Linux Gaming News Archives


2,003 Linux Gaming open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2006.

Unvanquished 0.55 Released With Big Performance Optimizations For Its Engine
Unvanquished 0.55 Released With Big Performance Optimizations For Its Engine

The Unvanquished 0.55 open-source game that was recently teased for its OpenGL 4.6 renderer work is out today with its shiny new release. As it's been more than one and a half years since Unvanquished 0.54, this new beta comes with a load of improvements especially around optimizing its Daemon open-source engine that is long derived from id Tech 3.

21 October 2024 - Unvanquished 0.55 - 4 Comments
Unvanquished Working On OpenGL 4.6 Renderer Support
Unvanquished Working On OpenGL 4.6 Renderer Support

It's been a while since we have seen anything new to report on Unvanquished as one of the few remaining and promising open-source game projects. The Unvanquished FPS/RTS game has been in development for 12 years now and built atop the Daemon engine that is now a very distant fork from the id Tech 3 engine. The latest now is that Unvanquished has been pushing forward OpenGL 4.6 rendering support.

15 October 2024 - Unvanquished + OpenGL 4.6 - 7 Comments
Open3D Engine "O3DE" 24.09 Released With Performance Improvements & More
Open3D Engine "O3DE" 24.09 Released With Performance Improvements & More

The Open 3D Engine as the open-source game engine developed under the Linux Foundation umbrella and began as an advanced version of the Amazon Lumberyard engine is out with a new feature release. Open 3D Engine "O3DE" 24.09 is out today with a variety of enhancements for this cross-platform game engine.

9 October 2024 - O3DE 24.09 - 20 Comments
FEX 2410 Released With New JIT Optimizations
FEX 2410 Released With New JIT Optimizations

FEX 2410 is out as the newest monthly update to this open-source emulator that allows running Linux x86/x86_64 binaries on Linux AArch64 (ARM 64-bit) systems, including for games and software like Steam. With FEX 2410 there are yet more fixes as well as some new JIT optimizations.

7 October 2024 - FEX 2410 - 9 Comments
SDL 3.1.3 Stable ABI Preview Release
SDL 3.1.3 Stable ABI Preview Release

Sam Lantinga released SDL 3.1.3 on Friday as their "stable ABI preview" version ahead of the SDL 3.2.0 stable release. The developer at Valve notes that SDL3 has already been "battle tested by millions of people in DOTA, CS2 and Steam" and they are now gearing up for the SDL 3.2 stable release to get SDL3 out to the masses.

5 October 2024 - SDL 3.1.3 - 25 Comments
SDL Now Prefers Vulkan Over Direct3D 12 On Windows
SDL Now Prefers Vulkan Over Direct3D 12 On Windows

The SDL abstraction library commonly used by cross-platform games now prefers using Vulkan on Windows as its ideal graphics API. Direct3D 12 has been demoted lower in priority compared to Vulkan for this Simple DirectMedia Layer.

21 September 2024 - Vulkan Preferred - 18 Comments
Godot 4.4 Dev 1 Brings Renderer Improvements, Betsy Texture Compression
Godot 4.4 Dev 1 Brings Renderer Improvements, Betsy Texture Compression

The Godot open-source, cross-platform game engine continues advancing wonderfully as an alternative to the more well established but proprietary and commercial-focused game engines. Godot 4.4 Dev 1 released today as the first tagged development snapshot toward the next version of this great game engine.

26 August 2024 - Godot 4.4 Engine - 10 Comments
Unigine 2.19 Rolls Out OpenXR Support, Multi-Threaded Renderer
Unigine 2.19 Rolls Out OpenXR Support, Multi-Threaded Renderer

While the Unigine SDK these days is more known for its simulation and engineering offerings rather than as a game engine, this engine remains visually impressive and continues advancing. Unigine 2.19 has been released that brings a number of improvements to the engine and leaves us clamoring to see a new/updated benchmark.

20 August 2024 - Unigine 2.19 - 2 Comments
SDL3 Library Adds A Built-In Snake Game
SDL3 Library Adds A Built-In Snake Game

For those enjoying the classic game Snake (Blockade) or rather wanting to learn about the SDL3 API to develop your own software using this cross-platform software/hardware abstraction library, a game of Snake has been added to the SDL3 repository to serve as a more full-featured example.

31 July 2024 - SDL Snake Game - 10 Comments
Direct3D 8 Support "D8VK" Merged Into DXVK
Direct3D 8 Support "D8VK" Merged Into DXVK

Direct3D 8 support by way of the D8VK project has now been merged into DXVK, the widely relied upon open-source software for mapping Direct3D 9/10/11 atop Vulkan that is used by Valve's Steam Play (Proton) for enjoying Windows games on Linux.

