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Best Configuration for Linux Gaming?

Posted by Cliff on from the aside-from-dual-booting dept.

werjman asks: "I'm interested in switching completely to Linux but the only thing holding me back is the gaming. What I really want to know is what distro, graphical environment, Window Manager, and so forth are low on the system resources and play games great (and by games, I mean 3D accelerated memory hogs). Does anyone out there actually use Linux as a gaming platform?"

2 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. use the game itself as your window manager by rjforster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    First set your system up without graphical login, which most distributions configure by default.
    To do this edit /etc/inittab and change the default runlevel to 3, this means find the line
    id:3:initdefault:
    which will normally read 5 and change it to 3 (like mine is), Fedora inittab files are well commented and explain what to do, others are probably similar.
    To go into X (the windowing system) you type startx after logging in, this gives you your regular desktop, gnome, kde, xfce, whatever.
    When you are bored with email quit out of X and run your game with (I think)
    xinit /usr/local/games/doom3/doom3

    I read that here

  2. Lightweight window managers? by lsd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To those of you suggesting that a lightweight window manager is the way to go, I have to ask, what exactly is the point? The last time I did this was back in the early G400 days, when things like CPU meters updating add significant X server context-switch overhead (far more than the under 1% of CPU time such apps might take). It saves some RAM, sure, but think about it:

    1) RAM costs next to nothing these days - 512MB goes for under AU$100 locally.

    2) Even without enough real RAM, this is a classic example of what virtual memory is for. After a quick game, is logging back in to your desktop, reloading all your apps and then getting back to your work really quicker than just leaving the OS to swap your apps back in?

    For me, one of the joys of Linux is the ability to have my desktop and applications open 24/7 for weeks on end. If you're going to log out every time you play a game, you might as well just hit the reboot button in your login manager and go play in XP.

    To answer the topic, I'd suggest an NVIDIA video card (the 6600GT is, by all indications, awesome, and NVIDIA's Linux drivers are better than ATI's), a Creative SB Live! or Audigy card (no need to knock yourself out - an older OEM Live! card will do fine), and an Athlon 64 CPU. There's no Linux-specific reason to go for the Athlon 64 over the P4 (though playing with 64-bit Linux can be fun), but they just seem to be a better chip for the money overall, and a better gaming chip in particular.