WILL TRAINZ EVER BE PORTED OVER TO LINUX

[NSWGR_46Class]

Well I can say that back in the 2004/2006 day we did have Trainz running in a Unix environment I am not to sure of all the ins and outs of it all but it was very stable and a lot of fun, Warwick House (wazzer) who was the project ring leader of the time. He could tell you all about it but very much before his time passed away last year, I was only involved in the hardware side of things as I am bit of a drop kick when it comes to operating systems. We were plotting to also run it on an IBM main frame but alas we never got round to it.

IIRC WEN was also playing with and had some success with Trainz on a Unix platform at one stage.

As to the pay ware debate I am not a fan of it as what are you paying for, the loco or rolling stock was designed by someone else that’s not your work your only reproducing it , you can not change for that, that’s illegal. The art work of the item is also someone else’s design your only reproducing it, you can not charge for that, most of the fancy scripting has been a community effort to develop over the years would be rude to change for that. The time and effort to produce a 3D mesh, what makes you so special that you need to get paid for that when there are so many people already giving them away free?

Hay I even know of one case of someone who approached a rolling stock manufacture got the actual CAD files from them for free, ported it in to Trainz and MSTS and was selling it as pay ware.

 

[wholbr]

Hi Everybody.
I think several years ago many of us thought that the Linux system would be the great Challenger to Microsoft. That said,the system has had plenty of time to bring that belief to fruition but unfortunately it has not happened.

in the last 12 months the future of computing has taken a new turn with the widespread acceptance of tablet computers by the public for any number of reasons. Therefore, undoubtedly software companies will be looking in that direction for their ongoing income and development.

As I have just posted on the on a separate thread regarding Trainz development on android as I believe that the new systems developed for tablets will be the way forward. Unfortunately with that in mind, the day of Linux has passed if ever it did have a day. It had its chances and seemed not to take those opportunities and will as likely as not fade into computing history as one of those " might have beens "

Bill

 

[WindWalkr]

As I have just posted on the on a separate thread regarding Trainz development on android as I believe that the new systems developed for tablets will be the way forward. Unfortunately with that in mind, the day of Linux has passed if ever it did have a day.

I know what you're saying, but to be accurate, Android is Linux. That said, a version of Trainz built for Android won't run on other Linux variants, so the point is moot to most users.

chris

 

[wholbr]

Hi Again Everybody

I know what you're saying, but to be accurate, Android is Linux. That said, a version of Trainz built for Android won't run on other Linux variants, so the point is moot to most users.

chris

Thanks for that WindWalkr, I certainly did not know that android was in any way connected with Linux. Oh well, you learn something every day even at my age.

That said then, I am certainly very satisfied with my new Samsung galaxy S android (Linux) tablet computer. With the foregoing in mind are we to get a Trainz version for the android, Linux.

Bill

 

[Bogiedon]

Quote “ you get what you pay for “
What's wrong with freeware ? Linux is free, the content created by forum members is free, this forum is free, PEV & Andi06 give us their software for free, Audacity sound software is free, Blender is free, Open Office is free & better than MS Office. I could fill pages with a list of free open source software that we would find it hard to continue without. Also most of the very good free open source software is better than what you pay for.
As for Windows !!!!!!! Don't get me started.


Cheers, Don ( A dedicated open source software & sadly a dedicated windows user )

 

[johnwhelan]

I know what you're saying, but to be accurate, Android is Linux. That said, a version of Trainz built for Android won't run on other Linux variants, so the point is moot to most users.

chris

POSIX is the US Government procurement standard for UNIX, the first POSIX compliant operating system was windows. Until POSIX arrived anyone could and did call anything UNIX.

Most operating systems have their roots in Multics, VAX VMS for example as well as many other operating systems including UNIX. The architect of the VMS operating system joined Microsoft and wrote the Windows NT operating system so too me there is little difference in architecture.

I think we need to distinguish between a free open source operating system and a commercial system. Probably twenty years ago Gartner came up with a figure of $11,000 a year to have a networked PC on a desktop in a corporate environment. At the time a new PC was roughly $4,000 the difference was basically support costs and I think its true today the total cost of ownership includes support and for most support costs are lower in a Windows environment especially Win 7.

UNIX / Linux is taught in college and University environments which is unfortunate as it turns out computer science graduates who don't understand the importance of costs and the importance of support.

