Linux gaming. Let’s face it – it’s terrible. Tux Racer? Please. Quake III, okay, I’ll give you that. NeverWinter Nights? If you can get it to work. WINE? If you have enough hair left to pull out, WINE is a good choice.WINE is a good idea but really a bridge technology, and many a techie will point out that what Linux REALLY needs is native gaming, and WINE will allow many developers to be lazy (read: Maxis/EAGames). Portable code that uses open standards (OpenGL) is nice, but OpenGL lags pretty significantly behind DirectX, so I have a hard time blaming developers there. It’s not an excuse, however.
The team over at Icculus.org have done a fine job porting games, and Ryan C. Gordon (aka Icculus) has even written an article about making your code portable, which includes “black box” modules (abstractions) so it does not matter if you have DirectX or OpenGL: either would work. Ryan worked at the now defunct Loki Games and did some stuff with a bunch of Linux games. Check out his site. Developers: wake up.
Linux gaming sites abound, such as linuX Gamers.net, Linux Games, and TuxGames, but don’t really offer anything substantial, just some howtos on getting your drivers installed and getting WINE to work. Wrong answer. Yes, I *WILL* pay for games on Linux, so long as they are games I want to play. Sorry, but Frozen Bubble and Tux Racer will never see my crisp greens.
I hate to say it [don flame-retardant suit] but Linux gaming sucks. My modern, fast system at home is running Windows XP, people, and gaming is the reason. Okay, it’s a glorified X-Box, but who cares – games install and they work. I can play some popular FPS games in Linux (Quake III, UT, America’s Army) but where are the other games? Battlefield series? Call of Duty? Warcraft III? Far Cry? SimCity 4?
I did manage to get FlightGear working – once, about a year ago – and that was great. But that’s just it – it works every time on XP but I struggle to get it to work consistently on Linux. TORCS gave me similar problems in Linux. Both games are great, by the way, if you have the time to tinker enough to get them to work.
Let me cut you off at the pass: I know someone, somewhere has gotten the games I’ve listed to work. That’s just my point – just saying “I got it to work” or even letting that thought through your mind means Linux has issues. I should just be able to download, install, and play! For example, I found an 1100 word document describing how to get SimCity 4 working in Linux (with WINE). In Windows, I inserted the CD. Big difference. I can do it in Linux, but I’m just tired of the hassle.
More to the point, I found a list of games and applications that shares similar frustrations with Linux + WINE + games. Most either will not install or install and then won’t work. If they do work, then they require all sorts of hacking. Yes, I’m a hacker and I love to do it, just not all the time for every game I install. When I want to hack, I hack; when I want to play a game, I want to play a game.
Some people would have you believe that you SHOULD go right out and purchase an X-Box or Nintendo for your gaming needs, arguing that they do a better job than a PC. Uh huh. I can still get mileage out of my 8 year old PC but my Nintento 64’s lifespan was much shorter (let’s face it – it’s pretty much dead). I disagree with this assertion, but that’s an article for a different day.
To be fair, network gaming has improved on consoles. Honestly, though, my performance PC has one raison de vive – gaming. Take that away and Linux will always be second-seat in my house, and for many of the avid gamers that really drive a lot of the PC market.
Don’t even get me started on graphics cards in Linux. Nvidia has done some excellent installer work but I’ve still had some nagging problems, and no, the forums couldn’t help me. ATi, which is my current fave, has been woefully behind the ball with Linux. Intel onboard graphics – don’t cringe, they are #1 in market share – frequently have problems, just won’t work, or don’t stay up to date (Xorg comes to mind).
Is your PC best not used for gaming? Am I wrong to want to play native games and forget about WINE? Am I wrong to keep XP around as a crutch? Where do I go from here? Do I stay with a Linux system for everything sans gaming and an XP system for gaming? Do I ditch one or the other? Does the Linux community wake up to their hardcore users (I’d be very willing to venture a guess that most Linux geeks are also gamers, but not vice versa)? Perhaps I’ll revisit this in a year.
About the author
Steve Husted is a long-time computer geek, currently doing anything but the technical support he was hired to do in Sacramento, CA. He tries to sneak in some Slack time between work, a bachelor’s degree, and family.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
I can play some popular FPS games in Linux (Quake III, UT, America’s Army) but where are the other games? Battlefield series? Call of Duty? Warcraft III? Far Cry? SimCity 4?
I haven’t tried Call of Duty, Far Cry and SimCity 4, but I am succesfully running Warcraft III and the Battlefield games in WineX, and they run perfectly.
Installing games with WineX is a one-minute process that even my mother could do.
Quote:
“and many a techie will point out that what Linux REALLY needs is native gaming, and WINE will allow many developers to be lazy ”
SPOT ON!!! I’ve been saying this for quite some time now – we need native gaming in Linux. Wine is just an excuse for games developers to be lazy and do bugger all and reap the money in from the Windows platform sales. They argue ‘no one buys Linux games’. I argue bulldust and fair pinklewinkles – if you don’t give me the opportunity how the hell can I buy the damn games?
The only way they’ll learn is to boycott the bastards. Don’t buy their Windows ports. Write letters. Write nasty letters. Make a noise with your local MP. Give em hell. If enough people get off their lazy bums and actually do this sort of stuff and they lose sales they’ll take notice.
Dave W Pastern
Since I’m up I’ll take a stab at your editorial here. Seems to me that despite all the market saturation Linux is claiming, it remains a “nerd” OS for all but the most mundane desktop tasks. While I’m willing to grant the emergence of projects like Lindows (err, Linspire . . .) and Lycoris as evidence that non-geeks can, will and are using Linux, there is an entire class of people who tread a very broad line of being quite well versed in computer technology. The problem is that what they know is Windows. For the sake of argument we’ll call these “power desktop” users. They know what their computer is capable of, but could care less how it achieves it. Thus, they’ll pay $480 for the best Radeon-based video card around, but they want to be able to plug it in, start the computer, run a .exe file and start playing their games. Right now, Linux does not allow that. Those “power desktop” users would have to learn a whole new set of skills to tweak their Linux computers, while they grew up knowing how to do it already with Windows. Thus, game developers focus on Windows primarily and in enters the chicken-and-the-egg problem.
Some people say, Linux needs native games and Wine prevents that. I´d rather doubt it, only a handful games run on wine, a few more with glitches on WineX. Wine is and never will be a serious solution for games.
We have SDL and this is an excellent base for Linux games, but why do we have so few of them. The answer is simple. It is Linux itself.
Face it, the PC is not the favorite platform for game developers, due to the fragmentation of hardware, which no driver really can abstract and no high level api either. Add to that the distro fragmentation and the neglegtence of the LSB and you have a market which is hard to target (close to impossible I must say) if you don´t want to run into a support nightmare.
Even though Linux has reached a critical mass which would make it a viable platform, if you look at the platform itself it is rather uniteresting to develop for.
You can abstract some parts somewhat with SDL, but most commercial libs the game developers use don´t have hooks into SDL and even then you run into the nightmare, of endless lib revisions which even can be broken between major revision numbers.
What we need would be a consistent and enforced linux gaming base, with defined library revisions, with defined installers and so on, but unlike the normal linux standard base, the games base has to be followed by the distro makers, otherwise I don´t see any chance to have a good gaming experience on linux.
Hey, there’s still some stuff missing from Linux. Gaming is one of them. Luckily I don’t care for games beyond FreeCiv, Minesweeper, Solitare and the like. For me, the crutch is iTunes. I really like Rhythmbox and Muine, but they don’t have a store.
This is utterly ridiculous. Please, don’t be silly, Open GL just hit the 2.0 spot, it’s way better than DirectX and it’s not a toy…
And then one day, the poster will find the real joy and excitement of getting real work done on a computer, which makes Linux an excellent OS choice.
I have always find the gaming fetish a bit odd for grown up people. Don’t you have anything better to do with your time, like help your local community, get in shape, read or write a book, play music, go for a bike ride?
I just never understood the allure of wasting hours upon hours trying to master and conquer the perils of a make-believe world.
FWIW, iTunes supposedly works in CrossOver Office 3.1 (which hasn’t been released yet, but there’s a beta available).
Linux have terrible 3d/sound support, it is the main game stopper. Games are most real-time, and long-time Linus ignoring RT with respect to net and filesystem server performance only. BTW, even sacred for hardcore hackers command-line tool – terminal so slow (gnome terminal).
How the hell can you play games on linux when you even don;t try. Come on power users … this is redicilous even a baby can install a linux game and play it. If you expect from linux to be started and just run .exe well you don;t have that hust because it;s not Windows ! power users are just to stupid to want a better p[latfor call them gamers nothing more! And i think the same way one user can lurn windows the same way he can learn Linux or any other OS he just have to start with it and not be lazy like more of the windows community. And who wants to waste his time with games anyway ?
“raison de vivre”, not “raison de vive”.
A French guy.
I really don’t understand why people complain when they do not get their Windows games to run on Linux. The games are made for Windows! You don’t hear someone who owns an XBox complain that he can’t play PlayStation 2 games on it!
Although I do agree with the fact that Linux needs native gaming, one must be fair too. Game companies try to make money. And, other than the big shots in the gaming world, most companies simply cannot afford and justify the time put into a native linux port. Why would they “waste” their precious time on a platform that has about 3% of the desktop world in its hands? These people need to make money too, and the easiest and fastest way to make money, is to make Windows games.
