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Worrying Aspects of Linux Gaming
jones_supa writes: Former Valve engineer Rich Geldreich has written up a blog post about the state of Linux Gaming. It's an interesting read, that's for sure. When talking about recent bigger game ports, his take is that the developers doing these ports just aren't doing their best to optimize these releases for Linux and/or OpenGL. He points out how it took significant resources from Valve to properly optimize Source engine for Linux, but that other game studios are not walking the last mile. About drivers, he asks "Valve is still paying LunarG to find and fix silly perf bugs in Intel's slow open source driver. Surely this can't be a sustainable way of developing a working driver?" He ends his post by agreeing with a Slashdot comment where someone is basically saying that SteamOS is done, and that we will never get our hands on the Steam Controller.
I still can't do the consoles. I bought one from every generation except the latest xbone / ps4 iteration. I just can't do it. I find the controllers bad for anything except fighting games and I generally like more complex games. Games that lend themselves to planning over days and often tabbing to a browser for insights.
I hate however having to boot to windows to play games. It drives me nuts. So I have a couple of linux native games I play but I mainly stream them from a windows machine via the steam client. It "just works", so my everyday machine is a dell latitude in a docking station running linux mint and I have an over the top gaming rig running windows in the garage. WOL and autostart steam. then a shutdown script. done.
Look, what's wrong with Windows or OSX or Android? They're not expensive, unless you're a cheapskate. They're designed for people like your family, and there are lots of nice people in black tshirts and turtlenecks who love to help out 24/7. Think of the children! Imagine their little faces as they realize Visual Studio is not available, and all they get is an empty black and white window that beeps on each keypress, unless they type ^]:q!
Linux doesn't need world domination, in fact it's been going downhill in the last 5 years precisely because too many people invite their friends and family, and they complain that they can't play games, or someone moved the Start Button That Stops The Machine. Then some busybody does something about it, without thinking.
The world doesn't need yet another gaming and browsing platform, there are enough out there already. The world does need a platform where everything is infinitely configurable and simple enough for dumb robots to understand, and people are forced to become experts. And that platform is dying.
So don't be a jerk, tell your friends about Apple before it's too late. Or Android, or whatever helps you fight your little hate war against M$ or whatever the latest shorthand for evil software companies is. I don't care, use the right tool for the job and so on, and leave Linux out of your ideological fight.