Linux Gaming FINALLY Doesn't SUCK!

[ryao]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Big if.

90% performance is still worse performance.

You'll never get 100% if you have to use something like wine or a VM.

Until all games are coded to run natively it will always be objectively worse, no matter how little or much.

I can tell that you are not a programmer. It is possible for things to run faster in Wine than they do on Windows. As long as the compatibility layers do not slowdown performance critical loops, performance can be the same. If the Wine/Linux bits make performance critical loops faster, then software can perform better than it does on Windows.

 

For running games, the bits that matter most are how the graphics pipeline is implemented. There are plenty of “zero overhead” techniques being used to reimplement Direct3D with Vulkan. If the remaining hurdles are cleared and the graphics driver SPIR-V compilers reach parity with their Windows DXBC counterparts, Windows software running in Wine on Linux  could perform identically.

 

By the way, DXVK is arguably as just as native as Microsoft’s Direct3D implementation if graphics driver developers get on-board with their plan to switch to DXIL:

 

https://github.com/Microsoft/DirectXShaderCompiler/blob/master/docs/DXIL.rst

[ryao]

10 minutes ago, Enderman said:

There are many other drawbacks than just fps.

Anything from installation procedure to non-game program compatibility.

 

Also, point is 190fps is not the same as 200fps.

if you're ok with 190fps then why aren't you ok with 180fps?

If you're ok with 1080fps why aren't you ok with 170fps?

...

If you're ok with 30fps why aren't you ok with 20fps?

Do you plan to backpedal on that when SteamOS does a better job of running Windows games than actual Windows?

 

There is a decent possibility that we will start to see Linux+Wine+DXVK+the latest vulkan drivers outperform Windows in a title by the end of the year. They were at 70% of Windows performance in GTA V like 6 months ago. They are now at 90%. There are ideas in the pipeline that will send it higher. I am looking forward to seeing a graphically intensive Windows game perform better on Linux than on Windows.

[Varusal]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Also, point is 190fps is not the same as 200fps.

if you're ok with 190fps then why aren't you ok with 180fps?

If you're ok with 1080fps why aren't you ok with 170fps?

...

If you're ok with 30fps why aren't you ok with 20fps?

I guess you don't really understand my point.

Your statement is just stupid and has no point at all.

If a game runs smooth that's all you need (which also includes monitor refresh rate).

[ryao]

5 minutes ago, SirMorokei said:

I guess you don't really understand my point.

Your statement is just stupid and has no point at all.

If a game runs smooth that's all you need (which also includes monitor refresh rate).

I could see his point if he has a 240Hz monitor.

 

I wonder what it will be when Windows has 95% of the performance of Linux when running a Windows game. 

[Enderman]

18 minutes ago, ryao said:

I can tell that you are not a programmer. It is possible for things to run faster in Wine than they do on Windows. As long as the compatibility layers do not slowdown performance critical loops, performance can be the same. If the Wine/Linux bits make performance critical loops faster, then software can perform better than it does on Windows.

 

For running games, the bits that matter most are how the graphics pipeline is implemented. There are plenty of “zero overhead” techniques being used to reimplement Direct3D with Vulkan. If the remaining hurdles are cleared and the graphics driver SPIR-V compilers reach parity with their Windows DXBC counterparts, Windows software running in Wine on Linux  could perform identically.

 

By the way, DXVK is arguably as just as native as Microsoft’s Direct3D implementation if graphics driver developers get on-board with their plan to switch to DXIL:

 

https://github.com/Microsoft/DirectXShaderCompiler/blob/master/docs/DXIL.rst

I've been programming for the past 6 years.

Not games, but just general stuff.

I've also used linux for 3 years.

Maybe instead of making personal attacks you should try to make a proper argument.

 

The only way a non-native game on linux would outperform it on windows is if the latency and overhead due to the compatibility layer or VM is countered by the additional optimization/performance that linux has over windows.

 

17 minutes ago, ryao said:

Do you plan to backpedal on that when SteamOS does a better job of running Windows games than actual Windows?

 

There is a decent possibility that we will start to see that by the end of the year. Wine+DXVK was at 70% of Windows performance like 6 months ago. It is now at 90%. There are ideas in the pipeline that will send it higher.

