Linux-based operating systems can be used for playing

video games A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

. Because few games natively support the Linux kernel, various

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

has been made to run

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

games, software, and programs, such as

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

, Cedega, DXVK, and

Proton A proton is a stable subatomic particle, symbol , Hydron (chemistry), H+, or 1H+ with a positive electric charge of +1 ''e'' (elementary charge). Its mass is slightly less than the mass of a neutron and approximately times the mass of an e ...

, and managers such as Lutris and PlayOnLinux. The Linux gaming community has a presence on the internet with users who attempt to run games that are not officially supported on Linux.

History

Linux gaming started largely as an extension of the already present

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

gaming scene, which dates back to that system's conception in 1969 with the game '' Space Travel'' and the

first edition The bibliographical definition of an edition is all copies of a book printed from substantially the same setting of type, including all minor typographical variants. First edition According to the definition of ''edition'' above, a book pr ...

in 1971, with both systems sharing many similar titles. These games were mostly either arcade and parlour type games or text adventures using libraries like curses. A notable example of this are the "

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

Games", a collection of

interactive fiction Interactive fiction (IF) is software simulating environments in which players use text Command (computing), commands to control Player character, characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narrati ...

and other text-mode amusements. The

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

philosophy and

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

methodology which drove the development of the operating system in general also spawned the creation of various early free games. Popular early titles included ''

Netrek ''Netrek'' is an Internet game for up to 16 players, written almost entirely in cross-platform open-source software, open-source code. It combines features of Shoot 'em up, multi-directional shooters and team-based real-time strategy games. Player ...

'' and the various '' XAsteroids'', ''XBattle'', ''

XBill ''XBill'' is an arcade style game for the X Window System. The game features a bespectacled character known as "Bill" (a spoof of Bill Gates). The goal is to prevent Bill's legions of clones from installing "Wingdows", a virus "cleverly designe ...

'', '' XBoing'', '' X-Bomber'', '' XConq'', '' XDigger'', '' XEmeraldia'', ''XEvil'', '' XGalaga'', '' XGammon'', '' XLander'', '' XLife'', '' XMahjong'', '' XMine'', ''XSoldier'', '' XPilot'', '' XRobots'', '' XRubiks'', '' XShogi'', '' XScavenger'', '' XTris'', '' XTron'', '' XTic'' and ''XTux'' games using the

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at ...

. Other games targeted or also supported the SVGAlib library allowing them to run without a windowing system, such as '' LinCity'', '' Maelstrom'', ''Sasteroids'', and ''SABRE''. The General Graphics Interface was also utilized for games like ''U.R.B.A.N The Cyborg Project'' and '' Dave Gnukem'' ported from

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

. As the operating system itself grew and expanded, the amount of free and open-source games also increased in scale and complexity, with both clones of historically popular releases beginning with '' BZFlag'', ''LinCity'', and '' FreeCiv'', as well as original creations such as '' Rocks'n'Diamonds'', ''

Cube A cube or regular hexahedron is a three-dimensional space, three-dimensional solid object in geometry, which is bounded by six congruent square (geometry), square faces, a type of polyhedron. It has twelve congruent edges and eight vertices. It i ...

'', ''

The Battle for Wesnoth ''The Battle for Wesnoth'' is a free and open-source software, free and open-source turn-based strategy video game with a high fantasy setting (similar to J. R. R. Tolkien's Tolkien's legendarium, legendarium), designed by Australian-American d ...

'', and '' Tux Racer''.

1994

The beginning of Linux as a gaming platform for commercial video games is widely credited to have begun in 1994 when Dave D. Taylor ported the game '' Doom'' to Linux, as well as many other systems, during his spare time.

Shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer. ...

copies of the game were included on various Linux discs, including those packed in with

reference book A reference work is a document, such as a Academic publishing#Scholarly paper, paper, book or periodical literature, periodical (or their electronic publishing, electronic equivalents), to which one can refer for information. The information ...

s. '' Ancient Domains of Mystery'' was also released for Linux in 1994 by Thomas Biskup, building on the

roguelike Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a style of role-playing game traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player character. Most ro ...

legacy of games such as '' Moria'' and its descendent '' Angband'', but more specifically ''

Hack Hack may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Games * Hack (Unix video game), ''Hack'' (Unix video game), a 1984 roguelike video game * .hack (video game series), ''.hack'' (video game series), a series of video games by the multimedia fran ...

'' and ''

NetHack ''NetHack'' is an open source single-player roguelike video game, first released in 1987 and maintained by the NetHack DevTeam. The game is a fork of the 1984 game ''Hack'', itself inspired by the 1980 game '' Rogue''. The player takes the role ...

''.

1995

From there Taylor would also help found the development studio Crack dot Com, which released the video game ''

Abuse Abuse is the act of improper usage or treatment of a person or thing, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit. Abuse can come in many forms, such as: physical or verbal maltreatment, injury, assault, violation, rape, unjust practices, ...

'', with the game's Linux port even being distributed by Linux vendors

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. (formerly Red Hat Software, Inc.) is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North ...

and

Caldera A caldera ( ) is a large cauldron-like hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber in a volcanic eruption. An eruption that ejects large volumes of magma over a short period of time can cause significant detriment to the str ...

. The studio's never finished ''

Golgotha Calvary ( or ) or Golgotha () was a site immediately outside Jerusalem's walls where, according to Christianity's four canonical gospels, Jesus was crucified. Since at least the early medieval period, it has been a destination for pilgrimage. ...

'' was also slated to be released by Red Hat in box. In 1991 DUX Software contracted Don Hopkins to port ''

SimCity ''SimCity'' is an open-ended city-building video game franchise originally designed by Will Wright. The first game in the series, '' SimCity'', was published by Maxis in 1989 and was followed by several sequels and many other spin-off ''S ...

'' to Unix, which he ported to Linux in 1995 and eventually released as open source for the OLPC XO Laptop. A website called The Linux Game Tome, also known as HappyPenguin after its

URL A uniform resource locator (URL), colloquially known as an address on the Web, is a reference to a resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identi ...

, was begun by Tessa Lau in 1995 to catalogue games created for or ported to Linux from the

SunSITE SunSITE (Sun Software, Information & Technology Exchange) is a network of Internet servers providing archives of information, software and other publicly available resources. The project, started in the early 1990s, is run by a number of universiti ...

game directories as well as other classic X11 games for a collection of just over 100 titles.

1996–1997

id Software id Software LLC () is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: game programmer, programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer T ...

, the original developers of ''Doom'', also continued to release their products for Linux. Their game '' Quake'' was ported to Linux via

X11 The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at ...

in 1996, once again by Dave D. Taylor working in his free time. An SVGALib version was also later produced by Greg Alexander in 1997 using recently leaked source code, but was later mainlined by id. Later id products continued to be ported by Zoid Kirsch and Timothee Besset, a practice that continued until the studio's acquisition by

ZeniMax Media ZeniMax Media Inc. is an American video game holding company based in Rockville, Maryland. The company was founded in 1999 by Christopher Weaver and Robert A. Altman as the parent company for Weaver's video game publisher Bethesda Softworks. ...

in 2009. Initially, Zoid Kirsch was responsible for maintaining the Linux version of Quake and porting QuakeWorld to Linux. '' Inner Worlds'' was released for and developed on Linux. ''The UNIX Book of Games'', a 1996 publication by Janice Winsor, described various games with an accompanying CD-ROM containing executables and source code for

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

and

SCO Unix Xinuos OpenServer, previously SCO UNIX and SCO Open Desktop (SCO ODT), is a closed source computer operating system developed by Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), later acquired by SCO Group, and now owned by Xinuos. Early versions of OpenServer were ...

1998

The Linux Game Tome was taken over by Bob Zimbinski in 1998 eventually growing to over 2000 entries, sponsored by retailer Penguin Computing and later LGP until it went down in 2013, although mirrors still exist. The site LinuxGames covered news and commentary from November 1998 until its host Atomicgamer went down in 2015. It was established by Marvin Malkowski, head of the Telefragged gaming network, alongside Al Koskelin and Dustin Reyes; Reyes passed away August 8, 2023. Zoid Kirsch from id Software ported Quake II to Linux. Two programmers from

Origin Origin(s) or The Origin may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Comics and manga * ''Origin'' (comics), a Wolverine comic book mini-series published by Marvel Comics in 2002 * ''The Origin'' (Buffy comic), a 1999 ''Buffy the Vampire Sl ...

ported ''

Ultima Online ''Ultima Online'' (''UO'') is a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released on September 24, 1997 by Origin Systems. Set in the '' Ultima'' universe, it is known for its extensive player versus player combat syste ...

'' to Linux and MP Entertainment released an adventure game ''

Hopkins FBI ''Hopkins FBI'' is a 1998 point-and-click adventure game from MP Entertainment, most famous for very large (at the time) amounts of gore. A sequel titled ''Hopkins FBI 2: Don't Cry, Baby'', involving Hopkins having to rescue the President's daught ...

'' for Linux On November 9, 1998, a new software firm called

Loki Software Loki Software, Inc. (Loki Entertainment) was an American video game developer based in Tustin, California, that porting, ported several video games from Microsoft Windows to Linux. It took its name from the Norse deity Loki. Although successful ...

was founded by Scott Draeker, a former lawyer who became interested in porting games to Linux after being introduced to the system through his work as a software licensing attorney. Loki, although a commercial failure, is credited with the birth of the modern Linux game industry. Loki developed several free software tools, such as the Loki installer (also known as Loki Setup), and supported the development of the Simple DirectMedia Layer, as well as starting the

OpenAL OpenAL (Open Audio Library) is a cross-platform audio application programming interface (API). It is designed for efficient rendering of multichannel three-dimensional positional audio. Its API style and conventions deliberately resemble those o ...

audio library project. These are still often credited as being the cornerstones of Linux game development. They were also responsible for bringing nineteen high-profile games to the platform before its closure in 2002.

1999

Loki published '' Civilization: Call to Power'', ''

Eric's Ultimate Solitaire ''Eric's Ultimate Solitaire'' (also known as Eric's Ultimate Solitaire X) is a commercial solitaire game developed by Delta Tao Software for the Macintosh. The game was later ported to Linux by Loki Software. Apple Computer bundled the game wit ...

