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

[DMJC]

The problem of Linux gaming basically falls into 3 categories:
1: Technical: 3D drivers, apis, etc. Mostly resolved.
2: Software library: Porting games, getting WINE to be more compatible. Increasing the number of Open Source games.
3: Platform size: slowly changing, slow steady progress that requires constant improvements to the platform.

Of those 3 categories the only ones which Linux developers can really influence are the technical and the software library. The problem is that the community as a whole is focusing entirely on the technical side and completely neglecting the software library side. For example, OpenMW: there should be a fork right now working on Oblivion and Skyrim support which is ready to submit patches back to the main tree once the main engine has stabilised. From what I've seen there's only a few people doing experiments and no repository to gather these modifications. Homeworld: Since the main port was made to work there's been no maintenance or development to add Homeworld 2 or Cataclysm support to the engine. Mostly because of lack of knowledge/technical skill/interest. WINE: I still can't run DirectX games from DirectX 5/6 from 1997 and people are whinging about DirectX 11/12??? These games won't even run in a virtual machine because the 3D support in VMs is based on WINE's code. I sympathise with people wanting a native D3D implementation, but it won't help a ton of problems in WINE and it sacrifices OSX/BSD/Solaris support for dubious value. Alienating the legion of Apple devs that might contribute to WINE is a bad move. And lastly we come to the Open Source games. No one is creating new content in the Open Source scene because the tools are garbage. There is no 3d model viewer on Linux that dynamically reloads textures on the fly. On Windows there are tools that let users with two screens switch from photoshop to a model viewer when the user clicks onto the model viewer window it automatically reloads the textures on the model so you can see updates to light maps, shadow maps and texture maps in real-time. There is nothing like this on Linux. On Modelling tools Windows users have over 70 choices of tools to choose from. Each with a different paradigm in how they model. Some are keyboard focused, some are mouse focused, some are freeform mouse editing, some are based on manual coordinate editing, some are polygon based and some are NURBS based. Linux needs a lot more diversity in tooling and Blender needs to become one of many tools.

[darkcoder]

Linux has various problems, starting with hardware and compatibility. While both have got better in the last couple of years, they still can affect a new user and specially system from time to time.

And the way software installs too. Too many differences between distributions. Most package managers offers outdated programs, and trying to stay with the latest means either:
1. Use unnoficial repos and packages.
2. Compile source by hand.

Not discussing those two methods now, but those who have gone there know there are far from optimal.

[oiaohm]

Linux has various problems, starting with hardware and compatibility. While both have got better in the last couple of years, they still can affect a new user and specially system from time to time.

And the way software installs too. Too many differences between distributions. Most package managers offers outdated programs, and trying to stay with the latest means either:
1. Use unnoficial repos and packages.
2. Compile source by hand.

Not discussing those two methods now, but those who have gone there know there are far from optimal.

There is flatpak and snappy these days. We are seeing flatpak slowly feature stack out and more applications being provided that way.

Windows install method of download a exe is not optimal either. We are getting closer to the same level of niggles as windows on software installation.

[Jesse2004]

Give it five more years, it will be great. If AMD had opened source their driver three years earlier, it would have been great by now. Popularity can only go up AFTER the driver, games etc. have all reached a really great shape.

[Ikaris]

This article misses entirely what makes a gaming platform survive: games.

The PSVita is the poster-child of a great platform suffering an early death due to a smaller game library, rejected by popular game studios. Game studios make money off of selling games. They must produce games in a timely fashion. Time is money. The PSVita was powerful, maybe too powerful, and died due to companies not taking the risk to produce quality games eating up too much time to develop. Gamers didn't buy the Vita.

So now, why is Linux gaming still struggling to be relevant? Due to the market share of Linux desktops, leaving game companies to make a choice between leaving Linux support out altogether, or financing what could potentially be a deathtrap given financial venues. Windows and Mac OS for that matter, also have the advantage of predictability, while Linux' "each one is different" approach leaves quite a gaping hole for potential spendings to pour in dev and support time.

