Windows 11 is last in gaming performance tests against 3 Linux gaming distros
notebookcheck.net
notebookcheck.net
No hardware. No justification of the games.
I love gaming on Arch. But I am stupid enough to use an nvidia card, which means that I have no Wayland. I am eating shit due to the drivers every few months. There are a whole host of good games with awful DRM that I can’t play. Steam is good but it’s still DRM.
The summary provided article gives the vibe that it wants to pump up Linux’s tyres rather than either demonstrating Linux’s superiority or making the case that you should be gaming on Linux.
GOG games are playable fine, you don't need Steam to play them.
Yes, most games on Steam have DRM. Steam is not synonimous with DRM though.
https://www.howtogeek.com/813209/psa-not-all-steam-games-hav...
"DRM-free makes it easy to re-download games, back them up on external hard drives, and enjoy their single-player mode offline."
I am very happy with gog. though not all games are on there, if they are, it is a no-brainer to get them there.
I have bought a few games in GOG, but until the give us proper Linux support, I won't give them any money.
(that said, I don't use galaxy, I've been using https://github.com/eddie3/gogrepo for updates)
Technically, they don't need to do that - you can run GoG games via Heroic Launcher or even via Steam+Proton by adding them as external games.
If your stance is of a more political nature, that doesn't matter.
Personally, I find myself somewhere in between. On the one hand, Steam is really helping improve support for gaming on Linux (and they've made such good progress that I don't even bother with Windows at all). On the other hand, GoG are fully committed to not selling DRM-ridden crap.
WINE (and maybe Proton) is your compatibility layer because you're trying to run _an application_ (games included) on a platform it's not written for.
The reason Steam has a Linux client with Proton integration is not so you, random Linux gamer, can have an easy time running games on Linux. It's mostly 2fold:
1. so that you, random Linux gamer, can run Steam DRM games on Linux at all;
2. so that they can launch products like the Steam Deck without paying license fees, or having to deal with, Microsoft and Windows.
GoG has no such needs. You already have everything you need to run their games. That is their differentiation. One could argue that this is a better proposition for you, the consumer, than that of Steam.
On the other hand, with Steam when I get a new game I just click on install, I go my merry way, and less than an hour later the game is ready to play, without me having to bother to configure anything.
Highlights (from auto-translated German):
> Windows 11: All updates were installed and version 23.11.1 was used for the graphics driver. The global AMD graphics profile was set to standard. This means that Radeon Super Resolution, Anti-Lag and Boost were disabled in the test for better comparison with Linux.
> The gaming PC used for the test was a system with AMD Ryzen 7 5800X on an Asus ROG Strix B550-A Gaming (Bios: 3202). The RAM was 32 GB DDR4-3600-RAM (CL18-22-22-44). The CPU was kept at temperature by a Scythe Mugen 5 while the system was in an open structure. The graphics card is a Sapphire RX 6700 XT Nitro+ with active Quiet BIOS. The monitor supported Full HD at 144 Hz. FreeSync was not active.
> A handful of current or currently very popular (Cyberpunk 2077) Windows games were used for the test. This shows the importance of current program packages for performance. The performance under Linux can also be compared with Windows in current titles.
> Since all games are versions designed for Windows, they ran using the Proton translation layer under Linux – specifically Proton Experimental as of 15 November 2023. Tested was carried out in Full HD.
> Finally, the question arises as to whether these results can also be transferred to a Linux system with GeForce? Yes, all titles were able to run; the editorial team had already tested that. However, the performance remained out of consideration for the time being. In the near future, ComputerBase will also address this topic.
Isn't that something a game/engine has to implement itself?
But I could be mistaken.
My initial interactions with waylands, years ago, including attempting to write a compositor from scratch, left a very source taste in my mouth and the strong impression that wayland was going in the wrong direction. Some things have no doubt changed by now, and a lot of cost has been sunk into it, so I'm deleting my rehashing of some of those concerns as no longer relevant, but I just have no interest in being an early adopter of it.
But for some reason the new open nvidia driver didn’t like my set up yesterday. mkinitcpio log shows it used the hook properly and then I did it manually. Proprietary one works fine and I am chill with that.
But to reiterate, it’s just the the summary doesn’t go into enough detail. It’s just pumping up the tyres.
My comment is not a criticism or evaluation of gaming on Arch or Linux or nvidia. It’s about the article.
Funny you would say this; I'm on AMD (Ryzen 6950HS IGD) and I'm eating shit due to the (FOSS) drivers every few days… to be fair I have two choices of distinct shit with X11 and Wayland, but neither is actually stable.
And none of this affects gaming, just the desktop in general :/. The RX 6950 in the desktop is in fact working without issues (same driver stack). I suspect it's some memory management problem with the CPU/GPU sharing on the 6950HS. But I have no idea how to track it down…
That said, FOSS GPU support has come a long way.
