Support us on Patreon
PayPalFeral Interactive one of our new favourite porting houses has asked the big question. Why do we game on Linux?
Linux gamers! Tell us: why do you game on Linux? Please spread this question hither and thither. @GameLinux @ROOTGAMERcom @gamingonlinux
— Feral Interactive (@feralgames) September 3, 2014
Feel free to twitter them, or comment here if you answer isn't a short one. I am sure they are watching.
My reasons
It's an interesting question and one that has been asked a lot by many interesting gamers across the years to the Linux community.
For me it's not about why I game on Linux, but more about why I use Linux which directly translates into gaming on it.
I love customization and having the choice to do lots or do nothing. For me it's not always about source code access (I feel that is important though!), but more about being free to do what I want with it, and never having to pay for system upgrades. I spend enough money on games and hardware without wanting to fork out x amount for the latest operating system.
With Linux I have OpenGL and can get updates for it whenever my chosen graphics vendor pushes out a driver for it, but on Windows at times you have needed to upgrade your entire operating system to get it.
On Linux if I don't like how the entire desktop works I can install another one with a few quick commands, or finding the main package in some package manager. That's an important one to note: I dislike Gnome Shell and Unity a lot, so I use Cinnamon and it works perfectly for my needs. I tried Windows 8 and the new UI was utterly a pain to work with or to find anything on (I gave it a real good go too), and I was stuck with it until I installed Linux on my laptop.
On Linux I have choices, and lots of them. I can tinker with almost anything, and if a game doesn't work you can do simple things to find out why. Running a game in the terminal for example will generally be pretty clear on what you are missing and fix it myself, and I can't say the same for broken games on Windows.
I also find Linux to perform far better at most general day to day tasks, and I come from a Windows 95/98/2000/xp/7 and recently a little of 8 background (yes I've used nearly all Windows operating systems, and a lot to).
There's also the community aspect. The amount of times of looked to find out how to do something, and someone helpful already has the answer and shared it with everyone. Linux users can be very, very helpful.
Right now Linux has also helped me fall in love with games I would never had tried if I was on Windows.
That is all off the top of my head, but that's my honest answer to it.
0 Likes
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
Ever since I upgraded from Windows 3.1 to Win95, I knew that Microsoft was scamming their customers. They intentionally make every progressive OS upgrade more system dependent. My computer just got slower and slower. I regret not installing linux in '97 when I had the chance. Instead, I simply gave up on using computers and sold mine as scrap. Now, when ever I use Windows I get the feeling that Microsoft thinks they have a say with how I use my own hardware.
I don't even know what the OS is doing. It's constantly accessing the hard drive and Windows sucks up my internet bandwith calling God knows who. The way the operating system forces a shutdown to install updates really ticks me off. I try to manually shutdown 'Windows Update' to no avail.
Windows is way over priced. It's currently the most expensive part of the computer. About a decade ago Wal-Mart had the great idea of selling whole computer without any operating systems installed. The prices were noticeably lower. Some how Microsoft shutdown their little side operation. I don't agree with Microsoft politics. The company just successfully lobbied to strip Peru of all FOSS software from government terminals. Microsoft has become WAY TOO POWERFUL. Since the NSA approached Linus himself and asked for a backdoor for snooping, you would guess that Microsoft was asked as well. Under threat of the Sherman Aniti-Trust Act, do you think Microsoft declined?
Run away from that company is the best advice I can you. With linux none of that which I just wrote applies.
I don't even know what the OS is doing. It's constantly accessing the hard drive and Windows sucks up my internet bandwith calling God knows who. The way the operating system forces a shutdown to install updates really ticks me off. I try to manually shutdown 'Windows Update' to no avail.
Windows is way over priced. It's currently the most expensive part of the computer. About a decade ago Wal-Mart had the great idea of selling whole computer without any operating systems installed. The prices were noticeably lower. Some how Microsoft shutdown their little side operation. I don't agree with Microsoft politics. The company just successfully lobbied to strip Peru of all FOSS software from government terminals. Microsoft has become WAY TOO POWERFUL. Since the NSA approached Linus himself and asked for a backdoor for snooping, you would guess that Microsoft was asked as well. Under threat of the Sherman Aniti-Trust Act, do you think Microsoft declined?
Run away from that company is the best advice I can you. With linux none of that which I just wrote applies.
