Forbes Tries To Game on Linux

ManofGod said:
Oh, so you have the determination of what a gamer is and is not? LOL! Welcome to the biggest reason Linux will not take over on the desktop. :) They have had 25 years and still have not succeeded in gaining any meaningful market penetration on the desktop. Oh well, this is not for lack of trying and they should just keep plugging away, regardless.
Click to expand...


Linux doesn't need market penetration.

In fact, it is better if it doesn't get market penetration.

If it goes to a place of broad market appeal it is inevitably going to lose much of what those of us who love Linux love about it, as it is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator level.

Please, keep Linux by the geekiest of geeks, for the geekiest of geeks.

Just like the Internet used to be like, back when it was good.
 
NoOther said:
You can say that about any OS honestly.

This is false. As I have stated, and this is you equating them yet again. With Windows, you still need to get updates for Nvidia, those updates sometimes crash things, some people don't always get the updates and have performance issues. Console ports still run like crap on Windows. There are also differences depending on what graphics card you have. So no, it is not always 100% better.

The problem is when people continually want to blame the wrong thing. No progress is made that way. The intent of this thread is about the state of gaming in Linux and how that can be improve. Identify the problem, developers and hardware makers not developing for Linux. That is the issue. A single market that pushed closed source development early on that helped to create a monopoly. Blaming Linux and saying it is a "Linux performance issue" is just incorrect.
Click to expand...


You don't seem to get that it is not a matter of blame. Blame doesn't matter.

Lets take the labels off of things and just do a blind comparison.

Option A:
A good chunk of titles have large performance hits, regardless of which drivers or versions of other software you install. For those titles you simply cannot overcome the performance deficit no matter what you do.

Option B:
As long as you keep your shit up to date, things will run as intended at full performance all the time.


I choose option B. Sure, it may not be the fault of Option A that many titles run poorly on it, but in the end that doesn't matter to the end user who just wants the best performance out of their titles no matter what.

I like Linux. 90+% of my personal computing time is spent using Linux. I'm posting from Linux right now. I don't use it for games, because I am unwilling to sacrifice the performance, and no matter what I do, no matter what drivers I update or what versions of Mesa or DXVK I use a large number of titles simply will not perform well under it.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
You don't seem to get that it is not a matter of blame. Blame doesn't matter.

Lets take the labels off of things and just do a blind comparison.

Option A:
A good chunk of titles have large performance hits, regardless of which drivers or versions of other software you install. For those titles you simply cannot overcome the performance deficit no matter what you do.

Option B:
As long as you keep your shit up to date, things will run as intended at full performance all the time.


I choose option B. Sure, it may not be the fault of Option A that many titles run poorly on it, but in the end that doesn't matter to the end user who just wants the best performance out of their titles no matter what.

I like Linux. 90+% of my personal computing time is spent using Linux. I'm posting from Linux right now. I don't use it for games, because I am unwilling to sacrifice the performance, and no matter what I do, no matter what drivers I update or what versions of Mesa or DXVK I use a large number of titles simply will not perform well under it.
Click to expand...

Option B completely excludes the conversation of gaming on Linux which is the intent of the thread. You want to talk about gaming in general, take it elsewhere. This is about gaming on Linux specifically. The best way to improve gaming on Linux is to get more developers involved writing code for Linux.
 
NoOther said:
Option B completely excludes the conversation of gaming on Linux which is the intent of the thread. You want to talk about gaming in general, take it elsewhere. This is about gaming on Linux specifically. The best way to improve gaming on Linux is to get more developers involved writing code for Linux.
Click to expand...

That Forbes article does quite some comparing and contrasting between the operating systems gaming abilities.

Even if it didn't, any discussion about the maturity of gaming on Linux is inevitably going to involve comparing and contrasting it to other options out there.

Thus this is well within the topic at hand.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
That Forbes article does quite some comparing and contrasting between the operating systems gaming abilities.

Even if it didn't, any discussion about the maturity of gaming on Linux is inevitably going to involve comparing and contrasting it to other options out there.

Thus this is well within the topic at hand.
Click to expand...

By erroneously stating the only options are to have reduced performance on Linux or game on Windows? That isn't even a true statement in itself. Nor does it actually further or address gaming on Linux, instead it advocates the opposite. So within the the topic? I hardly think so.

Also, where in the article does it compare gaming on Linux to Windows? The only comparison to Windows in the article talks about driver update frequency...no other comparisons. It mentions people playing games they played on Windows on Linux. It does not actually compare Linux to Windows. The article was strictly about how you play games on Linux and problems therein.
 
Radeon VII is where they made open source drivers available on day one, at this point I think AMD has fully caught up on driver release scheduling.

At this point both GPU manufacturers are expected to have Linux drivers on day1 for any new cards.

Zarathustra[H] said:
Agreed. I have been using them for years.

Correct me if I am wrong though, but since we are talking about gaming on Linux, much of the recent focus of Linux gaming has been AMD focused since AMD apparently has better DXVK support or something like that.

Now, while Nvidia's binary blob drivers are usually their best drivers, and their open source drivers generally are lackluster, on AMD the opposite has been true for at least the last 10-15 years or so. Their binary closed source (FireGL?) drivers are generally regarded as being pretty poor, unstable and buggy, and their open source drivers are generally the preferred ones for best use. The open source drivers are not available eon day one though.
Click to expand...
 
