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

[mike44]

If the Linux gamers numbers will not increase now, it never will. Would be sad to see Linux only being used by a few freaks and sink into oblivion.

[pmorph]

If the Linux gamers numbers will not increase now, it never will. Would be sad to see Linux only being used by a few freaks and sink into oblivion.

Linux usage is increasing everywhere, every day. It's just that this increase transforms to new gamers very slowly, because gaming typically isn't 1st, 2nd, or even 3rd priority for these people.

[Geopirate]

Things have gradually improved, but I think the next 5 years could be a lot more interesting than the previous 5.

The first thing is current and future games are what will make a difference longer term. Once people start playing games on the platform, more porting efforts will be worth the time. A lot of the problem now is a developer is interested in a port, or they do the port and maintaining it is too much. I think anyone gaming on Linux at this point has greatly enjoyed a game, taken a break for a few months and come back to a broken game. This is especially frustrating if

1. Wayland adoption has to continue to pick up. The overall benefits will help games run more reliably across more systems. This also relies on the Nvidia situation being resolved though....

2. Dx11 is starting to wane, and the door is open for Vulkan to overtake Dx12 moving into the future. If the Vulkan on Linux polish continues at the rate of the last year it should be a pretty smooth experience in most games in a year or two. Easier porting and games working more reliably with more shared code with the Windows version will only increase developer adoption.

3. If Vulkan games are able to run on Mac, we can piggy back on the porting efforts for that platform. They get quite a few more ports with only about 5% of the market. That sort of market penetration is very doable for Linux of the games actually work....

3.

[suspicious_milk]

A couple folks mention a RT kernel and then a few kinda blow it off.

Years ago (back when BeOS was still a thing and an AMD K6-III was still competitive) I recompiled the default kernel (for Red Hat Linux of the era) for real time. Several people were interested in pitting Linux against BeOS for some audio stuff, which I had no real interest in, but wondered how it would effect gaming. Followed some instructions of these audio gurus and recompiled. IIRC I had in the neighbourhood of 4-8% increase in my benchmarks and I felt my game (Quake I, lol) was much more playable.

Would love to see some more modern testing in this area (and may try again myself given the time); it's my belief a RT kernel would make a significant difference for games. A lot of gamers would spend 20-40% more money on a gfx card for a few frames per second. Using a RT kernel is free. Even a 2% improvement is worth the effort.

[eydee]

If the Linux gamers numbers will not increase now, it never will. Would be sad to see Linux only being used by a few freaks and sink into oblivion.

Never say never. As soon as MS drops win32 support, people will fly to linux. As soon as Valve releases Half-Life 5 as SteamOS exclusive, people will fly to linux.

[artivision]

The very fact that nine state tracker exist, it is proof of concept, and proof that WINE can be really good when dealing with Windows D3D API's. The only reason why WINE developers do not follow that path is compatibility, they are aware of benefits it offers, plus it's extremely complicated to pull that out. WINE developers would have much easier time if most (or all) games are developed with OpenGL/Vulkan in mind, that sadly isn't the case as of now.

For those comenting on latency of Linux kernel, I don't know, the best way to compare it with Windows in non-scientific way from user-level perspective is to use nine state tracker in games on wine. From my own testing on my hardware, latency is much better under GNU/Linux. Few months ago I've got into nostalgia mode and played Juiced 2, with modification of the game .exe to run at 60+FPS, I've played it under Windows because on my particular hardware there were some (very annoying) graphical anomalies, so I've beaten the game on Windows, then played for fun under Wine, my custom car (same save game) what I "felt" imidiately is how car is much more responsive (eg. input lag was non-existant, and yes both are used without vertycal synchronization), and this game is not standalone case, I've observed same thing with some other games. In some cases, performance under wine+nine were better than under native windows, without graphical inferiority.

I also said before, that a D3D11 state tracker will be faster than Windowz Crimson, because Mesa is faster. I disagree with those who said that is not necessary because we have Vulkan, how many games support Vulkan? Can i completely remove Windowz now, because of Vulkan? I disagree as well with those who think that all D3D (Gallium Nine included) is MS technology and can only be evolved by MS, apis will evolve as graphics vendors want (SM3-4-5) and Nine is our own code. I also disagree to one part of your comment, Gallium nine is one man's job for a little time, it is way more difficult to emulate everything.

[duby229]

Really? I don't think so. Microsoft requires Windows to thrash your drive. Even if you only use 1gig of ram out of 16, it will still swap a huge portion of that out to dis. Even if you disable swap totally, there is still Windows Search, Windows Update, Windows defragmenter, and more that just -won't- stop thrashing the drive. I don't see how a anybody could ever claim that Windows is more responsive than linux. It's just not true.

EDIT: On Windows all you have to do is compile two things simultaneously and that machine will come to it's knees. You will see the disk LED flashing hard constantly. That's what brings Windows to it's knees. On linux you could compile 100 things simultaneously and barely see the disk LED flicker at all. And that's exactly why Linux -is- way more responsive than windows. Literally anyone can experience it for themselves. Put Windows under a minor load and put Linux under a huge load and see for yourself.

[bregma]

Technical issues regarding gaming on Linux stopped being a thing a half decade ago (just shortly after UDS 13.04 in fact). I game almost exclusively on a mid-level Ubuntu machine with Intel graphics, and it tends to be smoother and easier than the high-end Windows gaming machine I have for reference. Generally speaking, the same games will look and operate better on my Ubuntu machines than on my Windows box and I never get a popup dialog in the middle of combat telling me "Windows has installed an update and needs to reboot right now" on my Linux machines.

Nope. Technical issues holding Linux gaming back are stale dry and crusty news from the olden days. The holdback right now is simply political. No amount of technical tweaking will change that. It's all up to the Linux corporate marketing budgets now, and since Canonical got out of the personal computing space last April, that means no one is working on that. Classic "free market capitalism" wins again (where the market is fettered and controlled by a few vested interests making the barriers to entry of additional competition so high as to form an effective oligopoly). Sucks, but the gamers get their soma and few others care because it's "just gaming." Just billions of dollars in economic activity siphoned into very few pockets.

Am I bitter? Duh. Gaming on Linux has peaked. Enjoy it while you can.

[Toyoracer]

If you haven't heard Solus is working heavily on Steam integration. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articl...egration.10536
also looking for gamers to help test https://twitter.com/SolusProject

[danmcgrew]

"...Ubuntu has tried to improve itself as a gaming platform, but has it worked?..."
"...the Linux marketshare reported by Valve is still consistently well under 1%..."
"...Google Trends around Ubuntu/Linux gaming has been largely the same the past few years..."

Looks like Linux users must be serious computer scientists, engineers, programmers developers and higher-level users who don't live in their parents' basement.

"What do you think Ubuntu needs to improve upon to become a more compelling gaming platform?...

Do you even know who your readership is? You'd better get a handle on it, or your fate will be the same as Ubuntu's/Canonical's/Mark Shuttleworth's.