A Gaming Team For Ubuntu Has Been Started

[phoronix]

Phoronix: A Gaming Team For Ubuntu Has Been Started

Take it as you will, but a group of interested Linux gamers have launched the Ubuntu Gaming Team. The mission of this newest Ubuntu focus group is "to give the open source gaming world a boost!" They intend to promote gaming on Ubuntu, connect free software gamers together on Ubuntu, address barriers to the development of free and open-source games, promote such games, and to organize gaming events. More on the Ubuntu Gaming Team can be found on their Wiki page or on Launchpad...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzIzMw

[d2kx]

Don't get me wrong: it's great that people care about games. But things like promotional groups have been around forever, sometimes here and sometimes there. Often it does not bring any advantages or they don't attract many people. Please, proof me wrong.

[drag]

Well that's easy to prove you wrong. :)

Take Linux audio, for example. Not pulse audio or drivers or anything like that... that's desktop stuff. I am talking about using Linux as a digital audio workstation and having good applications for doing studio recording and music creation.

For a very long time Linux had lots of capabilities in regards to audio creation and editing, but it was all very difficult to install and use. Stuff was distributed in source code form, there was no way to use it all together.

Then along came the Angula project. The Angula project was a initiative to try to produce audio specific Linux distributions based on Redhat/Fedora and Debian. The Redhat/Fedora side didn't really end up going anywere, but the Debian side was fairly successful and was called 'Demudi'.

What this did was to clean up a lot of the applications and ended up helping the standardization around JACK daemon. The Jack daemon allows for a very low-latency, high-performance method of routing uncompressed audio and midi signals from application to application and to and from external devices. So people can now easily install the software, and with a bit of work, develop their specific workflow using a mixture of hardware, software, and multiple audio applications, that rivals anything you can get out of Windows or OS X.

This lead to those packages from Demudi to being accepted as part of Debian proper and from that grew distributions like 64Studio*, which are used in real-world commercial DAWs and such things. (and UbuntuStudio, of course. But I like 64Studio a _lot_)

* 64Studio is a commercial Linux distribution that focuses on being 100% open source/free software. They make money by support and distribution customization. Very cool stuff.

http://www.64studio.com/

-----------------------------


Linux open source gaming is along the same lines.


There are lots and lots of different capabilities and different games out there. The Fedora folks have been very good at helping all this stuff out quite a bit with their own gaming project.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Games

However the more the meerier.


There is already a suprisingly large amount of OSS code in game. The Bullet physics engine is one big example of this.. I've seen them advertised in multiple different commercial games, but Bullet itself is completely open source.

Blender has a actually pretty effective real time gaming engine that can do some very cool stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5o_jb_9n_A

We have crystal space, then python bindings for that and easy to use gaming engine in the form of cspace. Ogre3D is used in commercial games and is quite popular on Windows, but originally was developed for people on Linux by people using Linux. It's just that it's currently easier to do this sort of stuff on Windows.

All sorts of things like that. Coin scenegraph.. lua is heavily used in games as a scripting engine. So is python.

Panda3D is a open source python-based gaming engine originally developed by Disney.. http://www.panda3d.org/ They use it for real world MMORPGs like the 'Pirates of the Carrabean' and things like that.

There are lots of examples like that. Open Source is definately no slouch when it comes to gaming.. it's very immature compared to other things OSS is good at.

There are also Mono-based game engines being used in professional games and are finding their way into iPhones and such..


Of course other then the game-creation and media-creation side of things there are a multitude of games aviable for Linux that are open source. Most are going to be smaller projects that are clones of old arcade games there are lots of actually pretty good 3D games.

Racing games, a ton of decent quality FPS, flight simulators, 2D platformers, 3D platformers, space fighter games, MMoRPG games.. both 2D and 3D. All sorts of stuff.


With all of this for normal users your running into the traditional problems that the software is just packaged in source code form for a lot of it. A lack of attention and developer resources to make the software easily avialable in Linux causes much of the decent quality games to go unnoticed and gives the impression that there are no really good OSS gaming development tools and resources.