'', Heretic II, Heroes of Might and Magic III, Railroad Tycoon II: Gold Edition, Quake III: Arena, and Unreal Tournament for Linux. Loki's initial success also attracted other firms to invest in the Linux gaming market, such as Tribsoft,

Hyperion Entertainment Hyperion Entertainment CVBA (formerly Hyperion Entertainment VOF) is a Belgian software company which in its early years focused in porting Windows games to Amiga OS, Linux, and Mac OS. In 2001, they accepted a contract by Amiga Incorporated ...

, Macmillan Digital Publishing USA, Titan Computer,

Xatrix Entertainment Gray Matter Interactive Studios, Inc. (Gray Matter Studios; formerly Xatrix Entertainment, Inc.) was an American video game developer based in Los Angeles. History Drew Markham and his business partner Barry Dempsey founded Xatrix Entertain ...

, Philos Laboratories, and

Vicarious Visions Blizzard Albany (formerly Vicarious Visions, Inc.) is an American video game development division of Blizzard Entertainment based in Albany, New York. Founded in 1991, the company was acquired by Activision in January 2005. In January 2021, Vica ...

. The ports of ''Quake'' and ''Quake II'' were released physically by Macmillan Computer Publishing USA, while ''Quake III'' was released for Linux by

. Red Hat had previously passed on publishing ''Quake'' for Linux, since it was not

at the time. Philos Laboratories released a Linux version of ''

Theocracy Theocracy is a form of autocracy or oligarchy in which one or more deity, deities are recognized as supreme ruling authorities, giving divine guidance to human intermediaries, with executive and legislative power, who manage the government's ...

'' on the retail disk. Ryan "Ridah" Feltrin from Xatrix Entertainment released a Linux version of '' Kingpin: Life of Crime''. BlackHoleSun Software released ''Krilo'' and Futureware 2001 released a trading simulation Würstelstand for Linux. The

Indrema Entertainment System Indrema Corporation, also known as Indrema Entertainment Systems, was a consumer electronics company famous for the Indrema L600 Entertainment System, a game console intended for independent game developers. Officially founded in 2000 by John Gi ...

(also known as the L600) was also in development since 1999 as a Linux based

game console A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can typically be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location conne ...

and

digital media player A digital media player (also known as a streaming device or streaming box) is a type of consumer electronics device designed for the storage, playback, or viewing of digital media content. They are typically designed to be integrated into a h ...

, but production halted in 2001 due to a lack of investment, although the TuxBox project attempted a continuation.

2000

Loki published Descent 3, Heavy Gear II, SimCity 3000, and Soldier of Fortune for Linux. They also released the expansion Descent 3: Mercenary as the downloadable Linux installer. Hyperion Entertainment ported Sin to Linux published by Titan Computer. Vicarious Visions ported the space-flight game ''

Terminus Terminus may refer to: Ancient Rome *Terminus (god), a Roman deity who protected boundary markers Transport *Terminal train station or terminus, a railway station serving as an end destination *Bus terminus, a bus station serving as an end des ...

'' to Linux. Mountain King Studios released a port of '' Raptor: Call of the Shadows'' and CipSoft published the Linux client of Tibia. Boutell.com ported '' Exile III: Ruined World'' to Linux, which was a game created by

Spiderweb Software Spiderweb Software is an independent video game developer founded in 1994 by Jeff Vogel in Seattle, Washington. Its primary focus is on creating demoware games for the Mac, Microsoft Windows, Android and the iPad. The games emphasize storytelli ...

. During this time Michael Simms founded Tux Games, one of the first online Linux game retailers, later followed by Fun 4 Tux, Wupra, ixsoft, and LinuxPusher. The period also saw a number of commercial compilations released, such as ''100 Great Linux Games'' by

Global Star Software Global Star Software was a Canadian video game publisher based in Mississauga. It was founded in 1995 by Craig McGauley and Damian Cristiani and operated alongside their Triad Distributors, which had been founded in 1993. Both companies were acqu ...

, ''Linux Games'' by Walnut Creek CDROM, ''Linux Games++'' by Pacific Hitech, ''Linux Cubed Series 8 LINUX Games'' by Omeron Systems, ''Best Linux Games'' by SOT Finnish Software Engineering, ''LinuxCenter Games Collection'', ''Linux Games & Entertainment for X Windows'' by Hemming, ''Linux Spiele & Games'' by more software, ''Linux Spiele'' by Franzis Verlag, and ''play it! Linux: Die Spielesammlung'' by S.A.D. Software. Numerous

Linux distributions A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel (operating system), kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply distribution (marketing), product distribution pe ...

and collections packed in Loki games and demos, including

Red Hat Linux Red Hat Linux was a widely used commercial open-source Linux distribution created by Red Hat until its discontinuation in 2004. Early releases of Red Hat Linux were called Red Hat Commercial Linux. Red Hat published the first non-beta release ...

Corel Linux Corel Linux, also called Corel LinuxOS, was a Debian-based operating system made by Corel that began beta testing on September 21, 1999 and was released to the public on November 15, 1999. It mainly competed against Windows 98 and Windows 2000 by M ...

and

WordPerfect Office WordPerfect (WP) is a word processing application, now owned by Alludo, with a long history on multiple personal computer platforms. At the height of its popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was the market leader of word processors, disp ...

, and the complete ''

'' bundled with PowerPlant by TheKompany. Easy Linux 2000 similarly bundled in a copy of the Linux version of ''

''.

2001

Loki published Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.², Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns, MindRover: The Europa Project, Myth II: Soulblighter, Postal Plus, Rune, Rune: Halls of Valhalla, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and Tribes 2 for Linux. Linux Game Publishing was founded in 2001 in response to the impending demise of Loki. Creature Labs ported '' Creatures: Internet Edition'' to Linux, which was published by LGP. Hyperion Entertainment ported Shogo: Mobile Armor Division to Linux, and Tribsoft created a Linux version of Jagged Alliance 2, both published by Titan Computer.

Illwinter Game Design Illwinter Game Design is a Swedish independent video game developer composed of Johan Karlsson and Kristoffer Osterman. The company was started in the 1990s under the name Bogus Game Design, but later changed its name. Registered officially as Ill ...

released Conquest of Elysium II and Dominions: Priests, Prophets & Pretenders for Linux.

Introversion Software Introversion Software Limited is a British video game developer based in Walton-on-Thames, England. History The company was founded in 2001 by three friends, Chris Delay, Mark Morris, and Thomas Arundel, who met as undergraduates at Imperial ...

released

Uplink In a telecommunications network, a link is a communication channel that connects two or more devices for the purpose of data transmission. The link may be a dedicated physical link or a virtual circuit that uses one or more physical links or shar ...

for Linux. BlackHoleSun Software released ''Bunnies'', and worked on ''Atlantis: The Underwater City - Interactive Storybook'' published by Sterling Entertainment. GLAMUS GmbH released a Linux version of their game ''

Mobility Mobility may refer to: Social sciences and humanities * Economic mobility, ability of individuals or families to improve their economic status * Geographic mobility, the measure of how populations and goods move over time * Mobilities, a conte ...

'' and Oliver Hamann released the driving game ''Odyssey by Car''. Small Rockets published Small Rockets BackGammon, Small Rockets Mah Jongg, and Small Rockets Poker for Linux. The company TransGaming marketed as a monthly subscription its own proprietary fork of

called WineX in October 2001, later renamed Cedega in 2004 and discontinued in 2011, which aimed for greater compatibility with

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

games. A special Gaming Edition of Mandrake Linux 8.1 was released that featured WineX packed in with ''

The Sims ''The Sims'' is a series of life simulation video games developed by Maxis and Video game publisher, published by Electronic Arts. The franchise has sold nearly 200 million copies worldwide, and is one of the List of best-selling video game fran ...

''. The fact that the fork of Wine did not release source back to the main project was also a point of contention, despite promises to release code after achieving a set number of subscribers. The release of

ScummVM Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion Virtual Machine (ScummVM) is a set of game engine recreations. Originally designed to play LucasArts adventure games that use the SCUMM system, it also supports a variety of non-SCUMM games by companies l ...

in 2001,

Dosbox DOSBox is a free and open-source MS-DOS emulator. It supports running programs primarily video games that are otherwise inaccessible since hardware for running a compatible disk operating system (DOS) is obsolete and generally unavailab ...

in 2002, as well as

video game console emulator A video game console emulator is a type of emulator that allows a computing device to emulate a video game console's hardware and play its games on the emulating platform. More often than not, emulators carry additional features that surpass ...

s like

MAME MAME (formerly an acronym of Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is a free and open-source emulator designed to emulate the hardware of arcade games, video game consoles, old computers and other systems in software on modern personal computers and ...

from 1997 and released as open source in 2016, helped make Linux a viable platform for

retro gaming Retro gaming, also known as classic gaming and old school gaming, is the playing and collection of computer game, personal computers, video game console, consoles, and video games from earlier decades. Usually, retro gaming is based upon syste ...

(facilitated by the

RetroArch RetroArch is a free and open-source, cross-platform frontend for emulators, game engines, video games, media players and other applications. It is the reference implementation of the libretro API, designed to be fast, lightweight, portable and w ...

frontend since 2010). This is especially the case for the

GP2X The GP2X is a Linux-based handheld video game console and portable media player developed by South Korean company GamePark Holdings. It was released on November 10, 2005, in South Korea only. The GP2X is designed for homebrew developers as we ...

series of

handheld game console A handheld game console, or simply handheld console, is a small, portable self-contained video game console with a built-in screen, game controls and speakers. Handheld game consoles are smaller than home video game consoles and contain the con ...

s by

GamePark Holdings GPH, formerly known as GamePark Holdings, was a South Korean company responsible for creating the GP2X. It was founded by former employees of the game maker GamePark in 2005. History Several years after the release of the GP32, its maker GameP ...

in addition to the community driven

Pandora In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first human woman created by Hephaestus on the instructions of Zeus. As Hesiod related it, each god cooperated by giving her unique gifts. Her other name—inscribed against her figure on a white-ground '' ky ...

and DragonBox Pyra. Dedicated emulation setups are also built on

single-board computers A single-board computer (SBC) is a complete computer built on a single circuit board, with microprocessor(s), memory, input/output (I/O) and other features required of a functional computer. Single-board computers are commonly made as demonstr ...

like the

Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi ( ) is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in collaboration with Broadcom Inc., Broadcom. To commercialize the product and support its growing demand, the ...

released in 2012, which are most often

based including with

Raspberry Pi OS Raspberry Pi OS is a Unix-like operating system developed for the Raspberry Pi line of single-board computers. Based on Debian, a Linux distribution, it is maintained by Raspberry Pi Holdings and optimized for Raspberry Pi hardware, with low memo ...

is also useful for running older Windows games, including

16-bit 16-bit microcomputers are microcomputers that use 16-bit microprocessors. A 16-bit register can store 216 different values. The range of integer values that can be stored in 16 bits depends on the integer representation used. With the two ...

and even some

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform la ...

applications that no longer work on modern

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ...

