'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?

Comments

Anyone know what made them

[rsilvergun]

port Tomb Raider to Linux? I'm not saying it's not cool and all, but I just can't imagine enough of a market for it. Shot across the bow to Microsoft over UWP maybe? From what I could tell that was what SteamOS was all about (and why Valve let it fizzel after the Windows Store bombed in Win8)

Re:Anyone know what made them

[Alwin Henseler]

As far as my limited understanding goes: OSX ports of games involve building against many of the (open source) components included in Linux distro's. So when doing an OSX port, a Linux port is 'low hanging fruit'. Some studios may take advantage of that to do a Linux port as well. Or not... depending on title, game engine, sales, in-house developer expertise, etc etc.

The market for OSX games is small compared to Windows games, but still significant and considerably bigger than Linux gaming. So in a way, you could say Linux gaming is freeriding on the OSX games market. And of course for games that are popular enough, even a 1~2% market is enough to warrant the effort for a port.

Re:Anyone know what made them

[Dutch Gun]

I can't speak for the Tomb Raider devs, but I can at least give you my general impressions from the industry.

It's a small market, certainly, and inroads remain slow. Most high profile game developers, or at least the ones I've previously worked for, never even gave it a second thought. I think that's slowing changing, although certainly not as fast as in the indie scene. My impression is that a lot of indie game devs (my own included) focus on Linux precisely because the AAA studios don't seem to care about it, so it's a more untapped market. It takes fewer sales to make an indie game profitable, so we can afford to take the time to support that platform. When your budget is tens of millions (or hundreds in the largest case these days), you have to focus on the largest market for the biggest return.

Another factor is that many large studios have in-house engines or heavily modified commercial engines, or else rely on a large number of 3rd party technologies. Developing your own Linux port is expensive, and if you're using 3rd party software, unless Linux is fully supported, a port is much less likely. Indie devs, on the other hand, are very likely to be using vanilla Unity or Unreal, which have native Linux support.

I'm probably a bit unique for indies in that I'm using a custom engine, but am still planning complete Win/UWP/Mac/Linux support, doing all the ports the hard way (only Linux remaining now). Once your engine is done, though, it's just a matter of QA and update costs, so I'm counting on that long tail to make the initial investment worthwhile.

Re:Anyone know what made them

[mark-t]

If there is no extra effort involved involved in targeting beyond checking a radio button in their build system that says "Linux target" (which is about how much effort is required for some game engines to make s Linux port), what do they have to lose by doing that?

Re:Anyone know what made them

[war4peace]

Offtopic but I have to ask...
Does your engine, by any chance, offer the development infrastructure for supporting space-based 3D games?

Re:Anyone know what made them

[Kjella]

It's a small market, certainly, and inroads remain slow. Most high profile game developers, or at least the ones I've previously worked for, never even gave it a second thought. I think that's slowing changing, although certainly not as fast as in the indie scene.

A good question is still: Why? According to Steam's survey 95.42% run Windows, 3.60% Mac and 0.84% Linux - not sure where the last 0.14% went. The number of Linux gamers is not budging, it's the same hardcore 1% that's used it on the desktop for the last decade. Unless Valve starts to get serious about Steam Machines and Linux I really don't see much of a business case...

Re:Anyone know what made them

[Dutch Gun]

No, it's a 2D tile-based engine. Normal commercial engines can handle typical 3D scenarios, but I had some very specific ideas about how I wanted my tile-based games to work, and none of the commercial engines worked the way I had envisioned.

Unless you've got some very specific requirements that make it impractical, or unless you're a *very* large company that can afford to write your own engine, it's generally a better idea to use a commercial game engine.

Re:Anyone know what made them

[war4peace]

Thank you, it didn't hurt to ask :)

Re:Anyone know what made them

[F.Ultra]

A sale is still a sale and as long as the porting efforts costs less than what you can sell you have a net profit and for some smaller companies that can be the difference between make it or break it. And to increase your income by 0.84% is not to be frowned upon if the actual number of sales is high enough.

