Linux and Games

[jevin]

Okay lets start a discussion here...

Why are there so little games for Linux?

I would say its because of marketing i.e. most game fanatics don't use Linux (I presume). What do you guys think about the matter?

[RumorsOfWar]

One game makers said the reason was the ever changing libraries and kernels. Most game companies can't be bothered to recompile for each revision of the OS.
The pity of it is, games really should be static compiled anyhow ! (actually, I would prefer if ALL applications were static compiled..easy for me to say, I'm no programer. ;) )

[Cliste]

How many distro's of linux are there? imagine all the bugs...!

[Enriquecaribe]

linux spends too much time growing, the kernel is always adding something new.

[RumorsOfWar]

For a while now, I've felt like Linux is trying to match Windows' strength, while ignoring its own strength.
Any one version of windows can run on any hardware ( by pluging in the needed drivers) but lasted long enough for software writers to count on to be there when their apps went on sale.
Linux also tries to support all hardware, but now there are over 150 different distros, all doing the same thing, and all upgrading every 6 months or so.
It makes no sense.

One of Linuxs stengths is in how many different distros there are. Instead of all trying to support all hardware, I'd like it if one was compiled and fine-tuned for march-k8 (AMD64), another for Intel, mabey even divide again for major video cards. Then static compile all applications to plug in without this hay-wire mess of libraries to worry about.
Some applications that can really use the extra performance, like Blender and mabey Open Office, can have a couple hardware specific compiles to match.
Then you'd see Linux distros as easy to use as Ubuntu perform as well as Gentoo ( which is a pain to use IMHO).

There are some successful distros using Kernels as old as 2.4.27 !
Ubuntus LTS releases are a good idea, in that a software writer can at least count on a few years on one Kernel. (Debian and a few others are like that too.)
I kinda wish Linux as a whole would look at this from a software proprietors point of view.