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'Linux vs Windows' Challenge: Phoronix Tests Popular Games (phoronix.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Michael Larabel at Phoronix has combined their new results from intensive Linux/Windows performance testing for popular games on Intel, AMD, and NVIDIA graphics cards, and at different resolutions. "This makes it easy to see the Linux vs. Windows performance overall or for games where the Linux ports are simply rubbish and performing like crap compared to the native Windows game." The games tested included Xonotic, Tomb Raider, Grid Autosport, Dota 2, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, F1 2015, and Company of Heroes 2 -- and the results were surprising.
Xonotic v0.8 outperformed Windows with a NVIDIA card, but "The poor Xonotic performance on Linux with the Intel driver was one of the biggest surprises from yesterday's article. It's not anything we've seen with the other drivers." And while testing on the Source 2 engine revealed that Valve's Dota 2 "is a quality Linux port," most of the other results were disappointing -- regardless of the graphics card and driver. "Tomb Raider on Linux performs much worse than the Windows build regardless of your driver/graphics card... Shadow of Mordor's relative Linux performance is more decent than many other Linux games albeit still isn't running at the same speeds as the Windows games..."
The article concludes with a note of optimism. "Hopefully in due time with the next generation of games making use of Vulkan...we'll see better performance relative to Windows." Have Slashdot readers seen any performance issues while playing games on Linux?
Xonotic v0.8 outperformed Windows with a NVIDIA card, but "The poor Xonotic performance on Linux with the Intel driver was one of the biggest surprises from yesterday's article. It's not anything we've seen with the other drivers." And while testing on the Source 2 engine revealed that Valve's Dota 2 "is a quality Linux port," most of the other results were disappointing -- regardless of the graphics card and driver. "Tomb Raider on Linux performs much worse than the Windows build regardless of your driver/graphics card... Shadow of Mordor's relative Linux performance is more decent than many other Linux games albeit still isn't running at the same speeds as the Windows games..."
The article concludes with a note of optimism. "Hopefully in due time with the next generation of games making use of Vulkan...we'll see better performance relative to Windows." Have Slashdot readers seen any performance issues while playing games on Linux?
Unfortunately quoting the top played Steam games for the day does not really say what you think/want it to say. Of those top seven games, four share the same game engine (CS:GO, DoTA2, Gary's Mod, and TF2) and honestly can be looked at as mods for HL2. So your "Top 10" list is really a "Top 7" list. Of those seven games only a little better than half are available for Linux.
The second problem with those numbers is availability for Linux does not give any information about the number of those players running Linux. If you apply the Linux stats from the Hardware/Software survey you've got Linux at 0.84% of the Steam installed base. A full quarter of the Mac installed base.
You also can't simply point to Steam's stats and suggest Linux games are plentiful. The most obvious omission for those stats are competing platforms/publishers like EA and Blizzard. Since there's effectively zero Linux support for Origin or Battle.net using Steam's figures is a bad extrapolation of the games market. You're trying to pretend that Steam == the game market and the games the GP mentioned aren't by some metric "top" games.
I'd love Linux to get better support from game developers/publishers. I also really appreciate the fact Linux gaming today is far better than it has ever been in the past, including during Loki Software's heyday. It's a bit ridiculous though to point out obviously wrong or grossly misleading figures and make proclamations that Linux gaming is awesome and all the top games are available.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.