There was no magic involved. When the Valve developers first ported the game’s code base over to Linux, the game crawled along at just 6fps. Only after the code was optimized to take advantage of the Linux kernel and video drivers did it manage playable speeds.
Throughout the porting process, Valve also worked with video card makers to squash bugs and remove bottlenecks, which should help to improve performance of all games running on Linux.
Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.
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