linux, the very weak system for gaming

[Hamish Wilson]

And to be fair, it would be nice if the open source drivers were a real option. But with the Binary Blob it's playable.

Interesting, I have run and played through almost all of the games on your list on my system with the free R600 Gallium 3D drivers. And these are the system supplied drivers on Fedora 16 - not the latest git or custom built packages. Now, I did have to grab the libtxc_dxtn package and I have set certain options such as "ColorTiling", "SwapbuffersWait", and "EnablePageFlip" in my Xorg.conf (which I had created anyway for other reasons). But I have ran and played them just fine. Maybe not as fast as they would be with the blobs, but they are perfectly playable, and some of the titles I am even running on a system that is below spec. Just saying...

[bearsuit_spaceman]

Linux gaming

The state of OpenGL, the reign of DirectX, all of the hardware related issues and software gaps for any system are not the largest problems in the lack of development today...

Windows is the major platform because it WAS the major platform, it has history of success for investors, the people that really need to have that warm and fuzzy. We have a downturn in economic systems all over the world, but particularly in America, so there is just not the kind of money sitting around for someone to say, "you know, I'm rich out of my mind, lets unify the API for Linux and crank out crazy new games that Linux users will pay for." This just isn't going to happen in the climate of the industry today. Seeing different companies, the latest being Valve, whom I love, enter the fray doesn't impress... lots of companies start off, but look at the track record of how they finish.

We represent a much smaller market, so going in, all developers know that they are making less money to produce the same game they already make money off of in Windows. Also, there is the console gaming market, that offers an alternative for Linux users to buy into. Say what you want about it, the only people I have ever successfully switched to Linux are console only gamers. Linux gaming is like a free Tibet and a legalized marijuana, it's a clever slogan that people say, but no one is getting rich doing any of those things, and that is why they are still the way they are.

[D0pamine]

In a way this is a silly thread as the desktop as platform itself is becoming less and less relevant, that said however its up to us as a community to carve a future use for GNU/Linux as a gaming platform and take on the ps3/xbox if thats what the community wants

the free operating system itself is more than up to the job - it just needs the titles and a little work on free drivers

[Decebal]

Strong

Maybe linux is a very weak system for gaming. But I for one, I'll stick with it no matter what. So, if those big guys really want my money, then they better code real good for linux since is the only way they'll ever get it.

[Turbine]

Well I'm using Lubuntu too and it's faster in gaming performance than in Windows 7 x64.

I must admit since Valve has been making the driver developers to work more on performance, this has helped.

I'm using Lubuntu with the Quantal repo making it 12.10, using Linux kernel 3.5.0-16.24 (linux-image with linux-headers), AMD Catalyst 12.9. Use sysv-rc-conf in terminal to turn off startup applications on the default runlevel 2 and use desktop session settings GUI application for configuring startup applications with a LXDE session. Do all this and you should have a faster pc.

[Paradox Ethereal]

More FPS in linux.

Valve wrote higher FPS in Linux, than windows. Under what configs I don`t know. So to say "weak" is ofcourse completely wrong.

Btw, Ubuntu configures their kernels with a lot of uneccesary stuff on, and without low-latency enabled. This results in even 30fps videos playing with framedrops. Those who advocate no-low-latency are actually saying "yes, your DVD mediaplayer will be completely smooth, but.." ? Lol..

Lots of known people are into low-latency, including John Carmack.

Try also my low-jitter kernel for Ubuntu 12.04.

Peace Be With You.

[Turbine]

Paradox, is there any plans to shave 3.5.x? I would be interesting to try, even though I've never experienced these jitters, no debugging and such is appealing.

[Paradox Ethereal]

I am running a local shaved 3.6rc. For Ubuntu mainstream kernel, I am using the ubuntu-sources though, which lies a bit behind. (which is normal, for testing, etc.)

Peace Be With you.

[Paradox Ethereal]

Btw, page updated with 3.5.4 ubuflavour.

Peace Be With You.

[gens]

default kernel scheduling is pretty low latency as far as i know

lower latency kernel + PA (the double abstraction layer) + X's problems (with multithreaded clients) + other poorly written threaded programs (hello console kit) = high jumpy latency

proper configuration is the key to lower latency, not voodoo

Every Starting Letter In Caps Breaks My Peace, no offense