The only way for this to really work would be if a flavour of UNIX became dominant on a platform in such large numbers that it would make commercial sense to build something as has happened in the case of Trainz built for Android.

Cheerio John

 

[pommie]

Hi Everybody.
I think several years ago many of us thought that the Linux system would be the great Challenger to Microsoft. That said,the system has had plenty of time to bring that belief to fruition but unfortunately it has not happened.

I don't think any OS can fight Windows , not for a lot of years anyway, MS put literally millions behind the ad campaign for Win95 and is still benefiting from it, MS's biggest competitor is piracy, not another OS.

in the last 12 months the future of computing has taken a new turn with the widespread acceptance of tablet computers by the public for any number of reasons. Therefore, undoubtedly software companies will be looking in that direction for their ongoing income and development.

Agreed

As I have just posted on the on a separate thread regarding Trainz development on android as I believe that the new systems developed for tablets will be the way forward. Unfortunately with that in mind, the day of Linux has passed if ever it did have a day. It had its chances and seemed not to take those opportunities and will as likely as not fade into computing history as one of those " might have beens "

Bill

Check on how many servers are running Apache, which is a Linux program, also ALL the 3D animation houses use Linux, its a lot easier to create a cluster of computers on Linux, its only on the desktop/laptop that Windows rule.
As vBulletin is cross platform it is odds on that these forums are running on Linux.

Please lets not turn this into a Windows/Linux fight as both have their place.

Cheers David

 

[wholbr]

Hi David and Everybody.

I don't think any OS can fight Windows , not for a lot of years anyway, MS put literally millions behind the ad campaign for Win95 and is still benefiting from it, MS's biggest competitor is piracy, not another OS.


Agreed

Check on how many servers are running Apache, which is a Linux program, also ALL the 3D animation houses use Linux, its a lot easier to create a cluster of computers on Linux, its only on the desktop/laptop that Windows rule.
As vBulletin is cross platform it is odds on that these forums are running on Linux.

Please lets not turn this into a Windows/Linux fight as both have their place.

Cheers David

Do not worry David I would certainly not have the computer technology knowledge to turn this into any sort of a fight.

All I was referring to was the fact that the Linux was seen as a potential challenger to Windows in the in the OS field a number of years ago. However, as you say there seems to be no one at this point in time who is anywhere near capable of challenging Microsoft in that department.

The only exception to this would seem to me to be in the fast-growing computer tablet market where Microsoft's effort seems to be a poor challenger at the moment.

As I said on a different thread, the potential of the tablet market is enormous on the business use side. They can perform just as well as any laptop in meetings etc and are more easily transportable as in the case of my Samsung galaxy S 7 inch model which easily fits into my pocket.

My prediction would be (for what it's worth) that computer tablets will see the very quick demise of the laptop and notebook market in business. With that in mind, we may also see the demise of the dominance of Microsoft in operating systems, perhaps.

Again just some thoughts

Bill

 

[Mouse84]

I was talking to someone who runs Trainz 2010 in Linux using WINE and was told that it runs pretty good.

 

[amigacooke]

Reminds me of all the 'Mac Trainz it'll never happen threads'.

Mind you at the moment you still can't buy Mac Trainz!

 

[IsambardKingdomBrunel]

I was talking to someone who runs Trainz 2010 in Linux using WINE and was told that it runs pretty good.

Very interesting, i have Ubuntu 10.10 dual boot on this pc.

Would love to get rid of Winblows and Microcrud all together.

IKB.

 

[wholbr]

Hi IKB And Everybody

Very interesting, i have Ubuntu 10.10 dual boot on this pc.

IKB.

IKB.....Ubuntu, wasn't he an African dictator. if he was how did you get him to run your PC for you. Also did he use his dual boots to kick six bells out of his opponents.:hehe:

Bill

 

[IsambardKingdomBrunel]

Easy Bill, used the cat o' nine tails on him.

He runs like a whippet, then. :hehe:

Dual boots......you know..............all terrain...........good for jungle and crossing rivers. :hehe:

IKB.

 

[pware]

I was talking to someone who runs Trainz 2010 in Linux using WINE and was told that it runs pretty good.

Good for him. I can't even get Trainz 2004 to run on Ubuntu under Wine on a machine that, when it ran Windows XP, had no problems running Trainz 2004 and Trainz 2006. Likewise for my USB optical mouse.

