Steam Gaming On PC-BSD

[TiberiusDuval]

Most of games I have under Windows are still 32-bits. Some new games too.

[rabcor]

I always find it kinda tempting to try out the BSDs...

[drSeehas]

DragonFly BSD?

... FreeBSD has the best Wine support of any other BSD, besides OS X. NetBSD ... OpenBSD ... Solaris ...

What's up with DragonFly BSD?

[Kano]

Back when Nvidia first released a binary driver for FreeBSD you had to change some settings for the kernel and recompile it. I am sure i tried play UT 2004 with it, not fully sure but I think it worked. Up to UT 2004 the Linux binary was on the CDs itself.

[gilboa]

For the last month or so, CentOS 6.5 and subsequently 6.6 have been ported and are in CURRENT. 64bit Linux apps now work. The linuxulator can translate 2.6.32 system calls now as well. Sure, this doesn't help running Steam on FreeBSD but ideas were shared of having a Debian base port besides CentOS in the near future, 8.0 Jessie maybe?!

Any idea why 6.6 was selected, as opposed to CentOS 7?

- Gilboa

[Xaero_Vincent]

For the last month or so, CentOS 6.5 and subsequently 6.6 have been ported and are in CURRENT. 64bit Linux apps now work. The linuxulator can translate 2.6.32 system calls now as well. Sure, this doesn't help running Steam on FreeBSD but ideas were shared of having a Debian base port besides CentOS in the near future, 8.0 Jessie maybe?!

Interesting. I was aware of the CentOS 6.6 Linux base port but not that 2.6.32 system calls are now supported but that would make it in line with actual CentOS.

Now the Steam client doesn't support CentOS 6.6 but someone found a way to port newer libraries, such as a newer SDL and glibc to make it work on it.

http://www.altechnative.net/2014/08/...ux-6-centos-6/

Maybe the same way this person was able to get Steam to work on CentOS 6 / RHEL 6 Linux can be tailored for FreeBSD with a CentOS 6.6 Linxulator base?

This deserves to be looked into more.

[BSDude]

Good to see some new BSD articles Michael.

Yeah, the Linuxulator compabability layer isn't up to snuff these days. It still can only translate Linux 2.6.16 system calls and requires an old Linux base with an old glibc, older than what Steam for Linux requires as a minimum base to function.

FreeBSD has the best Wine support of any other BSD, besides OS X. NetBSD also supports it think but I imagine it's a bit buggy and alot of stuff doesn't work and OpenBSD support was totally broken--couldn't even do (Wine --version) without a patch and dropped support long ago. Not sure if Solaris still supports it.

One thing lacking from my understanding is 64-bit Wine support on FreeBSD? Has anyone had any success at getting 64-bit Windows programs in 64-bit Wine to work on FreeBSD 64-bit? The ports tree just has a 32-bit versions for FreeBSD 64.

For the last month or so, CentOS 6.5 and subsequently 6.6 have been ported and are in CURRENT. 64bit Linux apps now work. The linuxulator can translate 2.6.32 system calls now as well. Sure, this doesn't help running Steam on FreeBSD but ideas were shared of having a Debian base port besides CentOS in the near future, 8.0 Jessie maybe?!

[Luke_Wolf]

I've just testing WinRAR 5.20 64-bit and 7zip 9.35 64-bit in Wine 1.7.33 x64 on Arch and they work. Granted, there are also 32-bit versions of these apps but 64-bit is becoming more common, especially with games.

Oh wow... WinRAR... Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time, a long long time.

[Xaero_Vincent]

That raises a good question... what 64-bit programs are there out there that actually work with wine? Wine can only reliably run dx9 games and previous, which other than maybe Far Cry and Crysis I can't think of any of them with 64-bit versions, and pretty much everything that's not a game is still 32-bit on Windows...

I've just testing WinRAR 5.20 64-bit and 7zip 9.35 64-bit in Wine 1.7.33 x64 on Arch and they work. Granted, there are also 32-bit versions of these apps but 64-bit is becoming more common, especially with games.

[Luke_Wolf]

Good to see some new BSD articles Michael.

Yeah, the Linuxulator compabability layer isn't up to snuff these days. It still can only translate Linux 2.6.16 system calls and requires an old Linux base with an old glibc, older than what Steam for Linux requires as a minimum base to function.

FreeBSD has the best Wine support of any other BSD, besides OS X. NetBSD also supports it think but I imagine it's a bit buggy and alot of stuff doesn't work and OpenBSD support was totally broken--couldn't even do (Wine --version) without a patch and dropped support long ago. Not sure if Solaris still supports it.

One thing lacking from my understanding is 64-bit Wine support on FreeBSD? Has anyone had any success at getting 64-bit Windows programs in 64-bit Wine to work on FreeBSD 64-bit? The ports tree just has a 32-bit versions for FreeBSD 64.

That raises a good question... what 64-bit programs are there out there that actually work with wine? Wine can only reliably run dx9 games and previous, which other than maybe Far Cry and Crysis I can't think of any of them with 64-bit versions, and pretty much everything that's not a game is still 32-bit on Windows...