# Full time Linux user and gamer?



## Easy Rhino (Sep 20, 2018)

I am curious to know if anyone considers themselves more than just a light gamer and also a full time linux user. I can't seem to make the full time jump because too many games that I *might* play rely on .NET. I know Steam is pushing their new wrapper but still...


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## Kursah (Sep 21, 2018)

Negative, for the same reasons and I work in a Microsoft dominant area, so staying in it for me is important for experience and keeping sharp on new issues. Though I spend plenty of time in Bionic Beaver, playing the occasional Planetary Annihilation, Factorio, and a couple other select Linux friendly titles. I haven't gotten onboard with the Steam wrapper stuff yet, but do want to give it a try at some point. 

But for me, Linux is a mainstay as a secondary boot OS. When it comes time to game, I'm going into Windows without a second thought. There are a few games I really like to play that don't play on Linux yet or maybe they do in the wrapper. Even then, if performance drops too low, it isn't worth it. But I will say that gaming performance seems better with each new iteration of Linux, and I'm really really really hopeful that Steam can keep the drive going to make Linux a more viable gaming platform.


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## Liquid Cool (Sep 21, 2018)

At this point in my life...I'd have to relegate myself to the full-time linux user, but "light gamer" category.....  So...please take my comments with that in mind.

As Kursah has said...and I agree with...gaming performance is steadily getting better, but not quite there yet for "serious" gamers.  Proton is a step in that direction.  Albeit a muddled one.

Speaking of .NET Frameworks.  If I recall correctly, I've loaded games that utilized the .NET framework using Wine.  I'll freely admit...I'm no expert on Proton(or Wine for that matter), but I'd imagine the Proton stack has to have some compatibility with the .NET framework?

You can always monitor the Steam Play Compatibility Report site and see how a particular game is stack-ing up.

Steam Play Compatibility Report

For my "casual" self...I appreciate titles from the 1995-2012 era more than what I'm seeing out there today(with very few exceptions)...so, for me it's a heyday.  If I can't find a wrapper, I can usually find a workaround.  For casual/indie gamers...it's not too bad of a platform.  I'm more than happy to use linux as a daily driver.  In fact....I love it.....

Best Regards,

Liquid Cool

EDIT:  I really should have mentioned...on the Steam Play Compatibility Report site you can click on "Raw Reports" on the left side and then search for a particular title from there.  This should give you a pretty good idea what problems other people are running into...and possible workarounds.


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## DeathtoGnomes (Sep 21, 2018)

A few years ago, close to a decade, between MMO breaks, I started to pick up on Linux, but since then, the Gaming Gods texted me and forbade me to convert.


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 21, 2018)

Easy Rhino said:


> I know Steam is pushing their new wrapper but still...





Kursah said:


> I haven't gotten onboard with the Steam wrapper stuff yet, but do want to give it a try at some point.





Kursah said:


> Steam can keep the drive going to make Linux a more viable gaming platform.


I've actually been trying it out on Mint. It's impressive and shows that Steam is committed to the platform. I'm really starting to like Steam for this. GOG is also committed in this area. The efforts of both are taking Linux to a level of gaming that it's never seen before. The next few years are going to be interesting as progress is made.


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## Xpect (Sep 21, 2018)

Hi, fulltime Linux User and Gamer Here. From my over 300 Steam titles roughly a third run natively in Linux. Even (for me) pearls like Brütal Legend or Psychonauts. Or Bastion. I'd just wish there were more bigger studios like Double Fine to natively Code for Linux. Oh yeah, Witcher also rund natively. Nowadays I find myself Not buying titles without Linux support anymore.


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## Aquinus (Sep 21, 2018)

So, if you haven't used Proton yet, I suggest that you try it. One of the "supported" titles is DOOM and that actually runs as good as if it had native support. If a game requires .NET, it will install it. That's not really an issue. You can tell it to run unsupported games through Proton but, not everything works. When stuff works though, it tends to work pretty well.


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## kastriot (Sep 21, 2018)

Linux was not made for gaming so..


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## dorsetknob (Sep 21, 2018)

kastriot said:


> Linux was not made for gaming so..



