I want this game so bad to be on Linux natively. No errors and then I would pay my money for S2. I seriously want to buy the full game (S2 License) and run it under linux with no problems. I have faced graphical problems in Ubuntu but none in Fedora (weirdly) but I can over come them and fix it. A native Linux version would perhaps boost FPS performance if is on OpenGL. I really want one and I'm sure many others do too! Please bring this to Linux dev!
CSMT is an out-of-tree patch that Fedora includes in its WINE packages. It can obviously be used anywhere as long as you're willing to patch and build WINE yourself.
What is it with you computer people and Linux? AS a somewhat normal user, I wonder if Linux is for people that were big fans of windows ME.
What is it that makes Linux a preferred OS for y'all? I dunno. I had a computer that had windows ME, This is an OS that makes VISTA look good. A computer nerd friend suggested I try this thing called "Lindows". After about a half a day of lock-ups, looking for patches and files to operate various software, and it STILL locking up and having glitchy performance at best, I re formatted again - with windows ME. Seeing that you still need to down load this patch that, having that patch conflict with something else, digging around for a patch for that that now conflicts with something else. What am I missing that y'all seem to be all over?
It used to be simple task, to download for example Ubuntu (gnome desktop) vs Kubuntu (KDE desktop) liveCD, burn it to disc, boot up temporarily from drive, and toy around the OS to see where it moved over the years.
If you think about the linux usage seriously, you should make sure your HW is one of those more "open" ones or has good history of linux support. Because when you have well supported HW, then usually everything works like charm, actually nowadays it tends to be easier for new PC users, as windows are more bloated, take longer to install, and last time I tried them some years ago, they had abysmal and tedious installer.
If you have some special HW, stay away, even if there's some way to download some driver and rebuild the kernel to support it, those things tend to break every year or so, as the development of core is going fast ahead all the time.
For me, with properly selected HW and distro, I have less-or-same amount of problems, as I had before with MS. But with the bonus of having free OS. Free both as in terms of price, and as in terms of my rights, how can I use it. Also source is included, so if I would get really crazy, I can adjust anything I wish (actually one bug in taskbar was nagging me in KDE4 for 2 years... did I check the source and propose a fix to devs? Nope.. too lazy... )
You should probably check some live distro just to see where it is now, if you are happy with MS, there's no point to switch. My motivation was, that I was very unhappy with MS.
You're describing your experiences with a Linux distribution that's nearly 15 years old (and has been "dead" for at least 10 years.)
If you cannot see how that isn't at all relevant to how the usage of modern Linux is, then it's hopeless to even try to have a discussion with you, as you've already decided your prejudice.
It'd be like me talking about "Why does anyone use the Internet! It's so incredibly slow." because I used it once on a 56k modem.
If you've played with 10 then it's clear that Linux is a sensible desktop choice. Steam have ensured that many A games will get a Linux port, Wine will let most programs work.
10 is shaping up to be a great money maker for me, all my clients who get the free upgrade and have no idea what's happening. AWESOME - CA-CHING $$$$.
And even the latest release is not as good as 7, better than 8 but how hard is that ?
Yes, works better at the hardware level, but how many (l)users care about that ?
"Its all changed and I hate it !!!!, fix it now !!!!" is what I'll be hearing.
A multitude of reasons. Specifics aren't important though. Broadly speaking if you have to ask why some people use Linux, then Linux is definitely not the operating system for you and you need not worry about it. Enlightened Linux people won't question your choice in Windows (although some might verbosely point out the flaws in it). You shouldn't either.
Secondly, it's hardly a question of either/or. Linux and Windows have not traditionally been in competition, although nowadays gaming might just flip the table. Asking to choose between them is like asking if you would choose a motorcycle over a car: The two are simply not built for the same purpose and co-exist on the roads in harmony.
It may be difficult to understand what truly is so different in the way the operating systems work so I'll give a simple example: Windows makes some tasks that should be trivial very tedious. Let's say you want to copy a file from a computer to another inside a local network. Not an impossible task to complete but surely difficult as many people would opt to transfer the file in a non-intuitive way such as email, usb-memory, dropbox... This would be the average Windows user. The average Linux user would take about three seconds to use scp, a program included in the operating system to transfer files over the network.
Finally it's also good to remember that it's not just a two horse race between Windows and Linux. Other Unix flavors are available. OSX for one is an excellent choice if you are after a sleek UI but still want all the Unix power under the hood.
Interesting stereotype of 'average windows user' vs 'average Linux user'.
