Linux sucks for gaming and this will probably never change

[whm1974]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

*bought an external USB floppy drive many years ago just because*

 

CDs are getting that way too.  A lot of machines don’t even have CD drives any more.  

That reminds me. I need to replace my DVR-R sine my Lite-On stopped working.

[Bombastinator]

1 minute ago, whm1974 said:

That reminds me. I need to replace my DVR-R sine my Lite-On stopped working.

Buy three.  You may need the parts down the road.  Three copies is the traditional number for no longer produced cars. I should have bought 3 usb floppy drives, but I didn’t.  I barely used it though.  Confirmed that it worked and stuck it in a plastic bag with the air sucked out and stored it.

[delph]

"Real" Gaming:

 

Linux being blocked as anti-cheat is a serious issue. This isn't particularly Linux's /fault/ but at the end of the day, if you can't play online games just because of your OS, that sucks and needs to be fixed. I think the Linux gamers who play stuff online are basically just hoping Steam takes care of it.

 

Modern Gaming:

 

More and more games are released natively for Linux, and I only see that increasing as it becomes a larger share of home computers and also easier to distribute to Linux (thanks to more and more tools to do so, many of which, I'll add, are open-source).

 

Backwards compatibility:

 

Emulation is better on Linux - even if just because there's less bloat on the system, thus more resources to emulate with. Dolphin runs easily 20% better on Linux than it did on Windows for me. For running old Windows games - honestly this is a big ask when Windows can't run Knights of the Old Republic. Wine is fine, and not the only player in the game anymore. All of this can even be solved by running virtual machines, if you're desperate to play something. That solution also applies to Windows, though. I honestly don't see any advantage for either OS in this field.

 

Overall gaming on Linux is taking leaps forward. The focus is running on new and upcoming releases because that's what people want - luckily for you, there is a big community of talented people willing to work tirelessly on old games.

Also, I'll remind anyone reading the thread that Linux is free and by no means requires you to remove Windows from your system when you install it. If you want to work with Linux or want to try it out, you're more than welcome to, and if a certain game doesn't work, you can flip back to your Windows install. There's almost a false dichotomy here, because you can use both and enjoy the benefits of either.

[Nayr438]

1 hour ago, Magmarock said:

For it to continue working for the foreseeable future, it does. Linux doesn't have things like Dot Net, Visual Studio, or direct X

.Net, we have mono and .NET Core both backed by Microsoft.

Visual Studio itself is nothing more than preference, I personally hate VS and pick KDevelop and CLion over it.

While DirectX isn't officialy supported, DXVK and VKD3D does exist. Vulklan itself can provide nearly everything DirectX can as well, which is cross-platform and why DXVK and VKD3D do so well.

 

1 hour ago, Magmarock said:

There's nothing wrong with open source software but there's nothing wrong with closed source either. But you'll never convince the Linux community of this.

There is actually a fair bit of proprietary software shipped on Linux. Chrome, Steam, and Discord probably being the most common examples.

 

1 hour ago, Magmarock said:

Most of the apps in the repository were ported there by the distro maintainers and members of the Linux community. They get the source code from places like GitHub, looked over it, and then modified it to work with their distribution; this is by desgin.

That depends on the Distro, many packages in Arch for example are compiled directly from there original source without modification.

 

1 hour ago, Magmarock said:

Because Linux Distros are being changed or modified by the community in one way or another, the software for it must also be changed and modified to keep up with it. When something is open source, like for example VLC, it's not that big of a deal. The distro maintainers can make the changes they want to the OS and change VLC's code to accommodate. With closed source you can't to do this.

This is one of the reasons why containers like FlatPak and Snap were introduced. Once it's packaged, the libraries on the system shouldn't matter anymore.

Steam was working on it's own container as well, I am however not sure if they have pushed that out or not yet however.

 

1 hour ago, Magmarock said:

Criticizing Linux is a lot like criticizing Half Life or Valve, no matter how on point you are no one wants to hear it. Trying to avoid the hate from the Linux community is a fruitless endeavor, it's going to happen whether you like it or not.

I would disagree. I enjoy seeing the criticism, I want to know what the pain points of using Linux are for a Windows user.

 

1 hour ago, Magmarock said:

desktop Linux is still the worst choice of platform for any serious gamer.