Not _every_ game works in Windows either, it's a moot point.

Thousands of games work in Linux. And with things like Lutris, Steam Play, Feral, and other such things, gaming on Linux is actually, by a wide margin, that easy. Just click install, run. (there are exceptions, but at this point, they are the exceptions, not the norm, and the gap is closing daily).

As for nVidia drivers, yeah, but it's actually easier to install them in Linux than in Windows, and your software repositories deliver you driver updates in less invasive ways than in Windows.

If you want your hand held every step of the way, get a console.

ThatITGuy said:
This was already responded to, but just pointing out, you still need to update the graphics drivers to use something other than the Nouveau driver if you have Nvidia graphics. Also, this is a bit simplistic, as not EVERY game works in Linux. I do think Steam has made great strides in making gaming on Linux easier, but if you are trying to play games that are not installed/run through Steam then level of difficulty ramps up greatly compared to "run installer, let install finish, run .exe". My initial attempts to get games running in WINE resulted in a lot of frustration and me going back to Windows/dropping Linux for the past 4 or 5 years.



Seeing as how i recently switched a number of my home PCs from Windows based to Linux, I would agree with this. I think one problem is that those unfamiliar may get overloaded with all of the options and what the "intent" of that distro is, especially when Windows seems to give you the best of both worlds. While I was able to get what I needed using Linux, there was a learning curve to getting it all working and i spent part of that time installing distros, tinkering, and then wiping it to try another distro. Its like that psychology experiment that showed people actually were more satisfied when they had fewer choices in ice cream flavors than when they had more choices. With Windows, you only have 2 choices: Desktop or Server edition (ignoring the Pro vs Home vs etc. fluff), and really only one choice since most people wouldn't even think of the Server edition. When that single choice gives you compatibility with pretty much everything and the competition has different levels of compatibility depending on the "flavor" you choose, it just further overwhelms.
All of that said, I do not like the direction Windows has been taking. I now run Ubuntu for my Plex/Home File Server, with XFCE for a desktop when i want to VNC into it. I also installed Manjaro (KDE desktop) on one of my other PCs for tinkering and basic gaming. I still keep my main desktop as Windows for gaming, but I am finding that I can do almost everything I would do on the Windows PC just as easily on the Linux machine. I think I tended to overestimate what I thought I might do on the PC, and found that really 99% of the time I am doing things that don't really necessitate Windows (browsing the web/streaming Netflix, playing music, sending emails, reading [H], and even some basic gaming). I still have my Windows PC for that 1% of the time when i want to actually game.
Click to expand...
 
My demo rig has like 1 or 2, as in the one I use to demonstrate gaming on Linux in my video(s). (as in, I need to make more of them :( ).

The PPAs that I use that I actually care about:
  1. for nVidia drivers
  2. for copyq (it's a nice tool)
  3. for libreoffice (so I can get newer version faster, many people don't need this)
  4. for lutris
  5. for riot
  6. for nextcloud (again not needed, except by me)
  7. for remmina (for me, most wont care)
  8. for vivaldi (this gets setup automatically from the vivaldi deb)
  9. for kdeconnect (to do neato stuff with mpy phone)

Most of those people won't run, I'm a power user, so this list is not representational of the typical use-cases.

ChadD said:
We are on the same side here BI don't get me wrong.... but sadly no the workstation Distro Ubuntu does not go that way unless your running a AMD GPU. It goes.
1. Install Ubunti
2. install third party PPA... which to me and you and anyone that works with Linux all day its no big thing. But to a new user its not an "official" Ubuntu thing and not as simple as we say it is really. If said regular user is using something like say a AMD 2200/2400G part they are also going to run into issues with installation... as the older Ubuntu install media isn't going to be using the latest working stable raven ridge kernels.
3. Install steam
4.... your right mostly just go and play.

I'm not saying its insanely hard or anything. Its just a different way to install drivers.

Ubuntu is way overrated imo... and it does Linux in general no favors. Its a fine workstation distro... but for regular end users its got a terrible distribution model. Its just in way shape or form ready to go at install for almost any home user. If you want proof... how many PPAs are you using ? Let me guess its well over 20 isn't it. lol I have argued with Ubuntu boosters that claim to be running over 100 PPAs.... which means a huge % of their system isn't even Ubuntu anymore. Better to run a disro that gives you access to all that latest versioning in the official repos.
Click to expand...
 
BloodyIron said:
Not _every_ game works in Windows either, it's a moot point.

Thousands of games work in Linux. And with things like Lutris, Steam Play, Feral, and other such things, gaming on Linux is actually, by a wide margin, that easy. Just click install, run. (there are exceptions, but at this point, they are the exceptions, not the norm, and the gap is closing daily).

As for nVidia drivers, yeah, but it's actually easier to install them in Linux than in Windows, and your software repositories deliver you driver updates in less invasive ways than in Windows.

If you want your hand held every step of the way, get a console.
Click to expand...

Not to mention that under windows.... a large number of games these days are tied to terrible store fronts. Nothing like being forced to install a spyware sales showcase that wants to start itself and its update service forever more in order to play a game.