Whats your Point ?
windows was also not made for Gaming Neither was DOS or UNIX  But Developers Realised that they Could Develop Games for these Systems


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## StrayKAT (Sep 21, 2018)

dorsetknob said:


> Whats your Point ?
> windows was also not made for Gaming Neither was DOS or UNIX  But Developers Realised that they Could Develop Games for these Systems



I would say Windows 95/NT was in fact a step towards ease of use for gaming. They introduced DirectX/and other behind the scenes configuration/plug-n-play/etc.. And with the Xbox and Win 10 finally being developing in parallel with the same codebase, it's a lot more gaming friendly than ever (they probably should have an optional Xbox type of interface though. Much like Steam's Big Picture mode. Not sure why they haven't done this).


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## DeathtoGnomes (Sep 21, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> I would say Windows 95/NT was in fact a step towards ease of use for gaming. They introduced DirectX/and other behind the scenes configuration/plug-n-play/etc.. And with the Xbox and Win 10 finally being developing in parallel with the same codebase, it's a lot more gaming friendly than ever (they probably should have an optional Xbox type of interface though. Much like Steam's Big Picture mode. Not sure why they haven't done this).



Gaming was a big part of windows development goals since win3.1.


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## StrayKAT (Sep 21, 2018)

DeathtoGnomes said:


> Gaming was a big part of windows development goals since win3.1.



I don't remember much 3.1 gaming myself. Myst maybe? Heh. Or do you mean after 3.1? I think they learned their lessons and got us away from CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT with Win95.. and Bill's infamous "640k" statement.


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## DeathtoGnomes (Sep 21, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> I don't remember much 3.1 gaming myself. Myst maybe? Heh. Or do you mean after 3.1? I think they learned their lessons and got us away from CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT with Win95.. and Bill's infamous "640k" statement.


before MYST there were the converted games to 3.1 from DOS 5.0 and other systems like Tandy 1000 and Commodores, Atari 2600s. IF DX was still written for DOS, Linux wouldnt have much problem converting it to a native state, but Linux wasnt around then to jump on it.


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 21, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> Not sure why they haven't done this


Because only gamers might like it and even then most likely wouldn't.


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## StrayKAT (Sep 21, 2018)

DeathtoGnomes said:


> before MYST there were the converted games to 3.1 from DOS 5.0 and other systems like Tandy 1000 and Commodores, Atari 2600s. IF DX was still written for DOS, Linux wouldnt have much problem converting it to a native state, but Linux wasnt around then to jump on it.



I'm drawing a blank on those converted games, but I'll take your word for it. I remember still being a little envious of Macs at the time, because it was pure GUI.. even for games that had DOS versions on PC (like Dark Forces, for example).



lexluthermiester said:


> Because only gamers might like it and even then most likely wouldn't.



I'd use it. The option would be cool at least. They already have a "Game Mode", but it's pretty bare bones.

They have everything else to make a very easy-to-use console type of experience otherwise. Especially the UWP apps. Installation of games could technically be as boneheaded as a PS4 or Xbox.


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## dorsetknob (Sep 21, 2018)

DeathtoGnomes said:


> IF DX was still written for DOS, Linux wouldnt have much problem converting it to a native state, but Linux wasnt around then to jump on it.


DX was written and patented for Windows' Linux Daddy was around  No one wanted to pay MS for its DX patents


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## StrayKAT (Sep 21, 2018)

Linux technically was around then.. First release in 93, I think.

I started messing with it around 95, but it was still kind of terrible then. edit: Terrible for GUI and game use, I mean. Clearly superior as a command line OS.


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## John Naylor (Sep 21, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> I don't remember much 3.1 gaming myself. Myst maybe? Heh. Or do you mean after 3.1? I think they learned their lessons and got us away from CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT with Win95.. and Bill's infamous "640k" statement.



With Win 3.11 aka W4WGs, I used a boot menu with 6 sets of config.sys / autoexec.bat files.  Part of that was to isolate wife and kids use / access to any partition with my files on it.  Another part of it was to break the 640k limit for AutoCAD using Helix memory management.   And the rest was for a gaming specific boot as most games of the time were DOS based.  I'd give anything to go back to having easily editable boot files to easily resolve issues instead of the current process of wipe OS partition and reinstall.

As for the Win95 disaster, I remember getting PC Magazines annual PC Round Up that year, post Win95 release, and was a bit befuudled why in the "100 PC Roundup", about 40% of the PCs submitted for testing had W4WGs on it.  That was odd I thought ... and was puzzled even further when the usual 3 pages of ads in the middle of the article turned into 60 pages of other stories and ads.

