Half-Life 2 - A Linux User's Lament

jvm writes "If you're a gamer with a pulse, you've probably heard about the impending release of Valve's Half-Life 2. As a gamer and a Linux user, I always get a little stirred up about the whole Half-Life situation, where we have a dedicated server but no client. So here's my reflection on the sad situation, past and present. How will the rest of the Linux gaming community react to the release of Half-Life 2? Boot into Windows? Wait for WINE or WineX support? Get the Xbox version? With so many Half-Life servers running on Linux, will the same be true for Half-Life 2?"

Comments

MS does good

[KrackHouse]

I hate to say it but sometimes MS is just better. DX is better than OGL, discuss amongst yourselves.

Nerve's heritage? WTF are you talking about?

[Mike Hawk]

bani? The same bani thats trying to turn Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory back into Return to Castle Wolfenstein?

Wow, for such an influential guy you're kinda an idiot.

Gabe Newell = Valve = Half-Life
Nerve = Nerve = Return to Castle Wolfenstein

Man, the just plain wrongness is staggering. Wait until I tell your boys at PlanetWolfenstein. Next thing you know you'll be claiming Splash Damage made Unreal Tournament. You think whoever let you in on the ET source would like to hear about you spreading this kind of slanderous false information about Nerve and Activision?

+1 Inaccurate is more like it.

Re:why not support the companies that support us?

[Natalie's Hot Grits]

The problem is, while geeks talk the talk, they don't walk the walk with their wallets.

no... the problem is that Loki got fucked by nVidia's and ATI's drivers. period. If you remember correctly, nVidia's 3d drivers were beta when Loki went bust, and they sucked. Not only that, but current linux nvidia drivers don't even use the platform standard DRI interface. You can't expect casual gamers to spend all their time getting 3d working for some BS game, and that is where the money comes from.. casual gamers.

And the state of drivers, and 3d graphics on high end consumer cards in general on Linux is just bogus, and completely ridiculous.

id ports to Linux on principle, and their engines are the best. One reason I haven't really played many non id games in the past couple years... (i still run them mostly on windows tho, its a small price to pay for the better performance you get with nvidia/ati's win32 drivers.)

Let me make my only point clear as day: Linux 3D for video games today is shit. No engine company is going to make any money supporting Linux when there is no hardware out there to run their game.

Re:I have a lament too

[LurkerXXX]

Some of us are familiar. We just think it's bullocks.

Missing the point

[digidave]

I think most people here are missing the point. I've read posts about Valve employees coming from Microsoft, DirectX 9 being better than OpenGL and prohibitive costs in doing a Linux port. All good arguments, but not the main point of the article.

Valve expects Linux users to support their game by running the server, but doesn't understand that they should support Linux users by giving them a client. If supporting Linux is too much work, then they should shove their Linux server up their ass and make due with whoever wants to run a Windows server.