What Linux Distribution is the Best for Games?

CodeGeekGuy asks: "I've been thinking of doing the big switcheroo from Windows to Linux. I have, in the past, had various levels of success using Linux, but I generally have to give up as soon as I feel like playing a game. I've done dual booting before, but find it a pain if you're waiting for something to finish and just want a quick game of Half Life 2 or WoW. I'm willing to give this another shot (as I hear that Cedega plays HL2 and WoW quite nicely). I've used Mandrake and Fedora Core and even Redhat, is there another distribution out there that is the best distro to use to get Cedega (and ultimately games) to work well? "

Comments

Regardless of the Dist you use

[KingBahamut]

Your still going to be bound by Cedega's working game list only. That aside, Ive had fairly good success with Suse, Fedora, and Gentoo.

Re:Regardless of the Dist you use

[Compenguin]

> Your still going to be bound by Cedega's working game list only

That's completely untrue. Many games (like ut2004, doom3, and enemy territory) have native linux ports. Tons of older games also have linux ports. Older SCI and SCUMM based adventure games will run and modern native VMs. Here's the list of FPSs that gentoo packages: http://gentoo-portage.com/s?search=category%3Dgame s-fps

Gentoo

[Apreche]

Gentoo is by far the best distro for gaming. I've used just about every major distro there is. Gentoo is the only one where I could reliably make games work. I've got nvidia drivers, alsa, the doom3 demo, emulators. Heck, I've got Mechwarrior 2 running in DOSbox on this thing. It didn't work when I tried it on fedora.

Re:None...

[X0563511]

Thats why i experience a 2 FPS drop? You just pulled that number out of your ass.

It doesn't emulate. It's a wrapper - it translates the calls to the appropriate API, rather than drawing it in software with occasional help from your hardware(as would be emulation).

But, you do have a point in that using them doesn't push devs to develope cross-platform. But, neither does the small market share making noise.

Gentoo is a possibility

[the_greywolf]

i run Gentoo and had no trouble getting Cedega working.

that said, i also use Con Kolivas' kernel patchset. initially i had problems, but we came up with a nice list of audio tips to help get things working right.

i'm waiting right now for some work Ingo Molnar has indicated he's going to do that could help Wine out dramatically. be prepared to recompile your kernel several times in the near future.

zen linux

[jbltgz]

try zen linux, then apt-get install wine.

SuSE

[TheRealJFM]

I recommend SuSE here, simply because of its driver support. It installs the nvidia drivers at install time if you have a net connection, and provides a good GUI to control all of that.

One click enabling of direct rendering (3d acceleration) is something that I think would be a godsend to most new users.

Also SuSE's exellent documentation cannot be ignored.

On the cedega front I suggest you do try this! It plays Counter Strike via Steam perfectly here, though I can't comment on WOW or anything like that.

I've heard Half Life 2 support is pretty good, and there are a lot of revies on the net that show it's working pretty well. In fact its cedega that's tempting me to go and buy HL2 - an interesting fact since I don't own a windows pc :p

The best thing to do is to just *try* all these things. SuSE isn't free, but there is an FTP install that should cover everything you need for gaming (the commercial extensions wont help you here and the drivers for nvidia are downloaded at install time or during a later online update).

The only problem with SuSE is a lack of a good package manager, but the installation of Apt For SuSE (http://linux01.gwdg.de/apt4rpm/) solves any problems here.

As for stability I'd recommend SuSE over Mandrake, in usablilty i'd recommend it over just about everything, and I'd recommend it for gamers over the other distros.

I'm happy to answer any questions. :)

(I recommend other distros for other things (eg slackware or debian for servers) but thats not the point. For home users its SuSE all the way)

just one user's opinion

[rogabean]

As a longtime Cedega (wineX) user I've had best luck under Mandrake in general. Suse was my preferred distro prior but as of the last year I've had nothing but trouble gaming under it... Fedora seemed to do ok, but the most solid so far (currently playing the two games you mentioned) has been Mandrake for gaming purposes.

Re:Gentoo

[wolf31o2]

Ugh...

You know, I am one of the Games developers for Gentoo, and I can tell you that we aren't anything special when it comes to non-native gaming. We might do a little better on the open source games than most people, but when it comes to commercial games, it really is all the same. Either cedega or WINE is really doing the work, if you're playing Windows games.