And you would be right, I won't disagree with that. This has been slowly improving, but we are still way off. The only thing simple in the Gaming Space is Steam, once you leave Steams bubble it starts to fall apart for most people. This steam bubble is the only reason something like the Steam Deck with SteamOS ( Built on Arch Linux ) even stands a chance of making it into the average Gamers Collection.

[Magmarock]

2 hours ago, igormp said:

Interesting, I have trine 2 on steam and it works just fine. Worth noticing that I'm on arch with everything up to date.

 

I guess when you're trying to run stuff on your own without a manager (like steam, epic or any other store software), you end up needing to do everything by yourself.

Good luck trying to download an old-ass windows game and having to go around installing tons of older dependencies (such as .net and others that you mentioned).

Installing old ass Windows games is kind of my thing dude. It's not that hard if you know what you're doing. As for Trine it sounds like you're running the Windows version with a Wine or something, rather than a native Linux version; and you did ask for a Linux example.

[Jaesop]

3 hours ago, Magmarock said:

Okay I admit I don't have much experience using Steam with Linux because I'm not a steam user myself. From the games I have tested though little has changed. I mostly test games that are installed from exe such as from a disks as well as GOG.

Yeah, this is a pretty huge thing to not have any experience with to make this claim. Steam and it's seamless Proton implementation for games is a, well, game changer for gaming on Linux and makes it very practical.

 

Will it ever be as simple as Windows, or consistently get the same performance? No. Is it workable if you'd rather by full Linux than have a separate Windows install, or at least minimize your use of it? Absolutely.

[Jaesop]

2 hours ago, Caroline said:

Expect comments about how Valve's Proton, Lutris and POL can make a couple games run after spending hours downloading dependencies and searching for mirrors of repos with specific files that aren't online since 2003 but somehow are required for certain libs to be compatible with the games.

Or, alternatively, Steam can make a large amount of games run in the exact manner you get them to run on Windows. So... download, click play.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

2 hours ago, whm1974 said:

DOSbox? That what I would use. I doubt very much that you could install Win10 640 on an PC old enough to have a Floppy Connector. For one they don't have 64-bit x86 CPUs. Now what you could do is get a USB FFD and use that with DOSbox to get older DOS games working.

Um i have one right here with me, running 3 dvd drives and handbrake, 

the floppy conector is a issue, it yells at me saying theres not a floppy drive every time I boot

2 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

*bought an external USB floppy drive many years ago just because*

 

CDs are getting that way too.  A lot of machines don’t even have CD drives any more.  

but you can still plug them in was my point, but I guess usb floppys are a thing

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, whm1974 said:

DOSbox? That what I would use. I doubt very much that you could install Win10 640 on an PC old enough to have a Floppy Connector. For one they don't have 64-bit x86 CPUs. Now what you could do is get a USB FFD and use that with DOSbox to get older DOS games working.

It’s not easy to find a z97 with a floppy controller but they can be had.  Usually very upmarket boards for their time and not many of them.  I’ve got one.  Also has atapi and a m.2slot.  Never used any of em.  The window is very narrow though.

[Magmarock]

8 minutes ago, Jaesop said:

Yeah, this is a pretty huge thing to not have any experience with to make this claim. Steam and it's seamless Proton implementation for games is a, well, game changer for gaming on Linux and makes it very practical.

 

Will it ever be as simple as Windows, or consistently get the same performance? No. Is it workable if you'd rather by full Linux than have a separate Windows install, or at least minimize your use of it? Absolutely.

Well Proton is based on Wine and admittedly I should've tested it before making this post. This is mostly about the communities reaction to Linus Substation though. Judging from what he's going though, it sounds like the same old nonsense.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

4 minutes ago, Magmarock said:

Well Proton is based on Wine and admittedly I should've tested it before making this post. This is mostly about the communities reaction to Linus Substation though. Judging from what he's going though, it sounds like the same old nonsense.

Hes had the least issues with the gaming part if what is seen from the videos is to be believed

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Just now, Caroline said:

You forgot the most important step.

 

Pay. 

There are free games on steam....

[igormp]

34 minutes ago, Magmarock said:

Installing old ass Windows games is kind of my thing dude. It's not that hard if you know what you're doing. As for Trine it sounds like you're running the Windows version with a Wine or something, rather than a native Linux version; and you did ask for a Linux example.

Nope, linux version straight out of steam without proton (no reason to use proton for a game that has a native version).

