Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer

Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer

One man's journey to explore all the fun Linux had to offer at the turn of the millennium.

By Hamish Paul Wilson

Part 1: Dumpster Diving Older computing hardware is getting harder and harder to find. What would have been given away just five or ten years ago can now often only be found for inflated prices. So when I noticed an interesting looking beige box ready to be recycled at my local dump, I did not hesitate to rescue it in order to see what was inside.

Part 2: Selecting a Graphics Card Linux graphics support is still remarkably similar to how it was 20 years ago, even with all the progress that has been made in the years since. By the time of Red Hat Linux 9 the Direct Rendering Infrastructure or DRI was firmly in place in Mesa and offered 3D support for a wide number of cards.

Part 3: Installing Red Hat Linux 9 My first choice was to run Red Hat Linux 9, for the arbitrary reason that it was the final release of the once dominant distribution and the second to feature the delightful Bluecurve desktop theme for both Gnome and KDE. I knew then that I was cutting things a bit close, but I still found myself disappointed with the outcome.

Part 4: Installing Red Hat Linux 7.3 I had some grief installing Red Hat Linux 7.3 but with persistence I was able to get it installed. In terms of compatibility though Valhalla proved to be far superior, so I decided to stick with it and focus on improving other parts of the system instead.

Part 5: Quaking in My Boots Dave Taylor can be credited with kickstarting the commercial Linux gaming industry with his ports of the games Doom and Abuse. Before leaving id Software he also graced us with a Linux port of Quake, which was later taken by Macmillan Digital Publishing to form the basis of their retail Quake: The Offering package.

Part 6: A Lone Marine Battled In the same vein as Quake: The Offering, the next game in the series got a similar treatment for Linux with Quake II: Colossus from Macmillan Digital Publishing, containing Quake II as well as its two mission packs The Reckoning and Ground Zero.

Part 7: The Arena Eternal The bedrock of almost all the LAN parties played in my household, Quake III Arena also became a trusty reliable for when I felt the urge for a casual bot match. Whenever I felt the need for a fresh Linux installation, Quake III Arena always became the first game I would reinstall. This had as much to do with the game's technical achievements as my fondness for the gunplay.

Part 8: Shovelware with a Penguin After completing all of the boxed Quake games for Linux, I was left with indecision. So if I could not settle on a single game to play, why not try one hundred? Made for a time of slow internet speeds and limited storage, these kinds of retail collections allowed users to explore hundreds of freeware and shareware titles from the comfort of a single CD-ROM.

Part 9: Ancient Archaeology After the demise of Loki Software, one of their former employees found himself forced to work behind a cash register for a living. Desperate to get back to porting games, he found the email address of an artist working for the Croatian developer Croteam, creators of the game Serious Sam; the first of many games to come to the platform thanks to Ryan "icculus" Gordon.

Part 10: For I Have Sinned At heart XEvil is a basic deathmatch, but it is the anarchic elements that keep it entertaining. There is no reason XEvil has to die a death, other than its modern obscurity. Another with the talent could revive XEvil and bring all of its features back home again.

Part 11: Forgotten Heresies Almost from the very start Raven Software and id Software had a symbiotic relationship. Given the Linux friendly atmosphere at id, it is no surprise that some of that would start to rub off on Raven, culminating in Loki Software negotiating to make a port of Heretic II.

Part 12: In Tremendous Pain In 1998 developer Raven Software acquired the rights to Soldier of Fortune to make a video game inspired by the mercenary magazine of the same name. The plan was the make a realistic tactical shooter, with consultant John Mullins brought in to add both his insights and likeness to the project. Where the controversy laid was in the game's violence.

Part 13: Looks Almost Unreal It is rare for Linux to see support from both sides of an industry battle, but that is exactly where we were with the release of Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament. With both games aiming to package the full breadth of the online multiplayer shooter experience into a standalone title, the competition between the two was fierce.

Part 14: Return to Na Pali One of the selling points of Unreal Tournament pitched to the modding scene by Epic Games was its ability to load assets from the original Unreal into the new engine. After a few years this snowballed into a concerted community effort to make the entire Unreal single player...