[geeks] HD/IDE question

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Tue, Sep 26, 2006 at 04:00:47PM -0400, velociraptor wrote:
 
> The two things that I think will be the hiccups for getting 100% off
> of Windows are the lack of fully functional scanner driver under
> Linux/Mac OS X for my current scanner and Adobe Acrobat. 

IMHO don't waste your money, Linux is not a good gaming platform. Assuming
you are interested in relatively new games, they just are not there, or
won't run. 

Transgaming's products are very narowly focused. Transgaming has put their
effort into adding to WINE support for two things. Direct 3D, mostly on very
high end graphics cards and copy protection. They have a relatively small
list of cards supported and games that will run. 

Buying a brand new game is a gamble that they will be able to get the copy
protection to work and that all of the Windows system call support you need
is really there and works the same way it works under Windows.

WINE itself without Transgaming's improvments does not support many games.
Hundreds maybe, but how many Windows games are there out there? 

When I was planing those things, I was looking at hiring five full time WINE
developers to get the games we wanted to play on our hardware, plus three
times that many QA people. We were looking at low end hardware and
low end games. No one was going to put the equivalent of a $500 video
card in a $150 hand held device. 

Besides Acrobat, MacOSX has IMHO, much better PDF support than Linux. 

As for device drivers, Windows has both far more drivers than Linux, or MacOS
(Intel) ever will, and unlike Linus Torvalds, Bill Gates actually wants the
old stuff to run on new systems and does not arbitrarily cut of support
for older driver architechures.

While I'm a great supporter of Linux and other open source software, I also
think a lot of the Macintosh and don't resent having to use Windows when I
do. To me they are all means to an end, and like any tool, each has their
own best uses. 

Personaly, I think if you are going to spend a lot of money on games,
buy a high end computer and video card for it, you might as well spend the
money on a copy of Windows. Even if the only thing you ever use it for
is to run games. 

Geoff.
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