BioWare Porting to Linux?
infodragon wrote to us with the news that BioWare is going to be porting games to Linux. Linuxpower has an interview with them talking about porting Neverwinter Nights, and /possibly/ Baldur's Gate 2. I promise I'll be good if they port BG2. I promise.
So news like this is always welcome.
However, Linux as a gaming platform is only one piece of the pie. We also need to work on usability for new users. The GNOME and KDE projects are a very good start for this.
After many years of working with "clueless newbies," it's become my opinion that most of them are willing to learn only what they need to know to get done whatever it is they want to do. Sometimes even less.
What needs to happen is this: New users should be able to learn what they need to know as they go. For instance, you have to update a whole bunch of things to get Quake III Arena installed. It's my opinion that all these drivers should have been included on the CD and the installation process included them, and these presented in a manner that users would learn what a shared library is, what X is, what X toolkits are, what the kernel is, what kernel modules are, how all this ties together, and why they are all important, in a quick, easy to follow format.
If the collective knowledge of all of us UNIX people can be placed in the hands of newbies at just the point where they're most receptive to it (e.g. the installation process of a game they really want to play) then I believe the number of "clueless" newbies will drop.
Anybody who wants to work on systems to make this sort of thing possible, or knows of any in progress, can feel free to contact me.
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How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?