I'm a gamer and I'm a Linux user. Yes, this puts me in a very small group of people in the world. The mass majority of gamers are either consolers (Wii, PS2/3, Xbox 360) or Windows gamers. They do often ask “What games can you play on Linux? Isn't it just a command prompt?”. You can game on Linux and you have quite a few options.

Option 1: Open Source Games

There are PLENTY of open source games. Some are excellent, some are ok and quite a number will only amuse you for a few minutes. These games are both free as in free beer and free as in the freedom to modify and redistribute. Some standout genres/titles are:

First Person Shooters: OpenArena, Nexuiz and Warsow
Real Time Strategies: Glest, Warzone2100
Platform: SuperTux
Strategy: Scorched3D, Battle for Wesnoth
Role Playing Games: FreedroidRPG

There are plenty of games and if you've chosen a distribution with a large gaming repository (like Ubuntu, Mandriva or Fedora) then you'll have plenty to choose from or just download and try out.

Option 2: Closed Source Games (Natively installed)

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