Trainz for Ubuntu

[johnwhelan]

The big problem in the UNIX environment is too many flavours, also graphic card drivers take a lot of work to get right and making their proprietary code code available probably isn't going to happen. The modern GPU is much more powerful than the CPUs and the reason that for Trainz Window's performance in general is much better on the same hardware than any flavour of UNIX.

The US government had a problem with what was UNIX and came up with the POSIX standard for purchasing. The first operating system that met the POSIX standard was Windows NT so fundementally they aren't that different and both can trace their roots back to the Multics operating system.

Google are doing some nice work with Android but it is not yet an ideal gaming platform.

Cheerio John

 

[Konni]

Linux has a potential but needs help.

Hi,

I am not a great computer expert, but that is a song I have been hearing for decades.

Cheers,

Konni

 

[Scottbe8]

Thread for me at this point is TL;DR, so I'd just like to ask now if anyone's considered the possibility of Wine support for Trainz.

 

[shaneturner12]

Trainz should work with Wine, as it would effectively be Windows.

Shane

P.S. Scottbe8 - have you seen my latest patching guide in the General Trainz forum?

 

[mjolnir]

Seems to me, that folks are overlooking a point here. Since there is a TS Android App, there is already TS support for at least one flavor of Linux, as Linux is the base OS of the Android...

ns

 

[AntonyVW]

Just to add my penny's worth. I wonder how many Trainz users have looked at windows 8 in depth. Ive been beta testing it for some time. Im not impressed with it so I wont be upgrading to it. Last time I attempted to run trainz under it I got problems with dotnet and was unable to install. Ive not updated my version of it recently so I wonder if that has been fixed? Minecraft - to mention anonther title - wont run on it either due to an opengl issue. I know this thread it about Linux but windows is not going anywhere fast at the moment with 8.
Ive tried running a few games natively in linux in the past - not just Ubuntu but Mandriva and Fedora too. What has put me off in the past has been that the interface is not as user friendly as it could be (but then have you tried windows 8?). Linux has a place in computers - after all a large number of servers have it running in the background as opposed to windows. But that is what they are good at. They have some catching up to do to convince gamers but I for one am wiling to keep going back to it to see what improvements have been made. When you can just stick in a disc and install it and see the game running then I think that others might take more note of it.

 

[JCitron]

Humble Indie Bundle is a great prove for that (http://www.geek.com/articles/games/...dows-users-for-humble-indie-bundle-3-2011082/).
Although it has users willing to pay, it also suffers from the lack of users. Valve see this problem and is planning to support Linux whenever they can (they are already developing new tools for Linux, helping with graphics drivers and collaborating with game developers on their Linux ports). I can see why you and many Trainz users do not like Valve, but on the other hand, they are really so much helpful on the Linux side and for that I do plan to support their work by buying as much game titles available for Linux as I can.

You mentioned charity, I would rather call it a temporary loan. Help Linux now and be rewarded in the future.
And the reason for this? There are many.
> Microsoft is a monopoly. Now, what they want is what they get. Valve's main reason for move is the 30% fee they must pay Microsoft for selling their software through them.
> Not everyone is willing to pay Microsoft for Windows, not everyone wants Windows. One size do not have to fit all.
> Microsoft and Apple are bad companies - they sue others for their Patents and they benefit from actual patent system more than others. Microsoft has more money from Google Android than from their own Windows Phone system. Apple on the other hand banns Android devices to be sold, though they had apparently copied Sony and created Iphone 4 design (http://www.theage.com.au/digital-li...ims-apple-ripped-off-sony-20120727-22xil.html). But it is partially a problem of today's patent system.

There would be absolutely nothing bad about having Linux as a alternative. Linux is developed by many companies and if some of them changes mind and starts to do bad things, others can continue with developing Linux in normal way. There is a great support from Intel, RedHat, Canonical, HP, Dell, Google and others + now Valve. Linux has a potential but needs help.

