OStatic

I have a confession: When I read press releases about Envizions' EVO Smart Console I am unsure if the company is run by self-assured, confident visionaries or if -- well, the situation is actually quite the opposite. I like (love?) the idea of an open source, Linux-powered gaming console. I like the potential it holds, the almost limitless features it could deliver, the creativity it could inspire.

I know that bringing hardware to market is rough, and that sometimes things get bogged down in regulatory processes and unexpected red tape. I know that balancing what you want to sell, what you want to deliver, and what your customers want, expect and request can be tricky. A company needs to hold on to its dreams and ideals -- and it needs to bring in cash in order to make those dreams and ideals happen.

It isn't easy, especially when you're selling something that isn't even at the early adopter stage. It's impossible to say if Envizions is going about this in the most logical manner -- it's uncharted territory. This is why Envizion's announcement of a 3-D online community (think Second Life) leaves me feeling even more conflicted about the EVO open source game console than ever.

Valve Software was in the market a little over a year ago for a software engineer who would, among other duties, work with porting Windows-based games to Linux. No word on who got the job, or how that engineer's first anniversary review went, but evidently, this year was productive.

It seems, according to Phoronix, the Left 4 Dead demo (Windows client version) shipped with some very suspicious sounding Linux libraries. The file names (such as steamclient_linux.so) lend some weight to the theory that these files have little to do with the Linux server build.

Last month I wrote about the EVO Linux-based gaming console. The term gaming console seemed a bit misleading to me at the time -- it is ultimately where parent company Envizions Computer Entertainment would like the EVO to be -- but it is an early adopter system in the truest sense of the phrase.

The EVO Smart Console was originally scheduled for release on November 18th. It seems the FCC approval and testing process is taking longer than planned. Envizions expects the consoles to ship in the next two weeks. There are also two versions (in four configurations) available. Two versions? You guessed it -- Linux and Windows.