>> but OpenGL lags pretty significantly behind DirectX
Do some basic research, please. You’re comparing apples with bananas.
OpenGL is a 3D API. DirectX isn’t. Direct3D is.
OpenGL does not play sounds. DirectSound does.
OpenGL does not take care of input. DirectInput does.
OpenGL does not bake cakes. DirectX doesn’t either.
Bah.
I play Unreal Tournament 2004 and Red Orchestra 3.0 under Linux: the first was installed with an executable installer located on my purchased DVD (just like under Windows), and the second was installed using a similar installer, downloaded from the web. And in a couple of weeks, I’m gonna enjoy DOOM 3 under Linux as well.
“Linux gaming” is not terrible – it’s just as good as it is in the Windows world. The problem is rather the lack of support from studios. Epic Games and id Software, two major ones, have shown the way: I bet high-quality ports for Linux are going to be more and more common in the short to mid-term.
1) easy to use packaging/installer system
–> whatever happened to LokiSetup?
2) compatibility across distros (e.g. file locations, where to put menu items, etc)
3) easy-to-install 3D and hardware accelerated drivers
–> hmm somehow this is related to #1
i guess when these are addressed, more and more game developers will step up to the plate
i mean, it is attractive for the gamedevs that you don’t spend anything on the OS, so you have a lot more money left to buy games, right? 
Maybe there isn’t a big demand for commercial games on Linux. Not knowing the specifics, but if there was such a demand why then did Loki shut it’s doors?
yeah, probably demand is THE problem.
but i think the approach being used by id software — putting windows binaries on CD then allowing linux binary version download over the Internet but using the same CD for the data files — is the right approach at this time. of course that doesn’t make it any easier to develop games that work on multiple OS/platforms; it just makes the distribution/publishing part simpler.
Nice article. I still think Linux is miles away from gaming if compared to the Windows OS. WINE and similar software is not something that would interest a cassual gamer and those with more knowledge would have a dual boot for games if neccessary so I agree that these kind of programs don’t do much good to Linux gaming.
I think you should include some John Carmack’s (id) comments from slashdot which he posted some time ago regarding Linux & games, because many people (particularry Linux fanboys) still think Linux is fit for games and how thing will change to good for Linux.
Here are some of his discussions, you can check the link for full thread:
“It has been pretty clearly demonstrated that the mac market is barely viable and the linux market is not viable for game developers to pursue. Linux ports will be done out of good will, not profit motives. From an economic standpoint, a developer is not making a bad call if they ignore the existence of all platforms but windows.”
Some later replyied with:
“I think it’s only been established that Id didn’t do well with the Linux gaming market (Admittedly, that’s NOT a good thing) and it’s been pointed out repeatedly by myself and others what went down with the sales of Quake III:Arena- and it wasn’t because you did a bad game or did bad by us. (On the contrary, you and the great people at Id given us all KINDS of things- including the initial 3D support for the ATI RagePRO, etc.)
When you lag the release of the game by a bit, offer a way for Linux users to buy the Windows version and then “convert” it to the Linux version, and have a situation of mixed quality support of 3D (Some of the blame can be laid at the community’s feet for that- some of it can be laid SQUARELY at the feet of the chip vendors…) sales are going to be most certainly in the toilet. One has to wonder how many of the sales for the Windows SKU were really impatient Linux users. You’re never going to know- because there’s no way for you, or any of the other management there at Id to know for sure because you didn’t have a framework for keeping track of the “conversions” in place (Should you have? I’m not so bold as to say you should have- but it would have helped to know for certain that the Linux market was a washout at that time or not. I tried to buy it at the rollout for Linux, to no avail- and in Dallas, one of the larger markets…)
I don’t think anybody would blame you for not seeing Q3A on Linux as a success or viable for gaming- I sure wouldn’t and I completely understand the position you’re taking on this. I just don’t see it the way you are because I’m seeing different data points.”
With Carmack replying with:
“All linux games sales EVER don’t add up to one medium selling windows title. We are one of the creditors that aren’t likely to see money that Loki owes us, so we have some idea just how grim it is.
That isn’t saying that it can’t change in the future, or that doing linux ports isn’t a Good Thing, but it isn’t an economic motivator at the present time.”
Just get over it. Microsoft has DX and the vast majority of (game) developers and I also don’t see this changing in 5+ years future.
Mac OS X does the same thing. Heck, even Amiga and Atari ST did the same thing (just click and run).
So it is not that “linux is not Windows”. It is more that LINUX IS NOT F5G READY!
Heard of Linspire? (http://linspire.com).
Sorry, forgot to put the link in the above thread.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=20503&cid=2194363
Almost every day for the past several months I have asked myself why I’m even bothering with Linux on the Desktop any more. I love it as a server, but as a Desktop – I don’t think it’s improving in the areas that matter most. KDE and Gnome get a little better with each new release, but they are still dog slow compared to Windows. (I can hear it now. “You’re crazy. *My* system runs circles around Windows! You Microsoft troll”) uhh… yeah, sure it does. Just keep telling yourself that sparky.
It’s definitely true that Linux is virtually free of viruses and spyware. (Largely due to the fact that it’s install base is too insignificant for bad guys to bother with.) But that really isn’t a compelling reason to keep me away from Windows. I’ve got a router/firewall to protect me from worms, I know better than to open e-mail attachments, I know to check for security updates, etc…
In my own experience, *Desktop* Linux (servers are a totally different issue), but *Desktop* Linux isn’t any more stable than Windows XP. In fact, I think it’s pathetically unstable. X hangs regularly. If I’m lucky I can ssh into my machine, kill X, and restart it. If I’m not lucky, I have to reset my computer. The UI feels like it has been doused with mollasis. Everything is laggy/slow. (This is the part where people blame KDE/Gnome bloat. Well – I switched to OpenBox for over a month. Window movement, resizing, redrawing is still painfully slow. Face it … X is a joke. Linux needs a new windowing engine.)
(Oh – I’m running Gentoo by the way. Stage 1 install. And I’ve spent HOURS tweaking everything for performance. So there goes the argument about running an unoptimized distro.)
Every time I boot my computer, I wait and watch, and then breathe a sigh of relief when X actually comes up. At least 20% of the time, I just get a black screen. CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE does nothing. CTRL+ALT+F1 does nothing.
Likewise, every time I come to my computer in the morning, the screens are black because the power management has kicked on. That’s good. But I tap my mouse and wait to see if I get X back or not. Linux likes to “hard lock” while sitting here doing absolutely nothing over night. When that happens, I can’t even ssh into my machine to shut it down gracefully.
Totem/gxine/other mpg players … laughable. When they work, they are sorta OK. But just as often as not, they don’t work. (Windows Media Player blows, but it always works.)
ALSA, OSS, OSS emulation, gstreamer, etc… it’s hard enough understanding what that junk even is, let alone how to properly manage it.
So where was I? Oh yeah. Linux rules. w00t. In your face Bill Gates. boo-ya, boo-ya to the all mighty penguin. Hail Linus! (sarcasm)
Maybe there isn’t a big demand for commercial games on Linux. Not knowing the specifics, but if there was such a demand why then did Loki shut it’s doors?
Yep, that’s the reason. There’re no impossible technical problems to overcome. If the game companies just see that there are enough dollars to be won from good Linux games, or lost if they fail to provide them, they will do their best to serve people’s need for Linux games.
Personally I may not be not very much into gaming, especially the typical drive, hack & slash type of games. But I suggest that people who are, who use Linux and want commercial games for Linux, just buy them. It is as simple as that.
On the other hand: I think that there are too few interesting Linux games available, and what little there are tend to be of the same genre.
Maybe even I could buy many more Linux games if there were more strategy games avalable (my personal fav game genre). Doom, Quake UT etc. maybe be perfect for many, but many gamers don’t so much care for such games. Maybe I’m partial, but I would say that the Linux users/gamers are not the average game market, and there could be much demand for smart strategy games à la Civilization, Total War series, Europa Universalis II, Crusader Kings, Tropico, Port Royale, or good sports and war simulation games. At least there is a lack of Linux ports of such games (usually they don’t work via WINE or even Cedega either, AFAIK).
I do like games, though I’m no game addict. But, sorry, I’m not going to buy Doom, Quake or UT, how ever good the Linux ports of them (or all the derivatives) are. I’m sure there are many similar Linux users who could buy Linux games, but different ones.
maybe the problem is lack of interest. yes! but not only from game-devs but also from all the linux-devs. In linux , things only get done if somebody needs them AND then starts to implement them HIMSELF! So instead of complaining, start coding yourself, because thats the way to go (or shut up and just f… use ur windows-box for gaming — like i do too) nobody wants linux to take over the world, they just want to have the best system for THEIR neeeds, and thats what they create (and they do it very well)
“Games are most real-time”
Not in the way you bring it up, I don’t think. Games don’t need time guarantees–they just need as fast as possible.
I have heard several times that it is a bad thing that you cannot extend or upgrade your gaming consoles. I disagree with that.
