[thelukester]

I've been gaming in Linux with both native and Wine/CrossOver games(free year thanks to Bush) for over 8 years now. Drivers are the biggest issue. There are 2 main issues here. First is quality. The video card manufactures need to dedicate additional resources to bring the drivers up to the quality of Windows.

The second issue is with the driver subsystem. The kernel developers need either a) stop breaking the existing driver interface ever other release or b) create new modern interface that's stable like MS did with Vista.

Imagine if every windows update, you had to worry about you games not working because MS might break the drivers. This is how Linux is now. This situation is especially bad for users with old and very new cards. For example, my X1900 can't run the catalyst drivers with any modern kernel, making it useless in Linux as my spare gaming rig. Of course it works perfectly in Win7, running about 2-5x faster than the worthless, buggy, open source drivers.

Fixing the video driver subsystem is exactly the kind dedication that would prove to me that Value is serious about making Linux a competitive gaming platform and likely convince me to purchase a SteamMachine.

[Jonimus]

The kernel developers will never stop breaking internal interfaces. Them being able to break internally is how they are able to move so fast and improve as fast as the kernel does. Programs written against Linux's external interfaces many moons ago will continue to work indefinitely, the issue is Video drivers need to work internally with the kernel are arguably even violate the GPL.

[anonymous]

> For example, my X1900

AMD have been shit since forever. There should be a message with giant letters printed on each box saying "THIS PRODUCT DOESN'T HAVE LINUX DRIVERS WORTH A DAMN".

Not that it helps your situation now, but maybe if you upgrade in the future, try with an nvidia card?