Huh, maybe I should give it another try then. A couple of months ago, I was getting nasty graphical glitches pretty frequently under Wayland. I've heard the upcoming 545 driver fixes a bunch of Wayland compatibility stuff, too, so maybe it's time to try it again.
it was literally perfect on AMD with no hassle, I just installed OBS and recorded the screen
trying to replicate the ease of use on Nvidia is a huge project, I’d have to either mess with OBS on X11 or wait until a new driver fixes my graphical glitches
Nice, this is League right? I have well over 10K games of Heroes of the Storm going back to 2015, all on Linux using Wine. I am queuing up for the next one right now.
Back when the development was still going at a breakneck speed I was always worried that a new patch might break my HotS Wine setup. But during all that these years there was only a single week when I couldn’t play. Somehow the Wine stack was always just good enough to keep up with the changes. For example DXVK came along just in time when the DX9 rendering was no longer supported.
There’s something really wrong with your GPU usage in Windows. It’s hovering around 88%. I don’t think this is an accurate comparison. You need to figure out what’s wrong with your Windows install.
I’m glad OP’s linux gaming experience is so much better than it is on windows. I don’t say this to cast aspersions but if the results were reliable and repeatable, people like christitus, gardiner and many others would make daily videos on the topic just to get all the views(dollars) it would surely generate. It would cause a seismic shift in the PC gaming space.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting, but I don’t think OP’s claims are extraordinary. I think he’s only saying “I’ve noticed Linux can outperform Windows on programs that are optimized for Windows. Kinda unexpected, but here are the benchmarks.”
OP is not claiming that this is true in 100% of cases. For example, in this thread he points out that Windows outperformed Linux on Doom.
They are only sampling ten paaticular games. If they included all games or even just games that run poorly then it would be far behind. I use Linux on my desktop but will still boot into windows rather than fussing with it.
When was the last time you tried “fussing with it”? I’ve been gaming on Linux for over a year now, and it’s been incredibly seamless. The only game that gave me any trouble at all was Assetto Corsa (the first).
Edit: and I did get it running. I won’t lie, it was a PITA. And it ran, and I played it for maybe 30 mins. :)
Not everyone has the same repertoire of games and not every game will run natively on linux. Depending on your flavour, messing with a compatibility layer can be fussy for some people and depending on your choice of games, your ratio of native/near-native:compromise:does not work will vary. It can’t be “it works for me so it should work for thee”.
Of course – but that works the other way as well. It doesn’t mean Linux gaming is lacking somehow if your library happens to be filled with the few remaining problem cases.
My point is simply that, by and large, it’s ready and seamless, and things like Protondb support this.
Yeah, I’ve played both with no issues as well. Curiously, BG3 ran better for me with DX vs Vulkan, but iirc the devs said the Vulkan build had issues at first.
Are you saying you had issues with them? If so, would you mind sharing your specs? BG3 in particular has a Gold rating on Protondb, but even AOE4 is Silver.
Yes, I had issues. I have a 3080 and some recent generation i5, 32gb ram. I’m sure I just need some configuration for my video card or something. It just takes about 5 seconds to boot into windows with nvme sticks. Every game works perfectly every time. I can’t be bothered.
Got it. I suspect it’s something related to nvidia tbh. Their Linux support leaves a lot to be desired. Valve’s (and many other’s) work on Steam Deck or Steam Deck adjacent stuff has made the AMD world a lot more Linux friendly as a result. I’m on an all-AMD system (Ryzen 5 7600X, RX 6600XT) which is probably why I’ve had a very smooth time.
But totally understand not wanting to waste time with it if Windows is still working fine. I think that will be harder to do, however, as MS continues to move down the path of OS as a service.
A few years of linux and the game becomes finding stuff that doesn’t work and making it work. Once you get it working you don’t bother using it, because it’s more fun to go find the next thing that doesn’t work and figure out how to make it work.
I occasionally do, but mostly if I’m intending to play it on my Steam Deck and it’s marked as unsupported or untested. That’s still pretty rare though.
Is HDR just so amazing that it’s worth the hassle of using windows though? Games get shinier all the time, it’s not really exciting to me anymore. Give it a year and it’ll be in anyway, and people will be on to the next randomnhotness that they can’t possibly live without that somehow they were fine without the year previous.
