Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

xda-developers.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 694 posts

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

#461

Post by ChocolateGod »

Gigachad wrote: post #348
Mariajaved906 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, anti-cheat support is probably the biggest barrier right now. The Steam Deck already showed that many gamers do not really care about the OS as long as their favorite games work smoothly.

I can’t see it happening until valve adds some kind of trusted compute environment. I’m imagining online games could have a flag which enforces secure boot, boot chain attestation, and disables multi tasking features. So while you are playing the game it becomes a single task device, but after you quit it’s fully unlocked again to do whatever you want.

This is the main problem why anti cheats are currenty blocking SteamOS.

I don't think you'd need to block multi tasking though, but the kernel would need to prevent or tamper root access so it couldn't modify the game memory.

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

#463

Post by yetihehe »

emkoemko wrote: post #419
ben-schaaf wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

why can't we prevent wall hacking by not sending packets of enemy players position if the user can't see them on their screen

Sometimes user can partially see them, game client would need that position. Then user can make a mod that flashes silhouette that just appeared behind a wall for a moment.

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

#464

Post by prmoustache »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #313
neverkn0wsb357 wrote: post #295

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…

What is the problem with cheating or bots really?

I feel that the solution is just to have a decent ranking/level system so that users play with other people, cheaters, bots or regular users of the same level. When I was playing mario kart with my 5y old daughter, I didn't mind she had access to helps to not run out of the road as it allowed us to play together. I don't see how different it is between say, a super skilled player, and a lower skilled player with cheat/assists. If cheating/assists system becomes so efficient, cheaters will just end up playing together and non cheater will have got rid of them and play between non cheater of similar level. Prolem solved. No?

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

#465

Post by CTOSian »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #8

Used to be a staff member working on an x86 OS called CTOS. I realized if I implemented a couple of traps, we could run command-line DOS programs. So I did. And it worked. Dev tools, text processing, piped commands all worked. It helped that the DOS executable format was the same as the CTOS format - because we had traded Bill Gates our linker (which produces executables) for his BASIC compiler.

hello! hello! I was mainly admin and COBOL dev with them (I wish I kept the collection of the manuals and PRGs, alas when no space..), bitsavers have a quite collection (incl a virtualbox HDD) if you are interested!

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

#466

Post by doikor »

Mariajaved906 wrote: post #212
9x39 wrote: post #211

Finding a way to get the multiplayer studios to get Linux support for their competitive games like Valve does could crack a wedge in the market for mainstream users to get in, particularly in those who don't want to pay the Windows tax (not everyone is willing to experiment or go unlicensed). I can't prove it, but the Steam Deck has probably torn down a lot of barriers for mainstream use among the crowd that care abo…

Yeah, anti-cheat support is probably the biggest barrier right now. The Steam Deck already showed that many gamers do not really care about the OS as long as their favorite games work smoothly.

Valve doesn’t do kernel level anti cheat on Windows either. Those are the actual roadblocks.

Userland anti cheats can work (and do) on Linux if the developers want to. Most of the third party ones the developer buys/licenses already do.

But reality is that only the kernel level ones seem to work to some extent. Difference in the amount cheating between counter strike and valorant is just massive (both free to play games)

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

#467

Post by Perz1val »

Gigachad wrote: post #348
Mariajaved906 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, anti-cheat support is probably the biggest barrier right now. The Steam Deck already showed that many gamers do not really care about the OS as long as their favorite games work smoothly.

I can’t see it happening until valve adds some kind of trusted compute environment. I’m imagining online games could have a flag which enforces secure boot, boot chain attestation, and disables multi tasking features. So while you are playing the game it becomes a single task device, but after you quit it’s fully unlocked again to do whatever you want.

You can't block multitasking, the largest multiplayers have huge crowds who play with friends and talk on discord.

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

#468

Post by kokada »

cortesoft wrote: post #336
NamTaf wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your initial baseline was arbitrary. If the game had been 10% slower on Windows, would you have never enjoyed it? If not, how could switching with a 10% penalty be a deal-breaking downside? Just do it. Swap and let go of objectivity. Let your subjective experience guide you. For me, the subjective joy of not having to fuck around with Microsoft's bullshit was worth multiples of having to mess around with technical cr…

> spoiler: I nearly never have to do that because I play single player games, Dota and CS I think most of the people who really care about game performance aren't people playing games like you do. They are either playing AAA games where the graphics quality is paramount, or competitive games where performance is useful for being competitive.

But it is also rare cases where a a few percent points actually make a huge difference. Remember when reviewers are doing benchmarks they're generally using a standardised test suite with uncapped framerates. For most people they would be perfectly happy to hit a target framerate, or if they really want to play uncapped they would first reduce a few graphical setting to archive good performance (most of time with imperceptible changes in the graphics). It is rare when the performance of the game is so tight in a hardware that a few percent points actually matter.

To give a particular example, I started playing GTAV on Windows after building a new PC since I had no spare drives. After finally installing Linux I decided to try GTAV on Linux just to see how well it would run. And it runs amazingly well, and yes, it runs a few percent points slower than Windows, but the only tradeoff I did was slightly increase FSR4 and the game still looks amazing. I didn't really notice any graphics issues, especially not during actual gameplay (if I stayed at the same place and started to nitpick I could notice differences).

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

#469

Post by liamgm »

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…

Yes , Win32 / DirectX in common HAL for games now , just compile your game for windows/steam , you can run everywhere , minimize the headache of doing native game development , like breaking with X11 / wayland kde / wayland gnome / wayland mutter .

For the OSes runtime side you can depend on SteamOS / Apple's Game Porting Toolkit / Crossover / Proton / DWProton / Wine / and Android's Winlator/Gamehub/Gamenative .

For DirectX compatibility you can depends on Apple's D3DMetal , DXMT , VKD3D , DXVK and WineD3D .

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

#470

Post by rightbyte »

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

EA's horrible launcher comes to mind.
Post reply on HN