the whole red team when his computer just “crashes” right before imminent ownage. Opening up the case would reveal that it was some Dell or whatever that had poor internal air flow, and the vidcard was just trying to let him know, “damn, take it easy, man.”
The natural response is usually, “I hate windows.” Crashes all the damn time.” Sounds like poor cooling, or insufficient hardware specs to me. (ahem) And that is what I tell them. They upgrade and much of the time all is well after that.
Linux…he he, well… try compiling modules for your ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB and getting that to work so you can get back to your hardcore linux gaming experience, oh, sorry, I meant Frozenbubble and tuxracer.
If I require a Windows app on my Linux network then I’ll stick with free Wine or trusted Codeweavers CrossOver Office. This developer is making claims on a product (Project David) that is only vaporware.
For the contact information:
Name: Fredrick J Lewis
Address: Summit One Office Tower, 530 Shaw Blvd
Unit 23-H
Mandaluyong, LZ 1501
PH
Email Address: [email protected]
Phone Number: (632)532-7854
MP3 to OGG? You do realize your going from one compressed format to another… I think you may lose some quality on your mp3 files.
Hah, you’ve got to be kidding me.
Games are what keep like 99% of the gamers I know from using another OS (especially OS X)
Games are *the* reason why Linux or Mac will never catch Windows if they don’t do something about gaming.
Tuxracer? Thats a joke.
UT2004 is nice, but thats one game, what about Blizzard? WineX doesn’t cut it, hell it can’t even play most games’ FMV or online without some kind of rediculous work-around.
Get games on Linux and you will get tons more users.
The requirements for these games are 400MHz and a directx compatable card. I have 1.6GHz or better, 512MB of RAM, and a minimum of 32MB of video ram on my ATI cards. It’s not a problem with underspeced systems, nor is it an inability to configure them having been in IT for 10 years. 😉
Frozen bubble is a cool game, but minesweeper is better.
By the way, there are nice efforts like http://www.garagegames.com who go Win/Mac/Linux for 95% of the games, but these usually aren’t the games that will drive OS migration, rather ones to keep the faithful happy.
I tried to use Fedora, but you need a significant amount of guidance on how to do things in Linux. Much of it was broken anyway, but I could never think of switching without native game support (or executables… like how Bioware does it for neverwinter nights, you can use all the Windows game resources + a linux executable and it plays)
Sadly, the games that do make it to linux are also missing mod tool support etc…. another great handicap.
Well, this thread seems to have turned into a Linux/Windows flamefest for some reason. Just to clarify, I use Linux, and have used Linux at home and at work for the last two years or so. But I’m not blind to what’s still missing from Linux. And games are not the only thing still missing.
A walk down the software aisles of any computer store will reveal tons of oddball software that does not, as yet, exist for Linux. For example, 3D home design; 3D garden design; Street and Trip map-making software; software to simulate flying model radio-control airplanes; software that lets you easily create greeting cards; software that teaches you how to play guitar, or various other musical instruments; and so on, and so on, and so on.
All that software is out there because somebody wants it, even if its only a small percentage of all computer users. And all those people are still stuck with Windows, because most of these oddball programs have no Linux or Mac equivalents.
-Gnobuddy
Linux has a lot of great software. Not all of us want to come home and play spreadsheet though. Turn based strategy is a good way to get my money. Something that will work through more than just a few versions.
why are there always some pathetic trollers keep on lying to themselves? every os has its pros and cons.
im a linux user for years. i understand the downside of linux the fact is there are still many areas for improving. windows and macosx are better desktop choices for normal home users.
as for gaming windows is definitely a prominent choice since people already own a pc why buy console? warcraft 3, doom3, halflife2 far cry everquest series all greatest games are first released on windows platform while one still has to wait 6 months or year+ for some console or mac version. hell for those who uses linux just reboot your fckin desktop machine to play the fckin games…
Get the games, get the noobs – not that i don’t like linux-newbies; but i’d be very busy helping those guys with questions that a “RT(F)M” could solve…altough unless we cut MS’ shares of DesktopPCs the compagny will never fall – so we need everybody (btw. u also get all the l33t-leachers and warez boys – they should stay with win. :þ)
… is the fact, that when it comes to linux, people talking the whole time aboput “making it a success” or “making it big”.
but i really dont know why!
i personally prefer linux and im happy with it.
thats all. not more, not less.
for business.. yeah i would be happier if i could get that ms-thing out my bosses heads.. but wtf…
i really dislike the vision of linux beeing a a “topseller” and i really doubt that it would ever become one.
not that it is too bad but because its way too “communist crap” for big businuss.
linux beeing a successor for business is like let mtv tell me that limb bizkit is indie.
linux is fun (ok sometimes a pain in the *ss) and fun should be free.
