Worrying Aspects of Linux Gaming 265
jones_supa writes: Former Valve engineer Rich Geldreich has written up a blog post about the state of Linux Gaming. It's an interesting read, that's for sure. When talking about recent bigger game ports, his take is that the developers doing these ports just aren't doing their best to optimize these releases for Linux and/or OpenGL. He points out how it took significant resources from Valve to properly optimize Source engine for Linux, but that other game studios are not walking the last mile. About drivers, he asks "Valve is still paying LunarG to find and fix silly perf bugs in Intel's slow open source driver. Surely this can't be a sustainable way of developing a working driver?" He ends his post by agreeing with a Slashdot comment where someone is basically saying that SteamOS is done, and that we will never get our hands on the Steam Controller.
Please, Please, Please (Score:5, Insightful)
Please move to gaming. It's the final blockade to me switching all the family and friends to Linux.
The old people were happy getting away from win 8 and back to a desktop that works, but the younger ones still can't accept Ubuntu.
Linux can and will in my opinion finally crush the other two os's - they are both fixated on the walled garden with "apps" to feed them.
Save us Linux, you are our only hope //the holograph figure turns and sees something, then fiddles with the holograph controls//
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OK now.
for that to happen you need to pressure Microsoft above all else.
you know why? you know why they made a big deal of SteamOS ? because of windows 8 - had ms succeeded in it's plans to bring all windows software to the windows 8 app store, then Steam would be irrelevant.
so that was their backup. and now that microsoft failed - or at least is totally stalled - in it's efforts to bring windows app store to be the place to get stuff you would get on steam - there's not so much need for it.
Xbox games exist (Score:2)
No sane (game) developer will stick their hands into the Windows Modern/Metro/Store development environment as it is a limited MS-controlled sandbox where you get to do what Microsoft decides you get to do.
Let's turn that around: "No sane (game) developer will stick their hands into the [Xbox/Xbox 360/Xbox One] development environment as it is a limited MS-controlled sandbox where you get to do what Microsoft decides you get to do." Yet there are plenty of games for Xbox family consoles from major publishers.
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Windows 8? Ubuntu?
I don't care what my parents and siblings do, but for me and my house, we will serve the Slackware.
And it has worked fine for the last 18 years.
LOL-- "sparsest" is my CAPTCHA.
Game developers are not Linux advocates ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Game developers are not Linux advocates. It is not their role to invest their time and money to displace Windows and Mac OS X with Linux.
Game developers create and sell games. Whether it is a Linux, Mac or Windows sale is irrelevant. A gamer who prefers Linux, but keeps Windows around for games, is already a customer. Letting that gamer move from Windows to Linux does not pay for Linux development, you are replacing a Windows sale with a Linux sale, there is no new money.
It is not game developers who are holding back Linux gaming. It is Linux enthusiasts who play Windows games that hold back Linux gaming.
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> Game developers are not Linux advocates. It is not their role to invest their time and money to displace Windows and Mac OS X with Linux.
They are members of the community. When it comes to video drivers, they are probably some of the most expert members of the community. The fact that the Intel driver is pants for games is probably related to the fact that people haven't really tried using it for them.
The fact that "Valve has to waste time" is not a bug, it's a feature. It means that Valve can fix thin
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Re:Game developers are not Linux advocates ... (Score:5, Insightful)
A console that is upgraded as needed destroys everything that makes a console attractive to both the consumers and the developers.
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PC games that support multiple controllers (Score:2)
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So, if you put it in a different chassis suddenly it's not a PC?
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Re:Game developers are not Linux advocates ... (Score:4, Insightful)
And what exactly is the difference between an upgradeable console and a PC?
PC: Full hardware cost paid at purchase. Upgradable. Software chronically underutilizes high-end hardware because it has to target the lowest common denominator for maximum market size.
Consoles: Hardware cost subsidized by expected licensing fees from game purchases. Non upgradable. Developers rapidly manage to fully exploit the single, well-defined hardware platform, knowing that just barely eeking out 30fps on their development console means they'll be hitting 30fps on every console on the planet.
Hell, for the effect of multiple upgrade paths look at the Wii - the balance board and motion-plus controller both added massive gameplay potential that went almost completely unused because integrating them as a core gameplay mechanic would drastically reduce the available market to only those individuals who had invested in the upgrades. Occasionally a game would incorporate them as a optional "advanced" control scheme, but by and large such attempts were lackadasical novelties rather than any real improvement - the incremental market of people whose purchasing desicions would be influenced by the inclsion of upgrade-only features was, in the minds of the executives at least, insufficient to justify spending enough resources to do the job properly, if at all.
