Gaming on Linux – Introduction
Introduction
GNU/Linux has made amazing strides over the past couple of years. It used to be a struggle to get decent professional applications on the system, but now that’s largely behind us, thanks to excellent FOSS applications that most people are now familiar with, such as OpenOffice, Firefox. GIMP etc. However there one area where Linux still falls down as a mass market desktop operating system, and that’s as a serious gaming platform.
Gaming is vital to Linux adoption, and has been helped along considerably recently by the WINE team: they’ve done the impossible and gotten lots of Windows games to run well on Linux, with only a little jiggery-pokery required. All gamers would be well advised to install WINE and try it out, or even better install the paid version of Crossover Games, it’s definitely worth paying the few extra bucks to get full support for major games like World of Warcraft and the various Steam offerings. Your money also goes to help WINE development, so you’ll be helping other gamers out too. You can check on how well a Windows game is likely to run on Linux by having a look at the WINE AppDB.
But there are some good games that also run natively on Linux, and I want to cover some of the best here. Some of these may be a little older and scrappier than the latest & greatest offerings on Windows, but they are all good serious games that are very playable and loads of fun. In some cases they are as good as some Windows offerings, it’s just that they didn’t get the same marketing and consequently aren’t as well-known. So they are all definitely worth checking out.
Licenses
Most of the games reviewed below are available under Proprietary licenses. Although I’m very much in favour of Free Open Source licenses wherever possible, I do recognise that artists have the right to make their works available under whatever license they wish, within the limits of the law. It’s up to you, the user, to decide if you find the rights granted by that license acceptable to you or not. I’ve listed in each case what category the game’s license falls into to assist you in that choice.
Installation
For FOSS games, the best way to install is normally just to use your distribution’s built-in Add/Remove Program system. However if you’re using a Debian-based system like Ubuntu (highly recommended) you should also try GetDeb for new packages pre-built for your OS. For Proprietary games you’ll normally download a generic Linux installer from the company’s website, some of which are less than clear in operation (I really don’t understand why). Frequently you’ll have to open a terminal and type in “./exact-name-of-installer” in order to get it to work – if you’re not confident with the terminal you have my sympathies…
Graphics Cards
Most modern graphics cards are fairly well-supported on Linux, including nVidia, ATI, and Intel. Unfortunately some of the drivers for these cards are not as efficient as they are on Windows, so this can cause games to run slightly slower, even if Linux itself is usually faster. A particular problem with Intel integrated graphics systems is that currently their 3D drivers are in a state of flux and very problematic for gaming, especially on Ubuntu. If you’re using Ubuntu 9.04 and an Intel graphics chip, you many want to install a more recent driver. Generally speaking for Linux gaming I’ve found that the best choice is to use an nVidia card if possible, particularly if you’re intending to run Windows games via WINE or Crossover.
