One for the gaming set here, as GameSpy takes on the question of
whether Linux gamers are better off waiting for Linux ports (which
aren't as plentiful as many would like) or getting behind Wine.
Includes commentary from Gavriel State of Transgaming, which is
working on bringing DirectX to Wine; and an assortment of pro-ports
people including Scott Draeker of Loki, who maintain that
compatibility layers are bad news:
On one side of the argument is Transgaming , which sees
the reality that the process of creating native Linux ports is an
extremely expensive procedure with very little monetary reward.
Their solution is to refine and extend Wine , their "development
toolkit for porting Windows source code to UNIX systems (Winelib),
and?program loader which allows Windows .EXE files to run directly
on Intel-based UNIX flavors," so that Windows games will work well
under Linux.
On the other side of the issue are the porting houses such as
Loki, Tribsoft, and Hyperion Entertainment . They have shown that
Windows games can be ported successfully to Linux. Additionally,
Loki proved that there is a demand for Linux games with their
recent decision to discount several of their titles to $9.99. As of
last week, Quake3: Arena for Linux was one of the top five selling
games on EBGames and the Website now shows the title as being
"backordered." While this move by Loki and Electronics Boutique
proved that people would buy games for Linux, it certainly isn't
economical to sell all their titles that cheaply.