Civilization: Beyond Earth Overcoming Linux GPU Driver Problems

[Commander]

Calling 99% (made up number) of nVidia fanboys just because you were unlucky enough to be part of the "other" 1% is somewhat overstretching your (unlucky) personal experience.
But in general, I always remind people, and I cannot stress this enough, that hardware and software configuration matters *a lot*.
While I can give you at least 30 different nVidia based configurations that I know for a fact that they are rock solid, for the life of me I cannot promise that it will even boot if you stray one inch from any of these configurations.
The same, BTW, is true for *any* installation of hardware on any type of system. This is way big companies pay big bucks for buying per-assembled and pre-tested HP/Dell/etc servers and workstations and keep to the tried-and-true configuration.

- Gilboa

What did dmesg/Xorg say about this then? Im guessing its an implementation issue in Ubuntu since a reinstall would also clear blacklisting etc.

I personaly have switched between
nVidia Asus GTX260+, (AMD 6370M), AMD XFX 5970, AMD XFX 6970, nVidia ZotacGTX670, and now lately nVidia MSI 970 Gaming
Latest two nVidia cards since it was performance/dollar but also from past experiance on both my Laptop where i had "experimental" tag on my screen for a rebranded card and really unstable drivers for ~6months since i bought it and about the same issue with it as with 5970 and 6970 where FGLRX would freeze when launching games or graphics corruptions left and right.

I would supply you the bugs i created in the unofficial repo http://ati.cchtml.com/ but most of them are removed because of "old" age.

But short here are some that i created that still drag on:
Multimonitor, corrupted mouse cursor. Had this on AMD hardware since Windows debacle had it couple of years ago. Took AMD few months to fix on Windows but never fixed this issue on Linux. Think i talked to about ~3-4 AMD reps through direct email and also this bug report.

http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=134

FGLRX profiling against Wine that limits the GPU, took some time but it was partially fixed since I last tested.

http://ati.cchtml.com/show_bug.cgi?id=528

All vendors have bugs, issue with me is that these are basic desktop usage and nothing specific that get dragged on without a fix or comment, release-notes etc. This drags on and you just feel left out and in the end just nag to a vendor that is like a brick wall. Things like graphic corruptions in Wine with AMD drivers that drag on and on.

While I report something on nVidia forums i get mostly a dev response and a fix sooner or later. But atleast there is some response or help even on their IRC channel #nvidia on freenode.

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/770053/linux/natural-selection-2-keeps-crashing-when-shooting-/

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/780214/graphic-issues-with-unreal-engine-w-343-22/#4349856

Sure I'm comparing here official and unofficial however i had no better luck contacting AMD directly and looking through their official part: http://devgurus.amd.com/community/steam-linux its the same dead horse where most is just updates from others/or bugreporters that the issue continues into next driver.

I am willing to try AMD again but all i see and read is "its coming" from their reps on interviews/presentations or their twitter feed "We are commited to Linux" etc etc....
AMD stepping up will not only help AMD users but also nVidia users since competition is good.

My thoughts and experience with both vendors.

[gilboa]

Commander,

I think your comment was not directed at my post.
As I said, even though I have large number of nVidia based laptops, desktops and workstations, I have zero stability issues.

Back to the OP, I believe people should wait before pre-ording Civ-BE.
I bought CivV and I have yet to enjoy it crashes constantly on my Fedora workstation.
I've contacted Asphir support, but thus far they were responsive and polite but gave me no meaningful answer and/or solution.
At least by the vibe I get from the Asphyr support personal, they only officially supports Civ under SteamOS and they are not particularly inclined to support non-SteamOS installation.

- Gilboa