Of course...3 days away from vacation and I get sick...I sure as hell hope it goes away soon, preferably BEFORE Friday.

Tags: sucks, sick, cold

If I had to give one reason why I don't completely wipe out Windows on my desktop, I would have to say that reason is games. I am a gamer and there are still several PC games I enjoy playing.

These games are made for Windows and can't natively be run under Linux. WINE, which just released version 1.0 of its software to run Windows applications under Linux does a pretty good job at running many PC games, sadly though, it is not a full substitute for running the game on the Windows operating system. I know me personally have had mixed success with running games with WINE. Sometimes I get it working perfectly, other times it takes a little bit of work to configure to get it to even work, and there are other times where I can't get a game to work at all.

The real reason for this is that developers won't make games for Linux. It's not just a matter of making a different installer, its about programming for a different set of graphics libraries, and programming the game to run natively under a completely different system. And despite my wishes that more developers would choose to release Linux versions of their games, I can't say I don't understand their reasoning. Game companies are in the market to make money, like any business. To make more money, it only makes sense for them to make their games for the greater user base, which in this case, is Windows. Like it or not, Windows is still the operating system with the most market share, and it only makes sense for developers to target Windows for their games. Windows may be slowly declining in market share percentage, but its still at the top, and the logical platform for PC games.

Mac OS X has recently grown noticeably in computers sold and some game companies, like EA have taken notice and are starting to develop more for the OS X platform. This goes to show that if a platform becomes more noticeable in the spotlight, it could very well start being developed for.

The argument could always be placed "well game companies should make a version of the game for Linux, so us users aren't left out in the cold". And I think of that argument too, and wish that some developers would take the plunge and start developing for Linux. Some companies have. Unreal Tournament 2003 came with a Linux installer and ran natively, Penny Arcade's game also came with a Linux version. I would love to see big-name games come to Linux, I think that Linux is a great platform and would definitely pay for a game that would run natively on Linux. But again, until more market jumps on the Linux bandwagon, its not realistically profitable for game companies to use Linux as a platform.

There are a lot of pretty good games that do run natively on Linux, but not many of them are the big name titles that you see everyone talking about. To make an example, I've been playing Crysis, the first person shooter from EA and Crytek. This game is a good game with amazing graphics and some pretty good gameplay. It currently can only run on Windows XP and Windows Vista. Its support under WINE is shoddy, and even if you could get it working under WINE, the graphical aspects of it that make it what it is would be lost because WINE can't run it natively.

I'm honestly not trying to bash Wine, I love it and it does a great job with the majority of applications and games, but for those games it doesn't run or just half-runs, there really is no alternative to Windows at the moment. We can only hope Wine improves and/or developers take more notice to Linux. If I can get most of my games to run under Linux, I would be love to be able to wipe Windows off my desktop and just go with a pure Linux system.

What do you think?

Tags: opinion, opensource, tech, linux

Well I finally just beat GTA IV...what's next? Metal Gear Solid 4 or Mass Effect?

Tags: gtaiv, next

Sorry I haven't been updating as much as I normally do, I've been preoccupied both with work and with a new project I've been working on. I'm not going to say too much on it, but it is a new website geared for social media. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with it, but so far its been a lot of fun and its starting to turn out really well and I'm excited with where its going. I'll keep you posted with any details I feel like releasing.

I've been toying with the idea of starting a small podcast, maybe updated every week or every other week that may turn out to be more of a video blog, so once I see what's involved with that, I'll take the next steps in seeing how I can make that idea a reality.

For any social media people out there who like Twitter, Plurk has just jumped on the scene and so far it's looking pretty nice, time will tell how well it does, and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing its API come out. If I can make myself some time, I'll definitely see about taking a stab at it and possibly creating my own app, not sure what platform I'd use though.

As many of you are aware, Apple's WWDC keynote was Monday and I have some thoughts on that I'll probably post either tonight or later this week.

There are totally not enough hours in a day.

Also, if any registerred user tried to comment on something, I apologize. There was a bug in the system, but its fixed now.

Tags: project, apple, wwdc, blogging

Look closely at the product this review is for: Ubuntu 7.04

Tags: ubuntu, humor