Linux and gaming

[sash1]

How is it?

I heard it's quite awful, and I don't expect it to have changed, but I was just wondering.

Thanks,

~Aunix

 

[hobgadling]

You pretty much heard correctly, however, sometime later this year Mandrake and Transgaming are releasing a gaming edition based on Transgaming's wineX branch of wine that comes with teh directx stuff installed.
Slashdot story
Actual news item

-Hob

 

[sash1]

Thanks Hob!

~Aunix

 

[DaHitman]

Actually this is really wrong for you to say its "awful"...

There is absolutly nothing wrong with Gaming in Linux at all... the problem is there are not that many games AVAILABLE for Linux..

The ones that are available such as Quake 3, UT, Tribes 2, Heavy Metal, Deus Ex, Soldier of Fortune, Heavy Gear & HG II, Decent 3, Heritic, Heros etc... they generally run just great..

OpenGL support in linux is excellent, and runs great on GFORCE, or Vodoo, or ATI cards, etc... thats why nearly every movie studio is or has already moved to Linux for all their animation, 3D special effects, and video editing work.

The problem is there are not that many games that are out for Linux... and thats the same problem the MAC has always had too..

But its really unfair and incorrect to imply that gaming itself is bad in Linux...its the games "SELECTION" that is really what is wrong...

Things are looking up, because of SDL... SDL is a open standard API which game devlopers are really starting to take notice of..

SDL is an API like DirectX which provides a programming environment for 3D(openGL), 2D, Sound, MPEG Video playback, etc.. and it runs on many platforms and is open for anyone to port to other platforms if they want... this basically give something as easier (or I hear actually easier and more powerfull) than DIRECTX but runs on many platforms... using SDL a developer can easily release a program for PC, MAC, LINUX, and Playstation without any porting work at all.. the same code will work on all the platforms that SDL supports...

For instance, take the recent game title of Tribes 2... this game was released SIMTANEOUSLY for PC, Mac, and Linux.. why... because Dynamix moved all their game development to SDL...

One of the reasons that Mac and Linux don't have many games is because there was a lot of work to port one from the PC to their platforms... a lot of stuff didnt translate between platforms.. and all that porting work was expensive and not worth the cost many times.... if more people start using SDL then this because nearly ZERO COST for a game publisher to release for alternate platforms such as the Mac and Linux.


The other thing your going to see is that DirectX games are going to be able to run on Linux soon... with transgaming... WINE is already pretty damn compatable with lots of games, that you can get to run on Linux just fine such as Half-Life/CS and StarCraft etc.. but WINE is very hard to configure and tweak to work with a particular game.. transgaming will bring to the table a way to make it easy to use and run those games in Linux...

But I feel that running Windows Games in Linux is a very very short term thing.. I don't WANT to run crappy windows programs on my linux system, I want to run Linux games..