Quake Live to Open Up to Linux and Mac OS X Gamers

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
From our front-page news:
1999 was a great year for multiple reasons, but the main reason it might linger in some gamer's minds is because right before we entered Y2K, id Software released its highly-anticipated Quake III. Surprisingly, both the Windows and Linux versions became available at roughly the same time, so gamers all over could get their frag on, in beautiful fully-accelerated OpenGL.

The cool thing about Q3, aside from the stellar gameplay, is that even upon its release, it ran quite well on most any current machine at the time, as long as it was equipped with a 3D accelerator card. That to me, was truly amazing, because while I don't recall what GPU I had at the time, I remember being incredibly impressed that it ran as well as it did. After all, for months leading up to its release, the graphics seemed to be the focal point, so I had assumed that nothing less than a bleeding-edge machine could handle it. I was wrong, thankfully.

With such a highly-optimized game, nearing 10-years in age, it's no surprise that id decided to bring the game to everyone's web browser, and that they did last year, with an open beta which began earlier this year for Windows users. Because id highly regards alternate operating systems, we all knew it'd only be a matter of time before we'd see a Linux and Mac OS X variant, and apparently, that time is just about upon us.

According to gaming site 1UP, the update will be applied in tomorrow's patch, as was discovered during this past weekend's QuakeCon. As a Linux user, I can't express how great this news is. I have yet to actually touch Quake Live, so I'm happy I'll soon be able to in my OS of choice. It seems like the perfect occasional distraction. I'll be sure to follow-up in our forums once I can give it a try.

quake_live_081709.jpg

Mac and Linux versions of the client are available for users to play on the show floor. Non-attendees will be able to check out the update when it launches this Tuesday, August 18th. I guess fans of BeOS will have to wait just a little bit longer to join in the fun.


Source: 1UP
 
Top