Redhat has changed and frankly doesn’t really exist any more as a desktop linux distro. It has been superceded with Fedora Core 1 (FC1) and the new FC2. Redhat is/was the most popular distro holding nearly 70% of the user base. Redhat is no more or less capable than Gentoo, debian, mandrake, slackware, etc. It is however not as flexible during the install, but neither is Mandrake, although it certainly is prettier and better controlled during the setup. It is hard to make a mistake with FC1 or FC2. There are more repositories holding a more standardized method of package distribution for all that add-on software available for the other distros. One could argueably say that there is more out there for Fedora than for all the others combined.
In the end,though, once the OS is installed they all are essentially the same OS. They run the same kernel, they run the same applications, they have the same configurations (essentially – with some differences), they run the same X, they run the same window managers, and they run the same programs, and the same games in the same fashion using the same drivers.
Some are harder to install but are more flexible in the install. That’s why some love them and some hate them with a pashion.
If you have your 3d accelerated video drivers installed and working and glxgears works and glxinfo shows you the appropriate data without giving errors then you do have it setup properly. The installer for ET is incredibly simple and requires little to no interaction. It chooses the appropriate install directory and copies the files to the appropriate place usually without errors. The error message you got is innocuous and you can ignore it.
If you don’t know about linux at all then most likely you don’t have the 3d accelerated drivers installed, as most distro’s do not install 3d accelerated drivers by default.
Most video card manufacturers do not provide linux drivers, although the top two do: nVidia and ATI. The nVidia drivers are easy to install and are extremely rock solid with very good performance. The ATI drivers are much more difficult and it is hard to find help installing them if you have problems.
Most video card drivers require that you install the kernel source for the kernel version you are running. You can go to a terminal prompt and type uname -r to determine your kernel version and then look on rpmfind for the kernel source. You will need to install that source and then, if you don’t have the kernel module for that card driver installers from nVidia can build them for you on the fly. You may also find the kernel source at other locations on the net and you probably can find the kernel source for your default install on the CDs you used to install linux.
Package/kernel updating for the most part can be done with apt-get and it runs on most distros. Mandrake is a distro that has serious problems with apt-get and it also has serious problems with nforce2 chipset based boards and it costs more to maintain a subscription to Mandrake over a 2-3 year period then it does Windows XP Home.
Updating with tools such as apt-get (which works wonderfully under FC1 and FC2) is simple and straight forward. You can also get a tool called synaptic which will work as a graphical front end for apt-get and install those kernel modules, kernel sources, kernel updates, and package updates with a few clicks of a mouse. The point behind this is to say that Redhat has no more issue with updates than any other linux distro.
Start the game by typing et. Or, you can look to the desktop menus and find the icon. The linux version is very stable, almost considered by me to be rock solid. It has excellent performance easily on par with the windows version. But you don’t go setting up linux to run this one game. It would be silly especially if you already have windows knowing you can just download the windows client and run it instead.
But, all in all, I’d say stay with windows and run ET on windows and that it doesn’t make sense to install linux just to play ET. Performance testing done on anandtech show that the windows version performs slightly better than the linux version. This was, as I recall, attributed to the drivers. All video card manufacturers could do well to increase the performance of their drivers for linux.
, do try to make some effort at spelling, it’s only polite to the people you want to help you (i’m sure there’s spelling errors in here, but at least I’m trying…)