Abstract
The same questions get asked repeatedly on Linux related mailing lists and news groups. Many of
them arise because people don't know as much as they should about how things "work" on Linux, at least, as
far as games go. Gaming can be a tough pursuit; it requires knowledge from an incredibly vast range of
topics from compilers to libraries to system administration to networking to XFree86 administration ...
you get the picture. Every aspect of your computer plays a role in gaming. It's a demanding topic, but
this fact is shadowed by the primary goal of gaming: to have fun and blow off some steam.
This document is a stepping stone to get the most common problems resolved and to give people the
knowledge to begin thinking intelligently about what is going on with their games. Just as with anything
else on Linux, you need to know a little more about what's going on behind the scenes with your system to
be able to keep your games healthy or to diagnose and fix them when they're not.