-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Linux might be the future of gaming on PC, yet I'm not doing anything to help
- Thread starter Arkanius
- Start date
I've considered it.
It would be fantastic for a relaxed perspective into the future to know that your OS' existence and viability can never be threatened by a single corporate interest.
However, the practical drawbacks at this point are still severe. I hope that Vulkan can open the door for performance parity on the one hand and better DX "emulation" on the other.
One thing I've personally resolved to do is to try and minimize my output of platform-specific software.
It would be fantastic for a relaxed perspective into the future to know that your OS' existence and viability can never be threatened by a single corporate interest.
However, the practical drawbacks at this point are still severe. I hope that Vulkan can open the door for performance parity on the one hand and better DX "emulation" on the other.
One thing I've personally resolved to do is to try and minimize my output of platform-specific software.
Fahzgoolin
Banned
Asking gamers to switch to Linux is asking them to take on a burden.
Burden + entertainment = unentertaining
I hate to say it, but I don't think it's ever gonna happen and I can't be bothered to care right now because of the reasons you mentioned and more.
Burden + entertainment = unentertaining
I hate to say it, but I don't think it's ever gonna happen and I can't be bothered to care right now because of the reasons you mentioned and more.
For Desktop computing especially it's excellent. It's quite picky when it comes to current hardware but that's not the fault of Linux but hardware manufacturers. I don't care about that as I usually buy hardware that contains Intel hardware.
thelatestmodel
Junior, please.
Until I can use Linux without it going "missing dependency" (or similar) within 5-10 minutes of installing anything, Linux is not the future.
I want to love it, I love the idea of it, but every time I've installed it, something doesn't work and it barks at me.
I want to love it, I love the idea of it, but every time I've installed it, something doesn't work and it barks at me.
Palculator
Unconfirmed Member
Were you messing about with Slackware or something as your first distro? Any modern distribution has repositories with automatic dependency management.
Sephiroth_VII
Member
The survey shows tries to show overall Steam usage. That's different from buyer OS split, since that depends on the game. Some devs have sold more on Linux than OSX, that doesn't mean there are more people using Linux than OSX though.
EDIT: Lol. Leaving this up for other "dumb" people ;-)
Have you tried any recent Ubuntu LTS release?
If the answer is yes, how the hell are you installing your software? Please don't tell me you're just downloading de-files from random websites, that's just not how software works on Linux.
That part could definitely be more user friendly though. That should be happening soon for Ubuntu, with their new snap-format for software making it a lot harder to break stuff from the next LTS going forward.
I played 4 months on my Linux dev system, AMD APU quad core, a lot of indies. Terrible experience. Only a bunch of 2D indies was playable and only with default drivers. The official AMD drivers were the shit, absolute shit, on my system. A simple 3D indie like Syder Arcade runs at 10-15 fps.
On Windows, on the same system, it runs perfectly.
We should accept a fact: Linux should be used only for developing, servers,security networks and computational mathematics.
Just stop saying that gaming in Linux is easy and friendly: it's a cruel lie.
On Windows, on the same system, it runs perfectly.
We should accept a fact: Linux should be used only for developing, servers,security networks and computational mathematics.
Just stop saying that gaming in Linux is easy and friendly: it's a cruel lie.
thelatestmodel
Junior, please.
Messing about? Thanks for the snark but I know what Slackware is - it was actually Ubuntu. The supposed most user-friendly distro. Seriously, someone needs to come up with a distro that just works, like Windows or OSX. Even Ubuntu is still not there yet.
Aceshighhhh
Member
Why are people so quick to write-off Linux in favor of Windows? The reality is that Linux does have plenty of potential, with user-base being its weakest point.
Don't people generally oppose these sort of monopolistic environments?
Don't people generally oppose these sort of monopolistic environments?
It can be used for anything besides gaming in a reasonable good way.
Wine is amazing for DX9 and below and it feels that DX11 is the final barrier that it needs to break.
And the wrappers are in a great state. Valve's own ToGL works great, and Virtual Programming eON has been showing fantastic results when it's wrapped at source code level.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rISRVeJxhnE
I wonder if DX12 will actually be easier to solve, but I hope it's a non problem and Vulkan wins in the end.
