Windows 10 vs. Ubuntu + Linux 4.7 + Mesa 12.1 Intel OpenGL Tests

[kenjitamura]

windows is still superior to linux operating systems on gaming with non Nvidia graphics hardware. Games tested are linux native?

FTFY

[aht0]

Not true, this is with the Mesa and Intel (integrated gpu) drivers. But it is a shame intel aren't putting their back more into it.

Not true either. You would get much more segfaults/crashes using Linux. Natural order of things.

Even on Windows platform, bigger AAA titles which tend to tax the hardware to the extreme thus tend to have stability issues for some months, until devs fix'em. And devs have to contend with
a) 3 different major Windows versions (7, 8.1, 10), multiply it by 2 because x86 and x64
b) immense array of different possible hardware combinations
c) some bugs are hellishly hard to catch/reproduce..

Active tech support for Linux game client would be something that any financially sane game studio would soon just drop quietly even if it was started for PR purposes. User base is abysmally tiny in comparison. Differences in software are thousandfold worse than on Windows platform, which would use up too many programmers and their working hours for too little gain. Some point would be only in sticking to some particular version of particular Linux distro. Again, if you perhaps have daily 15 000 players globally (average popular FPS) playing your title, and 50-100 of them are Linux platform users - would there be any great financial point in supporting it?

[Azrael5]

imho the major problem on linux systems is the excessive mole of instructions to operate. A program as Gimp almost 200MB to make the same operation of PAINT 64kb

[M@yeulC]

imho the major problem on linux systems is the excessive mole of instructions to operate. A program as Gimp almost 200MB to make the same operation of PAINT 64kb

IMO, if you're using Gimp to do the same thing as you do with paint, there' something wrong with you. Of course, doing the opposite would be even crazier.
You have some much simpler programs such as kolourpaint, that do a lot of things that paint can't even dream of.
I am not sure if you are speaking about disk or RAM usage, though.

[M@yeulC]

IMO, if you're using Gimp to do the same thing as you do with paint, there' something wrong with you. Of course, doing the opposite would be even crazier.
You have some much simpler programs such as kolourpaint, that do a lot of things that paint can't even dream of.
I am not sure if you are speaking about disk or RAM usage, though.

No edit? That's strange, sorry for the double post, then.

You need to compare apples to apples: How about Gimp on Linux vs Gimp on windows? Or... OpenArena on Linux and OpenArena on windows.
Those are using siilar code paths on both platforms, and are thus comparable.

[david_lynch]

windows is still superior to linux operating systems on gaming. Games tested are linux native?

Not at all, this is just a case of very poor Linux drivers compared to excellent windows drivers. When you compare Linux vs windows using the proprietary Nvidia drivers, Linux performance tends to be just as good. The moral of the story is, if you're just doing normal desktop stuff, intel is fine, but if you want the best gaming performance, go with Nvidia and the proprietary drivers.

[smitty3268]

Note that it's only the Skylake generation of iGPUs that has such terrible performance on linux. Something just isn't setup correctly on them - there's no reason Furmark should be running at 25% speed. It shouldn't be that difficult to track down, you wouldn't think. The older gens do much better.

[edwaleni]

Some of the programs I work with that use OpenGL label any Intel graphics as "use at own risk". I think it reeks when an updated Intel GMA Windows driver proudly professes it is running DirectX, but when you load a game, it reports that the "vendors driver has not fully implemented all DirectX features, please upgrade your graphics card".

This is why Intel GMA is for business or casual home use.

[ngkaho1234]

Not at all, this is just a case of very poor Linux drivers compared to excellent windows drivers. When you compare Linux vs windows using the proprietary Nvidia drivers, Linux performance tends to be just as good. The moral of the story is, if you're just doing normal desktop stuff, intel is fine, but if you want the best gaming performance, go with Nvidia and the proprietary drivers.

And it is quite obvious that the Linux version outperforms the Windows version by few percents ... :-)

[microcode]

Note that it's only the Skylake generation of iGPUs that has such terrible performance on linux. Something just isn't setup correctly on them - there's no reason Furmark should be running at 25% speed. It shouldn't be that difficult to track down, you wouldn't think. The older gens do much better.

I agree, I don't think that micro-optimizations could make that kind of difference, even if the Intel Windows driver team suddenly became a crack team of "10x" coders over the last two years.