It  soon became apparent that all of the major builders had submitted multiple machoines, often of the exact same configuration ... some with minor changes (i.e. IDE vs SCSI drive) ... why the heck would they do that ?   Then, looking at the performance tables ... it was obvious.  On average the W4WGs boxes were 40% faster than the Win95 boxes.  It seemed no vendor wanted to have their reputation hit by the fact that "their brand" was machine 40% slower and have their sales plummet  because of the OS performance penalty.

Infoworld reported that US businesses had spent $2500 - $4500 per box (adding memory, other physical modifications, training, testing, etc) transitioning between W4WGs and Win95 and then upon arrival PC performance dropped.  The big sales pitch for Win95 was it was a transition from 16 to 32 bit, but W4WGs (which busness and educated consumers / gamers were already using) already had the 32 bit APIs so Win95 offered nothing but disadvantages.  We set up a new triple boot box and spent a year with W4WGs, Windows NT4 and Win95.  After the test period, we deleted Win95 and W4WGs as NT4 was the fastest in every category.  We left the W4WGs boxes till they were retired and migrated to NT when new boxes were built.   We tested each new OS head to head and the one thing that was obvious ... taking an existing box and *upgrading* to a new OS always resulted in a performance decrease... in other words, the upgrade would actually be a downgrade.   After NT, we went to Windows 2000, XP  and Win 7.   All the others were tested, but felt there was nothing to be gained by switching.

Linux is not an option cause all of our machines are SOHO usage.  They gotta work for AutoCAD during working hours and they gotta do the gaming thing as a stress reliever after wok apps get closed.  However, the MMO (https://ryzom.com/) I have been playing on and off  for 14 years has Linux, Mac and Windows versions and I'd say Linux users represent about 30 - 35% of the player base.  There's also 3 means to make the installation.... so 9 different installation options.

Steam Client - It's has some issues, not the least of which is that patches / upgrades arrive last.  Another problem... 2 identical boxes using the Steam Client, one has issues one don't.  And the latter has issues resolved when it moves to one of the others.... https://store.steampowered.com/app/373720/Ryzom/

Native Client - When the moved to a 64 bit client (Version 3.x) , they took the best technical thing about th game IMO, and ruined it.   It's now like any other windows game / program in that in addition to tthe ganme's root folder, various user related files are installed all over the place.  The instalaltion packages for all 3 OS's can be found here... https://ryzom.com/

Single Folder Install - This is the method I use, Like vesion 2.x, all the files associated with the game are installed in a single folder.  You can copy the folder and copy / paste it on any machine, double click the exe and load game.   So you can have mulltiple versions of the game, all existing in the same folder.  The files for this method can be foun d here... https://sourceforge.net/projects/ryzom/files/installer/

Id note that for some of the Linux users, the reason they are using Linux and the reason, they playing are the same,... system requirements allow a satisfactory experience where newer 100GB games are out of the question.  For me, if it wasnt foir the gavct that we make our living with AutoCAD, I might consider using Linux, but no AutoCAD version takes that off the table.   Yes, I know there are Linux programs that do CAD, but you can't compete in the business environment using them.


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## StrayKAT (Sep 21, 2018)

John Naylor said:


> With Win 3.11 aka W4WGs, I used a boot menu with 6 sets of config.sys / autoexec.bat files.  Part of that was to isolate wife and kids use / access to any partition with my files on it.  Another part of it was to break the 640k limit for AutoCAD using Helix memory management.   And the rest was for a gaming specific boot as most games of the time were DOS based.  I'd give anything to go back to having easily editable boot files to resolve issues.
> 
> As for the Win95 disaster, I remember getting PC Magazines annual PC Round Up that year, post Win95 release and was a bit befuudled why in the "100 PC Roundup", about 40% of the PCs submitted had W4WGs on it.  That was odd i thought ... and was puzzled even further when the usual 3 pages of ads ein the middle of the article turned into 60 pages of other stories and ads.
> 
> ...



I like single folder installs anywhere. That was one thing old DOS had over Windows. And I wish Windows had the UNIX mentality of "everything is a file" (which DOS did itself too). It's easier to config than a Registry, for sure. But I think UWP is the next best thing. It hides just about everything.. which would be perfect for people migrating from consoles or phones.