First, you say that your 8-year-old PC is better at gaming than you N64, which is also out since 1996 (production ceased in 2001). If your PC is from 1996 i guess it’s a Pentium in the area between 100-200 Mhz, 16 MB RAM and a first-generation 3D card. I really don’t know what you mean by ‘getting more mileage’ out of it. Granted, you can use such a PC for a lot of things (like a server, or just for browsing with BeOS), but a PC (especially one suitable for gaming) is much more expensive. I would say that you would have to spend around 1000$ for a PC that plays today’s games reasonably well, while a new Gamecube costs only 99$. Even if you buy a new console every 3 years, it will still be much cheaper than upgrading a PC with a state-of-the-art graphics card (and the PS2 is out since 2000 and new games will be released for several years).
Second, your article evolves around the fact that getting games to work in Linux is really hard and should be simple. This is another strong point of consoles: No installation. Pop in the cartridge/cd/dvd/umd and start to play. If simplicity is your concern, go for a console.
Finally, I do understand that there are some people who just don’t like gaming consoles. That’s OK, of course. But your arguments against them seemed a bit strange to me. Also, I know quite some people who just buy a new graphics card worth hundreds of Euros just to play a game they don’t really like, but which has great effects and is something you can show off with…
Loki games did an alright job at bringing games to Linux, but the “community” didnt support them enough. I’m not a gamer, and even I bought a couple of their titles(Sim City and Civ CTP).
Loki wasnt in an ideal position to make big money though, their games were released months after the Windows versions, because they weren’t simultaneously developed. Plus developers like Maxis blocking ports of games like The Sims, didnt help.
The best hope Linux gaming has is for some Linux loving company to develop a killer game, release it for Linux do a windows port after a few months. Maybe that’ll make other devs follow suit?
Linux is sure more difficult to configure than Windows, seen from a typical PC gamers point of view – and especially if you compare Windows XP to Gentoo Linux that you say you use…
But speed? Could you provide some real benchmarks that show that Linux is much slower than Windows as a desktop OS? My experience, on my PC (no Gentoo..;-) is that there’s not so much difference, and if there is, Linux tends to be a bit faster (e.g. it boots faster).
As to highend 3D gaming, of course MS Windows wins Linux or any Unix hands down. One reason is Direct X. But personally I would rather have a bit slower gaming experience on Linux than use anything as unsecure as Direct X on it… Another reason is that game companies and Microsoft cooperate so much, even MS itself is also a big game company. Gaming and entertainment hss been one of the main goals of Windows development quite much from the beginning. Not so with Linux/Unix. However, that doesn’t mean that good games could not be developed for Linux. Especially with current common PC hardware speed should not be any sort of a restriction.
You know its all in the games.
To win the desktop war, you need the home users,
and home users want games.
And Windows owns games because of its API.
Its REALLY AN API WAR!!!
So, what can be done?
Is it possible to abstract a common API for both windows and Linux that utilises DirectX on Windows and OSS APIs under Linux and other platforms?
Do we have that already?
Now the following sounds like a really stupid comment, but please bear with me, as I’m brainstorming a solution.
If Windows ran Linux would this solve the problem?
Think about it for a moment, without considering, the bloat and the performance overhead, which could possibly be addressed through some trickery.
If you were to patch Windows and MacOS with a “Linux compatability layer”, FOR FREE. Then Linux Apps and Games software would inevitably result, as it would minimize risk for the software houses. They would just need to write for Linux. It doesn’t get Linux as the main desktop initially, but like a trojan virus it would infect Windows installations. At some point the user may find themselves running Linux native applications on Windows entirely and then uninstall windows altogether. It might save people from having to upgrade to Longhorn if it was popular in time.
You know its all in the games.
To win the desktop war, you need the home users,
and home users want games.
And Windows owns games because of its API.
Its REALLY AN API WAR!!!
So, what can be done?
Is it possible to abstract a common API for both windows and Linux that utilises DirectX on Windows and OSS APIs under Linux and other platforms?
Do we have that already?
Now the following sounds like a really stupid comment, but please bear with me, as I’m brainstorming a solution.
If Windows ran Linux would this solve the problem?
Think about it for a moment, without considering, the bloat and the performance overhead, which could possibly be addressed through some trickery.
If you were to patch Windows and MacOS with a “Linux compatability layer”, FOR FREE. Then Linux Apps and Games software would inevitably result, as it would minimize risk for the software houses. They would just need to write for Linux. It doesn’t get Linux as the main desktop initially, but like a trojan virus it would infect Windows installations. At some point the user may find themselves running Linux native applications on Windows entirely and then uninstall windows altogether. It might save people from having to upgrade to Longhorn if it was popular in time.
It timed out.
“just saying “I got it to work” or even letting that thought through your mind means Linux has issues”
Erm, # apt-get install flightgear && flightgear
ditto for TORCS. Not sure what trouble you had. There’s no such OS as Linux, you know. These games run just fine on Debian though.
“I *WILL* pay for games on Linux”
Yeah, you and about a hundred other people. So if you each pay $10,000 for the game…
For every hacker working on OSS games, there’s a hundred people saying he’s not doing a good enough job. If you’re going to hack OSS, hack something people will appreciate.
There’s not much point in churning out more FPS’s or MMORPG’s anyway. They’re all pretty much the same.
They probably would never have gotten off the ground if their buisness plan (sell Linux games) was rotten. Instead it got rotten managment and that can kill almost any company.
I use my computer almost exclusivley for games but I rarely use MS Windows. Why? because most of the good games have already been written. 99% of my gameing is retro. I do not care about the latest and buggiest games, I care about the classics. So it’s mainly emulators for me, except for those games that have open source code. For example did anyone here know that Elite has downloadable code and you can compile and run it in Linux?
I think most modern gamers don’t even know what Elite is. Until you read in some magazine about how some game tried to have the feel of Elite.
Not everyone wants to play the latest MS Windows games. I know that all the games some people play are those Java ones they download off the web (yahoo, etc) and console owners don’t really care about Linux vs MS either. Don’t try to put you game players into a box they won’t fit.
Who cares if Linux attracts the masses as a desktop operating system? As it is now it is wonderful as a server platform and many developers like it. And more importantly it is free software and has loads of free software available for it. Personally I could care less how many more people adopt Linux. At this moment it has enough inertia and applications that I’m happy with it as a platform for web browsing, email and development, which is essentially all I do on my computer.
As Linus said, the goal of Linux is not to topple Microsoft in the desktop market (though he implied it would anyway).
… I don’t think it’s improving in the areas that matter most.
gaming is not the area that matter most
It’s definitely true that Linux is virtually free of viruses and spyware. (Largely due to the fact that it’s install base is too insignificant for bad guys to bother with.)
viruses and spyware need a homogene evironment to spread. Linux is not hogene… viruses and spyware use features of windows bundled application. such featur aren’t planed on moust OS programs (JavaScript to send mail)
In fact, I think it’s pathetically unstable. X hangs regularly. If I’m lucky I can ssh into my machine, kill X, and restart it. If I’m not lucky, I have to reset my computer.
that must be a feature of your config. I use Mandrake and an nVidia card (nVidia driver), and not a single chresh. all was automaticli configured….
Window movement, resizing, redrawing is still painfully slow. Face it … X is a joke. Linux needs a new windowing engine.)
right on this one. X protocol “feature”, but X.org server 6.8 solvs some(or moust) of issus…
Every time I boot my computer, I wait and watch, and then breathe a sigh of relief when X actually comes up. At least 20% of the time, I just get a black screen. CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE does nothing. CTRL+ALT+F1 does nothing.
try using a bugy driver on windows
not even ssh to help you…
Totem/gxine/other mpg players … laughable. When they work, they are sorta OK. But just as often as not, they don’t work. (Windows Media Player blows, but it always works.)
mplayer and xine work for me 100% of the time. try solve codec conflicts on windows…
ALSA, OSS, OSS emulation, gstreamer, etc… it’s hard enough understanding what that junk even is, let alone how to properly manage it.
try a user friendly distro, and you don’t have to manage/understand
So where was I? Oh yeah. Linux rules. w00t. In your face Bill Gates. boo-ya, boo-ya to the all mighty penguin. Hail Linus! (sarcasm)
All this talk about Linux being such a slow gaming platform compared to Windows…
What I really find ironic is that Star Wars Galaxies (sort of the only game except Diablo 2 I play on the computer) running with Cedega is way faster than when I run it natively on Windows (XP) on the same computer. It is smoother and lags less at 1440×900 with hight detail textures compared and more higher detail options than the chunky chop chop disklag I get in Windows at 1280×1024 with low detail textures.
I actually laughed the first time I started up the game from Linux
Bzzzzzzz — wrong. You don’t like to hack. You like to play games. I like to develop using Linux as my tools. If I’d like to play a good game, I: a) would get a game console b) put my football outfit and go outside.
In my own experience, *Desktop* Linux (servers are a totally different issue), but *Desktop* Linux isn’t any more stable than Windows XP. In fact, I think it’s pathetically unstable. X hangs regularly. If I’m lucky I can ssh into my machine, kill X, and restart it. If I’m not lucky, I have to reset my computer. The UI feels like it has been doused with mollasis. Everything is laggy/slow. (This is the part where people blame KDE/Gnome bloat. Well – I switched to OpenBox for over a month. Window movement, resizing, redrawing is still painfully slow. Face it … X is a joke. Linux needs a new windowing engine.)
(Oh – I’m running Gentoo by the way. Stage 1 install. And I’ve spent HOURS tweaking everything for performance. So there goes the argument about running an unoptimized distro.)