 

Still, you're complaining about old WINDOWS games on linux, that sounds weird to me. If you know how to do that on Windows and not on linux, then that's on you and you can't really complain about that. Compiling your own kernel and dependencies for your old stuff is not that hard if you know what you're doing

 

Anyhow, I more often than not recommend people AGAINST linux for games or casual usage, specially in this forum, (which is mostly younger people whose main PC usage is for games) because there's no reason to use it if you're not a software developer or have some other specific need, just use windows since it'll just work and you're already used to it.

[Magmarock]

57 minutes ago, igormp said:

Nope, linux version straight out of steam without proton (no reason to use proton for a game that has a native version).

 

Still, you're complaining about old WINDOWS games on linux, that sounds weird to me. If you know how to do that on Windows and not on linux, then that's on you and you can't really complain about that. Compiling your own kernel and dependencies for your old stuff is not that hard if you know what you're doing

 

Anyhow, I more often than not recommend people AGAINST linux for games or casual usage, specially in this forum, (which is mostly younger people whose main PC usage is for games) because there's no reason to use it if you're not a software developer or have some other specific need, just use windows since it'll just work and you're already used to it.

No, I'm complaining that the community does nothing to help the games industry port games to the platform. It's not old Windows games that I was referring to, it's native Linux software that deprecates. But when it's open source it's not really an issue.

For casual usage, Linux is great. Install Ubuntu on a laptop and you'll be surfing the web and watching youtube and movies in about 10 minutes. Just don't try to do any serious gaming on it.

[OIe]

Hey. I've been using Linux since about 2007 (mainly Gentoo) and I just wanted to give my point of view regarding this whole shebang.

1. Packaging and therefore backwards compatibility are a known problem with Linux distributions. For some time many distributions are adopting some flavor of universal packaging (flatpak, snap, appimage) to provide a solution (compatibility of old software, cross compatibility with other distributions etc.).
2. Linux absolutely has the abstractions for developers that Direct X provides. I don't want to dive into too much of technical detail here where these apis are and why but if you want to have a comprehensive suite that offers you similar access to a players hardware in one place you might want to use for example SDL (fun side effect: SDL developed games tend to work on multiple platforms).
3. Compatiblity to windows games is it's own topic. The WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) project reimplements windows interfaces so native windows programs can run pretty much directly in your Linux Distribution. This normally works especially well with older windows programs and games in my experience. I often had more problems getting very old windows games to run properly in windows because it's not as easy to provide the old Direct X versions and their level of access to the hardware to these games there. Other people share this experience. So much so that there is actually a windows wine wrapper for your old games. Just to reiterate. Some people using WINE code under Windows because it sometimes can run some old Windows games better than Windows can. I think that's awesome.

[OIe]

Second post for my outlook on Linux as a gaming platform. If that's frowned upon please tell me. I'm new here.

Linux definitely generally has the potential to be a better games platform than windows. This is from nine years ago but the reasoning is still valid. You have access to the Kernel. You can streamline and tune this operating system and tailor it to it's hardware. Windows is a big binary blob that has to work in different roles on a huge amount of different machines. It takes much more resources than it needs to if all you want to do is game. That's why people are excited about this. Linux could potentially be the better solution for gamers no question. Progress to that goal is very slow for a lot of reasons. There was a time when AMDs open source driver development team had two full time people on it. (Sorry no source for that. It was back in 2009 or something) There's no wonder these drivers aren't as good as their windows counter parts which actually are developed to work well with specific games sometimes going as far as fixing bugs for them on the driver end.

 

So what I'm saying is: The potential is there. Linux can be better at gaming than windows. It just needs to break the catch 22:

 

Have less resources to develop your drivers -> Have less compatibility and power -> have less users -> have less resources to develop your drivers

 

Valve might have the power to break this cycle. We will see.

[fUnDaMeNtAl_knobhead]

I didn't read the previous posts so sorry if I overlap with somebody.

 

I agree with your statement until two weeks ago. However when linus did the gaming challenge it drew more attention so the whole industry began moving in the way they were going faster. Also Did you hear amazon hiring a proton developer for their luna project? Also the games can be closed source while it is not optimal the compatibility lair could move not the game itself

[whm1974]

10 hours ago, Magmarock said:

No, I'm complaining that the community does nothing to help the games industry port games to the platform. It's not old Windows games that I was referring to, it's native Linux software that deprecates. But when it's open source it's not really an issue.

