OK—this is Blog #2. I’m going to talk about gaming on Linux. Most of you that game (and you know who you are….) look for The leading game houses releases to indicate what Operating system you use. Sadly, the title for “best” gaming OS still belongs to Windows…..but that is changing more & more as the years move on..
Steam is a major contender in the gaming world—true, the number of A releases on Steam still is low, but they have made a commitment to Linux that is getting better with each year. I was involved with the rollout (as a beta-tester) for Steam on Linux & Steam continues to add titles every day for Tux users. I use Steam daily with several games that are not “main stream”, but allow you to play in a democratic fashion, they don’t care what OS you use, as long as you want to play.
Next there is Wine—which, for lack of a better definition, allows you to use Windows libraries in Linux. Think of Wine as a “wrapper” around the application (game or otherwise) that allows you to use the application as if you were on the operating system that it was “intended” for. (side note: I don’t use Wine for personal reasons—If the company in question can’t develop the application for Linux—I don’t want to use it. Think of that as voting for my party…..)
Lastly, there is a slowly growing segment of developers that create content for Linux...In this group are the Indie houses that see Linux as the next thing out there & are getting on the “ground floor”—making a name for themselves & getting goodwill for creating content. You could look up the “Humble-bundle” packages for where this is going.
There are several projects to replace the hodge-podge system that is the Graphics system in modern computers—the Vulcan project comes to mind as a ( replacing OpenGL & DirectX both ) standard that gaming developers can use to run applications on any hardware/OS variation—allowing better use of time to develop games for everyone.
In closing, I recommend if you want to game, vote for the future & game on Linux….The future is catching up very soon.