If Ubuntu could get together a good quality 'gaming edition' version of their OS then that could help gain a lot of traction.

People could sit down, download a DVD, and get literally hundreds of games. Not only that then they can get their hands on engines and development tools very easily so they can not only play on the games, but hack on them, contribute their own models and levels. and all sorts of fun stuff.

I remember back in the Quake2 days that producing models and levels were very popular thing to do and added a hell of a lot of game play worth to that engine. I knew dozens of people online that made their own custom models for that game and even my brother was having fun on custom levels. People were hacking together all sorts of extensions... like freeze tag and grappling hooks and all sorts of bizzare extensions.

But quake3 came along and made making models and such much more difficult (not soley because of increased complexity of the models, but they changed how a lot of the engine worked so that you needed more expertises to make drastic changed to how characters looked and moved). Even then there are lots of hacks and mods people made for it, some which survive well into this day.

So I know the potential for user involvement in all of this is very high. It's just a matter of getting the development tools, software, games, examples, and other resources presented to users in a easy-to-use, unified, and concise manner.


There are things still holding Linux back.. the lack of high quality 3D graphics is one of them. (sure you can get it for Nvidia for a long time, but that was not stable and didn't help anybody else out). As open source drivers stablise things its going to help out a lot.

[d2kx]

Thanks for your nice and long answer, drag :)

Looking forward to what might be done through this new "Gaming Team".

[gizmo]

Wouldn't it be better to have a group that promotes gaming on "Linux" not just Ubuntu. What kind of news is this. A vendor is promoting gaming on their own brand OS and not the entire community as a whole. We see lost of things like this lately, building for specific distros, and not for the community of distros. Ubuntu's starting to turn into "build for our establishment, not the community. Unlike other distros who have fought and developed standards, applications, and more, that promote linux, not just their brand. This is the type of promotion and fight that should be led by a group of people that are not vendor specific, but a combination of Linux gamers from every distro as a whole. I'd join if it were "Promotion of gaming on Linux" not just ubuntu. Oh well.

[Remco]

Ubuntu is not a vendor, Canonical is. Most of the stuff that comes from Ubuntu is not from Canonical. As is this latest idea. It's a community project. It's just not your community.

[gizmo]

Thats exactly what I mean. My community is Linux. Ubuntu is separating themselves from Linux. So your right they are not promoting for my community, They are promoting for theirs.

[Remco]

Thats exactly what I mean. My community is Linux. Ubuntu is separating themselves from Linux. So your right they are not promoting for my community, They are promoting for theirs.

The BSD and Solaris people will not like it if you call it the Linux Gaming Team. Maybe we should call it the Free Software Gaming Team?

[gizmo]

sounds good....lol

and in general, any group that promotes advancement of any technology compatible with Unix variants is fine by me. it just struck me as odd at first how all the articles about this have ubuntu brand pasted all over them.

[Kano]

I do not fully get the purpose, usually U games are in universe and most packages there are just Debian sid snapshots. Does anybody know a game that is in U repo but not in Debian? Maybe they can do FOSS gaming parties but nobody needs U to do that. And there are really lots of games already available. Look at the goplay tool which is also in lenny.

[drag]

Ya most packages are from Debian Sid. Pretty much the entire Universe and Multiverse is pulled almost straight from Debian Sid.

But that doesn't matter. There are a lot of tools, games, and packages that are floating around that are not packaged by any distribution.

One examples is the Ogre3D python bindings. Ogre is a very nice gaming engine that is developed on Linux, but actually is more popular on Windows. The python bindings allow you to do fast 3D graphics and games written python, but are executed on the effective C++ engine.

There are all sorts of extras that go along with that such as special versions of Ogre physics packages and whatnot that are extra.

So sure the Ogre3D engine and some stuff is included in most distributions right now, but not all the extras and not the python bindings. Depending on what version your dealing with it may not even be able to use the distribution-provided Ogre development files to bind to.. so that means building everything from scratch.

