Linux & Games

[KillaKilla]

Boilerplate: This is in no way implying that windows is in any way shape or form better than linux. Please do not interpret it as such.

Ok guys, I've been wondering. Since I'm already waiting for the 64 bit CPU prices to come down, linux is already 64 bit, and MS is going to totally blow 64 bit computing with CISC (linux is RISK, right?). Are most games compatable with linux without using any extra "compatability mode" BS? By most games I mean pretty much all mainstream non-RPG games. How much of a performance boost in gaming would I get w/ linux?

Required games compatable for me to switch:
BF1942
HL2
Doom 3
UT2k3

 

[NuclearFusi0n]

BF1942 no
HL2 no
Doom 3 yes
UT2k3 yes

P.S. CISC and RISC is a cpu architecture thing - has nothing to do with the OS.

 

[Nothinman]

The compatibility you might be looking for is called winex, but the amount of work it takes to get a game to really work under it varies heavily from game to game and there's no guarantees about future games (and even some present and past games).

How much of a performance boost in gaming would I get w/ linux?

With a native game like Q3, Doom3 or UT2K3 the performance will be about he same with nVidia hardware because their Linux drivers are really good. With games in winex it again varies greatly.

 

[drag]

WineX will always be slower then Windows. It's designed to provide compatablity mainly for the DirectX portions of games.

Most windows games use directX in one for or another, however lots of them use OpenGL for the actual gaming. 2 examples are quake3 and Black&White.

Linux has very good OpenGL support, so winex tries to run that as native as possible.

So games that are OpenGL based you will see only a slight hit in performance. However games that are entirely directx you get a fairly large hit in performance. Maybe 5-15 percent for OpenGL games, 10-30% for DirectX games. Maybe over to 50% for games that don't work that well.

For games that run natively in linux Like quake3 the performance is generally the same. It's more dependant on the quality of the drivers developed by Nvidia and ATI then over the OS.

All things the same you can probably get a slight performance advantage in Linux. Don't think it's worth the effort of learning a entire new OS.

Although other aspects like stability, security, networking power, no built in restrictions, virus/worm free, fancy desktops, customablility, free($), free(dom) etc etc.. makes the switch worth it IMHO.