Linux and Civ V

Thanks for the info. I will now be able to buy and play Civ V. :D
I transitioned to Linux (Ubuntu) late last year and did a clean install of Lucid/10.04 earlier this year as a stand alone OS (no more dual boot). My son is an avid gamer and has Ubuntu/XP/7 triple boot, but I don't usually get a chance to get anywhere near his PC!:lol:
This means that I will be able to play the latest version of one of my all time favourite games. While I'm sure I'm not in the majority, I am an example of someone who would not be buying this game if I couldn't play it on Linux. I'm not a big gamer these days but I have bought a few games (like World of Goo) since I moved to Linux only and obviously I will not buy a games that won't play on Linux because its of no use to me.

Look forward to that Steam client when it finally makes it, I think early to mid next year is not unreasonable. Have to wait and see though.
 
Okay, I've gotten Civ5 to work with Steam on my Ubuntu 10.04 install, but for the life of me can't get .NET 4.0 installed with Wine to allow the Modding Tools to work. Has anyone gotten it to work yet?
 
Okay, I've gotten Civ5 to work with Steam on my Ubuntu 10.04 install, but for the life of me can't get .NET 4.0 installed with Wine to allow the Modding Tools to work. Has anyone gotten it to work yet?
there is no .NET on other OSes
 
While I'm sure I'm not in the majority, I am an example of someone who would not be buying this game if I couldn't play it on Linux.

Same here :)

Okay, I've gotten Civ5 to work with Steam on my Ubuntu 10.04 install, but for the life of me can't get .NET 4.0 installed with Wine to allow the Modding Tools to work. Has anyone gotten it to work yet?

you won't have any luck with .NET 4.0 under wine, sorry.


there is no .NET on other OSes

1) yes there is, it's called mono.
2) we're talking about wine here. versions of .NET from 1.1 - 3.0 run inside this environment.
 
This means that I will be able to play the latest version of one of my all time favourite games. While I'm sure I'm not in the majority, I am an example of someone who would not be buying this game if I couldn't play it on Linux. I'm not a big gamer these days but I have bought a few games (like World of Goo) since I moved to Linux only and obviously I will not buy a games that won't play on Linux because its of no use to me.

Look forward to that Steam client when it finally makes it, I think early to mid next year is not unreasonable. Have to wait and see though.

Released blueprints for Ubuntu 11.04 reveal that developers are planing to implement synchronization with online gaming distributing systems, in fact Steam is mentioned by name, so yes, Steam Linux client is basically confirmed.

However, after seeing how bad Civ 5 is, I won't buy it even if it comes to Linux. Maybe some future patches will improve it, but the big question is whether I will care by then. Maybe I'll just go enjoy some Alfa Centauri.
 
Released blueprints for Ubuntu 11.04 reveal that developers are planing to implement synchronization with online gaming distributing systems, in fact Steam is mentioned by name, so yes, Steam Linux client is basically confirmed.

However, after seeing how bad Civ 5 is, I won't buy it even if it comes to Linux. Maybe some future patches will improve it, but the big question is whether I will care by then. Maybe I'll just go enjoy some Alfa Centauri.

Or they could be bending over backwards to try to get Steam to come
 
That's my opinion as the user of the most popular platform when it comes to PC gaming.

Why couch your answer in a riddle?

You probably meant MS Windows, but that will change when it becomes obvious to Game Players and Game Makers that Linux is a far more stable and versatile platform.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
Considering Valve announced it has no intentions of Linux Steam in the near future this is not happening

As I understand it Steam is simply a Game delivery system. There is no technical reason why Civ V must be tied to Steam.

The publishers of Civ V are free to remove the Valve Steam dependency in the future and probably will for future Civ V releases (especially after they have saturated the market and want to target players who refuse to load Steam on their systems). A Complete Civ V for example probably would not be tied to Steam.

Minor Concern:

I'd be concerned that Valve would go bankrupt and leave all its users with hundreds of unplayable games.

Disclosure:

I hate the whole idea of Steam and its ilk. I just barely tolerated it enough to install Civ V. In my opinion, Steam for Civ V is simply an over-growth copy-protection system.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
there is no .NET on other OSes

Sure there is. There is Mono which is a Linux Native version of the .NET framework, but it doesn't work very well. You can also run .NET 1 & 2 using Wine. Wouldn't be able to play hardly any game without that.

