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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

#511

Post by rounce »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #24
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

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

You’d think that but Xbox game pass games still won’t natively run on Linux.

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

#512

Post by Gareth321 »

harry8 wrote: post #329
KennyBlanken wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The status quo's days are numbered. Online chess shows how. An AI will play these games like a human but better. The AI can be totally separate from the windows box wearing anti-cheat ankle bracelets just as your brain a separate thing to the windows box when when you play. It can interact with the box via keyboard, mouse or controller. No windows kernel module is useful in detecting and deterring chess cheating no m…

Your argument appears to be nihilistic in nature: "don't bother fighting the cheating because it's inevitable." Forgive me, but I won't be giving up that easily. No anti-cheat is perfect, and we're not aiming for perfect. We're aiming for a reduction, and the harder we make cheating, the fewer cheaters there are. If cheating requires special hardware to mimic mouse and keyboard input, that significantly cuts down how many cheaters one will encounter in a given day. I have no doubt that the threat vector here widens and deepens as AI becomes more integrated into our operating systems. That does not mean we should give up or accept cheating as inevitable.

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

#513

Post by rowanG077 »

Gareth321 wrote: post #509
trashface wrote: post #109

Feels like there is some real momentum on linux gaming now. I mostly play older games but I've gotten most of them working acceptably in proton on my old system 76 laptop (oryp5, with a nvidia 2060; ~7 years old). The laptop actually has plenty of power for the games I play, but I underclock to keep the heat/fan speeds down (been doing the same on the win10 install on the same system), still getting acceptable framer…

I think Linux needs a few things before it will be ready for mass consumer adoption. 1. An equivalent of kernel level anti-cheats. Cheating really sucks. It ruins online games. Kernel level anti-cheats aren't perfect, but they're much better than user-space or server-side anti-cheats. Maybe in the future AI solves this, but inherence-based anti-cheats are likely going to be a cat-and-mouse game. Valve have stated the…

> 2. Immutability. Right now distributing games on Linux isn't distributing games "on Linux." It's distributing games to 12 different distros with a hundreds different configurations and a thousand customisations. This is impossible to support. When SteamOS gains traction, developers will be able to target exactly one distro with fixed configurations and limited customisations. Valve will set the standard for other distros.

Steam has already solved that problem. You target steam (not steamOS) and all other distros will do the work for you.

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

#515

Post by LazyGooze »

Gareth321 wrote: post #509
trashface wrote: post #109

Feels like there is some real momentum on linux gaming now. I mostly play older games but I've gotten most of them working acceptably in proton on my old system 76 laptop (oryp5, with a nvidia 2060; ~7 years old). The laptop actually has plenty of power for the games I play, but I underclock to keep the heat/fan speeds down (been doing the same on the win10 install on the same system), still getting acceptable framer…

I think Linux needs a few things before it will be ready for mass consumer adoption. 1. An equivalent of kernel level anti-cheats. Cheating really sucks. It ruins online games. Kernel level anti-cheats aren't perfect, but they're much better than user-space or server-side anti-cheats. Maybe in the future AI solves this, but inherence-based anti-cheats are likely going to be a cat-and-mouse game. Valve have stated the…

the minute linux solves kernel level anti-cheat is the minute it wins the OS war, tons of friends have only windows on their PCs because of valorant or other multiplayer online game that uses anticheat.

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

#516

Post by eigenspace »

helterskelter wrote: post #156
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…

If memory serves, Linux typically outperforms Windows with AMD and Intel graphics. Some of the gotchas are things like running games through Proton or anti-cheat/DRM stuff not getting the same attention that Windows does, but the raw performance is there. I wouldn't recommend using Nvidia on Linux though.

It typically will only outperform Windows *if* you are running lower-end hardware. The main thing here is that when running on Linux, your game is typically in less contention with the OS for getting access to CPU cores and RAM.