This illustrates a point that many have made - you can argue all you like about the merits of Linux but until Linux (any version) can match Windows for ease of installing and running a wide range of both software and hardware devices then it will not be a serious player in the desktop market where us non-computer nerds live.

Even in the networked systems market, Linux is not as widely used or as trusted as some of the posters here seem to think. Yes, a few corporations have Linux network servers but the majority are using Windows. Until my very recent retirement, I managed a network of over 200 desktops, over 50 laptops and 5 servers - using a mixture of XP and Win 7 for the desktops/laptops and Windows Server 2003 for the servers. I knew a few (very few) network administrators that were using Macs running OS X (which is Linux based) for their desktop machines, but all were running Windows based servers.

I had network tools that allowed me to totally manage any and all of these computers remotely, that included switching them on, logging on, installing software and even completely wiping their hard drives and reinstalling all the software to preset configurations. I could (and frequently did) use my desktop computer (Windows) and the Internet from home to perform a complete and simultaneous system reinstall on as many of these computers as needed.

At the conferences I attended, when the debate on Windows Vs Linux was raised, every network administrator stated the same thing - at the server end Linux just could not compete with the established Windows Server 2003/2008 for security, user and network management. On the desktops, the users wanted to run the latest Microsoft Word/Excel/PowerPoint (both Windows and OS X) and not some cloned freebie look-alikes.

Peter Ware

 

[geoffwilliams]

Linux, Ubuntu and Trainz

TRS2004. TRS2006, TC3 and TS2009 up to and including SP3 will all run under WINE on the latest stable version of Ubuntu (Maverick) out of the box. No need to be a computer geek or have a degree in computing, just install Ubuntu, the version of WINE that is in the addtional software, then install Trainz as you would on Windows. (Right click on the setup file and choose open with wine loader.)

You must have 3d accelaration enabled for your video card, Ubuntu provides proprietry drivers for most Nvidia an ATI cards so this should not be a problem unless you have an integrated graphics card.

I have run Trainz on two different desktops, two different laptops, and TRS2004 will even run on my Netbook a (Not well, but good enough for development) all running Ubuntu.

A couple of things to bear in mind.
In all cases (except the Netbook) TRS2004 runs smoother on Linux than it does on Windows 7 and Vista. TrainzObectz also works with WINE as an added bonus.

I have been unable to get TS2010 and TS2009 SP4 to work. Ubuntu doesn't seem to like the trainz asset database daemon.

TS2009 SP3 works well except for Content Manager, my workaround for this is to run Content Manager in an Oracle virtual box.

TS2010 SP4 is, on my systems anyway, the smoothest of all the Trainz versions, so if you want the latest and greatest, you are stuck with Windows.

I prefer Linux for everyday tasks, i don't need anti-virus and I feel more secure using it. Within the above limitations I can run Trainz in windowed mode whilst carrying out day to day tasks.

But for my pastimes, Flight Simulator and Train Simulators are more at home on Windows. Although I can get Trainz to run on Linux, there is no chance with MSTS and Railworks, both of which I use extensively. (Not wanting to start a war, I just think that both are great sims along with Trainz.)

And before anyone mentions X-Plane, I have tried it three times now and given up. For me it is a thousand miles behind FS2004. (Just my opinion though)
Geoff

 

[amigacooke]

At the conferences I attended, when the debate on Windows Vs Linux was raised, every network administrator stated the same thing - at the server end Linux just could not compete with the established Windows Server 2003/2008 for security, user and network management.

So people who make a living administering Windows networks decided Windows networks were best?

 

[johnwhelan]

Quote:
Originally Posted by pware
At the conferences I attended, when the debate on Windows Vs Linux was raised, every network administrator stated the same thing - at the server end Linux just could not compete with the established Windows Server 2003/2008 for security, user and network management.

So people who make a living administering Windows networks decided Windows networks were best?

If it helps we ran 1,400 servers including a variety of UNIX flavours. The windows server updates were easy to do and invariably applied. Using MOM (Microsoft Operations Management) we could monitor them and ensure they were correctly configured. MOM also had clients for none Microsoft operating systems but they weren't as comprehensive. We had another monitoring system whose name I forget which was as capable as MOM but you had to set up the rules. Fine when I gave them a list of the 4,000 things I wanted monitoring on an SQL server system they quoted me 12 items a day at $500 a day just to set them up.

