What do you think needs to happen in order for Linux to get native commercial games (No Wine/WineX)?
I think that a stonger user base would help. That would tell gaming houses that Linux is not just a fad or a hobbist OS.
Major commericial software other than games (like Adobe and others) would help regular people ease into using Linux, therefore creating a stronger user base.
Easier software installation. Software just needs to install and run correctly. (note..I do not have a problem with compiling souce and the like, but my gaming friends can't do it)
If the Linux community could get a couple major publishers (Rockstar/Activision/Electronic Arts) then lesser known companies might follow (yes! We have Id Software and 3d realms).
Start writing or emailing these companies so that we get heard and hopefully they change their minds.

And finally....Let's not allow Microsoft to get a larger and tighter grip on any company that wishes to create software for other platforms.

Any other comments???


A Slacker

Very difficult. ID software is by far my favorite company today. But using Linux as a gaming platform.. I don't know. Linux itself has to become a hole lot more attractive for both users and developers. Users because Linux is not user friendly as say, Microsoft Windows. Peoples are still trying to get online with their modems and Linux, making them trying to install a game, drivers for sound and video won't be easy task.

It also has to be more attractive for the developers. As a standard package manager, a good API (not a hole bunch as SDL, Mesa, OpenGL) and really good IDE's (Visual Studio and DirectX are a powerful combination). Ok, we have a lot of good text editors, but when the applications get bigger, things can get really rough.

To do not say that, ATI drivers are still buggy and there are many, many peoples using ATI's cards. If not even the hardware manufactures provides good, easy to install drivers... well, you get the idea.

So far, the only thing we can do is to support (and by that, buy) the current native Linux games, as Quake 3 and Tux Racer, for example. Buy an ID game even if you already have a Win32 version of the game. Use it as a server, or trow it out the Window. The important is that they see that Linux can be a market for games. And also we have to hope that Linux will get also more attractive to everyone.

The installation of drivers and software has become easy. RPM... apt-get...

Speaking of ATI, the drivers are in RPM format. The only thing that may be considered hard is answering thoses 20 questions in order to configure XFree86.

As of now, some PC knowledge is required in order to install and configure Linux.
However, things have become very easy, especially with most modern distribution.
Most hardware is fully supported... I know... there is the occasional USB device, network card, etc that does not work.
But now... ... so much is detected and configured automatically.
I purchase a brand new computer with good hardware, installed SuSE 9.0 and everything was detected and configured (MB, video, sound, scanner, printer, etc).
Only my monitor was not detected, but it worked with the generic settings. However, I was able to tweak it by making some modifications in the conf file (refresh rates).

Anyways, Linux is growing at an astonishing rate. Compare a Linux distribution from late 2000 - early 2001 to one now (2003-2004)...
The progress is amazing... if Linux continues at this rate...

And games... ID Software is the main Linux game developer (Quake3, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Return to Castle Wolfenstein)
I have seen other games such as RailRoad Tycoon 2 available for Linux.
But I don't know if we will see a major growth in this area as most gamers are windows users.
Hopefully I am wrong.