Spoken like a typical Linux user! Big evil big Microsoft and Apple. Oooh, they'll take over your computer and your car, steal from your refridgerator and get your girlfriend pregnant (if you have one). These maybe big companies, and no I have no love for them either, but they've done something right to get there. I happen to work for another very large software company as well, in fact the third-largest software company in the world. They are no monopoly either; all built through hard work by thousands of people. What made these companies big is selling products at the right time as well as leveraging a market that suited them well. I agree though that Microsoft, and even Apple and Adoboe, were not always forthcoming. We did fight them through the markets and courts and have won.

There is nothing wrong with Linux, but it's not meant for the home or general business market. Can you see your aunt or other family elder trying to install a package in Linux? Imagine a support call from grandma. Hi I'm trying to install my typing tutor. I've been asked to do a makefile. How do I do that? What's a makefile? I can see this going down hill very, very fast. I work in support and deal with more technical people than this. What we don't need is a total non-computer literate trying to use something more complicated than Apple OSx or Windows.

You get the picture...

Ideally yes this would be nice, but in reality this won't happen. From a consumer standpoint the commercial OSs, developed by Apple and Microsoft, are much easier for the rest of the public to use. Since there's a larger market share, this is also where the companies will go for business. This is also where the biggest support network is too. Imagine the same relation as above doing a Google search for running a package-add or some other install from a command line, or looking up something in a manfile. I don't think so.

Anyway Ubuntu Linux is still a minority OS, just like the other 'Nixs. The problem is there are so many different flavors of Linux, making the market very fragmented. If there was one flavor of Linux, such as Oracle Linux, then it would be different. One company, on set of libraries to code for, one market segement to shoot for. With the multiple flavors, this becomes difficult because there are so many different code libraries, making the market very fragmented. So thinking about this, if N3V were to develop for Ubuntu, this may only be a 2% of the Linux market because there's Oracle, Slackware, SuSee, RedHat (which isn't free anymore), etc., making up the rest. Linux maybe 5% of the platform market, but with the fragmentation, the overall consumer market is really too specialized and too small to rewrite a program for.

John

 

[clam1952]

The big problem in the UNIX environment is too many flavours, also graphic card drivers take a lot of work to get right and making their proprietary code code available probably isn't going to happen. The modern GPU is much more powerful than the CPUs and the reason that for Trainz Window's performance in general is much better on the same hardware than any flavour of UNIX.

Actually, as far as Nvidia is concerned, they work with the Open source developers, always have done and provide good working drivers or the files to compile them from for those oddball distributions. On the whole Nvidias openGL in Linux is far superior to Windows. ATI historically however is a different story, maybe better under the AMD banner but I doubt it, often provides dreadful drivers as and when they get around to it, their OpenGL is often abysmal and they barely communicate with Linux developers and provide virtually nothing in way of useful information. Never had any problem with Nvidia's proprietary drivers, a basic Nvidia open source driver is included in the current Linux Kernels, Ok it's basic and you need as with Windows to update to a proprietary driver for OpenGL, however, it is provided non the less.

Android is only loosely a Linux OS with bits allegedly pinched from was it Oracle? and although supposedly labelled Open Source, chunks of it are not available with the source code or licensed from the likes of Sun so technically unusable by the Open Source brigade, although Sun does have good working relations with Linux.
I'd hazard a guess that Trainz for Android is as seemingly most Android stuff, coded in Java, good for gadgets, not really up to a full blown Simulator for running in a proper PC based Linux environment. Trainz for Mac would probably be an easier base to port a complete sim from, as already pointed out both OSX and Linux have their routes in Unix.

However, there is of course the method that ID software use, provide Linux Binaries for the game, the catch being that you need to buy the Windows version and transplant it into Linux and put simply, replace the .exe files with the appropriate binary file. In other words a whole Linux specific game isn't needed to be marketed, packaged or have special installers, just the normal Windows game, a free Linux binary file and at least some basic idea of what you are messing with. The ID binaries will work in virtually any Linux distro excluding those hard line ones that refuse to have any commercial software what so ever included so only generic graphics drivers. It goes without saying that there is no need for a Steam Client to run a Linux executable file.

