Doom under Linux

[exp(x)]

You must be talking about freedoom. Overwrite doom2.wad in /usr/share/games/doom/ with the commercial iwad.

[vtbaz]

Bingo! Thanks for you help!

[ducon]

Don’t overwrite it, juste rename the original doom2.wad AND the freedoom.wad, and create a symbolic link (or use the Debian deviation system).

[Super Jamie]

I've been playing around with PrBoom on Linux a bit lately, and it's actually been really good.

If you stay out of OpenGL mode, it works very well. The software rendering gives a nice vanilla-feeling experience, but the higher res makes it bareable on modern monitors. Mouse movement is alot better than I ever got it in Vanilla, and you can configure horizontal and vertical mouse separately, turning off one axis or another if you so desire (I turn vertical off this way). It's nice having demo compatibility too.

It's got a couple of quirks - capslock is always run instead of a setting, only one key per control, you have to configure screen res manually in ~/.prboom/prboom.cfg, and it stretches at alternate aspect ratios - but that's okay.

The latest version compiles without a problem too. If you're not looking for fancy lighting or high-res textures, or to watch a demo recorded with vanilla, prboom is great!

[exp(x)]

ducon said:

Don’t overwrite it, juste rename the original doom2.wad AND the freedoom.wad, and create a symbolic link (or use the Debian deviation system).

The freedoom dependency is one of the most annoying things I have encountered with the debian and ubuntu repos. It's right up there with timidity requiring freepats. If the program doesn't require the package, don't force the dependency; instead, make it a recommended package.

EDIT: It looks like it is now a recommended package, but synaptic still makes you install freedm, at least on Ubuntu. It needs to be a suggested package instead, I guess.

[chungy]

In Debian, the prboom package only recommends either the doom-wad or boom-wad virtual packages (which are satisfied by either doom-wad-shareware or freedoom/freedm respectively), which means no IWAD is ever forced on you anymore.

It'll probably be like this in Ubuntu 9.04 as well, but I haven't verified this myself.

[Super Jamie]

In Intrepid, prboom depends on freedm, recommends freedm freedoom doom-wad-shareware, and suggests game-data-packager. There's no doom-wad or boom-wad in Ubuntu.

Both Freedoom and FreeDM have Ubuntu/Debian menu entries, I assume the idea of depending is to allow people to install prboom, and have a playable game, rather than have to stuff around symlinking iwads or launching with parameters from the commandline.

[chungy]

I actually meant Ubuntu 9.04... heh. and there isn't a freedoom/freedm requirement there (big surprise, they just fork from Debian unstable every six months)