@Sun Tzu Wu - I am able to get the game running in Wine, so no need to get codeweavers. My problem is the ModBuddy tools, which I don't think I'm going to be able to get to work at all until Wine gets .NET 4.0 support. I don't really need ModBuddy, as I've used Eclipse and gedit when I was working on The BUG Mod, but I *DO* need Nexus so I don't have to package and release the Mod the old-fashioned way. I also need the World Builder tools. And I really don't feel like spending money to get CrossOver, and then more money hoping they'd make .NET 4.0 work.;)

So no one knows a way to run .NET 4.0??
 
I play Civ5 on Wine, and it works really well.

But i can't download mods because apparently the BITS service implementation seems to be incomplete.
 
You probably meant MS Windows, but that will change when it becomes obvious to Game Players and Game Makers that Linux is a far more stable and versatile platform.

:lol: will that be the same time it becomes obvious to ordinary computer users that reading forum posts and editing esoteric configuration files in order to get their applications and hardware to work is preferable to out of the box support at the expense of a little stability and flexibility?

Don't get me wrong I use both Linux and Windows and there are many things I prefer about Linux but then I am a software developer not an average computer user.

Its the old adage "Linux is Only Free If Your Time is Worthless".
 
:lol: will that be the same time it becomes obvious to ordinary computer users that reading forum posts and editing esoteric configuration files in order to get their applications and hardware to work is preferable to out of the box support at the expense of a little stability and flexibility?

So cryptic registry entries and corruption of same are better than plain text configuration files? The Registry was the worst idea Microsoft ever came up with - a single point of failure. Microsoft is the #1 "Not Invented Here" place to Work; they reinvent everything and its shows. Most anything they have done right was copied from Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc.

Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) work hard to provide "out of the box" support and if the user is lucky, he will have a good experience.

Canonical's Ubuntu provides an excellent "out of the box" experience (nearly everything works just fine with zero configuration [not to be confused with the networking protocol of the same name] via their Live CD which runs the OS from the CD with an option to install to the hard drive. They also have an application that copies this ISO image to a USB flash drive, making it Live as well. MS Windows installation from an install CD can be a very taunting experience, even to an experienced software developer. Red Hat has a great Linux server OS (Red Enterprise Linux).

When OEMs realize how much easier Linux is to maintain than MS Windows, Microsoft will lose massive amounts of income.

Don't get me wrong I use both Linux and Windows and there are many things I prefer about Linux but then I am a software developer not an average computer user.

MS Windows isn't very good at running Linux/UNIX applications, but through the efforts of Code Weavers and the Wine project, a large number of MS Windows applications, including "Civilization V" work quite well. There is also plenty of free software and open source applications that run very well on MS Windows and often better than the corresponding closed, proprietary MS Windows applications.

Its the old adage "Linux is Only Free If Your Time is Worthless".

I can't agree less. I find it is vastly easier to add features to free software or open source projects than ask Microsoft to change its closed, proprietary software.

I spent more time with Microsoft's GUI configuration mechanisms time and time again, because for certain type of configuration, Microsoft decided not to support the CLI and configuration files that can be easily manipulated by simple scripts. Have a dozen machines that need to be configured the same, except for different network gateways and other simple differences? A single script can copy the template configuration to all the machines remotely with the desired changes.

There are many thousands of people working at dozens of companies (Google, IBM, HP, Red Hat, Novell, Intel, ...) working with free software and often making six figure salaries doing so. The adage above is not just old, its obsolete.

The revolving door at Microsoft has been very busy these past years with their massive layouts still in progress and their best people leaving in droves in the face of unless stock options. Steve Ballmer allegedly tried to keep Mark Lucovsky at Microsoft by throwing a ... Microsoft is now operating in deep panic mode, though the company certainly wants to keep it quiet. To maintain their growth, they needed to move into new markets and they have done so with dismal success, unless you think 5% of the Internet Search market is a measure of success (Bing).

The Days of the PC are numbered, and Microsoft's plans to move into new markets have largely failed, though Xbox 360 provides some hope for the company with maybe as much as 30% of the console market. Times are tough at Microsoft and its really showing; even Steve Ballmer looks tired now and he's normally one of the most animated leaders in the PC industry (he allegedly throws chairs off camera to convince employees not to quit; See link above).

