Linux and Civ V

Very well said Laserburn!

Let me just add that Microsoft's operating systems are behind Linux in every market from the smallest portable device to the largest super computer with the sole exception of the desktop.

Microsoft can't continue the old closed source, closed file standards, embrace, extend and extinguish strategy with regard to open standards. They have opened their source code a little and have honestly embraced open standards a bit more too, but they will have to do far more of it and they still won't be able to compete with Linux, GNU General Public License (free software) and open source (Open Source Initiative).

I'm just really happy that we have always had an Open Internet based on Open Source. Can you imagine what a Microsoft controlled Internet would be like? You would have to use all closed standards that Microsoft controls, pay maybe $0.10 per MB transferred and pay extra for (throttled) speed increases. BTW, Microsoft has patent on device speed throttling already; they probably see no viable way of making people pay for more speed that wouldn't cost them more in bad PR in the long term, otherwise they probably would utilize that patent to make everyone's hard drive or Internet access speed slow and offer a fee for full speed access.

Sun Tzu Wu

civ_king said:

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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They are selling more computers because the market is constantly growing and current popularity of Apple mobile gadgets, but Apple holds smaller market share that they did many years ago. No offense to the Apple fans, but Mac can never become dominant, simply because it is made primarily with profit margins in mind, not the performance to price ratio, the true driving force of any industry.

Therefore, I shouldn't have mentioned Mac when I said that proprietary software prices are holding the industry back. Mac has his own niche and it is neither effected nor affects computer market trends and most important mid-price point technology adoption.

laserburn said:

They are selling more computers because the market is constantly growing and current popularity of Apple mobile gadgets, but Apple holds smaller market share that they did many years ago. No offense to the Apple fans, but Mac can never become dominant, simply because it is made primarily with profit margins in mind, not the performance to price ratio, the true driving force of any industry.

Therefore, I shouldn't have mentioned Mac when I said that proprietary software prices are holding the industry back. Mac has his own niche and it is neither effected nor affects computer market trends and most important mid-price point technology adoption.

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looks like it's going up in Market share to me, what was it originally at?

All of the Mac Products fill niches,

civ_king said:

looks like it's going up in Market share to me, what was it originally at?

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You are too young to remember late 80's and golden age of the Mac. If at that time Apple allowed others to make clones, today Mac OS would have been what Windows is. Unfortunately for them, they waited too long, clones came too late, initial time of expensive PC hardware (as it was new technology) came and went, and after that it was all over. PC's cheaper modular design soon killed all competition, Atari and Amiga went under and Mac eventually had to become PC in order to survive.

And btw, take whatever Macrumors or Appleinsider tell you with a huge grain of solt. The sites are ran by complete fanboys.

civ_king said:

All of the Mac Products fill niches

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They do not cover all market segments, just the high-end. The business moto of Steve Jobs is "make cheap, sell expensive" and everything in the Apple's way of conducting business revolves around profit margins. You can't take over the market with such strategy, even if you have a very interesting product, others will make more affordable copies and undercut you.

My personal opinion is that Civ V should be available for Mac, Linux and Windows and not only for Windows.

But i also think that it was a mistake to release the game so early, they have put away some really great functions, for example the Ingame World Builder and the Spy - Functions, the Multiplayer isn't running at my PC too.

The game isn't fully developed, a game should fit to every System and should be running with no problems when it becomes released.

civ_king said:

looks like it's going up in Market share to me, what was it originally at?

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And if you have a look at the original info (where MacRumors get their data from) you'll notice a few things that put the graph in perspective:

• These figures relate to new PC shipments (not total market share).
• They state that Mac has ~10% sales by vendor, ie vs HP, Dell, etc (which is still pretty significant IMO - but AFAIK doesn't count all the systems that are built by indy PC shops, backyarders and DIYers).
• The graph relates to the US only. In the Worldwide data, Apple doesn't even rate a mention (doesn't make it into the top 6 - so sells less than 5.3% of new PCs worldwide).

Despite the fact that probably almost all of those PCs run either Windows OS or OSX it seems that Linux market share is growing faster than any other: Linux market share grows vs. Windows and Mac OS X shrinkage. Although in fairness it's really hard to get accurate figures for Linux marketshare, as most Linux PCs were sold with some other OS originally.

