Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: What Video Games Keep You From Using Linux?
skade88 writes "Everyone knows content is king. Many of us use Windows or OS X at home instead of Linux because the games we love just are not available on Linux. With Steam moving forward for a Linux launch, I would like to hear from the Slashdot community on this topic. What are the game(s) you cannot live without? If they were available in Linux would you be happy to run Linux instead of Windows or OS X?"
The real question should be... what games do you want now, and in the future. Just getting all games to work that I want now doesn't really help me when Awesome cool game 15 comes out and I really want it. This is coming from a person who has been using Linux for years.
Aside from a couple of great indie games, the majority of the games I've enjoyed in the past few months are not available for Linux.
The opposite question would have a much shorter answer.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
To be honest - Microsoft Office. Most of the people I communicate with use MsOffice products, and yes, I have heard of OpenOffice and LibreOffice, however, their cross-compatibility is not perfect. This is a no-go - when I send a customer an important document - I have to be sure everything is looking good / professional and that the other side has no issues with what I sent them. When I receive a document from a client - I have to be sure I get exactly what the customer sent. Sometime PDF is not a valid solution. LibreOffice does not promise it to me, yet (in my current opinion).
No attention span. I pick up a box in the store, feel the hours sucked vampirically from my body into the box. I put the box down.
Disclaimer: it's really all the fault of Sid Meier's Civilization series.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I'm really done with computer gaming. Now if you want to talk about how Netflix keeps me from using Linux, I'll be glad to talk.
"Technology.....the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Max Firsch
Hell, I like to make things run on WINE, that's a game in itself!, but untill Joe Sixpack can drop in DVD / Download-and-play-with-one-click, LINUX gaming will struggle. (Remember even WINDOWS gaming is too hard for a lot of people, with DX updates, various runtimes, licensing, etc,etc .. thus, IMHO, console sales)
The question wasn't "are you personally missing drivers for Linux", "do you feel that normal people could install Linux", or "is it important for all operating systems to have the familiar Windows interface". The question was which games would need to be available for Linux in order for you to switch to Linux. Or, if you prefer, if the games you need were available for Linux, would you run Linux instead of Mac OS X or Windows.
We all vote for Civilization. Most people are holding back just because they realize lifetimes are finite.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
Can't speak for OP, but as someone in exactly the same situation, the answer is the same as "what do you do if a game isn't available for the particular console you own?" I don't play it. I can't even keep up with all the good games that are available for my console. I'm certainly not concerned about the ones that aren't.
Many years ago, I dual-booted Windows so I could play games there, but once I got my first console (a PS1), that became more effort than it was worth. I haven't used Windows since.
Of course, I do hear that its possible to play some PC games under Wine, but I really haven't bothered to try.
Steam on Linux will be nice.
Mostly it's Battlefield 3 and the likes (new games with shiny graphics and DRM), they won't work well or at all.
If you can accomplish 100% of your task in Windows 7 and 80% in Linux, then why not just stay in Windows? **
**These numbers are from my own use. Debian partition on my own drive.
Drivers, installed base, drivers, familiar windows interface, drivers, most users can barely power their machine on much less install linux, drivers, forget installing linux software...see comment before the last comment, drivers, lack of vendor support, and drivers.
Oh did I mention drivers?
You play weird video games. Personally, I like playing the "my computer works already, I didn't have to hunt down twenty drivers from twenty different sites and make sure I kept them all up to date individually" game, that's why I already use Linux (and have for nearly a decade).
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
Most of the older APIs do proper relay to newer ones, and abstractions like SDL take care of a lot of that. For me, the biggest detraction, is I just yesterday installed the latest LMDE on my desktop... then, when it came around to installing the nvidia drivers, I added the additional repositories (checkboxes in synaptic) after install, no gui... Sorry, it it's a pretty big deal.. also, audio didn't work, but that's another issue... My system is about 2 years old now, using a 1st gen Core i7 with a more recent nVidia GTX 660 Ti... Honestly, it's a pain... will probably give it a try with debian proper, and then ubuntu... if I can't have my hardware working accelerated in Linux, gaming is out anyway, not that I game much. Just the same, I had less trouble running a hackintosh install than Linux sometimes. I like Linux.. use it for servers, non-gui, but as a primary desktop it's problematic.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
There's nothing solid about it. The emulation is garbage compared to the native clients.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
No, not games, but I've never known anyone that stayed away from Linux as a primary platform because of games. I have known many, though, that needed a handful of specific apps that simply didn't exist on Linux and that didn't run well in emulation.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Except, of course, none of it happened.
The configuration you are talking about, ALWAYS works in Ubuntu.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The most important development that will push games to Linux isn't Linux adoption by gamers, but lower costs of porting.
Increasingly, cross-platform development is a necessity. And if you're already being careful about not using platform-specific stuff (which you are if you're developing for Windows, consoles and OSX already), it becomes a simple question of middleware support. More and more engines support Linux these days, and Valve is committed to it. It will happen.
Meanwhile, I'm happy with Crossover and emulators/retrogames.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
FTL if you're looking for a roguelike that takes place in space instead of a dungeon.
Learn something new.
Running it in a VM still means that you're "stuck" on Windows. Don't kid yourself.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.