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

xda-developers.com

371–380 of 694 posts

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

#371

Given the current momentum, it feels like (to me) the adage of “Windows is for Games” is going by the wayside. If you look at Steam, and OSs like Bazzite it’s clear the consumer-side is finally shoring up. But that aside, from an economic incentive, game providers (for example Amazon Luna), don’t want to be paying the licenses for running Windows machines for Video Game Streaming on Demand. In fact, at my time there…

Nah.

Linux is still too bloody awful for power users, never mind the median gamer.

Most Linux usage is SteamOS which only barely counts.

It’s a great hedge that keeps Windows almost honest. But we’re a long long long long long long long long ways from the median gaming PC being Linux.

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

#372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd guess that the difference only matters if you have the latest most expensive gear pushed to the limit. I have a 2019 RX5700 XT and one of the DDR4 ryzen 5 cpus and all of my games run flawlessly on Linux with great performance. I've long since decided that buying the latest top end hardware is just spending a lot of money to be upset by buggy drivers or not being able to get 5000 fps in a benchmark but has no rea…

This. I understand that getting your desktop fps to ridiculous heights is a hobby in and of itself, an obsession that I don't share at all, and good luck to them that do. But I'm colourblind and have the reaction speed of a slug. Anything over 25fps is wasted on me.

After building a few PCs over the years something I've noticed is every time I've bought the highest end new part I feel bad about the money spent, and then I feel bad every time there's a delayed frame or feature missing, and then I feel bad when the next model comes out.

Every time I get something mid range or second hand I feel good about what a good deal I got, and how I'm getting 98% of the features for 40% of the price, and how realistically as soon as you stop pixel peeping screenshots, you won't even notice your settings are on High instead of Ultra. You just take in the story, the sound design, and the actual game.

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

#373

Given the current momentum, it feels like (to me) the adage of “Windows is for Games” is going by the wayside. If you look at Steam, and OSs like Bazzite it’s clear the consumer-side is finally shoring up. But that aside, from an economic incentive, game providers (for example Amazon Luna), don’t want to be paying the licenses for running Windows machines for Video Game Streaming on Demand. In fact, at my time there…

Nah. Linux is still too bloody awful for power users, never mind the median gamer. Most Linux usage is SteamOS which only barely counts. It’s a great hedge that keeps Windows almost honest. But we’re a long long long long long long long long ways from the median gaming PC being Linux.

Linux is for power users. Windows 10 with Powertoys and WSL for stuff like yt-dlp is a fine stopgap, but you can get the same workflow on Linux with a leaner system.

I never installed Windows 11 on any of my PCs, there's no place for it in my work or gaming regimen. If Linux is supposed to keep Windows honest, then some dev at Microsoft must have a Pinocchio nose.

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

#374
post #311

What excites me is that the kernel gets better not only for windows games but can also get benefits that can be more general purpose, such as what the article writes about: program able to wait for multiple events at once. It will be interesting to see how native Linux games differ in what fancy under the hood kernel or syscall features they use.

There will never be native games that use unique Linux kernel features because no studio will waste their time spending those development resources on an OS with even 10% market share, which Linux is nowhere near. The exception would be if, say, Playstation switches to Linux from BSD, which they will never do, as GNU licensing in essentially fatally incompatible with copy protection and anti-cheat functions.

[deleted]

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

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No you can't. Even at the raised prices. And if your argument includes used prices don't forget you can buy used consoles too.

Sure you can. Remember, we're not buying a normal gaming PC, just one that's better than a console.

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

#376
post #263

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…

Just produce your own numbers. Install whatever flavour of Linux you like (all distrohopping leads to Debian) on a separate partition and benchmark it yourself. It isn't complicated. In the case of my machine, I haven't observed any difference. And by observe I mean with my eyes, I haven't bothered with actual benchmarks because it seems to work about the same, which is good enough for me. I haven't booted my Windows…

>It isn't complicated

Getting reliable, consistent, meaningful performance numbers is in fact, extremely complicated:

* You need a consistent way to reproduce the exact same outputs - accounting for things like the game's RNG. You can't just walk around and snap the FPS counter in the corner of the screen and call that good.

