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
Best (CD Bootable?) Linux Distro for Dominions?
Threaded Mode