Rant about gaming on Linux from a Linux user

[Master Disaster]

This is an anecdote about something that happened to me yesterday/this morning and IMO the main reason why Linux gaming isn't ready for mainstream just yet.

 

I'm running Arch with Steam Native, AMDGPU, Mesa, AMDVLK etc etc, I have been using Steam for weeks with absolutely no issues at all. Everything I play works. I also consider myself to be a pretty advanced Linux user at this point, I'm not Anthony or Wendell but I'm also far from a beginner.

 

So yesterday a friend offered me a gift copy of Crash N Sane Trilogy on Steam, I accepted it after a long discussion about how I'm not really a crash fan and would probably never play it and he insisted it was fine.

 

I had a few hours free last night so I decided to give it a try, turns out its actually really fun and my "few hours" turned into 4 hours with me getting 30% through Crash 1 in one sitting (including replaying multiple levels for secrets which is something I NEVER do as a rule). Woke up this morning pretty late (it was gone 2am when I went to sleep) and did some Saturday morning chores, had a sandwich for brunch and decided to play some more Crash, fired her up and nothing but a black screen.

 

I had changed nothing since last night, I had installed no updates, hadn't touched any settings in Arch or on Steam, I literally fired up my computer, ran steam then ran the game.

 

I did a few ALT+F4s and restarts, same thing except I realised the game was running, just incredibly slowly, like the intro cut scene was running at 30 seconds per frame then once and for seemingly no reason it just worked. I quit and tried again and it was broke again. I went into steam settings and disabled the overlay, fired her up and she worked, thought I'd figured it out, quit and tried reloading again, broken again.

 

Whats weird though is all my other games work fine still, its just this one game.

 

I'm not asking for help, I'll get to the bottom of this on my own but I do want to highlight the (IMO) main issue with gaming on Linux, things break for absolutely no reason at all then start working again randomly before breaking again.

 

/rant

 

Thanks for reading this ted rant

[WolframaticAlpha]

2 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

I'm running Arch

There is your first issue/s

 

Initially I thought that your machine picked up an update to a component and it broke. But then:

6 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Whats weird though is all my other games work fine still, its just this one game.

Extremely weird.

[Master Disaster]

2 minutes ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

There is your first issue/s

Wanna fight?

 

Arch is fine.

[WolframaticAlpha]

6 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Arch is fine.

 

 

[SorryBella]

8 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Arch is fine.

Its the racecar of linux distro. Its always at the verge of crashing and only talented should run it

[whm1974]

8 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Wanna fight?

 

Arch is fine.

Do you respond to New Users to go and Read The Fucking Manual every time they ask a real question and they don't know where the proper Documentation is at?

[Master Disaster]

26 minutes ago, SorryClaire said:

Its the racecar of linux distro. Its always at the verge of crashing and only talented should run it

Well I guess I'm talented then because I've been running it for almost a year. I'm playing with Gentoo in a VM and I have the LFS manual saved too

 

Edit - TBC, that response is 50/50 hyperbole/confidence. I'm fully aware of Archs advantages and disadvantages and I actually don't disagree with you either

23 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

Do you respond to New Users to go and Read The Fucking Manual every time they ask a real question and they don't know where the proper Documentation is at?

Actually no, I'm very active in the Linux, macOS and non Windows thread as are at least 3 other Arch users. I'm all for users using whatever they need to do their own job and where possible, I'll offer help and advice for newbies. IMO the more people that use Linux the better and being elitist is not the way to make that happen.

 

Edit 2 - Also lets not forget, Valve (the saviours of Linux Gaming) chose Arch for the Steam Deck. If someone with 3 or 4 years of Linux experience is still having issues then I REALLY hope they made some big changes because if this is how its gonna be, Steam Deck is going to do more damage than good.