It’s not even implemented well in very many monitors. I think a lot of people just turn it in cause it’s supposed to be “better” even if it doesn’t make much of an actual difference.
i think it’s mostly due to how prevalent fake hdr monitors are
most people don’t understand it’s essentially impossible to get hdr without an OLED/microLED or MAYBE VA and keep buying into marketing bullshit, which leads them to having pretty shitty experiences
If you’re using an actual HDR capable display, HDR is pretty amazing. I know it’s weird reading about it online, but the lighting seems so much more “real” when you’re playing games on HDR. You actually have to “see it to believe it” as you can’t see it from screenshots or from people taking pictures of their displays.
Windows 11 actually has a calibration tool similar to the ones at the console so you can get good HDR on Windows.
10 game benchmarks hardly are an argument when only 1 in 7 games on Steam are Linux compatible.
Proton runs the Windows version of games on Linux, including games using DX12. They don’t have to be marked Linux compatible. That just means those can run without Proton (Linux native binaries).
Those shown in the video are using Proton (e.g. there is no Linux build of RDR2).
From the dev on disc when someone asked about smart tv support:
Playnite currently has heavy Windows dependencies so it’s not even technically possible.
Long term there is a plan to look into Linux support, but mobile or TV (Android in general) is very unlikely to happen any time soon.
I’m just going to go ahead and say this now, do not expect most windows games to run better on Linux than windows. Typically the case is when you find a well optimized game that is CPU bound, or is natively vulkan. Anything else, expect comparable framerates.
It’s comparable more often than not, but honestly even if it was 17% worse on average I would still stick to Linux and just build a better computer. Which is what I did before proton.
No doubt and I’m the same way, I’m just trying to say that one shouldn’t try to sell Linux solely based on “gaming performance” when it is definitely not the case most of the time.
Linux is not used like windows or macos at all, and new users will definitely be frustrated enough just learning to use the operating system. Believe me, I think it is awesome that we are finally getting another gaming revolution in the community (Linux gaming actually used to be pretty good before around 2010), but keep in mind that these efforts are for the community and steam deck users. Anyone who wants to have it too will ultimately have to join the community and learn the ropes.
I will disagree and that’s why I made this video. Been benchmarking games for 3 years now, mostly on AMD systems. It went from about same performance, to slightly better, to this. 17% average improvement is nothing to laugh at. It’s the difference between a 4090 and a 7900XTX on Windows. So people can literally save $1000 just by using Linux.
What you say, does mostly apply to Nvidia users though.
Man look, I’ve been using Linux as a daily driver for 18 years, people have been saying exactly what you’re saying since before performance was even comparable.
You’re not going to get 17% better performance on the GPU just because you’re using another operating system, it’s not going to happen unless you’re running a Linux native version of the game. Often times, that is not even the case.
Performance can be a little bit better if the game is natively opengl or vulkan, but if it is directx (the vast majority of windows games) then it is going to be comparable at best in GPU-bound scenarios, I.E. most of the games people are playing on PC.
You can’t just magically put more transistors in a GPU just because you are running a different OS. CPU bound games run better on Linux because of the god-tier scheduler, but a GPU is essentially a computer in itself, all drivers do is tell the GPU to take this information and translate it into something you see on a screen.
By the way, the Nvidia thing has been false for quite some time now. I primarily use AMD on Linux, but the only place you will run into issues with Nvidia is wayland, otherwise it works perfectly fine everywhere else.
I don’t see an argument which disproves my results apart from you disbelief. But I like the Nvidia comment. I’ll do a video of Linux vs Windows on my 3080M laptop. We’ll see how true is that Nvidia works as well as AMD on Linux. :)
Go right on ahead, I’ve done the tests myself already.
Keep in mind though that if you are using a laptop, nvidia tends to work better when paired with Intel vs amd for the sake of graphics offloading.
I don’t think you understand how this works, I’m not trying to disprove anything, you are the one trying to prove something. You chose 10 very specific games to run these tests, some of them being heavily CPU bound, and state that you are receiving an increase in GPU performance when it is simply not the case. All of these games are also optimized for proton, which does not help your case.
Tell you what, why don’t you give something like “Spec Ops: The Line” a test? Halo Infinite? 40k Darktide? Vermintide 2? Dying Light? Hell, infinite and darktide are very popular in the Linux gaming community, I was even one of the beta testers for darktide.
You say that like I’m afraid to do it. You’re missing the point that these games don’t have benchmarks lol. If you want I can do a gameplay comparison but don’t tell me, the areas or movements are not the same. :)
Also these games couldn’t be more diverse. I tested DXVK, VD3D and Vulkan (both on Linux and Windows) with these games. If you can find a more diverse benchmark please let me know, cause I haven’t found one.