Windows. The

Sharp Zaurus Sharp Zaurus is a series of personal digital assistants (PDAs) made by Sharp Corporation. The Zaurus was the most popular PDA during the 1990s in Japan and was based on a proprietary operating system. The first Sharp PDA to use the Linux operati ...

personal data assistants adopted a Linux derived system called OpenZaurus, which attracted its own gaming scene. This was also the case with the Agenda VR3, advertised as the first "pure Linux PDA".

2002

After Loki's closure, the Linux game market experienced some changes. Although some new firms, such as

Linux Game Publishing Linux Game Publishing (sometimes also referred to as LGP) was a software company based in Nottingham in England. It ported, published and sold video games Linux gaming, running on Linux operating systems. As well as porting games, LGP also spon ...

and RuneSoft, would largely continue the role of a standard porting house, the focus began to change with Linux game proponents encouraging game developers to port their game products themselves or through individual contractors. Influential to this was Ryan C. Gordon, a former Loki employee who would over the next decade port several game titles to multiple platforms, including Linux. Ryan ported America's Army, Candy Cruncher, Serious Sam: The First Encounter, and Unreal Tournament 2003 to Linux. Linux Game Publishing had initially tried to pick up the support rights to many of Loki's titles, but in the end it was only able to acquire the rights to MindRover: The Europa Project. They released the updated version of Mindrover and its downloadable update for owners of the old Loki version. Return to Castle Wolfenstein was released for

and with the Linux port done in-house by Timothee Besset Chronic logic released Bridge Construction Set and Triptych for Linux. Sunspire Studios released in retail commercial expansion of the game titled '' Tux Racer''.

2003

Ryan ported Devastation, Medal of Honor Allied Assault, and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter to Linux. LGP took interest in publishing Pyrogon games on physical CDs and they released Candy Cruncher. Mathieu Pinard from Tribsoft got LGP in contact with Cyberlore to save the Linux port of Majesty because Titan Computer get out of Linux publishing. This turn of events helped LGP to release a Majesty for Linux after Pinard closed his company in 2002. Timothee Bessett from id Software ported Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory to Linux. Around this time many companies, starting with id Software, also began to release legacy

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

leading to a proliferation of

source port A source port is a software project based on the source code of a game engine that allows the game to be played on operating systems or computing platforms with which the game was not originally compatible. Description Source ports are often ...

s of older games to Linux and other systems. This also helped expand the already existing free and open-source gaming scene, especially with regards to the creation of free first person shooters. In addition, numerous

game engine recreation Game engine recreation is a type of video game engine remastering process whereby a new game engine is Code rewriting, rewritten from scratch as a Clone (computing), clone of the original with the ability to load the original game's data files suc ...

s have been produced to varying levels of accuracy using

reverse engineering Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompl ...

or underlying engine code supporting the original game files including on Linux and other niche systems.

2004

Ryan ported Unreal Tournament 2004 to Linux for Epic Games and Timothee Bessett from id Software ported Doom 3 to Linux. David Hedbor, founder and main programmer of Eon Games ported '' NingPo MahJong'' and '' Hyperspace Delivery Boy!'' to Linux, which later were published by LGP.

2005–2007

Ryan ported Postal²: Share The Pain to Linux published by LGP. CodeWeavers offered an enhanced version of Wine called CrossOver Games. The reliance on such compatibility layers remains controversial with concerns that it hinders growth in native development, although this approach was defended based on Loki's demise. PlayOnLinux, established in 2007, provides a community alternative, with various guides being written on how to get games to run through Wine.

2008–2011

The Linux gaming market also started to experience some growth towards the end of the decade with the rise of

independent video game development An indie video game or indie game (short for independent video game) is a video game created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A ...

, with many "indie" developers favouring support for multiple platforms. The

Humble Indie Bundle Humble Bundle, Inc. is a digital storefront for video games, which grew out of its original offering of Humble Bundles, collections of games sold at a price determined by the purchaser and with a portion of the price going towards charity and ...

initiatives inaugurated in 2010 helped to formally demonstrate this trend, with Linux users representing a sizable population of their purchase base, as well as consistently being the most financially generous in terms of actual money spent. The Humble Indie Bundle V in 2012 faced controversy for featuring a Wine-based release of ''

Limbo The unofficial term Limbo (, or , referring to the edge of Hell) is the afterlife condition in medieval Catholic theology, of those who die in original sin without being assigned to the Hell of the Damned. However, it has become the gene ...

'' prepared by CodeWeavers, while a native version was later released in 2014. Humble eventually began offering Windows-only games in their bundles and on their store. In 2009, the small indie game company Entourev LLC published ''Voltley'' to Linux which is the first commercial exclusive game for this operating system. In the same year, LGP released '' Shadowgrounds'' which was the first commercial game for Linux using the Nvidia PhysX middleware. The GamingOnLinux website was launched on July 4, 2009, and eventually succeeded LinuxGames as the main source of news and commentary. The release of a Linux version of Desura in 2011, a

digital distribution Digital distribution, also referred to as content delivery, online distribution, or electronic software distribution, among others, is the delivery or distribution of information or materials through digital platforms. The distribution of digital ...

platform with a primary focus on small independent developers, was heralded by several commentators as an important step to greater acknowledgement of Linux as a gaming platform. Shortly before this,

Canonical The adjective canonical is applied in many contexts to mean 'according to the canon' the standard, rule or primary source that is accepted as authoritative for the body of knowledge or literature in that context. In mathematics, ''canonical exampl ...

launched the

Ubuntu Software Center Ubuntu Software Center, or simply Software Center, is a discontinued high-level graphical front end for the APT/dpkg package management system. It is free software written in Python, PyGTK/PyGObject based on GTK. The program was created for ...

which also sold digital games. The digital store Gameolith also launched in 2011 focused principally on Linux before expanding in 2012 and closing in 2014.

2012–2016

In July 2012, game developer and content distributor

Valve A valve is a device or natural object that regulates, directs or controls the flow of a fluid (gases, liquids, fluidized solids, or Slurry, slurries) by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically Pip ...

announced a port of their Source engine for Linux as well as stating their intention to release their

Steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

digital distribution service for Linux. The potential availability of a Linux Steam client had already attracted other developers to consider porting their titles to Linux, including previously

Mac OS Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. in a succession of two major series. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the classic Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system ...

only porting houses such as Aspyr Media and

Feral Interactive Feral Interactive Limited is a British video games developer and publisher for macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch, Meta Quest and Microsoft Windows platforms. It was founded in 1996 to bring games to Mac and specialises in porting ...

. In November 2012,

Unity Technologies Unity Software Inc. (doing business as Unity Technologies) is an American video game software development company based in San Francisco. It was founded in Denmark in 2004 as Over the Edge Entertainment and changed its name in 2007. Unity Techn ...

ported their Unity engine and game creation system to Linux starting with version 4. All of the games created with the Unity engine can now be ported to Linux easily. In September 2013 Valve announced that they were releasing a gaming oriented Linux based operating system called

SteamOS SteamOS is an Arch Linux-based Linux distribution developed by Valve. It incorporates Valve's video game storefront Steam; it is also the official operating system for the Steam Deck, Valve's portable gaming device, as well as Valve's earlier ...

with Valve saying they had "come to the conclusion that the environment best suited to delivering value to customers is an operating system built around Steam itself." This was used for their

Steam Machine A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be transf ...

platform released on November 10, 2015, and discontinued in 2018. In March 2014 GOG.com announced they would begin to support Linux titles on their

DRM DRM may refer to: Government, military and politics * Defense reform movement, U.S. campaign inspired by Col. John Boyd * Democratic Republic of Madagascar, a former socialist state (1975–1992) on Madagascar * Direction du renseignement militair ...

free store starting the same year, after previously stating they would not be able due to too many distributions. GOG.com began their initial roll out on July 24, 2014, by offering 50 Linux supporting titles, including several new to the platform. Despite previous statements, GOG have confirmed they have no plans to port their Galaxy client to Linux. The free software Lutris started in 2010, GameHub from 2019, MiniGalaxy from 2020, and the Heroic Games Launcher from 2021, offer support for GOG as well as the

Epic Games Store The Epic Games Store is a video game digital distribution service and storefront operated by Epic Games. It launched in December 2018 as a software client, for Microsoft Windows and macOS, and online storefront. Android and iOS versions of t ...