When's the last time you have seriously used or investigated the features, stability, embedded market share, supercomputer market share of Linux? Don't forget Google's Android (Linux Kernel/Java User Space) which has many times the market share of Microsoft's competing product with its measly 5% share. The world is changing and I'm not sure Microsoft is tracking it, much less taking advantage of it.

gareththegeek, please don't take offense at any of the above. None was intended. I'm just trying express that I probably have a very different opinion concerning the relative technical merits, market shares and futures of MS Windows and GNU/Linux than you do. In a few more years, even the PC (Game) prognosticators (secretly) paid by Microsoft will stop looking at Microsoft with rose colored glasses and so eventually the PC Game Players will at last abandon the MS Windows platform for Linux. After all, the vast majority of serious Game Players will get the best platform for the Game they want to play and that platform will eventually be GNU/Linux.

Sun Tzu Wu
 
The Source engine has been modified to work on Linux previously, note that there is only one and he maintains it

Ok, and the Source engine was ported to Linux to make what? And that product will be offered on what? :D It's not the first time Valve denies making something and then ships it. To quote Valve's own Gabe Newell: "It's not a surprise if you know it's coming".

And it is basically a one-man job, some of the best Linux games were ported by just one guy. S2 keeps just one developer for both its Linux and Mac clients of their popular HoN video game. They called both clients "big success" and all it took them to achieve it was one more guy on a payroll.
 
Well, I think we are talking at cross purposes. I am not trying to claim that Windows is better than Linux, far from it. But you would have to agree that Linux is not there ATM (whether or not it will be in the future).

When I last set up my Xubuntu install it took me a few weeks to get everything working, for example WPA2 wireless or the real time kernel. I certainly have above average computer literacy and I found it a struggle.

Until the average computer user can successfully run a Linux install without EVER having to open a command prompt, Linux is not going to succeed in the desktop market. When I have voiced this opinion on Linux community forums/sites I have found a lot of people have the attitude 'if someone can't work out how to use the command prompt, they don't deserve to use a computer' or that they are somehow 'better' than other computer users because they use Linux.

I would love to be able to use Linux for everything but over the years I have installed Linux countless times and become frustrated and given up because of how much work it can be to get everything working.
 
Linux is great... when you can operate it...
 
Well, I think we are talking at cross purposes. I am not trying to claim that Windows is better than Linux, far from it. But you would have to agree that Linux is not there ATM (whether or not it will be in the future).

When I last set up my Xubuntu install it took me a few weeks to get everything working, for example WPA2 wireless or the real time kernel. I certainly have above average computer literacy and I found it a struggle.

Until the average computer user can successfully run a Linux install without EVER having to open a command prompt, Linux is not going to succeed in the desktop market. When I have voiced this opinion on Linux community forums/sites I have found a lot of people have the attitude 'if someone can't work out how to use the command prompt, they don't deserve to use a computer' or that they are somehow 'better' than other computer users because they use Linux.

I would love to be able to use Linux for everything but over the years I have installed Linux countless times and become frustrated and given up because of how much work it can be to get everything working.

Well, sometimes, on some computers, things can still be a bit touch-and-go. Recently I also had a guy who installed Linux on what had to be the most incompatible hardware in existence, with GeForce 2 Ti and X-Fi audio. He was also a man with a lot of computer skill, but struggled for days to get things working. Years ago, that was a usual way to start with Linux, but now it is a rare case.

Few years ago I've made a prediction that Linux is going to become a major player in client OS market and people didn't believe me, some still don't. The reason why Linux will eventually take over lies in the fact that it is an industry wide effort, with more and more IT heavyweights seeing benefits for themselves and jumping on the bandwagon. Just like no matter how smart one man can be, he can never be smarter than the whole humanity, the same way OS that one company makes cannot better the OS that the whole IT world makes. Closed standards software is chocking the further development of the IT sector, so there is a lot of interest to break the old habits and create a new software platforms based on open standards and protocols (keep in mind I said open standards, not necessarily open source code). To understand this motivation better, let me tell you that prices of average computers in the last 15 years have dropped over 70%, yet Windows and Mac OS still cost the same. Closed software has become a stone around the IT's proverbial neck, stunning the further growth.

So that's why so many are investing in Linux, which in turn brings more developers, which brings more quality software, which brings more users, which brings even more interested investors, etc. It's a circle of very fast growth and betterment that wasn't obvious straight away because Linux started very small and needed to build trust and momentum, but it is starting to snowball down the mountain.

If there is one thing I could advise to anyone just starting in the IT business, it would be to learn Linux, it payed off for me very nicely. It's the future.
 
Considering Apple is selling faster than ever with expensive computers. The Original Power Macintosh costed $1700 now it costs $2500 which is actually more expensive when you calculate inflation
 
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