Also, I’m already doing benchmarks on my i7-10870H and 3080 laptop. Linux won’t go above 80W, cause of the Nvidia Drivers (545 Beta btw) so the difference will be IMMENSE for Windows there.
You don’t need a specialized benchmark to do a benchmark, you can use a realtime rendered cutscene, you can do an average over several games. That’s how they have been done for like a decade and a half at this point.
Also, I’m not referring specifically to mobile graphics nvidia, but nvidia altogether. Linux laptop gamers make up a very very small amount of total Linux gamers, it is an incredibly small niche of two already small niches, both being Linux and laptop gamers. Yes, of course if you have a limit to the total amount of power, it will lag behind.
I gave you a list of games, start there, my list is also diverse and includes all of those except for vulkan, which if you want, throw doom eternal in there, though as I have already stated vulkan will get a small increase on linux over windows in terms of GPU performance, so that’s not really proving anything anyone doesn’t already know.
If you want a fair comparison, limit it to 80 watts in windows as well. Remember though that power is NOT EVERYTHING when it comes to GPU performance. All of the games I detailed above are GPU bound games and will be a fair comparison. Just a heads up darktide may or may not have graphical glitches on your system if you are running amd (both operating systems, it is hardware related), I’ve worked with the devs to fix it in the past but it seems like recently people have been having issues with it again.
“works fine” is very different than “is equivalently optimized.”
Valve has done a lot of work to get games to work well on the Steam Deck, and that likely translates to other AMD GPUs. So it makes total sense that Valve would optimize the Proton translation layer for DirectX calls to the AMD driver differently than the NVIDIA driver (or rather, in a way that AMD handles better). A big issue in GPU optimization is keeping it busy, so perhaps the AMD driver working with Valve’s patches on the DirectX to Vulkan layer improve utilize m utilization. That could translate to a modest performance improvement even on well optimized games (perhaps 5-10%, probably not more than 20%).
I don’t know if that’s what’s going on here, but it’s a plausible explanation.
I can see why you’d think that, but what you fail to understand is that valve is not the only one working on proton, and valve themselves did not even make DXVK. Those are free and open source efforts and valve even pays external devs to commit to that software. I’m telling you that DXVK itself is not going to give a boost to graphical performance because it literally cannot, those are extra instructions that your GPU has to perform in order to send out frames.
Directx to vulkan translation is exactly that, translation. It receives directx calls and translates them to vulkan. For one, it has overhead, two, if the game is optimized, it is already going to be running at max performance on windows, using DXVK is going to slow the GPU time down because it will have to perform more calculations. No scheduler will save you from that, not even the Linux one, because it isn’t something that is handled by the scheduler.
I never said Valve built DXVK or even WINE, just that they have a vested interest to ensure it works well on their AMD-based hardware
I never mentioned anything about the scheduler or any Linux imtrinsics other than the AMD GPU kernel module
DirectX -> Vulkan isn’t a direct translation since the APIs aren’t 1:1, so there’s going to be some tuning in how APIs are mapped, and the tuning can differ depending on the GPU driver you’re using.
It’s the same with processors, you can optimize a compiler to work better on AMD vs Intel or vice versa (look at Intel C++ compiler benchmarks for an example of that), even if they use the exact same set of instructions because the microarchitectures are optimized differently. This is because the way the instruction set gets mapped to the microarchitecture can impact performance significantly (something like 10% is possible, depending on the benchmark).
GPU drivers are complicated, and there are a lot of areas where the interaction between the driver, software, and system services can be optimized. AMD’s drivers are open source, which helps with those optimization efforts. Then you throw in a big, well-funded, and motivated company like Valve funding development (both through salaries and donations) and you end up with AMD GPUs getting extra attention for things like DXVK.
So I would expect AMD on Linux to perform better vs NVIDIA on Linux when compared to AMD vs NVIDIA on Windows. As in, the performance difference on Linux vs Windows would be more favorable for AMD cards than NVIDIA ones because AMD on Linux gets more attention than NVIDIA on Linux. I don’t expect the same for compute, since NVIDIA invests heavily in that space on Linux, so it’s not an inherent advantage of the platform (e.g. the scheduler discussion), but a question of where optimization efforts are focused.
Alright look, I’m not going to argue about who said what because we both know what we said and it is unrelated to the topic at hand.
The reason the windows amd driver is bad is not due to performance, it is the very same reason why the proprietary driver is bad on Linux, it is horrible reliability.
There are circumstances where they trade blows and circumstances where they perform similarly. If you really want to compare the two based on OS alone, you need to compare the equivalent drivers which is the proprietary one.
