Category: Editorial

It turns out it was Knoppix 3.4 released in May 2004 that obsessed me as a child, providing me with some of my earliest steps into a larger world. Not only that, but the CD-R disc it was burned on still reads even after all of these years. Considering the volatility of such media, this surprised me.

I'm starting to feel old. I remember a time before Steam for Linux, back in the dark days even before the first set of Humble Indie Bundles, it's truly crazy how far Linux has come overall as a platform for gaming.

Back when I first played through Quake: The Offering I found that I enjoyed the two mission packs even more than I did the original Quake campaign, and while these were the only official addons sold for Quake, several third party expansions and total conversions exist that also had retail releases. Two of these, Shrak and Malice, were published on CD-ROM in 1997 by Quantum Axcess. 

If you look at the commercial Linux gaming catalogue at the turn of the millennium, in amongst all of the 3D shooters and strategic simulations being released, one glaring omission seems to have been the lack of any racing games. Loki Software never ported any to Linux, nor did any of the other porting houses. This left a void for the free gaming community to fill.

Some of my first real experiences of using Linux as a child came through the use of Knoppix, one of the first distributions to popularize the use of Live CDs. This allowed me to explore a wide swath of Linux applications. One of these was a role playing game which I recall I never got to work well, but lingered on in my imagination regardless.

It's been close to a year since the Steam Deck launched, so here's where things currently stand and my thoughts on it.

While their foray into interactive storybooks did fail to impress, it did help remind me of BlackHoleSun Software, one of the earliest Indie developers to create games with Linux in mind. Their most famous game Bunnies was released as shareware in 2001, providing a demo version you could later update through use of a retail key. Thankfully, the story does not have to end there.

The GPU industry is so broken right now and to make things worse, MSI thought it would be a good idea to do a lottery for a chance to win the ability to buy a GPU.

In light of some recent news surrounding the MSI Afterburner software, it's another reminder that it's quite important for people to directly support projects they use and enjoy.

Sold as interactive storybooks, these took the form of narrated picture books which went over the story from the film while allowing for a certain degree of user agency, typically by allowing a selection of quirky animations to play by clicking around with the mouse. UAV must have wanted in on this craze as well, and so Atlantis: The Underwater City - Interactive Storybook was born.

Given the the company's current focus, the name Hyperion Entertainment seems an odd fit for the modern maintainer of AmigaOS, betraying its earlier status as an Amiga focused video game porting house. One of their ports, that of SiN, to this day remains from them an elusive Linux exclusive.

The end of a year is a good time to sit, think and reflect on what a year it has been and what we hope 2023 will bring so here's some of what I want and what I think could happen.

Here's my own take on a top list of games to check out for Steam Deck that were released in some form in 2022, or had a major update to improve them.

Well, this wasn't what you were expecting to read was it? I have been converted. After years laughing about people who go over the top with RGB lighting in their PCs I am now a convert.

Now and then the exclusive game discussion pops up, because someone thinks it would be a good idea to lock games to a platform. Here we go again.

You think I'm joking? I'm not. Okay, okay. It's not a game but I'll get to that in a moment. The Steam Deck has transformed everything about gaming for me.

What an absolutely exceptional first year Valve had with the Steam Deck, and it continues to be my main way to play games now.

Back in 2020 I pointed out what were the best Linux distributions for gaming, so here's the current state and what you should go for in 2023.

Recently, I ran two different polls to find out how people with a Steam Deck used their device (or if they didn't much) and the results are out now.

Unfortunately, it seems a developer on the Minecraft launcher PolyMC went completely rogue and so for your own safety, you should remove PolyMC from all systems.