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Which libraries/platforms are available on Linux to start game development?

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    \$\begingroup\$ You're going to need to be more specific. What kind of games do you want to make? What languages do you want to use? What do you mean by "platforms"? \$\endgroup\$
    – michael.bartnett
    Feb 9, 2012 at 8:39
  • \$\begingroup\$ As stated in the faq which technology to use questions are now deemed off-topic. A good resource for this kind of thing is devmaster \$\endgroup\$
    – Jesse Dorsey
    Feb 9, 2012 at 15:50

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OpenGL and SDL are both open source and cross platform.

For C#, there is also a Mono library, which attempts to be a game library like XNA but cross-platform. I have not used Mono, but heard bad things about it.

PyGame is another popular cross platform library.

I don't know much about Java libraries, but Java itself tends to be easy for simple beginner projects, and it is obviously suited for multiplatform stuff.

The Unreal Engine apparently works on Linux using OpenGL, you might be happy to hear.

In general, anything open source will probably support GNU/Linux. More than that, they usually "start" on Linux. Proprietary stuff rarely strays outside Windows, on the other hand.

Keep in mind that if you develop for Windows, using for instance DirectX 9, your games might be playable through Wine on Linux if you're lucky.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Way way way too optimistic about Wine. \$\endgroup\$
    – o0'.
    Feb 9, 2012 at 9:55
  • \$\begingroup\$ Well, I don't have much experience myself, but the Wine community always claims decent support for older versions. \$\endgroup\$
    – Superbest
    Feb 9, 2012 at 15:06
  • \$\begingroup\$ Of course they claim it... \$\endgroup\$
    – o0'.
    Feb 9, 2012 at 16:33

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