1 Likes, Who?
Why do I game on Linux? That's pretty easy to answer: GNU/Linux has been my OS of choice since 2006. I don't use any other OSs at home, so I would feel silly purchasing and dual-booting, say, Windows, just so I can play games (I am patient, I'm not going to die if some game is Windows-only). I used to be a console gamer, but the current generation completely turned me off. Moreover, it's just so exciting to see Linux being taken seriously by AAA game developers and publishers!
1 Likes, Who?
linuxslacker Sep 4, 2014
started out in linux a few months after my 1st pc in 07 was also running windows 3.1 back then. thought it was cool and far superior to dos but lacked a gui(didnt know about x or how to configure it back then) i then ran windows primarily with 98 then 2000 then xp and had other pc's that i had various versions of linux on(redhat, mandrake, slackware, suse, etc) they all were interesting but i always kept going back to slackware. 2003 i think was the time i really got sick of rebooting into windows for gaming that i decided that ill drop windows altogether and stick with slackware and only play linux games since then slackwares been the only thing on my main system. i have tried some other distros on other pc's i did use mythbuntu when i first setup my mediacenter only to drop it for slackware when the update system did not get out of my way when i wanted to manually install the nvidia drivers because the distro provided drivers were a version old and had a bug. also used kubuntu on my nephews pc because i though it would be easier then slackware unfortunally an update screwed it - slackware to the rescue again. i also have a 2nd frontend to my mediacenter now and that does run mythbuntu. updates have left it non-functional once but since its a remote frontend i reinstalled mythbuntu and its still running fine for now one day it will also be a slackware machine.
why i use linux instead of windows
* it isnt a chore to use
* it is far superiour imho
* it is mostly FOSS and you can fix it yourself if you wanted to
* only had 1 kernel panic(linux's BSOD) and it was because i wanted to take a hand at writing(and failing) a driver(unsupported OEM capture card that looked like most of the work was done but turned out the chip code only supported usb not pci-e so was a little out of my skilllevel) :P totally user error there but was fun
extending the question to why i use slackware instead of insert distro X
* mostly vanilla
* stable
* doesnt get in the way of the user
* doesnt have a package repository or dependency resolution
* uses sysvinit with bsd style init scripts
* no custom config gui's
* will never have pulseaudio or systemD unless if forced(seriously stop trying to fix what isn't broken and creating nasty crap like that nothing wrong with sysvinit and alsa)
* will not use <insert new fangled thing here> till it has proven better then the alternative
* the oldest surviving distro still ran by the same guy who started it
* with my past distro hopping its still feel like the fastest distro i have used
should also mention arch's wiki documentation although i dont use arch that stuff is gold and very useful in slackware
why i use linux instead of windows
* it isnt a chore to use
* it is far superiour imho
* it is mostly FOSS and you can fix it yourself if you wanted to
* only had 1 kernel panic(linux's BSOD) and it was because i wanted to take a hand at writing(and failing) a driver(unsupported OEM capture card that looked like most of the work was done but turned out the chip code only supported usb not pci-e so was a little out of my skilllevel) :P totally user error there but was fun
extending the question to why i use slackware instead of insert distro X
* mostly vanilla
* stable
* doesnt get in the way of the user
* doesnt have a package repository or dependency resolution
* uses sysvinit with bsd style init scripts
* no custom config gui's
* will never have pulseaudio or systemD unless if forced(seriously stop trying to fix what isn't broken and creating nasty crap like that nothing wrong with sysvinit and alsa)
* will not use <insert new fangled thing here> till it has proven better then the alternative
* the oldest surviving distro still ran by the same guy who started it
* with my past distro hopping its still feel like the fastest distro i have used
should also mention arch's wiki documentation although i dont use arch that stuff is gold and very useful in slackware
2 Likes, Who?
To summarize what others have said, because I own my Linux while Windows tries to own me.
6 Likes, Who?
Lord Bacon von Hashbrown Sep 4, 2014
I got tired of the usual Windows problems like things breaking and licensing being a major PITA so I switched to Linux in 2007 and haven't looked back aside for having a Windows drive in my desktop, but even that's a dual boot setup with Arch Linux being my main OS these days. I've also found that I really like the flexibility and simplicity of design that Linux has. So the reason I game on Linux is essentially because I'd like to rid myself of Windows completely so I'm not paying for crap I don't want to play the games I want.
1 Likes, Who?
coryrj19951 Sep 4, 2014
Windows errors happen quite often. been using Linux for everything for about 4 years when i accidentally removed windows... best screw up I have ever made :D Gaming on linux just seem to work much better and use the hardware much better too.