Re:Anyone know what made them

[mark-t]

Notably, Unity3D, which is a pretty major player in the game engine field today, started supporting Linux targets a while ago, and for that system, it IS just a recompile, unless you've written explicit platform-specific code which in my experience with Unity is never necessary. Unity has abstractions over most aspects of the hardware that can result in 100% cross-platform code, and the resulting game works exactly the same as a desktop game built with it that targets any other platform.

Re: Games on Linux will always run poorly

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Gentoo on my desktop, Mint on my laptops. Both include proprietary codecs like x264. Both make it trivial to install proprietary nvidia drivers through the package manager, like any other package. Even distros like Debian that don't come with them out of the box still have repos and installation tools readily available.

Your experience does not represent all of Linux. But you seem to think it does. That's just ignorant.

First games, then performance

[Dukenukemx]

I'm not worried about performance, so much as the games. I have Mint 17.3 on most of my PCs, and I can't play Fallout 4, Dark Souls 3, and GTAV. Bring the games, the performance will fallow.

Windows to linux ports are crap.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Leave games, take high performance engineering analysis done by CAD/CAM design analysis tools. There is this leading company which became the leading company by acquiring many different physics simulation companies. And the acquisitions include pure-linux shops, pure-windows shops and some mixed. Their fluid mechanics tools come from what used to be a pure linux shop. It simply rocks in linux AND windows. Well done system, it would even catch access violations, clean up the sub systems and continue without crashing. Graphics would simply rock. It would take a fluid mechanics simulation being done on 128 node cluster and render the pressure contours on a remote work station. Fully scriptable too! Very good performance in windows and liunux. On the other side a geometry processing tool comes from a pure windows shop. This tool has the precision of Parametric Technolgies CAD engine and the flexibility of blender like UI. Slicker than Exxon-Valdez in Prince William Sound! But the damned thing does not even run on Linux. Their electronics analysis tools come from what used to be a unix shop, that went to Windows with Mainwin porting, then some sort hybrid of mainwin, kernel mode, console apps behind a reasonably good UI (unlimited undo/redo, complete parametric sweep with two levels of distributed processing!). Works reasonably well in Linux but even users who solve in linux postprocess in windows.

Moral of the story: develop in linux and port to Windows, you could compete with native windows apps. Develop in windows and port to linux, you would be lucky if it just runs.

Re:Windows to linux ports are crap.

[thegarbz]

Leave games, take high performance engineering analysis done by CAD/CAM design analysis tools.

What I meant to say was: Ignore the things that matter to people who play games, instead look at this completely irrelevant thing over here.

Ultimately it doesn't matter who's fault poor performance is, just that the performance is poor. Telling people to do without something they want seems to have been the major marketing point of Linux since the 90s. It hasn't worked so far, maybe it would be better if effort was spent improving the ports.

Re:Windows to linux ports are crap.

[jedidiah]

The performance has to be acceptable to someone that just wants to have fun. That may even include actual Windows users.

"inferior" can cover a lot of ground both in terms of "fitness" and the available software library.

Re:Windows to linux ports are crap.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The game system is limited mostly by graphics and rendering. In CAD and physics simulation graphics play a smaller role and the matrix solvers and physics solvers and the mesh generators take bulk of the CPU time and development load. If you can't port a CAD application well, there is no hope for games. That is what I mean by saying "Leave games, ..."

Re:Windows to linux ports are crap.

[mrchaotica]

There is this leading company which became the leading company by acquiring many different physics simulation companies.

Which software is that, and which industry (aerospace, mechanical, AEC)? I work for a company that makes BIM software (that isn't Revit) and would be interested in a best-in-class physics library.

Q n A

[Artem S. Tashkinov]

> Have Slashdot readers seen any performance issues while playing games on Linux?

Which games? Most games for Linux are Indies and Linux runs them just fine.

Under Linux you won't be able to play the native versions of Overwatch, Doom 4, Quantum Break, or any version of GTA, CoD, Battlefield, Colin McRay Rally, Crysis, Deus Ex, FarCry, Hitman, Mafia etc. etc. etc.

Re: Q n A

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I have played the first three Far Crys, Mafia 1 and 2, several Gta games, and Deus Ex. I ran them with Wine. Sadly I can't play Fallout 4 but most others do work.

