Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Postal had a very early linux port, I remember playing in the early 2000s. I think it was one of the games ported by Loki Software before they went bankrupt (ahead of their time I guess).

I remember I had some problems with sound in it because of the in-kernel sound driver for my laptop's sound chip didn't deal well with mmap()ed access, which the game required. I used the proprietary OSS audio stack which had a driver that didn't have that problem. Of course it was only an evaluation version and would shut off the sound after some minutes of play.

Kind of glad these things are rarely an issue on the linux desktop anymore :)



If it weren't so sad, it'd be hilarious how long it took for sound to even be close to usable on Linux. Only in the past couple of years has it become reasonable to use Linux for any kind of serious audio work (and it is still weaker than Windows and Mac on many fronts, though the latency and RT issues have been resolved for some time). I started trying to use Linux for audio in 1995, when I was still going to school for audio recording. Only now is it actually something that one might consider doing real work with.

It's always been such an afterthought, and always so flaky. For me, it was the one thing that kept a Windows partition on most of my systems through all those years.


Most things work nowadays. Oxenfree doesn't, but that might just be my system config.




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: