Linux still a mess for gaming

[NTMBK]

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=mordor-win10-linux&num=2

 

[TeknoBug]

There are certain games that perform better under Linux than Windows like Rising World, Savage Lands, 7 Days to Die, and Cities: Skyline, etc. SoM isn't a very good example.

 

[Anteaus]

There are certain games that perform better under Linux than Windows like Rising World, Savage Lands, 7 Days to Die, and Cities: Skyline, etc. SoM isn't a very good example.

There are always exceptions, but the generality holds true. Like it or not, Linux must rely on much of the "non-free" support that Windows relies on in regards to driver updates and developer support to optimize performance on Linux. Simply being able to run a particular game is no longer considered a virtue.

Ultimately, the industry needs gamers to want to play games on Linux before it will get the support it needs, and that level of commitment simply doesn't exist right now. Valve has made a good effort with Steam, but it is still too restrictive. Outside of SteamOS, the only mainstream distro that gets any real love from Value is Ubuntu, and many Linux users including myself avoid it for various reasons. Valve's efforts are laudable, but I don't see them gaining meaningful traction unless they also up their support for Debian and CentOS and lobby hardware makers for better drivers for complete chipsets and not just any one component like GPUs.

That's my two cents.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

I use Ubuntu mate 15.04 64bit edition and dont seem to have any problems running any games as of yet..They may not always run at the highest tiptop FPS but they run. I run alot of modern games natively using steam and the ones I cant run natively I use wine or playonlinux or steam for windows in wine/playonlinux. If your doing the same maybe you need to dump the .DLL files from a windows installation disc of your choice.I noticed alot of apps/programs that normally would work perfectly for windows would not run in ubuntu untill I did a DLL dump and added them to the correct wine folders. Now I can run just about anything that most people report as not working.. This does take up alot of HDD space but it is worth it. The only thing I am bitching about is the heat issue happens while using ubuntu. In windows I have normal 32-50c temps depending on what I am running and for how long. but in ubuntu I get much higher temps. I have seen temps go as high as 60c and that is under water cooling..

 

[mmntech]

I do hope for a day when we can get an alternative to Windows for gaming. I think Steam OS has made huge strides to making more of a reality. The fact that Shadow of Mordor is on Linux at all is a small miracle. Yet it's still a long way off from being viable.

The GPU driver situation is still a huge mess. I don't see that changing anytime soon. Less than 1% of active Steam users are running Linux. To put things into perspective, there are more people still using DX9 GPUs. So it's just not worth the investment.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Yeah things are getting better slowly but surely.. I do feel your pain though and wish ubuntu and steam could make bigger improvements faster cause the few games that do work vs the large amount of games that dont gets upsetting and fast. I too have had my fair share of nightmares when it comes to GPU driver issue's in linux..

 

[Red Squirrel]

Part of the issue is video card vendors are nazis about releasing enough info that will allow the Linux community to make better drivers. It's come a long way though, a couple years ago triple monitor was not supported without some horrible workarounds, and now it is. I still keep a windows machine for gaming though.

 

[Elixer]

Part of the issue is video card vendors are nazis about releasing enough info that will allow the Linux community to make better drivers. It's come a long way though, a couple years ago triple monitor was not supported without some horrible workarounds, and now it is. I still keep a windows machine for gaming though.

AMD has released a ton of documentation, but, it don't see many people take advantage of that document dump.
Instead, they rather use binary blobs, and use nvidia parts.

 

[Red Squirrel]

AMD has released a ton of documentation, but, it don't see many people take advantage of that document dump.
Instead, they rather use binary blobs, and use nvidia parts.

That's good to know, last I heard ATI was worse than Nvidia for that, so guessing this is fairly recent? Hopefully devs take advantage of this, it may even send a message to Nvidia to do the same.

In general though I think Linux is finally starting to get a bit more recognition by companies, so we are heading in a good direction I'd say.

 

[Jodell88]

So a clear bug either in the driver or the game = linux is a mess for gaming?

