Linux Gaming: Are We There Yet?
by Christopher Rice on December 28, 2009 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Closing Thoughts (for now)
What's the answer to the initial question, "Is Linux ready for gaming?" As you probably expected, the answer is both yes and no. If you're looking for an out-of-box solution for running older games, Linux is a decent alternative to Windows. The longer a game has been around, and the more popular the game, the better the odds that someone has already taken the time to get it working properly under one of the Wine projects. Naturally, that means the reverse is true: newer titles are less likely to work without some extra effort (and sometimes not even then). Even if you do manage to get a new release running, you should expect to see anything from graphical glitches to completely unplayable gameplay.
By now you're probably asking which of the three projects we recommend. Personally, I would use Crossover Games and Wine. We selected Wine because it's not only free, but if you're savvy enough you have a better chance of getting a new release game working right away. Since the Wine project is open source and extremely active in development, you can find patches around the net created on the fly for supporting specific games long before Crossover/Cedega come out with anything. We can then supplement Wine with Crossover Games when all else fails with installing or playing specific games.
Crossover Games provides a decent GUI and the ability to run additional games that Wine cannot. We have also found in many cases that Crossover Games will provide higher frame rates and a better gaming experience. Between both Wine and Crossover Games you should be able to get the majority of your games working with a reasonable amount of effort. If you're looking for the most functionality out of your Linux desktop and don't mind spending the extra money, then I would suggest getting all three. Having all three will give you the best possible chance to ensure all of your games are covered.
In an ideal world, Linux would be supported natively by games. Unfortunately, few developers are willing to take on that task. Eve Online used to have a native Linux client, but development was shut down this past year (in part because performance under Wine was more than acceptable). There was talk of a native UT3 client but it has yet to materialize. Some smaller projects (i.e. Penny Arcade Adventures and other indie titles) have been released with Linux clients, but for the most part major publishers are ignoring the platform.
One of the real problems we encountered is something we're going to address in a separate article. Our test system, if you notice, uses an NVIDIA GPU. We tried to be hardware agnostic, but the problems experienced with our test ATI HD 5770 and Wine eventually got the best of us. We could get the card to work with native Linux games, but Wine support at present was an absolute disaster. Part of the problem undoubtedly stems from the newness of the hardware, but we didn't have any alternative ATI GPUs available right now. The future of ATI GPUs on Linux isn't nearly so bleak, however, with some exciting developments coming from the open source driver. As stated, we'll be looking into that in a future article.
We have some other Linux articles in the pipeline as well. In retrospect, we should have started with something a little less daunting, as gaming and Linux was plagued by more problems than other aspects of the OS. In the meantime, we welcome your comments and thoughts on other Linux areas you'd like to see us investigate.
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Amiga500 - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
Sorry, disagree very strongly.Recently shelled out for Win 7 professional... and rebuilt the machine. At the same time, installed ubuntu 9.10.
Ubuntu 9.10 has a better interface, better desktop features, better desktop "fancy graphics" and better stability (2 crashes with 7 so far, albeit neither critical crashes).
Ubunutu is a better operating system. No arguments on that.
Of course the only problem is program compatibility. Is that linux's fault? With the constant changing of kernels... possibly.
However, I hope 9.10 is getting so close to good enough, that after 10.04, there will be less need to upgrade the kernel so quick - resulting in greater incentive for 3rd party programmers to support the system.
Griswold - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 - link
"Ubunutu is a better operating system. No arguments on that."No its not because what you describe are not the only factors that make or break an OS. An OS is only as good as the work and tasks you can get done with it - and that includes but is not limited to your mostly subjective claims of superiority in usability and stability. For others, its the other way around at the bottom line - for most others, that is.
I regularly check out various linux distros and so far, even setting them up to do what I need to do (which is more than just browse the web and write emails) is more of a hassle than most people are willing to go through. So, in the end, its NOT the better operating system. At best, it may be the better technology under the hood...
akse - Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - link
I started working at my current job about a year ago, using Ubuntu 8.04 and now I'm running with 9.10. I've had average experience with Linux OSs before but now I started to use them daily.I always felt Linux was the OS for me and yes it really felt like that for long. But recently there have been some things that I have started to hate about it.
Or probably it is just that Win7 and Vista have improved so much from XP times that I really love to use Windows now. So far everything is working so well on my home computer with new Win7 installed after using 2 years of Vista which also worked great.
Of course there are many things at Linux OSs that you can't beat with Windows, but then again there are many things in Windows that doesn't work quite right in Linux or you have to make 30 mins of work to make them work, which is fine but sometimes frustrating.
Anyways 9.10 Ubuntu interface kinda pleases me but they should try to figure something new for the Top and Bottom Panels, I like the new status area.