We’re already not doing an apples to apples comparison here because we’re comparing WINE+DXVK vs DirectX. Comparing the OS itself isn’t that interesting, at least from an end-user perspective, what is interesting is comparing the typical user experience on both platforms.
Valve is optimizing for that typical user experience on their Steam Deck, and that translates to the desktop fairly well. They’re not really doing the same on Windows, so it’s interesting to compare devs+manufacturers optimizing stuff on Windows vs the community+Valve optimizing stuff on Linux.
Why would not comparing the OS itself be interesting? That is literally the foundation of everything you are seeing on the screen.
You also can’t just compare WINE+DXVK to DirectX, because you can actually use DXVK on windows. If the video title was “directx vs dxvk” then that would be totally fair, but it is not, it is called “windows vs linux”. I’m simply trying to say that the vast majority of games are not going to see a 17% increase in GPU performance, your biggest boost is going to lie with CPU bound games because it is the truth.
The only time you’ll see a game perform better on a GPU on Linux is when the game has a native version, and even then that only applies if they actively develop that version, many games are not actively developed and are even a few versions behind.
Because regular users aren’t going to be changing drivers based on the game, or doing a ton of system-level configuration to get a bit better performance.
So it should be defaults vs defaults.
If we want to compare OSes, we should do targeted benchmarks (Phoronix does a ton of those). There are far more interesting ways to compare schedulers than running games, and the same is true for disk performance, GPU overhead, etc.
you can actually use DXVK on Windows
How many people actually do that though? I’m guessing not many.
“Windows vs Linux” is comparing the default experiences on both systems, and that’s interesting for people who are unlikely to change the defaults (i.e. most people).
The only time you’ll see a game perform better on a GPU on Linux is when the game has a native version
That’s just not true, as evidenced by this video. If you take the typical setup on Windows vs the typical setup on Linux, it seems you get a 17% average performance uplift on Linux on these games.
That doesn’t mean Linux is 17% faster than Windows, nor does it mean you should expect games to run 17% better on Linux, it just means Linux is competitive and sometimes faster with the default configuration. And that’s interesting.
Linux does not have a default configuration, that’s why we have over 600 distros. If you want to have a baseline “default configuration” then fedora would be the way to go, which he has not used.
Yes, he got a performance uplit by 17% on average in these games, the point he is trying to make is that you can get this in every game on Linux which is what is not true.
Most of those games are also CPU bound, an area that Linux is going to destroy windows. Once again, I am referring to GPU performance specifically, as that is the general point that OP makes with these posts.
That may be true, but de facto defaults today is Proton experimental on Steam with the a recent Linux kernel. That’s pretty much the same across all distros.
That’s not all the factors that play a role in performance in games.
For instance, what fork of the kernel are they using? Are they using zram? What graphics driver are they using? Gamescope? Gamemode? All of those things affect performance of a game to varying degrees.
Also, Proton experimental is definitely not the default on any system, that would be Proton 8.
Yup, the difference between Ubuntu, Fedora, and Arch or whatever isn’t going to be all that big, assuming you’re working with each distribution’s default kernel and running with a Steam’s provider runtime. You might get 1-2% here and there, but that’s pretty much within run to run variance anyway.
Sure, but each distro has a default configuration, and distros don’t vary that much in terms of performance with those default configurations for playing games. If there is a consistent performance difference, it’ll likely be something like 1-2%, which should be within run-to-run variance and not really impact the results.
And if anyone assumes that an average between 10 games represents the difference you’ll see on average for your own games doesn’t understand statistics because 10 games is not enough to be a representative sample, especially since they weren’t even randomly selected to begin with. It’s still an interesting result.
CPU bound… Linux is going to destroy Windows
You’re being hyperbolic here.
The differences, all else being equal, should be pretty small most of the time unless there’s a hardware driver issue (e.g. when Intel’s new p-core vs e-core split came out, Windows had much better support).
If we’re seeing a huge difference, more is going on than just a “better” scheduler or more efficient kernel or whatever. It’s much more likely Windows is using DirectX and Linux is using DXVK or something. The bigger the gap, the less likely it’s the kernel that’s doing it.
As someone who has used Linux exclusively for ~15 years, these kinds of benchmarks are certainly exciting. However, we need to be careful to not read too much into them.
It sounds like some time in that 18 years, you solidified this impression, and are choosing to not recognize the advancements in Proton and drivers that have occurred post-Steam Deck.
I’ve been using Linux since before Xwindows existed, and I am open to OPs research. Just because we’ve used it longer, doesn’t make either of us right without proof. OP supplied evidence. Prove them wrong.
