id Software Hits Linux Gamers with a Wine Bat

id Software has habit of releasing their engines as open source, but a statement made by John Carmack, on Twitter, revealed an interesting information.

People will remember that id Software was one of the few big game developers that thought about the Linux platform way before there were any hints that the open source platform was a valid business avenue.

Now the Steam for Linux is out of the bag, everyone wants a part of the action. Developers are coming out of the woodwork to announce that their games will also be launched on Linux.

John Carmack is a legendary game developer that has titles such as Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, and Rage in his resume. He chose to respond to a user question on Twitter in regard to a native Linux client for Rage, Bethesda’s latest game.

The answer is rather disconcerting. “I heard it ran fine under Wine. No plans for a native linux client.” Telling Linux users that it runs fine in Wine is quite frankly a no-no. It's like telling Windows users they can run any Linux application in a virtual machine.

Sure enough, Wine is not the same as a virtual machine, but applications that require a lot of processing power will never run “fine” in Wine and surely not with the same visual quality.

Maybe he’ll change his mind once Steam for Linux really kicks off.