Mateo

Root and I have been talking about this for a while, and finally decided to bite the bullet and get it done: Tactical OS, the Tactical Gamer linux distribution.

Find out more here:

http://www.tacticalblog.com/TGMateo/

If you want to be involved in the coding, testing, graphic design, or general butt kicking of the linux community, PM myself or ROOT.

CingularDuality

Oh, I'm so very interested in this! You make it as idiot proof and as stable as XP and I'll pay for it! And if you don't want the money, then we can donate it to TG or have some kind of contest to give away Supporting Memberships or something...

I'm not willing to beta test it as my primary OS, but this LiveCD thing intrigues me.

Please keep us all updated on this!

__________________

Become a supporting member! -- Shop at the Tactical Market!

Take the world's smallest political quiz! "I was touched by His Noodly Appendage."
TacticalGamer TX LAN/BBQ Veteran:

Mateo

Noone is going to have to pay for it....I'd like to say ever, but there may be a time in the future that we want to include an actualy Transgaming license in there. It's not likely.

As far as stability, linux is at the point where it is dead stable....the key issue is making it easy to use.

Pokerface

Linux itself is dead stable; it's making WINE stable with the games we play that's going to be an ever-lovin' hoot. :P

__________________

NS Game Officer. TF2 Admin. BF2 Admin / Scripter. PM with issues.
Tempus: Pokerface is nailing it right on the head. Everyone who is arguing against him is simply arguing against reality.
<anmuzi> it is not permitted to have privacy or anonymity
<LazyEye> yeah when I play on TG the server digs though my trash
Arm yourself with knowledge: TG NS TF2 BF2

Root

Why do you think he's got me involved? I'm the token idiot on the team

Root

__________________

Mateo

I think the only token idiot on this team is me, for suggesting it.

CingularDuality

That's actually what I meant... If you guys can let me run my games on the TacticalOS, then I'm in.

Does WINE emulate the entire Win environment, or just allow one application to think it's running on Windows? I'm just wondering how it'll work if I need to be running BF2, the BF2 admin program and TeamSpeak, all at the same time.

Just as a request, I'd also like Xfire and Trillian for my gaming machine. I have no idea if they have linux versions or not, just throwing them out there...

__________________

Become a supporting member! -- Shop at the Tactical Market!

Take the world's smallest political quiz! "I was touched by His Noodly Appendage."
TacticalGamer TX LAN/BBQ Veteran:

Root

You can run more than one windows app at a time with wine. You have to if you want to play CS, because you're running steam, cs and IE6 all at once. Running TS shouldn't be a problem.

What *may* be a problem, is running BF2 and the admin tools, for the simple reason that it's new and wine may not have been updated yet.

There isn't an xfire client for linux yet, and there doesn't seem to be one coming. The xfire forums are full of requests, but no response from xfire themselves. Kinda like when you post on steam forums.

There *is* an xfire plugin being developed for gaim, which is an alternative to trillian. This is only in alpha at the moment, so don't bank on it being releasedas a final anytime soon. I'm not sure there is a trillian client. Sadly so many programs don't get ported. This will change as more users make the switch though.

Root

__________________

Mateo

Whoa, guys, baby steps! We know that Steam runs on WINE/Cedega, but is not necessarily easy to install or configure. Let's start there. BF2 is the latest and greatest Dx9c game, it will be very unlikely that stock WINE will run it. Maybe Cedega will, in which case, we can test it using the CVS version.

Pokerface

Go you guys! Just let me know when it's done. :P

__________________

NS Game Officer. TF2 Admin. BF2 Admin / Scripter. PM with issues.
Tempus: Pokerface is nailing it right on the head. Everyone who is arguing against him is simply arguing against reality.
<anmuzi> it is not permitted to have privacy or anonymity
<LazyEye> yeah when I play on TG the server digs though my trash
Arm yourself with knowledge: TG NS TF2 BF2

micr0c0sm

Poker wins. What we need to do for this to be successful is baby steps.

Step 1) choose a platform
Which distro should this be based on?
Which installer should we use?
Which package manager?
Which window manager?

Step 2) pick a default program list.

Step 2.5) final touches.
Every time a new app is installed, you tweak it to be consistent with the overall distribution. Trust me, getting a kernel working, and then adding a splash screen when it starts to boot WILL break things. Better to get each application working exactly how we want it before moving on.

Step 3) install programs, one at a time while executing step 2.5.

