About learning game development !

**rangalo** · 06-06-2005, 05:47 PM

Hello all,

I have downloaded Knoppix 3.8.2 CD and running on my harddisk with fromhd cheatcode and with persisitent home ...

Now, I am a C++ programmer and want to learn game programming on Linux. I tried to work on some examples with SDL and found that it is not included in knoppix..My question is : are there similar libraries included in knoppix? I dont have internet at home, so I cannot install with klik. I would also like to know about some internet resources i can use for learning game development with available libraries in knoppix.

thanks,
Hardik

**rangalo** · 06-07-2005, 11:17 AM

Ok may be I have asked the question in the wrong forum. I will try putting this in Games forum and see if I am lucky enough.

**rangalo** · 06-09-2005, 10:09 AM

Hi all,

I got reply from linxquesitons that I require a library like OpenGl for graphics and GTK+ for gui... i searched the packages and did not find OpenGl in knoppix...can anybody suggest what should I do for graphics programming on knoppix ??

i guess I can replace GTK+ with QT3 whcih is included in the cd ... am I right ?

and this time please do reply....

hardik.

**phoboss** · 06-12-2005, 02:02 AM

Probably knoppix isn't the best distro for programming, unless you install to the hard drive. Then, you can apt-get whatever packages you need for your tasks.

**rangalo** · 06-14-2005, 04:16 PM

thaks Phobos,

ok I can understand this but my problem is I dont have much space for installing knoppix on my harddisk...i need to buy new harddisk for that can you tell me the minimum size knoppix needs for hd installation. I guess it is 5 GB and at the moment it is too much for me...

hardik

**UnderScore** · 06-14-2005, 06:42 PM

Originally Posted by rangalo

ok I can understand this but my problem is I dont have much space for installing knoppix on my harddisk...i need to buy new harddisk for that can you tell me the minimum size knoppix needs for hd installation. I guess it is 5 GB and at the moment it is too much for me...

This is not an official point of view but just my opinion.

Unless you truly, must have, gotta install Knoppix, don't do it.

A car is not designed for a good night of sleep. You can sleep in a car but unless you are dead tired, it is something that probably should not be done. Knoppix is not designed to be installed to the hard drive. It is designed to be a bootable CD. Sure it CAN be installed to the HD but it unless you are very experienced, it is something that should not be done. Or in other words, a hammer is a good hammer but make a poor knife.

A Knoppix install on a HD is very difficult to administrate, add/remove software & get new drivers. Some may feel that they can deal with the oddities & the quirks, but if it were all easy, then why are there so many people with problems after a HD install. For example: Knoppix HD installs frequently break the network config & leaves your PC unable to connect to the network.

If you want a boot from CD drive then use a Debian based live CD like Knoppix. If you want to install Knoppix to the HD (which is really Debian) then skip Knoppix & install Debian 3.1 released Mon June 6. If you want a pre-configured user-oriented desktop PC (not server) distro based on Debian then use Ubuntu (GNOME desktop) or Kubuntu (KDE desktop) or see Fedora Core 4 (released June 13). If you want a real noob friendly desktop Debian based distro & are willing to pay a small yearly price for support & software updates use Linspire.

As for game development, as long you can install the SDL & game engine libraries, any distro designed to be installed to a HD should work for you.
I hope this helps.
James

**rangalo** · 06-14-2005, 07:13 PM

Hi James,

and you are right that knoppix is not made for installing to HD, but as I made it clear that my major concern is HD space, I hav a lot of stuff on my little 20 gb hdd that I cannot remove atm.

can you further suggest me some light distro that is designed to install on the hdd ? I can spare upto 3GB for linux.

And on some linux forum, I came across a topic which told, if you want to install debian, install knoppix from the cd and then remover the "knoppix" stuff from it... because to install debian is really a geeky job. What do you say about this ?

thanks,
Hardik

**UnderScore** · 06-14-2005, 08:04 PM

Originally Posted by rangalo

and you are right that knoppix is not made for installing to HD, but as I made it clear that my major concern is HD space, I hav a lot of stuff on my little 20 gb hdd that I cannot remove atm.

Originally Posted by rangalo

can you further suggest me some light distro that is designed to install on the hdd ? I can spare upto 3GB for linux.
And on some linux forum, I came across a topic which told, if you want to install debian, install knoppix from the cd and then remover the "knoppix" stuff from it... because to install debian is really a geeky job. What do you say about this ?

This is 2 parts. First, if someone is telling others that a Knoppix HD install is OK for newbies then they are not fully informed and are causing more problems that they are fixing. Like I had mentioned, a Knoppix HD install will most likely break something, usually networking. A perfect real example of such is this topic within the past week: "Help please - how do I install a ethernet card driver???. Read that quickly & you will realize that we had to support this user with more technical geeky commands than you would normally find in a HD install of a normal distro.

A couple reasons why you should believe me over someone else on some other forum.

I realize that you don't know me from any other guy so I will explain my opinions further. I try to be humble & not mention it, but I am a Linux & Unix systems administrator employed at one of the top 4 software companies in the world (hint: not microsoft). I have used Unix since 1995 & Linux since 1996 when I first used RedHat and ended up destroying my Win95 partition. I know Knoppix. No, I really know knoppix. I wrote a HOWTO on making your custom own Knoppix CD: "HOWTO: Remaster the easy way using menu based scripts. I reviewed "Knoppix Hacks" for NewsForge.com. I gave a talk on knoppix customizing & remastering at my local Linux User Group, LILUG. You can find my OpenOffice slide, a PDF, and even a ISO download of the custom knoppix CD that I made.

So I say that knoppix should not be installed to the HD. What about Debian people in regards to the HD install of Knoppix?
2004
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/.../msg01452.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/.../msg01494.html

2005
http://lists.debian.org/debian-mento.../msg00203.html
http://lists.debian.org/debian-mento.../msg00208.html

As for a small non-geeky Linux distro ... how geeky are you? In some ways you may be more geeky than me!

I can't do real app coding in c/c++/java etc. I can read c/c++/java & I can do scripting in shell, perl but I my mind is simply not wired to be a developer. I've tried & I can't do it. Any how, a default install of Debian 3.1 (sarge) is about 350MB. It does not include KDE or GNOME by default, but adding KDE & GNOME to that base install brings up the total usage to about 1.8GB.

There are plenty of distros to choose from.

Some desktop oriented distros I've installed in the last 6 months
Debian 3.0/3.1 on i386 & alpha
Fedora Core 3, 4 on i386
Suse Prof 9.1/2/3 on i386
Gentoo on i386
Ubuntu/Kubuntu on i386

Those are all great choices & they have their positives & their negatives. In order to keep the size down, most of them should allow you to install only what you want & need. Suse is kinda large (5 CDs). Default install for Fedora Core 4 & Ubuntu is about 1.8GB & these should fit within your 3GB limit.
I hope this helps.
James

**rangalo** · 06-15-2005, 12:32 PM

Hi james,

I dont intend to doubt what you say but I was just putting what I had read about this stuff..and you can understand that I am quite a nub in terms of Linux

I was just hesitent leaving knoppix, because this is my first exp with linux and it was great.

anyways I am planing to go for debian3.1 for keeping the knoppix feel

another thing, I dont have internet at home so i will have to use dpkg instead of apt-get for installing new stuff and that may cause some dependency probs and i have heard that this is very simple with fedora core i.e. rpm so may be i would go for FC4 ..what do u suggest ?

And yes, your posts have been really a great help to me ...

thanks,
Hardik