Its funny that some windows gamer's will complain about having to use steam and lutris ect... yet they have 3-4 store fronts on their windows boxes cause every developer seems to have their own service platform.
 
BloodyIron said:
My demo rig has like 1 or 2, as in the one I use to demonstrate gaming on Linux in my video(s). (as in, I need to make more of them :( ).

The PPAs that I use that I actually care about:
  1. for nVidia drivers
  2. for copyq (it's a nice tool)
  3. for libreoffice (so I can get newer version faster, many people don't need this)
  4. for lutris
  5. for riot
  6. for nextcloud (again not needed, except by me)
  7. for remmina (for me, most wont care)
  8. for vivaldi (this gets setup automatically from the vivaldi deb)
  9. for kdeconnect (to do neato stuff with mpy phone)

Most of those people won't run, I'm a power user, so this list is not representational of the typical use-cases.
Click to expand...

That's fair... and like I was saying I'm not trying to attack Linux Ubuntu users. Its a fine distro... I just don't believe its the right distro for new Linux gamers. All the things people still wine about when they attempt to switch.... are not issues unless your trying to game on a distro designed as an enterprise workstation. (which is exactly what Ubuntu is) Like it or not canonical is not in the business of making a distro for gamers or everyone. They are in the business of selling large workstation rollouts and server support. Its why you have to use PPAs for things like nvidia drivers. I agree that isn't a big process... its just to my way of thinking there are distros that don't require that extra work. For someone just switching over that (wrongly) has a fear of a command line. Walking them through adding PPA archives (when they have no idea what they are doing and just blind punching things into the command line on faith) is not a great switcher experience.

With Manjaro.... those Nvidia drivers where installed before the first install screen even pops up... cause its one of the few Distros that allows you to install the latest Nvidia drivers at install. (not 5 min after.... at install) No blacklisting the neuvejunk driver (ok that isn't Ubuntu but last I used SUSE, another enterprise distro I have heard mentioned as a gaming option... that was still often required) Everything you listed using a PPA for... have upto date versions in the standard Manjaro repositories. To be honest its possible your PPAs might have newer versions slighly... as I have said Manjaro does hold things for added testing at times. Where as a lot of PPAs pull direct from git.

I know I can setup pretty much any distro to game... RHEL/Cent SLES, I have for giggles set them up to game. (its stupid and I wouldn't say those systems where still as rock solid as RHEL/SLES users would be used to) My only point is ya Linux is Linux you can game on anything. What is different about any distro is its repositories and how they are handled... and default settings. Which is why I always go back to Manjaro. IMO Ubuntu is a fine gaming platform if you know enough about Linux to set things up properly... or for a new user that expects to be a humble student for a good while.

Anyway... ya this forbes guy. Almost his entire laundry list of stuff that wasn't perfect. Solved by selecting a distro that took care of his issues before he would have known they where issues. Its not possible of course... but I do wonder how different his experience would have been if he was running a distro that was game ready after the first boot.
 
naib said:
or the game shortcomings
Click to expand...

It wouldn't be an OS shortcoming if it needs to be done on a game-by-game basis; not to say that there aren't shortcomings in all OS's. This is going to be worse for Linux I imagine, should support take off; fragmentation and uneven distribution package versioning as ChadD mentions with respect to Ubuntu is going to be an issue.

I'll say that I do hope that Manjaro does get more attention as a gaming distro; perhaps even a 'gaming fork' might be in order, one that involves a bit of curation with respect to drivers and perhaps WINE and other support innards.
 
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IdiotInCharge said:
It wouldn't be an OS shortcoming if it needs to be done on a game-by-game basis; not to say that there aren't shortcomings in all OS's. This is going to be worse for Linux I imagine, should support take off; fragmentation and uneven distribution package versioning as ChadD mentions with respect to Ubuntu is going to be an issue.

I'll say that I do hope that Manjaro does get more attention as a gaming distro; perhaps even a 'gaming fork' might be in order, one that involves a bit of curation with respect to drivers and perhaps WINE and other support innards.
Click to expand...
All distro's pull from the same upstream source: kernel, glibc, gcc ... They all adhere to the global standards, the LFS... This fragmentation, this uneven distribution packaging which is always thrown around as to why targeting linux is hard/isn't possible/is why linux won't take off ISNT as much of an issue as people make out it is.

A distro updates against its release cycle. typically every 6 months, some every 30min, some every couple of years (ignoring the security updates). The development of the libraries are equally done at their own pace. These are all asynchronous to each other. At any moment in time the minor version number will be different between distro's (where the versioning scheme is typically FEATURE.MAJOR.MINOR) but here is the thing, the backwards compatibility is phenomenal, the fact the FEATURE and/or MAJOR version number is encoded in the filename means multiple can live side by size (mitigating the mess that is WinSxS )

This fragmentation, this uneven versions is not as much of an issue. EXCEPT when there is a major technology change and over the past few months this has been occuring with Vulkan, Proton, dxvk . Now this can cause some issues if something like this is released mid Distro cycle and people could be sat there going "oh I want this, why can't I have this" BUT this is a side-effect of opensource and wanting what you don't have. Wait at least 6months and bam your distro of choice will have it. Now if you can't wait 6months (or you are on one of those slow but stable distro's) well... this is just matching a release cycle to your needs. Noone would pick RedHat for gaming, Noone would pick Arch for mission critical servers. Too often people conflate the mission statement of a packaging team (which essentially all a distro dev team is) with the fact there is too many distributions.

