Experimenting with Second Life
I was experimenting with Second Life last week. Sadly, the Linux version of Second Life is still in beta and I couldn’t get it to work on my Fedora 12 x64 laptop. I forced to use the Windows version under Vista. I experimented with it for a while and found out that it requires more CPU and graphic power usage than other GNU/Linux games that I played. Not following these system requirement, I tried to run Second Life under 32-bit Fedora 12 on my Eee PC 1005HA netbook. It run successfully and then crashed to the command line after I logged into the game. Then I tried it under XP on the netbook., it run successfully. However, the game didn’t run as smoothly as on the laptop. I think Linden Lab should lower the system specification for Second Life to make it run on the older hardware like other Linux games in order to attract more Second Life residents.
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On one hand, I wouldn’t try to compare Second Life’s specs to those of games. The two concepts are quite different in my opinion (i.e. Second Life isn’t by definition a game). However, I do agree that Linden Lab should set (or, if they’re already doing so, keep) performance and resource efficiency as their highest priorities. I wonder if the biggest issue is on the server or the client. If it’s the client, then I hope that contributors to Snowglobe (Second Life’s open source viewer, as you may already know) will set similar priorities.
Regardless, I personally am not a fan of how Linden Lab has handled a few things about their world, mainly with certain policies that some governments outside the jurisdiction of the servers were whining about. The way I see it, stay within the bounds of legality where the server is located (if only to avoid being taken down), but go no further. Obviously it’s their world and they have full power to set whatever laws they want. I’m just voicing disagreement and saying I would do things differently if I was in their position.
This is not to say I am totally displeased with their model. The facts that they even support Linux and that they have an open source viewer (which, by the way, has worked well for me on Linux so far) put them a huge step ahead of many (I dare say most) other software service providers.
I agree with you that Linden Lab offers Linux version of both SL viewer and Snow Globe viewer. After I wrote this post, I googled for other Virtual Worlds that alternative to Second Life. What I found was that all of these virtual worlds only have Windows client. I think I should wait until x64 version of SL Linux viewer out of beta.