The scene's opinion of GNU/Linux
category: code [glöplog]
Android is the future. At least if you want your prods seen realtime outside of youtube.
there is no intrinsic value in seeing a production on the hardware. just saying.
wait what
Yeah. Right.
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it's the GNU-part of the system that does not care at all about binary compatibility and break applications all the time. The Linux syscalls has historically been impressively stable.
Which GNU project causes the breakage? glibc? Could that be solved by linking it statically if the underlying syscalls are stable?
Most of demoscene is seen on youtube it's a fact...
most of newschool only runs on a warmachine with a specific 3D card (does not run at all on older card, will broke in next generation, nvidia or amd only (but mostly nvidia)...).
Most of Amiga AGA demoscene runs only on machines that exist only for the guys that developped the demo (needs 68050+, lots of ram...). same for falcon.
other oldschool demo will run 99% of time on emulators
BUT watching demo on real hardware is the real goal of demomaking. Youtube codec are much too lossy. Emulators are good, but some effects needs the real machine.
A linux demo could be well packaged (as a .deb or .rpm with correct dependencies) but it takes more time and avalaible ressources are still rare.
Personaly I use only linux for my cross compile (targeting obscure oldschool platforms).
most of newschool only runs on a warmachine with a specific 3D card (does not run at all on older card, will broke in next generation, nvidia or amd only (but mostly nvidia)...).
Most of Amiga AGA demoscene runs only on machines that exist only for the guys that developped the demo (needs 68050+, lots of ram...). same for falcon.
other oldschool demo will run 99% of time on emulators
BUT watching demo on real hardware is the real goal of demomaking. Youtube codec are much too lossy. Emulators are good, but some effects needs the real machine.
A linux demo could be well packaged (as a .deb or .rpm with correct dependencies) but it takes more time and avalaible ressources are still rare.
Personaly I use only linux for my cross compile (targeting obscure oldschool platforms).
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BUT watching demo on real hardware is the real goal of demomaking. Youtube codec are much too lossy. Emulators are good, but some effects needs the real machine.
I'd like to add some nuance to that.
I think the real goal of demomaking is to push real hardware. But watching it... The last few prods I have worked on (as well as things in the foreseeable future) were targeted at obscure platforms. I expect that most people simply don't have access to the hardware, so I am fine with people watching a video capture of the prod, or using an emulator.
I personally like to capture a video from real hardware when I have done a prod. Even though YouTube is rather lossy, I generally prefer a real capture over an emulator. Especially the sound can make quite a difference. Eg, compare some captures of Second Reality with a real GUS to Dosbox captures... or C64 demos/music captured from a real C64/SID vs emulated ones.
Or sometimes the other way around... I did a real capture of Crystal Dream some time ago, using a real Sound Blaster Pro 2.0. The sound quality is absolutely horrible. There are captures on YT that sound a lot better... Thing is, it's SUPPOSED to sound that bad, early sound cards on PC just sounded like that.
Take this one : http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59105
On real hardware you have a nice CRT emulation. on youTube you just have a bad image.
Sound in emulators is a real problem. Mostly because of timing problems and a too low mixing frequency (fe 44KHz is too few for a zx spectrum 1but music that uses some kind of pwm).
I do not say that watching on youtube is bad, just that it's too far from the real impact of some productions but it's true that most of production are not viewable otherwise, due to lack of hardware.
It is not exactly the initial subject... but to sum up, linux boxes are not good to watch demos... and 99% of windows PC are not better... so... code for what you like best...
On real hardware you have a nice CRT emulation. on youTube you just have a bad image.
Sound in emulators is a real problem. Mostly because of timing problems and a too low mixing frequency (fe 44KHz is too few for a zx spectrum 1but music that uses some kind of pwm).
I do not say that watching on youtube is bad, just that it's too far from the real impact of some productions but it's true that most of production are not viewable otherwise, due to lack of hardware.
It is not exactly the initial subject... but to sum up, linux boxes are not good to watch demos... and 99% of windows PC are not better... so... code for what you like best...
@kusma: Most of European, Russian and Asian TV station IP traffic monitoring run through a proxy server I wrote on Fedora/Ubuntu. Not because I wanted to, just because Winsock turned out to be Winsuck.
@superplek: I think this thread is about our opinion about using linux for demoscene purposes. You are right, by the way, about how Winsock sucks.
Having worked with linux for over a decade now I thought (despite my lack of scene cred) I'd weigh in.
*nix was never meant to be a gui let alone graphics oriented os. Anyone who deals with any type of server on a regular basis will tell you that. So any and all graphical capabilities are mostly "tacked on" as an after-thought.
On top of that as has been mentioned there are many distros with many different libs whereas for windows most dlls *should* run stuff made for that ver. and there can be some backwards compatibility.
Much as I dislike macs I think a closed *nix codebase with gui is actually not such a bad idea - far less variables to deal with. Making huge filthy profits off hipsters to stupid to realise they're being fleeced is probably just a bonus!
In short - making demos/games for linux is probably going to be a pain in the arse. Make them for the platform that most people will download and run on. Otherwise you're going to be using stuff like emulators and vm. And then what's the fucking point?
However if you want a desktop os that will never bluescreen or crash due to one of those dll's being corrupted then linux is probably for you! ;P
*nix was never meant to be a gui let alone graphics oriented os. Anyone who deals with any type of server on a regular basis will tell you that. So any and all graphical capabilities are mostly "tacked on" as an after-thought.
On top of that as has been mentioned there are many distros with many different libs whereas for windows most dlls *should* run stuff made for that ver. and there can be some backwards compatibility.