“Get games on Linux and you will get tons more users.”
Maybe. I know a few people that have tried Linux, and would be just fine staying with Windows, even all the same games were on Linux…
“I know a few people that have tried Linux, and would be just fine staying with Windows”
That’s all well and fine, the original argument was that Linux had no games. I wish Windows didn’t either, this way I wouldn’t have hundreds of dollars in games that don’t work properly.
My cube doesn’t have that problem, neither does my xbox. Why should my PC be allowed to get away with shoddy workmanship?
“I know a few people that have tried Linux, and would be just fine staying with Windows”
That’s all well and fine, the original argument was that Linux had no games. I wish Windows didn’t either, this way I wouldn’t have hundreds of dollars in games that don’t work properly.
My cube doesn’t have that problem, neither does my xbox. Why should my PC be allowed to get away with shoddy workmanship?
“I can see why some would want to run Windows Appz on Linux, but it’s not needed. Personally, I beLIEve OO.o is a superior product. Compatibility is getting much better with Office too.”
AutoCAD is a problem. It is standard in many industries, and you cannot replace it with a free substitute.
And it is a fact that gaming pushes the technology.
It is possible that gamers push desktop technology forward, but I never said anything to the contrary. I said that gamers do not push computer sales. Most computer users are not gamers.
If that was the case, I think Falcon Northwest, Voodoo PC, Alienware, nVidia, ATi and many other would pretty much be out of businness. Try telling that to people in Korea. Most everybody hates consoles there (because of old rivalries with Japan) and just about everyone plays PC games. They even have Video Game trading cards of the top players. And tell that to thousands of people that go to the CPL (of which I am one) or QuakeCon or other huge gaming tournaments/LANs. You would be hard pressed to find a console in sight.
There are very few reasons to buy a new /upgrade your computer today. If the computer dies, you need more power for Audio/Video, you do 3d rendering, you play games, or you want that new Microsoft OS. Now which of these options pertain to most of the PC userbase?
Just because you and everyone around you is a pc gamer doesn’t mean the entire market for computers is based around them. It is not. Most people don’t care about games. They want a word processor, a web browser, an email client, and a media player. When I’m helping someone buy a computer most of them say that gaming is not priority, especially after they see the price of video cards. They want to email and ebay, not much else.
Kids aren’t the only people using computers. College students, businesspeople, and grandmothers are buying computers at an increasing rate. Dell probably sells more 500 dollar PCs than anything that is capable of gaming anyway.
Stop posting about games and comment on the article. Stop talking about games and why they work or not or what store is best and blah!
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=18…
the product is expected to ship end of this year.
Wow, if it actually works it will be an exciting time for linux users. Looking forward to it’s release now.
UT2003 and UT2004 are both out for Linux and Mac OS X. UT2004 for Windows and Linux are both on the same cd.
Warcraft III is out for Mac OS X.
You can have the same hardcore gaming experiance on other OS’s.
Please do some research before you make troll-ish arguments.
No, hardcore is not how I would describe the gaming capabilities of the “other” OS platforms. Although I am too a linux user, and would like to see more gaming support for the upstart OS.
I am still fair enough to concede the PC gaming throne to windows, though. And that is one of the few reasons why I still run windows as well. As for the “idiot” comment. Chill with that, man.
Warcraft III out for the Man OSX, UT2003 and UT2004 are out for the linux and Mac OSX OS’s,
So what?!
Anything else? Just a few more, yes. But that is it. The gaming support is there, has always been there and will always be for the windows crowd. For the Mac? that’s funny. For Linux, growing yes, but slowly. So, we’ll see.
Until then, I’m sticking with windows for the latest and greatest in HARDCORE gaming. You do your research.
Didn’t mean to get off topic again, but I just had to respond to that mess up there.
Mac gaming is definetly bigger than Linux gaming at this point… sure they might be late and separate from the Win version, but there ARE way more games (and recent ones… Call of Duty, BF 1942 coming, All Blizzard games)
I mean, the only big game that I don’t remember making it to Mac is Half-Life
In fact, I would have a Mac if they only had mod tools available for OS X, unfortunately no Quake level editors are for Mac, there aren’t really any good low-cost 3D apps like Milkshape 3D, and limited documentation for compiling under something other than Visual Studio (at least for me who is entirely unfamiliar with any other program like GCC)
UnrealED is dependent upon Windows and won’t be available on Mac or Linux until Unreal 3.0 engine in a few years.
