Big +1 for dangerous penguins. Since Mac OS is unix based of course the steps to linux from there are much smaller than Window$ to linux anyway...
Dual booting to Linux Mint and Windows, in big part to be able to play E: D. Would be great to play in Linux
/me too for Linux
I recently installed Windows 7 specifically for Elite: Dangerous... Frontier are making enough of the right noises that I've ponied up for the Beta and the Expansion Packs, feels dirty using Doze, but Elite was my first profound experience on a computer so this has to be done.
I recently installed Windows 7 specifically for Elite: Dangerous... Frontier are making enough of the right noises that I've ponied up for the Beta and the Expansion Packs, feels dirty using Doze, but Elite was my first profound experience on a computer so this has to be done.
The percentage of Windows users contradict your claim. More than 90% of all PCs run Windows. About 4-5% run Mac (believe it or not), and the rest are Unix/Linux based.
The problem you don't realise with Linux is you can't really make just one port. For a game like this, you would need to make one for each Linux variant. That would make porting it not viable, economically speaking. Not to mention the probability that such a port would REQUIRE the user to run a certain desktop system, OR have a very specific graphics card, OR, OR ... see the problem with Linux?
And to port it to Mac wouldn't make sense either, unless the dev platform is easily portable (which I don't believe since it utilizes DirectX). It would be too expensive.
My guess is: if you want to play E
, you will have to go out and buy a copy of windows, OR possibly, wait for a Playstation or Xbox port (if one will be made).No. The difference between ACTUAL Unix and Mac OS is pretty big. The game would have to be written for the desktop, not for the underlying base OS, which is something completely different. It's like the difference between the old DOS and Windows 3.11. (Something Apple laughed at Microsoft for doing, btw).
If Apple supported DirectX and other tools used, it would be easier because it might be simply a matter of compiling for the different platforms. But that's not how Apple wants it to be. They focus on making people need to pay for THEIR stuff, not others'.
If you don' want to buy Windows to be able to play, can't we agree that you actually don't want to play? You paid money for your PC, why not pay for the operating system? Seriously.
Seriously, what with this attitude? You can *pay* for your Linux if you want - lot of companies cover good support for Debian, Ubuntu, or even Fedora/CentOS *on desktop* - if you want.
I just enjoy Linux so much more. Nothing to do with hate or not wanting to pay. I am more productive on my Fedora 20, and it works so much better. Buying Steam games, playing like a champ.
But ED is coming out on Mac....And to port it to Mac wouldn't make sense either, unless the dev platform is easily portable (which I don't believe since it utilizes DirectX). It would be too expensive.
My guess is: if you want to play E
OSX uses OpenGL while Microsoft uses the proprietary DirectX. The question might be why MS reinvented the wheel unless they were trying to lock users into their OS.
There are hundreds of Windows computers in the building that I work in, all of which are locked done and unavailable for game playing of any sort. As a game developer, you'd surely have to take account of the likely hood that millions of Windows machines will never be available for your product.
The percentage of Windows users contradict your claim. More than 90% of all PCs run Windows. About 4-5% run Mac (believe it or not), and the rest are Unix/Linux based.
The problem you don't realise with Linux is you can't really make just one port. For a game like this, you would need to make one for each Linux variant. That would make porting it not viable, economically speaking. Not to mention the probability that such a port would REQUIRE the user to run a certain desktop system, OR have a very specific graphics card, OR, OR ... see the problem with Linux?
And to port it to Mac wouldn't make sense either, unless the dev platform is easily portable (which I don't believe since it utilizes DirectX). It would be too expensive.
My guess is: if you want to play E
Sorry, but that's nonsense, and it is quite obvious you know very little about subject.
Have you wondered how Valve with Steam platform deals with it? Simple. They have one supported platform - most popular Linux desktop OS - Ubuntu. For every other platform people package it as required, and have short instructions how to setup. As distributions for 10 years now follow Linux Standard Base (or LSB), it is very easy to tune software setup without need or intervention from developer.
Also good software just use proper library calls, which are dynamically found and linked as required. Library versions are stable for very long time, kernel version is very stable for long time. As long this is true, support costs are minimal and major costs are porting itself.