CircleOfFire
Member
Except most of Android isn't written in Java...
CircleOfFire
Member
I've had much more success using Ubuntu than with OSX (used it since 2002) or Windows! The main issue that I've seen and this is common in other directions is that trying to use it the same way you do with say Windows is going to end in tears.
Sephiroth_VII
Member
But most of the apps are...
Please answer my question from above: How did you install software on Linux when you got those errors?
I know the answer you want is "command-line" but it actually depends on the distro. Ubuntu and other Debian distro's it's actually quite easy with the .deb files.
Sephiroth_VII
Member
It works just fine with nvidia-cards. Obviously, it would be preferable that it worked well with AMD as well, which it should with new cards going forward, but would it have killed you to do just a bit of research before buying? The Internet is flooded with people telling you not to buy AMD if you want to use Linux.
thelatestmodel
Junior, please.
Look it up in a repository, like you're supposed to. And it doesn't always work. It's not good enough.
I know it works a lot of the time, which is of course a good thing, but if there wasn't a problem, people wouldn't be complaining about it.
Sephiroth_VII
Member
No, it's not. He was saying that his systems always breaks with dependency errors, so I would expect him to be using debs, just like he would use exes on Windows. That's a recipe for disaster if you don't know what you're doing.
You too mate. I'm pro-linux, just asking a guy what he did to break his package manager ;-)
FrozenCell
Member
This is exactly what this thread argues - if it's not handed to you on a silver plate, then very few are willing to bear the incovenience in order to build a better future.
CircleOfFire
Member
Java can encourage certain bad habits for sure because of the huge safety net it provides, but for the vast majority of the apps it's the fault of the developers that the app is slow. 3D games aren't necessarily a great target for Java, but Notch did alright with Minecraft (remember, one guy made a highly dynamic game in that case)!
Caayn
Member
That's the thing. Linux needs an form of exe that just works. Saying "Yeah you use Linux, you should rely on the command line" isn't the solution.
Linux's fragmentation is a beauty but it's also the reason why it'll never reach main stream.
Huh? Linux has "exe", it's called ELF and even works with a double click.
Palculator
Unconfirmed Member
No, that would be a step down from what we already have with tools like apt and aptitude, which take care of these dependency problems. They aren't saying use the command line, they are saying rely on automatic dependency management instead of manually pulling in .deb packages, which can be done with a graphical user interface too.
But a unified front end for the command line yes. This is a nightmare because there multiple distro's with different package managers.
CircleOfFire
Member
This is the conceptual mismatch I referred to in an earlier response, there are package formats that handle this and it's not exactly hard to do that packaging for any app really.
Iztok Mravlja
Banned
Linux will never be the main PC OS for gaming, and not just because it's not very well suited for games (which it isn't, as far as support for hardware, APIs and actual games go), but because it's not even the best option for everything else users expect to do with a PC.
You may disagree, but if you're like me and worked for any length in IT, especially on the workstation side, you know this to be true and not just a matter of opinion.
If you ask me, people usually want 1 OS for everything. That's Windows.
You may disagree, but if you're like me and worked for any length in IT, especially on the workstation side, you know this to be true and not just a matter of opinion.
If you ask me, people usually want 1 OS for everything. That's Windows.
As media center, indeed. But it needs dedicated&friendly GUI as front-ends like KODI and others.
For different things, I will never suggest Linux as a home OS for a casual user. Even an "easy" Ubuntu distro still need some work from terminal, sometimes. Especially for resolve broken packet installation and dependencies.
This is not the right way to evolve as an home OS. But, it's perfectly understandable: Linux is not (and it will never be) an home OS. This is the point.
Sephiroth_VII
Member
Java is inherently slower than most programming languages, simply because it runs in a virtual machine. It's never going to be as fast as C++, or even Python.
What "just works" right now is using the package manager, just like on Android and IOS.
FrozenCell
Member
Universal Windows Platform is Microsoft's solution, personally I think UNIX-derived OSes solve all form factors better.
CircleOfFire
Member
My fiance and her mother both use Ubuntu based desktops without any problems at all and they're definitely casual computer users. Personally I've had weird problems with broken dependencies or similar about twice in 8 years and that's because I've driven way off piste and it was my own fault.
