Quoting: gbudnyCan you play Quake: The Offering using quake.x11 or squake with GeForce2 MX 400?

Sure, and it runs just the same, as it is in software mode on the CPU.

Quoting: gbudnySurprisingly, more modern GeForce cards had issues with Quake: The Offering for Linux.

Can you elaborate on this? Was it an issue with the GeForce cards specifically or was it a conflict with using a later distro for the newer cards?

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Quoting: omer666My Linux PC at the time was a Pentium III too, but it was equipped with a Matrox G200, which I was very satisfied with. I don't really remember what kind of performance I was getting though...

[Edit] Or maybe it was a G400... now I can't remember 😅

On my list of nice to haves would be, alongside any kind of Voodoo card to experiment with, a Matrox G400 Max as it seems like it would be a good showcase of the best the free graphic stack was capable of at the time. Good luck not breaking the bank on any of those though.

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Quoting: CaldathrasIronically, before I discovered that Linux was viable, I had always used ATI GPUs in my gaming rigs. I suspect that a big part of my choice was that ATI was Canadian.

Yep, ATI cards seemed to be more common out here in Alberta largely for that reason too I suspect, in comparison to Nvidia or even 3dfx at least based on what my family encountered while working in IT. Granted, they were not putting Voodoos in many business or home user machines. But we have salvaged many a Radeon card.

Quoting: gbudnyCan you play Quake: The Offering for Linux with GeForce2 MX 400?

Yep, it runs just the same as with the Rage 128 Pro, you are limited to the glquake.glx binary for 3D acceleration.

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Further links and resources can be found on the official website:
https://icculus.org/~hamish/retro/part51.html [External Link]

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Quoting: sarmadThis is unquestionably the most polished open source game. Prove me wrong.

I mean, the game is not finished even according to it development team. Although you could also say that just proves their ambition.

I would say The Battle for Wesnoth is a strong contender for "most polished" though. Less graphically intense sure but polish also implies stable and feature complete.

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Quoting: EikeAll those games and systems are not your own good olde times? What made you investigate them so deeply?

Well, it both is and it isn't. I did not switch over to Linux full time until 2007 largely due to the software I needed for home schooling, but I dabbled a lot with it before then, with my father having a history with Linux going right back to Linus Torvald's original Usenet post. I also grew up flipping through his stacks of old Linux Journal magazines and was fortunate enough to still experience the golden age of Linux book publishing, largely through the robust public library system Alberta had at the time. Many of those books even followed me home through later library book sales.

All of my brother's were also technically precocious again largely due to my father, but we also rarely if ever had the top of the line in terms of hardware, so I certainly still cut my teeth with computers of this vintage. In many ways this project is me paying my respects to the era of Linux when my fondness for the system first arose, while also allowing me to experience a world I was still just a little too young to truly engage with at the time.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyWell, overall, it kind of is. But French speaking in Canada is really quite geographically concentrated--masses in Quebec which has a large population, a couple of other enclaves like the Acadians, pretty much none everywhere else.

I would not say they are unheard of out here, but more as one ethnolinguistic minority among many. Alberta has the highest proportion of Métis in the country for instance, who of course have heavy French ancestry and influence.

A great deal of the towns and villages here also still have French names due to early Francophone settlement. My favourite example is Vegreville, which of course is now far more associated with its Ukrainian population, what with the giant pysanka and all.

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Quoting: gbudnyThat's interesting. I thought French was more popular in Canada because many native French-speaking people live there.

Most of the Francophone population across the country are fluently bilingual, meaning that they often just blend in with the Anglophone majority, outside of certain regions of Quebec and what once was Acadia in parts of the Maritime provinces.

Our federal institutions are obligated to provide services in French, and commercial packaging bears both French and English labels (what I like to call "cereal box French"), but beyond that you would be hard pressed to ever need to learn or use French in Alberta where I live.

Quoting: HamishMaybe you should contact Sleepless and ask about the Linux version of Inner Worlds. I don't think they have a CD, but maybe they could help you obtain the archive for your article. I didn't ask them about it.

