Nvidia's Ginormous Gift to Linux Gamers

By Katherine Noyes
LinuxInsider
Part of the ECT News Network

"This could sway game companies to make more games for Linux, meaning that gamers would have to boot into Windows less and less, eventually maybe not at all," said blogger Linux Rants. "Where go the games go the users. Other applications follow. If played correctly on the market, this could be the first step for Linux to more global acceptance on the desktop."What a difference a year makes.

It used to be that gaming was Linux's "Achilles' heel" of sorts, cited by more than a few enthusiasts as justification for their reluctance to switch away from Windows.

Fast forward to today, and gaming may well be the focus of more Linux-centered excitement than any other area.

How did we get from point A to point B, you may ask?

Doubled Performance

Well, it all started when Valve announced back in April that it was bringing its popular Steam gaming platform to Linux.

Soon afterward, Valve cofounder Gabe Newell declared Windows 8 a "catastrophe" that's driving his own company to Linux.

The latest news? None other than Nvidia's announcement last week that its latest R310 Nvidia GeForce drivers "double the performance and dramatically reduce game loading times for those gaming on the Linux operating system," in the company's own words.

'Music to My Ears, Baby!'

Hear that sound in the distance? It's the Linux masses, whooping and hollering with delight.

"Hardcore video games have traditionally been one of the sticking points against getting PC users to adopt GNU/Linux," enthused tepples on Slashdot, for example. "But with big companies (Valve and Nvidia) committed to bringing hardcore video games to the GNU/Linux platform, what else is in the way of making 2013 the year of the Linux desktop?"

Even more so: "Hear that, Microsoft?" wrote Type44Q. "That's the sound 

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