Pour les dépendances, je suis tout à fait d'accord quand tu dis que Galeon dépend de beaucoup de librairies. Cependant, ce sont toutes des librairies standard de Gnome 1.4, et Galeon est un navigateur Gnome. Donc, si tu as Gnome d'installé, tu ne devrais pas avoir de problèmes (si les packages de developpement sont installés).
La réalité est un peu moins rose, car Galeon demande en fait des librairies Gnome assez récentes pour éviter certains bugs. Cependant, si ton système est à jour et que Gnome est installé, tu ne devrais rencontrer aucun problème.
Je ne comprends pas trop les problèmes pour le portage.
Tu dis que si la Debian utilisait la glib d'un BSD, ça ne serait plus la Debian. Cependant, il y a un certain nombre de paquets qui ne pourront pas être portés, je pense en particulier au noyau, et à différents paquets qui sont spécifiques à linux tels que utillinux, ou tout ce qui concerne la gestion des modules. J'aimerais donc savoir où se trouve la distinction entre la glib et ces paquets ?
Les développeurs de Galeon ont choisi de sortir une version 1.0 car toutes les fonctionnalités qu'ils souhaitaient implémenter pour cette version étaient présentes. De plus, il ne reste plus de bugs connus qui ne sont pas liés à Mozilla. Plutôt que d'attendre la sortie sans cesse repoussée de Mozilla 1.0, ils ont choisi de sortir la version 1.0 sans se préoccuper de Mozilla, qui, d'un point de vue stabilité, a atteint le niveau d'une version 1.0 à mon avis.
De plus, comme cela a déjà été dit dans un post, gecko (qui est la partie de Mozilla utilisée par Galeon) est quasiment finie, le travail va plutôt dans l'interface graphique, le client mail, ...
Sortir Galeon 1.0 avant Mozilla 1.0 est discutable, mais à mon avis c'est un choix comme un autre, et il se défend. De plus, il y a probablement un certain nombre de logiciels en version 1.0 qui se basent sur des librairies pour lesquelles il n'y a pas encore de version 1.0
Y a une incrémentation de 0.0.1 quand Linus estime que le noyau est stable. Cependant, il fait des fois des boulettes, nul n'est parfait, ca fait plusieurs fois dernièrement qu'il y a des noyaux un peu bugges qui sortent.
Les numéros après les pre ne correspondent pas à grand chose, ca permet juste de suivre la progression. Tu peux très bien avoir uniquement pre1, pre2 et pre3 avant une nouvelle version, ou bien ca peut éventuellement aller jusqu'à pre12 ou plus
Pour licq, j'ai jeté un oeil sur leurs mailing lists, et il y a plusieurs personnes qui sont intéressées pour implémenter ce protocole. J'espère que les choses bougeront rapidement de ce côté là, parce que licq (avec son plugin gtk) est aussi mon client favori.
Le changement de protocole n'est pas vraiment lié au système de synchro des listes, puisque cette fonctionnalité est apparue dans la version 8 du protocole, alors que la version 7 était déjà basée sur Oscar. À mon avis, AOL vise à fusionner ICQ et AIM, et ce changement de protocole, ainsi que l'hébergement des listes icq sur une machine distante est un des passages obligés pour atteindre ce but
Pour galeon, en plus de la gpl, ils ont ajouté une clause supplémentaire autorisant le «linkage» avec la librairie XPCOM de mozilla, et avec certaines entêtes. C'est un peu bizarre comme licence, mais au moins y a une licence, après reste à voir ce qu'elle vaut.
Je sais que c'est pas surhumain, mais y aura toujours des personnes qui oublieront/ne trouveront pas cette liste, donc c'est toujours bon à rappeler.
Ce qui m'a fait poster ce commentaire, c'est la remarque suivante dans le corps de la news sur la rh 7.2 :
Note du modérateur : un grand merci à tous pour avoir proposé cette news. Une mention spéciale à lio et à l'anonyme qui sont les deux seuls à savoir écrire le mot "miroir" :P
Sur la news Red Hat, les modérateurs disent qu'ils ont attendus une news donnant les miroirs avant d'approuver, et pour le noyau par contre, pas de liste ?
C'est pas très cohérent tout ca...
Enfin pour ceux que ça intéresse (mais apparemment c'est beaucoup plus marrant de surcharger kernel.org), la liste des miroirs est ici :
Je suis aussi resté perplexe par cette allusion à la dmca, et j'ai une interprétation personnelle (et peut être totalement erronnée de cette remarque) : le fait de publier des informations permettant d'accéder de manière non autorisée dans un système est probablement interdit par le dmca, donc alan cox ne pouvait pas dévoiler les bugs de securite qui ont ete corriges.
Ca veut dire quoi exactement tous ces jeux bradés ?