* For Windows (and occasionally Linux) you need to ensure nothing is running that will taint the results (updates, AV scans, etc)

* Sometimes individual driver versions work very poorly with a specific game. Just because it ran badly doesn't mean you got good data, it may just be a bug in that specific driver version

* You can't just run the benchmark once. You need to run it many times, establishing run-to-run variance

* There are often a good dozen-to-hundred individual OS settings which can impact performance, and in some cases run-to-run variance. You need to know which to tweak, and which to leave alone.

* Sometimes the result of individual in-game settings differs between driver versions. Just because setting X had a big impact once, doesn't mean it always did

* FPS is not a great metric - it's an average. You need to check and see if there are huge frametime spikes. If there are, the game will have a 'good' FPS but feel horrible to play due to stuttering.

* You need to decide if you're benchmarking more GPU-heavy or CPU-heavy - those types of benchmarks require drastically different settings. If you run a CPU-like benchmark you may see a wildly different gap in framerate compared to a GPU-heavy one for the same game.

Benchmarking properly means accounting for thousands of tiny variables. Only a handful actually do it right.

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

#377

Given the current momentum, it feels like (to me) the adage of “Windows is for Games” is going by the wayside. If you look at Steam, and OSs like Bazzite it’s clear the consumer-side is finally shoring up. But that aside, from an economic incentive, game providers (for example Amazon Luna), don’t want to be paying the licenses for running Windows machines for Video Game Streaming on Demand. In fact, at my time there…

Nah. Linux is still too bloody awful for power users, never mind the median gamer. Most Linux usage is SteamOS which only barely counts. It’s a great hedge that keeps Windows almost honest. But we’re a long long long long long long long long ways from the median gaming PC being Linux.

I'd bet even more Linux usage is ChromeOS which even more barely counts, and certainly both are dwarfed by Android which simply doesn't count.

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

#378
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

wow that's interesting. Where is the gaming share moving, if not pc and consoles? I guess hand-held devices (do those not count as consoles?) and phones?

Mobile is the 900 pound gorilla in the games space through sheer volume, but it really depends on what you're measuring. Revenue per user is console > PC > mobile, but total gaming revenue is more like mobile > console > PC.

But here we're putting Candy Crush in the same category as GTA V, so I'm not sure we're really comparing apples to apples.

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

#379

Given the current momentum, it feels like (to me) the adage of “Windows is for Games” is going by the wayside. If you look at Steam, and OSs like Bazzite it’s clear the consumer-side is finally shoring up. But that aside, from an economic incentive, game providers (for example Amazon Luna), don’t want to be paying the licenses for running Windows machines for Video Game Streaming on Demand. In fact, at my time there…

Online multiplayer games keep trying to allow linux users in and keep having to lock them out because there's an instant influx of cheaters. The Nintendo Switch (which runs Linux) was a favorite of cheaters after jailbreaks came out. When anyone can compile and run their own kernel with god knows what for modifications, that makes it substantially easier for cheaters and substantially harder for anti-cheat. I don't s…

Nintendo Switch does not run Linux, it runs a proprietary OS called Horizon based on the Nintendo 3DS firmware. Not sure but it might or might not have some BSD code in the network stack or something.

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

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often does a video game really need a lock that can be shared between processes, That seems hugely useful for interprocess communication and I can immediately think of reasons to use IPC in a game. Having a separate voice process for one.

But that goes back to "how often". Not how many games use it, but how many times per second they use it. You might touch your voice process lock once per frame? That's negligible in terms of CPU time. Any half-reasonable overhead makes no difference in that lock, but might have a big impact in a more common lock.

It absolutely can make a difference because if you have locks that are supposed to sync or wake up other processes you care about latency not cpu usage.
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