John Carmack recently tweeted that Wine for Linux gaming seems like a better idea than Native ports, which triggered a big debate among Linux gamers. Now replying to a thread on Reddit.



From Ubuntu Vibes:

I wish Linux well, but the reality is that it barely makes it into my top ten priorities (Burn the heretic!); I use Linux for the flight computers at Armadillo Aerospace, but not for any regular desktop work. I was happy to hear that Rage ran in Wine, but no special effort was made to support it.

I do get tempted to port to Linux for technical reasons ? I would like to use Valgrind again, and Nvidia has told me that some experimental GPU features I would like to use for R&D would be easier to prove out on Linux. Working on open source Linux OpenGL drivers again would also be fun if I ever had the time.

However, I don't think that a good business case can be made for officially supporting Linux for mainstream games today, and Zenimax doesn't have any policy of unofficial binaries like Id used to have. I have argued for their value (mostly in the context of experimental Windows features, but Linux would also benefit), but my forceful internal pushes have been for the continuation of Id Software?s open source code releases, which I feel have broader benefits than unsupported Linux binaries.

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