[ Thanks to Dustin
Reyes for this link. ]
“From what I saw and heard at the Expo, Linux gamers have a
fantastic year ahead of them! From new games to better 3D video
cards to better 3D sound cards, members of the hardware and
software community showed that they were beginning to not only
understand the power of games on the technology market, but also
realize the potential that Linux has as a gaming platform. A clear
indicator was the number of terminals around the Expo floor running
Quake 3 Arena on various hardware configurations; a visitor could
walk barely 20 feet in any direction without seeing the trademark
Q3A gibs or hearing the familiar Q3A weaponry and sound effects.
Tell your friends, fellow gamers: The penguin has landed….”
“For his half of the talk, Scott Draeker showed Quake 3
Arena in action running the Utah-GLX Rage Pro driver on a
Celeron-powered laptop. Seeing a laptop with hardware acceleration
in Linux was quite a feat and the crowd was duly impressed. In
a rather bold statement, Draeker said that he felt that Linux could
be a better gaming platform than Windows (which, he says, is
declining in popularity while game consoles are flourishing). As
evidence of the key strength that he feels that Linux has, Draeker
told a parable in which the current x86 architecture disappeared
overnight and a new, different platform took its place. “How long,”
he asked, “would it take for all the old x86 [closed source]
software to be ported to that new platform?” The answer, he says,
is “Forever”; but in the case of Linux, the kernel source code is
available and Linux and much of its software could be up and
running in a matter of weeks, maybe even days.”