Descent 3 for Linux Announced

GehRehmee writes: "Heresay's been floating about for some time now, but Loki has officially announced its intent to release the Linux version of Descent 3 "By July 2000". Quotables: "We're excited to see the Linux market growing and we're very happy to be a part of it," said Matt Toschlog, president of Outrage. Jeff Slutter, who programmed the Linux version for Outrage, said, "We originally released a dedicated server version of Descent 3 for Linux and are very pleased that Loki will now bring to market the full client version." "

Comments

Remember why we want these things.

[Forge]

Lots of people don't want games ported to Linux or desktop apps in general. They think it will "dumb down the OS. However there is a purely selfish and logical reason to demand, request and even encourage these things. Here is the chain of reasoning.

1. The biggest problem facing the experienced Linux user is limited choice of hardware. You walk into a shop and of 20 devices for a particular use, anywhere from 5 to 18 don't support Linux.

2. Manufacturers don't bundle Linux drivers or contribute them to the Kernel simply because they don't think there are enough users to make money off.

3. The more applications run on a platform the more users it will attract. There is simply no way the person who bought a computer to play a particular game or run a specific program will use an OS that doesn't support that.

Therefore, by increasing the pool of applications we increase the userbase and by increasing the userbase we increase hardware choice. Already It has got the stage where I have not seen a new SCSI or Network card that doesn't support Linux ( with Linux specific instructions and/or drivers in the box ) for over a year now. Port more games and the same will be true for video cards, sound hardware and controllers.

As for Decent specifically. I didn't play it much before and probably won't start now. However there are people playing the old version on Windows who will at least experiment with the New version under Linux.