This kind of stuff is severely hampering the adoption of other operating systems.
Also, too many times when I hear Linux people screaming for games its often with things like demanding source code (Such as the petitions for Half-Life / 2)
Or too much expectations to meet the “free” nature of Linux.
It would be great to have native linux clients since porting from windows probably isn’t hard at all, but how can people expect to recoup costs in a market where everyone screams “gimme gimme gimme”
I noticed their development time is only scheduled to be 6-8 weeks?! With such an advanced system it have to be based on some existing code (such as WINE).
It looks like IBM is backing this project
“Early this year, SpecOpS Labs struck gold when IBM decided to back them up as they prepared to go public at the US Stock Exchange following a merger with a Canadian construction firm, which was moving out of the of the construction business and into the information technology business.”
http://www.mb.com.ph/INFO200404207565.html
Thank You IBM
Ok,
I haven’t scrolled through all the comment’s but most. And I haven’t found anyone that had it right! 1.This is most likely some big joke from what I can tell but there is about a 0.000001% chance its not. 2.Everyone is so biased either its Linux Is already perferct!!! and cant improve! or its Linux Sucks And windows rules!!! And why not a Linux emulator fot Windows, Windows is the better O.S. to run!. Both are wrong
and make no sense, Linux Would definitly benifet if it had 100% compatibility ofcourse! Linux doese have its own really good apps Open Office, K3b, Gaim, Gimp-2.0, but most can run on Windows anyways(all but k3b in that short list)
Linux Emulation in Windows? Windows seperiour? NO! Linux has great performance and no viruses! It hardly crashes and is more scalable!(I wont say more secure, Even though I strongly believe it is becuase the Windows biased people Say NO NO Windows has a serial number on the front of the cd!) The fact is if I was going to choose an O.S. simply by how good the kernel is Linux will be the obviouse choose! And the linux gui Is getting better and better every day, I already perfer KDE to the windows desktop. But Linux is still missing usability in a few key areas- 1. No Univeral Linux Install Shield. -2. Plug in play(Getting here). -3 Frankly The gui speed in The current X server sucks And makes linux look bad where it shouldn’t! Windows look horrable when you move them or resize them. All of these are being worked on though And I believe that all of these areas will later be strong pionts of linux. Linux Doese have more powerfull installers though(To install the O.S.) as long as you pick the right distro itll be easier then windows to install! Linux Already has 64bit for all major 64bit proseecors and it works good, while Windows is still laging behind in beta! And I bought Savage for linux at ebgames in the mall Ut2004 for linux is also there, why? becuase these companies are smart they ship bothe the linux and windows version in one box! but the piont you can get good linux games at normal stores! And theres two big games coming out soon Halfe Life 2 and Doom 3. Doom 3 wich is definitly for Linux and Windows(maybe not in one box though). Helflife 2 has not said either way. Windows however has all these games. and a few games being ported to linux makes the linux community screem with joy, were windows users expect it! The problem right now is this if you go to a windows tech guy(The avarege joe in computers) thell say yah windows xp sp 4(dont know if this is the right number) never crashes becuase of an article that said that windows Xp sp 4 never crashes as long as you don’t put externeal software on it! Now people think there buying a crash free product but as soon as they pop in any external software its going! On the other hand A linux tech guy(Usually more knowlageble in my experience becuase they would have to be diffrent then the avrage joe to even think of linux!) Will say Linux never crashes based on the fact it almost never crashes but it doese crash, Any O.S. will crash! I have crashed dos, win 3.1-xp, all linuxes, and even an o.s. that did nothing but give you a promt that I made on ASM! But in the whole time ive used linux its only crashed 3 times! And ive been using linux for awhile now, And it was only on very advanced 3d games. The fact is that both are wrong and need to look at the facts! just becuase they use it doesn’t mean its perfect! I think Linux will beat windows eventually, that its just a matter of time but for now linux isn’t perfect, windows isn’t perfect and I and you aren’t perfect So why not just admit that we aren’t perfect and are O.S. isnt perfect, and stop looking like arogent fools.
pointless. i dont see the point of running dose products on linux cept if ur talkin bout gamin.