Now granted, that's controllers rather than internal hardware, and new UI elements may be more demanding to get right, but the principle remains. What benefits do you imagine more RAM or a faster CPU/GPU would offer for a game designed to operate within the constraints of the original system? Why would developers spend considerably more resources on better models, etc. for upgraded consoles when they could instead spend those resourcess improving the experience for the non-upgraded masses? Meanwhile you're going to have to pay the full, unsubsidized price for that upgrade, which will probably be almost as expensive as a new console.
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Well, another significant downfall will be users who have the minimum and an average gameplay and uaers who spend thousands of dollars for the upgrades and have an advantage. Its like with pc games right now. The average family computer might play them well enough but the people with big gaming rigs and multiple high end video cards can often run circles around them.
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uhh..
if that's the definition, then you already have Dell etc computer manufacturers.
you're asking for "console manufacturer" to create a pc.
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Monitor size (Score:2)
Can you imagine that? A console that can be upgraded as needed?
top kek
I'll guess this means "I find this most laughable, and I speak Korean or Horde Common." Continue:
Perhaps you don't understand the only remaining difference between a game console and a PC....
It can't be upgrades because N64 had a RAM upgrade, all consoles since the Xbox 360 have had storage upgrades (including the Wii, since Wii Menu 4.0), etc. So might the difference be monitor size? A far larger percentage of consoles than PCs are connected to living room TVs.
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> It is literally impossible to support the endless pile of random Linux distros and their packages and other shit.
Then don't. Only deal with the low hanging fruit and leave everyone else free to deal with your laziness.
As far as Windows providing "clean" images, that's simply bullshit. Every copy of Windows is a unique snowflake. This is aggravated by the fact that everyone is used to doing system updates in order to install their apps. So you can never be sure what random shit is running on a WinDOS bo
Re:Please, Please, Please (Score:4, Interesting)
Look, what's wrong with Windows or OSX or Android? They're not expensive, unless you're a cheapskate. They're designed for people like your family, and there are lots of nice people in black tshirts and turtlenecks who love to help out 24/7. Think of the children! Imagine their little faces as they realize Visual Studio is not available, and all they get is an empty black and white window that beeps on each keypress, unless they type ^]:q!
Linux doesn't need world domination, in fact it's been going downhill in the last 5 years precisely because too many people invite their friends and family, and they complain that they can't play games, or someone moved the Start Button That Stops The Machine. Then some busybody does something about it, without thinking.
The world doesn't need yet another gaming and browsing platform, there are enough out there already. The world does need a platform where everything is infinitely configurable and simple enough for dumb robots to understand, and people are forced to become experts. And that platform is dying.
So don't be a jerk, tell your friends about Apple before it's too late. Or Android, or whatever helps you fight your little hate war against M$ or whatever the latest shorthand for evil software companies is. I don't care, use the right tool for the job and so on, and leave Linux out of your ideological fight.
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> Look, what's wrong with Windows or OSX or Android? They're not expensive, unless you're a cheapskate.
Windows is an insecure mess. There is nothing "expensive" about Windows as it's pretty much force fed to everyone that ever bought a PC. The price of it is included in your PC purchases.
OSX is only authorized to run on crappy hardware. The fact that it is "expensive" is potentially problematic but less so than the fact that Apple hardware is lame and annoying. Plus it's as much of an ugly redheaded step
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Run Linux the same way (far too) many people run Windows, and you'll find it's not that much better, security-wise. Sure, Linux doesn't make downloaded files executable by default... which is why we have http://curlpipesh.tumblr.com/ [tumblr.com] (or rather, the examples it provides). Linux doesn't run everything as root (unless you run as root, which 10 years ago was "WTF?!? Nobody would do that" and today is becoming more and more common just as it is on Windows) but then, neither does Windows... unless you do somethi
Mine, Mine, Mine. (Score:2)
Linux...has been going downhill in the last 5 years precisely because too many people invite their friends and family, and they complain that they can't play games...
The world [needs] a platform where everything is infinitely configurable and simple enough for dumb robots to understand, and people are forced to become experts. And that platform is dying.
infinitely configurable
simple enough for a dumb robot to understand
[while] people are forced to become experts in the platform
and here I thought an OS was a means to an end and not an end in itself.
not something to be hugged chokingly tight and close like a child's teddy bear.
the modern computer game demands an affordable OS and hardware capable of translating endless streams of ones and zeroes into a richly interactive and immersive theatrical experience ---
and suggesting a practical solution to the p
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Then, when people are using it for web browsing, writing, and other productivity stuff, and it is becoming the defacto OS for computers at work, then the gaming devs will come.
As a consumer desktop Ubuntu/Linux in general does pretty much n
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Screw gaming. Make a decent OS that people will actually enjoy using more than Windows, with half decent apps not command line programs, and maybe some people might choose it for some reason other than to use it as a server or because they are just brain dead fanboys.