Trying to do that on your own requires a LOT of RAM and probably 4-5 hours of work. I tried it a few times and never got it to work 100%.

Nowadays there are third party packages made for Ubuntu that provide a lot of stuff, but they are not going to be accessable to most people unless they go through the effort of getting them added to the default repositories.

So any effort to help package this stuff and getting it working is going to be worth it.


Plus Ubuntu works with Debian on some stuff so once stuff gets packaged in Ubuntu it'll eventually make it back to Debian.

[superppl]

The problem with Ubuntu is that it has a different cultural perspective from linux. Long story short, I personally use openSUSE, and in school this is how scenarios tend to work out:
Scenario 1
Some Random Guy: What's that on your computer?
Me: OpenSUSE.
SRG: So what's that?
Me: Linux.
SRG: So you're a haxor? You break into networks and the US govt and stuff?
Me: No I just use it.
SRG: Lier are you gonna hack my computer?
etc....

Senario 2
SRG: What's that on your computer?
Me: OpenSUSE.
SRG: What's that?
Me: It's like Ubuntu.
SRG: Nice, but I couldn't really get into that.
etc....

If you promote linux you give people the wrong image. At best it'll just further confuse people, and more likely it'll go nowhere. But Ubuntu is already popular, and most people that just want things to work don't understand the technicalities of distros. At the end of the day, the Ubuntu Gaming Group can support and recieve support from other distros and things can work out nicely.

[deanjo]

Well that's easy to prove you wrong. :)

Take Linux audio, for example. Not pulse audio or drivers or anything like that... that's desktop stuff. I am talking about using Linux as a digital audio workstation and having good applications for doing studio recording and music creation.

For a very long time Linux had lots of capabilities in regards to audio creation and editing, but it was all very difficult to install and use. Stuff was distributed in source code form, there was no way to use it all together.

Then along came the Angula project. The Angula project was a initiative to try to produce audio specific Linux distributions based on Redhat/Fedora and Debian. The Redhat/Fedora side didn't really end up going anywere, but the Debian side was fairly successful and was called 'Demudi'.

What this did was to clean up a lot of the applications and ended up helping the standardization around JACK daemon. The Jack daemon allows for a very low-latency, high-performance method of routing uncompressed audio and midi signals from application to application and to and from external devices. So people can now easily install the software, and with a bit of work, develop their specific workflow using a mixture of hardware, software, and multiple audio applications, that rivals anything you can get out of Windows or OS X.

This lead to those packages from Demudi to being accepted as part of Debian proper and from that grew distributions like 64Studio*, which are used in real-world commercial DAWs and such things. (and UbuntuStudio, of course. But I like 64Studio a _lot_)

* 64Studio is a commercial Linux distribution that focuses on being 100% open source/free software. They make money by support and distribution customization. Very cool stuff.

http://www.64studio.com/


An alternative to that is also Jacklab.
http://www.jacklab.org/

[deanjo]

Of course there always has been a perfectly good group promoting gaming in linux for a few years with their release

http://live.linux-gamers.net/?s=games

[energyman]

Ubuntards need to realize that crap brown ubuntu is not linux.

In fact, I would prefer phoronix using opensuse in their tests instead of perpetual broken ubuntu.

[energyman]

@drag:
enlop -i ogre
* dev-games/ogre


Total builds: 3
Global build time: 35 minutes and 21 seconds.
Average merge time: 11 minutes and 47 seconds.

[dogbert0360]

Very nice response too, drag.

I'm glad to see a group of people getting together to help advance gaming on Linux. Yes, they are part of Ubuntu but I hope this will spread to other distro's too.

Perhaps the gaming development community have had a long miss-understanding about Linux user's when it came to playing games. I'll be the first to say that I like to have fun once in a while when I'm on my Linux box, and welcome any means to improve it. Besides, I have a decent 3D card in my box that I like to get my monies worth out of once in awhile.

Some of that frustration in the gaming development community is how they can make money making games for Linux. This may be a sticking point, and I hope that this can be worked out with a little creative thinking and strong voices from Linux supporters.