I use Windows, Slackware (desktop), and Mac pretty much every day. X is no where near as bad as you make it out to be. In fact ,the reason it’s so bad is this: I’ve spent HOURS tweaking everything for performance.
Your the reason it’s crashing so much. I’ve never had the problems you claim with X.org. Granted, I go with something stable and that is setup for performance: Slackware.
Using all three desktops everday, I feel qualified when I say that each has it’s problems, and each are pretty much the same in speed. Heck, my person opinion is that the Mac is the most sluggish/heaviest, Windows is the flakiest, and that X is the most painful to configure.
The thing is: Your the reason your Gentoo machine runs slowly. I can easily get Windows and Mac to run slowly as well, Gentoo just makes it easier. I mean, seriously, anyone who blindly equates Gentoo with performance has some issues. Yeah, Gentoo can be fast, but only if you know what you are doing. You clearly don’t.
Sorry for the strange english, I rewrote part of the post before I posted it and forgot to take away one or two words… :/
> Let’s see your 4 year old son have a go at it then.
(comment about installing win games on linux with wine)
1. whose 4 year old son uses a pc?
2. I would not let him play the shooters until 14-18 years (some sons are responsable enough with 14, but the father has to decide if this is possible)
Another point of linux:
linux is not a gaming os.
linux has in fact its roots from unix systems. unix as linux were meant to be only as network os for servers and so on.
Now linux does this job excellent.
(take statistics, it is known as most stable os for servers, and there are more linux servers then windows, so the argument as “more used, more cracked” does not help defend windows.)
Now the developers are aiming linux as desktop solution, but mainly for enterprises. As you can see, there is already a migration of win to lin .
This means, the desktop is good enough. I do not miss anything. Keep in mind the pure desktop, no applications installed.
Well, it is not easy enough to install? yes, hardware is a problem as most hardware developers yet not develop drivers.
Easying lin for home users is now in steady and fast advancing progress. One problem remains.
Lin is different to win. As you had a learning curve to learn win, this is also for linux. I know many people having a lot of problems with win, but because many people use win, the chance asking someone and getting an solution is high. Besides this, Microsoft has influenced many people with advertisements how easy win is, that is not completely right.
A mac advertisement brings this to the point: Think different.
Well, I want to point out with this explanations:
Developing the desktop for enterprises is more important.
Why?
more desktops in enterprises –> more hardware developers will be forced to make lin drivers –> more home users will use linux as hardware does no more matter, parallel to this more commercial software will be developed as marketshare grows –> more game developers will see a potential market –> surely this leads also to more standardization of fast API’s for games.
So for me gaming is last in the row, although quite many home users play (me too). *sigh*
Well – I’ll try this again. X just crashed on me so I lost what I had typed before. Maybe I’ll get through it this time.
and especially if you compare Windows XP to Gentoo Linux that you say you use…
Lay off the X-Files man. There’s no conspiracy here. If I were going to lie about what distro I used, I wouldn’t have said Gentoo, I would have said Linux From Scratch.
But speed? Could you provide some real benchmarks that show that Linux is much slower than Windows as a desktop OS?
Well – could you provide some real benchmarks that show that Linux is much faster than Windows as a desktop OS? I don’t need benchmarks to show me that X is painfully slow to use. It’s blatantly obvious. I should mention though that I have 2 LCD screens running in Xinerama mode. One of the Linux aplogists that I talked to a while back told me that dual-head is a real problem in Linux and that that was the reason for my sluggishness.
My experience, on my PC (no Gentoo..;-) is that there’s not so much difference, and if there is, Linux tends to be a bit faster (e.g. it boots faster).
Eh … if you say so. I’ve yet to see a Linux distro boot faster than Windows. Gentoo takes at least 3 or 4 times longer to boot. Though I really don’t care about that. It could take 10 minutes to boot if the UI was as snappy as Windows is once it was booted.
As to highend 3D gaming, of course MS Windows wins Linux or any Unix hands down. One reason is Direct X. But personally I would rather have a bit slower gaming experience on Linux than use anything as unsecure as Direct X on it…
I use to think that way. But lately I’ve come to realize that the number one problem with security exists between the keyboard and the chair. If you are completely incompetent, maybe Linux would be a better choice for you from a security stand point.
It’s not that bad already for the size of the linux market.
Keep buying “built for Linux” stuff or subscribe to CEDEGA or both. It all contributes to show to game developpers how big the linux gaming market really is.
Native would be best, but a close second would be “developped with Wine/Cedega in mind”.
there is already some developement. Think of gtk+
gaming is not the area that matter most
I didn’t say it was. I didn’t even imply that.
that must be a feature of your config.
Instability and slugishness is a “feature”? That’s terrific!! Where is the option to turn that “feature” off??? Please tell me. I’m dying to know.
I use Mandrake and an nVidia card (nVidia driver), and not a single chresh. all was automaticli configured….
I used Mandrake for several months. I even bought the 9.2 Power Pack DVD. I didn’t experience as many problems with X as I’m having lately, but it was every bit as sluggish.
Window movement, resizing, redrawing is still painfully slow. Face it … X is a joke. Linux needs a new windowing engine.)
right on this one. X protocol “feature”, but X.org server 6.8 solvs some(or moust) of issus…
What was solved? I just emerged xorg-x11 6.8 a couple of days ago. After which point X wouldn’t even boot. Though I quickly discovered that that was due to a renaming of the keyboard module. It use to be “Keyboard”, now it’s “keyboard”. But it’s still as slow as ever. Have any of you people ever used X with multiple monitors? I use to have a triple-head setup, but now I’ve settled on dual-head. It’s still horribly slow, but not as bad as triple-head was.
try using a bugy driver on windows
not even ssh to help you…
True, but safe mode has always sufficed to get me out of any video jams I’ve ever ran into.
they are allready here:
opengl covers 3d and in fact even be used for 2d (uplink did that). http://www.opengl.org
openal is a “new” project to bring to sound what opengl brought to graphics. http://www.openal.org
sdl is the big one tho (allso known as simple directmedia layer). its abstraction layer that enable a game that have been coded towards sdl to be recompiled on windows, mac, linux, bsd, amiga, you name it. http://www.libsdl.org
if you want to check out what can be done with that toolset then take a look at: http://www.eternal-lands.com
i think opengl have gotten a lot of spotlight given that id software have embraced it from quake 1 and on. the rest have gone below radar for a long time but should get some more primetime.
“Almost every day for the past several months I have asked myself why I’m even bothering with Linux on the Desktop any more. I love it as a server, but as a Desktop – I don’t think it’s improving in the areas that matter most. KDE and Gnome get a little better with each new release, but they are still dog slow compared to Windows. (I can hear it now. “You’re crazy. *My* system runs circles around Windows! You Microsoft troll”) uhh… yeah, sure it does. Just keep telling yourself that sparky.”
That’s a gross and vast generalization that is not true for everyone. I run Gnome and it’s not “dog slow compared to Windows.” I wouldn’t claim that it “runs circles around Windows” either, but as far as I am concerned, your statement does not apply to me. And it does not apply to most Linux users that I know either…so it might be a problem on your end.
“It’s definitely true that Linux is virtually free of viruses and spyware. (Largely due to the fact that it’s install base is too insignificant for bad guys to bother with.) But that really isn’t a compelling reason to keep me away from Windows. I’ve got a router/firewall to protect me from worms, I know better than to open e-mail attachments, I know to check for security updates, etc…”
Right. And does your router/firewall protect you from trojans, rogue Active X controls, etc.? Or do you not surf the web? Windows 2K/XP Pro can be made mostly secure, but you’ll need to apply the NSA security recommendations which are in the 100’s of pages long. How many people can do that? Certainly not a sign of “user-friendly” computing. As for XP Home/9X/ME? Dump it and upgrade. It can’t be done by mere mortals. LOL.
“In my own experience, *Desktop* Linux (servers are a totally different issue), but *Desktop* Linux isn’t any more stable than Windows XP. In fact, I think it’s pathetically unstable. X hangs regularly. If I’m lucky I can ssh into my machine, kill X, and restart it. If I’m not lucky, I have to reset my computer.”
Again, probably a problem at your end. I experience none of this.
“The UI feels like it has been doused with mollasis. Everything is laggy/slow. (This is the part where people blame KDE/Gnome bloat. Well – I switched to OpenBox for over a month. Window movement, resizing, redrawing is still painfully slow.”
Maybe you need to upgrade to a modern Nvidia card? Because I have a bargain Nvidia FX 5200 and I don’t experience any of the above either.
“Face it … X is a joke. Linux needs a new windowing engine.)”
X is not a joke. It runs fine on my machine. It does not render as fast as Direct X w/o extensions, but hey it wasn’t designed for that.
“(Oh – I’m running Gentoo by the way. Stage 1 install. And I’ve spent HOURS tweaking everything for performance. So there goes the argument about running an unoptimized distro.)”
Just because you run Gentoo doesn’t mean you’re running an optimized distro. Using the wrong USE and CFLAGS can actually SLOW DOWN your system. And just because you spent “HOURS” doing it doesn’t mean you’ve exhausted all of the options or have done it correctly.
“Every time I boot my computer, I wait and watch, and then breathe a sigh of relief when X actually comes up. At least 20% of the time, I just get a black screen. CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE does nothing. CTRL+ALT+F1 does nothing.”