Then, when people are using it for web browsing, writing, and other productivity stuff, and it is becoming the defacto OS for computers at work, then the gaming devs will come.
Sounds like you want a ChomeOS laptop.
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You're asking for the impossible: For the masses "familiar" trumps all other considerations for ease-of-use, which by definition means that you *can't* deliver a better experience - any change in experience is seen as a reduction. Just consider all the grief that all the *good* Windows releases have still gotten. it's only after people have been forced to acclimate for a while becasue their "new PC came with this crap installed" that they start to realize that it actually is an improvement and they woul
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LINUX ISN'T A DESKTOP OS!
It is a Server OS and a Work Station OS.
I am talking about GNU/Linux base distributions not Android and other OS's that happen to use the Linux Kernel.
Gaming is never a big priority in Linux because gaming on Linux tends to stick at the novelty factor, but rarely gets serious. Sure we talk about Steam... But that is only one company, and for the most part their main reputation is releasing niche indie games.
Next you have the GNU community vocal nuts. Gaming doesn't bode well with
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Talking about moving on, how do you disable wordwrap on messages in Outlook? The stupid thing is driving me crazy.
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Jeez, again? Do you want the list? There's reason for the hate. Big corporations have shown, time and time again, that they are not to be trusted. When a company like Microsoft rolls out "Trusted Computing" and it turns out that it does the opposite of what the product is named, and they try to pass it off as actually enhancing trust in a roundabout way, they show how insulting, stupid, and treacherous they really are. Same story with Windows Genuine Advantage. They keep trying to conflate security fo
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There are many Linux laptop vendors whose laptops all suspend and hibernate properly.
How many of their products are available to try in a showroom in (say) Fort Wayne, Indiana? In Walmart, Best Buy, and even independent PC shops, every laptop that isn't a MacBook is running Windows. And I don't want to buy before trying lest I run the risk of buying something whose included keyboard is unusably uncomfortable, a problem I ran into before when buying a keyboard for my Android tablet.
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Indeed. I finally forced myself to sit down and try Unity again for a couple months, I figure they've had a few years now to iron out the wrinkles, and after a week of tinkering (and the addition of an XFCE panel) I've gotten it to the point where it's acceptable. Mostly. The grouped alt-tab behavior is still pissing me off whenever I work with lots of windows from the same application (often), not to mention the fact that the precious screen corners have been dedicated to rarely-used controls while the c
Just use Xubuntu (Score:2)
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> I swear, even in the Linux centered forums I still see this kind of rabid behavior or having to bash anyone who isn't Linux.
Kind of like what you're doing right here.
Were you trying to be ironic?
Linux desktop never happened (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm a guy who ordered a copy of Redhat all the way from Maldives back in 1996 (the shipping of which cost a bomb then), because it promised a new way to power our computers. From '96 till about 2007 I have exclusively used Linux in all my work. However, I've always had to keep a high-powered PC just for my games. With all the promise of different types of Wines and opengl implementations, games simply did not look as good or work as seamlessly (with few exceptions) as they did in Windows.
Since 2007, I have
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It happened and it's worked fine for a long time, the problem is there is just no channel for the hardware and never has been. The high street chains where a lot of people go to get their hardware are effectively Windows only and when those Linux netbooks starting appearing Microsoft did a good job of making sure they stayed that way. With even Apple having to open their own chain of shops to get their hardware in front of people. Ubuntu just don't have the resources to open a huge chain of Ubuntu stores.
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Weston has the potential to clean up the UI quirks, I hope they're headed in the right direction. It's way past time we got rid of X11, it's been holding us back for far too long. If they can't do it, I doubt anyone else will bother.
For 20-ish years windows games have been optimised for windows proprietary drivers, and vice versa. That's a lot of invested effort from both sides, that the linux eco-system hasn't had. Frankly I'm surprised at the recent rate of improvements, but linux is still a long way fro
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>Linux has not come to the point where it guarantees a user painless interactivity, and that means it's still not attractive to average users.
Neither has Windows. At least on Linux when something absolutely refuses to work you can usually go online and find a bunch of cryptic terminal commands and/or config file settings to attempt to fix it. On Windows you're pretty much just sunk after a few basic troubleshooting options - I've lost track of the umber of great Windows games I stopped playing because
Making Desktop Linux a major player will be hard (Score:2)
As someone who prefers almost any other OS other than Windows for my main, I still have problems believing that AAA gaming developers will make the big move to support an OS and framework that only covers a minuscule percentage of users.
I used to really be into running games under wine for Linux and OS X (osx86 *cough*), to the point where I would apply patches and do custom wine builds to get my favorite games running. I eventually just let go of it after 8 years and decided to always keep a Windows instal
Re:Making Desktop Linux a major player will be har (Score:5, Interesting)
I still can't do the consoles. I bought one from every generation except the latest xbone / ps4 iteration. I just can't do it. I find the controllers bad for anything except fighting games and I generally like more complex games. Games that lend themselves to planning over days and often tabbing to a browser for insights.
