Open Rails Support For Linux?

[NW 2156]

Evening, Will there be support for Linux at some point for Open Rails?

Robert

[baldwin]

The project is open source, so basically it needs someone to do the port to Linux. Far as I am aware there is nothing on the OR roadmap to provide Linux support.

[NW 2156]

Baldwin, I was afraid of something like that. I did do a little digging around in the Openrails source. Openrails has a lot of dependencies on Microsoft DirectX and .Net frame work. In order to port over to Linux a lot of rewriting of code would be necessary. Now, That is not all bad news. There are some nice open source projects out there that could supply a working graphics engine, Or at least the necessary API's to port over to Linux.

Here is the list of some of the open source projects that are available in case anyone wants to have a look.

http://www.mesa3d.org/intro.html

http://www.mono-project.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAL

http://sourceforge.net/projects/opendx2/

SharpDX- Open source .Net game engine. http://sharpdx.org/

http://www.ogre3d.org/

https://www.panda3d.org/manual/index.php/Introduction_to_Panda3D#Panda3D_Basics

http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque-3d

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/docu/

Tao Framework http://sourceforge.net/projects/taoframework/

OpenTK http://www.opentk.com/

ANX http://anxframework.codeplex.com/

SDL-Simple DirectMedia Layer https://www.libsdl.org/

FNA-FNA is a reimplementation of the Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh libraries https://fna-xna.github.io/

Engine Nine https://nine.codeplex.com/

Robert

[mikeebb]

In principle, Mono and Monogame (may have been renamed) would provide the equivalent of .Net and XNA frameworks. But of course the principle is never the practice. Almost certainly, that would not work and would require much banging and twisting of code to make anything work.

OTOH, does it work in WINE?

[NW 2156]

Wine seems to puke up ORTS. CodeWeavers Linux program also hates ORTS.

Robert

[ftldave]

Maybe Linux is not dead, but it's certainly a zombie, with all the in-fighting and unresolved conflicts in that community. How much banging, code twisting, and time is worth it to get ORTS to run on, what, less than 2% of desktop computers? That's the latest figure I've seen for desktop Linux usage. [Net Applications reports 1.52% in April 2015.] And note, Linux fans, the keyword is desktop Linux, not Linux on servers, and certainly not stretched claims that Android is somehow a desktop Linux.

This historical perspective from 2010 always comes to mind when I see someone hoping their favorite program will someday be supported on Linux. Though I don't agree with all the author's statements, i.e. about improved Linux ease-of-use and quality, he clearly explains what happened and why so few desktop computers are running Linux.

PCWorld: Desktop Linux: The Dream Is Dead

[gkhager]

Dave,

That article really hits on what offed the desktop market. In the late-90s I actually purchased a copy of Railroad Tycoon II which was designed to run natively in Linux! No Wine needed. It is really too bad that the Linux market never could come together and provide an easy to install, non-hobbyist type of distribution until way too late (Ubuntu). I installed so many flavors (Red Hat, Debian, Suse, etc even FreeBSD (I know not Linux!)), but each one was really good in one area (GUI, networking, audio/video compatibility, etc) that there was not really one all-around best version. All that along with the kernel being updated every few months, the situation was just too fluid to sustain a commercial endeavor when they had the interest. I went to Comdex in 2000 and attended workshops for Linux being held in the large meeting rooms at the Sands convention center, it was that popular! Corel Software was there and I won a copy of Corel Office for Linux by being the only person there that knew Ottawa was the capitol of Canada!?! (sad, I know!) By the next year 2001, the Linux desktop scene had all but evaporated, they were all pushing embedded linux for devices.

So while Ubuntu may have re-ignited things for a little while, the desktop market was gone long before 2008 as far as I was concerned.

Geoff

[gp18]

Maybe Linux is not dead, but it's certainly a zombie, with all the in-fighting and unresolved conflicts in that community. How much banging, code twisting, and time is worth it to get ORTS to run on, what, less than 2% of desktop computers? That's the latest figure I've seen for desktop Linux usage. [Net Applications reports 1.52% in April 2015.] And note, Linux fans, the keyword is desktop Linux, not Linux on servers, and certainly not stretched claims that Android is somehow a desktop Linux.

This historical perspective from TechHive, written in 2010, always comes to mind when I see someone hoping their favorite program will someday be supported on Linux. Though I don't agree with all the author's statements, i.e. about improved Linux ease-of-use and quality, he clearly explains what happened and why so few desktop computers are running Linux.

TechHive: Desktop Linux: The Dream Is Dead

At the risk of hijacking this thread, I cannot pass this up.The WOW computer being shilled by AARP costs $1200. The operating system is Linux, although which distro it is, is a mystery. It is easy for older folks to use, but that is a lot of money. I have Mint 17 on this laptop and it won't run OPENBVE unless I upgrade it or go to another distro. It ran fine on Mint 16.

[chip]

ORTS works well with wine-staging on Debian

ORTS works well with WINEPREFIX=~/.wine32 WINEARCH=win32 wine OpenRails.exe on a Debian stretch amd64 system.

I installed wine-staging: https://repos.wine-staging.com/debian/

I installed dotnet3.5sp1 via winetricks
I installed xna31 (not! via winetricks)

I installed the i386 versions of graphics libraries (e.g. libtxc-dxtn-s2tc-bin:i386, libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0:i386, mesa-blah-blah:i386 and so on)

I installed driconf to enable S3TC texture compression

ORTS version from January 2016 with the free! Radeon driver (xserver-xorg-video-radeon)