I don't claim to have much experience in writing games on Linux, so I would welcome some help to improve this page.
Mesa
If your Linux installation does not have OpenGL support you will need to install Mesa. If you already have OpenGL installed then skip this stage, for example I am using Red Hat 6.2 and I did not need to install Mesa.
If you don't have it already, install Mesa from their website
Mesa is a 3-D graphics library with an API which is very similar to that of OpenGL
Download MesaLib-3.3.tar.gz and optionally MesaDemos-3.3.tar.gz
Unpack with:
gzcat MesaLib-3.3.tar.gz | tar xf -
gzcat MesaDemos-3.3.tar.gz | tar xf -
gunzip MesaLib-3.2.tar.gz ; tar xf MesaLib-3.2.tar
gunzip MesaDemos-3.2.tar.gz ; tar xf MesaLib-3.2.tar
or
tar zxf MesaLib-3.2.tar.gz
tar zxf MesaDemos-3.2.tar.gz
Are there any sites which can advise people about
GUI
Most people these days like to use a graphical interface. I find it annoying that Linux users and programmers have to choose between KDE and Gnome. Could anyone give me some unbiased advise about which is best for 3d programers without stating a format war?
Using Java on Linux
If you have not already done so load the latest version of Java for linux from the blackdown website.
Unpack it to suitable directory:
cd /usr/local
gunzip /jdk-1_2_2-rc3-linux-i386_sh.gz
./jdk-1_2_2-rc3-linux-i386_sh
Make sure path is set:
export PATH=/usr/local/jdk1.2.2/bin:$PATH
Download and install Java3D for Linux
bunzip2 java3d1_1_3-fcs-linux-sdk_t.bz2
./java3d1_1_3-fcs-linux-sdk_t
see http://www.blackdown.org/java-linux/jdk1.2-status/README-3D
Apologies to Richard Stallman - I have used the word Linux here where I probably mean GNU/Linux. Its just that putting GNU/Linux everywhere seems over pedantic and makes the page more difficult to write and read. While I'm apologizing I'm probably writing 'Open Source' where I mean 'Free software'. Could anyone give me a simple one sentence definition of these terms?