Huge game companies like Activision, Blizzard, Ubisoft to name a few, are the ones with the hugely popular AAA games, and the financial capabilities to make Linux gaming viable. Yet they don't.

It's a deadlock: on one hand there are gamers not budging from Windows since it has all the games and driver support, on the other there are game studios catering to the overwhelming bulk of Windows gamers due to financial constraints and lower-risk opportunities.

And it doesn't help that currently, OEM Windows 10 Home edition keys sell for less than $5 on eBay...

There are companies trying though. I'm thinking about Feral in particular. It's a great start, but, well, Feral isn't exactly a AAA game studio with a cohort of well-established licenses like Blizzard.

[grok]

Blizzard was pretty big on linux even 10 years ago, there were a sub category of users whose linux gaming experience almost entirely consisted of Warcraft III maps under Wine, it's a bit funny how it was tolerant of junk hardware, junk graphics driver and not caring about your version of Ubuntu, Debian or Wine either. So I guess you can make dual mode DirectX 7 / OpenGL 1.x games and make sure they run in random versions of Wine. Well, there was some small "sysadmin" task of making a shortcut to cd /path/to/Warcraft\ III && wine Frozen\ Throne.exe -opengl (or training users to do that in command prompt)

Doing linux games the proper way? I guess that works but it seems to require good hardware, good drivers and huge storage for some of the games. Well, that's games.

[BangoMopar]

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.

These two items are mutually-exclusive and have nothing to do with each other, unless you are implying that developers never game - even casually - which is a major assumption and probably not very accurate at all.

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.

The reasons to game on Linux for most freedom-loving people would be the same reasons to use Linux over Windows in general. If you're indifferent or apathetic to your OS (and it's privacy and security implications) then your point is valid.

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.

Aren't all major VOIP programs are available for Linux as well? (Hangouts, Skype, Discord, Mumble, TeamSpeak etc, etc.). Also OBS (the most-used capture and streaming platform out there by far) is on Linux. Plenty of other options exist as well...As for mouse and KB configuration - eh...maybe? But seriously how many people won't play a game on Steam because of a lack of proprietary mouse software - say Logitech, for example? I bet less than 5% - probably much less. Sorry but your arguments seem a little weak and from circa 2010-ish. Just my opinion.

[oiaohm]

Doing linux games the proper way? I guess that works but it seems to require good hardware, good drivers and huge storage for some of the games. Well, that's games.

https://www.khronos.org/news/press/khronos-open-sources-opengl-and-opengl-es-conformance-tests

You are so close to the problem. Good drivers. How do you know you have good drivers is run conformance test suite right.

With Direct x you have been able to down load the software development sdk that has a test suite of applications that should work and you have the windows driver development kit that has another test suite for graphical drivers without being a being a paid up member with anyone. So proving that a party is fibbing on their Direct x support has been straight forwards.

Until start of 2017 this year with opengl unless you paid money to khronos or signed NDA you could not get hands on test suite for opengl. Vulkan at start of 2016 was when we saw the first formal test suite for anything 3d graphical released without requiring membership.

Yes parties can publish if a particular vendors claim of support X version of opengl was a lie due to failing the conformance suite. The paid membership/NDA said no publishing of the test suite results.

So Linux graphics drivers have been many levels of trash even for Android.

So starting to see what is required now to make sure good drivers get to consumers on Linux based platforms. Running under wine and graphics driver is suspect the game developer has been able to blame wine for it. Running native on Linux consumers expect it to work when the drivers have been horrible quality at times and with no way for the game developer to say run this test see that your driver is stuffed so complain to your driver vendor with opengl applications before the start of this year.

Of course it going to take game vendors to get aware they now have the power to ship to end users a conformance suite and blame the gpu vendor/gpu driver supplier where it their fault like they have been able todo with direct x for years. Yes one of the biggest hindrances to even opengl applications under windows is lack of conformance suite.

Its going to be interesting to see how the ratio of opengl/Vulkan vs direct x games on windows change now that from test suiting point of view they are now a level playing field. Of course if the number of opengl/vulkan games increase the numbers ported to Linux would be expected to increase due to less work to port.