The state of gaming on the GNU/Linux operating system is getting better, but it still is not quite there. Now that steam has come to linux natively, and indie developers are providing linux ports of their games, interest is rising, but to what end?
Indie games are great, and most of them are great fun to play, but they don't offer the publicity and following that the triple A titles do. While the triple A titles may be horrible, they are still huge games and many people play them.
You may be saying "I don't care if anyone else uses Linux or plays games on Linux", and I would have to agree with you, but think about this for a moment: if more of the big name developers start porting their games over to Linux, then others will follow. If Blizzard ported WoW, Diablo III, or Starcraft II over then I would play nothing but Blizzard games for a long while. If game like Planetside II, Skyrim, and Dishonored were ported over, then they could reach more people that may or may not be able to play these games on Windows. The game companies always say they wouldn't make enough money to make it worth it, but Valve (the owners of Steam which is the largest digital distribution service for games) is doing this right now, and have a lot of their games ported.
The studies these companies are looking at say that a very large majority of gamers play games on Windows and the Linux game side is abysmal. This is because the games that have to be ran in wine count as playing a game in Windows. I think if the studies did actual operating systems instead of what the game reports, the results would be surprising. Linux gaming is extremely close to overtaking mac gaming (if it hasn't already) according to the Steam stats, and if one or two triple A titles were ported over, then Linux would start to become "worth it" to them.
See, the games have to be available on the platform before they can be played, so why are these companies saying that it isn't worth it? How do they know if they haven't tried? Valve is going to prove them wrong.
I am writing this post because I have spent a lot of time in my Linux partition lately because of my programming classes for university. Sure I could do it in Windows by installing a lot of GNU software, but it is easier on Linux, and since Steam is now native, I can play a few games and still talk to my buddies. After this semester MS Office is pretty much not needed, and if it is, I can write papers on my tablet or Windows partition (or even the online version of Word). The rule of MS Windows will not go away, but it is nice for it to be challenged. I enjoy Windows on my Surface RT and it does everything I need for school that Android doesn't (the Surface RT comes with MS Office Student Full so I do a lot of my work on it for writing, and my school love the .doc and .docx format), but with no writing classes anymore, I can use Latex or just plain Abiword if I want.
Definitely something to think about.
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