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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

#151

Post by bee_rider »

hx8 wrote: post #136
traderj0e wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope this is right, because "you have to use AMD GPU" is not what people want to hear when building a PC.

I know plenty of people that use Nvidia and Linux, and it's something I've done in the past. You just suck it up and install the closed-source black box drivers and get on with your life.

Although, eventually NVIDIA will drop support for your card and you’ll have an annoying situation. This happened for Pascal on Arch Linux a while ago. The 10X0 series are pretty old at this point, but then Linux shines on older systems too.

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

#152

Post by foo12bar »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #128
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'm looking to finally get off Windows for good. My experience with the SteamDeck started me, later I upgraded to a ROG Ally X for beefier performance but found Windows insufferable on a handheld, and installed SteamOS. I was blown away by the performance gains. A few months later I installed Kubuntu for the first time since 2013 or so, Steam shortly after, and while the desktop linux route is definitely more taxing…

What do you plan to do about firmware updates?

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

#153

Post by willis936 »

whimblepop wrote: post #91
keithnz wrote: post #89

my son, and his friends all seem to have switched to https://garudalinux.org/ recently for gaming. Seems to be working out well for them.

That's exactly the kind of flashy, gaming-forward distro I was drawn to as a teenager. Good times :)

I sometimes wonder if my modern machines could run Sabayon's DE with high performance.

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

#154

Post by harrisi »

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…

Depending on storage constraints, you could always dualboot. That would give you the exact same hardware to compare, and it's not a full commitment.

Anecdotally, I find that getting Linux on somewhat older or underpowered hardware is always a massive positive. Better performance as well as battery life. I'm not as familiar with modern hardware's relationship to either OS ("OS vs. some flavor of OS based on a similar or same kernel" - I know) with modern hardware. Worth a shot though!

Every supercomputer seems to do quite well with Linux kernels. Probably good enough for Crysis :)

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

#155

Post by jerf »

caycep wrote: post #25

If you purpose build a Linux gaming PC, would you lean more towards AMD GPUs over Nvidia?

I run Steam on Ubuntu with a "GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER" (according to lspci), and while it generally works it has some weird issues with gaming in Linux. Some games end up with what feels like ~200ms latency for no apparent reason, and frame rates on some things like Just Cause 3, which I ought to be horribly overspec'd for (a 2015 game) run comfortably, but just barely, which really isn't right. And Persona 5 gets about 2 frames per second in Linux. My Steam Deck pushes it at 60 at 720p with no problem, and I think was pushing out 1080 at one point quite playably, and I think I benchmarked my PC at ~6 times more powerful than my Steam Deck.

Whereas the AMD-based Steam Deck always does what it should do.

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

#156

Post by helterskelter »

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.

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

#158

Post by worble »

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 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 important to you? I switched 10 years ago when things were a lot rougher than this, and in the end everything still worked well enough that I never cared to swap back.

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

#159

Post by cobar »

gamesbrainiac wrote: post #157

Anyone move completely over to Linux for gaming? What is the experience like and what are you using?

Overall experience is very good with AMD graphics. Most games run on Steam out of the box. There are also emulators for all the systems I've wanted to use. I use Faugus Launcher for other stores like BattleNet and Epic Games (Magic Arena).

For the most part the games just work, it's more system issues that I've run into where Linux suspend mode and the audio stack can be a little flaky and required Claude to diagnose and sort out.

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

#160

Post by stavros »

nottorp wrote: post #23
Pay08 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Windows muscle memory work? The vast majority of shortcuts are completely different for the casual user, and for the power user, there's no regedit or control panel and other such things.

> there's no regedit or control panel and other such things That's not a bug, it's a feature.

We weren't talking about whether the registry was better or worse, we were talking about how similar the two OSes were.
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