It's Been Five Years That Ubuntu Has Tried To Improve For Linux Gaming

[duby229]

Awesome, another article where "NO" is a perfectly acceptable answer.

I'd like to hear more about that if you're willing. If you links I could read or if you could explain it that would be cool.

[duby229]

Wine is Windows "emulation", the article is about gaming ON Linux, not about emulating Windows decently enough to play windows games on other OSes.

Also, your ideas that "Wine sucks because they claim it is not an emulator" is bullshit. Wine sucks because properly mimicking Windows is hell, they don't have enough resources to do that properly, and most people using Wine don't pay them nor contribute back in any way.

FYI: Wine can't be called "emulator" because it is not doing CPU/hardware architecture emulation (like for example console emulators that must virtualize the old console hardware somehow) nor OS virtualization of any kind.

It's re-mapping APIs, so it is a wrapper, or compatibility layer.

You're just nitpicking. You know just as well as everybody else gaming on linux is a catch22. Which specifically means it -must- be capable of playing existing games regardless of whether they are native or not. That's Wines entire purpose. This article seems to ask the question if it's Ubuntu's fault and the answer is no, it's wines fault. Wine -is- the missing link to closing that loop.

EDIT: And my point was that Wine would be far better off if it wrapped native implementations of the API's Windows implements. It would attract more developers, it would make wine proper ten times smaller, and because it wouldn't rely on inaccurate translations it would be a hundred times more compatible.

EDIT: And about emulation, that's exactly what they are doing at a retardedly high level. You're absolutely right that they aren't translating from one ISA to another one. What they're doing is translating entire operating system API's. They aren't writing simple wrappers like you make it out to be, in almost every case there is no direct 1 to 1 translation. They cannot rely on the behavior of the native API, they have to emulate the behavior of the Windows API using the native ones! It's so stupid. It's way too high level.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emulate

Note the definition, To strive to equal. Equal compatibility in this case. And because they don't implement Windows API's natively they cannot achieve equal compatibility without emulating behavior that Windows programs expect.

[starshipeleven]

1) Get a kernel that gives a damn about latency. Everyone heavily invested in kernel development unfortunately has servers in mind, so not likely that will change.
2) Get a framework in place that can mark all related components as latency-critical, and favor them always or on request.
3) Accept that all your precious benchmarks, ironically including gaming FPS will take a nosedive (while at the same time improving response time).

I somehow doubt that (soft)RT kernels will make any difference here (it's soft-RT kernels the ones where you can prioritize latency-critical applications, it's not new stuff).

4) Who cares for Steam or Ubuntu? I dont want to be drawn into a damn client or distro bc of gaming, much less a bottom feeder one.

Yeah, because there are tons of games that work natively in Linux outside of those distributed by Steam.

Fat chance of this happening in my lifetime. Thanks god I got a PS4 and don`t have to game on Linux (or Windows).

You must hate windows a lot to restrict yourself to use use crappy inferior consoles that don't allow even the modicum of freedom than PC gaming on Windows provides (mods and hacks).

[starshipeleven]

You're just nitpicking.

You're just posting bullshit. Wine sucks because none pays their devs (and none pays them enough because it's a catch-22 same as Linux gaming), not because "they claim it is not an emulator".

You know just as well as everybody else gaming on linux is a catch22. Which specifically means it -must- be capable of playing existing games regardless of whether they are native or not.

This is plain flawed logic ("emulating" other OS games does not make Linux more attractive than just installing Windows), and
you still can't get out from the same catch-22.

I quite frankly don't see the point of running an "emulation" when I can just use the real deal (reboot into Windows, or keep Windows on the gaming rig).

And due to this reason, Wine devs don't receive anywhere near the funding/manpower required for getting Wine into a decent shape.

[starshipeleven]

I'd like to hear more about that if you're willing. If you links I could read or if you could explain it that would be cool.

There is a popular tongue-in-cheek joke that states "any article that carries a question can be safely answered with NO".

Here is the paragraph under the title, bolding the question:
"Next month will mark five years that Steam has been available for Linux and it's been about the same length of time that Ubuntu has tried to improve itself as a gaming platform, but has it worked?"

And the answer is no. It did not work. The situation has temporarily improved only because of some cash influx, but under the hood you will see that it's all bunch of unstable hacks.

There is no kind of infrastructure to deploy games cross-distro on Linux, nor to keep them working over time with their own little sandbox of outdated libraries. (hint: what Snap and flatpack are supposed to do, and that would have been #1 priority for Steam)

Most games will get new issues and eventually stop working within years as Linux changes, and Steam can't realistically keep bundling the Ubuntu 12.4 libs with it up into 2020 and beyond, goddamnit.

[starshipeleven]

Valve's efforts with steam on Linux must be seen as malevolent. I have not seen a more finnicky framework and it still is not 64 bit even when most distros are abandoning 32 bit support. You cannot arrive at this situation otherwise than completely abandoning development, or being willfully malevolent.

No distro has yet (and won't for a long time) abandon 32-bit application support (aka running 32-bit applications in a 64-bit system), as company applications won't migrate fast their shitty codebases to 64-bit, if ever.

