Gamers Opinions of Linux

Well for several years I have heard many gr8 things about LINUX, and yes I too am sick of being shackled to Bill's glorified dialogue box, from 3.11 to XP. But being a gamer from my first DOS 6.22 (god I miss those days of total end-user control) rig to the present, my concern is there any point in making the jump ? Being so basic and such I dont see how there would be a problem in support for all the titles from long ago to now, but I never hear how well games run on LINUX. I remember the June 7th issue of Forbes mag having an article on how IBM is supportting LINUX with various teams for business apps, but it seems to me that they missed the REAL reason PCs sell. Ask anyone who purchased a CR8 for home use, it wasn't for the latest tax/spreadsheet/office proggies, It was for the games when they out-grew nintendo type games. Wow again I got off point, so a little reminder of my point:
Is Linux worth the switch for us gamers ?
Thanxz 4 the eye-ball time

If I only knew a 1/4 of what I think I know

I love my linux, but I refuse to game on it I keep winXP installed too just to load up games.

I haven't even bothered with emulators after talking to people about it. all of them claimed big performance issues with running games through emulators (any of the new stuff anyways)

yes native ports are great but there's also a very limited supply of them.

My point is if you're running a linux box, just install windows on it for gaming, it will run better and more games

I own a small business where I have the majority of the computers available to customers set up with linux. I also have most of the popular games running under linux, even those with windows only clients.

If you use nVidia cards you are in luck. nVidia tends to support linux with every release of the driver sets for the windows cards, sometimes before the windows drivers are released.

Most gaming in linux is predicated on having your video card working in 3d mode. Almost all distros, by default, don't install the commercial versions of the drivers and hence don't have the 3d hardware support enabled. If you go to www.nvidia.com and click the driver download link there'll be a driver link for linux.

You should download and try to follow the instructions that they give you.

Upon a successful install you'll have 3d hardware support and should be able to play those games with a native linux client out of the box. There are many that do have linux clients: UT2003/2004, quake, neverwinter nights, doom 3, enemy-territory, etc.

For those that don't have native clients you can go to www.transgaming.com and get a copy of their wine3 branch of files to permit you to play a bunch more games: Warcraft III, Everquest, World of Warcraft, Diablo, City of Heros, Command and Conquer: Generals, etc. They have a forum you can visit and read about the games they have support for.

The games that run under linux typically have minor problems but most can overcome them with a little help. The games don't always run as fast, but sometimes they run faster.

I don't recommend, EVER, trying to run linux on old hardware. It sours the experience. I have 3 older boxes with linux on them and 5 newer boxes with linux and linux on the newer boxes show where linux can and does shine. The older boxes can make linux look bad and sour your experience.

I've played with wine and qemu but damnit it's just not fast enough even qemus accelerator just doesnt give me enough boom in my gaming. Heres a thought to all the game devs out there COMPILE YOUR GAMES FOR US GOD DAMNIT! All the developers and companies keep saying they're waiting for linux to mature and for a larger user base well I got news for ya Linux is mature enough now, and without the software people want like some truely good games the user base will not grow! What torvalds needs to do is crawl out of the dark hole where he puts together new kernels and buy us a few good game publishers or at least go to them and ask nicely for linux support, maybe somebody can put togeter a nice API that will take all the pain out of making linux games. Linux is ready and so am I damnit!

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