Regarding using Wine.
I have had both 2009 and 2010 working in Linux using Wine, albeit that Content manager only partially worked in 2009 and didn't in 2010, however after sorting out the missing fonts the OpenGL performance was far superior to that of windows, on par with DirectX in Windows. 2010 actually ran on an old below spec clunker of a PC running PCLinuxOS that couldn't manage to run it in any video mode in Windows. When I get a spare few months and I'm not busy route building and I get round to replacing or repairing the blown Mobo on my Linux development / testing box, I may or may not look at getting TS12 to work. Of course it's far simpler to just use Windows, Win7 is a pretty good OS IMO for running games so I use it.

 

[JCitron]

Malc,

Sun is Oracle today. They were merged 2 years ago. THere's an on-going lawsuit between Google and Oracle regarding the patents on the lifted code from Sun Java. From what i've seen, Android icecream Sandwich is still clunky. It gets stuck on me quite often on my Asus EEPC. Nice little machine, but the software gets goofy. I agree there's a lot of limitations in there.


I agree with you on the NVidia front. ATI as always sucked with driver support. They still do even on the Windows and Apple side. They're a bit better, but still there are issues. I know, I have a 6970 which could be a really nice card if the drivers weren't so dodgy. What is nice about this is they are lighter on the power side, running a bit (not much these days) cooler than the NVidia equivalent.

Linux still requires too much work to get something working. This alone is a no-go for the average PC consumer. In my olden-days, I used to fiddle with config-files and makefiles. I've even manually concatenated files to make the binaries out of smaller downloads. This is way too fiddly for the average home user who only wants to install and play a computer game.

John

 

[johnwhelan]

Actually, as far as Nvidia is concerned, they work with the Open source developers, always have done and provide good working drivers or the files to compile them from for those oddball distributions. On the whole Nvidias openGL in Linux is far superior to Windows. ATI historically however is a different story, maybe better under the AMD banner but I doubt it, often provides dreadful drivers as and when they get around to it, their OpenGL is often abysmal and they barely communicate with Linux developers and provide virtually nothing in way of useful information. Never had any problem with Nvidia's proprietary drivers, a basic Nvidia open source driver is included in the current Linux Kernels, Ok it's basic and you need as with Windows to update to a proprietary driver for OpenGL, however, it is provided non the less.

Of course it's far simpler to just use Windows, Win7 is a pretty good OS IMO for running games so I use it.

Game performance often depends on the quality of the drivers. Quite often you'll see a new video card come out and then the benchmarks change when a later driver comes out as the programmers get their profilers out. Open-GL comes from the UNIX based graphic workstation side of things and as a result games performance was never a design goal. It's an "Open" standard that allows proprietary extensions until the next release and typically the standards process takes five years. nVidia also provide support to companies such as N3V to optimise their code for nVidia products. I used to write the specs for purchasing for government purposes and it was always a difficult call, use the OpenGL spec that really locked you into a specific company or Microsoft's DirectX which was supported by a number of companies?

DirectX was developed by Microsoft and kept away from the standards process in order to shorten the time to release. It was designed from scratch as a graphic standard for games which ATI basically designed their graphics card to run. Since it has a simpler job to do than Open-GL you can make the hardware simpler that means cooler, needs less power, and cheaper to manufacture.

nVidia does make drivers available for the Linux and UNIX market place but even so they put a lot more effort into their proprietary closed Windows drivers and it shows in the difference in performance.

Cheerio John

 

[Scottbe8]

Trainz should work with Wine, as it would effectively be Windows.

Shane

P.S. Scottbe8 - have you seen my latest patching guide in the General Trainz forum?

Yeah, it's on page 3. I'll bump it up.

 

[shaneturner12]

I did notice.

Shane

 

[martinZl]

The big problem in the UNIX environment is too many flavours, also graphic card drivers take a lot of work to get right and making their proprietary code code available probably isn't going to happen. The modern GPU is much more powerful than the CPUs and the reason that for Trainz Window's performance in general is much better on the same hardware than any flavour of UNIX.