That's a different thing than abandoning native 32-bit installation support, which is long overdue in many cases.

I've seen cases of extreme stupidity (inside company management), and I would not rule out the possiblity of Valve managers being morons and not understanding the true underlying issues in getting Linux up to speed.

It's not the first time developers are forced to make crappy and hacky software just because managers decided that something was not important enough to allocate time/resources to deal with it properly.

[discordian]

I somehow doubt that (soft)RT kernels will make any difference here (it's soft-RT kernels the ones where you can prioritize latency-critical applications, it's not new stuff).

Nope, its about allowing different scheduling policies. Currently Linux favors heavily letting threads run as long as possible, this reduced costly context switches at the cost of latency.
On Windows your background jobs will take way longer than on Linux but you can continue working, on Linux everything will be slow, jumpy and sometimes even buggy when you choose to run something heavy. On Windows your focused Window (the one receiving user input) will get priority and this will propagate down properly, on Linux there are tons of related components which work independently... which is a curse for prioritizing.

Yeah, because there are tons of games that work natively in Linux outside of those distributed by Steam.

I dont get your point? My point is that a valid PC gaming platform should not be locked onto some single distribution platform. There is GOG aswell.

You must hate windows a lot to restrict yourself to use use crappy inferior consoles that don't allow even the modicum of freedom than PC gaming on Windows provides (mods and hacks).

I still have a Win10 Dualboot, I just don`t have any compelling games that would make me think of starting it. O working game does not need to be modded or hacked. Maybe you have just a fetish of torturing yourself?
BTW, I really hate "PC Gaming" being synonymous with Intel and Windows, for me PC Gaming would be some working games on some ARM SBCs. But I guess that shows my age, when I was young I played exclusively "PC Games", most exclusively with Joysticks on my Amiga' s.

[finalzone]

So five years on, do you think Ubuntu is serving well as a Linux gaming platform?

No. Attempting to take a Google approach by forking existing codes without contributing back to open source community using a clause benefiting only Canonical was a disaster.

Or Linux more broadly as being suitable for Steam gaming?

Linux based operating system already benefited with the improvement from Mesa, libinput, a better Simple DirectMedia Layer. Currently in progress is the implementation of Wayland protocol to the existing toolkits, GTK and Enlightenment leading the way following by QT. What needed work is documentation and further standardization of core elements.

[torsionbar28]

I think most people who use Linux are not so much into gaming, they are more into development, engineering and research. Many users are software developers. Most gamers are acquainted with Windows. Even if Linux was a good gaming platform then there is no compelling reason to use it, because so is Windows.

x2, gamers are not generally very technical. They can click through a GUI, but the moment you ask them to type something on the command line, you've lost them. With "playing games" as priority one, it's a more straightforward experience on Windows, with less tinkering and less technical know-how involved. Heck, for a gamer to game on Linux, they have to be savvy enough to blow away Windows and install a Linux OS... a task that is well outside the comfort zone of most. Plus gamers tend to be young kids, in their teens even, and don't have the disposable income to build a second gaming rig just to give Linux a test drive.

Windows is a great gaming platform and it is for more reasons than just games, but for software for VoIP, communication, mouse configuration, keyboard configuration, streaming, gameplay capture and screen recording, etc.

I agree with the sentiment, but not for the reasons you mention. Linux is pretty capable in most of the areas you mentioned. The one advantage Windows has as a gaming platform however, is a relatively stable API/ABI. The Linux kernel and core libraries change so often, that a Linux game that worked a few months ago, no longer works today because the API/ABI has changed - even within the same OS version. The dynamic development of Linux is a strength, but it's also a weakness in this regard. The various LTS releases (CentOS, Ubuntu LTS, etc.) would provide a stable ABI/API, but then they miss out on the latest features and enhancements which are often needed or highly desirable for playing the newest games.

[torsionbar28]

Nope, its about allowing different scheduling policies. Currently Linux favors heavily letting threads run as long as possible, this reduced costly context switches at the cost of latency.
On Windows your background jobs will take way longer than on Linux but you can continue working, on Linux everything will be slow, jumpy and sometimes even buggy when you choose to run something heavy. On Windows your focused Window (the one receiving user input) will get priority and this will propagate down properly, on Linux there are tons of related components which work independently... which is a curse for prioritizing.

All true, but this can be mitigated somewhat by adding this to root's crontab:

@reboot /sbin/tuned-adm profile latency-performance

It makes for a nicely responsive desktop/workstation experience.

I don't pretend to know why, but I experience *FAR* more frustrations with active program response time on Windows than I do on Linux. I feel like all.the.time Windows programs will take several seconds or more to acknowledge a mouse click, while I rarely see that unpleasant active application latency on Linux.

BTW, I really hate "PC Gaming" being synonymous with Intel and Windows, for me PC Gaming would be some working games on some ARM SBCs. But I guess that shows my age, when I was young I played exclusively "PC Games", most exclusively with Joysticks on my Amiga' s.

We have this already today - boards like the Raspberry Pi make phenomenal vintage console game emulators. It's a truly excellent platform for vintage gaming. Get a USB joystick and relive all the Amiga games from your youth.