Now step back, look at windows, look at the different versions, the different levels of patch levels each one could have across the world, look at the incompatibilities that arise when MS tries to do what Linux does and runs 6month cycles. They are more similar than you think.
Equally Steam sandbox a subset of libraries for when game developers think this is an issue AND guess what... I have set the steam flag to use my local system libraries AND I run gentoo unstable YET all my games run justfine, so what is this fragmentation, what is this uneven distribution packages, what is the actual end manifestation? I see more issues in windows than I do in linux. I had 1709 pushed to my machine by corporate and I had to install half my applications, Tanium ran away in constant diskaccess (reducing my overall performance due to all the disk IO), incompatibilities with the solstice boxes we use ... the list goes on AND this is so that I can be productive hahahahahahaha
 
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BloodyIron said:
Not _every_ game works in Windows either, it's a moot point.

If you want your hand held every step of the way, get a console.
Click to expand...

Not true, every Windows Games works 100% in Windows and most games out there are Windows based. (All PC games are Windows based.) As for the last point, that is not going to bring people over to the Linux side of things. At one point, you claim it is easier to do things in Linux than Windows and than on the the other point, you claim Linux will need people who know how to do things without their hand being held.

Linux advocates need to see the weaknesses of the Linux platform as they really are, not choosing to be blind to them and argue when people point them out. Ah, oh well, Linux gaming is at the same level it was at in 2006, advancing but not anywhere near completely useful.
 
There's also that older Windows games run better on Linux than "modern" Windows XD

I agree with your points btw

ChadD said:
Not to mention that under windows.... a large number of games these days are tied to terrible store fronts. Nothing like being forced to install a spyware sales showcase that wants to start itself and its update service forever more in order to play a game.

Its funny that some windows gamer's will complain about having to use steam and lutris ect... yet they have 3-4 store fronts on their windows boxes cause every developer seems to have their own service platform.
Click to expand...
 
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Well then maybe we need to convince Canonical to streamline GPU driver stuff in the initial setup. I agree there's room for improvement there. And this is where Open Source shines, we can influence development of such things :D

ChadD said:
That's fair... and like I was saying I'm not trying to attack Linux Ubuntu users. Its a fine distro... I just don't believe its the right distro for new Linux gamers. All the things people still wine about when they attempt to switch.... are not issues unless your trying to game on a distro designed as an enterprise workstation. (which is exactly what Ubuntu is) Like it or not canonical is not in the business of making a distro for gamers or everyone. They are in the business of selling large workstation rollouts and server support. Its why you have to use PPAs for things like nvidia drivers. I agree that isn't a big process... its just to my way of thinking there are distros that don't require that extra work. For someone just switching over that (wrongly) has a fear of a command line. Walking them through adding PPA archives (when they have no idea what they are doing and just blind punching things into the command line on faith) is not a great switcher experience.

With Manjaro.... those Nvidia drivers where installed before the first install screen even pops up... cause its one of the few Distros that allows you to install the latest Nvidia drivers at install. (not 5 min after.... at install) No blacklisting the neuvejunk driver (ok that isn't Ubuntu but last I used SUSE, another enterprise distro I have heard mentioned as a gaming option... that was still often required) Everything you listed using a PPA for... have upto date versions in the standard Manjaro repositories. To be honest its possible your PPAs might have newer versions slighly... as I have said Manjaro does hold things for added testing at times. Where as a lot of PPAs pull direct from git.

I know I can setup pretty much any distro to game... RHEL/Cent SLES, I have for giggles set them up to game. (its stupid and I wouldn't say those systems where still as rock solid as RHEL/SLES users would be used to) My only point is ya Linux is Linux you can game on anything. What is different about any distro is its repositories and how they are handled... and default settings. Which is why I always go back to Manjaro. IMO Ubuntu is a fine gaming platform if you know enough about Linux to set things up properly... or for a new user that expects to be a humble student for a good while.

Anyway... ya this forbes guy. Almost his entire laundry list of stuff that wasn't perfect. Solved by selecting a distro that took care of his issues before he would have known they where issues. Its not possible of course... but I do wonder how different his experience would have been if he was running a distro that was game ready after the first boot.
Click to expand...
 
  1. Try to get Sid Meier's Railroads! working on WIndows 10, good luck with that
  2. There's hundreds to thousands of games only released on console, to say all games run on Windows is simply ignoring that gaming is more than just Windows
  3. Yes, there are a good chunk of common tasks that are easier to do in Linux than in Windows, and that does include drivers. I welcome you to do side by side comparison on the same hardware and time the time it takes you to go from fresh install, to fully updated and all drivers working. I guarantee you Linux will be faster in every single hardware configuration. I've done these comparisons myself. And yes, this does include WIndows 10.

I work on Windows and Linux all the fucking time, I actually have industrial experience (15+ years Linux ~20yrs Windows) to back myself up. Have you even come close to one year of Linux experience? Go eat some dog food already and see what it's really like. -> https://ubuntu.com

Linux gaming most certainly is not at the level of 2006, now you're the one with the blinders on.

