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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?
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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
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.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
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.
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.
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.
Just saying it like it are.
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...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.