BLUG Future Topis (Was: [lug] How did the Install/Info Fest turn out?)

[Jeff S Howell]

> On Wed, 15 Dec 1999, Michael Deck wrote:
> 
> > I may be all alone out here, but I'm going to disagree with this statement.
> > I have no interest in games whatsoever: I spend more than 8 hours in front
> > of this doggone tube and when I'm not working I want to be as far from it
> > as possible. My heart and mind would be more quickly won with a focus on
> > productivity and reliability tools.
> 
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One other point we're missing here. Games are typically the most complex
and demanding programs run on a desktop system. What better way to learn
how a system works? Learning how to optimize graphics, sound, file
systems, memory, etc. to get the best performance. It's how I learned
Dos/Windows and now that games are hitting Linux I'm doing more than
tinkering with Samba and daemons at home and digging into OSS, Mesa, and
so forth. I got my copy of Quake3 Arena for Linux from Loki on Monday
and it rocks. But the video performance is way lower than it is under
Windoze. So now I'm going through my system with a microscope to
optimize it.

My box here at work is perfect for my job. It runs Slackware 7 and I can
do everything I need to for my job and then some. At home, my machine is
a $2000 Nintendo :) I play games on it primarily. I'll rejoice the day I
can nuke Win98 off of it because all my favorite games run under Wine or
natively.

As Linux hit critcal mass in '99, the market for Multimedia, Games, and
internet apps (Stuff like Instant messengers and IRC Clients) will boom
as well. These are the types of things 'Joe SixPack' wants on the
machine on his desk at home. We won't be able to get Windows off the
desktop untill these things run as well and are as easy as the current
win32 versions. Although I'll tip my hat to Loki. The Quake3 installer
looked and ran just like a Windows installer. (Not that I need that, but
the technically challenged friends of mine will like it.)
-- 
 Jeff Howell
 EDS Unix Support
 PowerBak Administrator
 
  Why Windows NT Server 4.0 continues to exist in the enterprise
  would be a topic appropriate for an investigative report in the 
  field of psychology or marketing, not an article on information
  technology.
    --John Kirsh  Kirsh Consulting.
     http://www.unix-vs-nt.org/kirch/