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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? "
I've "sat through" the install on a less than uber system and it can take upwards of 3 days to build and install all the needed and wanted packages for a complete system. But, it's worth it.
I've had Cedega running with Steam for CS quite well. It only took 2 tries and 32 wtf's. Also, for games that run in linux when a patch is properly applied, you can emerge them. but you need the cd's or images as the emerge only comes with the patch. but it does the install for ya. Gentoo is teh slick... I just wish their install process was a little more automated. HINT HINT!!
while(1) { fork(); };
Cygwin has its uses, but it's just not a substitute for Linux. You don't switch to Linux because you want to run a particular Linux-only program -- those are actually pretty rare. You switch to Linux because you're tired of the flakiness, lack of security, and nonconfigurability of Windows.
great speech, from someone who has never used cedega. linux HAS the best video drivers, with as many or more features as the windows counterparts (for my nvidia cards at least). for performance lag, thats on a game by game basis. linux native games (savage, ut2004, every single ID game) run faster in linux almost 100% of the time. SOME windows games run faster (WoW being a prime example). most windows games run slightly slower on the graphical end, but almost every single windows game runs faster on the computational end, because the cedega emulation of various windows system calls such as disk access and paging are faster.
When I get home I game and have grown tired of trying to get linux to run the games i want to play, AND don't have the budget to buy a second virtual OS.
SOOOOOO
I recommend a KVM switch. Run lin on one box and win on the other.
AND ATI suck as it is THERE fault they have crappy support (if you can find any) for linux.
I feel like a jilted lover. 5 years ago I swore by ATI but now I only allow myself to have one ATI card at a time so I can use linux on the other pcs.
"He's a real midnight golfer"
Heh, I know it's not to everybody's liking, but I think the manual install process of Gentoo is actually one of it's strengths. I learned more about Linux in the two days it took me to get Gentoo set up the first time than I did after months of playing around with RedHat and Mandrake and the like.
I game, therefore I am...
Okay, well, maybe not native. I use slackware and SuSE 9.2. I haven't been able to get ATI's drivers to work for Slack for almost a year now, but SuSE's downloads work well if you follow their instructions EXACTLY! I'd say go native for gaming though. There's flight simulators, Seach and Rescue, and a good number of others available. Also, playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory on Windows yields about 80fps at 1024x786 on my RV350AP, in linux, it's over 100fps, occasionally spiking to about 120 even with all of the effects maxed out. I tried playing the windows port of ET under cedega, and I was getting about 60fps with much less effects turned on. That's just over half of the usual performance I get from the ported linux version. If you can help it, get a ported linux game, or even a native linux game. First, showing support for native linux games shows developers that there's a market out there for linux gamers.. Second, they just work better than trying to emulate another OS on top of an OS that's already running.
Evil Walrus >83=
I run Ubuntu and play WoW all the time. While games don't run as fast as they do nativly in Windows, the convenience is undeniable. I'd recommend any debian or rpm based distrobution because Transgaming distributes Cedega packaged with both of those.
Life is offtopic.