2 Likes, Who?
oldrocker99 Sep 4, 2014
First of all, thank you, Feral, for the excellence of X-COM.
My first distro was Ubuntu 8.04. At that time, there was exactly one easily purchasable native Linux game: Neverwinter Nights Platinum. The purchase of that (a game I'd been playing since 2002 anyway) with all its expansions set me back $16.95. Bioware's site explained how to install the Linux client, and I was happily playing, with all the mods working perfectly (once I learned to lowercase all the .HAK files). I'm still playing it, too, on the original installation.
Then, in 2009 came the first Humble Bundle, with some cool cross-platform games, including the classic World of Goo, and the interesting phenomenon of Linux purchasers always making a higher donation than Windows or Mac users, a phenomenon which has continued to this day. This did not escape the notice of game developers, fortunately.
Desura was a godsend. Suddenly we had a Steam-like service with great games, and when the Dominions series became available, I was ecstatic. Prepurchased Dominions 4 from Desura and have been having nothing but fun with it since.
THEN:Steam for Linux. Gabe Newell's disgust with Windows 8 has been one of the best things to happen to our beloved OS, and the hit games keep coming, along with some very cool indies.
We use Linux because it's (in our opinions, and not just ours) the best OS available, by far. I also think that the more you know about computer hardware, the more you'll appreciate Linux, the ultimate tinkerer's OS,and it has a certain appeal to the kind of people who like to swap out parts in their desktops, overclock, etc. And it's free, and by that, I don't mean "gratis." Yes, all the distros cost nothing to download, but this is free as in freedom, the freedom to use our OS to make our computers behave the way we want them to, from display managers to window managers, from minimal window managers like Enlightenment, Openbox, LXDE and others (MATE is pretty light, too) to the big, full-featured desktops like KDE, GNOME, and Unity. If we don't want closed-source software on our machines, then we don't have to install it.
We are also,demonstrably, hungry for games. Our presence on Steam is tiny (but 1.4% of 75 million is still a whole passel o' people), but we apparently have no compunction against buying closed-source games, even at full price.
Feral and Aspyr, and even the originally-despised Virtual Programming, whose eON wrapper has improved quite a bit since its somewhat rocky opening, have become heroes by this gamer's reckoning, and I, for one, can hardly wait to see what's coming!
My first distro was Ubuntu 8.04. At that time, there was exactly one easily purchasable native Linux game: Neverwinter Nights Platinum. The purchase of that (a game I'd been playing since 2002 anyway) with all its expansions set me back $16.95. Bioware's site explained how to install the Linux client, and I was happily playing, with all the mods working perfectly (once I learned to lowercase all the .HAK files). I'm still playing it, too, on the original installation.
Then, in 2009 came the first Humble Bundle, with some cool cross-platform games, including the classic World of Goo, and the interesting phenomenon of Linux purchasers always making a higher donation than Windows or Mac users, a phenomenon which has continued to this day. This did not escape the notice of game developers, fortunately.
Desura was a godsend. Suddenly we had a Steam-like service with great games, and when the Dominions series became available, I was ecstatic. Prepurchased Dominions 4 from Desura and have been having nothing but fun with it since.
THEN:Steam for Linux. Gabe Newell's disgust with Windows 8 has been one of the best things to happen to our beloved OS, and the hit games keep coming, along with some very cool indies.
We use Linux because it's (in our opinions, and not just ours) the best OS available, by far. I also think that the more you know about computer hardware, the more you'll appreciate Linux, the ultimate tinkerer's OS,and it has a certain appeal to the kind of people who like to swap out parts in their desktops, overclock, etc. And it's free, and by that, I don't mean "gratis." Yes, all the distros cost nothing to download, but this is free as in freedom, the freedom to use our OS to make our computers behave the way we want them to, from display managers to window managers, from minimal window managers like Enlightenment, Openbox, LXDE and others (MATE is pretty light, too) to the big, full-featured desktops like KDE, GNOME, and Unity. If we don't want closed-source software on our machines, then we don't have to install it.
We are also,demonstrably, hungry for games. Our presence on Steam is tiny (but 1.4% of 75 million is still a whole passel o' people), but we apparently have no compunction against buying closed-source games, even at full price.
Feral and Aspyr, and even the originally-despised Virtual Programming, whose eON wrapper has improved quite a bit since its somewhat rocky opening, have become heroes by this gamer's reckoning, and I, for one, can hardly wait to see what's coming!
