Just to be fair and balanced I'm a hardcore linux user and gamer and I've tried gaming on linux and I've hit many issues. 365 games on steam and while some windows games work I've hit probably just about every possible issue you can hit with other games. Graphical artifacts, freezing, stuttering, and even full OS reboots.
Sometimes I read this thread and scratch my head. I get enthusiasm for FOSS, but enthusiasm to the point of delusion? Honestly, Linux is not up to par with windows in terms of running games that are basically designed for windows. Thus the experience compared to windows for these things is definitively inferior.
Linux is surely not up to par with windows, but it is definitely getting better. Not only supporting more games but becoming more accessible.
Linus tech tips did a video recently on installing and gaming on Linux using pop_os which I think is great service for the mainstream user.
So yeah, long way ahead, but we are living the first step, becoming mainstream. If this trend continues, you won't have to be a hardcore Linux Fan to game in Linux.
> I get enthusiasm for FOSS, but enthusiasm to the point of delusion
I see your point but consider this: 20 years ago you could make the same argument for all aspects of linux, not just gaming. Why use some hobby level OS for serious work when you have Solaris, HP-UX, AIX?
Today we have a very usable Linux desktop and pretty much total dominance in the server arena, only because people were at one point "delusionally enthusiastic" about making it work.
Propriety Unixes always had very poor CLIs, to the point people would pay the FSF* to get to install GNU utils. No surprise people would flock to the (offering practically better experience) free OSs.
* Payment for CDROMs. Net distribution wasn't as common then.
Only because the owners of Solaris, HP-UX, AIX decided to outsource part of their UNIX development costs to Linux on one side, while others decided they wanted a free beer POSIX implementation to avoid paying for UNIX.
Except gaming culture is all about IP, something that FOSS don't seem to grasp on their quest for freedom über alles.
Video games are a particularly interesting subsection of software in the context of free software.
Broadly speaking video games are an expression of software and multimedia solely to be used for consumption, and intended to be consumed exclusively within the canonical form presented by it’s developer.
In that way IP is very important, because often there’s more than just the investment in underlying game engine and third party middleware involved; it’s a combination of artwork, audio, video, bespoke scripting, and architecture, to make a whole work. It could be reasonably argued that those pieces should be aggressively defended to ensure the investment is not wasted as these pieces may be of limited utility outside of the complete whole.
I’m certainly all for increased transparency into the inner workings of this package. But it’s an interesting topic and I don’t know enough to even form an opinion on where I think the correct answer lies.
Proprietary Unix systems usually required equally proprietary hardware, which, twenty years ago, was quite a bit more expensive, and also quite a bit slower, than x86.
Also, those proprietary systems usually sucked from the usability point of view, due to being business-oriented.
Less than 20 years ago, Windows was the hobby level OS compared to Solaris and AIX. Windows Server 2005 was a complete and utter joke compared to Solaris. The company I worked for in 2006 was moving their Solaris servers to Linux. Windows wasn't an option because it wouldn't even meet the specs in real life.
I think you may thinking of Windows Server 2003. I also suspect you've never run Windows Server 2003 at enterprise scale either. No operating system is perfect, but Windows 2003 was a reasonably capable workhorse, even in 2003.
My old company made a DIS box (UK gov-specified integration server that would talk to the central Government Gateway) as Java on Solaris in the early noughties, and doing a performance test that one Solaris machine took down the entire Windows-based Government Gateway test environment. Draw your own conclusions :)
It's difficult to draw any conclusions without knowing the environments, what's running on them, were they configured properly, etc etc.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not ideologically bound to any platform, but stuff like this just sounds like another tired old-man Windows vs Linux/Unix pissing contest.
> Graphical artifacts, freezing, stuttering, and even full OS reboots.
