How to start with GOOD Linux games

English Games
1

I’m an experienced Linux user but have never attempted to seriously play any good games on Linux. Can someone write an overview of the best way to get started?

The options I suppose are the GAMES repo, Native Steam and Wine. What are the problems/benefits with each of these and if Steam is the best option how do I get started?

A Sticky in this forum would be extremely useful if anyone can write some decent introductory overviews.

Thanks in advance.

BTW : Opensuse 12.3, KDE on a toshiba satellite laptop

2

You might want to define a “good” game ?
for me that is

BzFlag
Armagetron
“kiki the nano-bot”
“polly-be-gone”
Word War Vi
“virus-killer”
Qgo
GNU Chess
Extreme Tux Racer
Supper Tux Kart
Chromium BSU

3

Games are just programs the repo games should run no problem in most cases

Steam is in development so things change and may or may not be easy to use depending…It does seem to be coming along and you can play Linux based in the Linux client and there is a Windows client that runs under Wine and most Steam games play. Many games are being ported to Linux

GOOD games is just a little broad. What is a good game to me may be a boring game to you.

About the only game I play is Eternal Lands an online game. There is a good Linux client as well as Windows and Mac. It is free to download/play also. It is open ended with no real goal you can develop your character as you want

But it all depends on what you want to play.

4

Regarding Steam, I have one computer running the native client and one through wine, both runs quite fine. I don’t play very much no more, but the games available for native Linux have certainly increased and become better these last years; though, a matter of taste perhaps. Have e.g. installed and played Skyrim and LOTRO through steam wine, Amnesia and Wargames: EC on native steam.

Also played Penumbra, NWN and Lights Out, mm, as regular installs on Linux, there are some good commercial games for Linux pre steam also.

Installation of the win steam client was a bit problematic; I don’t remember precisely think it involved fonts and gui menu, it was a known issue, though, and I found an answer quite quickly.

Install native steam here: http://software.opensuse.org/package/steam - it should install without any problems, I would expect; only 32bit client available though (as with windows) so it might pull in quite some dependency packages, 32bit libs. Some prefer, and advise others, to avoid ‘one click install’, so you might wish to add e.g. this repository: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/games:/tools/openSUSE_13.1/ to YaST instead.

The games repo works well enough in my experience; from time to time, though, games in this repo requires newer versions of (usually libs) packages than are available from the -oss repo; replacing the library from -oss with what is provided in the games repo will, probably, make the game run but may break, and has done for me, something else on your system. So best to take it slowly, easier to stay in control so to be able to revert back if one wish.

Cheers,
Olav