You don't describe the problems with anywhere near enough detail to guess at what the underlying issue might be.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AMDGPU << Has a troubleshooting section that might help.
That's because this is the HN comment section, not the f.d.o bug tracker.
Since you seem to care, what I'm seeing is likely #2220, though the real problem for me is that dmesg output is not particularly helpful on its own and it's the entire desktop that crashes (as opposed to a single application that you could set Mesa/amdgpu debug flags on.) The fact that it "only" crashes about once per week complicates things further; aimlessly enabling debug options would probably result in getting buried in logs.
[drm:amdgpu_job_timedout [amdgpu]] *ERROR* ring sdma0 timeout, signaled seq=24191109, emitted seq=24191111
[drm:amdgpu_job_timedout [amdgpu]] *ERROR* Process information: process pid 0 thread pid 0
echo high > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_force_performance_level
amdgpu.ppfeaturemask=0xfffd3fff* https://github.com/lutris/lutris
It's an OSS game launcher that takes the place of Steam, and you can set things up to run locally so you don't even need an account on their system (lutris.net).
The name makes it sound like it's related to the macOS package system Homebrew. Any idea if that's the case? :)
I'm only a causal gamer, but never had any compatibility by simple running all games in a windows VM. This setup also serves as a way to sandbox all the windows spyware
I think the biggest business impact might be behind-the-scenes negotiations with Microsoft.
Of course, this is a seed that might bare more profitable fruit in the future.
If so, that's probably the thing to compare it against. :)
They did recently release "PlayStation Portal" which has the form factor of a portable gaming unit, but its not really a portable gaming console, its a portable hardware streaming client for PS5 games.
If Microsoft pulls some radical move, Valve will be in a better position to react than having to start from scratch.
They would have an edge if they would actually be pushing for native GNU/Linux games, as it is, it is just like OS/2 runs Windows better than Windows, kind of thing.
Just wait until the other SteamDeck competitors get more market share, all of them running Windows.
Lets see how the SteamDeck will stand against a market flooded with Windows handelds, Game Pass and GeForce Now, from 2024 onwards.
The game using a PE or ELF for its binary is irrelevant, what matters is the game actually running. There was a fringe loud minority that went all "No Tux No Bux" a few years ago but nobody really cares about that anymore.
> it is just like OS/2 runs Windows better than Windows, kind of thing.
This is a myth, OS/2 was only able to run 16bit Windows software and that was when 32bit Windows software - which OS/2 was unable to run - was starting to become relevant. In addition OS/2 wasn't even able to run 16bit Windows software as good as real Windows as there were various small incompatibilities (e.g. try running Delphi 1 on it and see all the visual gliches). And finally OS/2's (in)compatibility with Windows was among the smaller of its issues - more important was the lack of hardware support at a time when 3rd party "PC compatible" hardware was the majority of PCs and lack of support by IBM themselves (the story mentioning how IBM saw OS/2 as an accessory to their mainframe business has been posted a few times over the years here).
And let's not forget the anticompetitive licensing scheme Microsoft had for their OSes that practically forced people to get DOS/Windows unless they explicitly asked for something different (that would end up more expensive).
I really dislike Microsoft, but I'm mid-30s, and my whole life, the gaming support for Linux has been tangential at best. I want to convert to Linux fully, but I can't commit yet. It's still too unstable. I have a feeling I will die unhappy and unsatisfied with Microsoft's marketing's answer to graphics called DirectX.
I think that's actually Valve recommendations to developers as well: don't bother with the fast-moving and always breaking APIs and ABIs of native Linux support, just make sure your game works well with Proton.
I think that pre-Proton, Linux gaming was somewhat marginal -- some things worked, but a lot of AAA stuff didn't -- but these days, it's much, much better.
I have dual monitors which might contribute to the complexity, but it's still a low bar to expect dual monitors to work on a gaming OS.
Not to mention GPUs just go ballistic and drown out the game's sound with fan noise every time even when you're running a simple 2D game. You always have to keep the iGPU on and the discrete card off by default because it apparently has just two modes - off, or full-power. Smart throttling like on Windows is non-existent.
I don't mind the extra effort needed to set things up and gather knowledge on running it for the trade-off of a truly free system. But these things are out of any user's control and keep me from completely shifting over.
Are you using font antialiasing? if so, what font hinting setting are you using? are you using subpixel ordering?
What CPU frequency scaling governor setting are you using? What power setting did you set for your GPU? NVIDIA has Powermizer settings which have adaptive clocking for the GPU and there's a GUI control panel for it that comes with the driver.
Most of what you've mentioned here sounds like you misconfigured your system (e.g.: wacky fonts). Default settings often do not produce the problems you've mentioned.
