I can’t find it now, but back in the late 90s Tim Sweeney tried Linux / KDevelop for a week and, if he liked it, would make games for Linux. It was on Slashdot if I remember correctly.

It went fine, but some features like hot code swap weren’t available like they were in MSVC. I see that he’s still moving those goalposts.

When I bought it in February 2015 it didn’t require anything but a local network.