While Apple laptops have never really been the first stop for PC gaming, Linux is slowly shaping up to be an excellent gaming platform, largely thanks to open-source development efforts as well as work from the likes of AMD and NVIDIA, who have both put significant work into their respective Linux drivers in recent years. This makes efforts like the Asahi Linux Project all the more intriguing. Asahi Linux is a project that aims to bring Linux to Apple Silicon Macs—a task that has proven rather difficult, thanks to the intricacies of developing a bespoke GPU driver for Apple's custom ARM GPUs. In a recent blog post, the graphics developer behind the Asahi Linux Project showed off a number of AAA games, albeit older titles, running on an Apple M1 processor on the latest Asahi Linux build.

To run the games on Apple Silicon, Asahi Linux uses a "game playing toolkit," which relies on a number of custom graphics drivers and emulators, including tools from Valve's Proton translation layer, which ironically was also the foundation for Apple's Game Porting Toolkit. Asahi uses FEX to emulate x86 on ARM, Wine as a translation layer for Windows apps, and DXVK and vkd3d-proton for DirectX-Vulkan translation. In the blog post, the Asahi developer claims that the alpha is capable of running games like Control, The Witcher 3, and Cyberpunk 2077 at playable frame rates. Unfortunately, 60 FPS is not yet attainable in the majority of new high-fidelity games, there are a number of indie titles that run quite well on Asahi Linux, including Hollow Knight, Ghostrunner, and Portal 2.

A new fan-made mod for Valve's classic (I think we can say classic) Portal 2 has been made available on Steam, bringing a plethora of new content to the fine wine puzzle game. The mod, named Portal Reloaded and available on Steam for anyone who already owns a copy of the original game, adds a grand total of 25 new test chambers to out-think and out-puzzle, alongside a brand new mode for the Portal Gun - a Time Travel one. This Time Travel portal joins the classic blue and orange ones, and gives players the ability to jump 20 years into the future so as to be able to wreck havoc with the time continuum all in hopes of solving just... one... more... test chamber.

The mod includes 100 new voice lines and an original soundtrack, and should bring veterans or newcomers to the Portal series a new reason to stay awake until dawn breaks. Be careful when bringing cakes from the future, however - we all know what happens to people who want their cake and eat it too. Check some of the trailers explaining the new mechanics after the break.

Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the early findings of the Portal 2 Perpetual Testing Initiative.

Released just days ago, The "Perpetual Testing Initiative" has already resulted in the creation and publishing of over 35,000 user-created maps, collectively consumed via more than 1.3 million downloads.

To celebrate the launch, Steam is holding a Weekend Workshop Sale offering Portal 2 for 66% off, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim for 33% off, and many of this year's Team Fortress 2 Workshop Items available for 50% off their regular price.

Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the arrival of the free Portal 2 update titled "Perpetual Testing Initiative."

Available now for PC and Mac, The "Perpetual Testing Initiative" allows players to easily create, share, and play Portal 2 puzzles. The Initiative comes with a simplified Puzzle Maker that allows that creation of mind-bending puzzles without ever leaving the game.

Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the free Portal 2 DLC titled "Perpetual Testing Initiative" will be available for the PC and Mac on May 8th.

The "Perpetual Testing Initiative" allows players to easily create, share, and play Portal 2 puzzles. The Initiative comes with a simplified puzzle maker that allows that creation of mind-bending puzzles without ever leaving the game.

BAFTA recognised Portal 2 as the Best Game in its 2012 Video Games Awards. The smash-hit from Valve, also went on to win Best Design, and Best Story. Battlefield 3, on the other hand, went on to win Best Online Multiplayer, Best Audio Achievement, and GAME Award of 2011. Batman: Arkham City bagged Best Action, and Best Performer (Mark Hamill, who voiced The Joker). Portal 2 has been a centerpiece at Video Game achievement awards this year.

Portal 2 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim won big at the Game Developers Choice. Bethesda's smash-hit title bagged the coveted "Game of the Year" (GOTY) title, while Portal 2 bagged three top honors, winning "Best Narrative", "Best Game Design", and "Best Audio".

The year 2011 also saw the raising of the technology bar with two new game engines, CryEngine 3 from Crytek, and Frostbite 2 from EA-DICE. The two were implemented in flagship titles, Crysis 2 and Battlefield 3, respectively; both of which were published by EA. In the end, Battlefield 3 won "Best Technology". "Best Visual Arts", however, went to Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception.A list of top honors follows.