I’ve been using Linux since before Xwindows existed
Why are you blatantly lying like this? X came out seven years before the Linux kernel was even released. And even then, there wasn’t a working system for the Linux kernel when it was released. Keep in mind I said DAILIED Linux for 18 years, I didn’t say USED, I’ve been using Linux for 27 years now. I actually remember a time when Linux was not an operating system that people would use to play games on.
I’m using my time specifically in the community as an example to show that this is not the first time I have heard this. OP supplied evidence in ten very specific games here, there are over 12000 games on protondb that are “playable”, not even verified. I have run across myself quite many games that run at half to three quarters the performance that it does on windows, and that is absolutely fine.
Telling people that using Linux will get you a “free performance boost as much as 17%” when it very likely will NOT, will create a lot more angst towards the Linux community than it already is. The elitists are already doing that for us, we don’t need more of it.
We should be pushing people towards Linux for digital privacy+security and free software, not cherry picked performance boosts.
Yes, I very well recognize the black magic sourcery of proton and wine, but you are sitting here and trying to tell me that proton is somehow going to make your GPU somehow physically push more calculations per cycles just because it is running Linux. Not even giving me the “mesa drivers” spiel which is also BS, as performance is not the main area that the Foss drivers are better in.
Linux is not going to break the laws of physics buddy, I’ve already said what I said, boost in CPU bound games, little to no boost in GPU bound games. If you’re seeing a boost, it’s because you have a CPU bottleneck and you are getting it because of the scheduler.
Not enough people running nvidia realize just how much nvidia does to make sure you stick to their proprietary software. That you can close most of the performance gap with FOSS on AMD is an amazing finding.
Unfortunately it won’t convince many who haven’t already seen the benefits of a more open system.
how much nvidia does to make sure you stick to their proprietary software
Holy fucking shit you are extremely misguided. Are you not aware that the Linux nvidia drivers are proprietary? The only reason that the mesa drivers are awful is because they barely support the 10 series and they don’t support the new instruction set of the 20’s and above.
If you are running Nvidia on your system and it is above a 10 series, you are running proprietary software. Big whoop, steam is proprietary too, so are the vast majority of the games you play on steam.
Hell, nvidia used to be the ones supplying an open source driver on Linux like 14-15 years ago, AMD didn’t have that, only the proprietary driver. DO NOT OWE ALLEGIENCE TO ANY PUBLICLY TRADED COMPANY, that’s exactly why we don’t have good FOSS drivers for nvidia now.
Those are the mesa drivers, not the “amd” drivers.
Those very same drivers work on Intel cards and pre-20 series nvidia cards. Mesa is not an AMD project or an Intel project either, that is an independent team.
Even then, those drivers are for allowing the GPU to display to a screen and interact with the system. They are pretty much the same idea as the Microsoft basic display adapter. You still need the xf86 drivers to display X, the opengl drivers for opengl, cuda for cuda, vulkan for vulkan, etc. Those are all separate components because they have libraries included with them.
If all of those extras were built into the kernel, the kernel would be like 2 gigabytes, not 150ish megabytes. It is literally enough to get you going with a getty and that’s about it.
The drivers in the kernel (MESA) work with AMD out of the box. If you have AMD hardware, you don’t need anything else. What I said was “AMD drivers are currently in the kernel”. I did not specify that these drivers are developed by AMD – you seem to care a lot about that, but it’s not part of the argument I was making.
Again, you seem to have misread my first comment, which on the Linux side means: you still need proprietary nvidia drivers on Linux. This is also true for Windows, where many folks are perfectly happy to continually update GeForce Now and stay in that ecosystem. That was the point of the comment.
I’m not coming at you with hostility, I am informing you that what you are saying is incorrect. If you keep on skimming over everything I say, then perhaps I may get hostile because that is extremely annoying.
If you are so sure of yourself on the kernel driver front, then do me a favor and fire up gentoo or arch and try to run a desktop environment or window manager without the mesa packages installed. You’ll find that xorg has mesa as a dependency, and there’s a very good reason for that: it’s because that’s not what the kernel driver is for, mesa itself is larger than the kernel itself. The kernel driver is exactly what I said it is, it allows the operating system to see and interact with the device, it doesn’t tell the device how to do its job, it tells it “here are some pipes, you will receive information from certain ones, and send it through others”. That’s exactly what a kernel driver does, there are no libraries or anything of that nature which is the overwhelming bulk of what makes a graphics driver.