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## lexluthermiester (Sep 21, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> But I think UWP is the next best thing. *It hides just about everything..* which would be perfect for people migrating from consoles or phones.


That is exactly why a lot of people don't like it. Some of us want to see what it is the OS is doing. This is why an open source OS is appealing. If you want to look at and/or modify the way it operates, you can without "big brother" looking over your should or changing it behind your back.


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## StrayKAT (Sep 21, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> That is exactly why a lot of people don't like it. Some of us want to see what it is the OS is doing. This is why an open source OS is appealing. If you want to look at and/or modify the way it operates, you can without "big brother" looking over your should or changing it behind your back.



I like easy access when something is more prone to error (hence, I like the old days of simple config files in DOS.. or Linux.. or at least a UNIX /etc folder). But so far, it hasn't been prone to error for me. No more than installing apps on a cell phone or Xbox. Only issue with UWP is not many adopters.

You know what's better than easy access? Not breaking at all 

I don't know what you mean by Big Brother though. You keep bringing this up in Win10 discussions, but it doesn't seem you've messed with it much. Privacy is configurable. And I'm not sure what it has to do with UWP.. it's just an API. Not some means of spying on you.


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## DeathtoGnomes (Sep 21, 2018)

John Naylor said:


> PC Magazine


heh yea the Free CD had tons of games and apps on them over the years.


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## StrayKAT (Sep 21, 2018)

I used to love PC Gamer and their CD-Roms.


I should add that I don't think Windows should be exclusively UWP or anything. I just think that phone-app ease of use is a cool thing to have on desktops, as an option.

Windows is more like an OS with multiple personalities. I think NT was designed that way to begin with. I was surprised to find out there's actually a native NT api that's barely used, while Win32/64 is another thing entirely (even though it's what people associate with the OS).

But being that it's multiple personalities, it should have a more robust "Game Mode" that behaves like the Xbox.


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## notb (Sep 21, 2018)

Is it really worth the fuss? 
I don't know how you guys game. I'd imagine most people use their PCs for other things and jump into games for longer sessions when they have time.
I'd also imagine that "more than just a light gamer" also cares for having pretty clean environment for best gaming performance, i.e. he kills everything expendable and doesn't really care what OS is running underneath.

So what exactly is wrong with dual-boot?  With a fast SSD and clean OS instances, switching will take a minute.
I was a Linux user for a long time - jumping to Windows just for games. It didn't paralyze my life and back then rebooting took 5 minutes, maybe more.

To be honest, gaming kind of makes a mess on a PC anyway. I mean drivers, Steam, GOG and all this crapware. I'm currently playing 2 games on the PC (very occasionally), but I have 5 gaming platforms installed (Steam, Blizzard, GOG, Uplay and Origin)...


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## silentbogo (Sep 21, 2018)

I'd gladly switch to Ubuntu full-time, but I can't.
Not because of games, but because most of my work-related stuff (part-time second[...or third] job) only works on Windows.
Plus, Quake Champions has no Linux port and is not very good at running though Wine (blank screen or crashes, UI missing etc.).


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## StrayKAT (Sep 21, 2018)

notb said:


> Is it really worth the fuss?
> I don't know how you guys game. I'd imagine most people use their PCs for other things and jump into games for longer sessions when they have time.
> I'd also imagine that "more than just a light gamer" also cares for having pretty clean environment for best gaming performance, i.e. he kills everything expendable and doesn't really care what OS is running underneath.
> 
> ...



I'd rather not think about any of it. I'm getting too old for this. Heh..

But I kind of wish everyone had good options. It should be similar as iOS is compared to Android. They're practically the same, app-store wise. edit: Or XBox vs PS4, for that matter.


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## Liquid Cool (Sep 21, 2018)

When linux came out I can still remember my first thoughts.  I was helping teach a class on computer repair at a local college and a friend handed me a floppy that had linux written in a black marker on it and I laughed at the name.  Ripoff of unix was my first thought...and this ain't going nowhere was my second.  I played around with it for awhile, but ended up treating it like OS/2's kid brother. I 86'd it.

Never....thought I'd be using it full time......   

Then again, I thought I'd be a programmer in Assembler, Fortran, COBOL, C,  or Basic.  Ended up in finance.....