Yeah sure just let me install solidworks on steamOS, brb 

If steam os can play all steam games and regular non-steam games while getting better performance than windows then yeah it would definitely be a better option than windows.

I still wouldn't use it because there are many other things that aren't games that only run on windows.

But for gamers, yeah it would be a great option.

[Ashleyyyy]

yes! i was waiting for this video. i love LTT giving more attention to Linux. 

[aezakmi]

Mankind will get to Mars and Jupiter before making Fallout 4 playable on Linux.

[ryao]

2 hours ago, Enderman said:

I've been programming for the past 6 years.

It is not a competition, but I wrote my first line of code 17 years ago and my first line of C 11 years ago. I wrote my first line of C++10 years ago.

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Not games, but just general stuff.

Also not a competition, but I am in the credits for an OSS game due to some stuff that I did in college. I also have patches in a variety of OSS, including Linux, FreeBSD and OpenZFS.

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I've also used linux for 3 years.

Also not a completion, but I have used Linux for 9 years and I am a distribution developer.

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Maybe instead of making personal attacks you try to make a proper argument.

That is not a personal attack. Your remark struck me as something a non-programmer would say. In hindsight, it could also be said by a programmer inexperienced with systems programming. Everything that followed my remark was a proper argument. It had two purposes. One to explain why your remark was incorrect. The other was to backup my remark that I thought you were a non-programmer.

 

It is fairly clear to me that neither of us have a background in graphics. However, I wanted to see performance on Linux go up, so I started looking into things. I helped triage a bug in Intel’s i915 driver that was causing a memory leak when running software with DXVK. I also suggested the WIP shader cache that was shown to increase average frame rates by 10% and doubled minimum frame rates in Arkham Knight. It is currently in a branch in the DXVK repository having been just made by the developer.

 

I have recently repurposed some of my developmwnt hardware and I am gradually starting to learn how to do analysis and triage to assist the development effort in my spare time. I have a great incentive to help, which is so that I can run the Windows-exclusive VR software that I want to run without Windows. The fact that an unrelated developer could start contributing to the effort to improve things (because he felt like it) is an advantage that the open source development of Linux, Wine and DXVK have over Windows.

 

As far as I am concerned, the notion of native vs non-native is pointless. It does not matter if it is another operating system if the shims are not in performance critical code. Furthermore, the compiler technology involved in compiling the shader compilers and in the shader compilers themselves matter far more for performance than anything else.

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The only way a non-native game on linux would outperform it on windows is if the latency and overhead due to the compatibility layer or VM is countered by the additional optimization/performance that linux has over windows.

That code could be more efficient than the original code from Windows. It could also run so infrequently that it does not matter how it is written.

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Yeah sure just let me install solidworks on steamOS, brb 

If steam os can play all steam games and regular non-steam games while getting better performance than windows then yeah it would definitely be a better option than windows.

When Linux+Wine starts performing better than Windows in Windows games thanks to DXVK, we will have an inflection point where the DXVK library starts being used on Windows. Then driver optimization efforts will shift from D3D10/11 to Vulkan.

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I still wouldn't use it because there are many other things that aren't games that only run on windows.

That is fair.

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But for gamers, yeah it would be a great option.

I am looking forward to that.

[Arika]

Linux still has a long way to go before I'll consider it as a real alternative to windows. I can't even put it on my laptop because there is a number of programs that are not available for Linux at all

[the_ideaman]

CHECK THIS ONE OUT! THERE ARE 2000+ games with one "Working perfectly" rating.

 

http://spcr.netlify.com (unofficial site of working games)

 

 

[ryao]

31 minutes ago, Arika S said:

Linux still has a long way to go before I'll consider it as a real alternative to windows. I can't even put it on my laptop because there is a number of programs that are not available for Linux at all

Which programs?

[Varusal]

1 hour ago, the_ideaman said:

CHECK THIS ONE OUT! THERE ARE 2000+ games with one "Working perfectly" rating.

 

http://spcr.netlify.com (unofficial site of working games)

 

 

Nice!

[Drak3]

Until Linux doesn't suck as a general consumer OS, or a client side OS in general, Linux gaming will continue to suck. It just sucks marginally less now.

