Best (CD Bootable?) Linux Distro for Dominions?

Cainehill · #1 March 25th, 2004, 04:17 AM

In an attempt to alleviate the crossplatform bugs that keep Windoze / Linux players from seeing the actual battle playbacks when the game is hosted on the other platform, I spent this afternoon downloading and getting Knoppix to run.

With Knoppix, it's enough of a pain that I kept some notes on a step-by-step way to get D2 running, thinking I might post a faq, or pass one on to one of the D2-related sites.

Having finally gotten Knoppix to run (limp?), and gotten Dominions installed under Linux, I find it's unplayable. Now - I know (well, I suspect) it's a driver issue : updated drivers from Nvidia may, and even should, alleviate the performance so it gets more than 0.3 frames per second on minimum detail.

However, since Knoppix boots from the CD (an ISO image burned to one), it's .... "Difficult" to figure out how one could install the updated video drivers (for Nvidia, or whomever).

It'd be possible to do a full RedHat or SuSE install to harddisk and install video drivers, Dominions, etc, on top of that, but....

I'm actually trying to figure out the best, lowest pain way for non-UNIX geeks to be able to run Linux D2 from their Windoze boxes. Telling them to install Linux onto a hard disk partition isn't a good solution.

(I say this because getting a dual-boot system not infrequently involves screwing up drive partitions and having to rebuild everything, with commensurate loss of data if everything wasn't backed up. (And almost no one does proper home backups anymore, not in a day of 60-180 gig drives. Plus, with Windoze, you're -still- likely to lose everything.))

Telling them they can burn a Linux CD, boot from that, and properly enjoy multiplayer, multiplatform, D2 games seems like it would be a Very Good thing.

And I know there's many (more than a few) people playing from Linux platforms here. So - any of you have information on which CD-bootable Linux distros would work well for Dominions? Knoppix, Gnoppix, Feather, etc? Tips for getting updated video drivers working with them?

Or should I scratch the idea, and figure that any such FAQ should simply say "You're going to have to build a Linux partition on your hard disk. If you don't know what that entails, or aren't a unix sysadmin, don't try."?

Regards,
Cainehill

Gandalf Parker · #2 March 25th, 2004, 04:26 AM

The Devs use RedHat. In the early days of Dom1 I had trouble getting it to run on my Debian linux and the answers I received were RedHat answers which I had to translate. Not the answer you wanted but for the most support in future changes Id say RedHat would have some advantage.

[ March 25, 2004, 02:27: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

SelfishGene · #3 March 25th, 2004, 09:34 AM

This is a bit OT, but how do you like Knoppix? It should be arriving tomorrow. Im getting it to kill an evil Linux partition Fdisk refuses to handle.

More specificially, QTPartition

.

liga · #4 March 25th, 2004, 10:10 AM

I use Mandrake 9.2 for my Dom2 games at "work" at it work fine (I have noticed that under linux, with the same hardware, I got less efficeny in graphical details ... but it could be that I'm using a workstation not really configured well for graphics but just only for calculations) ... a way could be to install dominions 2 in a Linux box running into Vmware but I must admit I never tried yet ... I have one vmware running a Linux Mandrake 9.2 at home (on windows XP pro) ... i could try to install dom2 and post here a report.

good play
Liga

magnate · #5 March 25th, 2004, 12:31 PM

Debian Users should dist-upgrade to Sarge and all should be well. I use Sarge's own Nvidia drivers, not the newest Nvidia ones. (Yes, Sarge is still technically "testing", but it's very stable now.)

I don't mean to be rude, but isn't finding a solution enabling people to play Dom2 from a bootable Linux CD kind of missing the point about it being multi-platform? Wouldn't it be better to fix the bugs which prevent players on different platforms viewing battles? (Muchos apols if this has already been done to death.)

CC

Johan K · #6 March 25th, 2004, 01:22 PM

This bug has been fixed in the next patch. So hopefully you'll soon be able to mix OSes and still get correct battle replays.

GavinWheeler · #7 March 25th, 2004, 04:55 PM

I like Knoppix in general, but tend to keep my games on my lingering Windows partition. I did test the Doms 1 demo on linux (Mandrake 9.2) and found it to be surprisingly slow - way slower than on windows on the same, admittedly old, machine.

This seemed odd as it has always been the other way around for me - programs that ran on both platforms were generally way faster on Linux than on Windows. But Tuxracer also crawled when I tried it, which makes me wonder in Mandrake haven't messed up the graphics drivers somehow??

Anyway, we'll never get linux geeks to agree on the 'best' distribution. At least we can all agree that vi is the One True Text Editor.

Cainehill · #8 March 25th, 2004, 05:16 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by magnate:
I don't mean to be rude, but isn't finding a solution enabling people to play Dom2 from a bootable Linux CD kind of missing the point about it being multi-platform? Wouldn't it be better to fix the bugs which prevent players on different platforms viewing battles? (Muchos apols if this has already been done to death.)
CC

Well, until Johan posted in this topic that the bug is fixed in the next patch, there was no indication that it would be. Given that I don't have the source code, I felt that yes, it was worthwhile to devise a bootable Linux CD workaround. Presumably I'm not the only Windows based player involved in MP games via the mosehansen.dk site who is disadvantaged by hallucinatory battle scenes, and was surprised to find this to be the case.

PhilD · #9 March 25th, 2004, 05:17 PM

I shortly tried to get Knoppix to work, but wasn't very successful. Mostly, all my machines(*) are either dual-boot from the day I start using them, or Linux only. Repartitioning a mostly empty drive for dual boot isn't too hard, and only bothers you the very first time you have to do it.

But I'm not sure how you'd go about getting Knoppix to write your game data to a real partition... does it do it transparently?

(*) Two office desktops (one in each of my 2 offices), one office laptop, my home PC, my girlfriend's home PC, and my old personal laptop, though this one's mostly dead; yes, I qualify as a geek.

PhilD · #10 March 25th, 2004, 05:19 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Johan K:
This bug has been fixed in the next patch. So hopefully you'll soon be able to mix OSes and still get correct battle replays.

Hurrah! (it's not fun booting up to Windows just to watch important PBEM battles, and I can't really do this for my TCP/IP games...)

Now, if you could give us a (prospective) date for this marvelous patch...