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Open-Source GPU Drivers Show Less Than Ideal Experience For SteamOS/Linux Gaming (phoronix.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Phoronix's recent 22-Way SteamOS Graphics Card Comparison showed that NVIDIA wins across the board when it comes to closed-source OpenGL driver performance. However, when it comes to the open-source driver performance for Steam Linux gaming, no one is really the winner. A new article, "Are The Open-Source Graphics Drivers Good Enough For Steam Linux Gaming?" answers that question with "heck no" by its author. While AMD is generally regarded as having better open-source support, their newer graphics cards still can't run at their rated clock frequencies due to lack of power management support, the lack of enough OpenGL 4.x support means many AAA Linux games simply cannot run yet, not enough QA means regressions are common, and other issues were noted when it comes to testing a number of modern graphics cards on the open-source drivers.
You say catch-up, I say ketchup.
I don't see the problem with using closed-source binary blobs for a SteamOS box. What would be the point of an open-source gaming system? As long as nobody can hack into your system and delete your saved games or whatnot, I think it's more than good enough. It's free and it removes the need to buy a Microsoft Windows license just to be able to play videogames.
Fight for your bitcoins!
So what?
The closed-source drivers run on Linux and they run fine. I don't see what's the problem with switching to them while gaming - the games aren't going to be Open Source either, for the most part.
Well, we could play leapfrog if people would just reverse engineer the stuff and post the results anonymously. Don't let the law impede progress.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
What does licensing have anything to do with performance? If NVIDIA released an open source driver for their hardware, then open source drivers would win the performance shoot out. Their drivers will always be better than reverse engineered drivers (open source or not). The question really is, if you care about licenses and gaming performance, what hardware will fit the "good enough/open enough" requirement?
Honestly, it's been a while since I even attempted to get 3D cards and gaming working on a Linux box. I pretty much always use Linux for dedicated server "appliances" in the workplaces these days, and stick with a Mac or Windows box for general purpose use at home like gaming.
But I remember in the past, the closed source nVidia graphics driver bundles were perfectly fine, as long as you ran one of the Linux distros they supported. Otherwise, you were sometimes out of luck. That's probably the single biggest argument I had against the closed source drivers. You were stuck using something like RedHat, because nVidia didn't want to provide tarbars for many of the more obscure Linux variants out there.
Otherwise, sure.... I don't think Linux gamers or even people doing heavy 3D editing/animation feel a big need to have access to the source code for the graphics drivers. Maybe a VERY small percentage would prefer it, because they're knowledgeable enough of a coder to tweak a driver to fix a specific problem they're encountering? But that's got to be far less than 1% of the user-base.
All in all though, I get the impression that video drivers are largely debugged and improved BECAUSE advanced video games drive those changes. Windows always winds up with the fastest, best drivers for a given 3D card because it has the most games that push the limits and expose flaws. You saw the same thing happen on the Mac in OS X when it first started getting some "serious" 3D games developed for it like Word of Warcraft. There were regularly updates in OS X for the video drivers that referenced WoW bugs as reasons for the fixes.
Since Linux has the least number of these game titles coded for it, it gets the least video driver development too.
Yet Nvidia is there and Valve is there.
In other words, the real world is the EXACT OPPOSITE of your stupid trolling.
So the Linux gamer buys the same card that his Windows counterpart would. What's the tragedy? Certainly no one is using Intel for gaming. So at worst you are only losing one option (rather than two).
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Otherwise, sure.... I don't think Linux gamers or even people doing heavy 3D editing/animation feel a big need to have access to the source code for the graphics drivers. Maybe a VERY small percentage would prefer it, because they're knowledgeable enough of a coder to tweak a driver to fix a specific problem they're encountering?
AMD stopped supporting my on-board graphics some time back. A while later, a kernel change broke their final driver release for that chip. If the fix wasn't a code change in the part of their driver that's open source, I'd have been screwed.
Something I don't understand (I'm no a kernel developer) is why, given that AMD released the complete register reference for the cards, can't the open source driver compete with the proprietary one?
