Hi all.

As the following question may indicate, I'm pretty much a newbie to Linux (and not altogether that knowledgeable about Windows/computing in general, either)

Just a quick question - how is it that games that are made for Windows (and take years to develop), such as id Software's Doom & Quake series', are able to be ported so quickly to Linux?

I know that OpenGL is available for both formats, but is there some other techinique I'm not aware of that enables a DirectX-based transition to be made easily? Or are the Linux versions produced by in tandem/by a different dedicated programming team altogether?


Any help would be appreciated!

I'm not a gamer, but I haven't seen much indication that games are "quickly ported" to linux, especially ones that are DirectX only. I think you'll find that all the games that run natively on Linux use OpenGL, and DirectX games only run under an emulation system like wine or cedega. The wine project especially has spent a lot of effort recently improving their DX9 support, working to translate DirectX effects into corresponding OpenGL ones.