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Are Commercial Games Finally Going To Make It To Linux?
colinneagle writes "Those of us who actively promote Linux as a viable desktop alternative to Windows are often greeted with the following refrain: 'Nobody will use Linux because there are no good games.' The prevailing wisdom is that the abundance of high-quality, commercial video gaming is a key factor in the market-share dominance that Microsoft Windows enjoys. And, in all reality, this is somewhat true. So, then, the obvious course of action is to convince the video game publishers and developers of the world that Linux is a viable (if, perhaps, a bit niche) market. And by 'viable' I mean one thing and one thing only – 'profitable.'Luckily, there have been three high-profile recent examples of Linux users going absolutely nuts over video games, forking over their hard-earned cash in the process: the Humble Indie Bundle (drawing in huge numbers of sales — for a DRM-free product, no less — with sales numbers by Linux users consistently beating out sales to MacOS X users); Canonical's Ubuntu Software Center (where video games make up the top 10 paid software packages); Valve's announcement that it is bringing the Steam store, and community portal, to Linux desktop (specifically Ubuntu). Will the indie game developers (along with Valve) reap the bulk of the rewards that releasing games on Linux is offering...or will some of the big publishers realize what they're missing out on and join in the fun?"
I'll make sure to let our Linux support lead know. He's been bashing his head against a wall trying to get SimpleScalar to compile on our systems for a class to use. I'll make sure to let him know that pnot says that 10 years ago you stopped needing to do this and the program should just work! He'll feel awful silly that he spent all this time trying to make it work when clearly it already does.
I picked this particular example, by the way, because it is the most recent that comes to mind, it was what he was frustratingly working on for a good bit of the week (and he finally did succeed). It isn't the only one I can think of.
As for the kernel, the last time I had to deal with such a thing was in about 2008, which is the last time I made any serious effort to try Linux. I was attempting to do pro audio work with it, since that is one of the things I do. One of the first things I was told I needed to do was recompile my kernel for low latency audio. After fighting with it for a bit I decided it was not for me, and went back to Windows, where low latency audio is available for any WDM audio device in KS mode.