JedMeister said:

And if you have a look at the original info (where MacRumors get their data from) you'll notice a few things that put the graph in perspective:

• These figures relate to new PC shipments (not total market share).
• They state that Mac has ~10% sales by vendor, ie vs HP, Dell, etc (which is still pretty significant IMO - but AFAIK doesn't count all the systems that are built by indy PC shops, backyarders and DIYers).
• The graph relates to the US only. In the Worldwide data, Apple doesn't even rate a mention (doesn't make it into the top 6 - so sells less than 5.3% of new PCs worldwide).

Despite the fact that probably almost all of those PCs run either Windows OS or OSX it seems that Linux market share is growing faster than any other: Linux market share grows vs. Windows and Mac OS X shrinkage. Although in fairness it's really hard to get accurate figures for Linux marketshare, as most Linux PCs were sold with some other OS orinially.

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Uh your second link isn't a link...

Apple's YoY growth for Q1 is 34%
and they opened their third and fourth Chinese stores this year along with the Chinese online Apple Store

civ_king said:

Uh your second link isn't a link...

Apple's YoY growth for Q1 is 34%
and they opened their third and fourth Chinese stores this year along with the Chinese online Apple Store

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I fixed the link, thanks for picking that up. 34% YoY Q1 growth was for US though, not global (and for the record both Acer & Toshiba each recorded ~50% YoY growth in the US market in the same timeframe). Also all those figures come from research firm Gartner. According to this blog rival research firm IDC put Apple's YoY growth for the same period as only 8.6% - a significant difference (I was unable to confirm that as IDC's content is behind a paywall). According to Gartner (via this) Apple's Q3 figures are far more impressive: 10.6% sales market share!

Regardless though those figures all relate to sales market share (ie percentage of PCs sold by vendor/brand) not total market share (as in total number of PCs running a particular OS). As I said before (and probably many before me), getting an accurate indication of true total market share for Linux is really difficult. This article puts it nicely. Another one here raises a somewhat valid point as to the US/English speaking tilt on true total market share stats (I say only "somewhat relevant" as I would suggest that it is US/English speaking people who predominately also buy games).

JedMeister said:

I fixed the link, thanks for picking that up. 34% YoY Q1 growth was for US though, not global (and for the record both Acer & Toshiba each recorded ~50% YoY growth in the US market in the same timeframe). Also all those figures come from research firm Gartner. According to this blog rival research firm IDC put Apple's YoY growth for the same period as only 8.6% - a significant difference (I was unable to confirm that as IDC's content is behind a paywall). According to Gartner (via this) Apple's Q3 figures are far more impressive: 10.6% sales market share!

Regardless though those figures all relate to sales market share (ie percentage of PCs sold by vendor/brand) not total market share (as in total number of PCs running a particular OS). As I said before (and probably many before me), getting an accurate indication of true total market share for Linux is really difficult. This article puts it nicely. Another one here raises a somewhat valid point as to the US/English speaking tilt on true total market share stats (I say only "somewhat relevant" as I would suggest that it is US/English speaking people who predominately also buy games).

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Apple has plans to open "up to 25" retail stores in China over the next 24 months, I'm sure that'll give some nice YoY growth

wow this went way off the original topic...

I'm assuming everyone is able to make the game work with Wine by now, but has anyone found a workaround for the Mod issue?

The ironic thing is that, while the game runs a little bit slower in wine than it does on Windows, and while I can't load mods like the rest of you guys, I can actually PLAY the game on linux! I have never had a random crash, or a load-game crash, or problems starting large-sized maps while using wine, and I have these constantly on Windows, both XP and 7.

So cheers to the wine team. The game runs decently well within a couple weeks of release, and I imagine within a few more releases we can get the speed and mod issues fixed. When that happens it will be vastly superior on wine than on Windows.

alerum68 said:

wow this went way off the original topic...

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alerum68 said:

I'm assuming everyone is able to make the game work with Wine by now, but has anyone found a workaround for the Mod issue?

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Yep, runs pretty sweet! I've half been expecting updates to break stuff but they haven't (although I must admit starting seems to get slower every update - perhaps there is some stuff that wine can tweak to make that better?) I haven't tried any mods but I haven't read anywhere of anyone doing it successfully yet.