5 Likes, Who?
I game on Linux because Linux is more fun and easier to use than Windows.
1 Likes, Who?
I game on Linux because I've been using Unix since the late 80s and have been on Linux pretty much exclusively since the 90s. I'd rather struggle with Wine daily than actually have to use Windows.
2 Likes, Who?
Unlike most of you here, my migration to Linux wasn't love at first sight, and actually happened slowly over the course of a few years.
My first experience with Linux was through Ubuntu 9.04. I've heard people extolling its virtues for a good while, and I figured I'd give it a roll. I wasn't too particularly fed with Windows by that point, I was doing it merely out of pure geeky curiosity. I made a disc, gave it its own little partition, and gave it a roll.
I'll be honest with you all, my first impressions weren't all that pleasant. In fact, I kinda hated it. The UI was terrible, and didn't feel cohesive, it seemed needlessly complicated for the simple sake of being needlessly complicated, and it threw all kinds of goofy random bugs at me for no apparent reason. Don't even get me started on the hell I had to go through to get sound to work consistently. I scrapped the partition a couple days later, and thought never again.
Well...semi-never again. I always kept an occasional eye on the Linux scene to see what was going on, and how things were turning out. Even though I hated it at the time, it was still interested in Linux in theory. It wasn't something I checked out constantly, but from those occasional glances, it seemed to be improving bit by bit. Getting more software support, improving performance, feeling more like the developers were guiding themselves more towards a designed, user friendly environment, rather than a frankenstein of cool features from the other OSes. I started feeling passively interested again. Not enough that I wanted to take the plunge again anytime soon, but enough that I might consider it again at some point.
Cut a long story short, and fast forward to now. Just about every game I want to play is either already available, or coming soon. The vast majority of my other software is here (minus Photoshop, which I miss). I think why not. I'm in Ubuntu Gnome 14.04, and I'm finding the experience to be night and day in comparison to what I went through with 9.04. Other than having to install proprietary drivers (which was easy), everything worked perfectly right out of the box. The install was simple, the UI is surprisingly near OSX quality in look and cohesiveness (yeah, I'm one of the apparent few who really likes Gnome 3), it's fast, stable, and overall easy to use.
It's not perfect. I still don't think Linux has reached the point where I can recommend it to a complete computer newbie. But it's close. Closer than it's ever been.
So why do I use Linux? Simple. Cuz I like it, and I'd love to see more developer support for it.
My first experience with Linux was through Ubuntu 9.04. I've heard people extolling its virtues for a good while, and I figured I'd give it a roll. I wasn't too particularly fed with Windows by that point, I was doing it merely out of pure geeky curiosity. I made a disc, gave it its own little partition, and gave it a roll.
I'll be honest with you all, my first impressions weren't all that pleasant. In fact, I kinda hated it. The UI was terrible, and didn't feel cohesive, it seemed needlessly complicated for the simple sake of being needlessly complicated, and it threw all kinds of goofy random bugs at me for no apparent reason. Don't even get me started on the hell I had to go through to get sound to work consistently. I scrapped the partition a couple days later, and thought never again.
Well...semi-never again. I always kept an occasional eye on the Linux scene to see what was going on, and how things were turning out. Even though I hated it at the time, it was still interested in Linux in theory. It wasn't something I checked out constantly, but from those occasional glances, it seemed to be improving bit by bit. Getting more software support, improving performance, feeling more like the developers were guiding themselves more towards a designed, user friendly environment, rather than a frankenstein of cool features from the other OSes. I started feeling passively interested again. Not enough that I wanted to take the plunge again anytime soon, but enough that I might consider it again at some point.
Cut a long story short, and fast forward to now. Just about every game I want to play is either already available, or coming soon. The vast majority of my other software is here (minus Photoshop, which I miss). I think why not. I'm in Ubuntu Gnome 14.04, and I'm finding the experience to be night and day in comparison to what I went through with 9.04. Other than having to install proprietary drivers (which was easy), everything worked perfectly right out of the box. The install was simple, the UI is surprisingly near OSX quality in look and cohesiveness (yeah, I'm one of the apparent few who really likes Gnome 3), it's fast, stable, and overall easy to use.
It's not perfect. I still don't think Linux has reached the point where I can recommend it to a complete computer newbie. But it's close. Closer than it's ever been.
So why do I use Linux? Simple. Cuz I like it, and I'd love to see more developer support for it.
1 Likes, Who?
See more from me