Quoting: Ivancillo

Quoting: GuestLinux gaming existed before Valve, before the Humble Bundles, and before either was ever even an idea. With all due respect to Valve and their efforts (which have been a lot), they didn't create a market - they took it over, have increased it, but they never created it. The ball was rolling long before then.
It seems that so many think any kind of Linux gaming is reliant entirely on Valve and the success of Steam Machines. It's not.
[...]

So if Linux gaming isn't a replica of how things are done for Windows - does it really matter? By any other metric, Linux gaming is already a success and it's only growing.

I think more or less the same way as you.

In fact, I give more credit to HumbleIndieBundle and crowfunding goals for the increasing interest of the developers on Linux ports than to Valve.

It was clear for me at the time HumbleBundle started.

Valve saw the same and bet for Linux. Which is OK and contributed even more to the success with its influence on market and with the Steamworks port for Linux.

The last place (but not inmeritorious for that) is for GoG.com, which was very reticent to give Linux support.
I think that the exit of The Enigmatic T took part in that change.

Speak for yourselves guys. Pre-Valve the state of Linux gaming was pitiful IMO. Games have been my hobby and passion ever since I was 6 and my parents made the grave mistake of buying me my first console (I've only had two so don't hold it against me :)). In my view Windows has been and currently still is by far the vastly superior gaming platform. I'm not discussing why just stating the situation. However with Valve and GoG pushing the idea of Linux as a triple A viable gaming environment, sort of speak, that gap is finally closing. Obviously it always boils down to personal preference, but I cannot imagine how gaming can be your hobby and you'd lock yourself out of 90% of the great titles that come out for the PC. Hopefully in the coming years more of you guys will get a taste of that AAA goodness that us dual booters get to experience.

PS I know I always seem to bash on Linux in my comments but it's actually tough love and this place sure needs a devil's advocate ;)

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Quoting: liamdawe@mao, speak to AMD about their drivers. Every developer says the same thing, the closed source AMD drivers are trash for OpenGL support and performance.

Look at every Phoronix benchmark. It is not Aspyr's fault.

You know, in general I would agree because AMD have a history of bad drivers for both Windows and Linux. However the current driver is exceptionally good for Windows and pretty decent for Linux. It is the Omega driver that brought a huge boost in performance to 290 and 290x in particular, but I fail to see that in Borderlands (heck, the game actually runs worse). Again - I'm not judging Aspyr because it's always an financially based decision. I'm just arguing you cannot call a great port a game that does not officially support 2 of the three graphics card vendors and there is no active development in that direction. I know most Linux purists tend to bash on AMD but this whole "Linux as a gaming platform" thing will NOT work out if games aren't developed for all brands of GPU.

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Not to be a Negative Nancy but how is the Borderlands 2 port good, if it only works properly with Nvidia hardware. Just saying. Or is the Linux platform open, just so long as you don't want to play games, in which case you need to buy a GPU from that one brand. I'm thankful for Aspyre's work- don't get me wrong. But let's not get blinded and not state facts as well. For all the crap the Witcher 2 port got they're still actively fixing it and the thing is very playable even on AMD hardware, now. Yet, last week when I started Borderlands 2, just to see if the performance has improved since the last time I tried it on Linux and it couldn't reach 30 fps on an i7 4790k, 290x 4GB and 12GB of RAM. Heck, I was rocking 60 fps with my previous FX6300 and 270x 2GB under Windows and it s a notoriously badly optimized game.

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It's a fun game. Feels a lot different from Battlefield 4 or Counter Strike: GO. Maybe a bit more hardcore and realistic (there is no remaining bullets indicator for the weapon). The game feels a bit rough around the edges, yet a lot of people who play BF4 also play Insurgency so it definitely has a strong draw. If you're a Linux purist but like tactical shooters - get it on release. If you're dual booting - do it now if you haven't already (it's pretty cheap, too)

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It only shows how addicted I am to Paradox. I don't care for colonization, yet I bough the thing day one :).

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I'm skeptical as usual but in the unlikely event that it does happen it will be the biggest release for Linux so far. Borderlands 2 and CIv 5 are abviously big but they came a bit late for Linux, while it was just a couple of month ago that Shadow od Mordor was announced GOTY. It's on my to play list (right after I find it me to play Skyrim) as I have utmost respect for quality games with full controller support. I'm lazy - sue me :))).

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Need... controller... can't wait... any longer...

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To be honest, as a dual booter I'm much more excited about the controller. About damn time. As I get older I find less and less desire to be bent over a keyboard and mouse to play. Being able to play anything from Endless Legend to Skyrim with a gamepad would be awesome.
Btw, speaking of ports we'd like to see - Bethesda games and especially the Fallouts and Skyrim would be nice. Though knowing Bethesda, we'd probably see Half Life 3 before that happens. Even if Linux had, say, 30% market share, Bethesda, EA and Ubisoft would be like: "Yeah, but...".

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I know this is pre-alpha but doesn't look too impressive. Seems like a poor-man's Van Helsing.

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Looks interesting and different, but I think the art style will be its undoing. RTS is a very conservative genre in terms of looks and gameplay.

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