[drag]

@drag:
enlop -i ogre
* dev-games/ogre


Total builds: 3
Global build time: 35 minutes and 21 seconds.
Average merge time: 11 minutes and 47 seconds.


Hrm. Did that include the Ogre-python bindings? :)

[drag]

Of course there always has been a perfectly good group promoting gaming in linux for a few years with their release

http://live.linux-gamers.net/?s=games


that's the first I've heard of that. It looks nice, but it would be more useful for them to work on producing Deb and RPM packages and trying to get them accepted into Linux distros or at least setting up a third party repository.

Live cds are nice.. but people don't want to reboot their computer to play video games. :)

[joshuapurcell]

Since when did it become popular to bash Ubuntu? Please give that a rest, Ubuntu and the community it has established over the years has done a tremendous amount for Linux as a whole, and it is very much a part of the broader Linux community. Childish and immature comments about how the Ubuntu developers focus on Debian packaging (obviously) and how they try to make Ubuntu a better distribution over time are uncalled for, and they only potentially hurt the overall Linux community. Linux is a community full of various distributions, and just because Ubuntu is arguably more successful than some others in some ways doesn't mean Linux as a whole isn't being brought along with it.

[yogi_berra]

I don't think the Ubuntu community is in any position to judge anyone as being childish and immature based on its reaction to the Abbie Schubert story.

The "community" that you are quick to defend is giving the rest of us a black eye.

[energyman]

no, without python ogre - but the 3rd party ebuilds for that are broken and the build instructions on the website suck. I already have boost and the rest installed, I will not install it again just to make the build script happy.

If you want it but compilation takes too long: Suse build service
it can build everything for you. For most distributions

(another reason why phoronix should drop ubuntu for opensuse - or at least at it to the coverage. And unlike fedora opensuse is not broken by design)

[energyman]

joshuapurcell - what exactly has ubuntu done for linux? What? linux patches? gcc patches? glibc patches?
They break KDE - kde comes with complete internationalization - but with kubuntu it is utterly broken. They take working packages and break it. Ubuntus gnome is overloaded with patches so people don't see what a shitfest it really is with all the missing features - until they might hit a real gnome someday - but what of that patches goes upstream? Ubuntu is bad for linux, reasons:
http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/userfriendly/userfriendly1.php

even worse - there have been douzends of debian based 'userfriendly' distris before ubuntu came around. But ubuntu is special - the hype started long before the first release - together with a manpower drain on debian (another reason why ubuntu is bad).

The worst thing: canonical is destroying suse and redhat. And without these two it would be very bleak. Very, very bleak.

[superppl]

Ubuntu is a cultural movement. It's about using an operating system that is designed with you in mind. Unfortunetely, just like windows and mac, that "you" they have in mind is a lobotomy patient.
Distro's like OpenSUSE and Fedora see "you" as a person who needs to get work done(precisely why I use it.). And those like Gentoo and Arch see a "you" who has waaaaaaaaay too much time on his hands.


IMHO, Ubuntu will do good if it popularizes and increases the Linux userbase. I have yet to see a commercial application that only runs only on Ubuntu, but many applications that have improved thanks somewhat to Ubuntu's influence.
For example, bringing more people to linux brought us a Flash release on time!

[cb88]

Arch isn't that time intensive.... if you stick to defult configs

[Dragonlord]

GenToo is also not time intensive. And furthermore you can do things that you can't do with other distros without twisting your thumbs around using a wrench.

[energyman]

open konsole tab. eix-sync *fetchhotwater* emerge --keep-going -auD world *checkoutput* y <enter> work done, 30seconds of my time 'wasted'. A while later check results. Done.

