Linux

[TQB]

Anyone use Linux for the gaming PC?

 

[drag]

I do. I run Ut2004, Doom3, Quake3 + mods and several other games. Then there are literally thousands of other games out there, some good, lots of bad, mostly smaller indie type things.

For everything else I have a playstation 2 and a gamecube.

The biggest issue is the hardware. Right now the ideal gaming rig in my opinion is going to be Nvidia video card, Via motherboard (from a good quality manufacturer), AMD proccessor. Stay away from weirdness like on-board raid0/1 stuff (linux can do a better job thru it's own software raid and then you don't need special controllers. (keep all the drives as masters though, no slave drives in a raid array)), the new PCI-X stuff is touchy, and SATA controllers seem to be in contention right now, but that will clear up in the next few months. The best hardware are the ones whose manufacturers contribute to free drivers thru documentation and code, but with vid cards it can't be avoided and Nvidia is the clear choice.

Other then that you have a few big name popular games that run natively in Linux, and for the rest you have to depend on a Win32 api/DirectX-compatablility layer for linux called Cedega (formally WineX). Note that it isn't emulation it's a clone of the Win32 and DirectX programming stuff for Linux, it's not nearly 100% though and some games work better then others. Also be carefull because Cedega costs a little bit to obtain and they list games that have native versions in Linux which do not need their product to work. (native games are much perferable to games thru Cedega)

Also Wine is the original prodject that started the Win32 api for Linux, but Cedega incorporates many closed source stuff like cdrom copy/install protection that Wine will never support. Halflife 1 is a good example of a game that can be run thru Wine for free. Half-life 2 is a good example of a game you need Cedega to play in Linux.

Right now the state of gaming for Linux is that there are plenty of things to have fun with if your a Linux user, but Windows is still a preferable gaming-only platform. (pretty much everything else Linux is as good as Windows, or surpasses windows in, IMHO. The main that that Windows has over Linux is gaming, some propriatory windows-only applications, and lots of people are familar with Windows)

some links:
Linux gamers.net
Happy Penguin
LinuxGames

And there are dozens of other websites and such. It's a nice community as far as gaming goes...

 

[AnonymouseUser]

UT200X
Doom 3
Neverwinter Nights
Quake 3
Savage
RtCW

With Wine or Cedega:
Max Payne 1 and 2
GTA 3
GTA VC
UT
Mafia
Far Cry
Deus Ex (original)

There are others, but those are the ones I have played or am currently playing. I rarely boot to Windows anymore, and my primary machine only runs Linux.

 

[uOpt]

Doom3, UT2004 with Red Orchestra, Quakes, Medal of Honor, Return to Castle Wolfenstein all run well for me. I also have the old Loki crowd, Heretic2, Decent3, Myth2, Raidroad Tycoon and something I forget.

I like turn-based wargames but very few actually run under Wine, and even then it's often cases where you can't do a certain move which would hang your game. The 3D shooters are actually a lot easier to emulate in Wine than the 2D games. The 2D games rely on all kinds of weired old 2D APIs, and they try to do concurrency with fancy Win32 calls, whereas most (all?) heavy 3D games are based on an event loop. The 2D games have lots of trouble on different Windows variants, too, so that's hardly surprising. My impression on Wine is very negative.

NVidia is a must, but I don't like ATI under Windows any better either, so that's a non-issue for me. I don't think any of these games do 5.1 sound on Linux, although my 5.1 works well for DVDs. Not a big deal since I do games with headphones.

Vmware works better but I didn't bother to upgrade my VMware package to one which would run on FC2 or FC3. It's just too much effort with that real Windows that you have to network to your outer machine and the real Windows installation inside is as fragile as a real Windows installation on a physical machine. It's easier to backup, though.

 

[gwag]

Do not forget Enemy Territory and its free!!!

 

[Tbirdkid]

gaming on linux is bogus. that is why nobody makes games for linux yet. you have so much configuring and then you have to pay for a port on top of buying the game to get it to work. i had it working for a lil while, but it wasnt the best thing in the world.

if you want to try linux and keep gaming, i suggest a dual boot.

 

[drag]

I don't remember having to pay for a port to get a game to work in Linux. Unless you mean Cedega/WineX....

But there are quite a few games that get released for Linux that will run natively. You not going to get lots of titles like in Windows, but you do get enough to keep most people happy.

I definately wouldn't recommend Linux for people that are "hardcore" gamers, unless all their favorite games have native Linux versions, which is unlikely. Dual booting Win98 or XP would take care of that.

Hell you could do one thing that would be interesting to try, and I just thought of it for this purpose, is to setup software suspend for Linux. When you go into software suspend you save the contents of your RAM to your swap partition and shutdown the computer, when you reboot the system then copies the swap file contents back into RAM and effectively acts like it never was shutdown. That way you, as long as you don't have your windows partitions mounted read/write in your linux boot, can go to software suspend then boot up WinXP or whatever, then shutdown that and restore your linux session when your finished gaming....

 

[uOpt]

Speaking of annoyances, how do you guys install the UT2004 339 patch?

It has filenames in the tarfile which do not match the case (as in uppercase/lowercase) of already installed files, so it does not properly overwrite them.

Is there a vriant of tar which deals with this? Anyone else seen this?

I supposed I could do a smbmount to myself which would take care of it but that really can't be the last owrd on it.

Also, now it rejects my new Linux UT installation with a supposedly illegal CD key, although Windows didn't have a problem with it and my old installation on Linux with 323 patch ran just fine.

 

[frontwards]

where can i find an installer for quake 3 arena and quake 3 team arena? i have the windows disks, but i'm unsure of how to install it in linux (fedora).

 

[groovin]

games like Doom3 being released on linux IMO is a big step forward in linux gaming... it shows that some vendors are starting to take the linux segment very seriously. good start.

 

[Nothinman]

games like Doom3 being released on linux IMO is a big step forward in linux gaming... it shows that some vendors are starting to take the linux segment very seriously. good start.

This is nothing new from the id camp, it's the other companies that need convincing.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: frontwards
where can i find an installer for quake 3 arena and quake 3 team arena? i have the windows disks, but i'm unsure of how to install it in linux (fedora).

Easiest place to find the binaries for Linux for id games are at ftp.idsoftware.com.

The guys at id have always liked Linux very much. They even have SDK Doom3 developement enviroment that they produced to run in Linux and I wouldn't be suprised if they use it themselves for some stuff.


download the linux installer, run it the, then mount your Windows cdroms and copy the pak files over to the installation directory, just like they would be installed in the windows version. Usually stuff gets installed to /usr/local/games/

In fact if you have a Windows version aviable all you need is those .pak files. And if your installing third party maps and mods or whatnot remember everything is case sensitive. So make things lowercase if they are not.


Linux actually makes a great gaming enviroment. (for games whose developers bother to make linux versions for it.) The biggest issue used to be the sound support, but that has been mostly solved with the Alsa drivers... Now it's drivers issues with ATI cards, but that's solved by avoiding ATI cards newer then 9200 types.

 

[frontwards]

thanks drag.