[Lightwreather]

29 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Edit 2 - Also lets not forget, Valve (the saviours of Linux Gaming) chose Arch for the Steam Deck. If someone with 3 or 4 years of Linux experience is still having issues then I REALLY hope they made some big changes because if this is how its gonna be, Steam Deck is going to do more damage than good.

i Think they're taking a manjaro like approach by testing then greenlighting updates

[mahyar]

3 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Wanna fight?

 

Arch is fine.

well from the perspective of another arch user (me) i have to say that pure arch tends to break a lot

i suggest manjaro and will be returning to it very soon

[OneOfYas]

Linux is only good for doing stuff that you could do way back in the early 2000's on like Windows 98, it fails at everything else due to stability and complexity.

Linux is good for low power laptops and computers, not for gaming or anything more advanced than using the internet or doing some emails and typing up a story.

[Lightwreather]

18 minutes ago, OneOfYas said:

Linux is only good for doing stuff that you could do way back in the early 2000's on like Windows 98, it fails at everything else due to stability and complexity.

Linux is good for low power laptops and computers, not for gaming or anything more advanced than using the internet or doing some emails and typing up a story.

I honestly can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic

[Master Disaster]

1 hour ago, OneOfYas said:

Linux is only good for doing stuff that you could do way back in the early 2000's on like Windows 98, it fails at everything else due to stability and complexity.

Linux is good for low power laptops and computers, not for gaming or anything more advanced than using the internet or doing some emails and typing up a story.

Cool, if that's what you genuinely think then fine, it have neither to power nor motivation to change your mind.

 

You're wrong, but you're allowed to be wrong

 

Fun fact: you almost certainly see or directly interact with a device running some form of Linux multiple times every day, most of the time you don't even realise it.

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, Caroline said:

Must be hard to find friends like that, or just friends.

 

Welcome to Linux.

I use Arch as well and my experience has been nothing but headaches and hitting the desk countless times, but there's a difference: I know Linux isn't made to play games, any games, not even Neverball, and I'm fine with that as I don't play many games, I can't even remember the last time I played something using my Windows install, I keep it just in case my kernel randomly decides to commit suicide because the FSB clock changes from 100.00 to 100.01 during POST.

I've not really had that experience with it, at first I had a really hard time getting AMDGPU working at all, I even switched to Manjaro for a bit because of it but a few legends here helped me and since then, I've had no real issues. I've worked all the niggles I had out, I have hibernation & sleep working, I have a system restore and backup running (Timeshift), I've got a really nice and coherent theme across grub, systemd splash & my desktop and (touching wood with crossed fingers) I've never installed anything from AUR or had an update that's broken anything.... yet.  Plus its taught me so much about back end configuration and maintenance, I've had to learn how to set kernel boot params, load modules in the correct order, blacklist modules, write systemd modules.

 

I have a very weird mindset, I actually enjoy things not working OOTB, it means I can go read the Arch Bible Wiki and learn about something new.

[WolframaticAlpha]

4 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

chose Arch for the Steam Deck.

Mitt Romney: 'Corporations are people' - BBC News

 

People make mistakes  

 

/joking

1 hour ago, OneOfYas said:

-snip-

[LloydLynx]

Arch is designed to be a DIY distro that the user has to figure out how to use. It seems to me it's for people who want a system that follows the Unix philosophy, but don't wanna spend tons of time with source distros or building their OS themselves. You get all your software updated and dependencies managed automatically, you get to pick and choose what software you want without the hassle of manually locating it, and you have the AUR which provides build scripts so you don't have to compile software yourself. On top of all that, Arch has insanely good documentation with pretty much everything you'd need. So Arch, in a way, makes life a lot easier for the DIY people. 

[OneOfYas]

10 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Cool, if that's what you genuinely think then fine, it have neither to power nor motivation to change your mind.

 

You're wrong, but you're allowed to be wrong

 

Fun fact: you almost certainly see or directly interact with a device running some form of Linux multiple times every day, most of the time you don't even realise it.

You are right, my laptop.