Re: Q n A

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I have played the first three Far Crys, Mafia 1 and 2, several Gta games, and Deus Ex. I ran them with Wine. Sadly I can't play Fallout 4 but most others do work.

Which usually provides a subpar performance since efficient D3D to OpenGL translation is nigh impossible. Also forget about D3D 10/11/12 games altogether.

What about D3D 9.0c? Some games run at 1/5 native speed under Wine. Most others barely hit 50%. There are often glitches, artifacts, crashes and bad behaviour. I wouldn't call that gaming. It's torturing at best.

Sure, but I was responding to a claim that they wouldn't run - which my own empirical experience tells me is false.

Generally the performance under Wine has been good enough for me. I'm using an old 1280x1024 LCD panel. I'm not trying to drive a 4k display at 200 fps. "Most" games I run are much better than 50%, though a few have been problematic. I don't generally get glitches, likely because I know what winetricks is for. It also helps to give each game its own wine prefix. Still, my attitude is that if something doesn't suit you, use something else. I don't care if you use what I use. This mentality of "gotta win converts" is something I never really understood.

My needs are modest. A hardcore gamer has different needs and expectations. This is one of those things that's so basic, I'm amazed at all the bickering that goes on. My personal opinion is that Windows sucks for a whole host of reasons, and for me Linux would still be a superior choice even if my gaming experience was much worse. I don't expect everyone else to agree with my view on that. Anyone who does may be suffering from some kind of narcissism (or attempting to make others suffer from it heh).

Re:Q n A

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

This is the games currently played on steam:
Current Max today
646,219 1,099,697 Dota 2
525,059 535,298 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
71,194 71,655 ARK: Survival Evolved
70,252 70,252 Sid Meier's Civilization V
65,985 66,079 Football Manager 2016
62,039 64,762 Team Fortress 2
57,520 57,795 Garry's Mod
54,727 55,830 Rocket League
54,280 60,794 Grand Theft Auto V
45,628 45,628 Arma 3

Only the last 3 games is not availble for Linux. Top-7 of those games are available for Linux gamers.
So most of the game you call top-tiered are not among the most played games.
  And the gamers today play alot of a bit older and more popular games.

Re:Q n A

[BadDreamer]

Calling five out of seven "only a little better than half" is rather misleading.

You really have no place to call out "grossly misleading figures".

Re:Q n A

[Baki]

Steam also runs well enough under Wine, many windows-only Steam games work well, with same frame rates.

E.g. for Trackmania 2, I get exactly the same frame rate in Linux, using nvidia, as native under Windows.

Re:Q n A

[Blaskowicz]

Does anyone run SteamOS?
I'd personnally put it under 1% of linux desktop users.

Re:Q n A

[beastofburdon]

The only one I have had performance issues with is Firewatch. I have had stability issues with several others though, like Tomb Raider, Psychonaughts, and Among the Sleep.
There are also ones that work flawlessly like everything from Valve, FTL, Torchlight II, Robocraft(awesome game in case you haven't tried it, and free), Kerbal Space Program(had some rough spots for a while, but working great now), and Bastion.

Re:Games on Linux will always run poorly

[smoothnorman]

Can you, Anonymous Coward, do us all a service and point out the parts of the article which belies the replied_to Anonymous Coward's assertion? Because many of us tend to think their statements are more correct than incorrect and that the linked article supports that view.

Re:Games on Linux will always run poorly

[Anonymous Coward]

Proprietary drivers are part of most repositories, and that includes mainstream distros like Ubuntu. Only distros that use only free software won't include them, but if you use one of those that's exactly what you want. You can still install the driver if it isn't in the repositories, but then you have to to it the hard way and download it from the vendor's website like a barbarian.

Re:This can't be true

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the Linux evangelists here, Linux is better at everything and can do no wrong. Therefore the data must be wrong or there must have been a flaw in the tests. It cannot possibly be true that Linux is inferior at anything.