[ryao]

54 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Until Linux doesn't suck as a general consumer OS, or a client side OS in general, Linux gaming will continue to suck. It just sucks marginally less now.

I think you are confused. Windows is the lousy one:

 

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/next-windows-10-update-triggers-outrage-by-continuing-to-promote-edge/

 

Security researchers have been fed up with Microsoft for years and it shows:

 

https://thehackernews.com/2018/09/windows-zero-day-vulnerability.html?m=1

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/08/microsoft-obliquely-acknowledges-windows-0-day-bug-published-on-twitter/

 

The OS is riddled with spyware that slows down the machine:

 

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=windows10-w10priv-wsl&num=1

 

You cannot even be sure that it is all off. Even when it is supposed to be off, network packet captures show otherwise:

 

https://m.slashdot.org/story/306887

 

Let’s not forget the forced reboots:

 

https://www.cnet.com/g00/news/microsoft-windows-10-forced-updates-auto-restarts-are-the-worst/

 

To make matters worse, you have a defragmenter and antivirus program set to run in the background by default to slow down the system to compensate for lousy design choices in the filesystem and in how users obtain software (where they would download and execute from anywhere).

 

Then here is another lovely issue that I had to help someone to solve a few months ago. The subnet of a WLAN changed and Windows refused to stop trying to use the old one. Microsoft omitted any GUI option to do a DHCP release. The system would not intelligently learn the new subnet from DHCP across disconnect/reconnect like ChromeOS or iOS. It even would not learn it across reboots. I had to look up the shell commands to release and renew the DHCP to get it to do what ChromeOS and iOS did with ease.

 

Let’s not forget how Windows fares horribly as a client OS versus Mac OS X:

 

https://www.cio.com/article/3133945/hardware/ibm-says-macs-save-up-to-543-per-user.html

 

i would expect it to do similarly poorly against Ubuntu. It just has too many problems.

 

The other day, you insisted that my examples were dated when I challenged your claims about Windows vs Linux, so now that you have posted them again, I am providing more up to date examples. Windows is poorly made. It is a bit old, but this explains some of the problems:

 

http://blog.zorinaq.com/i-contribute-to-the-windows-kernel-we-are-slower-than-other-oper/

 

Those examples are still relevant. Here is a new annoyance that can be added to the list. Rather than support booting on arbitrary combinations of supported hardware across reboots as a general feature, they require you to do a special install of the OS called “Windows To Go” that you can only make from a special install of the OS:

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/planning/windows-to-go-overview

 

I guess that goes back to the insanity that is Windows product activation.

 

[Varusal]

1 hour ago, Drak3 said:

Until Linux doesn't suck as a general consumer OS, or a client side OS in general, Linux gaming will continue to suck. It just sucks marginally less now.

I don't agree with that.

Linux as a general consumer / client side OS is actually way better than windows.

You have a centralized store where you can find all kinds of software. Even Microsoft is building Linux Software (azure cloud runs partwise with microsoft's linux distribution).

Even office 2016 runs smoothly with WINE and also you can use Office 365 if you don't want to mess with WINE.

And as far as I know Linux don't get slow over time like Windows 10 plus with every f****** windows 10 update something gets broken. Best example is Windows 10 1803. It's just garbage. Windows 10 1709 was nearly perfect but no microsoft makes weird update decisions and break stuff. The next update (1809) will break stuff again for sure.

 

I used ubuntu 16.04 on my VM and upgraded it to 18.04 without any problems afterwards.

[ColonelMattyman]

That awkward moment when your user login is "justthetips" and then you say, "And now we're going to go a little deeper."

[GlobalPentahedron Corp]

After getting bored of AAA gaming about 10 years ago i moved to linux. All I need is opensource quake clones. Linux has rocket league now too so stuff other platforms. Oh and now with steam play I can play some of my old star wars games from steam.

 

My gaming life is complete.

[GlobalPentahedron Corp]

4 hours ago, SirMorokei said:

I don't agree with that.

Linux as a general consumer / client side OS is actually way better than windows.

You have a centralized store where you can find all kinds of software. Even Microsoft is building Linux Software (azure cloud runs partwise with microsoft's linux distribution).

Even office 2016 runs smoothly with WINE and also you can use Office 365 if you don't want to mess with WINE.