I have seen similar on Windows. For example when Bioshock Remastered Freezes there is no way to exit it, windows still responds, but there is no way to close the game because everything you open is hidden by it. Also the amount of Graphical glitches I encountered in Skyrim is just hilarious. DotA 2 seems to sometimes glitch out when you hit alt tab while it loads. That is just the games I played the last few weeks, I think there is not a single game that isn't somehow broken on Windows either.
For situation like this, make sure you have at least 2 virtual desktops available and then alt+tab and then ctrl+win+arrow key to switch to an empty virtual desktop and open task manager.
In the past (ie Win7 days and before..) I always made a point to set games to "Windowed Fullscreen" wherever possible as that vastly improved Windows' stability.
It was probably bad for graphical quality/performance/latency but being able to temporarily exit games without worrying about a crashing desktop was more important for me.
I've found using borderless "fullscreen" to actually improve latency. I had a lot of trouble with deflecting on Sekiro when I was running in fullscreen mode that I found immediately went away once I started running it borderless.
Sure, but Windows is supported, so instead of going to a forum and being unhelpfully told to try a different distro, you can take up your issue with the developer and they're much more likely to pay attention. Granted, some of them still have shitty support, but you're a lot less likely to be dismissed out of hand.
> is this something people actually (and successfully) do?
No. You fix it yourself, move on with your life or spend a few hours getting shit on by customer support and then move on. Videogames are an industry where you need to expect to be disrespected, because those companies do not care a whit about you.
I'm not a hardcore gamer but with some games that work reasonably well on a mid-class PC without an SSD drive I've noticed one thing in comparison. Windows keeps doing things that are hard to trace down while Linux (Mint in my gaming case) keeps its feet still. That is an important issue for me because some random System process may freeze up my games randomly. Not nice...
Overall I get a better performance on Linux at the cost of some graphics performance, which is a good deal for me. I'm really not playing the most current games to be fair. And I'm running on a 5400rpm HDD
I think at this point most of the issues (not all) that the average gamer experiences are caused by incompatible libraries and the like, it will be interesting to see how good linux gaming gets when the Steam Deck/SteamOS 3 release on which Valve will have better control on what users run.
To be fair, Valve already has a way to control mostly what is used by Steam and the game. They have their own runtime that uses (or can, can't remember if it's always the case) containers to create a controlled environment.
I have had issues sometimes with library/drivers versions on my rolling release preventing me from running everything natively, but each time using the runtime version of Steam allowed me to play.
They have information about it all over the place, I can't find exactly the page I wanted, but here[0] is some more information about it from their repository.
Agree. Updated os (and probably drivers) to support specific hardware seems easier to maintain.
Windows get the first class on drivers and it's update due to market share. If this one success we may find vendors to start focusing drivers for steam os after windows.
I don't understand why people insist on this shoehorning either.
It's like some obscene tribal topos that refuses to die.
KDE 1.0 came out in 1998 - 23 years ago (O god I'm old).
The discussion of "Linux to replace windows desktop" is over two decades old.
In computer age this is something geological. It's like... well, Macintosh came out in 1984. Xerox Alto came 1973. If we go back 5 years we reach Englebart's Mother of All Demos in 1968 which I think can be considered the intellectual precursor of those.
So there is 5 years from a tech demo on high-end research platform to a (more or less) commoditized consumer offering - even though Xerox had no idea what to do with it. Steve Jobs visits Xerox 1979 and five years later they deliver Macintosh.
So, with engineering talent PLUS business drive they copy the idea, implement their own hardware and software stack and are instant hit (well, let's say for the sake of this discussion they are a hit).
In FIVE years.
Linux is trying to copy the software stack, of an existing platform, and has been "attempting" this for two decades.
This is not an engineering problem. This is not a community problem. It's a "lack of business interest problem".
Honestly, the Linux desktop is quite usable. I'm quite sure two decades are enough for the open source software stack to find some local optimum for the desktop offering.
But really, copying and supporting a continuously moving target needs real capital and real business drive to sustain the boring, mind numbing support work that is needed to actually sustain an industrial quality platform.
