Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Category: News

Do you necessarily need Windows to play PC games?

Posted on by Viljami

Linux as an operating system of personal computers has been competing to this day against Microsoft’s Windows. Linux has advantages. First of all it’s free and mostly open source. So anyone with a decent knowledge about programming and computers and operating systems has an opportunity to learn and even modify this system. But is Linux capable of running the latest games? To this question I am trying to answer in this blog post.

Windows has a large support as an operating system that delivers reliability. It can run latest PC games and it is an answer to many electronic music producers as Linux currently doesn’t fully support VST instruments or many sequencer applications like, for example, FL Studio. Linux has some free music production apps. like Ardour, but to get your software and hardware to run decently is to my own experience a bit difficult.

Windows is not free. Windows still supports many hardware drivers that are important when running newest PC games. Take graphics processing units for example. Most of the GPU´s are supported. You have to pay for Windows. Usually you get the new Windows with a computer that you purchase. Usually you also get the update to a newer version when it is released. Still sometimes you might have an old computer and you don’t want to spend about 150 euros for only getting the newest operating system. Then Linux definitely is a good choice.

There is a war going on between Linux and Windows. It has been this way for decades. While Linux is supported by heavy users, technology nerds and programmers Windows is still holding on to it’s position as the default personal computer operating system. Of course there are also Mac users. So this also messes up the picture a bit. I definitely like to use Linux for programming if I can make a free choice. This is because it is more secure and it doesn’t need necessarily a virus protection application. It also has more opportunities to get deeper into technology of computer. You get to work with command line and the apps are mainly free and open source. You also get more updates and get to tweak your system a bit more.

You can get Windows games working with Linux. Older games certainly can be run through DOSBox, if they are DOS games, and through Wine, if they are Windows games. There has been a discussion goin on how clearly are Steam games running on Linux. There seems to be a certain distinction between Windows and Linux games that I am not so clear about. The software seems to be in question. I cannot reply to this question fully and I admit that. But it is an interesting point.

So if you plan to play the newest games my answer to you is – get a computer that runs Windows. That is to make sure that you have the latest drivers and have yourself the full support from hardware manufacturers and game developers. Since we are moving more and more towards digital markets when purchasing games it is also important that you have Steam or GOG.com or some other place to buy yourself games for your PC. This is how the situation seems to be. Linux has it’s own supporters and you have to keep in mind that Linux has it’s native games that run only on Linux. So to conclude – Linux is developing and it might be possible that it makes a takeover in the future but currently you will have to use Windows.

The Smallest Xbox Ever Released

Posted on by Viljami

I’m looking at it. I like it. It’s the smallest Xbox that is to this day released. It’s almost as small as PS2 Slim was or is. What got me to buy this thing? Well, I had been thinking about buying a newer Xbox for a while. My thoughts were centered to Xbox One. But why would I buy it for 250 euros when with 310 euros I’ll get a newer Xbox?

There are some things you have to consider when thinking about buying this gaming device. It doesn’t give you 4K video output when playing games. It only goes as far as 1440p resolution which is still a lot better than Full HD. To make this point clearer you can think about PS4 which gives you 1080p resolution and 1080 pixels being the actual height of the display. So, to make this even more understandable, Full HD means a picture that is 1920 pixels wide and 1080 pixels tall.

With not going in deeper details about the sharpness of gaming displays we shall continue this quick explanation about what are my feelings towards Xbox Series S. That’s basically what this thing is called. Why is it called this way? I guess Microsoft wanted to give it some basic name to make it clear what kind of a device it is. There is also another new Xbox model that was recently released. It is called Xbox Series X.

The main difference between these models is that S doesn’t have an optical disk drive at all while X has. X has also this 4K gaming display supporting ability. X is also a bit more expensive. It costs about 520 euros. The situation globally has been  tough. There haven’t been many opportunities to buy this new console be it the S or the X. I am also very satisfied that I got mine so fast as I’ve heard that some people have been waiting for their console for as long as six months.