ManofGod said:
Not true, every Windows Games works 100% in Windows and most games out there are Windows based. (All PC games are Windows based.) As for the last point, that is not going to bring people over to the Linux side of things. At one point, you claim it is easier to do things in Linux than Windows and than on the the other point, you claim Linux will need people who know how to do things without their hand being held.

Linux advocates need to see the weaknesses of the Linux platform as they really are, not choosing to be blind to them and argue when people point them out. Ah, oh well, Linux gaming is at the same level it was at in 2006, advancing but not anywhere near completely useful.
Click to expand...
 
BloodyIron said:
Well then maybe we need to convince Canonical to streamline GPU driver stuff in the initial setup. I agree there's room for improvement there. And this is where Open Source shines, we can influence development of such things :D
Click to expand...

ChadD said:
Not to mention that under windows.... a large number of games these days are tied to terrible store fronts. Nothing like being forced to install a spyware sales showcase that wants to start itself and its update service forever more in order to play a game.

Its funny that some windows gamer's will complain about having to use steam and lutris ect... yet they have 3-4 store fronts on their windows boxes cause every developer seems to have their own service platform.
Click to expand...

Which means no Play Anywhere Titles, no UPlay Titles, no Origin Titles and now no Epic Titles work on Linux. That is quite a few games that do not work on Linux, whatsoever. Those are the facts.

BloodyIron said:
  1. Try to get Sid Meier's Railroads! working on WIndows 10, good luck with that
  2. There's hundreds to thousands of games only released on console, to say all games run on Windows is simply ignoring that gaming is more than just Windows
  3. Yes, there are a good chunk of common tasks that are easier to do in Linux than in Windows, and that does include drivers. I welcome you to do side by side comparison on the same hardware and time the time it takes you to go from fresh install, to fully updated and all drivers working. I guarantee you Linux will be faster in every single hardware configuration. I've done these comparisons myself. And yes, this does include WIndows 10.
I work on Windows and Linux all the fucking time, I actually have industrial experience (15+ years Linux ~20yrs Windows) to back myself up. Have you even come close to one year of Linux experience? Go eat some dog food already and see what it's really like. -> https://ubuntu.com

Linux gaming most certainly is not at the level of 2006, now you're the one with the blinders on.
Click to expand...

Wow, you clearly have no objectivity because someone who was objective about what they use would not respond as you have. Also, you clearly ignored the context of my comment but hey, whatever, facts do not change regardless. I have been using Linux myself since 1995 or so and have very rarely seen someone actually describe Linux Desktop in a way that can stand strictly on it's own. You are taking things way to personally, especially for a OS that does not belong to you and you did not develop yourself.

Blinders? I have been gaming on the PC since 1993 and computer gaming since at least 1990. If you are not happy with my point of view, that is fine, I do not need you to agree with me. Not every Steam game is supported, all games with copy protection are not supported, which is the exact same issue older games have with Windows 10, or a Windows 98 era game, that requires a 16 bit installer and therefore, will not install on a 32 Bit OS or above, including Linux.

I do not know everything and freely admit it but what I do know is what it is. As for your point number 2, please, check the context of my post.............
 
IdiotInCharge said:
It wouldn't be an OS shortcoming if it needs to be done on a game-by-game basis; not to say that there aren't shortcomings in all OS's. This is going to be worse for Linux I imagine, should support take off; fragmentation and uneven distribution package versioning as ChadD mentions with respect to Ubuntu is going to be an issue.

I'll say that I do hope that Manjaro does get more attention as a gaming distro; perhaps even a 'gaming fork' might be in order, one that involves a bit of curation with respect to drivers and perhaps WINE and other support innards.
Click to expand...

Well despite what I said attacking Ubuntu and the like they do game fine once they are setup properly... its just more stuff your asking end users who are often brand new to Linux to do before they get going. That is the part that I don't like.

Your right though... a few tweaks to Manjaro (or Solus perhaps) where they installed a few more tools out of the box wouldn't be bad. Steam is almost all that is required... now that it allows you to add non steam titles under Linux and run them via proton. (they added that a little while ago not sure if people know that). Still there are some people that hate steam / valve for whatever reason ect... a default installation of wine and DXVK would be nice as well. Wine and DXVK are almost at the point where once you have them setup most windows stuff installs as easily as it does on Windows (I said almost... I know its not perfect yet). Its the installation of Wine and perhaps more DXVK that would throw most new Linux people imo.
 
naib said:
All distro's pull from the same upstream source: kernel, glibc, gcc ... They all adhere to the global standards, the LFS... This fragmentation, this uneven distribution packaging which is always thrown around as to why targeting linux is hard/isn't possible/is why linux won't take off ISNT as much of an issue as people make out it is.

