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Linux gaming is faster because Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features

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Re: Linux gaming is faster because Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features

#221

Post by jordand »

dpoloncsak wrote: post #120
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not gonna get promoted slowing down Linux gaming at MS today, the thing they want is Netflix of gaming where the platform doesn’t matter but everyone’s paying them $20 a month

I think this, as a business model, really relies on them also selling the licenses to the OS that you're using as well. Otherwise, gamepass would be on MacOS already, no?

Last I read, it really doesn't now. Less than 10% of Microsoft revenue is Windows with growth stagnant. It's all about subscriptions and recurring revenue now driving growth. They might as well bundle a Windows licence with all Game Pass subscriptions.

Re: Linux gaming is faster because Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features

#222

Post by jabroni_salad »

anonymousab wrote: post #161
jmalicki wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the revolution is just getting within 5-30% of Windows! If you need every last bit of FPS maybe it is lagging, but 5-30% slower is roughly on par at a large sense, it's less than the difference of e.g. one NVidia GPU generation to the next, so it makes it playable.

One problem is that having better FPS stops mattering if the frame pacing and timing is bad, making the game feel like a juddery mess. Or if there is significant input delay differences. That's why all the data matters for all of these dimensions; game performance is much more than FPS per watt over time. When people see "linux gaming is great now, look at the fps" it comes across as potentially disengenuous because…

To tack onto this a big annoyance for me right now is the lack of knowledge in the community about frame pacing and how to configure the computer.

The user will say 'it lags' but does not mention if they have tearing enabled in wayland, what are their 1% lows, have they set an fps cap, what vsync settings have they chosen in-game. On top of that there is an ecosystem failure as not every game supports arbitrary caps and you have to configure some mangohud thing.

Linux is only a 'just click play' experience if you have no standards because I have never had this stuff be correct out of the box on a fresh install.

Re: Linux gaming is faster because Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features

#223

Post by WhiteDawn »

tetris11 wrote: post #12

I wonder what spanners Windows can throw into the works to slow them down at this point, or if they're so checked out of the Desktop market as they suckle down hard on that Azure teat, that they're more than happy to let Linux eat their lunch

Really their best card is new and additional APIs, building incentives to develop against it.

WinRT (not to be confused with Windows RT, the early ARM version of windows), UWP, GDK, xgameruntime. All of these are relatively new and require virtualization and other security features.

Put pressure on devs by gateing xbox and gamepass behind this runtime and now you have a lever to make the situation more difficult for linux.

Kinda has the opposite effect on me however, as the only reason I'm not subscribed to gamepass right now is the games wont work on my steamdeck. But if MS can get enough killer apps as exclusive to that platform then that will certainly add some pressure.

Re: Linux gaming is faster because Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features

#225

Post by xboxnolifes »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #140

Show me the numbers. Show me an identical gaming PC running Windows 11 and then Linux, and show not just FPS - but things like frametime pacing, latency, etc. This NTSync stuff is very impressive, but I haven't seen a lot of end-to-end numbers versus Windows. The last comparisons I saw showed pretty much every distribution on the order of 5-30% behind Windows, varying on the game. And Nvidia GPU support was still not…

Unless you're playing CS competitively and really need 720fps for your 360Hz monitor, is 5-30% fewer frames (all else equal) really a deal breaker? Is this hardware thats barly good enough or something else?

I ask because I feel like I can frequently play games at, say, 150fps, and losing 30% would mean almost nothing to me to switch to Linux. I worry more about general capatibility and anticheat.

Re: Linux gaming is faster because Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features

#226

Post by sunaookami »

sedatk wrote: post #194
advisedwang wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be fun to call it Windows Subsystem for Linux!

which would be the right use of the term. WSL was originally called LXSS = linux subsystem. As I understand, lawyers stepped in soon after.

They already did the same thing 25 years ago with "Windows Services for UNIX": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX

Re: Linux gaming is faster because Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features

#228

Post by pjsmith404 »

BoxedEmpathy wrote: post #167
worble wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to swap, then just do it right now? As far as gaming is concerned Linux just works, and reaches speeds that are more than good enough to do so, even if they're not exactly the same as windows - the steam deck is pretty much proof of this. If Linux was measurably 5% slower on all benchmarks, would that mean you wouldn't do it even if you wanted to? Is every single nanosecond of performance really that impo…

I gave it a try. Got a steam deck, tries steam os on my desktop. I kept running into issues that took me time to solve. I understand that the only reason it took me time to solve these issues is because I'm new to it and that people who have been gaming on Linux for years already know how to solve them all. But what would happen was is I would sit down to play a game spend maybe an hour or two fixing issues and then…

I can recommend CachyOS as a linux distribution for gaming that has worked for me across multiple computers without any fiddling. It's the one that's led to me ditching windows entirely after a few failed attempts over the years.

Although, everyone probably says that about whatever distro they happen to use lol.

Re: Linux gaming is faster because Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features

#230

Post by laughing_man »

weezing wrote: post #26
jdubs1984 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft/Xbox is in the process of losing the living room permanently in the next gen if you ask me. I don't know what they could do spanner tossing wise to really screw w/ Linux gaming at this point that wouldn't just drive more frustrated customers off their platform.

Their gaming marketshare is minuscule both on PCs and consoles already. It's a downward spiral for years already.

That's not true. It's actually spiraling the other direction now. Consoles just don't have the value proposition they used to have. You can buy a general purpose PC for the same price as a console that has better performance and also allows you to do your taxes.
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