Bad news. id software really is abandoning Linux.

[naikon89]

I went ahead and emailed John Carmack directly about Linux ports, considering
nothing was mentioned of the sort at Quakecon 2009.

I recieved this reply:

> Dear Mr Carmack, I am just wondering if the graphics renderer for
> Rage is still
> built using OpenGL 3.* as a target? Will id still port to Linux if
> user numbers are
> small or not as big as say Mac OS or Windows?
>
> Gratzi,
> naikon89

The PC and Mac versions are still OpenGL 2.x.

We are not currently scheduling native linux ports.  It isn't out of the 
question, but I don't think we will be able to justify the work.  If 
there are hundreds of thousands of linux users playing Quake Live when 
we are done with Rage, that would certainly influence our decision...

John Carmack

And a follow up:

> Ok, it must be alot more difficult to port
> than older id software games :(

Yes, it is.  The codebase is much, much larger, and the graphics 
technology pushes a lot of paths that are not usually optimized.  It 
probably wouldn't be all that bad to get it running on the nvidia binary 
drivers, but the chance of it working correctly and acceptably anywhere 
else would be small.  If you are restricted to it only working on the 
closed source drivers, you might as well boot into windows and get the 
fully tested and tuned experience...

John Carmack

These are genuine, I can give the full mail headers if anyone wants them.

After so many years of Linux gifts, id has appeared to have given up
totally on the platform.

Shame, because I was going to personally buy
every single upcoming Windows copy with Linux support.

I don't understand why MacOSX(Unix) gets a port, whereas Linux does not.
Isn't id tech 5 meant to be cross plaform? The Zenimax deal really has killed id software.

This news needs to be blogged and passed around like wildfire.
id software is dead, long live id software!