Gaming dist.
 

Annyone heard of a Gaming distribution ? or a similar project ?
If not wouldnt it be a good idea to have a small dist (i.e. 1cd) with the option
to have the common gaming apps installed and optimized for games ?
Optimized for Nvidia or ATI gfx card, USB-mouses (like the coming Razor boomslang) joy/gamepads etc etc..

The option to compile the entire dist from install (like gentoo)

One great thing would be like it comes with a new game and when you install the game on winxp it says "This game works fine with this OS but if you want best performance you should install linux would you like to install it now ?" :p

It would be nice. I suppose you could make a bare-bones Slackware or Gentoo-based system with the video drivers included on the CD (I wonder if NVidia and ATI allow that). It would only work with native linux games, of course, but more and more of those are showing up all the time...

hmm..
 

slack, Gentoo what ever dist you choose as the core system.
But however it would be great to take a dist. you can freely distribute and modify to fit the "Game dist" certain need.
There are key issues that needs to be standardised like what Windowmanager
to run ? (It makes writing of pingtool (server search tools) hell of a lot easier).
What kernel (ofc i think 2.6).

I think theres a market for such a project, because there are alot of "pro-gamers" out there.

ps. moderator maybe should move this topic to GAME forum instead? .ds

About nvidia and ATI it's just a matter of involving them in an early stage and keep telling them the key benefits they have with this. its good P.R. for them
etc..

Actually, I think slack would be a better distro than Gentoo. The whole emerge thing makes Gentoo a bit harder to set up.

Something light, i think, like blackbox. It could be modified/configured to make the games easily accessible.
definitely 2.6, the performance is much better than 2.4
This is from the NVidia license:
2.1.1 Rights. Customer may install and use one copy of the SOFTWARE on a single computer, and except for making one back-up copy of the Software, may not otherwise copy the SOFTWARE. This LICENSE of SOFTWARE may not be shared or used concurrently on different computers.

2.1.2 Linux Exception. Notwithstanding the foregoing terms of Section 2.1.1, SOFTWARE designed exclusively for use on the Linux operating system may be copied and redistributed, provided that the binary files thereof are not modified in any way (except for unzipping of compressed files).

As far as I can tell, it would be legal to include a copy of the drivers in a distro, provided they are unmodified.

Actually, I've been thinking about this a bit more, and here are my thoughts:
1) the best performance would come from compiling everything manually
2) however, development tools take up a lot of space and they would be redundant once the system is installed
3) suggested solution:
-Create a live CD with developement tools (and nothing else - no X or anything)
-Using the development tools on the CD, create a simple but functional system
-Reboot into the new system

Since commercial games don't require development tools in order to install/run, the lack of basic development functionality shouldn't matter. If there's space, the CD could contain some decent open source games to be compiled at installation.

The system would have to contain: kernel (2.6), bash, coreutils, ed/vi, findutils, file, grep, net-tools, sysklogd, sysvinit, util-linux, X, and video drivers. If anyone can this of other necessary packages, please post them here.

What about http://www.gentoogames.com/ ?
The live CD of america's army seems to be a great initiative.
Although the kernel is precompiled, I guess the global distribution is optimized for gaming...

Has anyone tried this stuff ?

@spuzzz would be distributed with precompiled binaries, for people to see if they like the
dist if they do they can afterwards decide to install it in "expert mode" with sources iow getting
the sources from a live cd and then install with a install script made for compiling everything.
Except thoose programs that isnt opensrc ;)

What Im after is a fast GUI (like XFCE4 or worst case GNOME).
Voice communications program like "Teamspeak.org"
Optimised settings for gaming mouses and joypads.
(seen some Kernel hacks to get 500Hz out of your USB great for USB mouses)
For games like Quake3, UT, etc fps games

This dist. would be great for Internet Cafes don't have to pay MS for WinXP liscens
just to have some computers hosting UT/Q3/HL etc.

@mvbv-linux: yes ive tested the gentoogames cd and it just boots directly to the game.
And that isnt something i was looking for, im looking for a dist for pro-gamers to everyday home enterteinment games.


@Moderator: Move topic to games ?

i've started putting together some source packages (a la LFS) and some scripts to install/compile/configure all the stuff. It is extremely pre-alpha at the moment, but i'll let you know how i'm going. Unfortunately, my computer isn't extremely fast, so compiling all the stuff to test it takes a while :(

Personally, I like blackbox as a light, fast GUI. I'll have a look at XFCE4. GNOME is too slow and big.

I'm going to try to get it working first ;). User-friendly stuff comes later.

If you point me to a site, I'll include it with the default kernel source.

@spuzz you're not on the lazy side are you ? :)

Heres some information from fuhquake site

This is the actual 500hz howto
http://www.fuhquake.net/forum/viewto...ighlight=500hz

2.6.1 diff files is discussed
http://www.fuhquake.net/forum/viewto...ighlight=500hz

Wish I could help in someway.. but mind you im still fairly new to linux :)

Tell that to my girlfriend - she'd have a good laugh ;)
Its just a fun learning experience, though.

gaming distro
 

there's morphix
which is loaded with games and can run from cd without installing to hard drive. it is a knopix-based distro, which is itself based on debian.
hope this helps!

does anyone know - can you use opengl on a framebuffer or is X necessary?

Morphix has a game specific setup already. Uses IceWM and works a treat. Got mine on a mag dvd and there's more games there than you can shake a stick at. Also runs live and detects my nvidia card and sets it up with the nvidia driver as well. UT2003 demo and Quake3 demo came with it.

Tis good.