The one thing that has forced me keep Windows on my PC is the fact that most games require it. Hearing that such a large player in the gaming industry wants to move to Linux is really fantastic news.
The only thing that bugs me is that driver support is lagging behind so bad on Linux.
I remember when Linus said something about why you should buy ATI for linux gaming. Because they have open source drivers..
In the end I returned my ATI card.
My older Turion x64/hd3650 something laptop is still struggling with whatever flavor Linux. Still a work in progresss to get my Samsung 40" full hd TV through HDMI detected as something other than a 7" tablet screen..hmm.
As much as Linus might not like it, the nVidia closed source drivers are the only Linux display drivers that are production ready for high performance 3D gaming.
I'd say that there have been some major improvements to driver support in the last year. There are two drivers for ATI gpu's out there, the open source driver and the catalyst driver that comes from ATI. The open source driver has been stable for quite some time, but the performance was lacking. The Catalyst drivers have recently been shown a little love that they desperately needed, and there was a kernel patch sometime around v3.8 that fixed a problem with Radeon and KMS conflicts.
Try again, I'm using my HP Minilaptop with AMD components on (X)ubuntu or Linux Mint, 32 inch samsung is detected better in Linux then it is in Windows. (automatically runs it Full HD compared to Windows' 1366x768 )
Cool, could you hint me which version(s) of (x)ubuntu and mint are working out for you? I couldn't get passed the Mint login screen after installation. Couldn't drop to tty either. System froze over :(
I'm now on ubuntu 12.04 which seems better, but still.. HDMI/dual monitor is bugging me out.
This seems to be where Valve is really trying to push - I've seen quite a few quotes from Newell saying their first step is to use their massive leverage to get graphics cards makers to improve their Linux drivers.
There have been rather fast Open drivers for the HD3650 for at least two years now. I'm curious as to what distribution you're using that would exhibit these sorts of problems in 2013.
I had to switch to mostly indie games with I switched to Linux, which is great, there are a ton of awesome indie games. There are some mainstream Windows titles that I can get to run in Steam via Wine, but it's a pain. I really hope Valve can get the big mainstream studios on board.
My older Turion x64/hd3650 something laptop is still struggling with whatever flavor Linux. Still a work in progresss to get my Samsung 40" full hd TV through HDMI detected as something other than a 7" tablet screen..hmm.