I hate however having to boot to windows to play games. It drives me nuts. So I have a couple of linux native games I play but I mainly stream them from a windows machine via the steam client. It "just works", so my everyday machine is a dell latitude in a docking station running linux mint and I have an over the top gaming rig running windows in the garage. WOL and autostart steam. then a shutdown script. done.
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>
I hate however having to boot to windows to play games. It drives me nuts.
Which part? Simply the fact that you have to run Windows or that you have to wait for it to boot?
If it's an amazingly fast boot time that you want, then you need to get a nice fast SSD drive. I installed these in my desktop gaming system and it boots up faster than the consoles....
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It's the part of having to close down things that I would like to leave running. eg chrome or gedit.
As I said I don't really tend to play the twitch reflex games anymore (eg. gnomoria has eaten a chunk of my life recently) so there is no harm in tabbing out to do something else. So I often have terminals running or conversations running in the background independent of the game. Having to reboot breaks all the other things I am doing.
The boot time is not really an issue, as I run an ssd.
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Yea? My crappy racing wheel controller beats them for driving games, my not-so-crappy flight stick beats them for flying games. My keyboard and mouse beat them for most of the rest. What is left is fighting, sports, and platformers, which I don't play. If I played them I would get an arcade cabinet style controller for fighting, some basic gamepad for platformers, and still wouldn't play sports games.
Let me tell you a little secret. You can use racing wheel, flight stick, keyboard, and mouse on console too.
Also, my computer is upgradeabe, gets better graphics, ans also does other things besides running games.
Doesn't really matter when what's available on the market are console ports. You do have better graphic, I'll give you that
The best part is my computer need less updates than my consoles, which always require some updates whenever I switch them on.
Really? I always have to update steam each time I open it.
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My crappy racing wheel controller beats them for driving games, my not-so-crappy flight stick beats them for flying games. My keyboard and mouse beat them for most of the rest.
You do know that you can use those with consoles, right?
What is left is fighting, sports, and platformers, which I don't play.
And ARPG's, RPGs, adventure games, etc etc.
which always require some updates whenever I switch them on.
In other words, you play mostly on PC, so you're not using them enough and the updates build up.
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I've been running Linux as my primary desktop for about 8 years now. 20 years ago I wouldn't have used it. Far too many rough edges for dealing with every day (YMMV).
I have found the last 2 years to have seen a big improvement in gaming support for linux. And I hold valve 100% responsible for that. Now I can spend about 50% of my gaming time natively in linux (the types of games I play helps) and using the streaming option means my main machine no longer dual boots.
So in the last 2 years I have gone fro
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As the way things are going, SteamOS will be a great platform for indie games, that's for sure. But Ubisoft? Rockstar? EA? Activision Blizzard? I don't see that happening in the foreseeable future.
If the market is there, the game makers will follow.
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We "FreeBSD cough*PS4" owners get cookies? No one told me. And while my PS4 may not have SystemD, my Fedora 20 box does....I don't mind it.
Better inefficient than nonexistent. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, the ports might not be optimised perfectly, but I don't care. You know why? Because I don't have to reboot to play them. Being able to use the desktop I like and still have games, even if not perfect, is way better than having to use a desktop I dislike or reboot every time I want to fire up a game.
Same reason I deal with wine, except the Linux ports generally "just work" which is also worth losing a bit of optimisation.
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Sure, the ports might not be optimised perfectly, but I don't care. You know why? Because I don't have to reboot to play them.
I can't remember the last time I had to reboot Windows to launch a game.
Fun While It Lasted.... (Score:2)
The Valve/Steam experiment was just that--a way to test the waters, since nobody else had. Enjoy it while you can, because it's not a permanent thing.
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The point was to refute the statement:
Which has been proven false by pretty much every Humble Bundle which included a majority Linux-compatible games, since the very start of Humble Bundles.
But the numbers show that those 11% of customers are willing to pay more for the product/s than a large proportion of the other 89%.
If the product is being sold for more than $1, then t
IT's all about ROI (Score:2)
Want to know why game studios aren't going the last mile?
Because of money.
The era of the PS2, PS3, Xbox and Xbox360 signaled a huge change in the gaming market - suddenly consoles were popular, and profitable No longer did game developers had to rely on the fickle PC market and its absurdly high piracy rate (90%+) to make money - they could rely on consoles to make money (and most consoles have a reasonably low piracy rate - 10% or under on the Xbox 360, fair bit higher on PS3, but not more than 20%).
They d
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What about before PS2 (and I would include PS3 too), when advanced 3D visuals like atmospheric effects and dynamic lighting (remember that Splinter Cell was released in 2002, just about 5 years before PS3 made dynamic lighting possible for console games) would have been impossible on consoles?