I use windows, and I can transfer files across my lan in a few seconds with no trouble. I don't use dropbox or email for this, just windows key + E to bring up a couple of windows explorer instances and click on the relevant network locations to open them, then drag using the appropriate control key for copy or move... Simple stuff.
My experience with Linux is that unless you are a network admin or similar, it is more trouble than it's worth. For home users, windows wins hands down. Even when I go through a period of nerdiness and work on a project where I need Linux style flexibility, I end up using Cygwin.
Linux wins when the time you can save due to it's power and flexibility is more than the time you lose to hours of setup problems, and trawling through readme files and help switches trying to find the correct syntax for some obscure command line tool - you need to be fluent in stuff like Regex and emacs to get full advantage. Anyone who doesn't need to use custom scripts multiple times a day is using Linux for geek cred or because of some socio-political or ethical opinions they hold.
that scp example... yeah, that's exactly how things changed over years...
If you recall things like zmodem, nfs, talk, then you probably can recall it was not that completely trivial, to move some file around between the terminal, server and other server. Then again, once you understood what you are doing, and how those things should be applied, it all worked like a charm. Was just a bit ridiculous to have the terminal blocked for few seconds/minutes, till it downloaded that file locally. And to mount floppy disc as a user... and unmount it afterwards Am I old now?
Nowadays if you show people modern linux distro, and tell them it's new windows prototype, they will completely believe you.
Check this fun experiment from 2009, if you have 3min to waste. https://youtu.be/CPIgEFIv5MI
If a user moves files through network via email or usb-stick then that is 'fault' of the user, not the system.
A user who struggles with such task on windows will struggle on linux too - and other way around.
Also see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa9DLxDtPtc
What I do not "get" about Linux is the whole deal with package managers.
So they help install software and keep it updated etc, seems useful?
But to me seems like solution without problem, it is not difficult to download some installer.exe and click "next,next,next." Worse case you need to unzip some archive.
And most modern software has a build-in update function anyway.
Once I saw the package stuff from other side too (in small open source projects) it seemed even stranger. I did not follow the Linux stuff that closely but was like this:
New version of software is released, uploaded to server, windows users can download it. Tada.
Linux users had to wait for the package to be updated, which sometimes takes very long.
While Windows-version was simply some .exe file all the Linux distros/native installs required their own setup guide.
Users could just have downloaded a normal archive too, but somehow prefered the package thing.
Sometimes the package-peoplepersons disappeared and the old version just stayed in the package list until someone discovered it.
Or users of some distros (Debian) being hesitant to update to new version "because security."
Since it was an online game that meant players were stuck with an old version and could basically not play.
But ultimately I think the differences between OS are minimal for most users.
Nowadays most users use very few of a OS's functions and instead it is all about using the programs. The most used software (office, graphics, video stuff etc) is very similiar or exists on both platforms.
Many tasks that some years ago required special software can now be done in the webbrowser:
For example google-docs is basically an Office-package inside the browser.
No installing anything, no updating, no file system blabla.
This trend will continue and then for 99% of people the OS does not matter at all.
I'm not a network admin, yet Linux is the only (other than OS X, which I can't run on my gaming PC) platform that can actually allow me to do work tasks at home. Windows CAN'T run what I need it to run, nor would it be a fun experience even if I got it to work.
On top of that, Windows has a an absolutely terrible window manager, and Microsoft doesn't get how to improve it. They add features that make it look like OS X, but there's a fundamental disconnect between what it looks like and what it functions like. Sure it looks like an OS X ripoff, but it feels worse in every way.
Hell, adding the simple ability to rotate through a given application's windows (THEY ALREADY GROUP THEM IN THE TASKBAR, JUST LET ME HAVE A WAY TO ALT+TAB THROUGH JUST THEM) would be an exponential improvement which means Windows will never add it as it might be useful.
Some Windows pedants will point out that you can use WinKey+<number 0-9> to rotate through Windows based on their index in the Start Menu, but that's a **** terrible solution as it's based upon the index from the left in the taskbar, which means it could change.
I simply took a real life example that makes me cringe. Perhaps instead of 'average windows user' a non computer savvy person? Also file transfer can be surprisingly difficult in certain situations - for example if you are in a corporate network with a lot of workstations and user accounts. I'm not even sure how it would be done in a Windows network, perhaps some Windows network admin could tell the most efficient way. But I digress.
There's nothing wrong with how Windows works, just that I would not want to work that way. Now I use primarily a Linux desktop at work. I would use Linux at home too but I cannot be bothered to dual boot and occasionally I play games so Windows 7 is pretty decent. I don't think I have a single script to run daily. I mainly don't do anything I wouldn't be able to do on Windows but it sure makes my life easier. I'm not fluent in Regex - something I need to improve - but it's not too hard in my opinion to pick up a manual on the rare occasion. I'm not a network admin either.