Ubisoft Connect Ubisoft Connect (formerly Ubisoft Game Launcher and later Uplay) is a service for digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communication developed by Massive Entertainment to provide an experience similar to the achievem ...

and

. In March and April 2014 two major developers

Epic Games Epic Games, Inc. is an American Video game developer, video game and software development, software developer and video game publisher, publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney (game developer), Tim Sween ...

and

Crytek Crytek GmbH is a German video game developer and software developer based in Frankfurt. Founded by the Yerli brothers in Coburg in 1999 and moved to Frankfurt in 2006, Crytek operates additional studios in Kyiv, Ukraine and Istanbul, Turkey. It ...

announced Linux support for their next generation engines

Unreal Engine 4 Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) is the fourth version of Unreal Engine developed by Epic Games. UE4 began development in 2003 and was released in March 2014, with the first game using UE4 being released in April 2014. UE4 introduced support for Physically ...

and

CryEngine CryEngine (stylized as CRYENGINE) is a game engine designed by the German game developer Crytek. It has been used in all of their titles with the initial version being used in ''Far Cry (video game), Far Cry'', and continues to be updated to sup ...

respectively. Towards the end of 2014 the game host

itch.io Itch.io (stylized in all lowercase) is a website for users to host, sell and download indie video games, indie role-playing games, game assets, comics, zines and music. Launched in March 2013 by Leaf Corcoran, the service hosts over 1,000,000 ...

announced that Linux would be supported with their developing

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

game client. This was fully launched simultaneously on

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

and Linux on December 15, 2015. The service had supported Linux since it was first unveiled on March 3, 2013, with creator Leaf Corcoran personally a Linux user. The similar

Game Jolt Game Jolt is a social community platform for video games, gamers and content creators. Founded by Yaprak and David DeCarmine, it is available on iOS, Android, and on the web and as a desktop app for Windows and Linux. Users share interactive ...

service also supports Linux and has an open source client released on January 13, 2016. GamersGate also sells games for Linux.

2017–present

On August 22, 2018, Valve released their fork of

called

, aimed at gaming. It features some improvements over the vanilla Wine such as

Vulkan Vulkan is a cross-platform API and open standard for 3D graphics and computing. It was intended to address the shortcomings of OpenGL, and allow developers more control over the GPU. It is designed to support a wide variety of GPUs, CPUs and o ...

-based DirectX 11 implementation, Steam integration, better full screen and game controller support and improved performance for multi-threaded games. It has since grown to include support for DirectX 9 and DirectX 12 over Vulkan. The itch.io app added its own

integration in June 2020, while Lutris and PlayOnLinux are long-standing independent solutions for compatibility wrappers. As with Wine and Cedega in the past, concerns have been raised over whether Proton hinders native development more than it encourages use of the platform. '' Prodeus'' dropped native support in favour of Proton shortly before final release and Arcen Games cancelled planned native support for '' Heart of the Machine''. Valve has expressed no preference over Proton or native ports among developers. On February 25, 2022, Valve released

Steam Deck The Steam Deck is a handheld gaming computer produced by Valve Corporation, designed to run a portion of games available on the Steam storefront client. Built upon the experiences gained from Valve's earlier ventures with Steam Machine and th ...

, a

running SteamOS 3.0. The deployment of Proton and other design decisions were based on the limited response to their previous Steam Machines. Linux was also used as a base for several nostalgia consoles, including the

Neo Geo X The Neo Geo X (NGX) is a hybrid video game console manufactured by Tommo, licensed by SNK Playmore and released on December 18, 2012. It features games that were popular on the original Neo Geo (system), Neo Geo hardware and comes built-in with 2 ...

NES Classic Edition NES Classic Edition is a dedicated home video game console by Nintendo, that emulates the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Family Computer (Famicom). Originally launched on November 10, 2016, the console aesthetically is a miniature rep ...

, Super NES Classic Edition,

Sega Genesis Mini The Sega Genesis Mini, known as the Mega Drive Mini in regions outside of North America, is a dedicated console modeled on the Sega Genesis. The Mini emulates the original console's 16-bit hardware, and includes 42 games made available through ...

Intellivision Amico The Intellivision Amico (currently referred to as simply Amico) is a planned home video game console developed and marketed by Amico Entertainment (known as Intellivision Entertainment prior to Atari SA's acquisition of the Intellivision brand i ...

, Lichee Pocket 4A, and the

Atari VCS The Atari 2600 is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS), it popularized microprocessor-based hardware and games stored on swappable ROM cartridg ...

. It also powers the more general

Polymega Polymega is a home video game console developed by American company Playmaji, Inc. It is a retro gaming console offering backwards compatibility with several CD-based and cartridge-based platforms: PlayStation (console), PlayStation, TurboGrafx-C ...

Anbernic RG351 The Anbernic RG351 is a Linux-based handheld game console created in China by Anbernic. The console uses a microSD card for storage and is a digital ROM-only console. It is the successor to the RG350, and has emerged as a prominent handheld conso ...

and 5G552, as well as the

Game Gadget The Game Gadget is an open source gaming handheld that supports music and video playback, open game development, and some e-reader features. History Development Initial development of the system occurred in the United Kingdom, and open source so ...

Evercade The Evercade is a handheld game console developed and manufactured by British company Blaze Entertainment. It focuses on retrogaming with ROM cartridges that each contain a number of emulated games. The Evercade was released on 22 May 2020, and ...

, VS,

EXP Exp or EXP may stand for: * Exponential function, in mathematics * Expiry date of organic compounds like food or medicines * Experience point An experience point (often abbreviated as exp or XP) is a unit of measurement used in some tabletop r ...

and

Super Pocket The Super Pocket is a handheld game console developed by Hyper Mega Tech!, a brand of British company Blaze Entertainment. In addition to built-in collections of retro video games, the console features a cartridge slot and is compatible with all ...

retrogaming Retro gaming, also known as classic gaming and old school gaming, is the playing and collection of computer game, personal computers, video game console, consoles, and video games from earlier decades. Usually, retro gaming is based upon syste ...

consoles by Blaze Entertainment. As of early 2023, the retro game store Zoom Platform was enhancing Linux support on their available titles.

Commercial games for non-x86 instruction sets

Some companies ported games to Linux running on instruction sets other than x86, such as

Alpha Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter ''aleph'' , whose name comes from the West Semitic word for ' ...

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

, Sparc, MIPS or ARM. Loki Entertainment Software ported '' Civilization: Call to Power'', ''

'', ''

Heroes of Might and Magic III ''Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia'' (commonly referred to as ''Heroes of Might & Magic 3'', or ''Heroes 3'', or abbreviated HoMM 3) is a turn-based strategy game developed by Jon Van Caneghem through New World Comput ...

'', '' Myth II: Soulblighter'', '' Railroad Tycoon II Gold Edition'' and ''

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri ''Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri'' is a 4X video game, considered a spiritual sequel to the ''Civilization'' series. Set in a science fiction depiction of the 22nd century, the game begins as seven competing ideological factions land on the plane ...

'' with ''

Alien Crossfire ''Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri'' is a 4X video game, considered a spiritual sequel to the Civilization (series), ''Civilization'' series. Set in a science fiction depiction of the 22nd century, the game begins as seven competing ideological factio ...

'' expansion pack to Linux PowerPC. They also ported ''Civilization: Call to Power'', ''Eric's Ultimate Solitaire'', ''Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri'' with ''Alien Crossfire'' expansion pack to Linux Alpha and ''Civilization: Call to Power,'' ''Eric's Ultimate Solitaire'' to Linux SPARC.

published '' Candy Cruncher'', '' Majesty Gold'', '' NingPo MahJong'' and '' Soul Ride'' to Linux PowerPC. They also ported ''Candy Cruncher'', ''Soul Ride'' to Linux SPARC and ''Soul Ride'' to Linux Alpha.

ported '' Dominions: Priests, Prophets and Pretenders'', '' Dominions II: The Ascension Wars'' and ''

Dominions 3 ''Dominions 3: The Awakening'' is a fantasy turn-based strategy game created by Illwinter and published in 2006 by Shrapnel Games. It is the third game in the ''Dominions'' series, preceded by '' Dominions: Priests, Prophets and Pretenders'' and ...

'' to Linux PowerPC, as well as '' Conquest of Elysium 3'', '' Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension'' to Raspberry Pi.

ported ''

Sin In religious context, sin is a transgression against divine law or a law of the deities. Each culture has its own interpretation of what it means to commit a sin. While sins are generally considered actions, any thought, word, or act considered ...

'' to Linux PowerPC published by

Titan Computer Titan most often refers to: * Titan (moon), the largest moon of Saturn * Titans, a race of deities in Greek mythology Titan or Titans may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional entities Fictional locations * Titan in fiction, fiction ...

and ''

Gorky 17 ''Gorky 17'' (released as ''Odium'' in North America) is a turn-based tactics tactical role-playing video game developed by Polish studio Metropolis Software and published by Monolith Productions for Microsoft Windows in 1999. The game was lat ...

'' to Linux PowerPC which later was published by LGP. Runesoft hired Gunnar von Boehn which ported '' Robin Hood – The Legend of Sherwood'' to Linux PowerPC. Later Runesoft ported '' Airline Tycoon Deluxe'' to

was running Debian GNU/Linux. Iain McLeod ported Spheres of Chaos to Linux on the PlayStation 2 consoles and later re-released it as a freeware game.

Market share

The

Hardware Survey reports that as of January 2024, 2% of users are using some form of Linux as their platform's primary operating system. The Unity

game engine A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games which generally includes relevant libraries and support programs such as a level editor. The "engine" terminology is akin to the term " software engine" u ...

used to make their statistics available and in March 2016 reported that Linux users accounted for 0.4% of players. In 2010, in the first

Humble Bundle Humble Bundle, Inc. is a digital storefront for video games, which grew out of its original offering of Humble Bundles, collections of games sold at a price determined by the purchaser and with a portion of the price going towards charity and ...

sales, Linux accounted for 18% of purchases.

Supported hardware

Linux as a gaming platform can also refer to operating systems based on the Linux kernel and specifically designed for the ''sole purpose'' of gaming. Examples are

, which is an operating system for Steam Machines,

and general computers,

video game console A video game console is an electronic device that Input/output, outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can typically be played with a game controller. These may be home video game console, home consoles, which are generally ...

s built from components found in the classical home computer, (embedded) operating systems like

Tizen Tizen () is a Linux-based operating system primarily developed by Samsung Electronics and supported by the Linux Foundation. The project was originally conceived as an HTML5-based platform for mobile devices to succeed MeeGo. It was backed by o ...

and

, and

s like

, and

. The

Nvidia Shield Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis ...

runs Android as an operating system, which is based on a modified Linux kernel. The

design of the Linux software platform allows the operating system to be compatible with various computer

instruction set In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA) is an abstract model that generally defines how software controls the CPU in a computer or a family of computers. A device or program that executes instructions described by that ISA, s ...

s and many

peripherals A peripheral device, or simply peripheral, is an auxiliary hardware device that a computer uses to transfer information externally. A peripheral is a hardware component that is accessible to and controlled by a computer but is not a core compo ...

