Linux



A person who prefers Linux on their home computer is like a person who prefers to be under the hood of their car instead of driving it. -- this is probably why /g/earheads prefer Linux, but we've abo/v/e that.

Linux has been a favourite of neckbeards living in basements. It's been catching on, as more people RAGEQUIT from Windows Vista, or do a 360° and walk out when they see Windows 8. When they find out they don't have the money to buy a Mac iComputer, Linux is a last resort.

This page is for the games that run natively in Linux; not stuff that runs under WINE or ZSNES or whatever.

Until Valve gets off their asses and makes a native version of Steam, you can THANK YOU BASED GABEN

Websites
With the iTunes/ Steam/ GoogleChromestore interface that's getting popular Game app store interfaces (that don't try to own your ass)
 * Desura
 * Valve's Steam install it and type 'steam steam://store' at the console to get past the "beta users only" warning.
 * PenguSpy not an appstore, but not a review site either
 * Linux Gaming Tome ha ha this place is still alive? This is what Linux users used to think was a GOOD gaming site, christ.

Stuff that comes with your Linux distro
The "Distros" column in this section is for known good packages, mostly so you know which repositories to hit up for a copy of the game. If you have a different flavour of Linux, even a different package management system, you can still port the package over but you might need to puzzle out some missing dependencies. For those of us who love to tinker on the engine more than driving the car, you can get the source code for each of these and compile it by hand.

Distro-Agnostic Packaging
These are still typically free software (or at least freeware), but do not use your easy-peasy package manager to install itself deep in your system. Most of the time, they are just binaries (or executables in Windows parlance) in downloadable tar.gz archives (which work like .zip files). Though, in some more rare cases, these may also include games that come as source code only -- you need to hunt down the right libraries through your distro's package manager, compile, and install manually (while trickier, this has the added bonus of increased optimization for your computer hardware, however marginal).

Stuff you Buy
For a very short time in the '90s it was cool to release a Linux version for Windows games. That got old fast. But in 2012, when the world got to see the shit twinkie that is Windows 8... and Apple locked out the umpteenth game from their app store for bullshit reasons... well.