[plug] Linux decent gaming platform ???

[Leon Brooks]

James Tan wrote:
> 
> I haven't seen any games on Linux since I'm rather new to it and I
> do most of my gaming on Win9x.  I'm aware that Linux does support
> some games like Quake but I haven't seen a single game on it.
> Can anyone let me know whether Linux is going to take off as a
> gaming platform in the near future or does it require lots of
> up-to-date hardware ?

How do I put this? Everyone uses Windows 9X as a gaming platform. Permit
me to quote John Carmack, author of Doom, Quake, et al
(http://www.tstonramp.com/~freiheit/winflop.shtml but originally from
Computer Shopper, April 1997):


"Direct3D IM (immediate mode) is a horribly broken API. It inflicts
great pain and suffering on the programmers using it, without returning
any significant advantages. I don't think there is any market segment
that D3D is appropriate for. OpenGL seems to work just fine for
everything from Quake to SoftImage. There is no good technical reason
for the existence of D3D.

"I'm sure D3D will suck less with each forthcoming version, but this is
an opportunity to just bypass dragging the entire development community
through the messy evolution of an ill-birthed API. Best case: Microsoft
integrates OpenGL with DirectX (probably calling it Direct-GL or
something) ports D3D retained mode on top of GL, and tells everyone to
forget they every heard of D3D immediate mode. Programmers have one good
API, vendors have one driver to write, and the world is a better place." 


Note that Linux (and *BSD) displays through X, which generally does it's
3D using OpenGL (see http://www.mesa3d.org/ for example). Also, if I
want to set up a bunch of Windows machines to play a net game like
FreeCIV, or a MUD, I have to set up N full-scale computers. With Linux
and X, I can have one real computer that actually runs *all* of the game
clients, and N-1 junkbox specials running X servers under whatever OS
they had installed at the time (or, for character-based MUDs, not even
that - old-fashioned character terminals work just fine). Junkbox
specials with enough RAM don't even need hard disks.