Basic Linux Gaming Information

There isn't much you need to know to run basic X Window–based games that come with Fedora and RHEL. The following sections describe basic information about Linux gaming.

Where to Get Information on Linux Gaming

To find news on the latest games available for Linux, as well as links to download sites, go to some of the several Web sites available. Here are a few to get you started:

• TransGaming Technologies ( www.transgaming.com ) - This company's mission is to bring games from other platforms (Windows) to Linux. TransGaming is the provider of Cedega, formerly known as WineX, a powerful tool that allows you to play hundreds of PC games on your Linux system.

• The Linux Game Tome ( http://happypenguin.org ) - This site features a database of descriptions and reviews of tons of games that run on Linux. You can do keyword searches for games listed at this site. The site also includes links to where you can get the different games, as well as links to other gaming sites.

• Linuxgames.com ( http://linuxgames.com ) - This site can give you some very good insight into the state of Linux gaming. There are links to HOW-TOs and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), as well as forums for discussing Linux games. There are also links to Web sites that have information on particular games.

• Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org ) - In the past few years , Wikipedia has become a wonderful resource for information on both commercial and open source games available for Linux. From Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki ), there is a List of Linux games ( List_of_Linux_games ), a Commercial Linux Games ( List_of_Commercial_Linux_Games ), and Professionally-Developed Linux Games ( List_of_Professionally-Developed_Linux_Games ).

• id Software ( www.idsoftware.com ) - Go to the id Software site for information on Linux demo versions for Quake and Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

• Garage Games ( www.garagegames.com ) - Garage Games is a site that publishes games from independent game makers . Many of the games sold at the Garage Games store ( www.garagegames.com/pg ) have ports of games specifically for Linux.

• Linuxgamepublishing.com ( www.linuxgamepublishing.com ) - A relatively new entrant into the Linux gaming world, linuxgamepublishing.com aims to be a one-stop shopping portal for native Linux games, as well as for ports of games from other platforms. At the time of writing, they offered 15 games. Note that to purchase games from this site, you must create a user account.

• Loki Entertainment Software ( www.lokigames.com ) - Loki provided ports of best-selling games to Linux, but went out of business in 2001. Its products included Linux versions of Unreal Tournament, Civilization: Call to Power, Myth II: Soulblighter, SimCity 3000, Railroad Tycoon II, and Quake III Arena. While the company itself is no longer in business, t he Loki Demo Launcher is still available to see demo versions of these games, and some boxed sets are available for very little money.

• Tux Games ( www.tuxgames.com ) - If you are ready to purchase a game, the Tux Games Web site is dedicated to the sale of Linux games. Besides offering Linux gaming news and products, the site lists its top-selling games and includes notices of games that are soon to be released.

• Linux Gamers' FAQ ( http://icculus.org/lgfaq ) - This FAQ contains a wealth of information about free and commercial Linux games. It lists gaming companies that have ported their games to Linux, tells where to get Linux games, and answers queries related to common Linux gaming problems. For a list of Linux games without additional information, see http://icculus.org/lgfaq/gamelist.php .

Choosing a Video Card for Gaming

Because high-end games place extraordinary demands on your video hardware, choosing a good video card and configuring it properly is one of the keys to ensuring a good gaming experience. For advanced gaming you will need to go beyond what a basic 64-bit card can do for you.

Support for video cards in Fedora comes primarily from the X.org project. For details on exactly which features and cards are supported for the current release of Fedora or RHEL, refer to the X.Org Wiki ( http://wiki.x.org ). Select the link to documentation for the version of X.Org software included in your version of Fedora or RHEL (for example, http://wiki.x.org/X11R6.8.2/doc ).

One video card feature that can greatly improve your gaming experience is Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI). Whether you are running the games using Cedega or natively in Linux, a card that supports DRI allows your video display to do hardware acceleration. You can find a more complete list of video cards that support DRI from the DRI project site ( http://dri. sourceforge .net/ ).

Here are some suggestions of video cards you can use with Fedora and RHEL for gaming that either supply proprietary Linux drivers or include DRI support:

• NVIDIA - NVIDIA cards are by far the most popular video cards used for gaming in Linux. Open source drivers (nv) are available for NVIDIA cards. However, most Linux users get NVIDIA drivers that are produced by NVIDIA. Although these are not open source drivers, you can download binary NVIDIA drivers from the NVIDIA Web site ( www.nvidia.com ) or from the rpm.livna.org site. (To install the drivers directly from the NVIDIA site, you must have the kernel- devel and xorg-sdk packages installed.)

  Note 

  Because binary-only drivers are not part of the Linux kernel, if you update your kernel at some point, you will need to update your NVIDIA driver as well. The rpm.livna.org site offers a nice service by packaging NVIDIA and ATI video card drivers as RPMs to match new Fedora kernel updates. Refer to this site for further information: http://rpm.livna.org/livna-switcher.html . Because the drivers direct from NVIDIA have been known to overwrite shared XOrg files in Fedora, sometimes breaking your ability to use other video cards with the system, in most cases using the RPMs from livna.org are the best way to install NVIDIA drivers to Fedora.

• ATI Technologies - Chipsets from ATI Technologies that support DRI include the Mach64 (Rage Pro), Radeon 7X00 (R100), Radeon 2 / 8500 (R200), and Rage 128 (Standard, Pro, Mobility). Cards based on these chip sets include All-in- Wonder 128, Rage Fury, Rage Magnum, Xpert 99, Xpert 128, and Xpert 2000. DRI support for Radeon chipsets up to 9200 has recently been added. Proprietary, binary-only drivers for ATI cards are available directly from the ATI site at www.ati.com/support/driver.html or packaged as RPMs from the rpm.livna.org site.

• 3dfx - If you can find a used unit on eBay, there are several 3dfx cards that support 3D. In particular, the Voodoo (3, 4, and 5) and Banshee chip sets have drivers that support DRI. Voodoo 5 cards support 16 and 24 bpp. Scan Line Interleaving (SLI), where two or more 3D processors work in parallel (to result in higher frame rates), is not supported for 3dfx cards.

• 3Dlabs - Graphics cards containing the MX/Gamma chipset from 3Dlabs have drivers available that support DRI in Linux.

• Intel - Supported video chipsets from Intel include the i810 (e, e2, and -dc100), i815 and i815e.

• Matrox - The Matrox chipsets that have drivers that support DRI include the G200, G400, and G450. Cards that use these chips include the Millennium G450, Millennium G400, Millennium G200, and Mystique G200.

To find out whether DRI is working on your current video card, you can use the glxinfo command (available from the glx- utils package). Type the following:

 $  glxinfo  grep rendering  direct rendering: Yes 

This example shows that direct rendering is supported. If it were not supported, the output would say No instead of Yes . Even if DRI is not supported, you may experience the best game play with a high-end card from either ATI or NVIDIA. While DRI support can be important, many games support OpenGL rendering, a feature supported by both NVIDIA and ATI video cards. Both companies have specific driver requirements, so make sure you research the cards, driver requirements, and any game-specific issue before you plop down big money on a top- tier 3D video card.