I took over a none windows system and found no updates had been applied for the last three years. This was on a server that had some of our most critical systems running on it. The version of the operating system was no longer supported, the version of the database we were running was no longer supported. The updates were basically too difficult to apply.

We had to drop a number of UNIX servers and port the applications over to other operating systems as security had a blue fit when they realised that particular variety of UNIX had no antivirus or virus detection software available.

Oracle software is half the price on Intel Windows than a UNIX box and when you are talking $70,000 for the software on a $5,000 server then you take notice.

Intel X86 servers are mainstream, intel itanium servers aren't. One problem today is applications written for Itanium are having to be rewritten as a number of vendors including Oracle withdraw their support.

With Windows almost certainly some one has come across the problem before and there is a support network available. With Linux there is no central support network. No one certifies the drivers. With Windows Microsoft started to keep track of Windows failures and it found that badly written drivers where the main problem. LINUX does have its niche, when you want a cheap operating system that you have on many many machines such as Google does on its file servers then it can make economic sense but otherwise TOC is much lower with Windows.

Cheerio John

 

[pommie]

@ wholbr, Bill my statement was not aimed at anyone in particular

-----------------------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux
I know its wikipedia but its close enough to the truth to use.

As far as lack of support is concerned "what a load of bull" it is statements like that from Windows fan boys that cause a lot of confusion, a quick Google search for "Linux support" filtered by 'Australia only' gave,

http://linux-support.com.au/
http://www.cyber.com.au/support/rh-support.html
http://www.elx.com.au/support.php
http://barrang.com.au/
http://achernarsolutions.com.au/linux-support-services
http://cc.com.au/linux-support-and-consulting

There were a lot more results, but you must get the general drift.

The companies that develop Linux make money with support, training and developing their flavor of Linux for specific situations (think supercomputers).
Novell (opensuse) - Conical (Ubuntu) - Red Hat (Redhat) - Debian (Debian) and others are all profit making companies.

And just to clarify one thing, the FREE in free software is not free as in free beer, it means it is open source, not public domain and not closed source, if you do not know the difference between open and closed source look it up.

And any network admin that cannot work with all of the popular operating systems should not call themselves experts.

Cheers David

 

[pware]

So people who make a living administering Windows networks decided Windows networks were best?

Nowhere in my little *rant* did it state that all the conference attendees were windows network administrators. Quite the contrary, in my (former) industry you had people managing networks of desktop computers with all flavours - including a number of networks that had windows (multiple versions), MacOS 9 and OS X and, believe it or not, Linux all sharing the same cables, switches and servers. While a few individuals had attempted to set up Linux based servers, all were running Windows Server 2003 (and a few 2008) on their main and/or critical servers. Only one individual was using Apple's OS File Server system, but only for non critical uses. They all gave much the same reasons - better support, easier management, lower costs, less time needed - all the things John Whelan mentioned in his post.

Peter Ware

 

[gawpo50]

Mr. Whelan is right. This is one side of Unix that a lot of companies don't like.

The other thing too is once the program is available for Ubuntu, what about the other flavors of 'nix. Wouldn't people then want one for Red Hat, Solaris, Oracle Linux, Slackware, etc?

This is a major problem with the 'nix operating systems. There are so many flavors that it is really difficult to write a program that would load on all of them unless it is a specialized program meant for the proprietary platform.

So instead of going for the smaller proprietary market, Auran went for the more popular Windows and now Apple market where the consumers will purchase the program.

John

Hi John

You are wrong on a couple of points in the above quote.

1. Solaris is not and never will be Linux, it is it's own proprietary OS
2. All versions of Linux use the same kernel, just like Windows versions all use the same kernel.
3. The only differences among each flavor of linux is the package tool the each use and what they package with their base distribution.
4. There is generally no problems with most new hardware on the market now, if the linux kernel has the driver code in it, it will recognize the item right away.

I have successfully had TS2009 and TS2010 both running under Ubuntu using wine including Content Manager. The only problem I have come across was in the version of Wine I was using at the time which caused some of the larger routes to take a long time loading. Over the next few weeks, I will be trying to get TS12 to work under Ubuntu, will let any users who are interested know if it works on the forum.

Pter