 

[Maximilian]

Its not that big of a mess. Linux gaming is in a better position that its ever been. There are a number of really good games that run naively on linux these days and its got vulkan coming to replace openGL. Things are looking up, it'll take time though.

 

[ninaholic37]

I was thinking the same things as most repliers here. The quality of my posts usually deteriorate around 1am and I've learned to turn off the computer. Knowing how NTMBK normally makes more thoughtful posts than this, this seems to be one of those special cases.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Fixed the temp issue if anyone else is having the same issue I was, all I did was uninstalled the Intel drivers and reinstalled the updated ones and now temps lowered 20-30c so now I am getting 26c-32c instead of that 55c-60c crap. Put my cpu under full load with handbrake and some other benchmarks and after several hours felt the water block and rad and both were ice cold to the touch where before they felt a little to warm for my liking. anyways back to the subject.. I was trying to play Bioshock Infinite and Dying Light and noticed my 360 controller LB and RB are not working correctly and same goes for the right thumb stick.. I have tried Xpad,Joystick,And Xboxdrv to no avail.Anyone have a solution?

 

[TeknoBug]

Fixed the temp issue if anyone else is having the same issue I was, all I did was uninstalled the Intel drivers and reinstalled the updated ones and now temps lowered 20-30c so now I am getting 26c-32c instead of that 55c-60c crap. Put my cpu under full load with handbrake and some other benchmarks and after several hours felt the water block and rad and both were ice cold to the touch where before they felt a little to warm for my liking. anyways back to the subject.. I was trying to play Bioshock Infinite and Dying Light and noticed my 360 controller LB and RB are not working correctly and same goes for the right thumb stick.. I have tried Xpad,Joystick,And Xboxdrv to no avail.Anyone have a solution?

Did you reassign the buttons via Steam big picture?

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Doh... no I didnt.. I will go give that a shot asap.. thanks for the idea and I will let you know if it worked or not..

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Are SSDs so expensive that one can't install Winblows for gaming and Linux for everything else? Gamers don't think twice spending $300-999 on a video card but cannot justify $60 for another boot SSD.

 

[Anteaus]

Are SSDs so expensive that one can't install Winblows for gaming and Linux for everything else? Gamers don't think twice spending $300-999 on a video card but cannot justify $60 for another boot SSD.

I can only speak for myself, but I find dual booting to be a pita. It's about the effort, not the money. I like the dexterity of being able to go from gaming to email to the internet and back to gaming in the time it takes just to boot up linux, only to boot back into windows a few minutes later. I'm not saying this to give credit to Windows...only to say that there is efficiency in doing everything in one place, even if that place is Windows. Besides, even with an SSD linux boots ridiculously slow compared to Windows. A clean install of Debian, Ubuntu, or Mint takes 3-4 times longer to boot than Windows on comparable media. This is the downside of using bloated kernels that need to support modern PCs.

I use Linux on my other machines though.

 

[TeknoBug]

I use SSD's for all my OS's, Debian and Windows boots up around the ame time which is ~5 seconds. Also it might be a placebo effect but having UEFI enabled makes Linux boot faster.

 

[Anteaus]

I use SSD's for all my OS's, Debian and Windows boots up around the ame time which is ~5 seconds. Also it might be a placebo effect but having UEFI enabled makes Linux boot faster.

I wish I had your boot speeds. My computers take 3-5 seconds just to post. Are you doing a cold boot or is this coming from sleep/hibernation? I can get those speeds with my laptop but only if it was suspended.

Like you I use SSDs for everything.

 

[TeknoBug]

I wish I had your boot speeds. My computers take 3-5 seconds just to post. Are you doing a cold boot or is this coming from sleep/hibernation? I can get those speeds with my laptop but only if it was suspended.

Like you I use SSDs for everything.

Yes cold boot, post doesn't take long either, if I used legacy boot then yes it'd take a little longer.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Did you reassign the buttons via Steam big picture?

Nope the changes do nothing or dont take effect for some reason. Right when you start the game I can use the left and right bumper buttons then they stop working after about 5-10 seconds and then they dont work at all after that. There is something stopping them from working.. I have used everything under the sun that I can think of with no luck..