, such as

game controller A game controller, gaming controller, or simply controller, is an input device or Input/Output Device, input/output device used with video games or entertainment systems to provide input to a video game. Input devices that have been classified as ...

s and

head-mounted display A head-mounted display (HMD) is a display device, worn on the head or as part of a helmet (see helmet-mounted display for aviation applications), that has a small display optic in front of one (monocular HMD) or each eye (binocular vision, bi ...

s. As an example,

HTC Vive HTC Vive is a line of Virtual reality, virtual and mixed reality Virtual reality headset, headsets produced by HTC, HTC Corporation. The brand currently encompasses headsets designed for use with Personal computer, personal computers as well a ...

, which is a

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a Simulation, simulated experience that employs 3D near-eye displays and pose tracking to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video gam ...

head-mounted display, supports the Linux gaming platform.

Performance

In 2013, tests by

Phoronix Phoronix Test Suite (PTS) is a free and open-source benchmark software for Linux and other operating systems. The Phoronix Test Suite, developed by Michael Larabel and Matthew Tippett, has been endorsed by sites such as Linux.com, LinuxPlanet ...

showed real-world performance of games on Linux with proprietary Nvidia and AMD drivers were mostly comparable to results on Windows 8.1.

found similar results in 2015, though

Ars Technica ''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...

described a 20% performance drop with Linux drivers.

Software architecture

An operating system based on the Linux kernel and customized specifically for gaming, could adopt the

vanilla Vanilla is a spice derived from orchids of the genus ''Vanilla (genus), Vanilla'', primarily obtained from pods of the flat-leaved vanilla (''Vanilla planifolia, V. planifolia''). ''Vanilla'' is not Autogamy, autogamous, so pollination ...

Linux kernel with only little changes, or—like the Android operating system—be based on a relative extensively modified Linux kernel. It could adopt

GNU C Library The GNU C Library, commonly known as glibc, is the GNU Project implementation of the C standard library. It provides a wrapper around the system calls of the Linux kernel and other kernels for application use. Despite its name, it now also dir ...

Bionic Bionics or biologically inspired engineering is the application of biological methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology. The word ''bionic'', coined by Jack E. Steele in August 19 ...

or something like it. The entire

middleware Middleware is a type of computer software program that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system. It can be described as "software glue". Middleware makes it easier for software developers to imple ...

or parts of it, could very well be closed-source and

proprietary software Proprietary software is computer software, software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing t ...

; the same is true for the video games. There are free and open-source video games available for the Linux operating system, as well as proprietary ones.

Linux kernel

The subsystems already mainlined and available in the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...

are most probably performant enough so to not impede the gaming experience in any way, however additional software is available, such as e.g. the

Brain Fuck Scheduler The Brain Fuck Scheduler (BFS) is a process scheduler designed for the Linux kernel in August 2009 based on earliest eligible virtual deadline first scheduling (EEVDF), as an alternative to the Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS) and the O(1) sc ...

(a process scheduler) or the Budget Fair Queueing (BFQ) scheduler (an I/O scheduler). Similar to the way the Linux kernel can be, for example, adapted to run better on supercomputers, there are adaptations targeted at improving the performance of games. A project concerning itself with this issue is called Liquorix.

Available software for video game designers

Game creation systems

Several

game creation system A game creation system (GCS) is a consumer-targeted game engine and a set of specialized design tools, and sometimes also a light scripting language, engineered for the rapid iteration of user-derived video games. Unlike more developer-oriented g ...

s can be run on

, such as Game Editor, GDevelop, Construct and Stencyl, as well as beta versions of

GameMaker GameMaker (originally Animo, Game Maker (until 2011) and GameMaker Studio) is a series of cross-platform game engines created by Mark Overmars in 1999 and developed by YoYo Games since 2007. The latest iteration of ''GameMaker'' was released ...

. A Linux version of Clickteam Fusion 3 was mentioned, but has yet to be released. The Godot, Defold, and Solar2D game engines also supports creating games on Linux, as do the commercial UnrealEd and Unity Editor, The visual programming environments

Snap! SNAP! is a German Eurodance group formed in 1989 by producers Michael Münzing and Luca Anzilotti. The act has undergone several lineup changes over the years, featuring American singers, songwriters, and rappers such as Thea Austin, Turbo ...

, Scratch 1.X and

Tynker Tynker is an educational programming platform, like Scratch, to help children learn coding skills, including game design, web design, animation and robotics. It includes courses in Minecraft Modding, Minecraft Game Design, Creative Coding, Pyt ...

are Linux compatible.

Enterbrain , formerly , is a Japanese publisher and division of Kadokawa Future Publishing founded on January 30, 1987, as . Magazines published by Enterbrain are generally focused on video games and computer entertainment as well as video game and strate ...

's RPG Maker MV was released for Linux. In addition, open-source, cross-platform clones of the

RPG Maker ''RPG Maker'', known in Japan as , is a series of programs for the development of role-playing video games (RPGs) with genre-driven varieties as well as machinima, originally created by the Japanese group ASCII. The Japanese name, ''Tsukūru'', ...

series exist such as Open RPG Maker, MKXP and EasyRPG, as well as the similar OHRRPGCE and Solarus. The

Adventure Game Studio Adventure Game Studio (AGS) is an open source development tool primarily used to create graphic adventure games. It is aimed at intermediate-level game designers, and combines an integrated development environment (IDE) with a scripting language ...

editor is not yet ported to Linux, although games made in it are compatible, and the Wintermute and SLUDGE adventure game engines are available. ZGameEditor, Novashell, GB Studio, and the ZZT inspired MegaZeux are also options. Versions of Mugen were made available for Linux, and open-source re-implementations such as IKEMEN Go are compatible. The

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

based Ct.js Pixelbox.js, and

Superpowers Superpower describes a sovereign state or supranational union that holds a dominant position characterized by the ability to exert influence and project power on a global scale. This is done through the combined means of economic, military, tec ...

are also options.

Level editors

Various

level editor A level editor (also known as a map, campaign or scenario editor) is a game development tool used to design Level (video games), levels, maps, campaigns and virtual worlds for a video game. An individual involved with the development of game levels ...

s exists for Linux, such as wxqoole,

GtkRadiant Based on id Software's open stance towards game modifications, their ''Quake'' series became a popular subject for player mods beginning with '' Quake'' in 1996. Spurred by user-created hacked content on their previous games and the company's ...

, TrenchBroom and J.A.C.K. for the

id Tech id Tech is a series of successive game engines designed and developed by id Software. Prior to the presentation of the id Tech 5-based game '' Rage'' in 2011, the engines lacked official designation and as such were simply referred to by the nam ...

engines and related, Eureka, SLADE and ReDoomEd for the ''Doom'' engine, and the general purpose tile map editors LDtk, Ogmo, and Tiled.

Debuggers

Several game development tools have been available for Linux, including

GNU Debugger The GNU Debugger (GDB) is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, Assembly, C, C++, D, Fortran, Haskell, Go, Objective-C, OpenCL C, Modula-2, Pascal, Rust, and par ...

, LLDB,

Valgrind Valgrind () is a programming tool for memory debugging, memory leak detection, and profiling. Valgrind was originally designed to be a freely licensed memory debugging tool for Linux on x86, but has since evolved to become a generic framework ...

, glslang and others.

VOGL VOGL is a debugger for the OpenGL rendering API intended to be used in the development of video games. VOGL was originally written at RAD Game Tools and Valve. VOGL is free and open-source software subject to the terms of the MIT License. Desc ...

, a

debugger A debugger is a computer program used to test and debug other programs (the "target" programs). Common features of debuggers include the ability to run or halt the target program using breakpoints, step through code line by line, and display ...

for

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typic ...

was released on 12 March 2014.

Available interfaces and SDKs

There are multiple

interfaces Interface or interfacing may refer to: Academic journals * ''Interface'' (journal), by the Electrochemical Society * '' Interface, Journal of Applied Linguistics'', now merged with ''ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics'' * '' Inter ...

and

Software Development Kit A software development kit (SDK) is a collection of software development tools in one installable package. They facilitate the creation of applications by having a compiler, debugger and sometimes a software framework. They are normally specific t ...

s available for Linux, and almost all of them are

cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

. Most are

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...

subject to the terms of the

zlib License The zlib license is a permissive software license which defines the terms under which the zlib software library can be distributed. It is also used by many other open-source packages. The libpng library uses a similar license, libpng license, s ...

, making it possible to static link against them from fully closed-source proprietary software. One difficulty due to this abundance of interfaces, is the difficulty for programmers to choose the best suitable audio API for their purpose. The main developer of the

PulseAudio PulseAudio is a network-capable sound server program distributed via the freedesktop.org project. It runs mainly on Linux, including Windows Subsystem for Linux on Microsoft Windows and Termux on Android; various BSD distributions such as ...

project,

Lennart Poettering Lennart Poettering (born 15 October 1980) is a German software engineer working for Microsoft and the original author of PulseAudio, Avahi and systemd. Life and career Poettering was born in Guatemala City but grew up in Rio de Janeiro, B ...

, commented on this issue. Physics engines, audio libraries, that are available as modules for game engines, have been available for Linux for a long time. The book ''

Programming Linux Games Loki Software, Inc. (Loki Entertainment) was an American video game developer based in Tustin, California, that ported several video games from Microsoft Windows to Linux. It took its name from the Norse deity Loki. Although successful in its g ...

'' covers a couple of the available APIs suited for video game development for Linux, while ''

The Linux Programming Interface ''The Linux Programming Interface: A Linux and UNIX System Programming Handbook'' is a book written by Michael Kerrisk, which documents the Application programming interface, APIs of the Linux kernel and the GNU C Library (glibc). Book The boo ...

'' covers the

Linux kernel interfaces The Linux kernel provides multiple interfaces to User space and kernel space, user-space and kernel-mode code. The interfaces can be classified as either application programming interface (API) or application binary interface (ABI), and they ca ...

in much greater detail.