Nothing like that here either. Problem at your end?
“Likewise, every time I come to my computer in the morning, the screens are black because the power management has kicked on. That’s good. But I tap my mouse and wait to see if I get X back or not. Linux likes to “hard lock” while sitting here doing absolutely nothing over night. When that happens, I can’t even ssh into my machine to shut it down gracefully.”
Sorry to hear that. Nothing like that ever happens here either. Problem at your end?
“Totem/gxine/other mpg players … laughable. When they work, they are sorta OK. But just as often as not, they don’t work. (Windows Media Player blows, but it always works.)”
Complain to the authors, make bug reports, or make it better yourself. That’s the spirit of OSS. Just because you use Linux on the desktop doesn’t automatically make you an idiot incapable of independent thought. As for Windows Media Player, it doesn’t blow and it doesn’t always work here. Sometimes it will crash for apparently no reason. I personally prefer mplayer on Linux. Never had a problem with mpg, DivX, etc. Only had problems with RT, WMA, and QT…but those are proprietory so it’s understandable.
“ALSA, OSS, OSS emulation, gstreamer, etc… it’s hard enough understanding what that junk even is, let alone how to properly manage it.”
So don’t. Don’t use Gentoo then. Use a distro. where you don’t have to care about it. It’s like buying a complicated book and then complaining that it’s too complicated.
“So where was I? Oh yeah. Linux rules. w00t. In your face Bill Gates. boo-ya, boo-ya to the all mighty penguin. Hail Linus! (sarcasm)”
Sorry, but this doesn’t help you in your claim that you’re not a troll. I can see where some people would mistaken you for a troll. It’s probably just the frustration talking so I’ll give you the benefit of a doubt. But since I have none of the problems you describe, maybe it’s because your hardware configuration is incompatible with Linux or you’re not setting up Gentoo correctly. I’ve experienced some hardware configurations that have made Win XP unstable also so it’s not too much of a far-fetched idea.
The last time I had any major problems with X crashing the whole system or even crashing at all was probably greater than 5 years ago. This is true despite of the fact that I run Debian unstable on the desktop so I can’t even begin to relate to your experiences. Linux is rock solid on the desktop as far as I am concerned.
You’re well off base stating that Gentoo takes 3 or 4 times as long to boot as Windows. Even twice would be pushing it. It’s tough to get it to boot as fast (although possible), but it’s not THAT much slower. And Windows does a lot of loading after reaching the desktop, whereas Linux tends not to.
Security problems with Windows aren’t exclusively between keyboard and chair either. Yes, a bit of experience helps, but it’s basically playing whack-a-mole with security holes.
Back on topic anyway…. I find OpenGL slower than DirectX in highly scientific UT2004 tests. I don’t know how much of this is due to the game being optimised for DirectX. It does annoy me though because it’s generally much more responsive under Linux – maps load faster, system isn’t unresponsive for a minute once I quit etc…
Differentiate this two apis.
opengl was made for professionals. this was commonly used in 3d programs for developers.
well, direct x evolutioned faster, but take in account, opengl is for profesionals.
One example: Have you ever tried to use an old direct x game with newer api? Many games do not work.
direct x was a qick and dirty programmed api. since direct x 7 it got almost stable. that is the difference.
“it’s basically playing whack-a-mole with security holes.”
Hahaha. You just made my day. That’s the most amusing metaphor I’ve ever heard.
Have any of you people ever used X with multiple monitors? I use to have a triple-head setup, but now I’ve settled on dual-head. It’s still horribly slow, but not as bad as triple-head was
Yup, and it was as fast as the normal desktop. My only issue was the third monitor was too far (the way my desk is set), so it didn’t make much sense. My other issue is that Xinerama doesn’t allow for 3D support (a real problem with Xinerama, in my book).
However, again, your problems are with Gentoo, the operating system you are using. Maybe you should switch to something that does some of the work for you. As has been said by many others: running Gentoo doesn’t instantly mean your computer runs faster. Indeed, your belief that it does (as I gather from your comments) shows me your real lack of experience, and I believe the problems you are experiencing are a direct result of you.
I’m puzzled… Why the heck do you continue to use Linux on your Desktop if you consider it to be inferior, sluggish, unstable and that any application you use doesn’t do the job?
There must be some logic I don’t get…
According to your posts, Linux on the desktop is so unusable that no one would want to touch it with a 10-feet pole. Should I ask myself what I am doing?
I was just thinking… Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I had the time or desire to play games on my computers?
I have a feeling that a good portion of the home Linux user demographic has little or no interest in playing computer games. Though not always the case, it seems that the people who are most militant about gaming on Linux are the script-kiddy types who switch over to Linux because it is the ‘cool’ thing to do…
Only my humble opinion…
-uberpenguin
does your router/firewall protect you from trojans
No. But my Linux distro doesn’t protect me from running “rm -rf /” as root either.
Again, probably a problem at your end. I experience none of this.
Kudos.
Maybe you need to upgrade to a modern Nvidia card? Because I have a bargain Nvidia FX 5200 and I don’t experience any of the above either.
Maybe I should “upgrade” my AGP 128MB NVidia FX 5700 Ultra to a 4MB S3 PCI card. Because that’s what I was using back in about 1998 with Win98 and it was far more responsive than my system is today.
X is not a joke.
Really? I read an article (on this very site I believe) just a few days ago that stated X is 20+ years old and is a hack of a hack of hack that was never intended to do anything like what people want now. And that if one were to design a “windowing engine” today, that X would basically be the prime example of how NOT to design it. The primary issue being that when X was designed way back when that computer hardware was so much slower then than it is now that the network overhead was completely unnoticed. Fast forward 20 years and (according to the article) all the network overhead is a huge bottleneck.
Just because you run Gentoo doesn’t mean you’re running an optimized distro. Using the wrong USE and CFLAGS can actually SLOW DOWN your system. And just because you spent “HOURS” doing it doesn’t mean you’ve exhausted all of the options or have done it correctly.
Agreed.
Nothing like that here either. Problem at your end?
Must be.
Sorry to hear that. Nothing like that ever happens here either. Problem at your end?
Must be.
make it better yourself.
The biggest cop out in all of Linux.
Don’t use Gentoo then. Use a distro. where you don’t have to care about it.
My reason for switching to Gentoo in the first place was because I was read so many posts about how bloated Mandrake is. Or how much SuSE sucks. Blah, blah, blah… Gentoo was supposed to be the ultimate way to go. Just boot the install CD, set your CPU type, and 4 days later when it’s done compiling, you have a completely optimized setup.
Linux is rock solid on the desktop as far as I am concerned.
I believe you. And that’s why I put myself through the hell I put myself through.
“[i]
“raison de vivre”, not “raison de vive”.
A French guy.
[i]
”
Maybe it was in spanish.
A Romanian guy.
:))))))
Just think of all the fun we could have if someone made a closed source XBOX emulator under Linux (Would ONLY work under Linux) People would swap over to linux like crazy ..
DREAM DREAM i know ..
Linux as far as I can tell has superiour 3D performance than windows does. I usually find my gaming experience a lot faster and smoother under Linux than I do on windows.
I actually think Linux is a much better platform for games than windows because everything is portable, not the other way around, most libraries are written to go cross platform (we are talking hardware here people!) so you don’t even really need to optimise your code (although I still would).
There is no excuse now, we know developers can do it and its starting to show with big titles moving onto linux.
NWN2, Doom 3, there are even rumours of HL2 being ported to Linux!
I was dual booting Mandrake and Win98, where I was using Mandrake for web-browing and Win98 for games.
When WinXP arrived, I figured that:
– WinXP reliability is equivalent to Linux (for desktop usage) if you treat it well (but you have to be careful also with Linux anyway).
– Web-browsing on WindowsXP is now quite good thanks to Mozilla (no pop-up, no spam..).
And I was tired of having two OS to patch, to configure, so I dumped Linux.
I may reinstall Linux if I want to do some programming, I find programming on Linux easier than on Windows, but it is a matter of taste..
Frankly if one likes gaming, Linux is not interesting and I don’t expect that the situation will change soon..
The Windows marketshare is so big, why would game’s editors care about making game portables?
The expense of making the games portable and the added distribution effort probably cost more than it brings money, so this won’t change until Linux has a much bigger share than it has now on the desktop.
And no games –> slow increase on desktop, this vicious circle won’t be broken soon!
I’m puzzled… Why the heck do you continue to use Linux on your Desktop if you consider it to be inferior, sluggish, unstable and that any application you use doesn’t do the job?
Like I said in my first post, I have been asking myself that same question every day for at least a month. “Why bother?”
There must be some logic I don’t get…
Me neither. An incredible hatred for MS I guess.
According to your posts, Linux on the desktop is so unusable that no one would want to touch it with a 10-feet pole. Should I ask myself what I am doing?
My primary Desktop is more or less unusable. (I’m on my Laptop at the moment.) X isn’t as horribly slow on my laptop, but I can still see windows redraw and trail as I move them. It *feels* to me like a latency issue. As if my system is always 1 second behind me. For example when I click “File” in my Firefox browser, it takes about a half of a second before the menu drops down. And then if I trail back and forth over the menu items “File, Edit, View”, etc… it’s always lagging behind. I don’t get that in Windows. And that my seem trivial to you, but it’s that way with everything I do and it’s really noticable and extremely annoying.
