It's been several months that we don't know anymore if we can hope or not. In September 2007, the Valve editor was publishing a « Senior Software Engineer » job offer with the responsibility of porting Windows-based games to the GNU/Linux platform. But once this offer announcement done, we never heard about it anymore and it wouldn't have been the first disappointment about a game's port to GNU/Linux.

It's the excellent Phoronix.com website which just went back over that story. In an article by Michael Larabel, the website's administrators claim they have informations from Valve, confirming that the Source engine's port was effectively started. Knowing this site's serious, we can trust in those words. But can we do the same with Valve's word?

But what is this « Source engine »?
It's simply a software rendering layer created by Valve for their games. The Source's particularity is to used by numerous and sometimes famous games! Nothing less than Half Life², Counter Strike : Source, Team Fortress and Portal! To put it plainty, all Valve's great games (Source is also used by other editors' games but they are less famous).
Source originally used DirectX, the 3D library from Microsoft, so this port requires a big modification to use OpenGL too (such as Quake's engines).
Source is a little bit old (2004) but it is regularly updated to sensibly limit the obsolescence of the technology.

Thus, the Source's port would be strategic, it would give access to a number of games -and by the way, excellent games- made in Steam.

Info? Intox? Nothing isn't yet done. When reading this, we can feel either totally overexcited as well as totally septic.
But Phoronix used to finish their articles with a positive note. So they remind us that they predicted, one year ago, a new AMD/ATI driver generation and their video cards' specs release.

Before leaving, a message of Linux users from Ravenholm:


Translation:
"Fear me! I want games!
Else I'll eat you!"

Links:
- Phoronix.com article: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=source_linux&num=1
- The Valve's job offer: http://www.valvesoftware.com/job-SenSoftEngineer.html


By Asimov

Hello everybody,

What's on tonight at PlayOnLinux? We have new games available!!

DosBox games:

-Cervii
-Redneck Rampage
-Tunneler
-Wolfenstein 3D

Wine games:

-Grand Theft Auto : Vice City
-Hitman 2
-Sam and Max Season1

Thanks to puk007, parox, The_Mystery_Machine, djabal and THAiSi for their contributions


By GNU_Raziel

Hello everybody,

An urgent desire to massacre naughty and ugly E.Ts with an arsenal worthy of a Rambo from the future? So fell on Halo Combat Evolved

You incarnate the humanity's last hope against the Covenants, an interplanetary sect which gathers together several alien races that are game for anything to defend Halo, a huge ring wandering in the space and containing an horrible secret that will endanger the whole universe ... it's your turn to take up the challenge!!



For more details, see the forum HERE

Good game


By GNU_Raziel

Hello everybody,

Bored of Half-Life 2's old graphics? Want to rediscover an incredible trilogy, enriched by the unused game's content? So this mod is for you!!



Plunge back into a game with a darker and more oppressive atmosphere as well as increased textures and models.

For more details, see the forum HERE

Good game all


By GNU_Raziel

Hello everybody,

Since last versions, we included in "Install" a scripted games' list with icons.



But since we don't own every game, we need you, our POLian friends, to extract the games' icons in order to complete the list and make PlayOnLinux more convivial.

If you want to help us, get icons from the CDs only (you can extract them from the .exe files). Once it's done, follow these instructions (which will save a lot of our time) :



Once done, host them as you can and send us the link (to Tinou or Zoloom) .

Thank you to send icons of yet scripted games only

Thanks all for your help!

PS: We are also seeking screenshots of your favorite games (yet scripted of course) of seize 200x150, as well as a small description of the game (in English).

Thanks once again,

Have a good day with PlayOnLinux


By Zoloom

Hello,

Here is a news to announce the creation of a new plugin for PlayOnLinux: Wine Import.

It allows you to import the Wine's prefix into PlayOnLinux in order to add (in PlayOnLinux) your applications previously installed.

To test it, go to the download page :-)


By Tinou

Today, we are very happy to announce the first year of existence of the project.
In order to celebrate it, I made a little summary of the PlayOnLinux's improvements for those who weren't here since the beginning :)

Look at the following table:

Version	Lines	Files	Screenshot	Descritpion
0.1	Unknown	Unknown		Charming, isn't it?
0.5	Unknown	Unknown		Yet more pleasant
1.2	241	1		A little interface had never hurted anyone Thank you zenity
1.4	373	8		First version of the PlayOnLinux's "language". The first non-official scripts appear
1.5	417	8		Still more improvements
1.6.2	966	14		Appearance of the expert menu
1.7	1507	16		We migrate at OVH
1.8	2584	31		Most outstanding 1.x version :-)
2.0.1	4447	42		A nice interface
2.7.1	7405 + 6296 (Languages)	64 + 12 (Languages)		The latest version, released the same day that this news.

As you can note, the project evolved a lot since the beginning.

Happy Birthday PlayOnLinux!

Hello,

It seems that our script for the repository added a development version of PlayOnLinux under the name of 2.7 version.

PlayOnLinux couldn't run. In order to avoid any problems, we released a stable and functional 2.7.1 version for everybody (not only Ubuntu/Debian users).

Sorry for the users that yet did the update to 2.7 and sorry for the PlayOnLinux's packagers

Have a good day


By Tinou

As planned, here is the PlayOnLinux's 2.7 version

What's new:

A plugins manager

The plugins manger will allow you to add features to PlayOnLinux such as scripting ones. You will find some plugins on the download page. .pol is the plugins' format.

Any member who knows the PlayOnLinux's script language (feel free to read the documentation, available in English since few days, in order to discover this language) can create a .pol package (which can be both an offline game installer or a plugin).

If they interest us, they can become official.

Existing scripts at this day:
Script Creator, by Zoloom, version 0.2
Dosbox support, by Tinou, version 0.1
Wine Look, by Tinou, version 0.1

So the .deb packages don't exist anymore and are now incompatible with PlayOnLinux

Note: Think to enable a plugin after installing it.

New icons

The following icons, from the tango project, are added:

A warning for imprudent peoples

Miscellaneous stuffs:

- A proper and up-to-date changelog
- Big bugs fixed for the languages different from French and English
- The main interface's menus allow to access directly to each different tabs of the options menu
- Colors are back in the IRC chat

PlayOnLinux 0.2: thanks Zoloom

Here is his news:


Good evening


By Tinou

PlayOnLinux have been released some new version of PlayOnLinux without writting news on the English web site, we are sorry

This is not a change log yet, but Tinou is currently writting one.

This is a summary of change since last news.

So since the version 2.2.1 :
In the 2.3 we have rewritten the setup window and some bug were corrected.

2.5 & 2.5.1: it's the first integration of an IRC client in PlayOnLinux
The web navigator lynx is replaced by some lines in python (thanks Diablo150)
Russian translation improved
And ... some bug fixed.

2.6 & 2.6.1: it's a implementation of colourized nickname in IRC, and a reverse change for security. In an other word the 2.6 make a colour of each nickname in IRC and due to a vulnerability this function was removed (nickname with | .
Some novelty in the IRC client (such as date, sound, colour, stability ...)
The option panel has been remade.
PlayOnLinux is pretty easier to configure. You can enable a lot of new settings (such as Offline mode, Default web browser, auto-login into IRC, default pseudo for IRC)
The about box has been remade.

You can download the last package build for your distro on the download page.
http://www.playonlinux.com/en/download.html

Information for Mandriva and Fedora user :
The rpm package for mandriva and fedora was in version 2.5.1 for a least one week, I have break my computer (not serious but I can't currently build package).