Est-ce que loki brade ses stocks avant une fermeture définitive (ils sont déjà sous la protection du 'chapter 11'), ou bien est-ce uniquement une sorte de gamme budget pour faire un peu d'argent ?
Je suis inquiet pour loki qui a quand meme fait pas mal avancer le jeu pour linux
Transgaming Interview
Julien Laffray sat down with Gavriel State, CEO of Transgaming, to chat about their product - WineX.
Sunday October 21, 2001 | SheepCow
Linux is a pretty good OS but it is still a young one, and not very mature on some points. Gaming is one of those points along the desktop. Of course, you can play several open source or free games which exist, but none of them has yet reached commercial quality, even some are getting pretty close to that goal (Tux Racer; Parsec) as they are gaining maturity. The other was to buy commercials game that were converted from Windows to Linux: companies like Loki and Tribsoft have specialized in those conversions. Unfortunately, those games were released a long time after the Windows version because of the time needed to do a full conversion. Usually, people would go and buy the Windows version.
Wine & WineX
However, a third possibility exists and it involved a piece of software called Wine . Wine (a recursive acronym for Wine Is Not an Emulator) goal is to be able to run Windows programs under Linux by providing a Windows Layer to those applications. A certain number of games were able to work it like Half Life, but configuration was difficult, and getting the game to work was not an easy task, if it was working at all.
Besides, supporting games in Wine was not the priority of the development team; that's why Transgaming was created. They are working on WineX which is an implementation of DirectX under Linux using Wine.
WineX will allow current Windows game to work under Linux without modification. However, not every games are currently working, but game support should go increase rapidly as code is advancing.
The other side of that technology is to facilitate the port of Windows game to Linux using WineX. The major difference with what Loki is doing is that it doesn't require as much change to the code as you would need if you were completely porting the game. For example, Loki had to change the 3D api from Direct3D to OpenGL when porting Tribes 2. It took several months to do that. In comparison, the porting time to The Sims is just 8 weeks which is relatively short.
Transgaming
One of the specificity of Transgaming is also they envisioned their products. Code source is released with an aladdin free license, which allow free use of the code (it is hosted on sourceforge), but which prevents commercial use of it. Furthermore, they are launching a subscription based service, which will permit to obtain binaries for your distribution, access to technical support, and finally, to let you vote on which game, optimization should take place. However, the code will be released under the friendlier Wine license when the number of subscriber reach a certain number. This method called the Street performer protocol is touted by Transgaming as a way to take control over the development of the product, and a way to make money while leaving access to everybody to the work.
Currently, the following games are known to work with WineX: Sacrifice, American McGee's Alice, Baldur's Gate II.
While Winex will be used to play Windows game, Transgaming intends to work also on porting games to the Linux platform using the WineX library. In that optic, a partnership with MandrakeSoft and Electronic arts has been formed to create a Mandrake Linux Gaming edition which has The Sims included. The Sims , Electronic Arts' top seller has been converted to Linux using WineX, but also it went further the simple conversion : no less than 14 languages are present, music files are using Ogg Vorbis, the open source equivalent of MP3, and integration with different Web browser like Mozilla and Konqueror allows a seamless integration into the Linux environment.
This Linux Mandrake Gaming edition will be sold at $69.99 and will include 3 month subscriptions to Transgaming subscription service. As Winex has been especially optimized for NVidia drivers, this release should be pretty fast on NVidia video cards on Linux.
We can also trust Mandrake to create a nice installation process that will be smooth and easy. Most of the problems inherent to Wine installation and configuration will be probably gone using this specially tailored Linux distribution.
Conclusion
Overall, this is a good thing to Linux as more games are going to be playable. Currently, a good number of people are keeping a dual boot configuration because of games. As the products evolve, it will become a totally viable alternative to Windows in terms of gaming. It is arriving at an interesting time : Windows XP release with its new activation process. One of the controversy on Transgaming was that people were afraid that would kill the port of Windows game through game company like Loki. However, since Transgaming is using WineX as a library to port games natively, that point of view is not accurate anymore. Transgaming's adventure is worth looking at.
As soon as the Linux Mandrake Gaming edition has arrived, you will find a test of that distribution here.
Interview with Gavriel State, founder and CEO of Transgaming Technologies
Q: Your company Transgaming is introducing a new technology that will allow to run Windows designed games on Linux. Could you tell us more about it?
A: The downloadable WineX product that we're launching today allows Linux users to begin running their Windows games directly out of the box on their Linux systems. Once WineX is installed, users can purchase certain Windows games, take the CDs, install the product, and run it on Linux.
TransGaming's WineX is available via our new subscription services website. This site gives users a high bandwidth connection from which to download the software, access to regular updates, technical assistance with certain âofficially supported games, and finally, the right to vote to tell us which games or features our Engineering team should work on next. We feel it's very important for customers to understand how important they are in the process of creating the software. Democracy is a powerful force - we think that it can work to great effect in the community of our users.
Initially, TransGaming WineX will be able to run about half a dozen games well out of the box. These include hit titles such as Sacrifice, American McGee's Alice, Baldur's Gate II, and others. As time goes on, more and more games will run - and our compatibility level should grow exponentially, as work done on one game enables other games to run as well.
Q: Could you explain a little more specifically how it works?
A: TransGaming WineX is a derivative of the Wine project. It consists of two major components:
1) An alternative implementation of the core Win32 API used by all versions of Microsoft's operating systems from Windows 95 on up; and
2) A program loader that knows how to take EXEs and DLLs, load them into memory, and prepare the environment that they expect to see as they run.
TransGaming WineX adds specific functionality to several areas. First and foremost is an implementation of many of the DirectX APIs, including Direct3D - the core graphics system most Windows games use for hardware accelerated 3D. In addition to graphics and multimedia, there are many other subsystems that play a key role in smoothly running games out of the box - for example, the ability to run installers based on the popular InstallShield system. In order to get InstallShield working properly, we actually had to create a full implementation of Microsoft's DCOM in order to allow the different InstallShield pieces to communicate with one another.
Q: Many people consider Wine as an emulator (Note : Wine is a recursive acronym for Wine Is Not an Emulator) and therefore think it is slow, buggy and unreliable. In reality, what can we expect ?
A: Traditionally, emulators are products that provide hardware level simulation of another physical CPU and/or associated graphics and sound hardware. Wine is by no means an emulator in this sense.
Wine can be more properly thought of as an alternate implementation of Windows, layered on top of the Linux kernel and other associated components. Wine is no more a Windows emulator than Linux is a UNIX emulator. In the past, some people had poor experiences with Wine. For the most part the problem has been one of configuration. Wine is a complicated system, and it allows you to do some pretty crazy things if you want to - specifically, letting you create a hybrid of Microsoft's Windows components intermixed with Wine. Our packaging of Wine solves this problem very simply: we allow each account on a Linux system to have its own virtual Windows C:\ drive, which is completely devoid of any 3rd party software until you run the installer program for your software. We do not running programs from a physical Windows partition, because that simply opens the door for unending problems.
Q: How is your product going to be distributed ? Are you going to use the license displayed on the website to get paid ?
A: The source code for our product is freely available on SourceForge under the Aladdin Free public License. This is a license originally created for the GhostScript project that restricts commercial redistribution of the code, but allows end users to see and play with it. TransGaming will be providing binary packages only to users who are subscribed to our support and voting service. Others may provide binary packages non commercially, but they will not be official releases, and we will not be providing any support for them.
Once we have reached our subscriber goals, we will be releasing the WineX code under the much more liberal Wine license, and we will continue releasing code that way if our subscription numbers meet our targets. Thus, by subscribing, our users not only get the features and services they want to see right now, but they also help to establish the commercial viability of the Street Performer Protocol, which will have profound implications for the future of the entire information economy.
The Street Performer Protocol is a fascinating new economic idea for dealing with the central dilemma of information goods: treat them as an ongoing performance work, rather than an out-and-out product. Stephen King has experimented with it recently with an on-line novel. We feel that the Linux community is a perfect market to start with in the software world.
Q: Are you going yourself (as a company) to port some Windows games ?
A: Absolutely. In addition to the new TransGaming service and support website, the other key things that we are announcing today are new partnerships with Electronic Arts, and with MandrakeSoft.
From Electronic Arts we have licensed one of the most popular games of the last 2 years - one that is still topping the charts today - Maxis' hit "The Sims".
With MandrakeSoft, we are collaborating to create the new âMandrake Linux Gaming Edition, which includes Mandrake Linux 8.1, The Sims for Linux, and a three month subscription to TransGaming's support services website.
We have brought The Sims to Linux in record time - just 8 weeks since we signed the license agreement. In those weeks, we have been tweaking and optimizing like mad, and have produced a totally polished Linux version of the product. We have implemented several Linux specific features, including the use of Ogg Vorbis as the music format of choice, web integration with popular Linux browsers such as Konqueror and Mozilla, and the ability to select between 14 available languages when installing or reconfiguring the game. Linux users span the entire globe, so localization features are especially important to us.
And once again, we've gotten this done in just 8 weeks. TransGaming has an extraordinarily talented engineering team working on this product, and I am incredibly proud to have been involved in leading their efforts.
Q: A lot of controversial has arisen since you announced your idea several months ago. Many fear that will hinder or worse stop development of Linux native games like Loki is doing. What do you think about it ?