> Maybe it was in spanish.
No, that is not right.
live = vivir
yo vivo, tu vives, el vive, nosotros vivimos, vosotros vivis (ok, not sure about this one
), ellos viven
the live = la vida
Neverwinter nights has NATIVE linux client and it works very well!
sign on ! –>
http://www.blizzpub.net/petition/
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?atipet
Do you complain that you shouldn’t have to take a woman out first as well, or is it ok to do a little work for them but not your fast, free, Free, versatile, stable OS.
You’re preachin to the choir man, send this complaint onto game dev companies or something.
Go to google and type: how not to design a window system
Then click I feel lucky. (If for some reason you have google preferences that send you to some other link, here is the direct link I’m referring to. http://today.java.net/jag/wsd.pdf)
You seem to have a problem with your video card. If it’s a NVIDIA card, I suggest updating the card’s BIOS. Most of your problems (instability, sluggishness) probably come from there. I used to have X lock up, but since I updated my BIOS + NVIDIA drivers, and switched to xorg, I haven’t had a single one.
I have an Athlon 900, by no means a recent machine, and I have zero performance and stability problems – much less than with Windows 2000 at work.
At least 20% of the time, I just get a black screen. CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE does nothing. CTRL+ALT+F1 does nothing.
This is proof that there is something seriously wrong with your hardware. This is not normal behavior by any stretch of the imagination.
Oh, and MPlayer (with the KMplayer frontend) always works on my Linux machines, and plays pretty much every format I throw at it. Meanwhile, WMP often chokes, even on relatively small files (i.e. less than 10 MB).
In my experience, Linux is a much better desktop OS – games excluded (which is why I have a PS2 and an XBox, which are better for gaming that a PC IMO).
(I’m on my Laptop at the moment.) X isn’t as horribly slow on my laptop
I’ll ask the same question again: Why are you using Linux at the moment then?! You’ve been bitching about it on all your posts, but you still use to write your comments.
It doesn’t make any sense. If you think Linux (globally speaking) sucks and that Windows serves your needs much better, then be logic with yourself and drop Linux.
But please stop bitching around because you’ve only been able to mess with your Linux setup. Mess up an OS, whatever it is, doesn’t require any competency, anyone can do it. It doesn’t serve any purpose to “vomish” at everything because you did bad.
X isn’t as horribly slow on my laptop, but I can still see windows redraw and trail as I move them.
What most people perceive as slowness in X is actually a lack of desktop-double buffering and compositing engine. It also involves redrawing the entire window even if only a portion has changed. All of these are currently being fixed in xorg.com.
There’s nothing wrong with X that a little optimization can’t solve.
I’m curious, though: what’s the CPU speed of your laptop?
You seem to have a problem with your video card. If it’s a NVIDIA card, I suggest updating the card’s BIOS. Most of your problems (instability, sluggishness) probably come from there. I used to have X lock up, but since I updated my BIOS + NVIDIA drivers
Question. If it’s a hardware problem, why is it only an issue in Linux?
What most people perceive as slowness in X is actually a lack of desktop-double buffering and compositing engine. It also involves redrawing the entire window even if only a portion has changed. All of these are currently being fixed in xorg.com.
That’s the most intelligent reply I’ve seen yet.
I’m curious, though: what’s the CPU speed of your laptop?
My laptop is a few years old. The CPU speed on it is only 700MHz. My main Desktop is an Athlon XP 2500 w/ 1GB (512MBx2) dual channel DDR corsair memory. (Low latency XMS series.)
The fact is…if you play native games and dont do WINE stuff than my experience is that games work just like Windows.
Quake 3
UT
UT2k3
UT2k4
Americas Army (my current addiction)
Tribes 2
NWN
All of these games are available as NATIVE LINUX games, and they install and become icons on the desktop and click and run exactly like running them on a Windows desktop.
There is no “problems” with Linux that keep it back from being a good gaming desktop, its just there are not that many games to run.
The native linux games that are out there work great and provide the same easy to install and play experience that windows users have.
Come on!!! NeverWinter Nights its easy to install it, where is the difficult part? To download and extract Linux binaries? Moreover there are installers for this.
Linux gaming, all gaming for that matter is based upon content. Graphics, sound, game engines make up a game. While you may find a decent game engine designer who will do gratis work, good luck finding a graphic / sound artist who will do the same for linux.
Seems as though there aren’t enough game engines available, or enough kits to modify existing ones, considering the vast amount of game MODs available for nearly all popular games. If there were more linux game engine developers, perhaps those who design the graphics & sound for game MODs would switch over.
I don’t see linux getting too many game developer’s work anytime soon (unless you count obsolete, no longer profitable work.)
Game development is difficult. Doing it for free & not getting credit for your work is even tougher.
I used to be one of the biggest anti-M$ ranters, and you know what? It accomplishes nothing.
I used linux for my desktop for most of 2001, double booting to Win98 for gaming… (ok, triple booting to BeOS.. Not that I could do anything in Be).. It was annoying having to reboot all the time, and to constantly struggle to do the simplest things in linux, but at least I could work on stuff without the machine rebooting in the middle of my work for no good reason.
Finally I upgraded off the old monster in 2002, and put XP on the new box for the dual-boot. More and more I found myself staying in XP for long periods of time… When I discovered something that blew my mind. It seemed stable… Perhaps more so than Linux. (ok, let’s be fair… Linux is not the problem when it comes to stability, X is)
Last year I had a windfall, and decided to treat myself to something a bit more cutting edge. When it came to select parts for my new machine, Linux compatability never even entered my mind…
Microsoft has won me back. XP is stable and reliable so long as you update/patch regularly and take the proper precautions (Antivirus, spybot S&D AND Adaware, Google toolbar if your gonna use IE). The worst crash I’ve seen in a year of use is the explorer (not IE, but the proggy that handles the taskbar/desktop/folders) crashing and reloading itself. In exchange for that effort you get the largest, most varied and most useful application library available, cutting edge gaming, and ease of use. I want a program I download it or buy it, run the installer and I’m done… Even makes shortcuts on the desktop or on my start menu, often giving you the choice during install. When Linux ACTUALLY GAINS that level of functionality, I MIGHT think of going back. (They’ll probably have to fix the billion other minor annoyances first)
Despite multiple lawsuits, over everything from unfair practices (lemme get this straight, a company giving away software were sueing M$ for giving software away!?!) to simply having too large a market share (god forbid a company does well!), Microsoft has perservered. How did they get to be the biggest target with the bullseye painted on them? By working towards an OS that my grandmother can figure out e-mail and internet on, and my nine year old nephew can install games on in under a minute, and generally being THE operating system people use more than any other. You don’t get there by having something hard to use, despite the many claims to the contrary…
Something I definately cannot say about linux, and increasingly cannot say about the Mac much to my horror. When a friend came over flabberghasted over his Mac having multiple problems involving auto-updates and several other programs not working, and the solution being opening up an XTerm and running a few simple BASH commands followed by an existing shell script… I was shocked, thinking “this is a Mac, right?” while he was livid, cursing apple to the ninth ring of hell for switching to *nix under the hood and asked me what it would cost to build a comparable XP box. (not the first time I’ve heard this rant from him!)
It called into question my beliefs about M$ and the industry as a whole, something I have the feeling the writer of the article is doing himself.
Personally, if I felt like dicking around in a *nix shell to get even the simplest device working or spending hours recompiling supposedly finished software trying to make it run, I’d probably still be screwing around with Xenix on a Trash-80 model 16.
Really? I read an article (on this very site I believe) just a few days ago that stated X is 20+ years old and is a hack of a hack of hack that was never intended to do anything like what people want now. And that if one were to design a “windowing engine” today, that X would basically be the prime example of how NOT to design it. The primary issue being that when X was designed way back when that computer hardware was so much slower then than it is now that the network overhead was completely unnoticed. Fast forward 20 years and (according to the article) all the network overhead is a huge bottleneck.
——-
next time . talk about something you know. X network transparency is one of its cheif advantages and it uses unix sockets on a local system which is never ever a bottle neck.
besides X is a protocol which is very much extensible. do you whine about ftp or tcp/ip being old. same with X.
xorg has a new release which has a damage extensions which can significant reduce polling and screen redraws which people *percieve* as the slowness of X. with the composite extension enabled(its experiemental in the current release) its really feels modern and better
throwing away X is like throwing away the primary graphics engine in unix like operating system excluding mac os X. its not going to happen that easy or soon. neither it is required at all.
read joelonsoftware.com for the mozilla rewrite problems and read the presentation on freedesktop.org and lwn.net on how xorg(implementation) and x(protocol) is being improved.
Game developers see the Linux crowd as a very limited niche market. The same is somewhat true of OSX.
How do you get someone to spend 60 bucks on a game when all the Linux community cares to talk about is FOSS?
No wonder large gaming companies are more than a bit shy of spending a lot of development for the Linux platform when potential sales are slim compared to the same product for Windows. Not everyone is into developing software for FREE, and thankfully so.
If you’re desperate to play a PC game that was written for Windows, and are unwilling or incapable to get it to work in Linux, don’t run Linux.
I’m tired of this “what Linux needs for the masses to like it” stuff… people start to sound like religious missionaries. If you like Linux and can deal with its pros and cons, use it. If you are a PC gamer, stick with Windows and install Cygwin or something. Or dual boot. Or get a second box for Linux.