Best,

Liquid Cool


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## StrayKAT (Sep 21, 2018)

Liquid Cool said:


> When linux came out I can still remember my first thoughts.  I was helping teach a class on computer repair at a local college and a friend handed me a floppy that had linux written in a black marker on it and I laughed at the name.  Ripoff of unix was my first thought...and this ain't going nowhere was my second.  I played around with it for awhile, but ended up treating it like OS/2's kid brother. I 86'd it.
> 
> Never....thought I'd be using it full time......
> 
> ...



I kind of wish it never succeeded...or at least, got so huge.. because I like BSD more. Heh. But it came at just the right time, when BSD was having legal issues. I've said this elsewhere, but I think gaming and commercial support would have picked up more if Linux wasn't GNU-based. One look at what Apple and Sony did with BSD shows how quickly the commercial world can work with this.. if they're not constrained.


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## Liquid Cool (Sep 21, 2018)

StrayKAT,

Yes...I can remember you mentioning this....

For the record.  You didn't receive any disagreement from me.  

Albeit...I am not a fan of the way EULA's have gone....that's a whole 'nother topic though.

,

Liquid Cool


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## StrayKAT (Sep 21, 2018)

Liquid Cool said:


> StrayKAT,
> 
> Yes...I can remember you mentioning this....
> 
> ...



I do want to tie it into the topic though, because I think Steam is limited in what they can do to simplify things and truly customize Linux. And part of it is because of licensing and GNU's compulsion to seed back to the open source community. BSD licenses make no such demands.. a company is free to be as proprietary and/or closed as they want with their code and don't have to give it up to open source. It also doesn't scare driver developers away so much. To use FreeBSD's own words, GNU is a "legal timebomb".

_In contrast to the GPL, which is designed to prevent the proprietary commercialization of Open Source code, the BSD license  places minimal restrictions on future behavior. This allows BSD code to remain Open Source or become integrated into commercial solutions, as a project's or company's needs change. In other words, the BSD license does not become a legal time-bomb at any point in the development process.

In addition, since the BSD license does not come with the legal complexity of the GPL or LGPL licenses, it allows developers and companies to spend their time creating and promoting good code rather than worrying if that code violates licensing._



But I still think Steam can make things "good enough" at least.


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## Liquid Cool (Sep 23, 2018)

I hope no one minds me posting this video in the thread.  It actually seemed "somewhat" relevant to the topic.  I was actually a little shocked when I saw the title to the video...never thought I'd see Linus commenting on Steam Play/Proton.










Best Regards,

Liquid Cool


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## RejZoR (Sep 23, 2018)

I'm gonna post here the same line I've posted on that video from Linus...

*Gaming on Linux is easy! STEP 1: Open Terminal...

Aaaaaaand that's why I'm not using Linux...*


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## Aquinus (Sep 23, 2018)

RejZoR said:


> Gaming on Linux is easy! STEP 1: Open Terminal...
> 
> Aaaaaaand that's why I'm not using Linux...


Unfortunately, there isn't an easier way to to do things like installing Oibaf or Padoka's Mesa GIT builds because, why in the world would I want to compile it from source myself. To get proton to work, you only need the Padoka/Oibaf PPA and if you're like me using the plain AMDGPU driver, then I need the Mesa vulkan driver as well. Beyond installing those two things, you don't really need to open the terminal but, once those are installed, you don't need to use the terminal at all. If you use a nVidia card or the AMDGPU-Pro driver, you don't need to open the terminal at all IIRC to use Proton.

In all seriousness, Proton is pretty great. It's not perfect but, I can play a lot of games in Steam through it such as DOOM, Skyrim, Supreme Commander 2, and Banished. The only one that hasn't worked for me at all is the "Homeworld Remastered Collection" and all run okay at 4k. Only DOOM can't maintain 60 FPS but, I can run it in Vulkan.

With that all said, I think Linus is a tool and my preference is to not read or watch content from him.


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## RejZoR (Sep 23, 2018)

The fact you need to use Terminal AT ALL in year 2018 is the reason I try Linux almost every other year and delete it 15 minutes later because it's designed by morons. But Linux will overtake Windows, next year. For sure! Oh boy I've been listening about this for last 15 years or so...

