Yet Another Linux Distro Trying To Cater Towards Gamers

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.

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.