I'm a long-time Linux user and it seems like a fair test to me. Gaming has long been one of the weakest parts of having Linux on the desktop. Data like this is how that can change. Only a few years ago, no one would have thought to publish an article like this, so in my mind, lots of progress has already been made. That will take time. Meanwhile it's always been the case, that if gaming is a killer feature for you, then you go with the platform that all the major games are targeting, which is Windows.

For me, gaming is nice but it's not crucial. I'm satisfied running older games via Wine and I'm satisfied with native Linux games that are already out there. I like the way that number keeps increasing. But I have no illusions: a hardcore gamer would be better off with Windows, at least on his/her main gaming rig. Of course, that person would also have to put up with the constant malware threats, the nuisance of Windows Update, the lack of a central package manager, and the general asshattery of Microsoft including its desire to spy on its paying customers. Decisions like these are trade-offs.

Not everyone is an unreasonable fanboy. I use Linux because I like it and it meets my needs. Full stop. I'm not part of "Tribe A" and we don't have to hate some perceived "Tribe B". It's really that simple.

Dota on Linux/Windows

[Sax Russell 5449D29A]

I've got Win 8.1 and Linux in a dualboot setup on my computer and have been playing Dota 2 on both OSes. Performance on Linux has been on par with Windows and since the latest couple of patches I've seen the Linux client run even a few frames faster on average than the Windows one. On most other games the performance on Linux has been really problematic, though. The only other game I've seen run on my Linux perfectly is Natural Selection 2. The devs of NS2 have really put a lot of effort in developing the game further even though it's been over four years since its release.

Re:Dota on Linux/Windows

[F.Ultra]

I think the performance of those other games are lower due to them often being written specifically for DX9/10/11 and porting those to OpenGL would require a complete rewrite if performance would be equal and since the market is so much lower they simply "make it work" with some slight tuning around the corners. Still I must say that even if Tomb Raider (2013) is much slower on Linux than on Windows I still got an enjoyable framerate out of it (didn't experience any slowdown that broke the gameplay).

Re:This can't be true

[chipschap]

Thank you for a reasoned post which tells things as they are. I also use Linux because it meets my needs. I don't pretend that it's for people who want the highest performance from the latest games or anything approaching that. There are games for Linux (and more all the time) but I would hardly call it a gamer's platform.

And Linux not being a gamer's platform is not a problem. Gamers should use platforms suited to their purposes. I don't tout Linux as the One Solution That Fits All.

Linux is useful to me for getting things done. That's all I need.

Re:LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

As a real Canadian (unlike the coward AC who keeps posting that stupid thing), I would like to apologize for this non-Canadian troll.

Re: LOL

[Yvan256]

Dude, look at our cellphone plans, our cellular and wired Internet speeds, our monthly quotas and how much we pay for it. As far as telecommunications are concerned, we already are a 3rd world country.

Re:Games on Linux will always run poorly

[bridgmanAMD]

Most of the numbers in that article came from proprietary drivers - all of the NVidia numbers and most of the AMD numbers IIRC.

The problem isn't even performance

[Opportunist]

The problem is support for gaming hardware.

There is no gaming culture on Linux. At least not yet. And this is why few makers of gaming hardware bother to produce drivers for their devices. And those where such drivers exist, they're usually not on par with the drivers for Windows. From input devices like flight sticks, steering wheels and high resolution mice to output devices like 7.1 audio cards and headphones. Either they don't work at all or you can at best get a token support out of it.

Would you like playing F1 2005 if the force feedback on your wheel doesn't work? How much fun is playing a FPS game when the audio is reduced to a half baked stereo output that doesn't give you any information about the attacker's location?

Performance only starts becoming an issue once you actually want to play the game on that system.

Re:why would a company waste time on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

"It makes zero sense for a game studio to waste effort bringing the game to Linux."

It's not the game studios themselves that are doing the porting.
Specialized companies like Feral Interactive (native), Aspyr (native) and Virtual Programming (wrapper) do that work.
In many of these cases they already make ports for OS X, so they are familiar with the code.
(If you are really interested - I doubt you are - you could listen to this interview with Edwin of Feral Interactive.)
Steam has over 125 million registered accounts, so while 0.84% Linux isn't much, that's still more than 1 million potential Linux customers on Steam alone.
Also, there are more reasons to port than immediate money.
Creating goodwill, for instance. Or maybe a game's developer is a Linux fan.
Something like Tomb Raider doesn't run well on Windows Phones.

