In the beginning...

... there was MS-DOS. Then there was Windows. And nowadays, Linux is being touted as an option. This, at least, is my personal experience with PCs. Linux, whence last I toyed with it, was not only full of hardware-support issues, it was empty of gaming options. Since gaming is one of the two things I spend the most time on my PC doing, Linux wasn't an option for me. It's all fine, well, and good to have the functional guts there, but if I can't amuse myself with it, I want nothing to do with it. Windows, for all its detractors, works well enough. And it's got games!

But I get the urge to try out Linux from a music-production point of view (the other main use I have for my PC) every once in a while, and the bug just bit me recently. I figure that while I'm at it, and I've got Ubuntu hanging out on the PC, I'll check out how gaming in the Linux environment is coming along. Hence, the creation of this blog.

The plan is simple: play everything available for Ubuntu Linux from the default available sources; when I click "Add/Remove..." under "Applications" and select "Games" I get a list of everything that is currently supported as a gaming option by the Ubuntu people. I know there are other games out there, but the list of games that I could find on the web is probably near infinite, while the officially supported stuff is a finite list I can actually make my way through.

So I'm just going to do it in alphabetical order. With one exception: I'm starting out with the games that are installed by default with a fresh install of Ubuntu. After tackling those in alphabetical order, I'll start with the A's and go down the list in the package-installer thingybobby (a technical term).

I feel no compulsion to play games to completion; I will play games as long as I'm compelled to, and report my reaction here. I suspect a lot of these will be really short - how long does it take to analyze Four-In-a-Row, for example? As I run into games that are more like the fare I consume in my Windows-world (i.e. complex games often featuring narrative) the posts will run a bit longer. I'm not setting any specific timeline but I'd be stunned if I didn't go through at least a few games each week. With rare exceptions for the engrossing and complex titles that people assure me I can actually play on Linux, these days.

Alrighty, then. Onward!