For casual usage, Linux is great. Install Ubuntu on a laptop and you'll be surfing the web and watching youtube and movies in about 10 minutes. Just don't try to do any serious gaming on it.

Define serious Gaming... And yes the Linux along with the rest of the FOSS Community does help the Games Industry to adapt. Where do you think SDL and Vulkan came from? Wine? Loki Software did a lot of the hard work from late 90's to early 2000's.

 

I still have a number of games from them.

[cretsiah]

23 hours ago, Magmarock said:

Okay I admit I don't have much experience using Steam with Linux because I'm not a steam user myself. From the games I have tested though little has changed. I mostly test games that are installed from exe such as from a disks as well as GOG.

I have a love/hate relationship with steam ( probably alot of other steam users do too )

on windows with older gear that should have been able to run the games steam would cause grief from its launcher making the games unplayable.

on linux i wonder why it has to have 6-8 helper files running at once (but i am running slightly better hardware now where it has less impact, than i was running it on windows)

 

for GOG games there's 3 ways to do this 1) lutris, 2) play on linux, 3) wine + winetricks (off-line installer ) ....success depends more on the distro if they have preconfigured or allow a simple pre-configuration* after installing wine. ( linux mint somewhat does this - but it doesnt mean its error free for everyone.

 

for games from Cd's ive found wine + winetricks probably the best solution BUT this is still dependent on the distro  aka success depends more on the distro if they have preconfigured or allow a simple pre-configuration *after installing wine. ( linux mint somewhat does this - but it doesnt mean its error free for everyone.

 

possibly one of the better things about steam is it can be easier to install/ run games either native or with proton. 

 

to give you some idea of what people are playing in terms of multi-player games try looking here https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=225&t=363029

 

this thread might be of interest too https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=225&t=357782

 

* pre-configuration =  directx / opengl and audio file drivers preset. may include 32 and/or 64-bit versions.

[Magmarock]

18 hours ago, cretsiah said:

possibly one of the better things about steam is it can be easier to install/ run games either native or with proton.

So what does Proton have over things like Wine and Lutris. My experience with those was so awful I opted for using a virtual machine instead and got better results. Even if you're hosting on Linux as far as I'm concerned if you're using a VM you're 100% running the game through Windows. So that is not a win for Linux.

[Magmarock]

On 12/20/2021 at 5:46 PM, OIe said:

Linux could potentially be the better solution for gamers no question. Progress to that goal is very slow for a lot of reasons. There was a time when AMDs open source driver development team had two full time people on it. (Sorry no source for that. It was back in 2009 or something) There's no wonder these drivers aren't as good as their windows counter parts which actually are developed to work well with specific games sometimes going as far as fixing bugs for them on the driver end.

 

So what I'm saying is: The potential is there. Linux can be better at gaming than windows. It just needs to break the catch 22:

 

Have less resources to develop your drivers -> Have less compatibility and power -> have less users -> have less resources to develop your drivers

 

Valve might have the power to break this cycle. We will see.

"Potential" is one of the most cursed words in the English langue. It's basically code for "it will be good in the future," which means it sucks today. This is pretty much unintentional agreement with my first post. I'm not interested in potential, I want things to be good now. It's not like the software itself couldn't do it on that we agree. But the culture surrounding that software will do everything it can to prevent progress from being made. This includes hiding behind the excuse of a potential which will never arive.

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, Magmarock said:

"Potential" is one of the most cursed words in the English langue. It's basically code for "it will be good in the future," which means it sucks today. This is pretty much unintentional agreement with my first post. I'm not interested in potential, I want things to be good now. It's not like the software itself couldn't do it on that we agree. But the culture surrounding that software will do everything it can to prevent progress from being made. This includes hiding behind the excuse of a potential which will never arive.

Premise of the OP though is it is bad now AND will be in the future though.

[Magmarock]

19 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Premise of the OP though is it is bad now AND will be in the future though.

Yes, because if you want to know the future, look to the past.

[Bombastinator]

26 minutes ago, Magmarock said:

Yes, because if you want to know the future, look to the past.

That’s a variation on “those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it” though. I don’t think history is unknown though.  It does mean that if things are done in the same way they will likely produce the same results. 

[Magmarock]

7 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

That’s a variation on “those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it” though. I don’t think history is unknown though.  It does mean that if things are done in the same way they will likely produce the same results. 

Well yeah but the Linux community has been saying the same thing for years and years and yet nothing seems to change.