Linux is fantastic in lots of things.
I'm not sure reverse engineering Windows stack on Linux is very effective way of spending our civilizations engineering resources.
I appreciate masochistic Rude Goldbergish feats of engineering as much as the next geek, but I just don't see the value of individuals detached from the corporations that are implementing the master stack trying to reverse engineer everything on top of a third party platform.
Native Linux support? That would be nice. Native drivers and all? That would be nice.
If it works for someone that's very cool and satisfying - but I still think reverse engineering based gaming stacks for modern platforms that are alive and well are not perhaps the best way to spend engineering effort.
Games push an OS's limits. So a compatibility layer like Wine is more like trying to implement a browser that implements all of Chrome's API without forking it.
> I'm not sure reverse engineering Windows stack on Linux is very effective way of spending our civilizations engineering resources.
I don't think it is a question of a pool of resource that can be reallocated, however, as in a business.
The people who work on reverse engineering Windows presumably do so, because they are interested in doing so. They might not be interested in building something new.
The choice might therefore not be between doing this, and doing something new, but between doing this and not doing anything at all.
We don't collectively own engineers time, we are not under full blown socialism, yet and people are free to do what they want.
If individuals enjoy reverse engineering windows and making it work on Linux, that's great, actually I really need that. I wouldn't spend my time on it, but I'm sure I have equally suboptimal hobbies (from a "civilisation" point of view).
You don't get to spend someone else engineering effort.
Fully agreed. My intention was not to signal any entitled presumption of ownership of said resources - just that they are not maybe applied with maximum impact, which does not imply I presume to benefit from them anyway.
To add a datapoint, the bioshock games would crash while loading/saving on win 10, which seems to be a common issue. None of the suggested adjustments worked for me. Very little problems running on Ubuntu, there might've been graphical glitches but at least the games were playable.
I've had a similar experience. I would love to stop using Windows but I have found that ProtonDB wildly exagerrates the compatibility of games. I had game breaking issues with 50% or more of "gold" rated titles and even some with a "platinum" rating.
ProtonDB tells you that someone, somewhere at some point managed to get it working. It doesn't directly help you, but knowing it can be done can be an incentive to experiment instead of giving up.
That's unfortunately not unexpected. "Linux Desktop" is a ludicrously diverse not-platform for which Valve already has to bring its own runtime of basic libraries along just to ensure some minimum level of compatibility even for native Linux games.
Windows and Mac are not great for productivity and not easily customisable so if I want to be productive I need to work from a Linux environment and a Linux UI.
I don't game that much and rebooting / having another dedicated machine is a PITA.
I honestly don't remember experiencing that many issues with proton or wine for that matter. Maybe having to follow a wiki or installing something and a few minor issues. Proton automated most of that.
Sure, it's not perfect but for an occasional gamer like me it's less than the hassle of rebooting.
How Linux is more productive than Mac? I think it's true only if you use a lot of customization, like a custom shortcut to switch to a specific app/virtual desktop, and do some stuff. That would be extremely time-consuming but also really cool. I'm thrilled to try but with how prone I'm to falling into rabbit holes I'm really scared how much time it could consume. I already spent too much time on creating my own fork of Colemak and a lot of custom shortcuts with Karabiner elements.
After the hype related to the Steam Deck I decided to give Pop_OS with a GPU passthrough setup another chance. I got a single card setup functional but could barely get a dual-card setup working. Problems included:
* Needed a USB input switcher and two video outputs to use it correctly. I tried Looking Glass but it doesn't work well with NVIDIA cards unless you have one of those $15 HDMI dummy plugs which are all made by sketchy Chinese vendors...
* Because I only have one USB controller, all USB 3 ports got stolen by the VM, leaving only USB 2 for Linux.
* Weird audio pops that I thought I fixed but would come back on reboot.
* Difficult to monitor certain temps.
* Random crashes during long sessions, even on low graphics settings. Hard to debug - you have to pick through both Windows and Linux logs.