Available middleware

Beside majority of the software which acts as an interface to various subsystems of the operating system, there is also software which can be simply described as middleware. A multitude of companies exist worldwide, whose main or only product is software that is meant to be licensed and integrated into a game engine. Their primary target is the

video game industry The video game industry is the tertiary industry, tertiary and quaternary industry, quaternary sectors of the entertainment industry that specialize in the video game development, development, marketing, distribution (marketing), distribution, ...

, but the film industry also utilizes such software for special effects. Some very few well known examples are * classical physics: Havok, Newton Game Dynamics and PhysX * audio:

Audiokinetic Wwise Wwise (Wave Works Interactive Sound Engine) is Audiokinetic's software for interactive media and video games, available for free to non-commercial users and under license for commercial video game developers. It features an audio authoring tool an ...

FMOD FMOD is a proprietary sound effects engine and authoring tool for video games and applications developed by Firelight Technologies. It is able to play and mix sounds of diverse formats on many operating systems. Features The FMOD sound system ...

* other: SpeedTree A significant share of the available middleware already runs natively on Linux, only a very few run exclusively on Linux.

Available IDEs and source code editors

Numerous

source code editor A source-code editor is a text editor program designed specifically for editing source code of computer programs. It may be a standalone application or it may be built into an integrated development environment (IDE). Features Source-code editor ...

s and IDEs are available for Linux, among which are

Visual Studio Code Visual Studio Code, commonly referred to as VS Code, is an integrated development environment developed by Microsoft for Windows, Linux, macOS and web browsers. Features include support for debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code comp ...

Sublime Text Sublime Text is a text and source code editor featuring a minimal interface, syntax highlighting and code folding with native support for numerous programming and markup languages, search and replace with support for regular expressions, an in ...

, Code::Blocks,

Qt Creator Qt Creator is a cross-platform C++, JavaScript, Python and QML integrated development environment (IDE) which simplifies GUI application development. It is part of the SDK for the Qt GUI application development framework and uses the Q ...

Emacs Emacs (), originally named EMACS (an acronym for "Editor Macros"), is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, s ...

, or Vim.

Multi-monitor

multi-monitor Multi-monitor, also called multi-display and multi-head, is the use of multiple physical display devices, such as Computer monitor, monitors, Television set, televisions, and Video projector, projectors, in order to increase the area available fo ...

setup is supported on Linux at least by

AMD Eyefinity AMD Eyefinity is a brand name for AMD video card products that support multi-monitor setups by integrating multiple (up to six) display controllers on one GPU. AMD Eyefinity was introduced with the Radeon HD 5000 series "Evergreen" in September ...

& AMD Catalyst,

Xinerama Xinerama is an extension to the X Window System that enables X applications and window managers to use two or more physical displays as one large virtual display. Developed under the name ''PanoramiX'' by Madeline T. Asmus of the Digital Equipm ...

and RandR on both X11 and Wayland. '' Serious Sam 3: BFE'' is one example of a game that runs natively on Linux and supports very high resolutions and is validated by AMD to support their Eyefinity. ''

Civilization V ''Sid Meier's Civilization V'' is a 4X turn-based strategy video game developed by Firaxis Games and published by 2K (company), 2K. It is the sequel to Civilization IV, ''Civilization IV'', and was released for Microsoft Windows, Windows in Sep ...

'' is another example, it even runs on a "Kaveri" desktop APU in 3x1 portrait mode.

Voice over IP

The specifications of the Mumble protocol are freely available and there are BSD-licensed implementations for both servers and clients. The positional audio API of Mumble is supported by e.g. '' Cube 2: Sauerbraten''.

Wine

Wine is a

compatibility layer In software engineering, a compatibility layer is an interface that allows binaries for a legacy or foreign system to run on a host system. This translates system calls for the foreign system into native system calls for the host system. With s ...

that provides binary compatibility and makes it possible to run software, that was written and compiled for Microsoft Windows, on Linux. The Wine project hosts a user-submitted application database (known as Wine AppDB) that lists programs and games along with ratings and reviews which detail how well they run with Wine. Wine AppDB also has a commenting system, which often includes instructions on how to modify a system to run a certain game which cannot run on a normal or default configuration. Many games are rated as running flawlessly, and there are also many other games that can be run with varying degrees of success. The use of Wine for gaming has proved controversial in the Linux community as some feel it is preventing, or at least hindering, the further growth of native gaming on the platform.

Emulators

There are numerous

emulator In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run sof ...

s for Linux. There are also APIs, virtual machines, and machine emulators that provide binary compatibility: *

Anbox Anbox (short for “Android (operating system), Android in a Box”) is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source compatibility layer that allows Android mobile application, applications to run on Linux distributions by using containe ...

and Waydroid for the Android operating system; *

Basilisk II Basilisk II is an emulator which emulates Apple Macintosh computers based on the Motorola 68000 series. The software is cross-platform and can be used on a variety of operating systems. Christian Bauer (developer of a Mac 68k emulator ShapeShif ...

for the

68040 The Motorola 68040 ("''sixty-eight-oh-forty''") is a 32-bit microprocessor in the Motorola 68000 series, released in 1990. It is the successor to the 68030 and is followed by the 68060, skipping the 68050. In keeping with general Motorola ...

Mac Mac or MAC may refer to: Common meanings * Mac (computer), a line of personal computers made by Apple Inc. * Mackintosh, a raincoat made of rubberized cloth * Mac, a prefix to surnames derived from Gaelic languages * McIntosh (apple), a Canadi ...

; *

DOSBox DOSBox is a free and open-source MS-DOS emulator. It supports running programs primarily video games that are otherwise inaccessible since hardware for running a compatible disk operating system (DOS) is obsolete and generally unavailab ...

and

DOSEMU DOSEMU, stylized as dosemu, is a compatibility layer software package that enables DOS operating systems (e.g., MS-DOS, DR-DOS, FreeDOS) and application software to run atop Linux on x86-based PCs (IBM PC compatible computers). Features It ...

for MS-DOS and compatibles; * DeSmuME and melonDS for the

Nintendo DS The is a foldable handheld game console produced by Nintendo, released globally across 2004 and 2005. The DS, an initialism for "Developers' System" or "Dual Screen", introduced distinctive new features to handheld games: two LCD screens worki ...

; *

Dolphin A dolphin is an aquatic mammal in the cetacean clade Odontoceti (toothed whale). Dolphins belong to the families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins), Pontopori ...

for the

GameCube The is a PowerPC-based home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on September 14, 2001, in North America on November 18, 2001, in Europe on May 3, 2002, and in Australia on May 17, 2002. It is the suc ...

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America, and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, f ...

, and the

Triforce The is a fictional artifact (archaeology), artifact and icon of Nintendo's ''The Legend of Zelda'' video game franchise. It first appeared in the original ''The Legend of Zelda (video game), The Legend of Zelda'' video game (1986) and has app ...

; * FCEUX, Nestopia and TuxNES for the

Nintendo Entertainment System The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on 15 July 1983 as the and was later released as the redesigned NES in several test markets in the ...

; * Flashpoint for

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a mostly discontinuedAlthough it is discontinued by Adobe Inc., for the Chinese market it is developed by Zhongcheng and for the international enterprise market it is developed by Ha ...

; * Frotz for Z-Machine text adventures; * Fuse for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum; * Hatari for the

Atari ST Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

, STe, TT and

Falcon Falcons () are birds of prey in the genus ''Falco'', which includes about 40 species. Some small species of falcons with long, narrow wings are called hobbies, and some that hover while hunting are called kestrels. Falcons are widely distrib ...

; * gnuboy for the Nintendo

Game Boy The is a handheld game console developed by Nintendo, launched in the Japanese home market on April 21, 1989, followed by North America later that year and other territories from 1990 onwards. Following the success of the Game & Watch single-ga ...

and Game Boy Color; *

for arcade games (and previously

MESS The mess (also called a mess deck aboard ships) is a designated area where military personnel socialize, eat and (in some cases) live. The term is also used to indicate the groups of military personnel who belong to separate messes, such as the o ...

for multiple hardware platforms); * Mednafen and Xe emulating multiple hardware platforms including some of the above; * Mupen64Plus and the no longer actively developed original Mupen64 for the Nintendo 64; *

PCSX-Reloaded PCSX is a free and open-source, video game console emulator that allows software designed to be used with the PlayStation (console), Sony PlayStation to run on personal computers. Over the years, development changed hands several times with PCSX- ...

, pSX and the Linux port of ePSXe for the PlayStation; * Neko Project for the

NEC PC-9801 The , commonly shortened to PC-98 or simply , is a lineup of Japanese 16-bit and 32-bit Personal computer, personal computers manufactured by NEC from 1982 to 2003. While based on Intel processors, it uses an in-house architecture making it inc ...

; *

PCSX2 PCSX2 is a free and open-source emulator of the PlayStation 2 for x86 computers. It supports most PlayStation 2 video games with a high level of compatibility and functionality, and also supports a number of improvements over gameplay on a trad ...

for the PlayStation 2; * PPSSPP for the

PlayStation Portable The PlayStation Portable (PSP) is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on December 12, 2004, in North America on March 24, 2005, and in PA ...

; *

for LucasArts and various other adventure games; *

SheepShaver SheepShaver is an open-source PowerPC Apple Macintosh emulator originally designed for BeOS and Linux. The name is a play on ShapeShifter, a Macintosh II emulator for AmigaOS (made obsolete by Basilisk II). The ShapeShifter and SheepShaver proj ...

for the

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

; * Snes9x,

higan is a Buddhist holiday exclusively celebrated by Japanese sects for seven days; three days before and after both the Spring equinox ( shunbun) and Autumnal equinox ( shūbun). It is observed by nearly every Buddhist school in Japan. The tradi ...

and

ZSNES ZSNES is a free software Super Nintendo Entertainment System emulator written mostly in x86 assembly with official ports for Linux, DOS, Windows, and unofficial ports for Xbox and macOS. Background Development of ZSNES began on 3 July 1997 an ...

for the Super NES; * Stella for the

Atari 2600 The Atari 2600 is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS), it popularized microprocessor-based hardware and games stored on swappable ROM cartridg ...