7 July 2024 - D3D8 In DXVK - 54 Comments
Linux Shoots Past The 2% Threshold For The Steam Survey, AMD CPU Use Breaks 75%
Linux Shoots Past The 2% Threshold For The Steam Survey, AMD CPU Use Breaks 75%

When Steam on Linux debuted a decade ago it maintained around a 2% marketshare before receding and then beginning its long climb back up following the debut of Steam Play for running Windows games on Linux and then with the much anticipated Steam Deck handheld game console and the modern Arch-based SteamOS. Valve just published their May 2024 numbers for the Steam Survey and they indicate the Linux marketshare is finally back above 2%.

1 June 2024 - Steam Survey - 86 Comments
The NTSYNC Driver For Wine/Proton Is "Broken" For Linux 6.10
The NTSYNC Driver For Wine/Proton Is "Broken" For Linux 6.10

While Linux 6.10 is poised to merge the initial NTSYNC driver for a Windows NT Synchronization Primitive driver that can help with faster Windows gaming performance under Wine/Proton (Steam Play), the driver isn't complete. The initial patches have been in Greg Kroah-Hartman's char-misc-next branch for several weeks to expose the NTSYNC character device, it isn't the entire patch series. Greg has now marked the driver as "broken" for Linux 6.10.

15 May 2024 - NTSYNC BROKEN - 20 Comments
Steam Deck IMU Support Submitted For Linux 6.10 Plus ASUS ROG Ally HID
Steam Deck IMU Support Submitted For Linux 6.10 Plus ASUS ROG Ally HID

The Human Interface Devices (HID) subsystem updates have been submitted for the newly-opened Linux 6.10 kernel merge window. Among the HID driver updates coming with Linux 6.10 are supporting the Steam Deck IMU motion sensors as well as HID coverage for the ASUS ROG Ally and ASUS ROG Z13 devices.

14 May 2024 - Linux 6.10 HID - 1 Comment
SDL3 Adds PipeWire Camera Support
SDL3 Adds PipeWire Camera Support

Adding to the growing list of features coming with the SDL3 release for this hardware/software abstraction layer commonly used by cross-platform games and other software is PipeWire camera capturing support.

10 May 2024 - SDL3 - 4 Comments
Rust-Written LAVD Kernel Scheduler Shows Promising Results For Linux Gaming
Rust-Written LAVD Kernel Scheduler Shows Promising Results For Linux Gaming

Changwoo Min with Igalia presented yesterday at Open-Source Summit North America on optimizing the kernel's scheduler for Linux gaming. Of course, the motivation is around Valve's Steam Deck but for Linux gaming at large to benefit too from this scheduler work to ideally yield less stuttering during gameplay.

18 April 2024 - Rust-Written, BPF-Based Scheduler - 40 Comments
FEX-Emu 2404 Optimization Can Take Memcpy From 2-3 GB/s To 88 GB/s
FEX-Emu 2404 Optimization Can Take Memcpy From 2-3 GB/s To 88 GB/s

FEX 2404 is now available for this open-source emulator project to allow running x86/x86_64 binaries on AArch64 (ARM 64-bit) LInux systems. FEX has been one of the leading avenues for opening up gaming on AArch64 Linux hardware, even making use of Wine / Proton (Steam Play) for enjoying Windows x86 games within AArch64 Linux confines.

15 April 2024 - FEX 2404 - 13 Comments
Linux 6.10 To Merge NTSYNC Driver For Emulating Windows NT Synchronization Primitives
Linux 6.10 To Merge NTSYNC Driver For Emulating Windows NT Synchronization Primitives

Going through my usual scanning of all the "-next" Git subsystem branches of new code set to be introduced for the next Linux kernel merge window, a very notable addition was just queued up... Linux 6.10 is set to merge the NTSYNC driver for emulating the Microsoft Windows NT synchronization primitives within the kernel for allowing better performance with Valve's Steam Play (Proton) and Wine of Windows games and other apps on Linux.

14 April 2024 - NTSYNC QUEUED! - 37 Comments
OpenRazer 3.8 Brings Support For Newer Razer Devices On Linux
OpenRazer 3.8 Brings Support For Newer Razer Devices On Linux

OpenRazer 3.8 is out today as the newest update to this collection of community-developed, open-source drivers for Razer devices on Linux. OpenRazer allows for Razer device customization and support under Linux to make full use of these gaming peripherals outside of Windows / macOS. Paired with the likes of the Polychromatic UI, OpenRazer allows a nice Razer hardware experience on Linux.