Oh, and please, SET DEADLINES. No deadlines = wasted time. Deadlines = people will get thier ass in gear. i know it sucks and i would rather not have them, but this requires a lot of work.

so things to choose (set a deadline for these decisions).

Base system.
Package manager.
Window manager.
Installer.
Init-Scripts.
Default program list.
First game to support.

Once we have all the programs we want installed and running correctly, then we choose one game to tweak to perfection. Then we add games one at a time, tweaked to perfection. I have played ns on linux. It ain't pretty but it worked. I vote CS as the first game to support. CS 1.6 on steam. I don't play CS (at all) but it is the most popular game, and CS 1.6 will be easier than CS:S. Personally I would rather see support for natural selection because I play it, and I know it works decently once your drivers are set up, but I have to keep in mind our audience and who is making the distro. I actually thing ns lends itself to a more open audience but I do not want to judge.

Mateo

Don't know yet. I have yet to install Arch, so I don't know if it is viable or not. The only reason why I am looking at it now is because you brought it up. Originally, the idea was to use debian/zen as a base, and go from there. That would have given us synpatic as a package manager.

Window manager will be KDE. The point is ease of use, and KDE is readily understandable to all. To keep the distros size down, that's the only one it will ship with. If someone wants to add another, they can do it through the package manager.

KDE, all the apps that come with it (except K-office), Open Office, Real, etc... latest ALSA, Kernel, etc....you read the blog, right?

And that, right there, is where the timesink comes in. Most distros let the fit and finish pass, so you have a hodgepodge of gui types, fonts, etc...that is unprofessional in my mind. It's got to just work.

Actually, I think a better idea is to start from a finished product, and work backwards. There is no sense reinventing a KDE desktop from the kernel up-there are 100s of them already. The point is to revise it to suit our needs and requirements.

There will be milestones and deadlines once the final starting distro is decided. That will be next week. After that, I will start banging on the code, and parse out fit and finish stuff to others.

If someone wants to get working on some walls, icons, and the like using the TG dogtags, you can get started there.


Init scripts are something I want to isolate the basic user from. Yes, it's easy for someone that knows what they are doing, but thats just you and me so far.

The first game will be Counterstrike, although I was hoping to get CS:S up and running. Supposedly HL2 runs on the WINE dx9 patch really well, but I haven't tested it myself.

Keep them coming!

=Sarc=

Trillian isn't available for Linux but there are plenty of alternative chat clients that are suitable.

I'm a little worried about TS and a few other things. TS isn't supported very much on Linux. They have a package but I could never get it to work. It had some conflicts with dependencies with Open Office. So there may be some head banging to get the two working. Cedega costs money, I believe. A friend uses it but got a group of people together to chip in for a license. It supposedly works much better than WINE. ATI support is another problem. Linux works really well with nVidia cards because nVidia has a mature driver set. ATI has recently put more effort into Linux drivers. I could never get it working and never had the patience to keep trying.

__________________
JO Guides & Tutorials
Team Element - It's who you game with.

Mateo

Both GAIM and Miranda are cross platform, and work as well as Trillian. Not as pretty, but they get the job done.

Teamspeak is an issue. I haven't looked into the dependencies, but maybe there is a workaround (i.e. ventrilio on WINE, VoIP, etc.).

Yes, Cedega costs money, to the tune of $5 per month. To stay compliant with the GPL code they use, the commit their changes to WINE back to Sourceforge....so anyone can go grab the code and compile it without paying a thing. The downside is that the public version does not have the safedisc code in it, so you need to grab no-cds to run the game.

Another option is using stock WINE with the DirectX9 patch. So far, using that method, people have been able to get HL2 and Warhammer DoW running without many issues and decent frame rates.

They are not mutually exclusive, however. We can provide an installer for BF1942 DC using one, and support STEAM using another.

We will not be supporting ATI initially. Root and I both talked about this early on, and in the face of the poor driver support by ATI, it will not be possible to support a Tactical Gamer's distro supporting ATI.

IceCold

Wow, sounds pretty complicated...

Too complicated...

If you guys can't make this OS simple enough that I can pop a CD in and click "next" a few times before being able to play BF2, then it's not going to be successful. Are you guys going to be able to do that? I can't tell if your conversations are indicating the amount of work that you (the developers of this new OS) are going to have to do, or if you're discussing the things that the end users will have to do...