Ummm, the first Splinter Cells was on the PS2. Who says the PS2 couldn't do dynamic lighting?
http://www.gamespot.com/articl... [gamespot.com]
On the mobile front, Linux is already being avenged by the mighty Android.
But NOT for gaming. Sure there's cheap puzzle games and F2P IAP crap, but if you want "good" mobile gaming you need a mobile console like the 3DS and Vita.
I called this years ago.... (Score:3)
Back when it was announced. No small number of people voice some choice words with me at the time about how Valve supposedly knew what they are doing better than I possibly could.
Honestly, I really wished, and admittedly even dared to hope that I would actually be wrong.
Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Chicken meet egg. Egg meet chicken.
Both of you meet your chaperone, Valve, who are actually doing something to solve the problem of nobody bothering to port to Linux because "there are no other games on it", and thus nobody bothering to optimise for games "because nobody is porting to Linux".
More has happened in Linux gaming in the last couple of years thanks, almost exclusively, to the push from Valve than has happened in all the years before.
Something like a third of my 800-game Steam library runs on Linux now. That's bloody amazing. And they are all double-click-and-it-just-runs from the Steam client.
Those publishers too lazy to do this - are you telling me that they don't spot bugs in nVidia drivers and report them on Windows? Are you saying they don't spend a lot of their time working around bugs in drivers? Because for damn sure I've seen a lot of big releases have to patch like mad on day one when they hit all the ATI and nVidia and Intel bugs, and get bad performance reviews on certain chipsets etc.
Valve are DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Whatever you perceive the current state to be, that's something to be applauded. And, to my eye, they've done a damn good job and not once have bitched about Linux beyond "look at this odd performance bug we found where a manufacturer never bothered to turn the optimisation on for Linux machines".
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The world is a restless place - and the internet world particularly so. But one should now remember that it's not more than a year ago the Steam client arrived on Linux, and from then until now it's become an *amazing* catalogue of games available for Linux.
The next chapter, and the grand test, is
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What's a disc? Haven't installed a game from disc in nearly ten years.
I'm not in front of a PC I can load Steam up on at the moment (work), but:
Flash-conversions? Few.
Indie-games? Lots. And Lots. And Lots. Hell, the indie bundles are basically all-Linux nowdays.
Generic engines? Lots.
Just off the top of my head based on games I've actually played and which Google suggests were released in the last two years? Defense Grid 2. Space Hulk. Cities in Motion 2. Sanctum 2.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown just misses
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Okay. Many good games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Hotline Miami, Legend of Grimrock, Natural Selection 2, Shadowrun Returns, Space Hulk, Waking Mars, etc. are digital download only these days, even for Windows. Other blockbusters such as Dead Island Riptide, Portal 2, Serious Sam 3: BFE and the like are newer than 2 years on GNU/Linux (and in some cases, PS4 and XBone as well), but have been around on Windows for longer so I suppose I can't list those either.
However there are still plenty of t
Warthunder was a big one (for me) (Score:3)
Just tried Warthunder on Linux 2 days ago and was shocked to see that it simply worked like no other game on Linux ever before.
No crashes, runs in fullscreen mode well and yet I can switch workspaces without breaking it. Sound works well, incredibly fast on my old machine. Just amazing.
For me, this is a big milestone, because I am so used to Linux games ('bigger' ones) not working properly - especially on release day.
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Just tried Warthunder on Linux
The Linux version is out? Excellent. I play on the PS4, but I, for one, welcome our new Linux using War Thunder overlords.
(As an aside, I run Fedora 20 on my PC, and my first introduction to Linux was via the PS2 Linux kit.)
Content, content, content! (Score:3)
What I'd really want to see happening is that somebody would finally manage to be successful by consecrating on actual game content worth spending time on.
You know, I played my first computer games some 35 years ago - it's actually scary to think about those numbers; games like 'Colossal Cave' on a Cyber computer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure) or the first platform hoppers (character based on CP/M). What is really scare, though, is that content-wise nothing has ever moved since then. I don't give a toss about whether Linux has the very best driver for the latest ultra-, hyper-, super graphics card out there, because the games are still the same, old, tired re-run. It's like a $1000 gift card for MacDonalds - yeah, it's worth $1000, but on the other hand, it's for MacDonald's.
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Why does somebody always bring religion into it?
Errrm, ... who cares? (Score:2)
Sorry to be raining on your parade, folks, but seriously, no one really cares.
If Windows 8 has become a utility OS for Steam and Valve is OK with that and is dropping Linux as a foundation - so effing what? Valve would've built yet another dodgy distro of Linux (a shabby Debian fork I'd guess) and I think we all can agree that we have enough of those. And if you think that Valve would've put effort into the community - think again. Their a business.