D. Minky said:

The ironic thing is that, while the game runs a little bit slower in wine than it does on Windows, and while I can't load mods like the rest of you guys, I can actually PLAY the game on linux! I have never had a random crash, or a load-game crash, or problems starting large-sized maps while using wine, and I have these constantly on Windows, both XP and 7.

So cheers to the wine team. The game runs decently well within a couple weeks of release, and I imagine within a few more releases we can get the speed and mod issues fixed. When that happens it will be vastly superior on wine than on Windows.

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I haven't played it on Windows at all, but I too have had absolutely no crashes running it on Ubuntu 10.04 under Wine 1.3. Runs sweet as, although as the game goes on (and there are many more cities, units, etc in play) some of the scenes seem to get a little stuttery and every now and again it hesitates. But its only slight and I don't find it a major annoyance. I've just enjoyed playing it, and wqhilst it'd be nice if it was perfect, doesn't sound like it is on Windows either!?!

D. Minky said:

When that happens it will be vastly superior on wine than on Windows.

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the single thing that i like most about gaming on linux (wine or not) is the fact that i just have to hit ctrl+alt+left or right and i am INSTANTLY back to the desktop. have never seen a windows desktop return fast&gracefully from a fullscreen dx-game, there's always some swapping, refreshing, and waiting. gotta love linux memory management

D. Minky said:

The ironic thing is that, while the game runs a little bit slower in wine than it does on Windows, and while I can't load mods like the rest of you guys, I can actually PLAY the game on linux! I have never had a random crash, or a load-game crash, or problems starting large-sized maps while using wine, and I have these constantly on Windows, both XP and 7.

So cheers to the wine team. The game runs decently well within a couple weeks of release, and I imagine within a few more releases we can get the speed and mod issues fixed. When that happens it will be vastly superior on wine than on Windows.

Click to expand...

Ha, newbies, I can play with Mods on the hacked Mac version

alerum68 said:

wow this went way off the original topic...

I'm assuming everyone is able to make the game work with Wine by now, but has anyone found a workaround for the Mod issue?

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The short answer is no. I'm trying but I'm also new to Wine. I have Wine 1.3.7 (Ubuntu 10.10) installed with no winetricks (I think; there are none listed in the Libraries tab under Configure Wine). I start it with Steam (with the SkipIntroVideo option set to 1), click on the DX9 option and then wait. After about 60 seconds, I get the CivV cursor (blue-and-gold arrowhead) and the "Access the Steam Community while playing" popup as well as sound (the music that is played while on the opening menu screen), but it's just a black screen other than the cursor.

Without a workable knowledge of Steam and with a lot of varying info out there as far as which options to try, I'm a bit lost where to go from here. Is there additional information I can supply or does anyone have thoughts as to what to try?

My apologies - ignore my previous post. One update to the video drivers and it works fine.

alerum68 said:

I'm assuming everyone is able to make the game work with Wine by now

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Hello, I am among the many ones who keep a win partition only for Civ and I'd really like to get rid of it !

Is there a detailed instruction list somewhere for people not experienced in Wine ?

EDIT : I'm trying a new install, based on Wine 1.3 and this page. I'll come back to say if it works
EDIT2 : doesn't work. I'll try again in a few years...

IT's now clear Valve will never release a linux version, MS lobby is too strong, they will fight to wine be mediocre to games at best.

And this is where I do an epic thread resurrection.

Civ 5 came for Linux, unfortunately I don't have time as I had before, no way I'll be able to play it. But at least I'm happy for other Linux users. And I'm looking forward to Beyond Earth on Linux, though I'd wish they would also do a 1:1 modern remake of Alpha Centaury.

laserburn said:

And this is where I do an epic thread resurrection.

Civ 5 came for Linux, unfortunately I don't have time as I had before, no way I'll be able to play it. But at least I'm happy for other Linux users. And I'm looking forward to Beyond Earth on Linux, though I'd wish they would also do a 1:1 modern remake of Alpha Centaury.

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You beat me to the resuriction. Just loaded it and gave it a play. Works well for me on arch. Now to see if I can get mods installed some how. Guessing that's still out but I'm glad for the victory.