A: I absolutely disagree. As you can see from the above, we ourselves are now also in the business of creating Linux optimized games which include Linux only features. For TransGaming, WineX is a tool that allows us to deliver licensed game far more quickly and efficiently then ever before. It also gives us the opportunity to provide Linux users with the ability to run games when a publisher is unwilling to license any Linux version of a game.
We've said it before, and I will say it again: we will not encourage our users to vote for games that other publishers have ported or are already porting.
One of the core strengths of the Linux community is diversity. We think that there is room in the market for a number of different approaches to the problem of bringing more games to the platform.
Q: I suppose that WineX will be using DRI with Mesa. How easy was it to convert D3D API calls into OPEN GL ones ?
A: It was quite difficult, but as I said above, TransGaming has a truly amazing engineering team. Without a doubt, they are the smartest people I have ever worked with in my career.
We actually had core Direct3D to OpenGL code up and running more than 10 months ago. That has taken the most time has been applying a clean new architecture that has allowed us to implement earlier incarnations of the Direct3D APIs, including version 6, which is used in several popular games, including The Sims.
We have also spent a fair bit of time tweaking our work for the popular NVidia GeForce based graphics cards. We actually provide fully accelerated Direct3D-style hardware transformation and lighting on NVidia cards, through the use of OpenGL extensions such as NV_Vertex_Array_Range2. Our driver even provides vertex buffer renaming, which allows programs to write data to the same geometry buffer over and over, rendering each time - but without waiting for the hardware to be done rendering even the first pass of geometry.
Concernant les techniques utilisées par microsoft pour asseoir son monopole, on parle souvent de l'intégration des différents utilitaires ms dans le système d'exploitation (comme ie, media player ou leur truc d'im).
Cependant, on parle trop rarement du fait que pour un utilisateur lambda, il est à peu près impossible de changer les associations application/type de fichier. Ces associations sont en effet cachées dans un menu obscur qui a peu de rapport avec ça, et en plus, l'interface pour les modifier est totalement antiergonomique. De même, il y a un 'ouvrir avec' dans le menu contextuel, mais il faut savoir que ca existe (je crois qu'il faut faire un clic+bouton droit), et encore une fois, le menu qu'il y a après est assez effrayant.
Bref, ms a tout prévu pour que les gens utilisent uniquement ses applications et qu'ils ne puissent pas en changer....
J'ai lu il y a quelques mois que aol voulait utiliser netscape 6 en lieu et place d'ie, mais que microsoft avait fait pression, et que cette idée avait été abandonnée.
Si gecko est effectivement utilisé par aol, ca sera une énorme victoire pour mozilla.
Je comprends plus rien, maintenant sur linuxjournal ils ont l'air de dire qu'en fait les personnes que red hat a embauché avaient été virés de VA Linux
Bref, c'est assez flou tout ça...
Voilà qui prouve que les différentes association de défense des logiciels libres, et des libertés électroniques ont un minimum d'influence puisqu'elles sont parvenues à modifier la position du gouvernement quant aux brevets logiciels.
Le combat contre les compagnies voulant imposer les brevets logiciels pour leur propre profit n'est donc pas perdu, mais il faut continuer à lutter!
Vu le nombre de membres de la Liberty Alliance, ça a du prendre un certain temps à être mis au point.
Je pense que Passport et Liberty Alliance ont été développé en parallèle pendant un certain temps, et quand MS a annoncé Passport, ça a motivé les membres de Liberty Alliance pour dévoiler aussi leur projet.
Ceci dit, je préfère quand même Liberty Alliance, au moins c'est pas contrôlé par une unique société.
De toute façon, de telles initiatives devaient finir par voir le jour, c'est le prolongement logique de tout ce qui a été fait sur internet
La durée de vie de telles puces n'a pas besoin d'être très important, du moins pour un ordinateur personnel. De nos jours, un ordinateur vieux de 5 ans n'est généralement plus utile du tout, à part pour les collectionneurs. Ca serait quand meme dommage de pas pouvoir garder nos vieilles machines pour se rappeler comment c'était au bon vieux temps
J'ai compris exactement la même chose, la news est buggée. J'espère que tous ses changements chez VA n'auront pas d'impact sur Sourceforge (ni sur les autres sites de l'osdn), Sourceforge étant quand même un élément clé du mouvement opensource à mon avis
Je trouve que les lugs sont une très bonne chose.
Je me demandais s'il existait un site répertoriant tous les lugs existant.
J'aimerais aussi savoir s'il existe un lug sur Grenoble (j'ai la flemme de chercher :)
Avec les nouveaux forfaits noos, on peut avoir internet illlimité pour 200f par mois, en plus ca occupe pas la ligne téléphonique.