Also, geforce now is optional, you can as always install the drivers without the useless spyware application that nvidia provides.
If you keep on skimming over everything I say, then perhaps I may get hostile because that is extremely annoying.
What is annoying is getting novel after novel of irrelevant information. Can you actually tell me what part of my first comment you are referring to?
The closest I’ve seen is that you took “AMD drivers” meaning explicitly developed by AMD, but that’s not how adjectives work. Now you are all about needing more than MESA, which is also fine and correct, but irrelevant to my comment about nvidia drivers.
Go read this and do not reply back until you understand what it is we are talking about.
RADV is not built into the kernel.
Stop trying to sidestep and make it seem like I’m misunderstanding, you know full damn well that when I say AMD drivers that I am referring to drivers for AMD hardware. You have the Foss drivers (mesa), the open source drivers, and the proprietary drivers. All of these are AMD drivers.
Mesa isn’t a kernel driver. AMDGPU is the name of the kernel module and it’s primarily developed by AMD. Mesa provides OpenGL, Vulkan, etc. implementations and is funded by AMD, Intel and Valve (among others). There’s also AMDGPU-PRO which is a proprietary alternative to Mesa from AMD.
That does not change my point in any way, mesa is not built into the kernel, which you need as a dependency to use X, which is required to run a window manager and/or WINE. I never ever said mesa was a kernel driver.
yeah i have a work college that i got to use vim keybinds in most software but when i tell him that he could control his whole system like that if he switched to linux he dosen’t like the idea because he isn’t used to using linux
Not enough people realize how much AMD does to make sure people stick to their proprietary software. Nvidia software that is.
A lack of ROCm support on consumer hardware is simply inexcusable. Nvidia makes a shit ton of money with the AI boom, because people like to work with stuff they already know. And it’s infuriating, because Nvidia cards have way less VRAM.
Honestly, if you use Proton-GE's FSR feature for games that don't offer built-in FSR/DLSS + GameMode, you can def beat Windows performance in some Windows-only games. I know it's kinda cheating, but it does net you higher FPS on the same graphics settings.
I installed Linux on my old laptop recently because it was impossible to install the drivers for the graphics card in windows. It just kept blue screening. Linux worked out of the box. From 13 fps to 120+
Prople will debunk you then hit you to the ground. Just say the truth of the gimmiky things you do because a 25% performance boost is unreal.
A 5% to a maximum 10% is more believable but your stuff is a quarter of a video card processing power and this should ring you a bell of alarm because the doodoo you are eating there is pure BS.
Say what you will, I posted ALL the settings and updates and OBS Settings in video form. I am not obliged to do any of these things. People have come here stating that they don’t believe this is real without ANY arguments. When you want to talk seriously, maybe, we can do it.
Linux gaming is a little hit or miss. Some games have a performance boost. Some are about the same. And some games perform worse. This is the reality. And this is what should be expected.
Your post is still true for your specific hardware and this specific game, with these specific drivers, but let’s not go crazy here. Linux is good, yes. Fantastic even, on the Steam Deck. On PC most people are better off sticking with Windows, especially if you play a couple of competitive multiplayer titles. Or if you want to stream games from one device to another in house. Or if you have limited time and just want shit to work. Linux is getting closer, but the out of the box experience need to become way better and I don’t doubt it will sooner rather than later.
I really hate seeing the words “Linux is getting closer” as if the entire point of running Linux is an alternative platform to run games on.
It is not, Linux is really not any different than it was when the first distributions released. This is it. Yes things like DXVK and WINE and Proton are going to improve, but those things are not Linux, they are software that RUNS on Linux. If you actually want to make the switch to Linux, then you aren’t going to wait until it is “perfect” because none of it is ever going to be perfect, that is the nature of all things in the universe. If you truly want to embrace something, you have to embrace the bullshit as well, that’s why I made the switch 17-18 years ago and never went back to windows for a daily.
The entire point of Linux is to have a malleable free and open source operating system that can be used for any application from desktop to server to embedded. The fact alone that it is a different operating system will already change the ways you do things, but the additional fact that it is not supported on the desktop front by corporations but rather the community means you will have to make sacrifices, but a community backing will give so much more in the end.
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux,” and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use.
Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
No, Richard, it’s ‘Linux’, not ‘GNU/Linux’. The most important contributions that the FSF made to Linux were the creation of the GPL and the GCC compiler. Those are fine and inspired products. GCC is a monumental achievement and has earned you, RMS, and the Free Software Foundation countless kudos and much appreciation.
Following are some reasons for you to mull over, including some already answered in your FAQ.
