Linux GPU Driver Issues Are Still Holding Up Games In 2017

[starshipeleven]

So how do you like the fact that a properly written application for Windows may work for up to twenty years (a lot of Win32 applications for Windows 95 work just fine in Windows 10) without recompilation and/or changes to the source code, while the same is near impossible for Linux?

Please cite a long list of such applications, because that's not anywhere near my experience, and I work in techsupport so I assume I have some experience in that.

[dungeon]

Please remind me how many AAA titles does Linux get. 1% or less?

Ha, ha, i even think that Raspberry Pi is an gaming machine, as i saw people put emulators there and have great fun

If game does not produce fun, in my book it is shit ... AAA or not does not matter, there are lot of shits among these even

[starshipeleven]

Please remind me how many AAA titles does Linux get. 1% or less? I don't care about Indie games - I don't play them, but out of over 60 games that I've bought on Steam only 5 are available for Linux. Tell me more about gaming in Linux, please. I'm all ears.

Oh and zero games that I own in UPlay and Origin are available for Linux. Amazing!

This must have nothing to do with the fact that little games are ported to platforms that are mostly irrelevant in marketshare. You can't claim with a straight face that MacOS has the same issues of Linux, yet how many AAA titles it gets? Not much.

I might even hazard a guess that Linux is getting more new AAA games than Mac.

[dungeon]

Oh and zero games that I own in UPlay and Origin are available for Linux. Amazing!

And I have Playstation 4, about 40 games there so what ... but as you see i don't complain here that many are missing even for Windows

[HarlemSquirrel]

Here's an example of where the graphics issues stem from the game developer...

We were able to pin down the issue as to why Dying Light do not work with the opensource AMD drivers in mesa (or any mesa driver for that matter).

The more fundamental issue is that invalid GLSL shaders are getting created as "mesa" isn't matched in your vendor detection method in `libropengl.so` resulting in:

#version 450

in int gl_VertexID ;

void main() {
gl_Position = vec4(0,0,0,1);
}

which is what causes the black screen issue as the redefinition of `gl_VertexID` is illegal GLSL. This happens because a variable called 'g_OpenGL_DeclareVertexId' is getting set.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/239140...8197205660517/

[andrebrait]

And I have Playstation 4, about 40 games there so what ... but as you see i don't complain here that many are missing even for Windows

Take a look at this: .
This is the point. And you're missing it.

Jokes aside, really, since when is not having games from a completely different category of electronic device a complaint anywhere in the PC market, at all? It's like saying Linux users can't complain not having PC games ported because no PC has Super Nintendo games ported and Windows users aren't complaining about it.

[dungeon]

Since Linux is not PC exclusive, for example these little ARM boards runs usually Android and Linux, same like PCs Windows and Linux... to me this is the same as someone complain "oh why this only works on Android but not on Linux" and the opposite

And you know it is possible to run Linux on Playstation 4, altough hard but possible And as soon as someone run it, he will start to complain OK it runs but why all software actually not run on Linux too and so on

[muncrief]

Well, I've been waiting for over a year now for my $330 R9-390 to be supported under Linux. And I mean fully supported, not trickles of support here and there, but full solid support. In fact Linux gamers who use AMD cards are being hit by both sides. We have the open source drivers that refuse to face the reality that without OpenGL 4.5 compatibility mode many games won't work, and in fact even Steam sees them as OpenGL 3.x. And then we have AMDGPU-PRO that's such a cluster storm that games may run, but with graphical corruption. And it's not just my specific card, users are reporting the same problems even with the newest AMD cards.

And on top of everything else, how's a poor everyday user even supposed to use these drivers? I'm an engineer and can patch and compile both drivers and kernels, but I still can't get my favorite games to run. Are the disparate parts of the driver installed correctly? Is the firmware for the card correct? Is there some small part of the installation or compilations that went wrong that can't be detected by the human mind? I mean really, it's an impossible situation, and it's actually getting worse. For whatever reason the fact is that since the last AMDGPU-PRO drivers that mostly worked, 16.50, graphical corruption has returned like a plague that can't be cured. And with each new kernel version, support for older drivers that may have worked are dropped.

And of course since even the basic stuff doesn't even work, a GUI for controlling GPU features isn't even spoken of any more. It's a long lost dream that became victim of the nightmare that is Linux GPU drivers.

I'm sorry to be so harsh but sooner or later someone has to speak the absolute truth. Things aren't getting better, they're getting worse, and more complicated. And far beyond the reach of the average user to grasp and use. And the dream that Valve held out for Linux to finally become a viable gaming platform is dead. And so long as Linux is not a viable gaming platform the dream of it gaining desktop market share is dead as well.

[artyom.h31]

> We have the open source drivers that refuse to face the reality that without OpenGL 4.5 compatibility mode many games won't work, and in fact even Steam sees them as OpenGL 3.x.

I think that most games which demand OpenGL 4.5 compatibility profile are simply broken. Someone made one or two calls to the deprecated function, just by accident. And someone just forgot to check their game on Mesa/macOS (both of them expose only core profile). There's no reasons for a modern graphics-intensive game to use deprecated functionality from OpenGL 1.x. It is much, much easier to fix the game than to add compatibility profile to the driver.

[smitty3268]

We have the open source drivers that refuse to face the reality that without OpenGL 4.5 compatibility mode many games won't work

Yeah, all 3 of them.

And then we have AMDGPU-PRO that's such a cluster storm that games may run, but with graphical corruption.

Yeah, the rest of this is just a rant about how sucky the -pro drivers are, and i agree. But you're silly for trying to use them. The mesa driver is meant to be used for games, and it's easy enough to use now.