Operating Systems are supposed to be there to provide you with a place to run the programs you need to get things you want done… done. If you run Firefox, AIM and an MP3 player when you’re not playing games, just spare us the “What Linux Needs” lecture and just run Windows already. If you prioritize games over other things, stop complaining that your favorite OS doesn’t play the games you want. If you care more about what OS you run, prepare to not be able to run some games.
I hate this mentality of people trying to convert users to Linux, or people making the switch without realizing the technicalities of the situation, and then writing rants like this. Yes, if you move to Linux, you will not be able to play all of the games. Period.
I play City of Heroes and Warcraft 3 on my Debian/unstable box. I had a few problems with performance issues that were corrected, but did cause a bit of nuisance. I couldn’t get Worms World Party to work with Cedega.
[shrug] But that’s the decision I made. I knew what I was getting into with Linux, and I was willing to trade the few PC games I played for it. I’m more of a console gamer anyway… and I’d NEVER try to switch over a Windows gamer. You end up with rants like this article.
simple install is good, that is probably why projects like amsn and firefox like to have them. i think they are a nice idea, personally, and one like the amiga installer would be a good move. developers just wrote scripts for their program which used the installer to install their software.
sorting that out, so that games that are written now can be run by anyone would be nice. THEN I would consider what new technologies linux needs or doesn’t need.
WINEX/WINE fantastic effort, but I feel it’s true potential is compatability with older windows software for those who want to move on from windows 3.1/95/98. Anything that is new enough to run native on 2k/xp (along with new games) really needs a native equivalent. using wine for these is just a desperate move made in the absence of native versions.
how many of loki’s games came out at the same time as windows version? maybe that is why sales could have been better.
linux users dont like games … erm, console emulators seem to be popular.
Yeah, I forgot to mention that X has its problems and it’s been rather old technology that needs some improvement. But the new X technology is developed fast now and it shows a lot promise.
If your X has really crashed that much you say, it MUST be a problem at your side (or hardware or Gentoo), not so much X itself. X simply is much better than what you try to say it is.
Well – could you provide some real benchmarks that show that Linux is much faster than Windows as a desktop OS?
What I said is that that there’s no real difference in speed worth mentioning. In some cases Windows is faster and in some other cases Linux is faster.
I’ve yet to see a Linux distro boot faster than Windows.
With boot time I meant the total start time from turning your machine on to the point when everything is properly loaded, and that both operating systems have approximately similar arsenal of services and default apps running. Oh, and I have Windows 2000 on my machine (that boots rather slow), and the Linux distros are Debian and Arch Linux. I know that WinXP is snappier than W2k. But on my mchine both Debian and Arch clearly win Windows 2000 in the start time.
If you are completely incompetent, maybe Linux would be a better choice for you from a security stand point.
Huh? You know, especially security experts tend to prefer Linux or any Unix over Windows. *nix is built especially security in mind, MS Windows is built with ease of use for home users in mind. If you’re an expert and want to tweak the security settings higher, that is where *nix systems like Linux especially shine.
I can’t believe this “article” was even published. L1n0x g4wing suxor!!!!! would have been better.
No Linux gaming doesn’t suck. Gaming works very well thanks. UT2004 etc. The only problem is lack of publisher interest. So once again, no Linux gaming is actually very good and fast. Publishers are the problem, Not Linux.
It is really, really funny how much credit people give Microsoft for the efforts of third party companies developing for Windows. Whether it be device drivers, games, or other applications, any third-party vendor has to extensively test their product to make sure it installs and functions easily under Windows. If there is any consideration given to Linux, it generally consists of “here’s a binary (or a tarball or whatever), our in-house geeks tell us it basically works, good luck with it because we can’t help you with support”.
I would really be curious to know what fraction of user-installed apps are games – I bet it is a high percentage. Face it, folks, most of the population never installs any software, let alone an operating system. From my interactions with people in real life, I would guess that 50% of computer users use whatever shipped with the machine and never install anything, another 40% rely on someone a little more knowledgable to stick in the disc and click “OK” (Daddy, can you put this new game on the computer for me?), and maybe 10% even go so far as to install anything.
“‘Linux gaming” is not terrible'”
The hell it isn’t.
10 FPS do not = gaming… especially when there is no Half-Life 1 or 2.
Linux gaming, is sadly, a joke right now, and no spin doctoring is going to change that.
DirectX is an awesome development tool…. sadly it stifles porting to other platforms. Maybe if there were some more powerful cross platform development environments / libraries / tools etc…
Improvements to X are happening. That’s a great achievment because like everyone has been saying, it’s ancient, it’s hard to find documentation, and it’s not modular. It appears this is rapidly changing, according to some other recent articles. Games are an eventuality on Linux, but games are sophisticated software, and for the time being, it might be a good idea to pick up a console like Xbox, or PS2…or wait for Xbox2 or PSX.
loki failed because of bad management.
Possibly, but ya know what really killed them? The market. Linux gamers are all talk most of the time. How many loki games did you buy? I bought every game they ever released, even the ones that I had no intention of playing.
linux desktop speed
I have to agree with the disgruntled guy. My linux box does infact feel slower on the same hardware compared to windows xp. However, I wouldn’t say that XP is as stable as Linux by a long shot. SP2 really made my XP pro install start doing some seriously flakey things.
NWN is hard to install
I haven’t tried installing it on linux yet. I was kinda pissed about the whole Blink video issue. After actually playing the game (on windows) I realized that there are so few cut scenes in the game that it was complete ignornance on my part to have bitched about it so vocally on various forumns. I admit my mistake. What I will say about NWN is that its still pretty damn buggy. I started playing it again a couple months ago and after about 2 weeks of playing the game I ran into a critical bug (yes i reported it) which basically ruined the experience for me. I’ll try it again after the new patch goes gold. If its not fixed, I’ll probably not buy another Bioware game again. Kinda sad that a game that has been out that long can still have those kinda bugs.
general observations
I keep seeing these articles on various sites talking about linux gaming. Personally, I don’t really think linux is ready for gaming. Its really kinda clunky as a desktop. Ultimately I think linux will rule the world. But not today. I think linux is the ultimate server OS right now. I can’t think of another server solution that even compares. The desktop still has a ways to go. Do I still use linux on the desktop? Yes, 40hrs a week.
There are a lot of things about linux that need to change/improve. In my opinion (as a full time user/admin of linux since 1992) the following technologies are key to making linux the ultimate desktop.
1. full HAL and DBUS integration with all aspects of the OS
2. gstreamer fully stable, fully integrated with the desktop and full codec stability (that will probably mean forking over cash for licenses)
3. alsa. as much as I hate to say it, its still pretty clunky.
4. x.org. more of what they are doing with the newest release.
5. kernel. more focus on the desktop. maybe with DBUS the desktop will have a way of notifying the kernel as to which application is in the foreground and give it processor priority.
6. open gl 2.0 support in drivers and mass application adoption.
7. full featured video drivers from Nvidia and ATI supporting all the features on their cards. (video in.. video out.. etc.)
8. kernel driver abstraction. stable ABI? driver on demand?
9. adoption of new plugin api being produced by the mozilla guys.
what else did I forget?
You’re more or less right except that there can be arcane configuration problems on Linux to be able to run games:
– having to use different drivers for example (the free driver if you want to report a bug to the kernel developpers, the NVidia driver if you want 3D performance).
– difference between distribution may create problems for game installation.
Also you’re playing on word a bit: “No Linux gaming doesn’t suck.”
Yes, it sucks because there are very few games running under Linux.
>Publishers are the problem, Not Linux.
“the problem” For who is-it a problem?
It is a problem for Linux’s users.
I can assure you that as long as creating&distributing a portable game for Linux cost more than it bring revenue, publishers won’t have any problem NOT creating games for Linux..
I found this 3d-engine on sourceforge:
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/downloads.html
Haven’t seen it mentioned before, and it looks like a good idea, 3d engine in open source.
I wouldn’t say that XP is as stable as Linux by a long shot. SP2 really made my XP pro install start doing some seriously flakey things.
Again I want to point out that I’m talking about Desktop Linux. I think there’s a big difference. I think Linux accels at server related tasks. I’ve ran linux servers for months at a time without rebooting. And when I would reboot, it was probably to move the hardware or upgrade the kernel. I think it’s rock solid for those tasks.
But when it comes to Desktop tasks, it has proven rather unstable for me. Various computers and various distros. I rarely have to go to the task manager in XP and end task on a program. But I find myself in an xterm several times a day killing some process or another. (Video playback has been the biggest issue lately. I have to “kill -9” totem about every other time I run it.) Firefox, which has always been very stable for me, is “crashing” on me constantly as of late. I’ll go to a website, click a link, and it just disappears. And like I pointed out in other posts, X. Bah … besides being sluggish and unresponsive, it causes my system to hang or just won’t even come up at all.
It pains me to say anything positive about windows/microsoft. But I consider myself a realist. I’m not going to be one of these Linux apologists that over looks any and all Linux problems, focusing only on the positives of Linux and turning a blind eye to the negatives – while at the same time ignoring the positive points of windows and making an international case out of the negatives. Those guys are only hurting themselves. The sooner people step up and say “Hey! You know what, this (thing) really sucks!” … the faster it’s going to get solved. But no – some people would rather push those (things) under the proverbial carpet and pretend they don’t exist.
