Gaming in Linux

Wow, seems I'm doing an entry that actually has a point. How rare.

Anyway. Gaming in linux. Although generally not people's preferred gaming platform, Linux is anything but incapable. Generally, there are two ways to go. You can either go for native Linux games - Darwinia is a personal favourite of mine, running on Windows, Linux or Mac OSX - or running Windows games via some sort of emulator*, my personal choice being Wine, or a variant like Cedega. There are, of course, some steps common to getting games working either way, specifically getting drivers for your graphics card working properly. I won't bother explaining about my experiences with this. If you can't use google well enough to find some help, I'm not sure if you're ready to use Linux...

* Wine isn't actually an emulator, more of a compatibility layer. Emulator's easier to explain.

Native linux games? There's a few out there. As I said, Darwinia's my personal favourite, and there are also a couple of other games from the same guys, Uplink, which is available now, and Defcon, which is awesome and coming soon. There's also a couple of the more "mainstream" games, like Quake 3 Arena, Neverwinter Nights and Unreal Tournament 2k3 which have been ported onto linux. Generally, these are pretty easy to install, but if all else fails, you can always google for a howto... There's usually one around for any problem you'll have. Check linuX-gamers for that.

That said, good native linux games are still pretty sparse, at least compared to Windows ones. That's where Wine comes into play. Once again, I'd best point you to linuX-gamers or WineHQ, as I don't feel like going into detail over setup details. Cutting a long story short, Wine lets you run a lot of windows software under Linux. Often badly. And with setup issues. But still, it's better than nothing. And if you're willing to shell out a little, head over and have a look at TransGaming's Cedega program. Designed specifically for gaming, they've got a reasonable list of games that run quite well, Half Life 2, Civilization IV and Guild Wars to name a few. So, um, I guess that's about all I've got to say on the subject. Now go. Install linux and, most importantly, play.

Oh yeah, personal note, another exam over. And another one tomorrow. Bah.