* Random FPS drops, especially in LoL.
* Lived in fear of getting banned from some games (Also LoL)
* NVIDIA drivers would sometimes crash trying to rebind the cards when I closed the VM, so I had to reboot the computer anyways, might as well have dual-booted.
* Setting up OBS takes extra work.
Gaming in Linux natively was, for all intents and purposes, the same. The games I play (mostly online multiplayer) are either unavailable or unplayable.
After over two weeks of my computer being semi-functional and my friends asking me for the fifth time when I was going to be back online, I decided it wasn't worth it. I see so many people in these threads praising Linux gaming, saying it's now functional and simple to set up. They must either only play single-player indie games, know something I don't, or are being dishonest.
Very likely the former: the majority of proton users, by necessity, play only single player games (I'm one of them).
I'm trying VFIO at the moment, and so far (but it is very early) seems to be working (I also have an integrated video card which greatly simplifies things). I didn't pass through the whole USB controller, just the specific USB peripherals (mouse+kbd and bluetooth controller for audio). I assume this is not done by actual passthrough but there is some layer of indirection; what would be the disadvantage? more latency?
Latency and the ability to switch between the VM and the host. I have a cheap USB input switcher which I've owned for ages for this purpose.
IIUC unless you're running Looking Glass or some other alternative method, passing through each device individually locks them while the VM is running.
Yeah, people are definitely trying to oversell how well gaming works on Linux, especially now that the Steam Deck is coming out. I've had games rated Platinum and Gold on protondb be completely unplayable due to graphical issues, or fail to even launch. I've also run into Linux specific issues even for games that have native ports, for example, holding down a single key for a long time randomly causes the OS to stop sending signals for it until you release it and press again. It's gotten me killed quite a few times in fast paced shooters when holding down the movement key stops working.
What graphics card and which drivers? It's especially problematic with older GPUs, but with modern ones it's largely fine and none of these issues show up as much as they apparently did for you.
while it's theoretically possible for this to be caused by software, it seems more likely considering the other issues you've listed that there are some hardware issues here. linux drivers exercise the hardware differently from windows, and usually more efficiently. if your hardware is weak (particularly PSU), it can fail during intense loads. see: people blaming prime95 for crashing their computer.
Because some people are claiming that they all work, and Valve is saying that they plan to have every game working with Proton by the time Steam Deck releases. I've lost count of the amount of times I've seen people point to the "15.5k games work" number on protondb since the Steam Deck was announced, even though "15.5k games work" only requires a single person to say a game worked for them, and less than half of games on the site are rated as platinum.
>Because some people are claiming that they all work
Who? Just go to that site. It's tells what's working and not working. It says right there on the front page only 50% of the games are currently rated gold. You can't really complain that something doesn't work when they're telling you it doesn't work.
> I get enthusiasm for FOSS, but enthusiasm to the point of delusion?
Nothing wrong with being honest. We sometimes have to keep hiding the fact that when we use something on a system that is not officially supported and comes with tons of issues or bugs, we quietly fix it ourselves with hacks and workarounds and try to move on if possible.
Unfortunately with most users, they cannot tolerate 'Graphical artifacts, freezing, stuttering, and even full OS reboots' and would simply give up and use something fully supported like Windows.
> Honestly, Linux is not up to par with windows in terms of running games that are basically designed for windows. Thus the experience compared to windows for these things is definitively inferior.
If it says it is designed and optimised to run on Windows, then that's a hint that it will perform badly on other systems. You can 'try again' on other systems but obviously the help-desk guys will say: 'Sorry, that's unsupported.'
Better to go for something that has official support and move on, not half way there. Or wait until the other system has official support.
Sometimes I read this thread and scratch my head. I get enthusiasm for FOSS, but enthusiasm to the point of delusion? Honestly, Linux is not up to par with windows in terms of running games that are basically designed for windows. Thus the experience compared to windows for these things is definitively inferior.