What more would I want to tell you about this new console? It has been working nicely. The first game I bought for it was Remedy’s Control. I also bought Halo 5 and a remake of Final Fantasy 8. I wasn’t actually thinking about sales but I found out that there was, and actually still is, going on a sale in Microsoft’s Xbox Store. Getting a fully digital gaming console with no physical play and installation disks made me consider about getting faster internet connection. My solution to this problem was to let the game that took about 42 gigabytes to download over the night. I’m still considering updating my connection because I  might need a faster one.

I like the controller. The layout is your typical Xbox controller layout. I am not going to argue about if it is better than PlayStation’s. It is enough said that they differ a bit from each other. The controller works with two AA batteries. I am also considering some other solution as I don’t want to keep changing the batteries to it all the time. I think there is at least a cable available. That would be a USB-C cable that is at least three meters long.

One thing you should really think about is that this thing only has a bit over 500 gigabytes of storage. So you can’t really install so many games to it. You can actually buy storage upgrades. I haven’t thought about this so much as I have only three games right now and I think that is a lot for starting the experience and getting to know the device.

I went and bought this thing. Right now I am really enjoying it. I am very proud of it. One thing that really pushed the purchase for me was that there were only a limited amount of these devices available and that the price was actually as low as it was. Right now I’m playing Control. I hope I will get to know more about Halo 5 soon.

100th Blog Post

Posted on by Viljami

I would like to dedicate this post, as it’s the 100th, to describing the path I have went through with this blog so far. Maybe I’ll share some secrets about how I’ve been maintaining this blog or what kinds of strategies I’ve used. Who knows? Are there some secrets? I don’t want to answer that question directly. But keep reading.

This blog is my most recent. It is also the most popular blog I’ve ever have kept updating. My background is in writing lyrics for hiphop. That’s where I picked up writing. I have been writing lyrics since 2001. I have been writing blogs since 2008. I wrote posts for this blog for many years. I didn’t however write so frequently to it. I wrote shorter texts than I write today. So some progression in this mean has been going on.

For six years I was busy with studying my computer science degree. It was a Bachelor’s Degree. I had big dreams of becoming a well paid game developer. This dream hasn’t come true. I did graduate in 2016 but it was a pain in the butt to get a job that would fit my background. After about half a year I decided to try my hand in blogging again. This time I made deeper plans and decided to write one or two posts per week. I wrote that blog in Finnish. I kept writing this blog and it got some visitors. I also added commercials to it but it didn’t become profitable and I didn’t get any income from these advertisements. I had very few visitors compared to this blog that I’m currently writing.

So I got finally a job as a customer service person in a game shop. I worked there for six months. During that period I also wrote to the shops blog. My boss liked my style of writing so I wrote several posts to their website. I also got later another job. While I was working I picked a book from local library that described maintaining a blog. I never had a blog that would have been very successful. The idea was fascinating. It wasn’t all about the opportunity to earn some money but it was rather the opportunity and possibility to create something that might some day be my full time job.

So I read the book, I can’t remember right now what book it exactly was, and took a paper and pen and started designing this new blog. I wrote five articles in advance. This blog would already have some content. I started with a free web host but I moved to paid web host in 12/2020. It has been a fun time writing this blog. I have received comments. I have gained visitors and followers as I have been active in Instagram also. Right now I have almost 600 followers there.

I keep coming up with ideas for posts as I am living my regular life. I try my best to write at least a post per week or at least a post per two weeks. Sometimes I write more and sometimes more rarely. It is easy for me to come up with new ideas but I sometimes forget that I have already handled these topics in some earlier post.

What it comes to gaming I am thinking right now if I should buy Nintendo Game & Watch or one more of those original Xbox gaming consoles that I have already had two. I have made many new purchases that I haven’t had time to get into lately. I have bought many PS4 games as they have been lately on sale. I try to find time for gaming and also for this blog. I have also been thinking about ways to get some income from this site but right now I could say that writing this blog is still only a hobby for me.

How would you feel if there were ads on this website? What topics you would like to read about? Feel free to leave a comment.