Only problems I'm having with this client is the obvious

The aspects of the client that I have tried so far have worked perfectly. It would be nice to have sound working though. Same goes with video. Might I recomend using the mplayer drivers for video.

I'd also like to see the video detection stuff work. And I'd like it to be able to access more video memory. 16mb is a little low. My video card has more memory then that.

The current version of the Linux client seems to work better in fedora core 4 with full updates then the windows client does in windows.

Check out the tips thread, no it wont get sound and video working, but the first post addresses the video card memory usage (has a massive impact) - lots of other good stuff to....

/263/9c/86253/1.html

No MPlayer is not an option for Linden Labs.


Vinci

If could probably be an option for Europeans -- no software patents here, yet -- but since LL is in the USA and 80-90% of the users are, too, tough luck

I just started yesterday with SL. I use Linux virtually 100% for work and home. I'm running Open SuSE 10.0, 2.4 GHz P4, 1.5 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9600XT. I'm very impressed with the quality of the alpha Linux client.

I don't know the release plans but this is such a great addition to Linux I'd recommend scoping the initial release to sound and forget stuff like the hardware detection. The Linux crowd knows at least a bit about their hardware. Editing a simple settings file is trivial for us especially with good community support like this.

Minimizing the functional footprint seems in the plans for the Linux 1.0 client? I'd like to add my encouragement to keep it that way for now.

BTW, I heard an MS guy on TWiT this morning that said MS owns an island with all kinds of spiffy stuff. He even explained "an island is actually a Linux blade". I think he threw that in to point out MS is hip that the monopoly ends with the desktop. Regardless I kind of chuckled at the idea of MS "owning" a Linux server

Oh well. Forgive the ramblings of this n00b.

I see two things wrong with this. First, you're speaking for the entire Linux community, and it's a pretty varied crowd. There are people trying to get this game to work that don't use the console if they can avoid it. Linux is growing more user-friendly, and with that trend also comes the tendency to attract less savvy users.

More importantly, when we say "hardware detection", this includes how much RAM SL thinks you have. Currently it seems to detect ActualRAM/1000 (integer division). In other words, if you have a machine with 1 Gb RAM, SL thinks you only have 1 Mb. < 1 Gb, and it detects 0 Mb. This detected value is used by SL's caching algorithm, so fixing it would have a *tremendous* effect on performance. Personally, I'd rate that miles above getting sound to work.

In fact, for me, sound is pretty much at the bottom of the known bugs list. I want proper memory/video detection, AGP support (even enabling it in the config file doesn't do anything right now, at least on my machine), and, above all else, copy and paste.

And while I'm in a griping mood: Hey LL, Why are you using UDP??????

Okay, I think I'm better now

Note: Vinci is not a representative of Linden Labs, and cannot speak for them. What he's referring to is the Trouble With Patents... see this thread for more info.

Summary: Video is streamed with the quicktime codec (whatever it's called), and it's patented. The problem would be solvable if they switched to an open format, but that has it's own issues, most notably forcing people to re-encode their streams.

This is why LL should say "If you want Video in-world on Linux, you install MPlayer. We'll interface with it, but we can't support it."

If somehow the actual codecs used (because QT supports several of them including XviD) are different than the container format (MOV over RTSP), then integrating video is easy.

The mplayer idea seems viable. I would guess LL only has to say "you must have MPlayer and <whatever> codec(s) installed" to use streaming vid. It would then be up to a user to ensure they are in compliance with local legality. I'm no expert on this but Linspire seems to have worked this out so QT format is available in the US and other countries with similar IP constraints. I think Fluendo will be making this stuff more widely available via GStreamer plug-ins.

I guess I wasn't clear. When I said the "Linux community" I meant me since I care most about having my needs met.

Seriously though I find your perspective challenges my limited take on Linux: 1) You don't need to go into a console to edit a text file 2) you need 3D acceleration to run SL and this pretty much means getting into driver installs 3) Linux is one land mine after another for typical home desktop users so it's hard to imagine a totally non-technical user trying to run a commercial 3D app like SL. 4) every non-technical Linux user is supported by a techie friend or family member OR a non-technical user pretty much just runs the most basic stuff like Firefox.

Give these assumptions I think most unsupported, less-technical users will make a beeline back to OSX/XP after a short time of trying out Linux. Anyone left might not be a hard-core techie but editing a simple text file and knowing the simplest stuff about their hardware would certainly be in their domain.

OTOH, if I'm wrong then that's great. I would love for nothing more than Linux to be gaining serious ground on the desktop outside of administered use.

In support of what you say though I could see how companies like LL need to treat Linux users with the same attention to user-friendliness like OSX and XP users. Otherwise nothing will ever change for Linux and it will remain a techie-mostly OS.

Fair enough


It might be hard to imagine, but it's happening more and more. Our campus tech support has started getting walk-ins who have installed Linux on their own (Ubuntu, mostly), and something went wrong, or they couldn't figure something out. In areas without free walk-in computer service, I imagine those people learn how to read forums


Entirely possible, but there are always stubborn users who stick with the OS, often under the *false assumption* that they know what they're doing. I've met many of these people on IRC.


Well, you're still right in perhaps 95% (random statistic!) of cases. But the trend is starting.


Absolutely true. However, you have to be careful not to go the way of XP, sacrificing robustness and safety for user-friendliness. I'd honestly like to see a Linux distribution that explains the major differences between Linux and Windows when you boot it the first time... permissions, the root user, just simple stuff like that.

A comprehensive set of easy-to-follow tutorials, with analogies when appropriate, wouldn't be amiss. Explain things like "Where is my C: drive?" and a lot of "How do I do <insert task common and easy in Windows, but less obvious in Linux>?"

I'd write these myself, but I absolutely suck at explaining technical concepts to non-technical people...

That's great to hear. I bet there are a ton of cracked Windows out there and could imagine a few percentage points of people will try Linux once confronted with the new "Genuine Windows" program.

Linsipre is the only distro I've seen that provides a really great out-of-box experience for a new user. It's $50 for all of the PCs in your home. The additional $20/year for Click and Run also covers all of your home PCs. I bought it just out of curiosity but have ended up using it on my wife's laptop because the browser plug-ins are so much better than anything else I've tried.

Linus distros need better iPod support, Flash for Linux not to lag XP/OSX, simple proprietary drivers installs (like how the new Firefox Flash installer works), more commercial app support, etc. Still, a distro like Linspire is virtually a 100% fit for many people's needs at a much lower cost and with the great benefit of better security and stablity (though MS seems to be doing a lot better in both regards).

Anyway, go little Penguin go

This is where the "Closed Shop" of people like Apple comes in... They won't release Ipod for Linux, and if you reverse engineer, they call the DMCA down on you... (actual case, not with linux tho).

The support Linux can offer, is getting better.

Closed formats, which is a HOT issue in Europe, with lots of court cases going on to force the opening of protocols, are released for Linux at the whim of the manufacturer.. which is his right, I guess. Though preventing Reverse Engineering for compatibility is NOT his right, IMHO...

The States is having big problems with this stuff because of the DMCA, but in Europe, this is seen differently. Fair Use still has priority here, so far, despite massive pressure from the DMCA fans in the states

Last time I looked at Linspire, it appeared to have gaping security holes involving the normal user having root priveleges...

Anyway, ubuntu is a great free (as in beer) distro that works for most people right out of the box, and has a pretty simple install for even some proprietary apps. I haven't tried it myself though... just seen it used, and it looked simple.

Touche, salesman.

Anyway... they fixed that, right?

Yes, it was fixed in the autoupdater and all current releases before the news hit. You'd need privileged or local access to the machine to be able to exploit this so it didn't allow for remote code execution, only local takeover. It only made big news because Ubuntu-specific exploits are an exception.

The fact it was fixed in record time isn't an issue, it should have been fixed in record time and it was. It hit the news because it got out the door, because some clutz didn't know what he was doing and nobody was checking his work. Thats why it was a big story. Overhyped a little maybe (if your physically sat at a Linux box and you can't root it, well....).

Sure we have software patents. But they are not called that.

Vinci