Quick guide to getting BMax working on PCLinuxOS

Hi everyone, I'm a new (and so far, quite happy) BlitzMax owner, who just spent a couple days getting the software up and running under Linux. Since I've seen quite a few topics discussing Linux-related woes, I thought I'd list the steps I took to get BMax (v.1.16) running under my Linux distro of choice, PCLinuxOS (current release 0.92). Hopefully they'll prove helpful to someone out there:

1. Out of the box, Blitz won't work with PCLinuxOS. Even though the distro comes with gcc and g++ pre-installed, you'll need to set up symbolic links to both. To do so, log on as root, open up a console window, navigate to your gcc directory (/usr/bin on my system), and type:

sudo link gcc gcc-3.3

and then

sudo link g++ g++-3.3

Exit the console, and feel free to go back to your user account.

2. Alright, we can now compile and run programs with BMax! Woo! But... They're slow as hell. PCLinuxOS comes with Mesa installed, but you really should install the latest drivers for your video card. For my aging GeForce 2 MX, the 8178 update did the trick.

3. Sound... I had no sound issues whatsoever, it all worked right out of the box. Your mileage may vary.

All in all, I must say I'm very pleased with BMax's performance under Linux: It feels faster than under Windows XP, and certainly miles ahead of Windows 98. Whether you're a dual user, or a Linux-only coder, getting BMax running under Tux's banner is definitely a worthwhile proposition. Cheers :)

On the speed: Thats because the DX7 driver for 1.16 was not that fast (OpenGL was better). with 1.18 this issue was resolved.

This ought to be posted in the Linux forum as a HOWTO thread like the other three sticky threads in there...

Ricardo_C: Glad to see you have it all running. I also notice that BlitzMax feels more "spontaneous" on Linux compared to XP.

MT: as Ubuntu is the only Linux we recomend officially I'm not sure about a sticky for every other distribution out there. Maybe a single stickied topic with links to all threads similar to this, underneath the big ubuntu recomendation that is...

thanks so much, this is exactly what I needed to do to get it working on suse10 as well

I'd like to throw in my 2 cents here.

If Ubuntu truely is the officially recommended Linux disrto, where are all the strategic alliance partnership program icons? (At the very least you should make sure the Ubuntu thread is the top sticky, as opposed to the Linspire one).

Secondly, even though Ubuntu is a nice Linux, and the one BRL supports, I don't see anything wrong with making sticky topics with user contributions of getting it to run under different Linux flavours.

In most cases the steps seem to be roughly the same. Create symbolic links, install GL compatible drivers, make sure you're running ALSA, etc...

Update: These steps don't seem to work with the latest PCLOS release (0.93). Use with caution.

EDIT: Nevermind, still not working perfectly. Must be missing a lib I can't figure out.

It's strange. The Digesteroids sample game works fine, but everything else I've tried returns a variation of the following output:

"Building .starfieldpong
Compiling:.starfieldpong.bmx
flat assembler version 1.64
3 passes, 22012 bytes.
Linking:.starfieldpong.debug
Executing:.starfieldpong.debug
X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
Major opcode of failed request: 143 (GLX)
Minor opcode of failed request: 5 (X_GLXMakeCurrent)
Serial number of failed request: 31
Current serial number in output stream: 31

Process complete"

EDIT 2: The problem might be related to this:

http://blitzmax.com/Community/posts.php?topic=59816#666979

But unfortunately I broke my X configuration while trying to figure out the problem (I'm writing from Windows now), so I won't be able to test it till tomorrow.

Finally got BMax working on this distro. It seems that installing the latest drivers for my card wasn't enough, I also needed to install the legacy support pack for my particular NVIDIA card (the legacy driver is included in the repository, so it's a snap to install).