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I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

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Re: I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

#91

Post by II2II »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #61
II2II wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, one couldn't have even said that much about Linux a decade ago even though Linux ran on the same hardware as Windows. Now we can say that we can do Windows gaming on Linux and it is amazing. It is possible to both play a huge swath of Steam games under Linux, with comparable performance to Windows, and to go the "a lot of effort" route with non-Steam games under Wine (again, with comparable performance to…

It's funny how what people consider "a lot of effort" varies through the years. As a kid I was cracking open my apple-clone 5.25" drive and trying to manually adjust the drive speed with a screwdriver, with absolutely no documentation, internet or other support to help out - just to get a game work!

You're right. Even though I was thinking along the line hardware and software compatibility, repairs certainly fit the bill. It's not like today, where a flaky drive is simply replaced. A floppy drive of that era costed as much as an entire computer today. And let's not forget the MS-DOS era, when people were pretty much expected to tweak their system's memory configuration to play games (and different games required different profiles).

Out of curiosity, does kid-you remember whether the drive came poorly tuned from the factory or if it drifted after the fact. (Or perhaps it was the disk at fault, having been written on a poorly tuned drive.)

Re: I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

#92

Post by ddtaylor »

toxican wrote: post #72
davidhariri wrote: post #36

I tried to follow many different tutorials on getting Diablo IV set up using CrossOver but never could get past Blizzards automatic patches that break it.

Did Blizzard ever give a reason for not supporting Macs? They used to be really good about supporting them (I played a lot of WoW on one for years with zero issue). Guessing the extra effort required to support ARM didn't make financial sense?

I'm sure there are plenty of up and coming development studios that are more than happy to create a product that can run on multiple different machines.

Blizzard got derailed by Activision and probably cannot be saved now after at least a decade of solid management into the ground.

Re: I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

#93

Post by ddtaylor »

mvdtnz wrote: post #40

Wait till you try windows gaming on windows.

It's actually easier to use Steam on Linux and just keep trucking along than to play roulette with Microsoft and Windows 11 artificial upgrade "support".

Meanwhile, some random nerds put them to shame by providing LTS by just having a mailing list.

Re: I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

#94

Post by ddtaylor »

santoshalper wrote: post #46

If gaming is important to you, build a good desktop gaming PC. If you enjoy games casually and don't want the money/hassle of a gaming desktop, get a Playstation, Switch, Steam Deck, or buy a lower-end gaming laptop. If you enjoy tinkering, setting up Linux or a Mac for gaming can be a fun project, but it's not a good use of your time if your goal is to play games well. You'll jump through a lot of hoops and maybe ge…

Linux or Deck setup will actually work out of the box. We have multiple Steam PCs in the house that can all do Steam Link with our tablets and stuff in the house.

The amount of time we specifically use the spare Windows PC as the Steam Link source is pretty low. Most of the time we connect to our media server, which is the Linux machine.

The idea that it's "only 70%" to me is pretty mind boggling. I think there is a lot of the experience that works correctly because of properly supported hardware (AMD)

Re: I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

#96

Post by ddtaylor »

mmmpetrichor wrote: post #87
mmmpetrichor wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

counterpoint as a dev who works with k8s and wants a linux env:. I was told to get a mac when I joined and I wish I hadnt. WSL and vscode remote ssh make windows better for linux dev. the alternative is getting a parallels license. I mainly use vscode to remote to linux machines now and ignore my mac and wish it didn't exist. also as a longtime windows user i think the windows desktop is just better. window managemen…

bottom line: I dont know what dev workflows are better on mac, but if its linux, windows is now more linuxy than mac. imo.

I don't use Windows, but WSL is legit IMO

Re: I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

#97

Post by ddtaylor »

int_19h wrote: post #88
bee_rider wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam, on Linux and Steam on Windows are very similar experiences. Is it much worse on the Mac?

It's a similar experience, but the library of natively supported games is fairly small, and ports are often poor quality - especially older games that haven't been updated in a long time and are broken in various ways on newer Mac versions. The most common problem I run into is the lack of high-DPI support, which means that you can't run the game at full 4K even if your display supports it.

This is a reason many Linux gamers just use the proton version of the games in Steam. It's more consistent.

Re: I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

#98

Post by out_of_protocol »

p_ing wrote: post #44
ddtaylor wrote: post #35

Does Mac not do Steam gaming the same way? In Linux I just press install and it works with my AMD card. I haven't pressed any other buttons. Fedora 42

Linux works because it runs the most stable Linux ABI is available— Win32. Mac users are generally running on aarch64 rather than x86, so you have the binary compatibility barrier. Plus no 32bit support.

> Linux ABI is available— Win32

Yep!

> Mac users are generally running on aarch64 rather than x86, so you have the binary compatibility barrier. Plus no 32bit support.

That's not really the reason. Rosetta exists and quote good. Macos binaries don't work because Apple breaks its own compatibility (including 32 bit thing), and windows binaries don't work because Apple don't support vulkan nor opengl, and, maybe even more important, no one has incentive to fix it

Re: I tried Windows gaming on a Mac

#99

Post by didibus »

mmmpetrichor wrote: post #87
mmmpetrichor wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

counterpoint as a dev who works with k8s and wants a linux env:. I was told to get a mac when I joined and I wish I hadnt. WSL and vscode remote ssh make windows better for linux dev. the alternative is getting a parallels license. I mainly use vscode to remote to linux machines now and ignore my mac and wish it didn't exist. also as a longtime windows user i think the windows desktop is just better. window managemen…

bottom line: I dont know what dev workflows are better on mac, but if its linux, windows is now more linuxy than mac. imo.

Disagree, after doing WSL2 development for 2 years, and switching to mac, it's way nicer now. Mostly because, Windows is still crap, and windows laptops are the worse. WSL2 is also pretty bad with GUIs, even with everything I tried.
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