Windows Vista

Vista is out for almost two weeks now, and EL doesn't seem to work on it. We don't really know why, no developer has Vista, nor do we plan on switching to Vista any time soon. In fact, I am thinking about moving to Linux or FreeBSD in a few years, when they will be more mature for desktop use, and when the percentage of XP computers will drop under 30% (or when the majority of hardware manufacturers will stop releasing drivers for XP).

It seems that the majority of our players don't care too much about it either. Now, that poll is not the most accurate reflection of their will, since many didn't care to vote, but nevertheless it is good to see that about one third of our players use non MS OSes.

I am aware that many people buying new computers (that come preinstalled with Vista) might not be able to play EL, and this doesn't concern me for the time being. We are right now in a 'comfort zone' where the amount of players is just right. 500+ more players and then it will become kind of crowded for one server, then we'd have to look into more servers, which is a lot of work (see my previous entry).
Of course, sooner or later someone will address those issues so our game will work fine on Vista eventually. But there is no rush.

One other thing I am curious about is the number of people that will say no to MS and go with alternative OSes. If things go as I believe they will, in 2 years the percent of non MS OSes will be somewhere around 10%. Right now the percentage of non MS operating systems it's about 7%, divided mainly between OSX and Linux (4% OSX and 3% Linux). It is difficult to find an accurate source for those numbers, some sites reporting Linux to around 3% and OSX to around 4%, others reporting more or less than that.