Debate!!!

Yer, I agree with Swiko. Linux can be initially very confusing… but, I guess it’s all part of the cool fun of finding out about stuff. I mean, try explaining to someone about mounting file systems. geepers.
“but, why isn’t it just THERE!?! why do I have to type mnt /dev/hda1 /mnt/dos to see my C: driiIIIiive!”

Having said THAT, then getting started isn’t too difficult. You just need to get some linux distribution such as RedHat (and, no, you don’t NEED to buy it if you have access to a network or a cd-burner and plenty of patience and boot to the CD. I’ve installed TurboLinux, RedHat and Mandrake, and it’s all reasonably straightforward…

You should really pick up a book on Linux, I think? I mean, how else do you know how to start X with startX, hmmm?? Or what a .xsession does? or a .cshrc?? so… getting a book or a linux guru to give you a hand is probably a GOod Thing

my 2c worth

cheers
John

oh, that’s right! My whole point for posting was FORGOTTEN. I saw a tech release from microsoft expounding on their New! And AMazing! Invention… baout how their researchers are busily commig up with amazing new ideas to revolutionalise the world, yadda yadda. well, this article was about the “inventor” or symbolic links.

Really… it’s FUUNNNY. uh… guys… unix has had sym links for… hmm… ever?

cheers,
John

I’ve got some observations that could use some more insight. I have used both DX and OGL so don’t go yelling that I haven’t. Ok on to the observations. In my studies of DirectX I came up with the conclusion that DirectX is so “quick” because it utilizes not only hidden windows APIs but also has the capabilities to directly access the video hardware. As third party implementors of OpenGL it is obvious that without direct access to video hardware and hidden APIs it will be slower (Is there a way to directly access hardware in Win programming?) So what I’m thinking is that if MS is broken up will DirectX be moved to the “programs” portion of MS? If so then we may see DirectX slow down as new releases of windows come out. Then possibly OGL will advance a little more. Just some Ranting.

Random Task

Originally posted by Random_Task:
In my studies of DirectX I came up with the conclusion that DirectX is so “quick” because it utilizes not only hidden windows APIs but also has the capabilities to directly access the video hardware.

Just to point out that was the whole point of DirectX. pure windows functions are too slow and Microsoft had to do something to make game developper happy and make them accept windows as a game platform.

[b] As third party implementors of OpenGL it is obvious that without direct access to video hardware and hidden APIs it will be slower (Is there a way to directly access hardware in Win programming?) So what I’m thinking is that if MS is broken up will DirectX be moved to the “programs” portion of MS? If so then we may see DirectX slow down as new releases of windows come out. Then possibly OGL will advance a little more. Just some Ranting.

Random Task[/b]

The version of opengl on windows is made by microsoft. You are right, just taking software rendering into account, Direct3d is faster because microsoft made more optimisations, but opengl standard specifies that if a card support opengl, it must support all features! So there is no real need for third party opengl implementation

I belive for any type of 3d or advanced graphics that Opengl would be the best api to use. DirectX is great for their directinput directsound directmusic and directplay, however direct3d is very hard and painful to use and does not run as smooth or look as good as opengl. Just look at the difference between Quake3 Arena(opengl) and Unreal Tournament(d3d). Quake3Arena looks much better with flashier graphics. UT looks very blocky, everything is rectangular! I belive opengl is the best 3d graphics api, nand dinput, dsound, dmusic, and dplay are excellent for games also, however d3d is just plain horrible. This is all my own opinion of course, so tell me what u think.

Originally posted by Random_Task:
In my studies of DirectX I came up with the conclusion that DirectX is so “quick” because it utilizes not only hidden windows APIs but also has the capabilities to directly access the video hardware.

Is there any particular reason why an OpenGL library for Linux can’t/shouldn’t be able to access hardware? Take NVIDIA’s implementation: they have three libs (libGL, libGLcore and libglx) which work with their XFree86 4.0 nvidia drivers to access hardware directly. I’m using it right now and even without the extra perks associated with AGP (something wrong with their AGP implementation), I’m getting fantastic results with it. 8^)

Oh … and may I also advocate OpenAL <http://www.OpenAL.org/&gt; as an alternative to DirectSound.

Hi,

well, what you quoted in your reply and what you responded to are two entirely different things.

It has been alleged that microsoft have “secret” sections of their windows API that allows DirectX to access the hardware directly; ie. magic directX backdoors that OpenGL can’t access. But that’s another story, and I don’t want to go there.

What you responded to is a different matter. SGIs allow direct access to the hardware, largely because it doesn’t expose a linear framebuffer to the user. It’s GLX can bypass the X-Windows interface and talk directly to the OpenGL pipe with appropriate resource locking.

Can Linux do this? Hmm. Not sure. THere are good philosophical/techical/practical reasons why a given resource (not just the screen, but printers, the harddisk, etc.) shouldn’t be exposed to the user process. Whter XFree4 can get around this is another question. I don’t know.

cheers
John