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You clearly miss the point entirely. Activision, for nearly two decades have done everything they could to undermine, damage and thwart gaming on linux. from legal action to firing any developer that dared use it.
for example.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/...

it is definately not a coincidence that a couple of months after someone starts a thread asking "will i be banned for using linux", acti starts hunting down and banning linux users.

"fixed something"
"fixed indention" on a commit that actually fixes a bug.

At least they fix things which are mostly not fixed in the mainline kernel.

The only thing they do is backport patches from upstream and maintain their proprietary drivers.
Sometimes they fix things in stupid ways because they don't understand the code and upstream didn't do it yet.

Don't worry, even core Linux developers don't understand what they are doing which has many unpleasant effects. Examples? The broken IO since 3.x (see bug 12309). revoke() is still not there which means that file descriptors and network sockets cannot be forcibly closed and without unmounting them it leads to stale mount points, which can then cause oopses and even kernel panics (bug 14505), the fix requires rewriting the half of the kernel, but who is gonna do that? In many BSD's this feature is implemented. Broken thread priority. There's also no concept of backward compatibility. And so on... This is what happens when there's no interest towards consumers. And Google is in process of switching to its homegrown Zircon.

I'll be probably down-voted by GNU/Linux advocates but it's mostly due to the fact that GNU/Linux isn't suitable as a gaming OS. As an OS it lacks several mechanisms that are necessary especially for complicated interactive/heavy software such as AAA games. For example, Linux threads were poorly implemented as a hack on fork() and as a result thread priority sucks https://www.gamingonlinux.com/... as IRL some threads are more critical like sound threads. Also the notorious bug 12309 where symptoms are sill present or bug 14505 where file descriptors and network sockets cannot be forcibly closed and without unmounting them first it leads to stale mount points, and in certain cases to oopses and crashes. Not even talking about unstable API/ABIs. Windows Mac OS and strangely many BSDs are mostly free from such Linux diseases. Even Google is planning to replace it with Fuchsia/Zircon in future.

You sir have a lot of misconceptions. Linux is just fine as a gaming OS, and sometimes beats Windows if the games are native implementations (instead of badly ported console/Windows games).

Threading is much better on Linux that it is on Windows actually. You can look at Valve's port of the source engine - they were seeing higher frame rates on Linux than on Windows mostly due to better threading.

I'll be probably down-voted by GNU/Linux advocates but it's mostly due to the fact that GNU/Linux isn't suitable as a gaming OS. As an OS it lacks several mechanisms that are necessary especially for complicated interactive/heavy software such as AAA games. For example, Linux threads were poorly implemented as a hack on fork() and as a result thread priority sucks https://www.gamingonlinux.com/... as IRL some threads are more critical like sound threads. Also the notorious bug 12309 where symptoms are sill present or bug 14505 where file descriptors and network sockets cannot be forcibly closed and without unmounting them first it leads to stale mount points, and in certain cases to oopses and crashes. Not even talking about unstable API/ABIs. Windows Mac OS and strangely many BSDs are mostly free from such Linux diseases. Even Google is planning to replace it with Fuchsia/Zircon in future.

Nice little rant.

Users don't get 10 desktop environment and 25 window managers, if they happen to pick Linux Mint Cinnamon, they get 1 desktop environment and 1 window manager to work with.
They don't get a holy war about whatever runs when the computer starts, nobody except us nerds know about that.
There are applications.
Hardware does connect and 'just work'.
Including printers and video cards.
They don't need to ever open a shell to type commands.

To me, your "not have a working GPU" remark discredits your entire post.
Even NVIDIA, who Linus gave the finger, has very solid Linux drivers nowadays.
Linux users can even be hardcore gamers.

"Linux on the server is fine; it's what it is made for, [...]"

Is it? Is that was Linus had in mind?

"Linux on the desktop will never, ever happen, as far as the general population is concerned."

Current, about 2% of desktop users are on Linux. That's a tremendous amount of people. And it's still growing.

There are whole websites dedicated to games that run on linux: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/

In the last 1-2 years there has been increased progress in porting over games to linux, and in driver development for GPUs.

Its very good to have corporate backers like red hat or valve to work on mesa and similar projects. The future of linux gaming is certainly looking great.

Already now you can play a very wide range of proprietary and free (as in freedom) games on linux, and its getting more every day.

If you want the last bit of performance, or if your favourite game doesn't have a linux port nor works with wine, then you obviously should use Windows, but if you can make minor compromises on that front, linux for you.

As many kickstarter projects which overpromise and/or other recent revolutionary games underdelivering, this is no different but unfortunately on a larger scale.

The CEO, being a dropout blonde young woman (exotic novelty in this field) has really captured and cultivated her narrative in a smart way, swindling investors of 700M USD. Do them deserve it?
Probably - You do your due diligence before investing in a company promising to revolutionize the world in a secret way. Revolutions don't happen secretly.
Shall she be sent to jail for being a fraud?