Re:This can't be true

[murdocj]

Once you say that AAA == CoD / Battlefield you instantly lose all credibility.

Re:This can't be true

[nukenerd]

According to the Linux evangelists here, Linux is better at everything and can do no wrong./p>

Nope. There is plenty that's wrong with Linux. Trouble is, there is even more wrong with the alternatives. Then perhaps I am just a Linux user, not an evangelist.

Anyway, its no surprise that Windows is still better at games.

Know who you're trolling

[raymorris]

> I wonder which group of Slashdotters will rule this time. The ones that say Linux sucks and systemd is the devil, or the ones that say they've used Linux since the 80s and everything else is a pile of shit.

Know who you're trolling. It's the people who have used Linux (or Unix) for a little while who see the problems with systemd. Those who think "Linux sucks" (Steve Ballmer and three others) are midnless Windows fanatics. Therefore they love the systemd/MS Office approach of putting every function anyone could ever need into one monstrous software package.

Re:This can't be true

[xvan]

Your #4 and #1 are mutually exclusive. And are related to #3.

If there is no central package manager, you can't trust somebody else to care about minimum security for you.

So in windows, if I need to batch re-size images, if I google "linux image resize", image-magick is in the first page.

"windows image resize" has a lot more of noise, so a user will probably download a demo with water marks, need to pay for a well known program or download a program from a non legit sources.

It's clear that the average linux user is more skilled that the average windows user, and that the most important linux tools are open source and available for windows.

Depends on which "various consoles"

[tepples]

The desire to release a game on both Windows and various consoles

A developer that has been approved by ID@Xbox but told "not yet" by SCE and Nintendo is likely to target Windows and Xbox One. Or in other words, Windows and Windows.

Re: Query

[kvvbassboy]

It's called systemd

Input problem with Android vs. consoles

[tepples]

we already want to make the game as reasonably portable as possible so we can put in on PC, consoles, and possibly mobile--ie, often Android.

I don't see how one game can work well on both consoles and mobile, especially if isn't inherently a point-and-click game. Consoles have a thumbstick and buttons as their primary input device. The vast majority of Android devices* have a touch screen. If you try to adapt a game designed for a thumbstick and buttons to a touch screen the trivial way, by putting a D-pad and buttons on a flat sheet of glass the way emulators do, you get something like Pixeline and the Jungle Treasure . It's a platformer in the vein of Super Mario Bros. or Giana Sisters. When I tried it on my Nexus 7 (2012) tablet, it was a pain in the ass to play because I kept accidentally pressing outside the active area of the on-screen controls due to lack of any sort of tactile feedback as to where my thumbs were. (Pairing a Bluetooth keyboard solves it but also somewhat defeats the point of mobile.) The workaround to make a platformer work with a touch screen often involves simplifying it to an endless runner.

* Most Android devices are not OUYA, SHIELD, JXD, or GameStick.

Re:This can't be true

[jedidiah]

I wouldn't call the Grid Autosport port "rubbish". If anything, it's good enough that I want to spend extra money on a better controller.

Of course I would laugh at the idea of using Intel for gaming. Athough AMD has potential. At least they don't have crap hardware.

Xonotic

[future assassin]

If you haven't played it you're missing out. Although Minsta-Hook is not my cup of tea, if you love flying around like Spiderman with a insta kill laser in your hand this is for you. Xon has Vehicles, Jet Packs and Overkill Mod too. My fav since its mine is my Shotgun only server Called Mofo with a Shogtun. With wall jumping and crazy pushback force from the bullets to make your enemies fly back fast and die while hitting a wall :) or just fly back off the map and of course die....

Re:Xonotic

[Anonymous Coward]

No, anyone who hasn't played Xonotic isn't missing out. It's not that it's a bad game, it's just that it has almost no player base. Where I live for example (Australia) there are ZERO players in the evening, the prime time for gaming. I'm not sure what was the last time I've seen Australian servers with anyone playing. Even ignoring local servers, the total player count at any given time isn't much to talk about.