One guy, Linus Torvalds, used GCC to make his operating system (yes, Linux is an OS – more on this later). He named it ‘Linux’ with a little help from his friends. Why doesn’t he call it GNU/Linux? Because he wrote it, with more help from his friends, not you. You named your stuff, I named my stuff – including the software I wrote using GCC – and Linus named his stuff. The proper name is Linux because Linus Torvalds says so. Linus has spoken. Accept his authority. To do otherwise is to become a nag. You don’t want to be known as a nag, do you?
(An operating system) != (a distribution). Linux is an operating system. By my definition, an operating system is that software which provides and limits access to hardware resources on a computer. That definition applies whereever you see Linux in use. However, Linux is usually distributed with a collection of utilities and applications to make it easily configurable as a desktop system, a server, a development box, or a graphics workstation, or whatever the user needs. In such a configuration, we have a Linux (based) distribution. Therein lies your strongest argument for the unwieldy title ‘GNU/Linux’ (when said bundled software is largely from the FSF). Go bug the distribution makers on that one. Take your beef to Red Hat, Mandrake, and Slackware. At least there you have an argument. Linux alone is an operating system that can be used in various applications without any GNU software whatsoever. Embedded applications come to mind as an obvious example.
Next, even if we limit the GNU/Linux title to the GNU-based Linux distributions, we run into another obvious problem. XFree86 may well be more important to a particular Linux installation than the sum of all the GNU contributions. More properly, shouldn’t the distribution be called XFree86/Linux? Or, at a minimum, XFree86/GNU/Linux? Of course, it would be rather arbitrary to draw the line there when many other fine contributions go unlisted. Yes, I know you’ve heard this one before. Get used to it. You’ll keep hearing it until you can cleanly counter it.
You seem to like the lines-of-code metric. There are many lines of GNU code in a typical Linux distribution. You seem to suggest that (more LOC) == (more important). However, I submit to you that raw LOC numbers do not directly correlate with importance. I would suggest that clock cycles spent on code is a better metric. For example, if my system spends 90% of its time executing XFree86 code, XFree86 is probably the single most important collection of code on my system. Even if I loaded ten times as many lines of useless bloatware on my system and I never excuted that bloatware, it certainly isn’t more important code than XFree86. Obviously, this metric isn’t perfect either, but LOC really, really sucks. Please refrain from using it ever again in supporting any argument.
Last, I’d like to point out that we Linux and GNU users shouldn’t be fighting among ourselves over naming other people’s software. But what the heck, I’m in a bad mood now. I think I’m feeling sufficiently obnoxious to make the point that GCC is so very famous and, yes, so very useful only because Linux was developed. In a show of proper respect and gratitude, shouldn’t you and everyone refer to GCC as ‘the Linux compiler’? Or at least, ‘Linux GCC’? Seriously, where would your masterpiece be without Linux? Languishing with the HURD?
If there is a moral buried in this rant, maybe it is this:
Be grateful for your abilities and your incredible success and your considerable fame. Continue to use that success and fame for good, not evil. Also, be especially grateful for Linux’ huge contribution to that success. You, RMS, the Free Software Foundation, and GNU software have reached their current high profiles largely on the back of Linux. You have changed the world. Now, go forth and don’t be a nag.
The Linux gaming experience is better than Windows on AMD. Period. I’ve been testing games on many systems (mostly on AMD) through the Proton years. I just want t debunk the myth that Linux gaming is worse. Cause it’s not. It’s better.
I play Apex Legends, and I get way better performance in Linux. My regular squad mates were having graphical lag issues last weekend. Me on Linux, no issues. 120+fps
Yeah. It’s not kernel level like it is with Fortnite and Destiny. Works great on Linux and Steam Deck.
Edit: a tip if you take the plunge: When you launch it, it will pop up a box for “compiling vulkan shaders” with an option to skip. Do not skip it, at least not immediately. Apex has WAY more shaders than most games. In Steam settings, under downloads, I recommend enabling “shader pre-caching” as well as “allow background processing of vulkan shaders” so that ste can constantly compile shaders. It seems to make things work better “on the fly” as well. Nowadays I almost always hit skip on the shader dialogue.
Sometimes, not every time, my initial load into Apex has stuttering. This smooths out on my system after a minute or two, usually within the lobby. If it’s still happening once I am in the drop ship, I will take a late drop on my first game. Once it’s past all the shader compiling, it is buttery smooth the rest of the time. And keep in mind, this is not every time I play. Just sometimes. It’s way better than what my squaddies had last weekend.