[OneOfYas]

10 hours ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

Mitt Romney: 'Corporations are people' - BBC News

 

People make mistakes  

 

/joking

Nice meme, but it don't change the fact that what I said is fully correct.

 

 

[WolframaticAlpha]

3 minutes ago, OneOfYas said:

Nice meme, but it don't change the fact that what I said is fully correct.

 

 

You are conflating extremely different things and that video is from 2014

[OneOfYas]

Just now, WolframaticAlpha said:

You are conflating extremely different things and that video is from 2014

And your latest distro is from 2021 but is still unstable and not all that usable but for basic tasks for the average user.

You are welcome.

[WolframaticAlpha]

2 minutes ago, OneOfYas said:

And your latest distro is from 2021 but is still unstable and not all that usable but for basic tasks for the average user.

You are welcome.

It might be that you got frustrated because Linux is not an exact replica of windows. No OS is perfect, and if you think that Linux is absolutely perfect, then Idk what to tell you.

 

>And your latest distro is from 2021

Which one? What are you even talking about?

 

> but is still unstable and not all that usable but for basic tasks for the average user.

Which one? What is your issue? If you are having problems with one distro, switch to the other.

[OneOfYas]

Just now, WolframaticAlpha said:

It might be that you got frustrated because Linux is not an exact replica of windows. No OS is perfect, and if you think that Linux is absolutely perfect, then Idk what to tell you.

No, I just don't sell false hope to people regardless of requiring money to do so or just word of mouth.

Don't make things up to suit your narrative, it's illogical.

 

[OneOfYas]

4 minutes ago, WolframaticAlpha said:

It might be that you got frustrated because Linux is not an exact replica of windows. No OS is perfect, and if you think that Linux is absolutely perfect, then Idk what to tell you.

 

>And your latest distro is from 2021

Which one? What are you even talking about?

 

> but is still unstable and not all that usable but for basic tasks for the average user.

Which one? What is your issue? If you are having problems with one distro, switch to the other.

Arch, Ubuntu, right now using Mint and that's been fine for basic stuff which with a Core 2 Duo and an old 3850 GPU is more than enough in a laptop, I just use it for learning and doing course work.

I never rely on a Linux based system to do anything as it falls apart for no reason when you try to use it for tasks that require you as a user to sort out. Reflective of the OP oddly.

[WolframaticAlpha]

3 minutes ago, OneOfYas said:

No, I just don't sell false hope to people regardless of requiring money to do so or just word of mouth.

Don't make things up to suit your narrative, it's illogical.

 

What do you even mean? What was your issue? Which distro? 

 

 

1 minute ago, OneOfYas said:

Arch, Ubuntu, right now using Mint and that's been fine for basic stuff which with a Core 2 Duo and an old 3850 GPU is more than enough in a laptop, I just use it for learning and doing course work.

I never rely on a Linux based system to do anything as it falls apart for no reason when you try to use it. Reflective of the OP oddly.

What is your issue precisely? How is it unstable?

 

A core 2 duo(2threads or 4t?) is obviously going to be suitable for basic work only. Was your laptop hanging or crashing? 

 

Linux has it's fair share of issues. But making blanket statements like this are misleading.

[OneOfYas]

Just now, WolframaticAlpha said:

What do you even mean? What was your issue? Which distro? 

The biggest issue is that Windows exists and makes things easier, I prefer easier since my life has other priorities instead of hours sat on my butt discovering some way of fixing what should already work as that is what the community sold us.

[wasab]

Sounds like dev have not extensively QA test their games on the Linux platform or they had but whatever difference between your system and their test system cause some unforseen issues not found when they did their testing. Games that worked for the first couple of hours or days are mostly likely to escape the quality assurance and then end up breaking at some point for the actual consumers. I owned shogun 2 total war and I was able to ran the game fine for years, a few distro releases and updates later, including newer kernels, the game is now all but none playable on all the distros I tried.