L'inconvénient c'est que tout le monde a pas le cable :(
En fait c'est peut etre pas un bug de gtk, il parait que c'est encore plus lent avec la version CVS de mozilla.
Cependant, j'ai jamais remarqué de ralentissement notable entre les différentes versions de mozilla en ce qui concerne la gestion des onglets
Y a toujours eu des ralentissements de temps en temps, mais c'est très aléatoire
[^] # Re: Librairies nécessaires
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche Galeon 1.0 est sorti. Évalué à 1.
La réalité est un peu moins rose, car Galeon demande en fait des librairies Gnome assez récentes pour éviter certains bugs. Cependant, si ton système est à jour et que Gnome est installé, tu ne devrais rencontrer aucun problème.
[^] # Re: Rien à voir avec la Debian
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche Debian sur Mac OS X. Évalué à 1.
Tu dis que si la Debian utilisait la glib d'un BSD, ça ne serait plus la Debian. Cependant, il y a un certain nombre de paquets qui ne pourront pas être portés, je pense en particulier au noyau, et à différents paquets qui sont spécifiques à linux tels que utillinux, ou tout ce qui concerne la gestion des modules. J'aimerais donc savoir où se trouve la distinction entre la glib et ces paquets ?
[^] # Re: Version 1.0
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche Galeon 1.0 est sorti. Évalué à 1.
De plus, comme cela a déjà été dit dans un post, gecko (qui est la partie de Mozilla utilisée par Galeon) est quasiment finie, le travail va plutôt dans l'interface graphique, le client mail, ...
Sortir Galeon 1.0 avant Mozilla 1.0 est discutable, mais à mon avis c'est un choix comme un autre, et il se défend. De plus, il y a probablement un certain nombre de logiciels en version 1.0 qui se basent sur des librairies pour lesquelles il n'y a pas encore de version 1.0
[^] # Re: Pas de bol
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche Kernel 2.4.15/2.5.0 buggé. Attention !. Évalué à 1.
Les numéros après les pre ne correspondent pas à grand chose, ca permet juste de suivre la progression. Tu peux très bien avoir uniquement pre1, pre2 et pre3 avant une nouvelle version, ou bien ca peut éventuellement aller jusqu'à pre12 ou plus
# et voila la liste des miroirs
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche Les noyaux Linux nouveaux sont parmi nous. Évalué à 1.
http://www.kernel.org/mirrors/(...)
D'habitude j'utilise ftp://ftp.fr.kernel.org(...) , mais il a pas l'air d'etre a jour pour le moment
[^] # Re: Zog zog
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche Changement de protocole pour ICQ. Évalué à 10.
Le changement de protocole n'est pas vraiment lié au système de synchro des listes, puisque cette fonctionnalité est apparue dans la version 8 du protocole, alors que la version 7 était déjà basée sur Oscar. À mon avis, AOL vise à fusionner ICQ et AIM, et ce changement de protocole, ainsi que l'hébergement des listes icq sur une machine distante est un des passages obligés pour atteindre ce but
[^] # Re: explications ?
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche Zend Engine sous licence BSD. Évalué à 6.
[^] # Re: Et la liste des miroirs ?
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche Noyau 2.4.13 out. Évalué à 1.
Ce qui m'a fait poster ce commentaire, c'est la remarque suivante dans le corps de la news sur la rh 7.2 :
Note du modérateur : un grand merci à tous pour avoir proposé cette news. Une mention spéciale à lio et à l'anonyme qui sont les deux seuls à savoir écrire le mot "miroir" :P
Faudrait voir à être un peu cohérent....
# Et la liste des miroirs ?
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche Noyau 2.4.13 out. Évalué à 0.
C'est pas très cohérent tout ca...
Enfin pour ceux que ça intéresse (mais apparemment c'est beaucoup plus marrant de surcharger kernel.org), la liste des miroirs est ici :
http://www.kernel.org/mirrors/(...)
et vu que pour l'instant je peux pas y accéder, le noyau est accessible à l'adresse suivante :
ftp://ftp.fr.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4(...)
# ce que j'ai compris
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche DMCA, quand tu nous tiens. Évalué à -2.
# est-ce le debut de la fin pour loki ?
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche Les jeux Loki bradés. Évalué à 4.
Est-ce que loki brade ses stocks avant une fermeture définitive (ils sont déjà sous la protection du 'chapter 11'), ou bien est-ce uniquement une sorte de gamme budget pour faire un peu d'argent ?
Je suis inquiet pour loki qui a quand meme fait pas mal avancer le jeu pour linux
[^] # Re: S'il vous plait
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche Interview du CEO de TransGaming. Évalué à 5.
Transgaming Interview
Julien Laffray sat down with Gavriel State, CEO of Transgaming, to chat about their product - WineX.
