I'm a linux user at home and at work (for everything except starcraft), but I don't feel the need to pretend otherwise.
But read that stat again. 20 times. For every linux user there are 20 windows xp users, and 35 windows 7 users.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_system...
The nature of gaming is changing. Listen to Gabe talk about player generated content being the way of the future. Core gamers are a niche bunch, and will spend thousands of dollars for custom hardware. Why would they settle for locked down, legacy software like Windows, when Linux can be made to work just as well if not better, for free, while allowing full customization?
Linux gaming is not going to be backwards compatible. It's not about now. It's about the future. An open source platform makes sense for the gaming industry, because it allows rapid experimentation and low barriers to entry.
Core gamers who support indie games have already moved to Linux. The AAA studios will follow once they see sufficient adoption.
Do you have any evidence to support this claim? I've seen plenty of indie games targeting GNU/Linux, but no evidence of large amounts of players so far (the fact that there are GNU/Linux games does not mean that more than few people are playing them). From my personal experience (couple of demos of unfinished projects and loads of time wasted lurking into indie forums like TIG and /r/gamedev) the Windows is still pretty much the standard target platform.
Insofar as games are concerned, at the end of the day, the game design matters many times more than the runtime of the game.
> I truly do feel that emulation of some sort is a proper technical direction for gaming on Linux. It is obviously pragmatic in the range of possible support, but it shouldn’t have the technical stigma that it does.
That might be a valid point if wine's windows support was like FreeBSD's linux compatibility layer. But it isn't... It is a massive pile of API translation layers and libraries reverse engineered from a huge closed source proprietary moving target. It's a hacky workaround and I couldn't believe he is actually saying reverse engineering windows is a "proper direction" that "shouldn't have a technical stigma".
> A good shim layer should have far less impact on performance than the variability in driver quality.
As he describes in great length, most of the characteristics of games are either identical, or similar. It sounds like he's advocating more of a simple JIT translator than an OS-level compatibility layer.
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOpera...
About 12% Linux!!! ... of which 11% is Android.
