Chapter 7. Gaming in Fedora and RHEL

In This Chapter

  • Gaming in Linux

  • Playing open source games in Fedora

  • Finding commercial Linux games

  • Running Windows games in Linux

As Linux has grown in popularity, the availability of Linux-based entertainment options has increased. From simple parlor games to fast-paced OpenGL first-person shooters (FPS), there have been great strides recently in Linux gaming opportunities. In fact, the advance of processor-devouring 3D games has helped drive improvements in computer technology in general.

Availability of gaming software that you can use directly in Linux is a mixed bag. Many free and open source board games, card games, and clones of old popular game console games are either packaged with Fedora or available from other sources. Some older commercial games have been either released as open source (such as Doom) or become freely distributable (though only as binaries or with licensing restrictions on how they can be used).

Some experts predict that gaming will be the software category that brings Linux into homes. The unfortunate truth is that many of the current "hot" titles still need to be coaxed onto Linux with some kind of Win32 emulation (such as Cedega). But even this is getting easier and more dependable. While the number of popular game applications is fairly limited at the moment, like everything else in Linux, more games are becoming available each day.

One area where gaming-related software has grown in Linux is in tools for producing high-quality ...

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