Robottiimu2000
Member
i was just thinking about this the other day. I fear I will be too lazy to jump on board just yet, but this is definitely *the right thing* to do..
Palculator
Unconfirmed Member
This isn't a programming language pissing contest and a language's value isn't solely determined by its raw performance during execution, otherwise we'd all be programming assembly.
CircleOfFire
Member
I've never seen any Python run faster than Java in over a decade of being employed as a developer. Here's a benchmark that runs a nbody simulation in 20 seconds in Java, versus 15 minutes in Python: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64q/performance.php?test=nbody Startup time is a factor, but we're talking the first couple of seconds of an application starting.
The virtual machine you're talking about turns the bytecode into native code at runtime, which brings it close to C++ speeds for most things. The main limitation is that you can't do unsafe memory tricks in Java itself.
anothertech
Member
I've never really understood the sentiment that everyone should go to Linux. It's a terrible non user friendly OS that is fast, sure, but is incompatible with even the most day to day applications out there.
Very similar to the OSX argument, if you have to dual boot so you can run programs on Windows, what the hell is the point? Just use Windows for Zods sake.
If there is a real reason for the masses to switch, I'm failing to see it.
Very similar to the OSX argument, if you have to dual boot so you can run programs on Windows, what the hell is the point? Just use Windows for Zods sake.
If there is a real reason for the masses to switch, I'm failing to see it.
Palculator
Unconfirmed Member
It was kind of a silly statement anyway because Python is interpreted and compiled before runtime (barring things like Cython and such) much like Java bytecode is interpreted by the JVM. It maps even better considering plenty of Java code is compiled just in time.
Of course, a virtual machine isn't equal to an interpreter but they're both added layers of processing between program and CPU.
This is nice and it shows that Ubuntu is the only distro "close" to its future objective but it's an exception. Only an exception, imo.
Every single "casual user" (from 20-year to 60-people) I know that tried Linux (as main system) later went back to Windows/OSX as fast as possible. Only a bunch of people I know still use a distro every day but they are programmers and/or students like me so it's natural for them.
High performant games in Android use native C++ libraries
Also, take a look at this guys:
http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/0...wed-multitasking-but-its-disabled-by-default/
Android is finally going Windowed mode! It's finally reaching the Windows model of Windows 95. And that is Linux! It has the user base, it has the devices, it has everything.
Could the push to Linux come from mobile when it goes full circle?
This is likely what is needed, most consumers don't know enough about Linux but if a laptop is released with an android operating system they know it is the same thing on their phones.
I would need some kind of backward compatibility with old PC games though...so I guess I'll stick with windows.
I've been using Linux for 17 years at this point. It's been my main operating system for probably ten. I still have a gaming windows 10 machine, but I've probably seven devices that run some version of Linux (Ubuntu) or Android.
I think Linux is nearly there for gaming. The driver issue is ongoing. It's always been a problem, but for most casual gamers Android tablets have enough oomph to do the job. That's probably where the future of gaming lies anyway.
At some point I can see a hybrid desktop/android system.
To the OP I'd say move over, dual boot. see how it goes. For a web browser machine Android tablet or Ubuntu laptop is a no-brainer at this point.
I think Linux is nearly there for gaming. The driver issue is ongoing. It's always been a problem, but for most casual gamers Android tablets have enough oomph to do the job. That's probably where the future of gaming lies anyway.
At some point I can see a hybrid desktop/android system.
To the OP I'd say move over, dual boot. see how it goes. For a web browser machine Android tablet or Ubuntu laptop is a no-brainer at this point.
Ubuntu is a very user friendly distro, but again like gaming, it's suffering from a small echo chamber where when you search anything, it will be the more tech inclined giving advice and resorting to command line everything to solve your issues.
cHaOs667
Member
I can really not see why and how Linux should replace Windows as THE PC games OS.
Beside the performance and driver issues the user experience is inconsistent, sometimes you have to deal with issues end users are not able to fix like missing 32 Bit shared libraries on 64 Bit linux systems that had to be downloaded and installed manually AND i have experienced the transition the other way around in the past four years.