And as far as I know Linux don't get slow over time like Windows 10 plus with every f****** windows 10 update something gets broken. Best example is Windows 10 1803. It's just garbage. Windows 10 1709 was nearly perfect but no microsoft makes weird update decisions and break stuff. The next update (1809) will break stuff again for sure.

 

I used ubuntu 16.04 on my VM and upgraded it to 18.04 without any problems afterwards.

there will always be people like that who cannot be budged from their platform. I know all sorts of people in all sorts of professions that are using ubuntu. Journalism students are being encouraged to use it because of the crypto & anon tools. I have to use windows at work but things are changing there too. I once rode a bus and the advertising was on a TV and it crashed into an ubuntu log dump. Saw the same thing at a Mcdonalds, an electronic billboard displaying 404 errors on an ubuntu terminal. Its everywhere!

[Varusal]

46 minutes ago, GlobalPentahedron Corp said:

there will always be people like that who cannot be budged from their platform. I know all sorts of people in all sorts of professions that are using ubuntu. Journalism students are being encouraged to use it because of the crypto & anon tools. I have to use windows at work but things are changing there too. I once rode a bus and the advertising was on a TV and it crashed into an ubuntu log dump. Saw the same thing at a Mcdonalds, an electronic billboard displaying 404 errors on an ubuntu terminal. Its everywhere!

Yes I agree linux is getting bigger and bigger because it's a small functional operating system. Windows is a big operating system and more user oriented than linux.

If you give an linux user a windows PC he/she would know (most likely) where to find what (programs etc.).

If you give an windows user a linux PC he/she would know where to find stuff like (file explorer, internet browser etc.) but would have a hard time to install software which isn't available in the (as an example) Ubuntu store.

 

But every OS has its pro and contras.

[GlobalPentahedron Corp]

24 minutes ago, SirMorokei said:

Yes I agree linux is getting bigger and bigger because it's a small functional operating system. Windows is a big operating system and more user oriented than linux.

If you give an linux user a windows PC he/she would know (most likely) where to find what (programs etc.).

If you give an windows user a linux PC he/she would know where to find stuff like (file explorer, internet browser etc.) but would have a hard time to install software which isn't available in the (as an example) Ubuntu store.

 

But every OS has its pro and contras.

installing software on ubuntu: I could make a nooby program that creates a .desktop entry when given the location for an executable and icon, but its so easy to do with a text editor

[Drak3]

6 hours ago, SirMorokei said:

actually way better than windows.

Linux is dog shit compared to all alternatives on market. The ONLY redeeming qualities to Linux are the fact that its free and the fact that it's open sour e, with the latter only really being beneficial to corporations.

 

Linux is hardware picky and you load it down with enough stuff to try to make it a viable client side OS, it tends to break. It's only secure because it's obscure.

1 hour ago, SirMorokei said:

But every OS has its pro and contras.

The only pro Linux has as a consumer OS is the fact that it's free.

[Varusal]

6 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Linux is dog shit compared to all alternatives on market. The ONLY redeeming qualities to Linux are the fact that its free and the fact that it's open sour e, with the latter only really being beneficial to corporations.

 

Linux is hardware picky and you load it down with enough stuff to try to make it a viable client side OS, it tends to break. It's only secure because it's obscure.

The only pro Linux has as a consumer OS is the fact that it's free.

Than you have clearly no Idea.

[alextulu]

Have you tried adding games as non-steam games and see it proton works with them?

[Varusal]

1 minute ago, alextulu said:

Have you tried adding games as non-steam games and see it proton works with them?

Non-steam games will not be recognized (launch with proton). How ever you can run proton manually and add the exe to the command (and run some scripts).

More details can you find here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/99fjzw/steam_proton_for_non_steam_applications/

 

 

[Drak3]

6 minutes ago, SirMorokei said:

Than you have clearly no Idea.

I've been trying to use Linux for the past six years, it's nothing but headache trying to keep things working software side. Now, Linux is only useful to me in a VM. I'm the last of one out of my group of friends to try to use Linux. Everyone I know that tried to use Linux went back to Windows after a year or two. None of them care about PC gaming, as they have consoles. They got sick of the constant maintenance Linux demands as well.