I have Steam on Linux Mint, and while setting it up on my machine required some tweaking with drive write permissions, I've installed a few games just fine.
Admittedly Linux Mint is just a fork of Ubuntu, so perhaps some other Linux flavors require manual installation.
The percentage of Windows users contradict your claim. More than 90% of all PCs run Windows. About 4-5% run Mac (believe it or not), and the rest are Unix/Linux based.
The problem you don't realise with Linux is you can't really make just one port. For a game like this, you would need to make one for each Linux variant. That would make porting it not viable, economically speaking. Not to mention the probability that such a port would REQUIRE the user to run a certain desktop system, OR have a very specific graphics card, OR, OR ... see the problem with Linux?
And to port it to Mac wouldn't make sense either, unless the dev platform is easily portable (which I don't believe since it utilizes DirectX). It would be too expensive.
My guess is: if you want to play E
The trouble is that this is a very blinkered view of what is happening at the moment.
Microsoft is happily moving onwards for a walled garden state for win 8 and apps are moving towards having to be "approved" in their medium term stratergy. I can see win 9 even dropping the desktop and going for the whole app based "metro" look for the home premium package.
This means that a lot of popular open source software will not be able to complete or will incurr additional charges by having to play to Microsoft's fiddle to get onto their "approved" list
Valve is certainly worried, hence the move into offering their own flavour of Linux based on Debian. But the joy of that is that as Valve already support Debian and hence Debian offshoots that an awful lot of Linux flavours work as is. Mint, Ubunutu, Zorin (which simulates a win 7 enviroment) etc.
That is just from the OS point of view, when you take into account the amount of devices that are running linux underneath such as Andoid or iOS then it gets a lot more interesting.
As stated above large amounts of windows computers are for enterprise and all they do is run IE 9, Office and what ever productivity software that company needs.
Microsoft more or less abandoned the whole PC games market when the original Xbox was launched and certainly DirectX is no longer as well maintained by Microsoft or is it as needed as there isn't now the huge amount of hardware vendors that there was in the 1990's there are tiny amount and a move back to Open GL would open up to a lot more platforms. Something that Microsoft would not want as that would challenge their monopoly.
Android and iOS by their very nature are the complete reverse, they are on entertaiinment devices such as phones and tablets in the billions and people will have multiple devices in their home and the Unity engine was ported very quickly onto Linux and Android to get maximum exposure to developers. Currently they support 10 platforms.
Also Linux support for both AMD and nVidea is very good in fact AMD have finally got a simple windows style double click installer with minimal fuss at the start of the year and they release the Linux drivers simultaniously with the windows ones.
This is now not about Elite as such but for frontier to get the COBRA engine working on as many platforms as possible and that includes Linux, MAC's, Android, iOS etc. Sticking to a single format these days is not a safe bet as you never know what may happen down the road.
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I have steam running happily on 64bit Slackware, its one of the oldest surviving dsitro's and is a bit different from Ubuntu, Redhat etc. Setup wasn't hard, just follow the instructions
.So, yes again its a "no" they won't need to create different builds for each Linux flavour.
Incorrect, they learned from that mistake and desktop PC users will be properly catered for in W9 - go read the latest news about W9.
Again, they have plans to remedy that - read the latest DirectX news.
The only "news" is hearsay and rumor.
DirectX 12 will be out sometime in 2015 and will work like AMD's mantle and will most likely will not be rolled out on anything but win 8 and there's more win9 rumors about how it will look but it seems to be based mainly on the enterprise versions not the home premium.
Calling it a remedy is a very long stretch - first of all, I personally see Mantle and DirectX 12 as industry admitting ugly truth about having different driver paths in DX as standard practice, and moving even further. As performance gains are very disputable, I am all about proper drivers for standard API - like OpenGL.
AMD have problems with drivers for years, and suddenly they are pioneers in moving forward in graphics drivers API scene? Give me a break.
They got ridiculed by the business sector for metro, they're not complete idiots. And the leaks are from Microsoft "sanctioned" leakers... bit more than hearsay and rumour, but whatever, if you want to stick your fingers in your ears and go wah-wah-wah, be my guest!