Porting Windows games to Linux?

[cbn]

How difficult is it to convert Windows games to run on Linux?

 

[VinylxScratches]

What kind of games, if it uses Direct X, there's a dick chance. You'd be better of using Wine.

 

[Nothinman]

How difficult is it to convert Windows games to run on Linux?

The answer ranges from simple to impossible depending on how the game was developed.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Yea as everyone else said, it ranges from very easy to impossibly hard.

DirectX games are virtually impossible to port to Linux given that Linux doesn't have DirectX.

If a game uses OpenGL, then it is fairly easy to convert between the two OSes. In my mind it would simply be rewriting a few Windows system calls and recompiling the source - though I may have an overly simplistic view on the matter.

-Kevin

 

[theevilsharpie]

Compared to other applications, games are relatively easy to port because a majority of the games assets are things like textures, models, sound, etc., that can be run on any platform, all other things being equal.

As to how difficult it would be to port a game from Windows to Linux, the worst case would require a partial rewrite of the game engine to use the appropriate Linux libraries (or whatever Linux uses these days) instead of DirectX. Compared to ports between PCs and consoles (or even just between consoles) where the game content itself often needs to be modified to work within the new platform's resource and input constraints, engine modifications aren't really that difficult.

 

[Fox5]

Just about impossible, if you don't have the source code.