With Android and Chrome OS we already have to large Linux d
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ChromeOS. And Android.
Tell me, what OS do those things run on? And what parts of that OS aren't an application framework (e.g. Dalvik) but actual hardware drivers? So the graphics cards for those devices would need a driver for what OS?
So all of the work Valve are doing will be wasted - except on ChromeOS and Android who can benefit from all their work?
Desktops may be "dead" - but it's more likely their use has shifted so that device and UI are different but the OS is still the same.
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Gaming on smartphones and tablets is just taking of and there are enough experts in gaming who've expressed their feeling that the current gen of consoles will be the last.
Smartphone/tablet games aren't the equal of even PSP games, let alone Vita/3DS or the PS3/PS4/Xbox One. It's mostly F2P IAP crap.
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Like nvidia's shield tablet; their tablet, not the shield thingmbob from last year.
it may be a powerful tablet, but it's STILL Android. Which means the problem is the GAMES, not the hardware. I wasn't talking about "just graphics" with my comment about PSP/Vita games compared to Android, but the quality of the games.
What does Linux bring to the table? (Score:2)
Until Linux can bring something compelling to the table, gaming on linux is only done for one of three reasons:
-Convenience, people who use a linux box as their main box and don't like switching to another OS for their games (SMALL market but growing)
-Politics, people who feel strongly enough about open source to write out any other OS as an option
-Novelty, people who enjoy tinkering with the OS and the freedom it offers, and want to make it work if possible
Gaming is, at its very basic roots, about immersio
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You missed one possibility, people who are enthusiastic gamers and want to game on a platform that is flat out compiled and optimised for playing games. That's not Linux today, but...if any platform can get there, it's Linux.
Windows is pretty megalithic. It's there to support general purpose computing and tries to be useful for everyone, and that's great. I work with Windows every day. I develop code for Windows. But I also run Linux and I can see a possible future where dual booting into a Linux optimised
Re: What does Linux bring to the table? (Score:3)
I agree entirely, and that's what I was referencing when I mentioned that it could compete on performance. A full realization of SteamOS would be huge for linux, but consensus seems to be it is dead in the water. I really wish it'd take off because none of the other console makers have been daring enough to work touchpad-style input into a controller, which is the one thing that could bring RTSes and other strategy games to the console successfully. It would also make FPSes bearable to anyone whose ever
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I really wish it'd take off because none of the other console makers have been daring enough to work touchpad-style input into a controller, which is the one thing that could bring RTSes and other strategy games to the console successfully
The PS4 controller has a touchpad. The PS4, like the PS3 and PS2 before it, has USB ports for a reason.
But who says RTS's need mice? The first ever RTS was a Sega Genesis title! The only reason they use mice is that they're "designed" that way. It's quite possible to design them so that they don't need them. You really don't need pinpoint accuracy since you're lassoing units.
Heck I've played the PSone port of Red Alert. While it has PSone mouse support, it quite playable without it.
It would also make FPSes bearable to anyone whose ever used a mouse.
Depends on the FPS,
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You missed one possibility, people who are enthusiastic gamers and want to game on a platform that is flat out compiled and optimised for playing games.
Don't we call those consoles?
That's not Linux today, but...if any platform can get there, it's Linux.
Hasn't BSD already got there, since the PS3's "CellOS" is based on BSD (but doesn't use a BSD kernel), and the PS4 uses full fledged fork of FreeBSD 9
They don't even optimize for Windows. (Score:4, Insightful)
Companies barely optimize for Windows at this point (have you seen the minimum requirement for assassin's creed unity?).
Heck, some games have slowdowns on -consoles-.
And you expected them to optimize the Linux version?
Baby steps here cowboy.
My Experience (Score:4, Informative)
The Only Solution Is Money!!! (Score:3)
There is no engineering solution to this particular problem. The only solution is a market one. When customers buy games on Linux desktop at the rate of Windows desktop the game industry and hardware stack developers will care enough to put their A team on it (better yet they will hire more developers downstream to work on it). I don't believe this will happen and here is why:
We are in the middle of a platform shift today. The PC desktop is in decline and the players are fighting for a shrinking market. Mobile is saturating the market. A successful Linux gaming market people don't want to talk about is Android. Google provided a compelling alternative to the Apple ecosystem. Many hardware vendors had a limited to no market in the Apple ecosystem, Google provided an more open hardware ecosystem with developer credibility. Hardware vendors are now squeezing every bit of performance out of the mobile hardware today.
