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Alex Scoble

Extremetech: Why gaming sucks on Linux

8 comments

IT TOPICS:Linux, Operating Systems, Personal Technology, Software, Windows & Microsoft

I saw this Extremetech piece while going through my feed list today. Kind of makes me wonder if this jibes with the experiences of most other gamers who have tried to run Windows games in a Linux environment.

I've heard of people running City of Heroes and World of Warcraft in Linux flavors using various technologies like WINE and such and the few that I've run into had good experiences doing so, but I wonder about those PC gamers out there who have tried and found the whole process wanting.

Personally, it's not something I'm particularly interested in trying as I don't really like to mess with my gaming system. It's mainly for, you know, gaming. Downtime caused by experimentation isn't exactly a welcome state when I'm in the mood for a good fragging.

Still, eventually someone will figure out how to get 99% of Windows apps out there to run and run well on Linux. I'm just wondering how close we are to there.

Based on Extremetech's recent article, we aren't very close. What are your thoughts?

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please explain more?

Submitted by delindak on February 24, 2007 - 3:51 P.M.

please explain more?

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bcoz linx best support to

Submitted by BooBah on February 24, 2007 - 3:44 P.M.

bcoz linx best support to the hardware

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bcoz linx best support to

Submitted by Anonymous on November 20, 2006 - 11:26 P.M.

bcoz linx best support to the hardware easily and the games are easily managed by the developers & user.

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I was running WOW on my

Submitted by Brady on November 14, 2006 - 12:24 P.M.

I was running WOW on my Linux system using Cedega for about a year and generally it worked great. On a couple occasions when a patch came out there would be a slight lag (a few hours to a couple days) before it worked correctly on Cedega. As for performance I barely noticed a difference between Windows and Cedega/Linux. And while Windows would lock up sometimes and require a complete reboot the Linux system would just require a ctrl-alt-backspace to kill the X session. I was quite happy with my experience.

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Ceratinly Linux is closing

Submitted by Anonymous on November 1, 2006 - 9:17 P.M.

Ceratinly Linux is closing the gap quickly.

Cedega I did not find to be a vast improvement over WINE (which is still free...). Those Loki installers you mentioned are a good reason why Linux users are confident they will come up to M$ levels eventually, if not sooner. Thats an example of the Linux community flexing it's muscles and the kind of grass-roots support you simply cannot expect from those other guys.

But, sadly, the big name gaming companies still cannot resist the lure of that large a market. Still - you can sense a change in the wind...

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I run linux 100% and run the

Submitted by steve on November 1, 2006 - 6:52 P.M.

I run linux 100% and run the games I want to play under Cedega with Mandriva and an nvidia card. Yes some titles need to be tweeked, other titles work as good (if not better) under linux. But lets face it, if you don't get a kick out of tweeking your system and writing programs. perhaps you are not geekie enough to be a linux user.

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Yeah, I use Linux 100% but

Submitted by Quentin on November 1, 2006 - 2:53 P.M.

Yeah, I use Linux 100% but gaming is pretty lax at the moment. I own all the Loki titles which are click and run installs, no mucking about. When trying to get WIndows games to run, I dont bother anymore. Until games are ported to Linux I dont think I'l even bother with them. I may miss out on having the latest and greatest games, but I can live with the few native titles ported to Linux.

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I have got WoW running in

Submitted by Phillip on November 1, 2006 - 1:38 A.M.

I have got WoW running in linux for quite some time now, I use ubuntu and Cedega and it runs fine so long as you have an nvidia graphics card, if you got ATI you will have to muck around quite a bit.

It doesnt have the same performance as windows but the performance hit isnt big enough to persuade me to go back to windows.

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