The biggest reason I still dual boot my Ubuntu with Windows XP is Gaming. In fact the Windows XP in my desktop is used for no purpose absolutely except occassionally playing games.

I know for the fact that WINE has the ability to play lots of games, (not to forget the native Linux games like Doom and Quake) and I’ve tried and succeeded too. In fact I was pleasantly surprised how well WINE managed to run those games it did manage to run. The performance difference was too minimal as compared to performace of gaming in Windows,

Unfortunately, not all games run in WINE. Few games run so well that they run as well as they do in Windows and maybe even better. Few games run exceptionall well with an occassional bug, while others are playable with noticeable problems but a lot of games do not run at all. Of course, the failure of these games to not to run in Linux using WINE is no fault of anyone but the game developers themshelves. Most game developers do not even bother with the *nix platform and do not even help the WINE developers. Even more depressing it gets when a game runs well in previous version of WINE but fails in the newer version.

However the successes of WINE with few games it managed to run and this thread brought a thought in my mind. What if the game developers take a leaf out of id software and develop their games for Linux? It will seriously enhance the experience of all the Linux users. And yes I mean *ALL* Linux users.

How? – you would ask. Most people are not gamers and most people get satisfied by silly games like Gnometris and like and games like GnuChess and like, Sure, but I will still not change my stance by this argument. Why so? I will come to his point later.

To most gamers it would not matter in which platform their games run on, to gamers it only matters the performance of their favourite games (FPS of FPS, I call it,(frames per second of first person shooters) pun intended). Now we all know that Linux kernel could be tweaked in any way you like and Linux distros could be as light weight as you wish using lighter desktop environments. Now due to adaptability and free nature of the Linux based operating systems, gamers could extract much needed raw performance from their games especially in custom distros over Windows.

Adding to this fact that most Linux distros come free, both in terms of cost and freedom, the gamers would save a lot of money and spend those bucks in acquiring superior hardware which they would have otherwise spent on purchasing license of Windows. Of course this may not be suited to all, since most people have Windows license or pirate Windows anyway.

It can be argued that since most games are based on DirectX, they will not run in Linux. Of course. This is obvious. However game deveopers can develop their games on OpenGL and most game developers develop games on OpenGL anyway when they design games for the Sony Playstation and thus a Linux port would not be that difficult.

Personally I feel game developers could afford to develop a game for Linux and skip for Windows. You will say – “WHAAT? Ignore the biggest platform?”. I would say even no body would be left out since Linux is free, and it would be only required to be installed and let’s admit it installing Ubuntu is very easy, especially under Wubi, even for a six-packed joe.

Now coming back to the point – How would it help *all* Linux users?

It will help. And the answer is through better hardware support. If even 40% of gamers switch to Linux in this scenario, this would prompt the Hardware Manufacturers to develop better hardware drivers for Linux, because they would no longer be able to ignore the market share. Adding to this fact that gamers are a big target of the Hardware Manufacturers (they purchase high end hardware), so Hardware Manufacturers will develop better drivers and who knows may open source them.

Now with better hardware most of our woes would be ironed out and it would be more fun to use the Linux distributions.

And with better Hardware for Linux, Sky is the limit.