As for SSD I have my Ubnutu installed on my 64GB Sanddisk SSD and its super fast at booting up and loading programs. Unfortunately there is not enough room to install windows for dual boot on this SSD.Beside I am starting to not like windows so much after returning to Ubuntu. Video encoding in Ubuntu seems to be much much faster then in windows using handbrake. And I dont get that laggy-ness that I once had in windows.
Its odd cause I never noticed the laggy-ness in windows while using it all these years then one day a couple weeks back I tried Ubuntu live cd 15.04 and it seeme to be pretty neat so I did a full install. after using it for the last couple weeks I then tried to go back to windows which was windows 7 but noticed huge amounts of lag. everything from loading programs to bootup speed and slow mouse movements even after changing mouse speed. And its not a drive issue, its a windows issue.If it weren't for windows only compatibility for games I would completely ditch windows.
Sorry to vent my anger..

 

[Eelectricity]

In a nutshell the reason that PCs (linux,windows,mac) can't get better performance than they do now is that console developers are able to utilize the system more efficiently by doing things in parallel. Like writing textures to GPU while GPU is doing something else. It comes down to the PC world graphics API is the way it is to make it simpler to use. Console developers have to do things the hard way. Watch this video.

This is a good video that clearly explains why consoles can compete with non-consoles. I didn't say consoles could do better but just compete and why console developers can get so much performance out of lesser hardware.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1L4iLIU9xU

BTW the idea that a more difficult to use API will allow huge benefit for performance also applies to Vulkan. Game developers are going to have to step up their skill set.

 

[ninaholic37]

I wish I had your boot speeds. My computers take 3-5 seconds just to post. Are you doing a cold boot or is this coming from sleep/hibernation? I can get those speeds with my laptop but only if it was suspended.

Like you I use SSDs for everything.

When I installed Quirky April Linux (install to Partition option), my cold boot time was around 6 seconds. And this was on an old Thinkpad T41 with HDD / Legacy Boot. Windows XP booted almost just as fast, but the real killer was when the desktop actually displayed, Windows would take around 10 seconds of lag for it to load it's stuff in the background... and my XP installs were very clean with no added programs, so I'm pretty sure this is how it works by design.

TL;DR - At first glance, it seemed like XP was just as fast, until you actually tried to click on the Start menu or open anything when the desktop first shows up.

 

[Eelectricity]

Its not that big of a mess. Linux gaming is in a better position that its ever been. There are a number of really good games that run naively on linux these days and its got vulkan coming to replace openGL. Things are looking up, it'll take time though.

I agree. I hear that something coming this year for Vulkan. But I'm not sure what is going to be released. Maybe just the Vulkan API.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

When I installed Quirky April Linux (install to Partition option), my cold boot time was around 6 seconds. And this was on an old Thinkpad T41 with HDD / Legacy Boot. Windows XP booted almost just as fast, but the real killer was when the desktop actually displayed, Windows would take around 10 seconds of lag for it to load it's stuff in the background... and my XP installs were very clean with no added programs, so I'm pretty sure this is how it works by design.

TL;DR - At first glance, it seemed like XP was just as fast, until you actually tried to click on the Start menu or open anything when the desktop first shows up.

Yep that is exactly what I am talking about when I say speed and things are faster in Ubuntu. Its like Windows stalls sometimes opening programs and I have a pretty beefy system too 4820K with 32GB of ram.. I like windows 10 but something is screwy with it now and soon as I install it and do all the updates it decides to expand and fill up my ssd. I have ran virus scans and malware this and that you name it but it never turns up anything. I turned of hibernate and pagefile has been lowered to 5gb but I am at a loss so now I am stuck running Ubuntu cause I cant keep reinstalling windows over and over again.Anyways like I was saying before if you are having issues install any games you should try playonlinux its a side tool for wine that will install just about anything and auto insert needed files you would typically miss.it plays windows games fine for the most part but it all comes down to not being able to use a 360 controller with games that support it.Thats all I want right now is for them to fix this one tiny little issue and I will be happy..