Can Linux Succeed As A First-Rate Gaming Platform?

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Can Linux Succeed As A First-Rate Gaming Platform?

There's been a discussion that organically started within the forums concerning whether Linux is a "very weak system for gaming", with a variety of reasons being expressed by a number of different Linux users. There's now more than 100 comments on the topic, but do you think Linux can succeed as a first-rate gaming platform?..

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTE3MDM

[kwahoo]

The original poster's view is that for his system(s) he sees about 50% better performance with Windows 7 over Lubuntu (the LXDE Ubuntu) and that he sees errors/warnings/crashes when trying to install or run a Linux game

EOT

PS I've seen the Loch Ness monster.

[birdie]

Of course, as soon as Linux becomes a viable software platform for developers.

Right now Linux has some major problems to solve.

[Fazer]

PC gaming service Rock Paper Shotgun tried to answer a similar question - http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012...ames-on-linux/. The outcome was positive.

[russofris]

Can Linux Succeed As A First-Rate Gaming Platform? Yes. The only pieces of the puzzle that remain are the graphics drivers and the games. Sony has already demonstrated that Darwin can be used as a gaming platform, even when encumbered by finicky hardware and a closed ecosystem.

F

[remm]

With the success of Android gaming, and Mesa going for good OpenGL ES support along with Steam availability, it is relatively evident "classic" Linux will see decent ports and an acceptable marketplace for them. On the (open) hardware front, there seems to be little hope beyond Intel graphics though.

[gens]

Michael, since you already have the massive amount of benchmark data on lots of systems
could you put together some charts showing what is the best kernel/(ati, nvidia)driver/wine(?) version for games(like xon for example)
for some average rig ofc, not the latest and greatest
im sure you know from experience what matters for those tests

cheers

[Dukenukemx]

Is Linux a good gaming platform? Hell no, and anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional. Can it be? Well, if Android can do it then why not Linux?

Android is Linux, except with much better support and standards. It is a gaming platform. It wasn't always, and started off with a rocky road. Funny enough, you can look at custom Android roms as linux distros in a way, and they do just fine.

So what's the problem?

#1 Graphic drivers in general are just terrible.
#2 Better hardware support and a easier way to setup that hardware.
#3 Lack of standards between distros.
#4 Needs to be backwards compatible with older games, and why Wine is so important.
#5 Lack of stability in general. I like how I installed Mint 13 and came with broken repositories, but fixed if you install updates.

[johnc]

Yeah you really have to define what's meant by "gaming platform". If you mean Android then of course the answer is yes. If you mean a console of sorts where a big name like Valve is driving it, then certainly.

But if you're talking about desktop Linux, then just stop, put down the crack pipe and face reality. There are *no* usable, good desktop environments even out there, so why would anyone move to desktop Linux, even if there are games? You would need to get a big name out there (Google?) to come up with a DE that isn't a huge steaming pile of shit before you can even make it an attractive proposition.

JMO of course.

[tizbac]

Well, drivers except ATI are in good state , also most desktop environments are completely useable , especially gnome-shell and kde.

The problem is just that there are no games released ( i say released because many games internally have completely working linux versions , just never released ), i have no idea what is the problem with releasing a game for linux when you have PS3 version ( Playstation 3 uses opengl ), you have just to write 300-400 lines of code to init SDL+ opengl, sound and get input working and it's done.

Linux is completely useable as a gaming platform. and with native games it will work much better than windows because the scheduler and I/O management is a lot better.

You can already see that a game under wine usually takes half of the time to load compared to it running under windows, the slowness of rendering it's not as many think because of wine , but because the game isn't optimized to be used indirectly with opengl driver, the fact that first native port of L4D2 was running at less than 20 fps says it all.

What's needed is just cooperation of hw vendors with opensource drivers developers ( especially from ATI that despite the fact it provides "documentation" , their opensource drivers are more crappy than nouveau that is done with no doc at all ), and between opensource drivers developers and game developers