To put it into perspective. Vendor A is nVidia, B is AMD, C is Intel with #1 being their Linux stack and #2 their windows one.

And now some truths. Excluding nVidia all the rest of the OpenGL desktop drivers out there are having questionable quality and there is a reason for that. OpenGL is huge, complex and all the extensions (start counting from 20year ago) interact in a very weird way with each other. That is a source for many bugs and redundancy.

Khronos group at some point created a cut down version of GL with core profiles. Valve, despite the love I have for them, in some presentations they recommended using compatibility profiles. That makes me angry because in a way they undermine all the effort Khronos had put into driving everyone to the core profiles.

I totally get AMD, writing OpenGL drivers with all this ***load of extensions is unimaginable tough (I know because I write OpenGL drivers myself). Trying to test all this combinations and interactions is an insanely huge vector of possibilities.

The solution IMHO? A new and slick and modern API.

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I own both games. While they have some issues (with the worst offender being the loading times and stuttering) they are quite playable (with an nVidia yes). Personally I prefer this kind of "buggy" experience than the endless hoards of 2D indies.

It's a good starting point for Nordic/Farm 51 but I believe that porting games will never be the optimal solution. Planing to support a platform from the beginning will likely produce better results than trying to "adapt" a final code base to something that was not designed for.

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Quoting: SoltrummanThe Witcher 2 turned up in my Linux-library on Steam today. Seem to be able to download it as well, not sure if it works when downloaded though.

It's a good game and it's great to see it on Linux.

Cool! If it works let us know :)

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That is great news indeed! Linux support for DOSBOX powered games is definitely a no brainer and a trivial technical challenge. DOSBOX runs everywhere. For all the rest of the windows games... we hope but it's a big challenge to emulate them using wine with no issues.

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That is awesome news!

I would love to see a technical presentation on how they ported it, if they have a translation layer from D3D to OpenGL like Valve, what OpenGL extensions do they use, if they are planning to become a Khronos member along Valve, Epic and Unity. Too many questions.

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Shadowrun returns is an enjoyable game. But the price for the DLC is a bit steep (14Euros).

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I've downloaded the game and started playing it. Haven't played it on Windows but it seems to me there are missing effects. I suppose it should have depth of field, ambient occlusion, motion blur and other but I didn't spot any of those. Also the video settings menu is stripped down.

It is not that it looks bad but the Linux version seems inferior.

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Bought (when the penguin icon appears on steam of course)

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I had the game in an unusable state for quite some time now. But yesterday after an update it become playable. A few bugs here and there but overall it seems OK.

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One of the reasons Linux gaming is not going forward is that hardcore gamers will never be satisfied with the type of games currently on Linux. People want to see FPS and RPGs but all we have is countless indies with 2D simplified graphics. I have to admit that good graphics don't mean good games but not all people are sentimental, not everyone started playing games on the 80s and not everyone is attracted to simplicity.

Don't want to sound ungrateful, indies are nice to have and the driving force of Linux gaming but they are not enough to attract the hardcore gamer.

PS: I am using steam linux since the beginning and this survey never popped up.

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