That seems like a lot to say but I want to say it all so you don’t abandon ship because it’s choppy at first. That doesn’t last so stick it out. I haven’t had any chop or lag for weeks.
EDIT2: This is me playing on linux. ANy excuse to share this crazy win, no idea why we deserved to pull this off lol www.twitch.tv/videos/1961781842
Combination, and it depends on the game. Dxvk will add latency, but depending on the renderer and how the game runs the reduction in CPU overhead by using dxvk instead of native can provide performance gains, especially on certain CPU’s.
On games with a native vulkan renderer, Linux will most often just be faster since you have less system overhead burden. This has been fascinating to see though.
First the games started to become playable, but framerates weren’t so great.
Framerates started to improve
Framerates started to become a wash between Windows vs Linux
We are progressing into this step: it either runs comparably or better.
The results are mixed right now, and it’s going to be real hard to nail down predictability as far as performance goes. More often than not, so long as DRM isn’t involved, games run really well on day one. Older games are starting to see a performance uplift and reliability improvements through proton/dxvk/vkd3d.
I’m very happy though that what we’re talking about is comparable performance metrics. We use to be content if the shit ran at all.
One comment to add to your post, Linux is better on performances not just because of the less overhead, but because manages resources much effectively. You could have a bloated linux, it still would perform better because resources are properly managed
That’s an absolutely correct and very relevant point. On any equivalent computational loads, Linux comes out ontop. Better scheduler, better I/O, better stack.
Yes but it’s very much an afterthought. Their notion of using containers and the Job Objects is largely a bolted on approach. If you look into the Job Objects, that would be what I can think of as the closest equivalent.
Could be both. Who knows. For high performance computing Linux is the de facto standard because it has better performances than windows, and Linux distros are usually better, stabler OSes overall when one needs raw performances. In this case, who knows, someone should investigate further
Tbf, on Linux performances for hpc are better even on standard desktop distros, no need to clean it up. It manages resources and jobs much better. For performances that is the critical part, once the code is optimized.
I think it has more to do with Linux being easier to tweak, not some inherent performance difference. You can tweak the scheduler, page sizes, and all manner of other things to get a bit more performance if you know what your workload looks like. So it being open source and ubiquitous is a bigger contributor imo than anything inherent to the design of the kernel.
Regular users aren’t going to go through that level of tweaking, so the difference should be a lot smaller and will benefit more from general code-level optimizations than system tweaks. General purpose, high performance computing works just fine on Windows, it’s just easier to tweak Linux for production compute use cases.
No no, it is better. Take a real hpc library, install debian and test it yourself. No tweak needed. Linux as kernel and the overall OS manages resources much better. Linux is a better kernel than windows kernel.
I’ve been doing hpc for over 15 years now. People install standard distros on their workstations and clusters. No tweak needed
How big are we talking? I looked and couldn’t find benchmarks, but then again I’m not familiar enough with HPC to know what benchmarks to look for.
I’ve been Linux exclusive for something like 15 years now (before Steam even came to Linux), so I’m not exactly familiar with Windows performance on the stuff I use. I casually look at larger projects and benchmarks they run (for example, I remember async on Linux vs Windows was a significant issue in the early days of node.js).
I do dabble a bit in hpc, but only on Windows and macOS. I’ve done signal processing and some high thread count number crunching, but I haven’t needed to run benchmarks, just get things running well enough (as in, minutes vs hours, not 10-20% difference).
When I talk about hpc, I don’t talk about a script in Matlab. I talk about the work you do on supercomputers, real computing intensive jobs that takes weeks or months on hundreds or thousands of processors. I guess you don’t find benchmarks simply because no one uses windows, same reason you probably don’t find a fiat panda in the Nürburgring rankings.
K. Everything I’ve done is basically translating a Matlab script to Python using numpy or tensorflow or something. So we’d go from Matlab taking hours to Python taking minutes. The biggest project was a Monte Carlo simulation of signals produced from explosions (looking for seismographic impact) that takes something like 45 min per run when run on our cloud infra.
So something a little more interesting than plotting an FFT if overlaid signals, but still on the simpler end of the spectrum.
We’re nowhere near the point where tuning the OS is interesting, we just use Linux because it’s convenient. I wonder how much of the HPC crowd has a similar perspective, at least until you get to the higher end where tuning the OS becomes important.
You don’t really need to tune the operating system, you just need a good one. The hpc crowd has a pretty unique perspective. You won’t find anyone doing any real hpc on windows, not even Microsoft
linux_gaming
Active
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.