Non Windows OSes?

[forkmantis]

Does anyone here use non-Microsoft OSes on their primary computers?

I use primarily linux at home, and Mac OS X and linux at work. When I first started playing online poker for play money, finding a place to play was a challenge. Pokerroom.com runs directly in the browser, so I started there. When I decided to start playing real money, after I stumbled on this site, it became obvious that I'd have to get a windows machine up and running if I wanted to have more than one choice as to where I played.

I was just curious as to wether or not anyone else faced a similar situation, and where they are with it today.

[Sed]

I have heard that crossover office and stars play nicely but haven't tried it myself. I just cross over to the dark side of my hard disk and use windows..

I think pingviini and lefou are the resident linux/poker software experts...

- sed

[ake]

Vmware will do the trick, that's what I use. Wine might work too but I've never been very fond of it.

[forkmantis]

Just out of curiosity, sed, was your name inspired by the *nix tool of the same name?

[Sed]

no, they are my initials... but I do frequently use sed.

- sed

[forkmantis]

no, they are my initials... but I do frequently use sed.

- sed

sweet. I wish my initals were the same as one of the *nix power tools... like grep, awk, or chown...

[arkana]

I cant believe you said that

[LeFou]

I love that you said that. I'm thinking of getting a dog and naming it "menuconfig"

Anyway: yeah, I had to go with pokerroom for awhile. But recently picked up a laptop with XP installed -- this has basically become my poker box/UDAgent partition.

If you're not able to get a win box anywhere, look at the usual Wine, VMWare, maybe Xen can help.

Oh, also email stars or whomever and let 'em know you'd play more if they had a Lx client. It would take a few thousand people sending 'em that message before it was worthwhile fort them, but you gotta start somewhere.

[forkmantis]

If you're not able to get a win box anywhere, look at the usual Wine, VMWare, maybe Xen can help.

I'm currently using a laptop that we were about to throw in the trash. I have win2k running on a PII 266 laptop w/ 64MB RAM. It's a PoS. It gets the job done, though, and keeps my more worthy machines M$ free

Oh, also email stars or whomever and let 'em know you'd play more if they had a Lx client. It would take a few thousand people sending 'em that message before it was worthwhile fort them, but you gotta start somewhere.

Good point. I will do that.

I haven't made up my mind if I really want to do this or not, considering that PokerTracker already has, but I've been considering writing an app w/ MySQL and some combination of PHP, sed, awk, etc. to basically do what poker tracker does. Based on the limited amount of free time I have, however, I'll probably choose to actually play poker instead. Still, though, not owning PokerTracker makes me want to at least build some basic tools to help me easily look back on specific hands I've played or specific players I've played against.

[forkmantis]

Well, LeFou, I went ahead and emailed PokerStars. I can't say that their response came as a surprise. It was nice, though, to get a real response, and not just a form letter telling me what a valued customer I am.

Hello,

I'm afraid I'm going to have to tell you things you probably heard many
times as a non-Windows aficianado.... but I'd rather be honest with you
than string you along with false hopes. A native Macintosh or Linux
version of PokerStars just isn't in the cards.

MacDaily News reported earlier this year that the market share for Macs
was 2% worldwide, and under 3% in the USA in 2003. And while it is no
more (or less) expensive to write a native Mac application than a PC
one... it just isn't profitable to do both.

With limited programming resources, keeping two completely different
code bases current and feature-set identical would be a virtually
insurmountable task. It would cost literally well into six figures to
hire the quality programmers needed to write a Macintosh native client
from the ground up, and make it 100% compatible with the current
Windows software. Once developed, we'd have to keep the Mac
programming team on staff to keep it feature-set identical to the PC
version.

So, if we can spend $X to get 97% of the market... or more than 2 times
$X to get that extra 3%... which is the better business decision?
Especially given that the other 3% can still run your software through
means available to them, such as Virtual PC?

It is unfortunate that Mac users have heard that sort of explanation a
hundred times, and don't much like it, but it's sadly true, and more
true today than in 1996, when the market share of Macintosh was closer
to 15%(where Linux is today).

The same reasoning, by the way, applies to Linux. Even though it is
rapidly growing as an operating system and has a far greater market
share than Macintosh, we don't have plans to develop a native Linux
client, as our client runs under WINE, the WINdows Emulator for Linux.

We do hope you'll run our software under Virtual PC, or perhaps on a
Windows PC you use as "second best", as we think you'll really enjoy
PokerStars... but unfortunately, we must pick and choose where our
development dollars are best spent, and today that is on the Windows
platform.

Best Regards,

Rob
PokerStars Support Team

[edudlive]

All I have is Linux, so I guess my only bet is to install VMWare eh? Sucks I guess, but better than having to reboot.

[evman150]

I use Unix at school, but that's about it. I couldn't imagine running that shit on my home computer.

[NewJack33]

Vmware will do the trick, that's what I use. Wine might work too but I've never been very fond of it.

how's the performance under vmware.. noticeably sluggish or pretty good? also does it work with pretty much all the poker software?

[ake]

Vmware will do the trick, that's what I use. Wine might work too but I've never been very fond of it.

how's the performance under vmware.. noticeably sluggish or pretty good? also does it work with pretty much all the poker software?

Pretty good most of the time. All the poker software works. The stars client used to be slow on my old machine (XP 2000+, 512 RAM) But is working fine now on my new one (64 3200+, 1gb).