A distro updates against its release cycle. typically every 6 months, some every 30min, some every couple of years (ignoring the security updates). The development of the libraries are equally done at their own pace. These are all asynchronous to each other. At any moment in time the minor version number will be different between distro's (where the versioning scheme is typically FEATURE.MAJOR.MINOR) but here is the thing, the backwards compatibility is phenomenal, the fact the FEATURE and/or MAJOR version number is encoded in the filename means multiple can live side by size (mitigating the mess that is WinSxS )

This fragmentation, this uneven versions is not as much of an issue. EXCEPT when there is a major technology change and over the past few months this has been occuring with Vulkan, Proton, dxvk . Now this can cause some issues if something like this is released mid Distro cycle and people could be sat there going "oh I want this, why can't I have this" BUT this is a side-effect of opensource and wanting what you don't have. Wait at least 6months and bam your distro of choice will have it. Now if you can't wait 6months (or you are on one of those slow but stable distro's) well... this is just matching a release cycle to your needs. Noone would pick RedHat for gaming, Noone would pick Arch for mission critical servers. Too often people conflate the mission statement of a packaging team (which essentially all a distro dev team is) with the fact there is too many distributions.

Now step back, look at windows, look at the different versions, the different levels of patch levels each one could have across the world, look at the incompatibilities that arise when MS tries to do what Linux does and runs 6month cycles. They are more similar than you think.
Equally Steam sandbox a subset of libraries for when game developers think this is an issue AND guess what... I have set the steam flag to use my local system libraries AND I run gentoo unstable YET all my games run justfine, so what is this fragmentation, what is this uneven distribution packages, what is the actual end manifestation? I see more issues in windows than I do in linux. I had 1709 pushed to my machine by corporate and I had to install half my applications, Tanium ran away in constant diskaccess (reducing my overall performance due to all the disk IO), incompatibilities with the solstice boxes we use ... the list goes on AND this is so that I can be productive hahahahahahaha
Click to expand...

I agree with you and IC. lol

It both isn't as big an issue as some make out (developers for sure its not a good reason to not build Linux binaries) and yet its still a bit of an issue in regard to game experience. There can be a big difference for say something like MESA from 18.2 to 18.3 to 19.0. Too often we tell brand new users to add say a MESA third party repo that gives them the latest release candidate... so they both have no idea really what they just did to get that package, and end up on testing branch software in a lot of cases which isn't a great solution for a new user. (yes I know there are PPAs that would install the latest stable... but windows gamers in general ime tend to be the lets install the latest 0day testing driver more FPS man more FPS ;)) Another reason I like a distro like Manjaro... right now the official mesa version is 18.3 in Manjaro. Its the current release its stable and runs great. Sure there are some tweaks in 19 but its not ready for prime time yet.... in a few weeks Manajro will no doubt bump to 19 when it has a stable release.

Anyway ya your right... for the most part software runs just fine. Most package managers do bump dependency versioning if required ect. So the "fragmentation" is mostly a non issue I agree. Games are just it seems the most sensitive to slight library differences.
 
BloodyIron said:
Well then maybe we need to convince Canonical to streamline GPU driver stuff in the initial setup. I agree there's room for improvement there. And this is where Open Source shines, we can influence development of such things :D
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Well that is the problem. No one will EVER convince Canonical to ship out of the box the latest week old version of a Nvidia driver. Or to ship a version of MESA that hasn't been tested for 6 months.

Cause their only paying clients are enterprise workstation and server clients. Those paying customers have no need for the latest 3D libraries to drive games. They want rock solid workstations for Jane and John in accounting that won't crash ever out of the box. If they really have stations in a dept that need those libraries for some reasons their techs can easily add them.

That is the problem with Canonical... they don't make an Ubuntu home edition. With a ton of testing (or current but not bulletproof tested) packages... they make Ubuntu for Enterprise and allow anyone to download it. Red Hat is a bit better that way in that they have Fedora which isn't intended for their enterprise users... but they have a ZERO non free stuff policy. So that means out of the box installs of NV drivers are out there. SUSE makes a rock solid enterprise distro (My personal fav) but again their for everyone Leap distro is still really conservative as Suse knows many of their big clients will use Leap still... and their rolling tumbleweed is too GIT rolling for new users.

Which is why I suggest Manjaro. Its based on arch which has no enterprise aspirations. The Manjaro folks have no enterprise aspirations either. They are projects aimed at people that love Linux desktop that is it. No server first choices... no enterprise first choices.
https://www.archlinux.org/about/
"Development focuses on simplicity, minimalism, and code elegance." Of course that is just the base.
https://manjaro.org/
"Based on Arch Linux, Manjaro provides all the benefits of cutting-edge software combined with a focus on getting started quickly, automated tools to require less manual intervention....
Manjaro can represent a perfect middle-ground for experienced Linux users, those who want good performance, full control, and cutting-edge software but also a degree of software version stability."

Just saying no need to pressure Canonical or Red hat or Suse.... Linux is Linux and a community of Linux desktop users is already out there trying to create the perfect end user distro. :) lol

PS... know its all in good fun. I know the windows boosters see us debating distros and its red meat perhaps. But that is the great thing about Linux anyone can fork a distro to do exactly what they want it to do.
 
I like Mint and have it on dual boot on a couple laptops. But my primary gaming rig? Nah, man.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Linux doesn't need market penetration.

In fact, it is better if it doesn't get market penetration.

If it goes to a place of broad market appeal it is inevitably going to lose much of what those of us who love Linux love about it, as it is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator level.

Please, keep Linux by the geekiest of geeks, for the geekiest of geeks.

Just like the Internet used to be like, back when it was good.
Click to expand...