; *

UAE The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a federal elective monarchy made up of seven emirates, with Abu Dhabi serving as i ...

for the Amiga; *

VICE A vice is a practice, behaviour, Habit (psychology), habit or item generally considered morally wrong in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character trait, a defect, an infirmity, or a bad or unhe ...

for the Commodore 64, 128, VIC-20, Plus/4 and PET; *

VisualBoyAdvance VisualBoyAdvance (commonly abbreviated as VBA) is a free emulator of the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance handheld game consoles as well as of Super Game Boy and Super Game Boy 2. It is still downloadable to this day. Besides t ...

, mGBA and Boycott Advance for the Game Boy Advance; *

Mini vMac VMAC is a block cipher-based message authentication code (MAC) algorithm using a universal hash proposed by Ted Krovetz and Wei Dai Wei Dai ( zh, c=戴维 or zh, c=戴伟) is a computer engineer known for contributions to cryptography and c ...

and the no longer actively developed original

vMac VMAC is a block cipher-based message authentication code (MAC) algorithm using a universal hash proposed by Ted Krovetz and Wei Dai Wei Dai ( zh, c=戴维 or zh, c=戴伟) is a computer engineer known for contributions to cryptography and cr ...

for the 680x0

;

Linux homebrew on consoles

Linux has been ported to several game consoles, including the

Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand that consists of four main home video game console lines, as well as application software, applications (games), the streaming media, streaming service Xbox Cloud Gaming, and online services such as the Xbox networ ...

PlayStation 2 The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on 26 October, in Europe on 24 Novembe ...

PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). It is the successor to the PlayStation 2, and both are part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. The PS3 was first released on ...

PlayStation 4 The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013, in ...

, and

which allows game developers without an expensive

game development kit Game development kits (GDK) are specialized hardware and software used to create commercial video games for game consoles. They may be partnered with game development tools, special game engine licenses, and other middleware to aid video game dev ...

to access console hardware. Several gaming peripherals also work with Linux.

Types of Linux gaming

Linux gaming can be divided into a number of sub-categories.

Libre gaming

Libre gaming is a form of Linux gaming that emphasizes

libre software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

, which often includes levels and assets as well as code.

Native gaming

Native gaming is a form of Linux gaming that emphasizes using only native games or ports and not using emulators or compatibility layers.

DRM-free gaming

DRM-free Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures, such as access control technologies, can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. DR ...

gaming is a form of Linux gaming that emphasizes boycotting

technologies. This can include buying games from GOG.com, certain

s or

and avoiding

and similar services.

Terminal gaming

Terminal gaming is the playing of

text-based game A text game or text-based game is an electronic game that uses a text-based user interface, that is, the user interface employs a set of encodable characters, such as ASCII, instead of bitmap or vector graphics. Text-based games have been we ...

s from within a

console Console may refer to: Computing and video games * System console, a physical device to operate a computer ** Virtual console, a user interface for multiple computer consoles on one device ** Command-line interface, a method of interacting with ...

, often programmed within Bash or using libraries such as ncurses.

Retro gaming

Retrogaming Retro gaming, also known as classic gaming and old school gaming, is the playing and collection of computer game, personal computers, video game console, consoles, and video games from earlier decades. Usually, retro gaming is based upon syste ...

is the playing of older games using emulators such as

, compatibility layers such as

and

, engine reimplementations and

s, or even older

(including

live CD A live CD (also live DVD, live disc, or live operating system) is a complete booting, bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than lo ...

s and

live USB A live USB is a portable USB-attached external data storage device containing a full operating system that can be booted from. The term is reminiscent of USB flash drives but may encompass an external hard disk drive or solid-state drive, thou ...

, or

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulator, emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve ...

s), original binaries, and period hardware.

Live gaming

A number of games can be played from live distributions such as

Knoppix Knoppix, stylized KNOPPIX ( ), is an operating system based on Debian designed to be run directly from a CD or DVD (Live CD) or a USB flash drive ( Live USB). It was first released in 2000 by German Linux consultant Klaus Knopper, and was one ...

, allowing easy access for users unwilling to fully commit to Linux. Certain live distros have specially targeted gamers, such as

SuperGamer SuperGamer is a Linux distribution for the x86 platform originally based on the PCLinuxOS distribution, and is currently based on VectorLinux. Focusing on Linux gaming, gaming, it is designed to be run directly from a Live DVD. Features Availab ...

and Linux-Gamers.

Browser gaming

Browser gaming A browser game is a video game that is played on the internet using a web browser. They are sometimes referred to more specifically by their format, such as Flash games or HTML5 games. They are generally free-to-play and can be either single-pl ...

is the act of playing

online game An online game is a video game that is either partially or primarily played through the Internet or any other computer network available. Online games are ubiquitous on modern gaming platforms, including PCs, consoles and mobile devices, a ...

s through a web browser, which has the advantage of largely being platform independent. The same largely applies to

social network game A social network game (sometimes simply referred to as a social media game, social gaming, or online social game) is a type of online game that is played through social networks or social media. They typically feature gamification systems with mu ...

s hosted on

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

sites. Older games were largely based on

, while modern ones are mostly

HTML5 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...

Cloud gaming

Cloud gaming Cloud gaming, sometimes called gaming on demand or game streaming, is a type of Online game, online gaming that runs video games on remote Server (computing), servers and Streaming media, streams the game's output (video, sound, etc.) directly to ...

is the

streaming Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through a network for playback using a media player. Media is transferred in a ''stream'' of packets from a server to a client and is rendered in real-time; this contrasts with file downl ...

of games from a central server onto a desktop client. This is another way to play games on Linux that are not natively supported, although some cloud services, such as the erstwhile

Google Stadia Stadia was a cloud gaming service developed and operated by Google. Known in development as Project Stream, the service debuted through a Software release life cycle#closed beta, closed beta in October 2018, and publicly launched in November 20 ...

, are hosted on Linux and Android servers. GamingAnywhere is an open source implementation.

On Windows

Although less exploited than the reverse, as few programs are Linux exclusive, support does exist for running Linux binaries from Windows. The

Windows Subsystem for Linux Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is a component of Microsoft Windows that allows the use of a GNU/Linux environment from within Windows, foregoing the overhead of a virtual machine and being an alternative to dual booting. The WSL command-lin ...

allows the running of both command line and graphical Linux applications from

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

and

Windows 11 Windows 11 is a version of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released on October 5, 2021, as the successor to Windows 10 (2015). It is available as a free upgrade for devices running Windows 10 that meet the #System requirements, Windo ...

. An earlier implementation is

Cygwin Cygwin ( ) is a free and open-source Unix-like environment and command-line interface (CLI) for Microsoft Windows. The project also provides a software repository containing open-source packages. Cygwin allows source code for Unix-like operati ...

, started by

Cygnus Solutions Cygnus Solutions, originally Cygnus Support, was founded in 1989 by John Gilmore (activist), John Gilmore, Michael Tiemann and David Henkel-Wallace to provide commercial support for free software. Its tagline was: ''Making free software affordabl ...

and later maintained by

, although it has limited hardware access and required adaptation. The use of

can even allow for the running of Windows games on Linux from Windows. The LibTAS library for tool assisted speedruns currently recommends WSL to run on Windows.

Naughty Dog Naughty Dog, LLC (formerly JAM Software, Inc.) is an American first-party video game developer based in Santa Monica, California. Founded by Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin in 1984, the studio was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2001. G ...

meanwhile have used Cygwin to run old command-line tools for use in their game development, which is a broader use for the platform. As with running Windows applications on Linux, there is controversy over whether running Linux applications on Windows will dilute interest in Linux as distinct platform, though it has speciality uses.

Android gaming

Originally derived from

, the Android mobile operating system has a distinct and popular gaming ecosystem. It has also been used as the base for several game consoles, such as the Nvidia Shield Portable and the

Ouya The Ouya ( ), stylized as OUYA, is an Android (operating system), Android-based microconsole developed by Ouya Inc. Julie Uhrman founded the project in 2012, bringing in designer Yves Béhar to collaborate on its design and Muffi Ghadiali as VP ...

. Popular games include '' Pokemon Go'', ''

Genshin Impact ''Genshin Impact'' is a 2020 action role-playing game produced by MiHoYo, MiHoYo/HoYoverse. The game features an anime-style open world environment and an action-based Role-playing battle systems, battle system using Classical element, element ...

'', '' League of Legends: Wild Rift'', ''

Dead Cells ''Dead Cells'' is a 2018 roguelike-Metroidvania game developed by Motion Twin and Evil Empire (company), Evil Empire, and published by Motion Twin. The player takes the role of an amorphous creature called the Prisoner. As the Prisoner, the pla ...

'' and '' Call of Duty: Mobile''. Certain games, such as ''

Minecraft ''Minecraft'' is a 2011 sandbox game developed and published by the Swedish video game developer Mojang Studios. Originally created by Markus Persson, Markus "Notch" Persson using the Java (programming language), Java programming language, the ...

'', ''

Stardew Valley ''Stardew Valley'' is a 2016 farm life simulation game developed by Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone. Players take the role of a character who inherits their deceased grandfather's dilapidated farm in a place known as "Stardew Valley". ''Stardew Valle ...

'', and ''

Papers Please ''Papers, Please'' is a Puzzle video game, puzzle Simulation video game, simulation video game created by indie game, indie game developer Lucas Pope, developed and published through his production company, 3909 LLC. The game was released on Au ...

'', are available for both Android and desktop Linux.

ChromeOS gaming

ChromeOS ChromeOS, sometimes styled as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is an operating system designed and developed by Google. It is derived from the open-source operating system and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user ...

is another

derived operating system by

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

for its

Chromebook Chromebook (sometimes stylized in lowercase as chromebook) is a line of laptops, desktops, tablets and all-in-one computers that run ChromeOS, a proprietary operating system developed by Google. Chromebooks are optimised for web access. They al ...

s, and it too has a dedicated gaming ecosystem. Partly owing to a lack of high end graphics hardware, it is especially oriented towards

cloud gaming Cloud gaming, sometimes called gaming on demand or game streaming, is a type of Online game, online gaming that runs video games on remote Server (computing), servers and Streaming media, streams the game's output (video, sound, etc.) directly to ...

via services like

GeForce Now GeForce Now (stylized as GeForce NOW) is the brand used by Nvidia for its cloud gaming service. The Nvidia Shield version of GeForce Now, formerly known as Nvidia Grid, launched in beta in 2013, with Nvidia officially unveiling its name on Septe ...

and

Xbox Cloud Gaming Xbox Cloud Gaming, also simply known as Xbox Cloud, is a cloud gaming service as part of Xbox offered by Microsoft Gaming. Initially released in beta testing in November 2019, the service later launched for subscribers of Xbox Game Pass Ult ...