The Linux desktop does not have the same opportunity now, we kind of blew it a decade ago when PCs were relevant. We then blew it again when Netbooks were on the rise (started as Linux only at first), and then blew it again during the Windows 8 debacle (Chromebooks are our only success story here (similar to Android in this respect)). With all the in fighting about compositors, windows managers, incompatible kernel ABI, etc there is no compelling story. There was no real market to demonstrate who the winners and losers were and drive developer resources, so here we are in 2014 still arguing about stuff like Wayland, Mir, X, etc. The "free" free market leads developers to argue about dumb shit like GUI tool kits, syntax indenting, and init systems. Hardware vendors don't give a shit because they can't sell units based on these things. We are not solving problems that would grow their bottom line and thus they have no interest in growing our bottom line. This is simple economics.
Many Linux desktop diehards have moved to MacOS X which is has competent desktop, with a rich market of customers willing to play, and software library that is brimming with quality apps, with a UNIXey environment underneath. Apple demonstrated what we could have done if we had gotten our act together and the market has rewarded them.
Consoles, FTL (Score:2)
Re:I have seen the factory line (Score:5, Funny)
I can't help but imagine you as a preacher in a Baptist congregation.
"I have SEEN the FACT-ORY LINE!"
Re:I have seen the factory line (Score:4, Funny)
Dry Land does exist, I've seen it!
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Why, oh why do I always click, "Post Anonymously"? Seems I get far more +5s as an AC than as meself. The mods stop at +3 when I'm posting under me own name!
</lament>
Interesting fact: It depends on where you look at your posting and whether or not you have "Excellent" Karma.
There are two ways to look at your posting: From the article's comment section and from your own comment history on your profile.
If you're an AC, your comment gets a nifty 0 moderation. People need to upmod you 5 times until it's at +5.
If you're logged in, you get an immediate +1 that is visible to you and everyone. People only need to upmod you 4 times until it's a +5.
If you have "Excellent" Karma,
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The only delay is unloading all those boxes of Half-life 3 off of the front.
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The OpenGL API is fundamentally opposed to an efficient implementation. It allows developers to do fundamentally inefficient things (like dramatically changing configurations at the last second, before rendering, requiring the driver to recompile/reoptimise shaders and/or reverify states) immediately before rendering. Furthermore, it doesn't allow developers to do fundamentally efficient things (i.e. giving the driver a heads up about exactly what state/shader combinations it's going to use, so that they can be made ready at compile/launch time).
Good points. But while the API may not coerce you into writing performant code like (perhaps) the alternatives, it does not make it impossible or practically unobtainable. I will readily admit that I know very little about 3D programming, shaders and the like.
However, modern games are all built upon some form of game engine that in turn is typically used in multiple games. Few game developers write to the API anyway, so if the few (relative to number of games they support) game engines were optimized, would
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You only need to look at the stats - Metal on an iPad Air will manage to run 3000 draw calls per frame, OpenGL, only 200.
In all fairness, Metal is an optimized platform-specific API, like AMD Mantle. It is certainly true that OpenGL is slower, but it provides a common HAL for many platforms, making porting applications easier.
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Is this problem shared by OpenGL ES, as well?
Re:"It took significant resources" (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, over in a tiny little corner, you've got the Linux users with a gamer-grade PC, no OS but Linux, no console, and pockets lined with cash earmarked for games if only publishers'd release them on their OS of choice! Except it's "user", not "users". Yeah, that one guy standing in the corner. That's the market: people that want to buy games, want more than the (mostly Indie) games that have been released for Linux already, but won't (or can't) switch to a platform that has a larger selection.
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Look, if you're going to keep pointing at me I'll have to bite your finger off.
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Then you've got the people like me, who dual boot all of their systems (so we're already customers, anyhow).
I've seen this claim too many times now. I also dual boot for the few games that I cannot play under Linux, when I can be bothered - which is not often. Dual booting is a hassle, especially since it happens so seldom, it usually involves updating the Steam client, the games, and even Windows itself which takes forever. So I don't do it (anymore). If a game is only available for Windows, I no longer buy it. I have so many Linux games already, I have no need for something that I know I won't be playing.
The
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It doesn't mater what OS I play it on, I actively refused to buy a license for any game that doesn't at least run on OSX. Once most games have an OSX/OpenGL port its only a mater of time before Linux becomes a easier port/support option.
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My point wasn't that your demographic doesn't exist, just that it's nowhere near low-hanging fruit. Being generous, it's the intersection of gamers and people who use Linux in any form. Realistically, the demographic is more nuanced, something li
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Then, over in a tiny little corner, you've got the Linux users with a gamer-grade PC, no OS but Linux, no console, and pockets lined with cash earmarked for games if only publishers'd release them on their OS of choice! Except it's "user", not "users". Yeah, that one guy standing in the corner. That's the market: people that want to buy games, want more than the (mostly Indie) games that have been released for Linux already, but won't (or can't) switch to a platform that has a larger selection.
I think it's actually narrower than that, most people who use Linux exclusively do it because of ideological, economical or because you find it the best tool for the job.