Today Kotaku is reporting the top 5 games pirated for major platforms this year according to TorrentFreak. As usual the PC platform is the most guilty almost doubling in pirated copies then its competitors.

Some of the titles listed are not surprising but the lack of a certain title filled with dragon slaying is. Why Skyrim didn't make the top five is anyone's guess. Either Steam is in fact the most user friendly DRM or people just love Skyrim. Either way this is just a small glimpse into the world of pirated software.

Top Five Pirated PC Games

1. Crysis 2 (3,920,000) (March 2011)
2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (3,650,000) (November 2011)
3. Battlefield 3 (3,510,000) (October 2011)
4. FIFA 12 (3,390,000) (September 2011)
5. Portal 2 (3,240,000) (April 2011)

Welcome to the TechPowerUp 2011 PC technology Christmas special. We hope that you will enjoy reading it while tucking into your turkey, Christmas presents and a little too much wine... In this article, we go through the technology of 2011 that has had the most significance, the most impact and was generally the most talked about. It's not necessarily the best tech of 2011 which is the most significant though, since lemons can be just as significant as the ground-breakers in how they fail to deliver - and the backlash that goes with it.

January: Intel Sandy Bridge i5 & i7

Released on January 9th, the new Intel Core i5 & i7 processors were based on Intel's second generation Core architecture built on a 32 nm production process (HEXUS review). They included an IGP (Integrated Graphics Processor) physically on the same piece of silicon along with HyperThreading. These new dual and quad core processors soundly beat all previous generations of Intel processors in terms of processing performance, heat, power use, features and left AMD in the dust. Therefore, Intel badly needed some competition from AMD and unless you have been living under a rock, you will know how that turned out in October with the launch of Bulldozer. Sandy Bridge was a sound win and is generally considered to be the only architecture worth considering at this point. The i5-2500K is currently at the sweet spot of price/performance. It comes at a stock speed of 3.3 GHz, but typically overclocks to an amazing 4.5 - 5 GHz with a decent air cooler and without too much difficulty in getting there. Models in the budget i3 range were released at various times later. See this Wikipedia article for details.

Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress, and Counter-Strike) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced the second game add-on for the year's highest rated multiplatform game, Portal 2, is in development and targeted for release early next year.

This major update will feature an easy-to-use in-game map editor that will let users design, build and share their own single-player and co-op test chambers with the community, who will be able to view, play and vote on them with a simple click.

It took somewhat longer than expected, after having been promised for the summer and then a couple more times, but now this fresh new DLC called Portal 2: Peer Review will be released to eagerly waiting Portal 2 fans on October 4 on PC (Steam), PS3 & Xbox 360 platforms. This is a hard date, so there should be no more slips.

AMD today released this month's major update to its Catalyst software suite, Catalyst 11.7 WHQL. The new driver introduces a few major bug fixes, and provides WHQL-signed support for the recently released AMD A-Series APUs, apart from Radeon GPUs and AMD 8-series and 7-series chipset-integrated graphics. AMD claims to have fixed all outstanding issues related to cursor-lag; a variety of system hangs noted when using HDMI or DisplayPort outputs have been fixed; a number of video playback issues, some generic and some application-specific, were resolved; the "checkerboard" pattern display corruption issue related to Eyefinity on CrossFire setups in DirectX 10 games was fixed; and flickering issues related to Portal 2 were fixed. The driver doesn't introduce any new features or performance improvements, but with greater stability, improved performance should naturally follow.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.7 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit | Windows 7/Vista 32-bit | Windows XP 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit

A list of changes follows.

Valve's acclaimed puzzle-action hybrid Portal will be given a sequel, according to the game's lead designer Kimberly Swift."Well, I believe Doug Lombardi who is our lead marketing director at Valve, has announced Portal 2." said Swift in an interview with G4TV. Lombardi had previously stated that more Portal was on the way, but Swift's comment is the first mention of a true sequel to be made thus far. No further details on the project were provided. Aside from the announcement of the sequel, Portal also won the Game Developers Choice Award for Game of the Year last night in San Francisco and has taken home the awards for Innovation and Best Game Design.