Status of the Linux Client

Why did you compress the tar.gz including your groups? The extracted files and folders are owned and grouped by "1052" - this was an unknown thing there...

So it's nessessary to change the ownership before you could run it, why did you include the group and owner in the archive?!

Re: the person asking about getting a premium account and using Linux....

I use nothing but Linux on all of my machines. I have no windows partitions anywhere. wheN I buy a laptop, the first thing I do is reformat the hard drive. When I buy a desktop, it's mostly a bunch of parts, but in any event it has no OS installed.

I'm one of those.

I also have a premium account, and have foolishly let myself drift up to the $40 land tier level. I'm not to worried about it; I expect the Linux client to keep existing. And, indeed, given that the client is now open source, even if LL slacks off on it, it's at least *possible* for others to pick up the slack. But, also, given that LL runs all of its *servers* on Linux, I suspect there are a fair number of Linux geeks within Linden. And, corporate philosophy (yay freedom of information) is in line with the sot of people who like to support Linux.

As such... I wouldn't worry about the Linux client going anywhere any time soon. I'd be more worried about LL selling their technology to some megacorp who sees this as a moneymaking opportunity without really understanding the community of SL. I'm not too worried about that either... but that would affect all client operating systems, of course!

It runs on my system without any change of ownership or anything. I use mc to unpack, and just run what comes out. Or are you talking about the source tree maybe?

Ok, I took the plunge and purchased a yearly premium account. Yay, this game is awesome! I just wish it would be possible cram more than 117 prims on a 512m firstland.

Thanks again Linden Labs people for making this game available on Linux!!!

Well really that can't be helped . Because whenever you create and archive there will be an owner/group setting automatically. The other key thing is when you untar it the permissions will change to the user who unpacks it.

FCStPauli, if you have a nvidia card, there's a Live CD that resident Drake Bacon made that has an updater script that runs nicely, and you can copy it over to your installed system to use permanently. You can get it here: http://www.libsecondlife.org/sl/

Don't extract or run as root. Simple enough.

After the scheduled SL update today, will we be able to get in with the currect version of the linux client or will a new one be available for download?

New version needed - it's available for download now.

Yes, keep up the good work Tofu

Well, I have been here for eleven days now. I heard about SL on Simon Mayo's radio show here in England and it took me a while to get the proper nVidia drivers installed on my Mandriva 2007 machine. Once I did it, I was able to log in using the Linux alpha client and from chatting to people it seems as reliable as Windows.

Thank you so much to you splendid chaps for giving us SL on Linux, it's a fantastic experience with lots of friendly people.

As with Prospero, I would not have tried SL were not available on Linux, I'm sure this excellent operating system will get more and more popular as more programs like SL become available for it. After all why would people use Windows when you have a stable, free OS like Linux!

I'm new to this, too. I'm experiencing a small number of problems using the client.

I changed my avatar's looks but couldn't save it, and the avatar couldn't leave the "changing-looks"-mode anymore. And sometimes my capability of moving stops... so I can't move anymore. This seems to happen preferrably after not moving around for a while.

But besides that (and my computer obviously using a lot of performance when running the game, although I have a dual core machine and a nvidia 3D-card with 512MB memory of its own) it all looks pretty good.

I'm curious how this goes on. And I'm kind of proud that this seems to be a 100% GPL-project!? Finally, a "game" is brought to Windows by Linux, not vice versa. (At least at the server side, and growingly on the client side, too, as it seems.)

Well, I've been here 2 months now and things are still working great! The new viewer (14.0.0) has been very stable for me so far... not like a few previous firstlooks that had problems with constant crashing. Keep up the good work with the Linux client!

Very pleased with the linux client. It runs stable on 3 of my archlinux boxes(2 ati's x500/x600, 1 nvidia).

I may have two issues though:
- Is there any way i can get quicktime support in the linuxclient?
- When i press upload texture/image, it does nothing :/

Im running 1.14.0 client here, and im dling 1.14.1 as I type.

keep up the good work. I really appreciate it that LL takes the time and effort to develop a linux client.

On the last one, check behind the window.

Tofu,
I might moan sometimes in the blogs, but I do have to say thanks for all your work on the Linux SL & FL clients. I've been a Linux only geek for a few years now, and secondlife is a superb way of showing off how reliable and stable Linux can be to our OS impaired friends.

My only problem... ok... one problem... is attributing crashes. I ran the latest 14.0.1 client when it was first released and it just crashed horribly for the first night and I went back to the last FirstLook. But now I can run the 14.0.1 release with no problems for hours.
It's un-nerving not knowing if it's a client or server issue that's crashing things, and I'd probably be able to provide more input on real client problems if I could tell one crash from the other.

You've got some keen fairly geeky people using the Linux client and we'd love to help, so if you have any pointers on "ah yes that'll be a server problem" crashes... It might help?

Fer instance... If the last few warning messages are about "Throttling back the network connection" and then it crashes... is that the client or the server? And if I get a "Unknown texture" or "Unknown object" type of message.. is that the server as well?

Any hints much appreciated!
And THANK YOU! It's been a difficult birth, but the SL Linux client has 10 fingers and 10 toes!