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Yet Another Linux Distro Trying To Cater Towards Gamers

Gaming

Published on 07 September 2014 05:14 PM EDT
Written by Michael Larabel in Gaming
24 Comments

While there's already a handful of Linux distributions trying to cater towards the increasing number of gamers with no real competitive edge over any of the other long-standing, general-purpose Linux distributions (sans SteamOS), there's yet another new one to report on this weekend.

The latest Linux distribution to come about that's aspiring for adoption by Linux gamers is "Play Linux", a distribution based on Ubuntu LTS that's "specially designed for gamers" and more. Gil Nóbrega, the project's co-founder and main builder, wrote into Phoronix saying, "It is not only a gaming distro but it is an All-In-One distro for Gamers, because gamers are not only gamers, right? They have to work or study too."

The project released its third alpha today and ships with Steam pre-installed along with the usual assortment of other packages like Firefox, VLC, WINE, PlayOnLinux, etc. This distribution is also friendly towards the proprietary NVIDIA and AMD Catalyst Linux graphics drivers. It also makes the proprietary Skype application easy to install. As with most Linux distributions out there, the project also makes claims that it "features a gorgeous set of themes, icon themes and wallpapers." The Cinnamon Desktop Environment is used by default.

Yet Another Linux Distro Trying To Cater Towards Gamers


At the end of the day it seems to be mostly just Ubuntu LTS with various gaming-related applications slapped on top (and other software expected by Windows users), which can already be obtained by Ubuntu and its many derivatives through the official package archive. There doesn't appear to be any low-level tuning or other optimizations to try to do anything different about either being a faster distribution or offering any competitive advantages over what's easily attainable on the many other Linux distributions out there that are more widely supported and tested.

If you want to learn more about this project visit Play-Linux.com.

About The Author
Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the web-site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience and being the largest web-site devoted to Linux hardware reviews, particularly for products relevant to Linux gamers and enthusiasts but also commonly reviewing servers/workstations and embedded Linux devices. Michael has written more than 10,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics hardware drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated testing software. He can be followed via and or contacted via .
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