It ain't just Xonotic which has this problem. Red Eclipse has no player base, Warsow has no player base, OpenArena has no player base. There ARE players, but never when you want to play, never on a local server and never in any quantity apart from maybe one guy who's hoping someone else joins and leaves soon after because they were hoping for an actual match.

It's weird. These games are completely free, fully functional with no micro-transations that most other free shooters have, and yet no-one gives a shit about playing them. A multiplayer game without players is hard to recommend.

Re:Xonotic

[future assassin]

Well the player base is Eurocentric which does suck but.... Also the game is quite playable with high ping. I use to cap quite often on the EAC Minsta server with 180 ping.

Re:Xonotic

[Blaskowicz]

Open Arena has two uses : to check that your OpenGL works (because glxgears is too fast) and to fill precious available space on the / partition (your system gets at least semi-unusable if it's filled up)

It's also a warning about how gaming on an AZERTY keyboard can suck if the devs didn't plan or test for it.
It's semi-useful if you have access to a small LAN of old desktops and want to play some Free deathmatch on it while wishing you had real Quake 3.

Re:This can't be true

[nnull]

I'm actually quite happy about Steams push to add games to linux. It's actually bringing attention of the poor graphic performance in linux and people are actually interested in making it better finally. That and I can finally play some decent games in linux, despite the poorer performance, it's good enough for me not to have to reboot to Windows.

Re:why would a company waste time on this?

[jedidiah]

Linux looks a lot bigger to a Mac porting shop than it does to Electronic Arts. They're both closer to each other than either of them is to Windows.

Re:Long live Linux

[jedidiah]

Unless you've got developer credits, you're just a poser talking out his ass.

It's not the primary platform, it's gonna suffer

[Sarusa]

'Nobody' cares about gaming on Linux (statistically - I know a few companies do), so the drivers are always going to be lagging and the ports are mostly going to be half-hearted, and Vulkan won't fix that. Probably the biggest issue is a lack of something like Direct X to make things easy - being Linux, there are multiple competing standards for it.

It's why all my servers are Linux but the gaming machine is Windows. When I want to play a game, I just want it to work without messing with WINE configs or having to put up with stuttering and low frame rates. I tried!

Re:This can't be true

[Tough Love]

I don't pretend that it's for people who want the highest performance from the latest games or anything approaching that.

But if you look at the Dota2 Vulkan and the Unigine results, it is approaching that. Vulkan on Linux within 1.5% of windows on AMD and 9% on nVidia. Not that OpenGL is any slouch - Unigine OpenGL are within 9% of windows DirectX, showing the huge difference between native support and translation layers. But developers already voted with their allegiance: few had the luxury of supporting two dissimilar rendering platforms and almost all picked the one with the biggest market and modest performance advantage.

That equation changes now. See this this or this if you have any doubts. The new equation is, if you want one platform that delivers top performance across Android and Windows you go with Vulkan, end of story. Desktop Linux is the lucky beneficiary of that.

Re:Games on Linux will always run poorly

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you're all wrong. The linked article merely proves that Linux is not considered a primary development platform yet for games, especially by game makers (who aren't optimizing things). The article even mentions that they believe Vulkan will help improve the situation vastly. Last I checked, none of these things had anything to do with the post that started this conversation, nor does it show that Linux/OSS developers in general have anything to do with it. It merely shows that driver and game devs aren't as concerned with new markets as they are with the existing ones.

Games are still the crux

[Smiddi]

This is awesome news. I cant wait to run games on Linux that were released in 2006.

Re:This can't be true

[Anonymous Coward]

The new equation is, if you want one platform that delivers top performance across Android and Windows you go with Vulkan, end of story. Desktop Linux is the lucky beneficiary of that.

Would be nice if it was true, but it isn't. from what has been seen of benchmarks vulkan gives you great performance cross platform but DX12+ will give better performance on windows. It will come down to the Age old fight of DX vs OpenGL, nothing has really changed, nor has there suddenly become a great reason to jump from one to the other. Windows desktop is still the primarily gaming market and with that DX.