My work laptop has Ati Graphics card in it which makes the Linux experience even worse :)
Well about gaming: In home I have win7 and other computer next to it runs Ubuntu 9.10 (too). I have wine there which I use for 1 thing only. Whenever I get into playing Diablo 2 again I use it to have a second character online at the same time :) It works just fine, though I have to play it in windowed mode to work, which is the case in win7 and vista also.
sammyF - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
I agree on the Flash support, linux definitely needs more Adobe-Love on this one :/ The rest of your post is pretty much humbug.Win7 is 30$ for students, maybe, but by far not everyone is a student. It's also the price over and over again if you own more than one computer. It would also be quite something if Office2007 was actually included in the price you're naming. The home and student version of Office2007 is listed as $79.99 (down from $149) at amazon.com (probably can get it a bit cheaper elsewhere, but you see the point)
I will spare you the horror of finding free software that does all the stuff you can get for free through an easy to understand click&install interface in linux ... and I won't talk about grabbing the latest drivers for your hardware, compared to a very high chance that everything runs out of the box in linux.
"The interface is cleaner and much more stable"? which one? Gnome?KDE?XFCE?AWESOME? some other one? Besides, most DE or WMs are easily customizable (without even touching the terminal)
Okay ... and then "There is far FAR more compatibility" ... This Anandtech article should be proof enough that you got it backwards. let's see :
Linux -> 100% compatible with linux software, partially compatible with windows software as old as win3.1 through one of the packages mentioned here.
Windows7 -> 100% compatible with win7 software, probably vista soft too ... partially compatible with winXP software if you happen to have a version with the XP compatibility thing. 0% compatible with linux software.
Winner through KO : Linux
ManjyomeThunder - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
Uhh, Linux doesn't have ANY support for Windows applications. Linux is the kernel. Now, if you want to say that using 3rd party applications on certain Linux distributions can provide some level of Windows API support, then you would be correct.In the same way that saying that Cygwin provides Windows users with a UNIX-like environment and an implementation of the POSIX API.
Both have some support for the other's API and applications through third party applications, but they're both fundamentally different. However, Windows has a larger amount of applications, and thus one could say that it does have better "compatibility".
sammyF - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
yeah, you're right, sorry. I got carried away I guess. Additionally, whether in windows or linux, there is always the possibility to run the other OS in a vbox.I'm just tired of reading "it has more/better compatibility" and similar ~sentences~, as they just don't make any logical sense : Compatibility with *what* or *whom*? And my foot is also longer.
LuxZg - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 - link
Out of all this reading, only thing I can say is - why bother at all? Either dual-boot Windows and your favorite Linux distro, or run one OS and keep other in VM (preferably Windows and Linux in VM because of 3D support in VMs).As for the pricing, author here recommends buying two products, plus a third one for a price of over 100$ - PER YEAR!. For 100$ you can get OEM licence of Win 7 Home Premium, giving you great compatibility through dual-booting, and you can use it till next OS gets here. That's minimum 3 years, meaning you've just saved yourself 200$. OK, you can use just Linux+Wine and go the completely free route - but is it really worth it? I mean let's face it. For casual gaming Linux is fine, and so is it's brethren OSX. But if you're avid gamer, you spend so much money on games and hardware (CPUs and graphic cards) that it's simply hard to give an excuse for NOT using Windows. Only negative is having to support two OS-es on every computer that you game on, but than again, if you have one computer it's not that much more work, and if you have many, than it's better to dedicate one for just gaming (just Windows) and be done with it.
It's hard to convince anyone that Linux is good for gaming when all you get running without much trouble are games few years old... That's - casual gaming. Very casual :)
Cheers!
sprockkets - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
Both the opengl people and Microsoft tried to merge all the 3d api's together, but both failed to do anything about it. Both are to blame.You know that whole thing about Apple only allowing Cocoa on the iphone to develop with to protect the platform? Same with DirectX stuff.
At least OSX has some commerical support going for it with Blizzard.
medi01 - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
Why would Microsoft cooperate to make Windows less attractive? PC games support is the only nearly exclusive "windows" feature.Penti - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
The 3D API aren't to blame nobody designs games to run directly on DX or OGL, they write code and do graphics/content for a game engine and plenty run on both DX, OGL and variants of both of them two, on Windows, Xbox 360, Wii, PS3 and several engines also on OS X and Linux. You don't create game content for an specific OS.Running virtual Windows for 3D Windows apps is really the way to go anyhow, now days you can get a dedicated graphics card for accelerated graphics if your computer has Intel VT-d support anyhow. Sure you need a separate graphics card and a retail (or just as you do on your wincomputer pirated) copy of Windows. But it's doable. If you need Windows then run Windows. Or just have a separate gaming computer. (Which probably will be cheaper anyway.)