The ideologists aren't going to buy closed-source, commercial DRM-wrapped games.
If you picked Linux to save money you aren't very likely to waste it playing games.
And using Linux for gaming is pretty much the opposite of being pragmatic.
The only real counterargument is if you consider there's a broad selection and more games than time to pl
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> Epic's Unreal Engine 4 and the Unity engine both have Linux versions already. So does Valve's (obviously). EA's Frostbite engine has an OpenGL version, so that's part of the way. There's no market. Not a significant one, anyhow. Most people that are in the market to buy games either have a console, handheld, or a Windows/OSX PC. The vast majority.
_...and which version to you think those MacOS users are going to be using? You seem to be casually lumping MacOS and Windows together here and seem to be for
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From a marketing an pop-culture viewpoint, OSX is more similar to Windows. It's a larger market, and it's a mainstream product. It's actually available in stores and viewed as something that "normal people" buy. As an example, my fairly non-technical parents would consider (and have considered) buying
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That's me. I'm a casual gamer. I use Linux because it simply works better for me. It's not worth booting into Windows to play a game, because I'd be locked out of everything else. I don't watch or own a TV, so I've never bought a console. So I simply didn't play games for years.
But Humble Bundle started making me aware of the Linux games available out there. Then Steam came out. A little over a year ago I spent several hundred dollars on decent graphics card to drive my 1440p display. I've spent hundreds o
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Epic's Unreal Engine 4 and the Unity engine both have Linux versions already. So does Valve's (obviously). EA's Frostbite engine has an OpenGL version, so that's part of the way. There's no market. Not a significant one, anyhow. Most people that are in the market to buy games either have a console, handheld, or a Windows/OSX PC. The vast majority. Then you've got the people like me, who dual boot all of their systems (so we're already customers, anyhow).
Of course there aren't a lot of gamers who run pure Linux systems, because there aren't enough high quality games to be a gamer on a pure Linux system.
But if SteamOS becomes more popular then some Linux gamers who dual boot start going pure Linux (and playing more games because rebooting is less of a hassle). And some current pure Linux users who do a little gaming, and have been satisfied with basic Linux games, start buying modern games through valve.
It's not a huge market but there's enough that I can se
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Valve isn't complaining. It's an ex-employee of Valve who is.
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My Windows 7 laptop for work crashes 2 to 3 times a week with a reboot and a popup that says there was a "BSOD Error" After months of diagnostics by the help desk people and days of down time the best they can say is it looks like a "Video Driver issue" but there are no updated drivers. Thus I have to live with it rebooting and crashing tell microsoft/intel/someone releases a new driver.
Compared to my Linux Desktop at the house
07:42:39 up 316 days, 19:56, 7 users, load average: 0.97, 1.07, 1.20
Windows is
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My Windows 7 laptop for work crashes 2 to 3 times a week with a reboot and a popup that says there was a "BSOD Error" After months of diagnostics by the help desk people and days of down time the best they can say is it looks like a "Video Driver issue" but there are no updated drivers. Thus I have to live with it rebooting and crashing tell microsoft/intel/someone releases a new driver.
Compared to my Linux Desktop at the house
07:42:39 up 316 days, 19:56, 7 users, load average: 0.97, 1.07, 1.20
Windows is still crap in my book and still "Blue Screens" on a regular basses they just call it a BSOD error and use a pop up to tell you instead of a blue screen. Hoping no one will ever realize that BSOD == Blue Screen Of Death
My Daughter has a Windows 8 laptop that I had to get her for school, in the last year we have had to re-install it three times. It gets an update that causes it to continually reboot with an error about the update failing and it rebooting. After the third time she brought it to me and asked me to wipe the crap and put linux on it. Why? Because in 10 year of her running a linux laptop it never crashed on her, yet the first windows laptop she had crashed every couple of weeks and the new one crashes to the point of re-install several times a year.
Don't give me the crap that windows is stable or good. Would you put up with a car that broke down twice a week? or even 3 times a year? Then why put up with windows doing it?
It sounds to me like your support guys are not very good at their jobs, or perhaps, just don't care. I'm willing to bet that you have faulty hardware and not a driver issue. As for your daughter's computer, there is no reason why you should have to reinstall after a patch. I'm wondering if she doesn't have bad sectors on the hard-drive that is corrupting OS files.
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I converted to Linux when Windows 3.1 went to windows 95 and have not managed, trouble shot, or worked on a windows system other than the work laptop/desktop, and help desk handles the problems with these systems.
I have no idea how to diagnose an issue with a windows system. I can however do anything and everything with Linux. I did watch the help desk guy grab files off the system that he said he had to analyze. If it was just me, I would assume bad hardware. But with everyone complaining about there syste
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"Some" easier probably, but the PS4 doesn't use OpenGL but GNM and GNMX