Hardware:

Before we look at the games themselves, we have to see how well the hardware is supported. There are two major players in the video card market, NVIDIA and ATI. Of these two, NVIDIA has always supported Linux very strongly - with full driver support for all their cards available. Even though their drivers are not released under the GPL (General Public License), which means they can't be bundled with distributions, they are fully featured drivers with support available for almost all the features of the GPU, including multi-monitor support. The drivers are very easy to install on a wide range of distributions.

ATI, on the other hand, has only recently started pushing for better drivers under Linux. Earlier, if you wanted to have good 3D-Acceleration under Linux, the choice of card was a no-brainer. NVIDIA ruled the roost mainly because of poor driver support from ATI. ATI has made it a priority now, however, and have a dedicated Linux driver team. Still, in terms of drivers, NVIDIA has the upper hand as of now.

Sound cards, on the other hand, have long been well supported under Linux. As long as it's basic sound, it's there. When you talk about EAX and the like, things get murkier. The Live! and Audigy series of cards are fairly well supported as well. Sound is not so much of an issue to get working as video, as any modern distribution should be able to handle sound fairly well. Still, some advanced features may not work too well, or at all on Linux, which is a disappointment for the time being, but it will quickly be resolved.

Joysticks, Gamepads, Wheels, and HOTAS rigs are a different story altogether. Some of them work, and work well, others refuse to, no matter how you tweak them. It is also generally true that getting a gaming device to work under Linux is rather more difficult than getting it to work under Windows. There are exceptions, but this is one area needs some work to appropriately execute.

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