Sunday October 21, 2001 | SheepCow
<http://www.gamespydaily.com/screenshots/january01/tran/tran_big.jpg(...)
Click to enlarge
Current state of Gaming on Linux
Linux is a pretty good OS but it is still a young one, and not very mature on some points. Gaming is one of those points along the desktop. Of course, you can play several open source or free games which exist, but none of them has yet reached commercial quality, even some are getting pretty close to that goal (Tux Racer; Parsec) as they are gaining maturity. The other was to buy commercials game that were converted from Windows to Linux: companies like Loki and Tribsoft have specialized in those conversions. Unfortunately, those games were released a long time after the Windows version because of the time needed to do a full conversion. Usually, people would go and buy the Windows version.
Wine & WineX
However, a third possibility exists and it involved a piece of software called Wine . Wine (a recursive acronym for Wine Is Not an Emulator) goal is to be able to run Windows programs under Linux by providing a Windows Layer to those applications. A certain number of games were able to work it like Half Life, but configuration was difficult, and getting the game to work was not an easy task, if it was working at all.
Besides, supporting games in Wine was not the priority of the development team; that's why Transgaming was created. They are working on WineX which is an implementation of DirectX under Linux using Wine.
WineX will allow current Windows game to work under Linux without modification. However, not every games are currently working, but game support should go increase rapidly as code is advancing.
The other side of that technology is to facilitate the port of Windows game to Linux using WineX. The major difference with what Loki is doing is that it doesn't require as much change to the code as you would need if you were completely porting the game. For example, Loki had to change the 3D api from Direct3D to OpenGL when porting Tribes 2. It took several months to do that. In comparison, the porting time to The Sims is just 8 weeks which is relatively short.
Transgaming
One of the specificity of Transgaming is also they envisioned their products. Code source is released with an aladdin free license, which allow free use of the code (it is hosted on sourceforge), but which prevents commercial use of it. Furthermore, they are launching a subscription based service, which will permit to obtain binaries for your distribution, access to technical support, and finally, to let you vote on which game, optimization should take place. However, the code will be released under the friendlier Wine license when the number of subscriber reach a certain number. This method called the Street performer protocol is touted by Transgaming as a way to take control over the development of the product, and a way to make money while leaving access to everybody to the work.
Currently, the following games are known to work with WineX: Sacrifice, American McGee's Alice, Baldur's Gate II.
While Winex will be used to play Windows game, Transgaming intends to work also on porting games to the Linux platform using the WineX library. In that optic, a partnership with MandrakeSoft and Electronic arts has been formed to create a Mandrake Linux Gaming edition which has The Sims included. The Sims , Electronic Arts' top seller has been converted to Linux using WineX, but also it went further the simple conversion : no less than 14 languages are present, music files are using Ogg Vorbis, the open source equivalent of MP3, and integration with different Web browser like Mozilla and Konqueror allows a seamless integration into the Linux environment.
This Linux Mandrake Gaming edition will be sold at $69.99 and will include 3 month subscriptions to Transgaming subscription service. As Winex has been especially optimized for NVidia drivers, this release should be pretty fast on NVidia video cards on Linux.
We can also trust Mandrake to create a nice installation process that will be smooth and easy. Most of the problems inherent to Wine installation and configuration will be probably gone using this specially tailored Linux distribution.
Conclusion
Overall, this is a good thing to Linux as more games are going to be playable. Currently, a good number of people are keeping a dual boot configuration because of games. As the products evolve, it will become a totally viable alternative to Windows in terms of gaming. It is arriving at an interesting time : Windows XP release with its new activation process. One of the controversy on Transgaming was that people were afraid that would kill the port of Windows game through game company like Loki. However, since Transgaming is using WineX as a library to port games natively, that point of view is not accurate anymore. Transgaming's adventure is worth looking at.
As soon as the Linux Mandrake Gaming edition has arrived, you will find a test of that distribution here.
Interview with Gavriel State, founder and CEO of Transgaming Technologies
Q: Your company Transgaming is introducing a new technology that will allow to run Windows designed games on Linux. Could you tell us more about it?
A: The downloadable WineX product that we're launching today allows Linux users to begin running their Windows games directly out of the box on their Linux systems. Once WineX is installed, users can purchase certain Windows games, take the CDs, install the product, and run it on Linux.
TransGaming's WineX is available via our new subscription services website. This site gives users a high bandwidth connection from which to download the software, access to regular updates, technical assistance with certain âofficially supported games, and finally, the right to vote to tell us which games or features our Engineering team should work on next. We feel it's very important for customers to understand how important they are in the process of creating the software. Democracy is a powerful force - we think that it can work to great effect in the community of our users.