I have used both, windows and linux, as a dual boot solution to develop software for over 11 years because several software tools where and are not available for linux. One of them was the infamous Microsoft Office, the other one Altova XMLSpy.
Still to date there is no alternative to Microsoft Office on Linux - i have seen many Excel files, used extensively in serveral coporations, that crashed OpenOffice and LibreOffice frequently that i started to boot up Windows every time i had to look into one of the files (or used it within an virtual environment) BUT with the release of Docker and CMDER for Windows I started to use Windows as my main OS. So today I use Windows and OSX for my daily work tasks and just use Docker for virtual linux environments to code. And everything completely transparent for the Host OS so I can take the full advantage of HiDPI screens and Tools through the host OS.
So far I love the solution and I am not likely to go back.
Beside the performance and driver issues the user experience is inconsistent, sometimes you have to deal with issues end users are not able to fix like missing 32 Bit shared libraries on 64 Bit linux systems that had to be downloaded and installed manually AND i have experienced the transition the other way around in the past four years.
I have used both, windows and linux, as a dual boot solution to develop software for over 11 years because several software tools where and are not available for linux. One of them was the infamous Microsoft Office, the other one Altova XMLSpy.
Still to date there is no alternative to Microsoft Office on Linux - i have seen many Excel files, used extensively in serveral coporations, that crashed OpenOffice and LibreOffice frequently that i started to boot up Windows every time i had to look into one of the files (or used it within an virtual environment) BUT with the release of Docker and CMDER for Windows I started to use Windows as my main OS. So today I use Windows and OSX for my daily work tasks and just use Docker for virtual linux environments to code. And everything completely transparent for the Host OS so I can take the full advantage of HiDPI screens and Tools through the host OS.
So far I love the solution and I am not likely to go back.
Palculator
Unconfirmed Member
I wish Windows' command prompt was as sophisticated as the Linux or even OSX shells. Cygwin is the only way to make it bearable and that barely counts as a Windows command line. The reason you see it given as an answer to so many things is because it's incredibly powerful and besides maybe having to edit configuration files or go down to a pretty low level when dealing with hardware issues, most command line based solutions boil down to a few calls with parameters you can usually copy and paste from whatever resource you're getting them from. I get how the black hole of the terminal is kind of dreaded, but it's not exactly rocket science in common cases.
Palculator
Unconfirmed Member
I might try it, thanks for the recommendation. The actual solution I'm going with right now is to steer clear from anything command line on Windows since I can luckily do most of that on Linux too. Mainly use Windows for gaming these days. Also, mostly using zsh but bash is obviously just as familiar.
Blegh @ PowerShell.
I haven't ever thought about switching Windows for something else, but Windows 10 with its privacy snooping, forced auto updates and a move towards a closed system, I would consider a switch. I really hope that someone would put up a fight with Windows so I can switch to that OS instead if Windows turns even worse. As for now I will continue to use Windows and hope that Microsoft comes to their senses. I don't expect them to do that however, they have been on a one track mind since the Xbox One reveal.
Sephiroth_VII
Member
Well, I may have been wrong on that. I will admit that I've never used Java, so my opinion is based on trusted third-parties. I'll definitely look into it more, so thank you for the correction.
soxinthebox
Member
Install Ubuntu with wubi and you can dip your toes in whenever you feel like - just choose the OS from the bios.
People have been saying that Linux for the desktop (and thus gaming...) is just around the corner for the past15 years. What they don't recognize is that there is just far too much tinkering that needs to be done in order to get a usable experience, even in 2016.
I work in the tech industry and used to run Ubuntu on my laptop. After a period of time I just had to go back to Windows because I don't want to have to tinker around to get something to work properly after doing that all day at work.
That doesn't even take into consideration the multitude of software support issues games have under Linux, needing to emulate in WINE (for some), etc. No thanks.
I work in the tech industry and used to run Ubuntu on my laptop. After a period of time I just had to go back to Windows because I don't want to have to tinker around to get something to work properly after doing that all day at work.
That doesn't even take into consideration the multitude of software support issues games have under Linux, needing to emulate in WINE (for some), etc. No thanks.