If you have a HiDPI setup like a 4K screen, simply set your resolution to 4k (3840 x 2160), scaling to 2x, 96 DPI and get a proper font of your liking. You can even get the fonts used on Windows if you install the TrueType font file (I think "Segoe UI Variable Regular" is the font name you would be looking for), with anti-aliasing y hinting set to Slight.
The only configuration I did was install Nvidia's correct proprietary drivers and turn on fractional scaling and font antialiasing (with correct subpixel ordering) on Linux. On Windows, even that was on by default.
Aliasing is intended for low-dpi displays. If you are using HiDPI, it is between useless and counterproductive.
Im on a Mac now but did this eventually get fixed?
Overall experience feels a little janky, but once you get into the game, it seems fine.
I'm not using Lutris, just my own scripts for launching both native and Wine games.
You can start here for example:
I started out doing what you suggest here, but it's a ducking pain in the butt after a while, every couple months there is a new version of X, then Y is deprecated and you should switch to Z... I do this kind of crap as my day job already, no need to keep going in the evening when I just want to have some fun with friends.
I prefer to control it myself. The way it's set up - I have a common launcher script and each game has a config file with a bunch of variables.
Haven't needed to update those config files for games much after they are set up, so not sure what your particular X or Y issues are, especially something that happens every couple of months.
There must be business reasons it makes sense but experience wise it's a pointless friction.
And recently, again, any game that bundles the EA app was a pain in the butt to get running, you had to switch back to very old proton versions and disable dxvk and other shenanigans for the EA installer to work. Once it installed properly you could switch everything back to default, but startup time is still abysmal.
It was bad before they updated it, now its so much worse somehow.
Being able to get a respectable gaming experience will for many be the reason that they can stay in the OS that they prefer for other reasons.
While playing games developed and sold for Android/NDK or developed and sold for GNU/Linux isn't really a thing.
Proton will never stop being a requirement for the large ecosystem of Valve's gaming library.
Apparently the lessons from OS/2 weren't learned in due time.
Using APIs for lock-in is an old anti-competitive trick, so it's fun to see it failing for gaming.
A Phyrric victory if there was one.
Now had they managed to convince said studios to write native GNU/Linux games, or to port their Android/NDK games into GNU/Linux, I would have agreed Valve managed something.
Not sure what you're doing wrong, but using arch with latest kernel, nvidia drivers, and I play Steam game daily on it with xorg or wayland to mostly stop using my PS4/5 again. I tend to flip back and forth between xorg and wayland, and xorg I still get odd kde compositing bugs, and wayland the compositor has a persistent memory leak that'll use all 128gb of my ram within a few days. I get lots more fps with wayland (particularly yuzu for switch emulation), but I have to restart kde every few days, which is a KDE problem, not Steam.
Otherwise gaming has been great since Proton picked up, but if you do still have problems, use install Proton GE from AUR. If anything doesn't work with default, it does almost certainly with GE.
If games use invasive DRM, or like Epic/Ubisoft/EA with their garbage launchers, F-em - they don't get my money anyways. Plenty out there that don't to have to deal with crappy mega company BS.
it was much easier in the past (when hyper-v is disabled) with windows compared to using specific tools in linux. however, now it is a matter of whether it is possible at all or not.
on the flip side, the metrics don't matter if the game doesn't run to begin with. many of the online multiplayers are plagued with AC not working on linux (at least the last time i checked).
Not saying your stuff is well supported but if it isn't, a bit of work/code from your side could share benefits with all others.
I am surprised some clever “entrepreneurs” didnt come up with an NFT or token to “trade” Linux.
All sign point to windows 11 going insane. Still, you can't leave them. They're a prime example of too big to fail. I'd love to see 700 win32 API implementations.
Phoronix has also posted a lot of these tests where Linux seemingly performs better than Windows.
I don't have the technical wherewithal to challenge their methodology but it just doesn't seem right that you would add overhead and still outperform Windows on a system barely used by 1% of gamers. It seems like Linux fanatics fantasizing.
I love what Valve have done, thanks to them I am never bored on Linux and never wish I had a windows PC anymore. But something is rotten in the state of denmark.
There's no emulation, just alternative implementation (kernel, drivers, userspace, including Windows APIs with Wine). I don't play and I haven't looked at the results but it does not surprise me that an alternative implementation can perform better.
Caveat for dxvk, as mentioned by iforgotpassword, there's indeed a translation layer there.
Not an expert on the topic.
I have not run any benchmark but I exclusive use Linux as my gaming platform. I don't play any multiplayer though and I think that's one aspect where Linux is behind. But for single-player stuff it's perfectly fine.
One thing though is that I have to filter out which games I buy by checking on ProtonDB their level of compatibility. But I can play major AAA games just fine.