Much as I dislike macs I think a closed *nix codebase with gui is actually not such a bad idea - far less variables to deal with. Making huge filthy profits off hipsters to stupid to realise they're being fleeced is probably just a bonus!
In short - making demos/games for linux is probably going to be a pain in the arse. Make them for the platform that most people will download and run on. Otherwise you're going to be using stuff like emulators and vm. And then what's the fucking point?
However if you want a desktop os that will never bluescreen or crash due to one of those dll's being corrupted then linux is probably for you! ;P
Yeah, instead of solving bluescreens you need to become a nerd to merge with the operating system on a molecular level if you want to keep it up and running, or have some non-essential service like wi-fi working like it works everywhere else.
Never again. At least the hipster-machine does something right.
Never again. At least the hipster-machine does something right.
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Translation: "I don't like Linux".
No, more like: "Why should I invest time and energy into making something for an OS I myself don't use, that's fragmented as hell, and that has no audience for my work?".
Also: what Preacher said.
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Thing is, it's SUPPOSED to sound that bad, early sound cards on PC just sounded like that.
No it isn't? Crystal Dream worked with GUS which sounded a lot better, and also: the then state of hardware being bad is not the same as "we intended the music to sound this shitty", it was just the way it was. If the content of the MOD could be played back on better hardware (aka "software") then the content of the MOD is unchanged. It's not exactly rewriting history to welcome a better resampling-routine :)
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become a nerd to merge with the operating system on a molecular level if you want to keep it up and running
Says someone on a very heavily code-oriented site...
I'll be the bigger man and say that I was trolling with my comment about macs. However.
Aside from 1 big recent glaring omission (Heartbleed) most of the security concerns for OSS/GNU os's are dealt with quickly and efficiently by a dedicated worldwide team who tackle the problem at the kernel level rather than at software level. This model for os security I believe is far safer (generally) than having a corporate dept. who deals with it.
Clearly this has nothing to do with demos on linux.
let me paraphrase, linux has nothing to do with demos. period. ;)
hey, it runs youtube
@gloom
No, it didn't. Crystal Dream 2 did, though.
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Crystal Dream worked with GUS
No, it didn't. Crystal Dream 2 did, though.
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let me paraphrase, linux has nothing to do with demos. period. ;)
Oh maali. You thought you had something to say that we might take seriously?
That's sweet!
:P
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hey, it runs youtube
With the right adobe plugin. Good luck with that ;]
Wait, people still use youtube with flash? It's near impossible to see the video with all the crappy ads and overlays if you have flash installed!
flash is still better in HD videos, as it doesnt make my CPU die in agony as with html5 HD :)
(maybe GPU dies in agony then)
but there are no adverts over youtube flash videos, use adblock+ or similar.
(maybe GPU dies in agony then)
but there are no adverts over youtube flash videos, use adblock+ or similar.
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No it isn't? Crystal Dream worked with GUS which sounded a lot better
Was covered already.
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and also: the then state of hardware being bad is not the same as "we intended the music to sound this shitty", it was just the way it was.
That's my point: I wanted to do a capture that showed the demo 'the way it was'. That's just the hardware you had (the SB Pro 2 was the best possible option at the release of that demo).
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If the content of the MOD could be played back on better hardware (aka "software") then the content of the MOD is unchanged. It's not exactly rewriting history to welcome a better resampling-routine :)
Well, there are two sides to that.
The music itself is one thing... Which is why I also did a 'remastered' video, where I replaced the actual music with high-quality captures of the mods.
The mods themselves may actually have been composed on an Amiga, so they were composed for better quality than in the demo.
But, as a demo, the mod player routine is just part of the production. Besides, that was a 'state of the art' playback routine at the time. There were no 16-bit cards yet, you couldn't get 44 KHz in stereo, and interpolation was too expensive. Back then, mod routines were optimized for speed at the expense of sound quality, because that was the only way to have enough CPU time left for graphics effects.
So I think it is important to capture the demo like that, so people can experience what it was really like.
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but there are no adverts over youtube flash videos, use adblock+ or similar.
Did someone say OSS?
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The problem is that desktop GNU/Linux is barely a suitable platform because it lacks binary compatibility. Too many distros and too many configurations (even for different processors) and, of course, a hell of libraries that are not the same among all "popular" distros and can change in the next update.
Has anyone tried to execute a linux demo from 2004 in 2014?
Yellow rose of texas currently runs fine on my install, worked out of the box (IIRC, was more than a year ago).
Regarding what las said, I think it could be solved with something like CDE (http://www.pgbovine.net/cde.html). For sizecoding one could pick the exact version of libs yielding the most compact code and pack it so that it will run on any linux distro. I hope that such a prod would be accepted into a 4k / 8k compo, as long as it can be proven to run natively on correctly configured hardware. Perhaps the linux loving part of the scene could even standardize on some libraries with specific version as a platform, revising it every few years.
I personally use linux and would love to do a serious linux 4k / 8k, but unlike windows there are no standardized tools (crinkler etc) and frameworks available that I know of. Our 64k prods actually run on linux, but end up packed at >300k with lots of compatibility issues.
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I personally use linux and would love to do a serious linux 4k / 8k, but unlike windows there are no standardized tools (crinkler etc) and frameworks available that I know of.
Why don't you develop it yourself then? If everyone would just wait for others to spoonfeed them with tools and frameworks, then things like crinkler or 4klang would never have been developed either.
I guess that's the bigger question here: why hasn't anyone done serious linux demos/tools/frameworks yet?