, with models featuring

Nvidia Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...

GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...

s ultimately being cancelled. Numerous games for Android have also been made compatible with ChromeOS, as well as a standard Linux games,

games via

, and with

browser game A browser game is a video game that is played on the internet using a web browser. They are sometimes referred to more specifically by their format, such as Flash games or HTML5 games. They are generally free-to-play and can be either single-pl ...

s also being popular. A version of

has been in development for ChromeOS, with third party launchers also available such as the Heroic Games Launcher for the

. Popular titles include ''

Among Us ''Among Us'' is a 2018 online multiplayer social deduction game developed and published by American game studio Innersloth. The game allows for cross-platform play; it was released on iOS and Android (operating system), Android devices in J ...

'', ''

'', '' Alto's Odyssey'', ''

Roblox Roblox (, ) is an online game platform and game creation system developed by Roblox Corporation that allows users to program and play games created by themselves or other users. It was created by David Baszucki and Erik Cassel in 200 ...

'', and ''

Fortnite ''Fortnite'' is an online video game and game platform developed by Epic Games and released in 2017. It is available in seven distinct game mode versions that otherwise share the same general gameplay and game engine: '' Fortnite Battle Roy ...

''. Skepticism remains for using ChromeOS and Chromebooks as gaming machines.

BSD gaming

Owing to a common

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...

heritage and

ethos, many games for Linux are also ported to

variants Variant may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Variant'' (magazine), a former British cultural magazine * Variant cover, an issue of comic books with varying cover art * ''Variant'' (novel), a novel by Robison Wells * " The Variant", 2021 epis ...

or can be run using

s such as

Linuxulator FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable h ...

. BSDi had partnered with

to ensure its Linux ports ran on

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

. The Mizutamari launcher exists to facilitate running Windows games through

, which can still be used standalone. A 2011

benchmark Benchmark may refer to: Business and economics * Benchmarking, evaluating performance within organizations * Benchmark price * Benchmark (crude oil), oil-specific practices Science and technology * Experimental benchmarking, the act of defining a ...

even found certain speed advantages over running games on Linux itself, comparing PC-BSD 8.2 to

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

11.04. Most BSD systems come with the same pack in desktop games as Linux. The permissive licensing of BSD has also lead to its inclusion in the

system software System software is software designed to provide a platform for other software. An example of system software is an operating system (OS) (like macOS, Linux, Android, and Microsoft Windows). Application software is software that allows users to d ...

of several

s, such as the

Sony PlayStation is a Video game, video gaming brand owned and produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), a division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. Its flagship products consists of a series of Home video game console, home video game consoles produce ...

line and the

Nintendo Switch The is a video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. Released in the middle of the Eighth generation of video game consoles, eighth generation of home consoles, the Switch succeeded the ...

OpenHarmony gaming

HarmonyOS HarmonyOS (HMOS) ( zh, s=鸿蒙, p=Hóngméng, tr=Vast Mist) is a distributed operating system developed by Huawei for smartphones, tablet computer, tablets, smart TVs, smart watches, personal computers and other smart devices. It has a microk ...

with custom kernel and

OpenHarmony OpenHarmony (OHOS, OH) is a family of open-source distributed operating systems based on HarmonyOS derived from LiteOS, donated the L0-L2 branch source code by Huawei to the OpenAtom Foundation. Similar to HarmonyOS, the open-source distrib ...

-Oniro based operating systems distros of these newer platforms has a dedicated gaming ecosystem with compatibilities with third-party Linux libraries by developers on

subsystem such as musl-libc of C standard library that targets the Linux syscall and POSIX APIs compatibility for native compatible games as well as limited virtual machines such as Android-based sandboxed ones.

Unix gaming

A further niche exists for running games, either through ports or lxrun, on

Solaris Solaris is the Latin word for sun. It may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Sol ...

and derivatives such as

OpenIndiana OpenIndiana is a free and open-source illumos distribution compatible with SPARC and x86-64 based computers. The project began in 2010, forked from OpenSolaris after OpenSolaris was discontinued by Oracle Corporation, and is hence descended f ...

, Darwin distributions such as PureDarwin,

Coherent Coherence is, in general, a state or situation in which all the parts or ideas fit together well so that they form a united whole. More specifically, coherence, coherency, or coherent may refer to the following: Physics * Coherence (physics ...

SerenityOS SerenityOS is a free and open source desktop operating system. It features a preemptive kernel, currently supports x86-64, ARM, and RISC-V based computers, and hosts multiple complex applications including its own web browser and integrated deve ...

, Redox OS, ToaruOS, Xv6,

Fiwix Fiwix is an operating system kernel based on the UNIX architecture and fully focused on being POSIX compatible. It is designed and developed mainly as a hobbyist operating system, but it also serves for educational purposes. It runs on the i386 ...

, or on

Minix MINIX is a Unix-like operating system based on a microkernel Software architecture, architecture, first released in 1987 and written by American-Dutch computer scientist Andrew S. Tanenbaum. It was designed as a clone of the Unix operating syste ...

and

Hurd GNU Hurd is a collection of microkernel servers written as part of GNU, for the GNU Mach microkernel. It has been under development since 1990 by the GNU Project of the Free Software Foundation, designed as a replacement for the Unix kernel, and ...

based systems. There has been some cross-pollination with purely proprietary

derivatives, such as

AIX Aix or AIX may refer to: Computing * AIX, a line of IBM computer operating systems *Alternate index, for an IBM Virtual Storage Access Method key-sequenced data set * Athens Internet Exchange, a European Internet exchange point Places Belg ...

QNX QNX ( or ) is a commercial Unix-like real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market. The product was originally developed in the early 1980s by Canadian company Quantum Software Systems, founded March 30, 1980, and l ...

Domain/OS Domain/OS is the discontinued operating system used by the Apollo/Domain line of workstations manufactured by Apollo Computer. It was originally launched in 1981 as AEGIS, and was rebranded to Domain/OS in 1988 when Unix environments were added ...

HP-UX HP-UX (from "Hewlett Packard Unix") is a proprietary software, proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system developed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise; current versions support HPE Integrity Servers, based on Intel's Itanium architect ...

IRIX IRIX (, ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS architecture, MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with Berkeley Software Distribution, BSD extensio ...

( see here),

Xenix Xenix is a discontinued Unix operating system for various microcomputer platforms, licensed by Microsoft from AT&T Corporation. The first version was released in 1980, and Xenix was the most common Unix variant during the mid- to late-1980s. T ...

Unixware UnixWare is a Unix operating system. It was originally released by Univel, a jointly owned venture of AT&T's Unix System Laboratories (USL) and Novell. It was then taken over by Novell. Via Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), it went on to Caldera Syst ...

Tru64 UNIX Tru64 UNIX is a discontinued 64-bit UNIX operating system for the DEC Alpha, Alpha instruction set architecture (ISA), currently owned by Hewlett-Packard (HP). Previously, Tru64 UNIX was a product of Compaq, and before that, Digital Equipment Corp ...

LynxOS The LynxOS RTOS is a Unix-like real-time operating system from Lynx Software Technologies (formerly "LynuxWorks"). Sometimes known as the Lynx Operating System, LynxOS features full POSIX conformance and, more recently, Linux compatibility. L ...

(which features inbuilt Linux compatibility),

Ultrix Ultrix (officially all-caps ULTRIX) is the brand name of Digital Equipment Corporation's (DEC) discontinued native Unix operating systems for the PDP-11, VAX, MicroVAX and DECstations. History The initial development of Unix occurred on DEC eq ...

OpenVMS OpenVMS, often referred to as just VMS, is a multi-user, multiprocessing and virtual memory-based operating system. It is designed to support time-sharing, batch processing, transaction processing and workstation applications. Customers using Op ...

z/OS z/OS is a 64-bit operating system for IBM z/Architecture mainframes, introduced by IBM in October 2000. It derives from and is the successor to OS/390, which in turn was preceded by a string of MVS versions.Starting with the earliest: ...

UNIX System Services z/OS UNIX System Services (z/OS UNIX, or informally USS) is a base element of z/OS. z/OS UNIX is a certified UNIX operating system implementation ( XPG4 UNIX 95) optimized for mainframe architecture. It is the first UNIX 95 to not be derived f ...

, and even

A/UX A/UX is a Unix-based operating system from Apple Computer for Macintosh computers, integrated with System 7's graphical interface and application compatibility. It is Apple's first official Unix-based operating system, launched in 1988 and disc ...

. The games '' Doom'' and '' Quake'' were developed by

NeXTStep NeXTSTEP is a discontinued object-oriented, multitasking operating system based on the Mach kernel and the UNIX-derived BSD. It was developed by NeXT, founded by Steve Jobs, in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was initially used for its ...

, a forerunner of modern

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

, before being ported to

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

and back to numerous other Unix variants. This involved reaching out to numerous Unix vendors to supply machines to use in the build and testing process.

References

{{VideoGameGenre Video gaming Video game platforms

History

1994

1995

1996–1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005–2007

2008–2011

2012–2016

2017–present

Commercial games for non-x86 instruction sets

Market share

Supported hardware

Performance

Software architecture

Linux kernel

Available software for video game designers

Game creation systems

Level editors

Debuggers

Available interfaces and SDKs

Available middleware

Available IDEs and source code editors

Multi-monitor

Voice over IP

Wine

Emulators

Linux homebrew on consoles

Types of Linux gaming

Libre gaming

Native gaming

DRM-free gaming

Terminal gaming

Retro gaming

Live gaming

Browser gaming

Cloud gaming

On Windows

Android gaming

ChromeOS gaming

BSD gaming

OpenHarmony gaming

Unix gaming

See also

References