Question about netbooks

[forrestcupp]

Can the average netbook run an SDL/OpenGL game like Neverball or SuperTux in opengl mode?

[LowSky]

supertux runs fine on my netbook

[forrestcupp]

supertux runs fine on my netbook

That's cool, but what about things like Neverball that are 3D? I'm not expecting Crysis or anything, but Neverball isn't too intensive.

[thegreenblob]

Neverball runs fine on mine. I also played frets on fire the other day just fine.

[Anastasis]

Yeah, I'm running supertux as well. I don't know if it's in open gl mode though. Whatever it's in though it's doing it flawlessly. Sorry, I'm not much of a gamer.

I might add as well that I have the lowest end Netbook out there - an Asus Eee PC 900 Celeron. But I'm telling ya, this little dinky piece of plastic can do a lot more than I thought it would running Linux. With XP it was very sluggish.

I wanted to see if I could do on the fly recordings with it. I tried a Windows/Cakewalk mix and no luck. Then I tried an Ubuntu/Ardour mix and it works flawlessly --on 900 mhz, nonetheless. No skips, cracks, or drops.

Almost feels like a computer when I'm running Ubuntu.

There are newer Netbooks out there running with the Atom processor from 1.5 to 2.5 ghz. These'll run any games you want.

[Ozor Mox]

Just to chime in and say I'd also like to know. A lot of these netbooks have the Intel integrated graphics, especially the GMA 950. The Wikipedia page on the GMA says that the 950 has a maximum video memory of 192-250 MB, which is quite a bit. But of course, it can't do fancy stuff like shaders, transform and lighting, and so on... Also, it shares its memory and bus.

[Vostrocity]

Intel graphics, especially the 950 that is paired with Atoms, is generally crap. But the good thing is that most Linux games are pretty light. If you want to get better performance, most netbooks let you upgrade RAM to 2GB. Also to note is that nVidia Tegra-based netbooks are coming later this year. Those things have a much better graphics chipset and they play 1080p video flawlessly.

[forrestcupp]

I'm looking at some netbooks right now, and it appears that they don't have built in speakers. So do you have to use headphones with them, or am I wrong about that?

[Swagman]

Your wrong

My daughters Eeepc 701 has inbuilt

[ddrichardson]

Well, I've an Aspire One and I wouldn't worry about graphics - I'd worry about controlling the game.

If you're at a table/desk and don't mind the slightly unnatural angle your hands are at on the keyboard then all well and good but in you lap is a nightmare - it slips all over the shop. Yeah you could get a controller but then you need to make sure it's a newer Aspire One where the screen doesn't flicker on USB power to peripherals.

[sloggerkhan]

My netbook runs neverball/neverput fine, but super tux lags when bombs explode. I think I might have a buggy version, though. My netbook has a beta/alpha supertux version from some fedora repo, and I didn't have any issues with supertux when I used Ubuntu.

All netbooks I've seen have speakers. They're often not very good, but they have them. With my aspire one, max volume seems to change a bit between versions of linux, but otherwise is fine. The speakers on mine sound decent but don't get very loud.

[forrestcupp]

Thanks everyone.