14 April 2024 - OpenRazer 3.8 - 8 Comments
SDL 3.0 Will Now Prefer PipeWire Over PulseAudio
SDL 3.0 Will Now Prefer PipeWire Over PulseAudio

For the widely-used SDL hardware/software abstraction layer that is commonly used by cross-platform games, the upcoming SDL 3.0 release now has the logic to be able to prefer using PipeWire directly rather than PulseAudio when successfully detecting the presence of PipeWire.

12 April 2024 - PipeWire Over PulseAudio - 51 Comments
SDL 2.30.2 Released Along WIth New SDL3 Preview
SDL 2.30.2 Released Along WIth New SDL3 Preview

The Simple DirectMedia Layer software/hardware abstraction layer commonly used by games and other cross-platform software is out with a new SDL 2.30.2 stable release as well as a new SDL3 preview release.

2 April 2024 - SDL 3.1.1 Preview - 11 Comments
Updated Windows NT Sync Driver Posted For The Linux Kernel
Updated Windows NT Sync Driver Posted For The Linux Kernel

CodeWeavers' Elizabeth Figura has been working on the NTSYNC driver to implement Windows NT synchronization primitives for the Linux kernel in order to help the performance of various Windows games running on Linux by the likes of Wine / Valve's Proton (Steam Play). The third iteration of that driver was posted overnight as it seeks to go into the mainline Linux kernel.

29 March 2024 - NTSYNC - 27 Comments
SDL3 Will Keep Wayland Default At Least For The Time Being
SDL3 Will Keep Wayland Default At Least For The Time Being

Following several days of discussions from both sides of the table over whether SDL 3.0 should revert its Wayland over X11 preference in light of some aspects of the Wayland ecosystem support not being in good shape, for now at least SDL 3.0 is sticking to the Wayland support by default. It may be revisited though closer to release to see how the upstream support is for users of this hardware/software abstraction library widely used by cross-platform games.

27 March 2024 - SDL 3.0 - 115 Comments
SDL Developers Weigh Reverting Wayland Over X11 For SDL 3.0
SDL Developers Weigh Reverting Wayland Over X11 For SDL 3.0

With the SDL library that's widely-used by cross-platform games with the current SDL 3.0 development code it prefers Wayland over X11, but a new pull request would temporarily revert that on the basis of the Wayland ecosystem still not being up to par.

26 March 2024 - Possible Revert - 106 Comments
A Game Is Finally Announced For The Open 3D Engine
A Game Is Finally Announced For The Open 3D Engine

Announced back in 2021 by the Linux Foundation was Amazon Lumberyard becoming the Open 3D Engine and the Linux Foundation fostering the Open 3D Foundation for evolving this new open-source game engine. Three years later there is now a commercial game announced for the Open 3D Engine (O3DE).

20 March 2024 - Open 3D Engine - 30 Comments
SDL Storage API Merged For SDL 3.0
SDL Storage API Merged For SDL 3.0

Going back years but documented in 2022 has been a desire for the SDL hardware/software abstraction layer popular with cross-platform games to offer an abstracted file-system API. That's finally come to reality with the new SDL_Storage interface added for SDL 3.0.

16 March 2024 - SDL_Storage API - 18 Comments
Orange Pi Neo Coming As A Ryzen 7 + Linux Powered Handheld Device
Orange Pi Neo Coming As A Ryzen 7 + Linux Powered Handheld Device

When hearing of "Orange Pi Neo" this weekend from sources at FOSDEM 2024, I just assumed it was yet another Orange Pi single board computer... But then to hear it's a handheld game console from Orange Pi again gives off the impression of some low-power ARM device. It turns out though that the Orange Pi Neo is a forthcoming AMD Ryzen powered handheld gaming console.

5 February 2024 - Orange Pi Neo - 12 Comments
SDL 2.30 Released With New API Additions For Steam Use
SDL 2.30 Released With New API Additions For Steam Use

While all major feature development for the Simple DirectMedia Layer "SDL" is currently focused on SDL 3.0 for this library commonly used by cross-platform games for various hardware/software abstractions, SDL 2.30 released on Thursday as a new point release in the SDL2 series.

2 February 2024 - SDL 2.30 - 4 Comments
"The Finals" Can Run With Intel Graphics On Linux When Hiding The Fact It's An Intel GPU
"The Finals" Can Run With Intel Graphics On Linux When Hiding The Fact It's An Intel GPU

Embark Studios' The Finals free-to-play first person shooter has proven quite popular since its release in early December. The Finals is a game powered by Unreal Engine 5 that has been running on Linux thanks to Valve's Steam Play (Proton + VKD3D-Proton). With the latest Mesa driver activity, Intel Arc Graphics on Linux with their open-source driver can now handle this popular game.

15 January 2024 - Intel XeSS Workaround - 18 Comments

2003 Linux Gaming news articles published on Phoronix.