What a sad world we live in... don't promise the moon if you don't have rockets to travel there, don't invest your money without contractual promises and clear transparent due diligence.

Alas, we all want to be famous and make billions of USD in the shortest amount of time, we've just received a medicine of our own...

This article is post bait. 1. Lure passionate people into highly upsetting or controversial hypothetical statement. 2. Popcorn 3. Watch the war break out between the factions 4. Profit SEO comments and data 5. Popularity++ KDE is not dying. On GamingOnLinux statistics KDE is the #1 used Desktop Environment https://www.gamingonlinux.com/... Is the author blind? Perhaps specific tools and websites that were once cutting edge have gone stale, but seriously - Konqueror? You mean that thing that was replaced by Dolphin? Someone should tell the author there's a reason why X Y and Z tools have not been renovated - usually because there are better options available.

News from the same day: Steam Hardware Survey shows a rather insignificant drop for Linux.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/the-latest-steam-hardware-survey-shows-a-rather-insignificant-drop-for-linux.7557

Linux build coming soon

What you write doesn't make any sense.
You write about open source games, give related examples, and somehow conclude that "Linux fails as a desktop".

First of all, Linux also has Steam, with 1742 games.
Just yesterday the Linux version of Saints Row IV was released.
And last Saturday, Slashdot mentioned Capcom's recent announcement of Street Fighter V for Linux.
Nowadays, open source games have little to do with Linux failing as a gaming platform.

Secondly, your remark that Linux fails as a desktop is even more general than how it's doing when it comes to gaming.
As a desktop OS it's already a success. Millions of people are already using it as their main desktop OS and for them it works just fine.

What you actually mean is something like "Linux is not yet the #1 desktop OS."
Well, yeah, but open source games basically have absolutely nothing to do with that.

I mean, really, re-read what you just wrote.
You literally start with "This is an example of why Linux fails as a desktop."
Seriously?

And unfortunately this new Crimson driver barely improves performance on Linux...
http://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/the-new-crimson-amd-driver-tested-on-r7-370-4g.6274

Have you looked at steam? You might be surprised at the number of proprietary games available for Linux.

Also, you should look be looking at this site as well.

I don't know about bad recent graphical support. I can tell you that I've been happy with the FOSS OpenGL support by Intel and AMD for the past 11 years. The only consistent issue I ever had was with NVidia's proprietary drivers that chained me to a specific linux kernel and even then would still cause kernel panics. I threw out my last NVidia card 6 years ago and never looked back.

Apparently you haven't paid much attention either...
Borderlands 2 uses the Unreal engine and they released it on Linux.

"It doesn't matter which is cheaper if Linux can only play a very small subset of the games."

Times are changing.
If you don't pay attention, you may miss what's happening.
Currently, 22.5% of Steam's catalog works under Linux; 1346 games and those are not the 1346 crappiest Indie games either.
There really are more than enough great games on Steam to justify buying a $200+ video card just for Linux gaming - I've done it and don't regret doing it.
"Very small subset" simply no longer applies. Linux support for games is being added left and right.
In fact, today we'll get another port by Feral.
Probably either "Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor" or "Alien: Isolation".
There's a whole bunch more great stuff coming up soon.
And a couple of months from now the Steam Machines.

And its coming to Linux natively!

http://www.gamingonlinux.com/a...

Wrong;

http://www.gamingonlinux.com/a...

Now its not confirmed 100%, but its looking good based on its publishers track record.

Scrolls is currently Mac and PC only, it looks great https://scrolls.com/ There is a indication that it will be coming soon http://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/mojangs-scrolls-is-coming-to-linux-soon.2135 although personally I am not holding my breath. Fortunately Linux isn't short of games anymore.

Since Phoronix claimed originally it was both just to clear it up only Portal 1 is out for Linux, there are no hints about Portal 2 despite this article stating it and linking to a source for Portal 2 (the source of that info is an idiot). Daily linux gaming news can be found on www.gamingonlinux.com by the way :) where we actually check facts properly ;)

Well there are plenty of others, LGT was my first though! http://www.gamingonlinux.com/ - daily news http://www.penguspy.com/ - a directory similair to LGT http://linuxgamecast.com/ - game videos and tutorials for linux

The email is mine. I sent it to Mike Larabel and I did not expect him to use the screenshot. I also told him I'd provide further evidence that the email was genuine; nope. The next morning I find this article. I already addressed some concerns over the email's validity over at reddit in this thread, my username is thejoe: http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/ujwx3/valves_gabe_says_yes_to_steam_linux_this_year/ Additionally, someone posted an exchange he had with Gabe here: http://www.gamingonlinux.com/index.php?threads/steam-really-is-coming-for-linux.890/ Short of letting you log in to my gmail account, I don't know what else I can supply. You could email Gabe yourself and ask him if you're really tenacious. I didn't intend for this explosion of interest, I didn't want the screenshot to be so widely circulated. I actually think I've annoyed Gabe by sharing emails like this. I'm also never sharing anything with Phoronix again.