Because someone disagreeing with your choice is the same as preventing you from exercising it?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I don't think Linux gamers or even people doing heavy 3D editing/animation feel a big need to have access to the source code for the graphics drivers. Maybe a VERY small percentage would prefer it, because they're knowledgeable enough of a coder to tweak a driver to fix a specific problem they're encountering? But that's got to be far less than 1% of the user-base.
I have little interest in hacking my own video drivers, but I would still very much prefer that they were open source. Because I want the very small percentage of users who would hack their own video drivers to be able to, so that I can benefit from their work. That's the beauty of open source, and it's the reason why we put up with all the considerable ugliness of open source.
not enough QA means regressions are common
Regression testing is borrrrrrrrring! I wanna do the fun happy path stuff!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
You don't see the problem? What happens if/when Valve starts to behave like Microsoft/Sony? I have a 12+ year old STEAM account but I definitely see the open source thing as good and free as in beer as better. Having said that I'm willing to bet less than 10% of my library will run without Windows. So for the time being, it's the Win 7 lifeboat for me.
What I don't understand is why AMD bothers to keep Catalyst around, when a) they've already shown to be supportive towards open source, b) Catalyst drivers have always been considered crap compared vs. their Nvidia counterpart (by most gamers anyway), and c) the open drivers have made leaps & bounds of progress in the last few years.
Supporting both the open and closed source drivers will surely take more resources than focussing the effort on one of them. And I kind of doubt that AMD has much resources to spare for this kind of thing. The open drivers have caught up to Catalyst quite a bit lately, why not work towards replacing Catalyst with it? That would make everybody on AMD side of the fence happy I think (not to mention future buyers of AMD videocards / APU's).
Not sure where "there" is nVidia.
Valve is doing it because they are afraid Windows Store could take on their monopoly. (I give them credit for saving PC market, but having only one major store still sucks).
So the whole rushed "SteamOS" thing is to get away from Windows.
Also, about 20% of Valve's clients are using Intel's GPUs.
With nVidia alone maybe the argument is that they won't release open source drivers just because they are dicks. Ok, yet AMD has thrown in with open source, however they still have a faster proprietary driver. Why? Perhaps the licensed code has something to do with that. They license various things they can't open source, and those things are some of what help make it faster. AMD didn't just release the Catalyst source because they can't. It contains code they paid licenses for and can't open up.
The situation isn't quite as simple as some people would like to make it. If it was, well then the OSS AMD drivers would have full support, be faster than Windows, perfectly stable, etc, etc. However it turns out that writing a graphics driver is REALLY HARD and very complex.
nVidia is investing in making Linux drivers, that is how they are 'there'. Now how much of it pertained to desktop gaming versus how much gaming benefits from them having to do drivers anyway for workstation and HPC. The point stands that in spite of some folks demanding a purist open source experience, reality is a compromise.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
You're not screwed. You're inconvenienced by running old non-supported hardware. Take a moment, and upgrade to something current, that suits your needs. If you can't, I have an old 300 Baud Acoustic Modem you can use to connect to the internet. It still works and is easily programmed.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
"Freetards" wouldn't use Steam.
Linux is a fully capable desktop OS and has been for a quite a while.
Care to explain how? If you mean by hacking a driver such that it produces more fps, then (by that logic) simply plugging in a faster GPU would qualify as cheating too. Note that the 'faster-GPU-cheat' is considered perfectly acceptable for online gaming, only exception being pro gaming tournaments where I'd expect all participants to have same-configured machines.
In case you were thinking about see-through-wall hacks, mods that help with aiming etc: those things are in game engines not graphics drivers.
Yes but the will still be closed source drivers, which too some is a no go.
I don't get their point on a gaming machine though because most of the games they run will be closed source.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
They elected a new speaker and passed a budget this week. Or didn't CNBC mention that?
No, CNBC was too busy trying to sabotage the latest presidential debate...
Is there anything stopping me from just using the drivers that actually work? When the OSS drivers catch up we can revisit them - until then I'll use what works.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
So? What good does Steam market dominance do for Linux, when 99% of the games available on it are Windows or Mac only?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
That doesn't answer anything. It would make sense if the driver wasn't feature complete (i.e. support for x, y, and z is missing) however it doesn't explain why the performance is bad, unless the code optimization is just non-existent.