[sc3252]

joshuapurcell - what exactly has ubuntu done for linux? What? linux patches? gcc patches? glibc patches?
They break KDE - kde comes with complete internationalization - but with kubuntu it is utterly broken. They take working packages and break it. Ubuntus gnome is overloaded with patches so people don't see what a shitfest it really is with all the missing features - until they might hit a real gnome someday - but what of that patches goes upstream? Ubuntu is bad for linux, reasons:
http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/userfriendly/userfriendly1.php

even worse - there have been douzends of debian based 'userfriendly' distris before ubuntu came around. But ubuntu is special - the hype started long before the first release - together with a manpower drain on debian (another reason why ubuntu is bad).

The worst thing: canonical is destroying suse and redhat. And without these two it would be very bleak. Very, very bleak.

WTF are you going on about? Redhat and Novell don't get revenue from Opensuse or Fedora. They use those for their future releases, you know testing new technologies. Both Fedora and Opensuse have fairly big communities that are not dying out. Thinking that some how Ubuntu is going to destroy them is stupid, and not going to happen. Hell last time I checked canonical was just breaking even with support contracts.

You have to factor in that both Novell and Red Hat are not targeting consumers, so it is only fitting that Ubuntu, a company that targets consumers, gets more of them then Fedora or Opensuse get. That is why there is more hype around their releases.

Last, blaming Ubuntu for anything is a waste of time at best and unproductive at worst. At worst the Ubuntu community does nothing for Linux and at best they get people interested who have never read or heard about Linux. So if anything the people who hurt Linux the most are those that recommend Gentoo or Linux from scratch to new users.

PS: I don't use Ubuntu, so you cant call me a fanboy.:p

[energyman]

when ubuntu is delivered with dell machines it hurts redhat and novell

also opensuse and fedora are testbeds for sles and rhel.

Last&worst, it is a marketing scheme get the people with free stuff (ubuntu cds) so you can sell them subscriptions later (canonical support).

Ubuntu is bad for linux.

[Dragonlord]

Last, blaming Ubuntu for anything is a waste of time at best and unproductive at worst. At worst the Ubuntu community does nothing for Linux and at best they get people interested who have never read or heard about Linux. So if anything the people who hurt Linux the most are those that recommend Gentoo or Linux from scratch to new users.
Unfortunately this is untrue. I know quite some people which got in contact with Linux first through Ubuntu and hate Linux now or rather consider Linux a piece of shit and inferior to Windows due to tons of non-working shit. So yes, they DO damage Linux.

[deanjo]

when ubuntu is delivered with dell machines it hurts redhat and novell

also opensuse and fedora are testbeds for sles and rhel.

Last&worst, it is a marketing scheme get the people with free stuff (ubuntu cds) so you can sell them subscriptions later (canonical support).

Ubuntu is bad for linux.

Umm actually Dell is also a partner with Novell as is IBM and there are a few other OEM's that offer either SLED or openSUSE. Novell, Redhat, Mandriva and many others also make their product to sell support. It's their main business model so singling out Ubuntu as the only commercial distro out there being the only ones interested in selling support is quite frankly completely false.

While openSUSE is a base for SLES and SLED it is community ran with a community elected board. SLED and SLES is not.

[sc3252]

Unfortunately this is untrue. I know quite some people which got in contact with Linux first through Ubuntu and hate Linux now or rather consider Linux a piece of shit and inferior to Windows due to tons of non-working shit. So yes, they DO damage Linux.

So are you saying they would be more impressed if they were to use fedora? I doubt it, I ran into just as many issues with ubuntu as fedora when trying out both of them, and I try out both of them once a year or more.

[sc3252]

when ubuntu is delivered with dell machines it hurts redhat and novell

also opensuse and fedora are testbeds for sles and rhel.

Last&worst, it is a marketing scheme get the people with free stuff (ubuntu cds) so you can sell them subscriptions later (canonical support).

Ubuntu is bad for linux.

Red hat has said themselves that they are not competing in Desktop Linux space. At least not in the sense of going on consumer desktop machines.

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2008/04/red-hat-novell-desktop-linux-ready-for-workplace-not-home.ars
This is from 2008, but I have not heard anything that says they plan anything for the desktop. The only thing Red Hat has is fedora, a community distribution that is considered cutting/bleading edge. I would go more on the bleeding side since they do put in a lot of things that are just not ready.