Initially, TransGaming WineX will be able to run about half a dozen games well out of the box. These include hit titles such as Sacrifice, American McGee's Alice, Baldur's Gate II, and others. As time goes on, more and more games will run - and our compatibility level should grow exponentially, as work done on one game enables other games to run as well.
Q: Could you explain a little more specifically how it works?
A: TransGaming WineX is a derivative of the Wine project. It consists of two major components:
1) An alternative implementation of the core Win32 API used by all versions of Microsoft's operating systems from Windows 95 on up; and
2) A program loader that knows how to take EXEs and DLLs, load them into memory, and prepare the environment that they expect to see as they run.
TransGaming WineX adds specific functionality to several areas. First and foremost is an implementation of many of the DirectX APIs, including Direct3D - the core graphics system most Windows games use for hardware accelerated 3D. In addition to graphics and multimedia, there are many other subsystems that play a key role in smoothly running games out of the box - for example, the ability to run installers based on the popular InstallShield system. In order to get InstallShield working properly, we actually had to create a full implementation of Microsoft's DCOM in order to allow the different InstallShield pieces to communicate with one another.
Q: Many people consider Wine as an emulator (Note : Wine is a recursive acronym for Wine Is Not an Emulator) and therefore think it is slow, buggy and unreliable. In reality, what can we expect ?
A: Traditionally, emulators are products that provide hardware level simulation of another physical CPU and/or associated graphics and sound hardware. Wine is by no means an emulator in this sense.
Wine can be more properly thought of as an alternate implementation of Windows, layered on top of the Linux kernel and other associated components. Wine is no more a Windows emulator than Linux is a UNIX emulator. In the past, some people had poor experiences with Wine. For the most part the problem has been one of configuration. Wine is a complicated system, and it allows you to do some pretty crazy things if you want to - specifically, letting you create a hybrid of Microsoft's Windows components intermixed with Wine. Our packaging of Wine solves this problem very simply: we allow each account on a Linux system to have its own virtual Windows C:\ drive, which is completely devoid of any 3rd party software until you run the installer program for your software. We do not running programs from a physical Windows partition, because that simply opens the door for unending problems.
Q: How is your product going to be distributed ? Are you going to use the license displayed on the website to get paid ?
A: The source code for our product is freely available on SourceForge under the Aladdin Free public License. This is a license originally created for the GhostScript project that restricts commercial redistribution of the code, but allows end users to see and play with it. TransGaming will be providing binary packages only to users who are subscribed to our support and voting service. Others may provide binary packages non commercially, but they will not be official releases, and we will not be providing any support for them.
Once we have reached our subscriber goals, we will be releasing the WineX code under the much more liberal Wine license, and we will continue releasing code that way if our subscription numbers meet our targets. Thus, by subscribing, our users not only get the features and services they want to see right now, but they also help to establish the commercial viability of the Street Performer Protocol, which will have profound implications for the future of the entire information economy.
The Street Performer Protocol is a fascinating new economic idea for dealing with the central dilemma of information goods: treat them as an ongoing performance work, rather than an out-and-out product. Stephen King has experimented with it recently with an on-line novel. We feel that the Linux community is a perfect market to start with in the software world.
Q: Are you going yourself (as a company) to port some Windows games ?
A: Absolutely. In addition to the new TransGaming service and support website, the other key things that we are announcing today are new partnerships with Electronic Arts, and with MandrakeSoft.
From Electronic Arts we have licensed one of the most popular games of the last 2 years - one that is still topping the charts today - Maxis' hit "The Sims".
With MandrakeSoft, we are collaborating to create the new âMandrake Linux Gaming Edition, which includes Mandrake Linux 8.1, The Sims for Linux, and a three month subscription to TransGaming's support services website.
We have brought The Sims to Linux in record time - just 8 weeks since we signed the license agreement. In those weeks, we have been tweaking and optimizing like mad, and have produced a totally polished Linux version of the product. We have implemented several Linux specific features, including the use of Ogg Vorbis as the music format of choice, web integration with popular Linux browsers such as Konqueror and Mozilla, and the ability to select between 14 available languages when installing or reconfiguring the game. Linux users span the entire globe, so localization features are especially important to us.
And once again, we've gotten this done in just 8 weeks. TransGaming has an extraordinarily talented engineering team working on this product, and I am incredibly proud to have been involved in leading their efforts.
Q: A lot of controversial has arisen since you announced your idea several months ago. Many fear that will hinder or worse stop development of Linux native games like Loki is doing. What do you think about it ?
A: I absolutely disagree. As you can see from the above, we ourselves are now also in the business of creating Linux optimized games which include Linux only features. For TransGaming, WineX is a tool that allows us to deliver licensed game far more quickly and efficiently then ever before. It also gives us the opportunity to provide Linux users with the ability to run games when a publisher is unwilling to license any Linux version of a game.