Except what qualifies as "old" on the GPU world is nowhere as old as you think.
I have a small media center built around a Zotac Mini-ITX mobo using nVidia ION hardware, which was released late on 2009. Last years they dropped support on their binary blob driver and the chipset support will effectively end by 2016. The hardware performs fantastic, is dead quiet (no fans) and can handle any kind of video i throw at it, but i'm now forced to stick with an aging video driver which might stop working altogether soon.
Yes, but almost no one really cares...
Price isn't the reason people will move to Linux, and frankly Windows 10 isn't either...
Linux has less than 2% of the desktop OS market and that hasn't moved in a long time...
Preamble:
Just started using linux Mint - with no internet connection only one CUBE runs well on http://itsfoss.com/cube-lets-i....
Long story short Charter.com hacked me, keylogger (firewall caught that one) and much more
all because they thought I owned them $100 (I had auto payments setup). Cell phone number was reused and flagged.
Turned off the system and now in the process of using linux chntpw capturing what they did, and will send it to the appropriate people.
My windows era is over.
---
Haven't played any games with Linux yet, but have every intention of going to the Steam or SteamOS and playing what they have available.
I have an EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750, reading the article I'm going to be doing rather well. While it may not of come out on top other than Performance Per Dollar, it can handle all that was tested; each at least above 60 FPS lowest 90, and all at very low temps.
Sadly a lot of people just don't understand that by buying random 'cheap' hardware it makes these problems unfixable too.
You are under the assumption that "a lot of people" give a damm.
They don't, they just want something that works and is cheap, the rest is just background noise.
Yes, because we should all throw away perfectly good hardware just because the manufacturer decides to make it obsolete.
You know what else is dead quiet and can handle almost any kind of video? Plex and a $30 android 'stick'.
I do sympathize with you, until a year ago I was running a fanless HTPC (AMD E350) myself.
That doesn't answer anything. It would make sense if the driver wasn't feature complete (i.e. support for x, y, and z is missing) however it doesn't explain why the performance is bad, unless the code optimization is just non-existent.
It's not the code that controls GPU performance, it's the GPU. When I worked on drivers years ago, most of the work was not getting the GPU to do what the software told it, it was detecting the retarded things the software was asking the hardware to do, and generating the same output in a more efficient manner.
In some cases, that required disabling features once we detected a RetardoSoft program was running, so they'd fall back to a different code path that ran faster on our hardware than the one that incorrectly used the disabled feature.
It cannot handle a webserver, SSH, torrents, print server and NFS file server as the ION board does without breaking a sweat though.
In the past 7 years Linux on the desktop had gone from less than 1% to 1.8%. That's movement. Although, at a snails pace.
I'm an outlier, but I am very happy with using Linux as my desktop OS.
To stave off holy wars I won't bring up my distro and I must mention that while I dislike using Windows I respect things like Powershell (monad! AHHH!) and the administrative capabilities.
Mostly I like Linux because I can get things done. I code professionally and have become accustomed to the tools at my disposal. Everything from a first class shell to being able to install utilities with a few keystrokes. For me this is the desktop experience that I want. I even got my mother on Linux 5 years ago and she was pleased as punch at its speed and lack of scary pop-ups. That is highly subjective, and her needs are minimal, but to me the Windows desktop is dead. At most it might be a platform for PC games, but I've long since relegated Windows to the same mental 'bin' as a console or phone OS. It is what it is and it doesn't want to be anything else (even if it can be persuaded to some degree).
Thats okay, but it doesn't suit me. Your Mileage May Vary.
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
The Free Code purists in the Linux community are so dedicated to their cause that they intentionally make it hard for the average user to use the proprietary drivers.
They place hooks in the OS that may only be used by open-source code - yeah, they check the code to see if it's open source and if not this extra junk code added to the kernel refuses to cooperate..... so much for "freedom" for the end-user.