So few people understand how important this is. It applies to more than just geeks, it is vital for every community to have its niche area, members only.
 
Ever since Windows 10 came out in 2015 I haven't been able to take microsoft windows products seriously.

Between the lack of control and customization of the OS, the forced updates, including drivers "updates" that crater the system, the spying and phoning home on users, The vastly shortened battery life vs windows 7 or even ACPI/TLP enabled linux kernels, the lack of compatibility with my older hardware, and software including win16 and even some win32 titles..(Battlefield: Vietnam being notable) I find it more of a trouble and a hackjob to keep running than I do my Linux-based oses.

Linux has also resurrected some of my old systems which by microsoft standards are a paper weight (Dell Studio 1558 notebook doesn't support windows 10 officially and is missing ALOT of functionality including brightness controls and proper power management support. It's also VERY crash happy, Asus X205TA is stuck on a 32bit windows 10 due to having a 32bit uefi implementation even though the cpu is capable of 64bit software and operation. The 32GB MMC chip makes it very difficult to upgrade windows feature updates without a reinstall due to a lack of space as well).


I haven't ran a microsoft operating system since I jumped ship from Windows 7 in 2017. Between Ubuntu, Mint, Arch, and LFS all of my hardware is covered to full functionality, and Lutris, Crossover, Playonlinux, Steam Proton, and the wine all my software is covered in some way and is "good enough".

My job is a sore spot.. they still use the Microsoft trifecta (windows desktop, office 2010-2016, windows server/AD) So to deal with that I have old MacBook Pro running 10.11.6 El Capitan with Office 2016 for compatibility. If it dies I'm thinking of moving it all to a contained VM of win7 or getting Office 2016 to run with Crossover/wine.


To pull me back to windows, The next Windows operating system needs to be a REAL desktop os like Windows 7 was.. (no tablet interface crap) with the kernel refinements, and improvements NT has received since win 8/10. It also needs to have true native POSIX compliance for proper software development and not bolted on crap like Windows Subsystem for Linux. Needs to have proper customization and modularization / granularity to tailor to your and your system's needs
 
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"Do or do not, there is no try" -Yoda

Try to game on Linux. OMG personal package archives......

The thing that bothers me, the word "tries" in the title. It really isn't that difficult to figure out. OMG problem solving..... Pussies
 
Using Ubuntu 18.10 as an example, users just need to go "Software & Updates" and click on "Additional Drivers." There you'll see an option to install the Nvidia Driver metapackage, labeled as nvidia-driver-390. Select it, click apply, and you're no longer using that subpar open source driver.

But here's the first problem: is this all common knowledge for new users? I'm willing to bet it is not.
Click to expand...

At the risk of sounding like an elitist Linux ass, how is this any more difficult than Windows? I use Linux professionally, but I still game on Windows. When I put a new graphics card in my Windows 10 PC, Windows downloads and installs some crappy generic driver. I then have to know to go to the Nvidia website, download this thing called "The GeForce Experience", create an account, log in, navigate through the menu system, and then download and install the latest driver.
 
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wizdum said:
At the risk of sounding like an elitist Linux ass, how is this any more difficult than Windows? I use Linux professionally, but I still game on Windows. When I put a new graphics card in my Windows 10 PC, Windows downloads and installs some crappy generic driver. I then have to know to go to the Nvidia website, download this thing called "The GeForce Experience", create an account, log in, navigate through the menu system, and then download and install the latest driver.
Click to expand...

Oh how many times have I had to explain to a new Linux user that that Linux driver on the Nvidia website is NOT for them. :)

People learn one way of doing things... and try and import that knowledge to something different. Human nature I guess.
 
ChadD said:
No need... my Linux box runs it all. ;)
Click to expand...

Runs all you have, possibly but runs it all? Nope, not even close to possible. (You are referring specifically to one build, one computer, one distro and no, it does not run it all.)
 
ManofGod said:
Runs all you have, possibly but runs it all? Nope, not even close to possible. (You are referring specifically to one build, one computer, one distro and no, it does not run it all.)
Click to expand...

Covers all my old gaming needs far more efficiently then any alternative. Dos / old win stuff / consoles both new(ish) and old / C64.. atari ect ect.

The only stuff I have issue with running is newer DRM laden crap... and frankly that doesn't really upset me.
 
At this point, I've heard you out, and you're completely unwilling to consider what I have to say.

So, I'm done listening to you and wasting my time trying to converse with you.

ManofGod said:
Which means no Play Anywhere Titles, no UPlay Titles, no Origin Titles and now no Epic Titles work on Linux. That is quite a few games that do not work on Linux, whatsoever. Those are the facts.



Wow, you clearly have no objectivity because someone who was objective about what they use would not respond as you have. Also, you clearly ignored the context of my comment but hey, whatever, facts do not change regardless. I have been using Linux myself since 1995 or so and have very rarely seen someone actually describe Linux Desktop in a way that can stand strictly on it's own. You are taking things way to personally, especially for a OS that does not belong to you and you did not develop yourself.

Blinders? I have been gaming on the PC since 1993 and computer gaming since at least 1990. If you are not happy with my point of view, that is fine, I do not need you to agree with me. Not every Steam game is supported, all games with copy protection are not supported, which is the exact same issue older games have with Windows 10, or a Windows 98 era game, that requires a 16 bit installer and therefore, will not install on a 32 Bit OS or above, including Linux.

