I don't think any rational Linux users feel entitled to have a client at the same time as everyone else, since for most games we don't get a client at all. It's expected. What makes this situation galling is Epic said we would have one. I'm not pissed at Valve for no Linux client for Half Life 2. They never "tricked" me into buying it with a promise of a timely Linux client. Epic did.
Now I'm more than happy to attribute it to stupidity instead of malice
But my point is that I am not happy about not having something, I am unhappy about not having something that I was told I would have. You can grasp this subtle difference I trust? Getting the game ten months after I thought I would will be nice, but is still
not ideal.
I know that's less a serious question than an attempted zing, but yes, [nerd]I'm actually hex booting at the moment, with two versions each of three operating systems.[/nerd] Two of those are of course Windows. As you note, it comes with being a Linux user and a gamer. I'm just annoyed that about the only game I play regularly right now that requires Windows is UT3, and nine months ago Epic was saying that wouldn't be the case for long.
Anyway, I wouldn't dismiss Linux fans of UT too quickly. UT3 hasn't been the greatest success, but being one of the few big games on Linux (someday, according to Epic) it would receive a disproportionate amount of attention from users of that operating system. If it doesn't live up to some ideal or prebuilt notion, we can't just abandon it for COD4 or Crysis or Flavor of the Week. If we had a client, the average Linux UT3 player would be slightly more attached to it than the average Windows UT3 player, and I don't see how that could be bad with the way UT3 seems to be limping along right now. A group of people thankful to have it (unlike Crysis or COD4 or Flavor of the Week) and dedicated to playing it would be a good thing.
I'm not dismissing the smart fans who play UT on Linux, I'm talking the idiots who are convinced it's a "conspiracy" like that guy said. Stupid remarks like that are why I insulted him.
They are still working on it, but Ryan Gordon is only one man, and who knows how long it will take... probably a lot longer than Epic would like. I think a great deal of the problem is that UE3 is very, very intensive on CPUs and Videocards, and basically they have to convert what's probably ****tons of D3D code into OpenGL - and that can't be an easy task by any stretch of the imagination. Right now, there's no OpenGL renderer, it's strictly D3D9, and that's going to take quite some time for one person and one person alone to translate and get working even remotely good.
Believe me, I don't dismiss the Linux fans one bit. I just can't stand the elitists who think MS is the plague, and Epic "sold out" like that guy implied. Trust me, if Linux became the dominant OS overnight, people would be hacking it like no tomorrow. It's not better, it's not safer, it's not more secure... and if it is, it's through obscurity, not better design. Every OS does things different, and they all have strengths and weaknesses. No OS is exempt from this, and yet guys like him have this "Holier-than-thou" attitude because they use Linux and it really pisses me off.
To be dead honest, if Linux were a better platform for gaming, I'd drop it in a heartbeat myself. But the fact of the matter is, Linux is a catch-22 right now - to grow, it needs more developers to make stuff for it, but for developers to make stuff for it, they need to justify the cost with a userbase. Now, a lot more things are being made workable on Linux, and that's good, but right now and for the foreseeable future, Windows will still be the OS of choice, so you basically have three options:
1) Set the systems to Dual Boot. This way, you have Linux for most of your stuff, and can run Windows only for Windows-only apps and/or games that aren't supported natively in Linux.
2) Stick with Linux, and wait patiently, while keeping fully in mind some games will likely never have a Linux port.
3) Go back to Windows.
Again, I don't hate on the Linux fans, not at all. It's just that guys like him really set a bad example, and they do a good job of spreading the misconception that all Linux users are elitist, whining snobs who complain and yell conspiracy/sellout the second a game of theirs doesn't work out of the box.
Epic has said that it is under progress, but very slow progress, so just sit and wait, really, or install a minimal Windows XP partition to play the game off of. I have a fairly good feeling that it might show up in Patch 1.4 or 1.5, since now the staff that aren't working on GoW can focus exclusively on UT3 now that the 360 version is out.
(Apologies for this post being so long. It's slightly tangental and I digressed quite a bit.)