The Linux Gamers' How-To

Peter Jay Salzman

Frédéric Delanoy

Copyright © 2001, 2002 Peter Jay Salzman

Copyright © 2003, 2004 Peter Jay Salzman, Frédéric Delanoy

2004-11-13 v.1.0.6

Abstract

The same questions get asked repeatedly on Linux related mailing lists and news groups. Many of them arise because people don't know as much as they should about how things "work" on Linux, at least, as far as games go. Gaming can be a tough pursuit; it requires knowledge from an incredibly vast range of topics from compilers to libraries to system administration to networking to XFree86 administration ... you get the picture. Every aspect of your computer plays a role in gaming. It's a demanding topic, but this fact is shadowed by the primary goal of gaming: to have fun and blow off some steam.

This document is a stepping stone to get the most common problems resolved and to give people the knowledge to begin thinking intelligently about what is going on with their games. Just as with anything else on Linux, you need to know a little more about what's going on behind the scenes with your system to be able to keep your games healthy or to diagnose and fix them when they're not.

• Table of Contents
• 1. Administra
   
• 1.1. Authorship and Copyright
• 1.2. Acknowledgements
• 1.3. Latest Versions and Translations


• 2. Definitions: Types Of Games
   
• 2.1. Arcade style
• 2.2. Card, logic and board games
• 2.3. Text Adventure (aka Interactive Fiction)
• 2.4. Graphical Adventures
• 2.5. Simulation (aka Sims)
• 2.6. Strategy (aka Strats)
• 2.7. First Person Shooter (aka FPS)
• 2.8. Side Scrollers
• 2.9. Third Person Shooters
• 2.10. Role Playing Game (aka RPG)


• 3. Libraries
   
• 3.1. What is Glide2?
• 3.2. What is Glide3?
• 3.3. What is OpenGL?
• 3.4. What is Mesa?
• 3.5. What is DRI?
• 3.6. What is GLX?
• 3.7. What is Utah GLX?
• 3.8. What is xlib?
• 3.9. What is a widget set?
• 3.10.

* License

* The Linux Gamers' How-To Index