I do not know everything and freely admit it but what I do know is what it is. As for your point number 2, please, check the context of my post.............
Click to expand...
 
Well, I was more meaning make it so it's a selectable option during install, not so much default option.

ChadD said:
Well that is the problem. No one will EVER convince Canonical to ship out of the box the latest week old version of a Nvidia driver. Or to ship a version of MESA that hasn't been tested for 6 months.

Cause their only paying clients are enterprise workstation and server clients. Those paying customers have no need for the latest 3D libraries to drive games. They want rock solid workstations for Jane and John in accounting that won't crash ever out of the box. If they really have stations in a dept that need those libraries for some reasons their techs can easily add them.

That is the problem with Canonical... they don't make an Ubuntu home edition. With a ton of testing (or current but not bulletproof tested) packages... they make Ubuntu for Enterprise and allow anyone to download it. Red Hat is a bit better that way in that they have Fedora which isn't intended for their enterprise users... but they have a ZERO non free stuff policy. So that means out of the box installs of NV drivers are out there. SUSE makes a rock solid enterprise distro (My personal fav) but again their for everyone Leap distro is still really conservative as Suse knows many of their big clients will use Leap still... and their rolling tumbleweed is too GIT rolling for new users.

Which is why I suggest Manjaro. Its based on arch which has no enterprise aspirations. The Manjaro folks have no enterprise aspirations either. They are projects aimed at people that love Linux desktop that is it. No server first choices... no enterprise first choices.
https://www.archlinux.org/about/
"Development focuses on simplicity, minimalism, and code elegance." Of course that is just the base.
https://manjaro.org/
"Based on Arch Linux, Manjaro provides all the benefits of cutting-edge software combined with a focus on getting started quickly, automated tools to require less manual intervention....
Manjaro can represent a perfect middle-ground for experienced Linux users, those who want good performance, full control, and cutting-edge software but also a degree of software version stability."

Just saying no need to pressure Canonical or Red hat or Suse.... Linux is Linux and a community of Linux desktop users is already out there trying to create the perfect end user distro. :) lol

PS... know its all in good fun. I know the windows boosters see us debating distros and its red meat perhaps. But that is the great thing about Linux anyone can fork a distro to do exactly what they want it to do.
Click to expand...
 
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BloodyIron said:
Well, I was more meaning make it so it's a selectable option during install, not so much default option.
Click to expand...

Fair point. I think that is one of the differences with Mint for what its worth. The mint team does include a install using "non-free" drivers as well.
 
So, I can report a small advancement: after doing some apt upgrading, audio is no longer romeo-foxed while trying to get League of Legends playing.

Even found one of the 'runners' as Lutris calls them to appear not to hijack the audio completely. Others hijack, but release once the Wine instance is killed.

[previously, attempting to get it all running resulted in all sound being lost across multiple distros...]
 
Hmm, sounds like I'll have to try that out again then, thanks :D

ChadD said:
Fair point. I think that is one of the differences with Mint for what its worth. The mint team does include a install using "non-free" drivers as well.
Click to expand...
 
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BloodyIron said:
Hmm, sounds like I'll have to try that out again then, thanks :D
Click to expand...

Hmmm I could be wrong as well... I was just looking at the Mint site. And in their FAQ they say;
"No. Proprietary drivers such as the ATI or nVidia drivers are easy to install but not installed by default."

I could have sworn the last time I installed Mint there was a install using non-free option... but its been awhile and they could have changed or I could be remembering wrong.

Then looking here
https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html
The screen shot shows an install window that says install third party software for graphics, wi-fi, flash ect....

Well if you do give it a go let us know if it installs Nvidia drivers at install or not. I am pretty sure it does despite what their own web site says. Perhaps however they did remove the option from their latest release, I'm really not sure.

The single box for all non-free seems a bit shortsighted if that is still how they are doing things... if I'm running an AMD GPU I want the free AMD drivers but I would still want the non-free wi-fi drivers ect. Would be better if they offered a list of of check boxes... for GPU / Wi-Fi / Flash / MP3s ect instead of just one box.
 
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Well, I don't mind trying a recent build, but that might have been referring to the same option in Ubuntu that talks about like network driver blobs, like for WiFi.

ChadD said:
Hmmm I could be wrong as well... I was just looking at the Mint site. And in their FAQ they say;
"No. Proprietary drivers such as the ATI or nVidia drivers are easy to install but not installed by default."

I could have sworn the last time I installed Mint there was a install using non-free option... but its been awhile and they could have changed or I could be remembering wrong.

Then looking here
https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html
The screen shot shows an install window that says install third party software for graphics, wi-fi, flash ect....

Well if you do give it a go let us know if it installs Nvidia drivers at install or not. I am pretty sure it does despite what their own web site says. Perhaps however they did remove the option from their latest release, I'm really not sure.

The single box for all non-free seems a bit shortsighted if that is still how they are doing things... if I'm running an AMD GPU I want the free AMD drivers but I would still want the non-free wi-fi drivers ect. Would be better if they offered a list of of check boxes... for GPU / Wi-Fi / Flash / MP3s ect instead of just one box.
Click to expand...
 
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