Disappointed With Linux Gaming

I’ve been thinking over the past few days about Linux, and how I’m still using Windows. I love linux, but it still is so far behind. While it is ahead in the 64bit arena, which is why I want to run it on my AMD 64, it falls far behind where it counts. ATI has drivers for my video card, but they only work in 32bit land. And of course the only 64bit distro I’ve gotten my ATI Radeon 9800 to work in is Fedora, which doesn’t do direct rendering. In other words, for the gamer, Linux still sucks. I did run Steam / Counter-Strike in winex months back, but I wouldn’t even try something like Half-Life 2 or Doom 3 (although I imagine they may have native ports, hopefully…)

I’m beginning, though, to realize the truth about Linux… How we forget that “Linux” is only a kernel. I realize how I prepare for moving to linux by installing the cross platform software such as Mozilla/Firefox, gaim, OpenOffice and others. All open source software. The question is, will that which drives people like me towards Linux make it into Windows before Windows software makes it onto Linux?

Only time will tell. Until then, I can only tinker with Linux on the days I don’t want to play games, or run bleeding-edge hardware…