Today (Tuesday, February 24th, 2009) Quake Live -- a new game from id Software, that plays entirely in a web browser using a simple Firefox or Internet Explorer plugin -- was released as an "Open Beta." Great! Right?

The bad news is it isn't yet available for GNU+Linux. Another example of one of the biggest nuisances when using GNU+Linux, which is proprietary software compatibility delays, for games and their updates in particular. Although, this isn't a big deal for some people, like us, who don't use proprietary software.

Software vendors -- such as id Software -- commonly release their GNU+Linux versions at a later time then their Windows version. The time between the releases is commonly short, most likely because each game is developed for each platform at the same time.

If you're thinking about playing Quake Live, you might just want to skip the registration for now, save yourself the time waiting in the queue, go straight to following them on Twitter, and wait for them to release the GNU+Linux version. Because all you'll be greeted by is this message.



We are likely not to see Quake Live being GNU+Linux compatible until a few weeks or months. Although, if it turns out anything like Epic Games' Unreal Tournament 3 -- which was supposed to have a "Linux client" but as of now still does not, -- it could take up to a year or two. On the other hand, they did release the computer "Linux client" for 'Enemy Territory: Quake Wars' after only 17 days on October 19th, 2007, after the game's initial computer release on October 2, 2007.

But this is id Software we're talking about, a company that has a very large number of GNU+Linux supported games, perhaps the largest, and, releases the source code -- licensed under the GPL as free software -- to each game after a certain period of time. With people using their game engines in free software games, it helps grow GNU+Linux demand for the future games, this is a very long lasting use of the engines, making for a reasonably sized demand for GNU+Linux clients. So, perhaps the releases might some day happen at the same time, and, we will no longer have to wait for each game.

All and all, fun game, and, we hope that id Software doesn't keep us in the dark for too long.
You can find Quake Live at www.quakelive.com.