We've said it before, and I will say it again: we will not encourage our users to vote for games that other publishers have ported or are already porting.
One of the core strengths of the Linux community is diversity. We think that there is room in the market for a number of different approaches to the problem of bringing more games to the platform.
Q: I suppose that WineX will be using DRI with Mesa. How easy was it to convert D3D API calls into OPEN GL ones ?
A: It was quite difficult, but as I said above, TransGaming has a truly amazing engineering team. Without a doubt, they are the smartest people I have ever worked with in my career.
We actually had core Direct3D to OpenGL code up and running more than 10 months ago. That has taken the most time has been applying a clean new architecture that has allowed us to implement earlier incarnations of the Direct3D APIs, including version 6, which is used in several popular games, including The Sims.
We have also spent a fair bit of time tweaking our work for the popular NVidia GeForce based graphics cards. We actually provide fully accelerated Direct3D-style hardware transformation and lighting on NVidia cards, through the use of OpenGL extensions such as NV_Vertex_Array_Range2. Our driver even provides vertex buffer renaming, which allows programs to write data to the same geometry buffer over and over, rendering each time - but without waiting for the hardware to be done rendering even the first pass of geometry.
Thanks very much!
Related Links
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[^] # Re: une chose dont on parle rarement
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche La stratégie de Microsoft pour la domination. Évalué à 0.
J'avais plus le lien sous la main, j'ai pas pu le mettre
# une chose dont on parle rarement
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche La stratégie de Microsoft pour la domination. Évalué à 10.
Cependant, on parle trop rarement du fait que pour un utilisateur lambda, il est à peu près impossible de changer les associations application/type de fichier. Ces associations sont en effet cachées dans un menu obscur qui a peu de rapport avec ça, et en plus, l'interface pour les modifier est totalement antiergonomique. De même, il y a un 'ouvrir avec' dans le menu contextuel, mais il faut savoir que ca existe (je crois qu'il faut faire un clic+bouton droit), et encore une fois, le menu qu'il y a après est assez effrayant.
Bref, ms a tout prévu pour que les gens utilisent uniquement ses applications et qu'ils ne puissent pas en changer....
# ms laissera-t-il aol faire ?
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche AOL utilisera Gecko dans ses prochaines versions. Évalué à 10.
Si gecko est effectivement utilisé par aol, ca sera une énorme victoire pour mozilla.
# faudrait savoir...
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche RedHat acquiert une partie de VA Linux. Évalué à 1.
Bref, c'est assez flou tout ça...
http://www2.linuxjournal.com/articles/briefs/0085.html(...)
# enfin une bonne nouvelle
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche Le gouvernement français et les brevets logiciels. Évalué à 10.
Le combat contre les compagnies voulant imposer les brevets logiciels pour leur propre profit n'est donc pas perdu, mais il faut continuer à lutter!
[^] # Re: C'est OpenPassport, non ?
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche Liberty Alliance Project. Évalué à 7.
Je pense que Passport et Liberty Alliance ont été développé en parallèle pendant un certain temps, et quand MS a annoncé Passport, ça a motivé les membres de Liberty Alliance pour dévoiler aussi leur projet.
Ceci dit, je préfère quand même Liberty Alliance, au moins c'est pas contrôlé par une unique société.
De toute façon, de telles initiatives devaient finir par voir le jour, c'est le prolongement logique de tout ce qui a été fait sur internet
[^] # Re: Je me demande...
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche Des transistors de la taille de molécules. Évalué à 3.
[^] # Re: Incompréhension ?
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche RedHat acquiert une partie de VA Linux. Évalué à 6.
# vive les lugs!
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche Naissance d'un LUG en Sologne. Évalué à -5.
Je me demandais s'il existait un site répertoriant tous les lugs existant.
J'aimerais aussi savoir s'il existe un lug sur Grenoble (j'ai la flemme de chercher :)
# y a le cable
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche Lettre ouverte aux membres du gouvernement français pour l'internet illimité. Évalué à -1.
L'inconvénient c'est que tout le monde a pas le cable :(
[^] # Re: vous êtes à la bourre
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche La RIAA veut hacker nos machines. Évalué à 2.
# vous êtes à la bourre
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche La RIAA veut hacker nos machines. Évalué à 10.
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/10/15/1715233.shtml(...)
[^] # Re: Galeon
Posté par Christophe Fergeau . En réponse à la dépêche Mozilla 0.9.5 dispo. Évalué à 1.
Cependant, j'ai jamais remarqué de ralentissement notable entre les différentes versions de mozilla en ce qui concerne la gestion des onglets
Y a toujours eu des ralentissements de temps en temps, mais c'est très aléatoire