kapil pendse wrote: > You could try Mdk10. I'm saying this because I've used SuSE and > Redhat. None could configure hardware graphics accleration for my 865G > board, but mdk10 did it out of the box! > and now I can play quake3 without a hitch! :-D
I've successfully played Quake III Arena in Redhat 9, later Mandrake 9.1/10 and now SuSE 9.1. Most of the leading distro vendors don't ship with the generally proprietary accelerated graphics drivers (for commercial reasons that beat me), but you can easily download the latest drivers from the net, install it, and have your accelerated graphics up and running. Most of these however have text-based installers, that can be slightly "scary" for a newbie. I simply fail to understand why most of the software companies that develop software for Linux and Unices in general, fail to provide easily *usable* setups? Not that such programs are not available... Firefox does have an easy-to-use graphical installer, so do games like Unreal Tournament 2003/2004, Quake (and most games I know of). I don't know if this is sheer negligence on their part or a deliberate effort to downplay Linux, but it is definitly preventing a lot of people from using their computers in an easy-to-use productive way. Usability *is* a factor to reckon with. I understand that "Unix is really diverse and there are o-so-many architectures and graphical libraries and stuff to contend with, that it would be pointless to develop a graphical installer" and stuff... I've heard that many times before. Well, one thing is for certain. If Linux does not become easy to use for the average user, I really don't see Linux *ever* beating Windows in the desktop market. I mean, why do we use a computer? To get work done. You shouldn't have to spend half your time tweaking it! I understand that this act itself drives a lot of innovation, and can be a sheer hacker's delight. But, I see little point in technology if it is of little use to the masses and of great use to some select hackerish few. "Just like you don't need to be a car mechanic to drive a car, so you shouldn't be a software engineer to use a [Linux] computer". To exemplify... redhat does not automatically mount your filesystems. It is trivial to implement it, but redhat just overlooked/neglected it. Also, if the average user wants to listen to mp3's, he find's that they don't play. Next weekend, he gets a divx movie to watch and it too does not open. Well, if our average-user is the non-programmer kinds, do you think he would ever return to using Linux again? I don't think so. Some of the best software I have ever seen have been those on the Linux platform -- both in terms of usability and features e.g. MPlayer (which sadly does not ship with a fine distro like SuSE -- thankfully Mandrake 10 comes with it) ... or a lightning fast and easy-to-use image viewer like gqview, and loads of others. Bottomline? Linux better get more usable, if it ever wants to win the desktop war. -- ______________________________________________________________________ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List: ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) List Information: http://plug.org.in/mailing-list/listinfo/plug-mail Send 'help' to [EMAIL PROTECTED] for mailing instructions.