So since both of them are not aiming for desktop Linux I guess we should have dell Linux on their laptops instead? Of course they could go with Xandros, or Gos. Are those great alternatives. In fact maybe they should go with Android, will that make the Linux desktop better?
The Linux desktop market is what it is. There are tons of distros, and tons of netbooks they are on. I think there are 5-10 different distros for the 5-10 netbooks that Linux is on. Ubuntu is just one of the distros, and they are only on Dell so far, and yet they have the best return rate out of all the Linux netbooks. I wonder why...

http://www.slipperybrick.com/2009/02/dell-says-large-portion-of-mini-9-netbooks-are-sold-with-linux/

Can any of you guys actually post links to your absurd claims other then "well I have friends and they don't like Ubuntu"

[deanjo]

I wonder why...

http://www.slipperybrick.com/2009/02/dell-says-large-portion-of-mini-9-netbooks-are-sold-with-linux/

Can any of you guys actually post links to your absurd claims other then "well I have friends and they don't like Ubuntu"

Oh don't go there with that here. You will only be replied with "It's all lies Windows Fanboi".

[energyman]

well, start with Greg's linux plumbers video.

Ubuntu takes. Ubuntu does not give back. It attacks the business model of companies who do give back. As such it is bad. Ubuntu is all about press releases and noise in the media. Nothing else.

Ubuntu has done what? Easy linux? Have been done before. Mepis for example.

[deanjo]

well, start with Greg's linux plumbers video.

Ubuntu takes. Ubuntu does not give back. It attacks the business model of companies who do give back. As such it is bad. Ubuntu is all about press releases and noise in the media. Nothing else.

Ubuntu has done what? Easy linux? Have been done before. Mepis for example.

Smoke and screen show? Yes I can agree with that. They don't give much back to the linux community as a whole.

[artsci2]

I just wish my computer would play BZflag on linux as well as it does in windows....

[joshuapurcell]

The Linux community, much like politics, religion and life in general, has a 'not invented here' mentality. People like to reinvent the wheel and be able to say they own the best solution to the problem everyone faces, when in reality there are many times multiple solutions to the same problem. Sometimes the best solution is not widely adopted at first (or ever) because another solution was adopted by more of the people facing the problem for whatever reason.

In the case of Linux distributions there is no single best solution to a problem. Ubuntu is one solution for many problems users face, and many people believe it is a good one. Some people on this forum and other places in the Linux community don't like this fact for whatever reason, and their response only serves to weaken the overall Linux community because they choose to attack a single distribution.

It's absurd to think that Ubuntu or any other distribution is bad for Linux... the Linux community is full of various distribution working to solve problems in their own way. This is a good thing, but Linux is hurt in some ways by the fact that there is no benevolent dictator forcing the community to follow standards and adopt a single solution/package to any given problem. It also benefits from this fact.

[L33F3R]

The Linux community, much like politics, religion and life in general, has a 'not invented here' mentality. People like to reinvent the wheel and be able to say they own the best solution to the problem everyone faces, when in reality there are many times multiple solutions to the same problem. Sometimes the best solution is not widely adopted at first (or ever) because another solution was adopted by more of the people facing the problem for whatever reason.

In the case of Linux distributions there is no single best solution to a problem. Ubuntu is one solution for many problems users face, and many people believe it is a good one. Some people on this forum and other places in the Linux community don't like this fact for whatever reason, and their response only serves to weaken the overall Linux community because they choose to attack a single distribution.

It's absurd to think that Ubuntu or any other distribution is bad for Linux... the Linux community is full of various distribution working to solve problems in their own way. This is a good thing, but Linux is hurt in some ways by the fact that there is no benevolent dictator forcing the community to follow standards and adopt a single solution/package to any given problem. It also benefits from this fact.

I duno how to say it man. You hit the nail on the head. I suppose it helps that all distributions have the same kernel (mind the version). We would begin to see problems if we had say, the ubuntu linux kernel or red hat kernel that broke source compatibility.