OpenGL lags pretty significantly behind DirectX
LOL!
In other news Photoshop lags behind Flash..
Well, I did not notice any crashs with firefox yet.
But I agree with you. No need to push the negatives of linux under the carpet.
If you ignore this and act blind, then this is not a constructive discussion, but distructive discussion which helps nobody.
I think this shows quite well the slowness of X.
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=1913
Perhaps this is due to SDL, the graphics engine he was using. SDL is not known for it’s fast 2D graphics and it is not likely to change either as development seems to have stalled.
Well frankly X is not made for what he is trying to do.
Anyway I’ve read that the new X server 6.8 has a new 24-bit visual setting, I’m wondering if it could help?
It is too long since I’ve made X programming, so I’m not sure..
And maybe this require a patch to SDL to use this new visual.
Before someone brings up but C# is too slow, I’ll preempt by saying that developers used to say the same thing when the move from assembler to C occcured and from C to C++. C# has some niceties that make it a bit better for speed than Java like value-type on the stack and being able to dip down into using raw pointers when you want to avoid bounds checking and the compiler can’t optimize it away.
The fact of the matter is that in the future you’ll see a lot more games being written in managed code for windows and that’s just one more API mess that developers don’t need to deal if they use Mono/DotGNU.
Here’s a very nice engine that runs on Mono. axiom.sourceforge.net It has a DirectX and OpenGl backend for windows people and has a very clean design.
The OP claimed to have problems “getting FlightGear to work” on Linux, claiming it “just worked” on Windows. That’s odd, considering that Linux is its native platform, the one that most of the FlightGear developers are using. Also odd given that the sim is aggressively made available to Linux users (e.g. is a part of all major distributions), so Linux users make up the majority of FG’s userbase, while 80% of the “I’m having trouble getting it to work” questions come from Windows users.
Oh, and if you really wanna drive the FlightGear developers nuts, drop in on their mailing list and refer to it as a “game.” Many of the characteristics most of us would consider integral to a “flying game” have been intentionally ignored by the aero engineers etc. that do the FG development, out of a desire to concentrate on realism of the flight dynamics model and such. You see this reflected in people who start using FG after years of MSFS and ask why the Cessna keeps pulling to the left during a takeoff run.
> You see this reflected in people who start using FG after
> years of MSFS and ask why the Cessna keeps pulling to the
> left during a takeoff run.
Note that IL2 Sturmovick (which is clearly a game) have also this behaviour: so being a game doesn’t prevent you from being realistic..
“I have always find the gaming fetish a bit odd for grown up people. Don’t you have anything better to do with your time, like help your local community, get in shape, read or write a book, play music, go for a bike ride?
I just never understood the allure of wasting hours upon hours trying to master and conquer the perils of a make-believe world.”
I see what you are saying, but at the same time do you watch TV work on word puzzles if so what’s the difference other than your opinion on the matter.
for crying out loud. Linux is an OS “for Engineers, by Engineers.” Period. Wipe your ass with your f@#$ing games. It is not a desktop OS, it was never meant to be, and hopefully it never will be. Some things are better left alone.
I have to be honest, I don’t really care about Linux gaming because I know PC Gaming is falling by the wayside. With the exception of *maybe* MMORPGs, no games made for a PC can’t be made equally as well for a console platform. Game developers like consoles for lots of good reasons: a) it reduces the chance of game piracy, b) it provides less headaches for the support staff as something like an XBox won’t BSOD as easily as a working, desktop copy of Windows XP will.
I’d prefer all the talent being put into Linux Gaming were put into some killer apps for Linux instead. I like Transgaming and what they’ve done with Cedega, but I think this should be the extent of it. Native Linux gaming is a waste of effort, IMO. Let the developers develop for consoles, and let the people who want to game do so on consoles. I might add, also, that I think consoles are a better idea from a social standpoint. Most games for consoles encourage multiplayer, whereas PC games encourage single player (or, perhaps even worse, Internet-based multiplayer) which causes gamers to live in isolation. Gaming should be a social affair, usually. At least that’s what a healthy relationship with a game should be 🙂
First, saying that Linux gaming sucks is purely a matter of perspective.
If you are into all the latest and greatest first person shooter or fantasy/role playing games, then yes, Linux is behind. This stuff requires the latest in video cards and 3D acceleration, and is written for game consoles or Windows. These games typically take upwards of 4 years to write and it’s not economically feasible for vendors to port the stuff to Linux.
But if you prefer the simpler, lightweight or “classic” 2D style games that are still fun and addictive and easy to play and have great “game play”, then Linux as a gaming platform is outstanding. For this category, Linux has more great games than one knows what to do with.
And frankly, IMHO, first person shooter and fantasy role playing games suck. The first time I saw someone play Doom back in the early nineties it looked cool and exciting and original. Now, my wife’s 15 year old brother is a big gamer and always has the latest first person shooter games. I see him play these games, and I can’t escape the fact that these latest games are exactly like the original Doom, only with more advanced graphics, more explicit violence, and different characters and scenes. And frankly, these games look excruciatingly, painfully boring. It’s the same old crap, with different window dressing.
And fantasy/role playing games are really for people with waaaaaaaaay to much time on their hands. To play these games, you really can’t have much of a social life or a job, or you have to be a pre-teen or teenager without any extracarricular activities (or friends).
The second category of games I mentioned, the lightweight 2D ones, are for adults with actual lives who want an entertaining diversion now and then. And frankly, these are a lot more fun and addictive. Tetris-like games still can suck you in. XSoldier is fun. Frozen-Bubble is fun. Klickity is addictive (and challenges your brain). Kolf is fun. The list goes on.
Finally, as much as I’d like to see Linux get the same kind of game support that Windows XP enjoys (to help further push Linux on the desktop), gaming is not that important. There are far better things to do with a computer (other things that Linux excels at), and far better things to do with one’s life. And yes, games are best on consoles – that way you don’t have to flush your hard earned money down the toilet buying ungodly expensive video cards trying to keep up with the latest boring (but slick) video game graphics.
Hardcore gaming on PC’s is quite funny actually. The video game vendors pour the majority of their resources into advanced 3D graphics (taking years to develop), while not putting one single iota of improved game play into their latest games, all the while requiring all of the suckers out their to waste their money on upgrading their video cards. It’s a vicious cycle that ultimately benefits the video card manufacturers. No thanks.
The OP claimed to have problems “getting FlightGear to work” on Linux, claiming it “just worked” on Windows. That’s odd, considering that Linux is its native platform
I haven’t tried Flightgear but I can say that both Neverball and Trackballs works better and faster in Windows than in linux, which came as a surprise to me since I believe both of them are developed in linux. In fact, I’ve heard people saying that Neverball performs better with the Win32 binary under Wine in linux than what the native version does. I can’t confirm that though, but I find it kinda amusing and confusing if it’s true.
Note that IL2 Sturmovick (which is clearly a game) have also this behaviour: so being a game doesn’t prevent you from being realistic..
Note that I never said otherwise. My point was merely that many qualities we pretty generically associate with flying games are simply not top priorities to the FG developers; they don’t see that as a problem, because making a game is not what they’re after.
Honestly, who gives a flying turd?
Linux is powerful, fast, scalable, and is an incredible piece of software.
Why the rush for mass adoption by gamers and other Joe-Sixpack desktop/multimedia pc users?
The market for Linux is growing, quite rapidly. When game publishers see that there is a large enough market to justify the costs of writing/porting a Linux game, they’ll do it, plain and simple.
Economics will dictate how this plays out. Right now, everything is in favor of Linux exploding onto the desktop; In fact, I beleive it is right now through corporate adoption and migration of governments.
What’s the rush? It will and *is* happening. For now, use your pirated copy of XP to play your games. Yeah you, you know what I’m talking about…
I would have been very surprised if I had been unable to get torcs or flightgear to work. I have always just got the packages off http://www.linuxpackages.net or more recently, just done emerge flightgear, and it’s worked. Flawlessly. In fact the only problem I ever had with flightgear was trying to install it on my other hard disk running win98. Likewise I’ve never had any problems with torcs, and neverwinter nights, unreal tournament and ut2003 all installed flawlessly on my system. First time. The only problem I ever had with the nvidia drivers was when I forgot to run depmod after installing them, but even if I hadn’t figured it out that would have been working fine after a reboot. The first game I ever tried with wine after installing worked flawlessly. (Red Alert 2). Granted some I’ve tried running with it after haven’t, but my wine success rate is over 50%, although it is true I don’t tend to have the very latest games.
To me, linux gaming is real, and it’s happening on my system right now. I think steve was just unlucky.
Well – could you provide some real benchmarks that show that Linux is much faster than Windows as a desktop OS? I don’t need benchmarks to show me that X is painfully slow to use. It’s blatantly obvious. I should mention though that I have 2 LCD screens running in Xinerama mode. One of the Linux aplogists that I talked to a while back told me that dual-head is a real problem in Linux and that that was the reason for my sluggishness.
Ummm…Strange. I run two monitors in Xinerama mode and haven’t experienced the issues you describe.
Anyway…X as a protocl is not slow. You could argue that X.org is slow or Xfree86 is slow, but X is not slow.
You are using X.org? 6.8? Hardware accel?
Interesting…In my experience, X.org configured well is much faster than Windows XP.
Have fun.