The US government had a problem with what was UNIX and came up with the POSIX standard for purchasing. The first operating system that met the POSIX standard was Windows NT so fundementally they aren't that different and both can trace their roots back to the Multics operating system.

Google are doing some nice work with Android but it is not yet an ideal gaming platform.

Cheerio John

Really?
Look here: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/

Linux is much more powerful and fast gaming platform.

+ I would like to see Trainz for Linux. Start with Ubuntu, like Valve did. And if you do not like Steam, push the game to the Ubuntu Software Center.

 

[lackoo11111]

Can we please forget Valve ? It will not change the future of linux gaming .
Also a DRM system on an open-source OS ? It will not work .

 

[RRSignal]

Really?
Look here: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/

Linux is much more powerful and fast gaming platform.

+ I would like to see Trainz for Linux. Start with Ubuntu, like Valve did. And if you do not like Steam, push the game to the Ubuntu Software Center.

To dispute that Linux has far too many flavors to be practical is like debating whether water is wet.

I'd love to see Linux become successful and kick both M$ and Apple to the curb. Both are awful, bloated OS' designed, in their modern form, to increasingly take functionality and control from the computer owner and put it into the hands of outsiders for profit. Valve is simply trying to pull the same thing on Linux, so no thanks there.

But the community has to rally around a single flavor, and to also become a user-friendly community, not a geek-oriented one. I've been waiting 15 years for that one. Let's hope it can change but don't be shocked that few developers want to pony up major $$$ right now.

 

[clam1952]

To dispute that Linux has far too many flavors to be practical is like debating whether water is wet.

I'd love to see Linux become successful and kick both M$ and Apple to the curb. Both are awful, bloated OS' designed, in their modern form, to increasingly take functionality and control from the computer owner and put it into the hands of outsiders for profit. Valve is simply trying to pull the same thing on Linux, so no thanks there.

But the community has to rally around a single flavor, and to also become a user-friendly community, not a geek-oriented one. I've been waiting 15 years for that one. Let's hope it can change but don't be shocked that few developers want to pony up major $$$ right now.

Too true, it's not likely to happen while there are hundreds of different distributions all with their own different slant on what a Linux OS should be like and differing levels of hardware support.
I've been waiting slightly longer, for 17 years for them to get their act together. There are friendly Linux distro communities out there, well the one I use is, however they are in the minority.
Curiously I've just had an email from eComStation, who took over OS2 from IBM, asking if I or anyone I know still use it! How about Trainz for OS2? :hehe:

 

[johnwhelan]

Curiously I've just had an email from eComStation, who took over OS2 from IBM, asking if I or anyone I know still use it! How about Trainz for OS2? :hehe:

Now that's an idea, I always had a soft spot for OS/2. At one time we were looking at adopting it rather move to Windows 95 and technically there wasn't that much to choose between them.

Cheerio John

 

[NSWGR_46Class]

Now that's an idea, I always had a soft spot for OS/2. At one time we were looking at adopting it rather move to Windows 95 and technically there wasn't that much to choose between them.

Cheerio John

I also loved OS/2 - old system two to we often called it. I was working in Radio Broadcast Automation at the time and we were using both NT and OS/2 servers and work station, OS/2 was so stable that there was a $500 reward for anybody who could cause a system crash. The money was never given out as far as I know.

 

[JCitron]

I also loved OS/2 - old system two to we often called it. I was working in Radio Broadcast Automation at the time and we were using both NT and OS/2 servers and work station, OS/2 was so stable that there was a $500 reward for anybody who could cause a system crash. The money was never given out as far as I know.

I remember OS/2 as well. We had a couple of Domino servers setup and they ran like champions.

We could beg for a CP/M-Plus version too of Trainz. That would be fun running in command line from a terminal.

John

 

[AntonyVW]

Gosh. Now your bringing back memories. I remember using DOS back in the 80's. Now that was fun. How about a version for the good old 1k ZX81 and black and white blocky graphics. That was the first compute I ever played with. You would sit all day typing in a huge amount of code only to discover that you had made a tiny syntax error at the beginning and had to start again.