Re:It's not the primary platform, it's gonna suffe

[eWarz]

On the contrary, I am aching beyond all belief for Linux to have awesome game support. Just because you posted this, I demand that you cease using Linux for all eternity! You must also cease using Windows as well.

Re:This can't be true

[rhodium_mir]

Vectorworks and Creative Cloud are the big two that I can't do my job without.

Re:This can't be true

[war4peace]

You still trust somebody else even if there's a central package manager. Unless you build that package manager yourself, from source code, and analyze every line of code.
And #1 and #4 are not mutually exclusive, there are things such as trusted software repositories (been working well for the last two decades), on top of that there's antivirus solutions.
If you want to batch resize images, there's a very nice command-line based solution called PhotoResize, there: http://www.rw-designer.com/pic...
Yes it takes a bit of searching, but I have no problem with that. Your argument "people are stupid and can't find the right tool" is valid but won't make said stupid people do any better under Linux, mainly because they won't be able to properly use it in the first place.

Re:why would a company waste time on this?

[F.Ultra]

Any business that would ignore to increase their potential sales by 1.79% for free would have their management replaced on the next share holders meeting.

Indeed

[wkwilley2]

I'm in the same boat with others, The game I play the most is 7 Days to Die. Being based on Unity, it actually runs better on my Linux installation than it did on my old Win7.

Linux gaming is definitely becoming more of a reality especially due to Valve pushing the Steam Machine. Even though that's not gaining much traction, it is ushering in games that support, or are developed for Linux. Half of my 400 Steam games are SteamOS/Linux compatible, and that ratio seems to be growing.

Re:why would a company waste time on this?

[dave420]

It's not for free, though. They have to support the Linux version, which requires having trained technical support staff and an entire Linux testing facility to ensure it actually works as they are advertising it to. It's not as simple as you seem to think it is...

Re:This can't be true

[TemporalBeing]

Of course, that person would also have to put up with the constant malware threats, the nuisance of Windows Update, the lack of a central package manager, and the general asshattery of Microsoft including its desire to spy on its paying customers.

#1 has never been a problem, it's extremely difficult to catch malware if you use legit sources for games, software and media. Fir everything else there's isolated VMs to do crazy stuff on. #2 is NOT a nuisance, if you care to spend 2 minutes configuring it properly. #3 is actually a strong point IMO. #4 is easily avoided if you download one of the many available simple tools and spend 2 minutes clicking on checkboxes.

Well, starting with Windows 8 there is a central package manager - it's called the Microsoft Windows Store (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/apps/windows?icid=en_US_Store_UH_apps_Win). *But* it has it's own issues - regarding licensing, usages, and more. They do (did?) have a relatively friendly Open-Source policy, but primarily to try to grab market share; however, even that hasn't really helped them gain any traction.

And yet people still complain...And no, I'm no fan of it.

Re:This can't be true

[Tough Love]

Given MS can tune specifically for Windows while Vulkan needs to remain somewhat generic then DX will always have a performance advantage even when working with basically the same concepts

Sorry, you lost me here. The entire concept of Vulkan (and DX12, both being derived from Mantle) is to run as close to the hardware as possible, so where does your imagined performance advantage come from?

Re:This can't be true

[Blaskowicz]

Under Windows, hopefully the user will have found out about IrFanView or XnView to deal with collections of pictures (if only to view them) and then will look for functions in the menus to find about batch resizing.

Re:It's not the primary platform, it's gonna suffe

[Blaskowicz]

These games are "indie" but can realistically only reach their market, especially with linux, by being distributed on Steam.
Perhaps developers can target the "Steam Runtime" while not using Steam. No idea how they should be sold or DRM'ed then, but if there's a middleman it's not as indie as it was in the 90s.

Re:why would a company waste time on this?

[F.Ultra]

That you would get the 1.79% for free was claimed by parent and not by me. That said, if you believe that gaming companies have anything like what you propose and that regardless of operating system then you have more than naive, unless we are talking about possible the big power houses like EA and Ubisoft.