[Element187]

Just out of curiosity, sed, was your name inspired by the *nix tool of the same name?

i was going to change my name to awk or grep

[Element187]

I use Unix at school, but that's about it. I couldn't imagine running that shit on my home computer.

linux and unix are two different monsters ...same commands, but linux has a much prettier interface.

[forkmantis]

I just installed ubuntu linux on one of my machines at home in the last day or two. Once I get a few other things set up, I'm probably going to get VMware up and running and try playing poker from there.

It's nice to see that there are a few other linux users hanging around here.

[Element187]

i'm a network security engineer, its part of my job to know a variety of OS's .. linux just happens to be my favorite by far .. the eye candy of the desktop in Gnome 3.0+ blows away Mac and Windows. not to mention, its nice to push the power button on my computer, and have my desktop fully loaded and completely ready to run programs in 1/20th the time it takes windows just to get to the login prompt.

which distro do you use primarly?? i've been running gentoo for the past 2 years .. probably the fastest most streamlined linux available.

[tjp]

i was looking at vmware's site today, i used to mess about with it. The workstation version has to run on a windows box, 2k and up. So that does not help you. The gsx server also needs the windows platform. Esx uses some proprietary os probably based on a unix kernel of some kind and is very expensive. As you need to load up a windows virtual machine to run the poker client, how can vmware help? If i'm wrong please explain.

[ake]

i was looking at vmware's site today, i used to mess about with it. The workstation version has to run on a windows box, 2k and up. So that does not help you. The gsx server also needs the windows platform. Esx uses some proprietary os probably based on a unix kernel of some kind and is very expensive. As you need to load up a windows virtual machine to run the poker client, how can vmware help? If i'm wrong please explain.

There's a linux version of the workstation too.

VMware Workstation (for Windows operating systems and Linux systems)*** Evaluate Download

http://www.vmware.com/download/

Element187

I use slackware most of the time. But right now I'm running gentoo again. I hadn't tried it in almost 1 year so I decided to give it a second go. It's a very nice distro.

[tjp]

Thanks ake, i just did a cursory look at the vmware site and did not see that a linux ver was available. They are planning a solaris wkstn ver as well i believe. Here's something i was thinking about. If you run vmware on a linux box and create a windows virtual machine; that vm has it's own ip address as i recall. So is the win vm not just as susceptible to threats as any windows box?

[ake]

If you run vmware on a linux box and create a windows virtual machine; that vm has it's own ip address as i recall. So is the win vm not just as susceptible to threats as any windows box?

There are different ways to share your internet with vmware. The easiest way for most people is probably to run the builtin NAT module in vmware, this way the windows machine gets a private ip (192.168.0.x) and it should be somewhat safe. But since I've never done it this way I cannot guarantee it.

I'm already running a small network (my laptop and desktop) and I protect it with iptables. So my virtual windows is just like any other physical windows box getting it's internet from my linux computer and therefore safe.

[tjp]

i use a sonicwall soho 3 so everything is nat'ed behind that on a 172.16.X.X (i prefer to use class b private, no real reason). I just could not see the value, if you have a good hardware firewall and NAT with a private internal network address, in using a linux / vmware config. Do you agree?

[edudlive]

I'm trying to install Win98 in VMWare currently (XP will take up too many resources for my liking) but its going to give me problems since my cdrom doesn't correctly work for booting (I have to use ISOs)...but Win98 requires a boot floppy the last I remember...so this will be interesting.

[ake]

i use a sonicwall soho 3 so everything is nat'ed behind that on a 172.16.X.X (i prefer to use class b private, no real reason). I just could not see the value, if you have a good hardware firewall and NAT with a private internal network address, in using a linux / vmware config. Do you agree?

Hmm, I'm not sure if I understand your question. Do you mean using linux and vmware at all? Or are you talking about linux firewall and vmware?

[edudlive]

Finally got Win98 installed, its great to be able to play things other than pokerroom's java client (I think their downloadable client is the best by far). VMWare tools makes it run as smooth as butter (well, for Windows anyway).

Now, if only Creative would fix their emo10k1 driver so that it would work with VMWare again.

[pokermac]

Hey,

i don't have the answer for linux, but there is a ton of mac poker info at:

www.poker-mac.com.

[LeFou]

I just installed ubuntu linux on one of my machines at home in the last day or two. Once I get a few other things set up, I'm probably going to get VMware up and running and try playing poker from there.

It's nice to see that there are a few other linux users hanging around here.

You still interested in PHP/MySQL poker hacking? I had some ideas awhile back, and still have them, but have been buried in my day job (PHP/MySQL hacking) recently.

[tjp]

sorry ake, what i meant was that if you have a private network behind a good icsa certified hardware firewall then what is the point of a linux / vmware setup. if your pc is the single host / gateway then i can see the advantage.

[qmriis]

I use Unix at school, but that's about it. I couldn't imagine running that shit on my home computer.

linux and unix are two different monsters ...same commands, but linux has a much prettier interface.

If you're talking about GUIs, you can run CDE, KDE, wmaker, GNOME, or whatever on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, etc. Looks of system has nothing to do with whether you are using linux or "real" Unix.

Someone mentioned latest GNOME being neat. I tried a version about a year ago, and it sure was purdy. Don't use Unix for desktop though, just server applications. My PCs for everyday things run NT 5 and 5.1.

[Fortune 500]

Edited when I relized this post is months old.