So why use Linux? It's not one thing you can put a finger on. Working around/with computers gives you rather unique problems to solve at times, and for that problem solving Linux is a fantastic OS because you have a programmable shell to use. For example, if you have a lot of source code in several folders and say you are working on refactoring it. Let's say I want to look into each of the many files and individually search them to see if they reference a particular object. And if they do let's say I want to move or copy them somewhere else. Or look into the version history of these files. Or maybe I'm on my way to a code review and want to print these particular files. I'm not convinced you could do any of that on Windows and even if you could do one thing you wouldn't be able to modify the command as versatilely.
I'm not justifying anything by saying 'you can't copy files over network in Windows' because you can. There's a lot of stuff you can do - but then again there's a lot you can't do, all because Windows does not have the obscure command line tools that pretty much make the use of Linux what it is.
Bernhardt's point is pretty neat: Unix/Linux is a power tool and you need to learn how to use it properly. It gives you a fantastic amount of freedom to do pretty much anything - but the learning curve is pretty steep.
In the past (when computers weren't household appliances) everybody wrote their own programs. Later people would at least compile the programs themselves and had at least a rough idea of what the code actually did. Now we don't anymore. Even if you had the expertise to do this it would be an exhausting exercise because modern software is huge. Additionally, a single vendor (the producer of a particular program) might have used ready made components to avoid reinventing wheels.
So software is modular. A lot of functionality that programs require are in shared libraries (shared objects in Unix-type systems and DLL's in Windows). The problem is who is in charge of the shared libraries? How do you know what a particular library does or doesn't do? What is keeping you from inadvertently installing malware?
Linux in general is no silver bullet. "Why does something in Linux work the way it does when in Windows it's much simpler" is a common argument. Linux is not necessarily better. It's different. It's an alternative way of doing things. If you don't like the way things work then it's not the operating system for you and that's fine. Linus started to write an operating system for himself and as a computer scientist he had very different requirements for an operating system than a random, average man. Linux is essentially an OS by a computer scientist for a computer scientist - which is a very niche user base.
A combination of Active Directory Groups (although you can use individual users if you want a maintenance nightmare) and NTFS Access Control Lists. It's fairly straight-forward, but the existing tools for managing large file shares are somewhat lacking, so it can be time consuming. I recently wrote a program at work to make it considerably easier.
Windows PowerShell is actually quite a powerful command-line/scripting tool, although IMO many of the commands and names are rather convoluted (but then again, "grep" is fairly meaningless unless you already know what it does). Many of the basic Linux/Unix commands have aliases to their Windows equivalents, which can be handy for the lazy (me).
As for code refactoring, if you have all the source and are using c/c++/c#, Visual Studio is pretty damn good at refactoring an entire project these days.
Find (and replace, including RegEx) can be done across many files/folders in PowerShell with the right sequence of commands.
For source/version control, git's git wherever you use it, although Visual Studio has git integration now for those less commandline savvy.
Windows even has a package manager now (OneGet, again part of PowerShell), which is based loosely on Chocolatey, but is still in development. Visual Studio has had a package manager for a while (NuGet) which has proven very popular. It remains to be seen how people will take to OneGet, it's too early to tell.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Windows fanboy, just trying to be informative. I use both Windows and Linux regularly, though it is mostly Windows at work with Linux for a few tasks where it's more suited.
Hmmm... So what I'm getting about this is Windows is like a family car. It's good to get from here to there (playing simple games, doing simple stuff)
While Linux is more like a Utility vehicle or a tractor or something. More geared towards hard core computer users?
I dunno, After fighting to get that Win10 malware off my box, I started to take a new interest in Linux.
Sorry, but something that invades your computer the way win10 did, can't be good. in fact it's kinda scary. I don't trust it. Plus, GWX.exe for some reason was killing my internet. It went back to normal after I finally was able to get rid of that crap.
Plus, there's no such thing as fair or free - so what's the catch to it?
If the Linux operating system got less complicated to fool with, then it might be worth another look. But if it's still go get this patch for this. Get that patch for that, no now the other patch is incompatible.. that sort of crap? Then I think my days of messing with these boxes are coming to an end. I'm too old for that kind of thing and I got better things to do with the time I have left.
All I really do on the computer at home anymore is babble on forums and play a couple of video games (this one and War Thunder) and watch you tube once in a while.
Which is why I'm not so sure about Linux either.
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