The MS DOS version of Inner Worlds was made explicitly freeware, and the Linux version has been found and distributed on the Internet Archive, but I do intend to try and get in touch with Sleepless Software at some point to clarify the legal status of this before I would cover the game for an article.

Quoting: HamishCan you share your opinion on the license for LinCycles for Linux? The README file mentions payments and the availability of the source code for an old version. I'm not sure if it was a commercial title that was re-released as freeware because one of the comments from an author is odd.

Loading up the binary distributed from old SunSITE archives displays the following message:
"LinCycles v2.1unreg by Oliver Richman.
(C) Copyright 1996 Five Wheel Horse Software.

This program is Shareware! The trial period is 30 days.
If you like LinCycles, then please register it. For only $5,
we will send you the registered version of LinCycles, plus our
nifty FWH software catalogue! Source code for all programs are
available. (see the read.me file for more information).
PLEASE REGISTER LINCYCLES! ALSO ASK ABOUT OUR REALLY COOL PDSOFTWARE CATALOG!"

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Quoting: gbudnyDo you learn French in schools in Canada?

It varies based on which province you are in, but not as a general rule no, although it is often offered. The irony of my household is that the only person who has a working understanding of French is my father, who was born and raised in New Zealand.

Quoting: gbudnyI don't know it. I think MP Entertainment released Hopkins FBI for Linux in April 1999. I'm not sure if it was available in stores like Walmart in the U.S. Maybe some Americans remember it.

My understanding is that the Linux version was only ever available through mail order from them directly or through a few select vendors, which is part of the reason it is so difficult to find on the second hand market.

Same with Abuse and Inner Worlds.

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Quoting: gbudnyI always thought that Quake 3 was a black sheep among games for Linux. I wish this game hadn't been released because this decision could have saved Loki from bankruptcy.

I do not think that is entirely fair to be honest; as you yourself pointed out, the bigger issue was Loki's tendency to over invest and stretch their resources far further than their income stream could support. Them ordering way too many Collector's Edition tins was just a symptom of a wider problem.

Regardless, by black sheep, I meant more Call to Power's standing in relation to the rest of the Civilization franchise more than its standing on Linux. Although based on the small sample here, it does seem to have a more positive reputation among at least a subset of Linux gamers than I have seen elsewhere. Quite effusive in fact.

Quoting: gbudnyFor example, you probably need the French version of Civilization: Call to Power for Linux to use installers and patches for this specific version, but you can't change it to English. Please correct me if someone tried it.

There are separate patch installers for both version upgrades and language conversion listed:
https://www.lokigames.twolife.be/products/civctp/updates.php [External Link]

I was able to change my Linux install from English to French and then to German. That may have been useful for me to experiment with before as there were several cheap German boxes of Call to Power for Linux listed on eBay, while the English version I did finally buy cost me quite a premium, while also still being shipped from Germany ironically enough. Too late now though.

I did pick up a very cheap French copy of Call to Power for Windows just for the CD audio to prevent further wear on my expensive Linux disc; the eBay listing never mentioned that it was in French, but it was from a Quebec seller and you can see French text if you really squint at the picture of the jewel case, so caveat emptor I guess. By copying over the English data from my Linux install and modifying the civpaths.txt file I was able to convert it over myself manually, although again, the CD audio was all I was really after. No idea why French versions of older games sell for as cheap as they do to be honest.

Quoting: gbudnyDid you find any commercial games for Linux published in 1997?

I have never really thought of it in those terms before, but I certainly can not think of any off the top of my head. You certainly listed all of the notable ones from that period.

On a separate but related tangent, whether Call to Power was the first or second Linux game to be sold at retail is somewhat muddied by the fact that Macmillan Publishing announced their boxed Quake releases on May 13, 1999 (my fifth birthday) while Call to Power did not start shipping until May 15, 1999 despite being announced months earlier.
https://web.archive.org/web/20081005014949/http://happypenguin.org/html/qlinux.html [External Link]
https://web.archive.org/web/20011201235040/http://www.lokigames.com/news/archive.php3?051999 [External Link]

So you might need to get into an argument over store stocking, logistics, pre-orders, and the like.

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