If you have a beefy CPU and plentiful RAM, then typically one should expect Linux to be slightly behind Windows performance (though there are exceptions), because then Windows' bloat becomes a non-issue, and the impact of the translation layers start to become more significant.

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

#517

Post by naikrovek »

caspper69 wrote: post #510
naikrovek wrote: post #300

Nothing like copying someone else’s shit when you want to avoid thinking of new things for an operating system. You could be more like Plan9, Linux. You could actually innovate and create new paradigms that make people look at MacOS and Windows and think that they are no longer in the same league. But you don’t want to do that. You want to play games faster. Fucking children run the world today. There are no adults k…

OS Development has halted in 1970 at this point. I know everybody loves Unix, but it has the same problem as Windows- namely that anything you run under your user context has access to your whole user context. And it will continue to be a scourge until/if we ever figure out how to make capabilities ergonomic. I've been racking my brain for 30 years to try and do it, but they just make certain things very painful.

I agree completely.

Look at Plan 9, if you haven't. I can open a window, add/remove things from its environment (via mounting and unmounting files into that window's namespace) seal that environment to prevent changes, then launch a program.

The program can only see what is available to it via the file system. If it has no /net folder then it can't talk to the network. At all. If it has a truncated /env then it can only see a subset of the environment variables available to me, the user.

EVERYTHING being a file is ... weird. Unix has that, but Plan 9 takes about as far as it can go, which is pretty far. But that makes permissions to things quite easy, because file permissions are easy.

The other thing that Plan 9 does is that everything is a file, including your environment, mounting and unmounting things from/to your environment is how you gain/deny access to yourself and to programs.

If this permissions model was common, ransomware would have never been possible. No virus could infect your system, only its own environment (with caveats).

If you already know all of this, I apologize. If you don't, then you owe it to yourself to have a look at Plan 9. It's very weird, but once you wrap your head around it, you start seeing why some people really rave about it.

There's a channel on YouTube called "adventuresin9"[0] which has TONS of content about Plan9.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/@adventuresin9

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

#518

Post by needle0 »

KolibriFly wrote: post #436
trashface wrote: post #109

Feels like there is some real momentum on linux gaming now. I mostly play older games but I've gotten most of them working acceptably in proton on my old system 76 laptop (oryp5, with a nvidia 2060; ~7 years old). The laptop actually has plenty of power for the games I play, but I underclock to keep the heat/fan speeds down (been doing the same on the win10 install on the same system), still getting acceptable framer…

This is exactly why Proton feels like the pragmatic path. Native ports are nice in theory, but PC games are rarely just one clean executable anymore

And exactly why Apple's push for Mac gaming (which still puts native ports as the ultimate goal and treats things like GPTK, despite having made it, only as "ways for developers to preview how the port would end up" and not intended for general consumer use) is never going to work, no matter how much cash they throw at it.

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

#519

Post by dosisking »

swiftcoder wrote: post #457
HerbManic wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last few years it has felt like that, Microsoft is more than happy to sell to everyone while also having Windows. I mean Windows is still a huge cash cow for them and is THE desktop OS but the actions they are taking with it sort of makes it feel like a second class citizen.

> and is THE desktop OS Part of the problem seems to be that desktop OS use as a whole is cratering as more and more folks who grew up in the smartphone era enter adulthood. Outside of tech circles, I meet a lot of folks who have a phone + tablet but no actual computer...

What's a computer?

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

#520

Post by retr0rocket »

ben-schaaf wrote: post #349
QuaternionsBhop wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't rely on server-side detection either, because some of the cheats are so advanced they go to great lengths to "behave" like a highly skilled human player would with their aiming Shouldn't that be the goal of anti cheat? That cheating is indistinguishable from expert gameplay? Seems to me like these companies are just trying to avoid implementing proper infallible server-authoritative gameplay by offloading…

All these games already have an authoritative server. These cheaters aren't breaking the rules of the game by being invincible, super speedy, etc. they're aim-botting and wall hacking. Those cheats can't be prevented with authoritative networking.

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