They do not place easy-to-use buttons on the install screens to let the user select to install a manufacturer's "binary blob" or run the manufacturer's install shell script
They auto-install the not-ready-for-prime-time open-source drivers, tying them in with the grub stuff that most users find confusing and scary (most users are too terrified to do what it takes to root-out drivers like Nouveau, and when they try and those drivers keep arising like walkers that haven't been stuck in the head, they give up and run away)
There is simply no valid reason other than ideological fanaticism that keeps the situation like this; it seems a political effort to make the experience so bad that users will give up and settle for the poor performing open source drivers. This is both sad and counter-productive. When Linux started to take-off, there were open source drivers for standard 2D VGA chipsets because those chips were fully documented in the freely-available data sheets. Then, as 3D chipsets arose and actually replaced the 2D chips, there was a lot of consternation about whether the video chipset makers would cooperate or Linux would by strangled by having no video card support. Nvidia came along and provided drivers for Linux, an act that cost them money and resources and which they never HAD to do and they've been great in providing constantly updated and excellent drivers for Linux at a release rate similar to their Windows drivers. It's an act of self-destructive insanity for Linux people to keep fighting this level of cooperation and support because it's not "pure enough" for some. If it's pure enough for the users, who all this "freedom" was supposedly about, then it ought to be pure enough for the purists to at least fully cooperate with.
Behind the closed source drives are a lot of IP, some of which are on license from a third-party. It's not quite so easy as to say "be free" and all source be revealed. This means that for the RMS types out there, they have to reinvent the wheel. Of course to reinvent that wheel, you have to have the knowledge to do so as well as the time and motivation. To date the stars required to make that happen have never come in alignment. Probably never will.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I'm glad that you have the option to run Linux. We'd all be worse off if that option didn't exist.
My only point is that it isn't going to give Windows a run for its money in the marketshare dept anytime soon.
:) No, it isn't movement, it is a rounding error...
It is quite possible that the number was 1.5% 7 years ago and remains 1.5% today.
But regardless, it is nothing to be jumping up and down about. Even Mac, with its 5% (give or take) desktop market share isn't exciting.
Frankly, if we were going to see a major challenge to Windows, I'd expect it from Mac before Linux, Apple has something to gain there.
Maybe add nomodeset to GRUB.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
There are at least 1500 games on steam for Linux compared to 6464 games for windows. That's approaching 25%. I admit it's still a long way from overthrowing windows, but its a lot more than 1%.
You know what else is dead quiet and can handle almost any kind of video? Plex and a $30 android 'stick'.
It cannot handle a webserver, SSH, torrents, print server and NFS file server as the ION board does without breaking a sweat though.
I fail to see how any of those need a GPU. You could try using "Plex and a $30 android 'stick'" for playing video and the ION board for everything else. It's called division of labor.
Maybe a VERY small percentage would prefer it, because they're knowledgeable enough of a coder to tweak a driver to fix a specific problem they're encountering? But that's got to be far less than 1% of the user-base.
just like a kernel, maybe 1% is knowledgable enough to understand & contribute to kernel code, but i'm sure happy linux has an open sourced kernel so those 1% can continue to improve it.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
And how many of those 1500 are serious triple-A titles, compared to the 6464? Even with Valve's initiatives, you could probably count the number of newer triple-A titles released on Linux on two hands. 99% of Linux games are either small indie titles that no one gives a fuck about, or ancient AAA titles like Half-Life 2 (many of them released by Valve themselves). To argue that Linux titles make of 25% of the gaming market is ridiculous. It's comparing apples and oranges.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I offered up my 300 baud modem. You missed the point of why.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I offered up my 300 baud modem.
Obsolete because the new tech (v.90) is literally 160 times better, pushing practical 48000 bits per second over the same line and providing substantial practical benefits. Old HTPC gear isn't quite as necessarily obsolete, as hardware that used to be able to push 1080p can still push 1080p.
You missed the point of why.
Then for the benefit of other readers, could you explain in more detail the point of why?
And if you're running Gaming rig, you're going to want high end current CPU, GPU lots of ram, lots of fans and ventilation, which isn't the same rig as a quiet HTPC.
Then how do Sony and Microsoft succeed at promoting PlayStation and Xbox family devices for both gaming and home theater applications?