If Linux wasn't designed by clueless nerds who can't think outside of their tiny little box, Linux would be a superpower used by millions and millions of people. Instead it's this bizarre frankenOS with next to zero regard for unified and standardized design of pretty much anything. And they always have this excuse "uh oh if you don't like this distro, then use some other". This is the exact problem with Linux. I don't want 400 million distros. I want just 1 that actually frigging works. It's why Windows works, it's why MacOS works and it's why Android (even with massive version fragmentation) and iOS work. I always thought sticking with most used distro like Ubuntu would solve these issues, but it just doesn't. It's still this awkward clumsy OS to work with I'd frankly rather pay 300€ for Windows and be done with it. And that's basically exactly what I'm doing and unless makers of Linux get their heads out of their own rears, I'll continue to do so. The saying "You get what you pay for" literally applies 120% here.


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## Aquinus (Sep 23, 2018)

RejZoR said:


> The fact you need to use Terminal AT ALL in year 2018 is the reason I try Linux almost every other year and delete it 15 minutes later because it's designed by morons. But Linux will overtake Windows, next year. For sure! Oh boy I've been listening about this for last 15 years or so...
> 
> If Linux wasn't designed by clueless nerds who can't think outside of their tiny little box, Linux would be a superpower used by millions and millions of people. Instead it's this bizarre frankenOS with next to zero regard for unified and standardized design of pretty much anything. And they always have this excuse "uh oh if you don't like this distro, then use some other". This is the exact problem with Linux. I don't want 400 million distros. I want just 1 that actually frigging works. It's why Windows works, it's why MacOS works and it's why Android (even with massive version fragmentation) and iOS work. I always thought sticking with most used distro like Ubuntu would solve these issues, but it just doesn't. It's still this awkward clumsy OS to work with I'd frankly rather pay 300€ for Windows and be done with it. And that's basically exactly what I'm doing and unless makers of Linux get their heads out of their own rears, I'll continue to do so. The saying "You get what you pay for" literally applies 120% here.









Are you scared of the terminal or do you hold that opinion in the same place as all of your rants about things like your E-450 (or was it 350?) ...or maybe it's that you just attack things you don't want to or simply refuse to understand. I understand it not being straightforward but, of all the things to get pissy about... Linux? Really? ...and it's not even really about Linux, you're whining about distros. Just pick one and get over yourself. If you cared (which you don't,) you would learn how to use it instead of whining about it.

You also must have missed this:


Aquinus said:


> If you use a nVidia card or the AMDGPU-Pro driver, you don't need to open the terminal at all IIRC to use Proton.



Also: Remember what sub-forum you're in, buddy. There is a good bet that none of us actually care how much you don't like Linux.


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## IceScreamer (Sep 23, 2018)

If stuff from Autodesk worked on Linux I'd probably be using it full time. For gaming, most if not all games I want to play work, since I barely play anything new. Other than that I use Mint for word processing and general study/research on my scrap laptop actually pretty often and, apart from an occasional hiccup or the need to search for a solution for a problem, it's pretty straightforward, even for a Linux noob like me.


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## silentbogo (Sep 23, 2018)

RejZoR said:


> Gaming on Linux is easy! STEP 1: Open Terminal...
> 
> Aaaaaaand that's why I'm not using Linux...


That's because Linus is not the sharpest hammer in the axe rack.
If we ignore proton for a sec, all you need to do is:
a) Install proprietary drivers, which you'll probably find popping-up in the tray soon after your first updates get installed
b) Install Steam from Ubuntu software center or just download the installer from steampowered.com
c) Play games
At least on 4 of my past NVidia cards that's all that is necessary to run games with existing Linux ports.

The reason I and millions of users use terminal in Ubuntu, is because certain things are easier and faster to do this way. Same goes for Windows, especially since Powershell started shipping with the OS and made my life much easier. If you consider yourself a PC enthusiast, then you should embrace the command line and all the stuff you can do with it.
Think of it this way (I'll try to describe it in noob-friendly terms, just to make it easier for you): terminal commands are like keyboard shortcuts - press a combination and you've already performed a task, while more intuitive UI is an equivalent of using mouse context menu for the same operation - even a grandma can do it, but it's painstakingly slow and has many unnecessary steps.


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## StrayKAT (Sep 23, 2018)

Aquinus said:


> Are you scared of the terminal or do you hold that opinion in the same place as all of your rants about things like your E-450 (or was it 350?) ...or maybe it's that you just attack things you don't want to or simply refuse to understand. I understand it not being straightforward but, of all the things to get pissy about... Linux? Really? ...and it's not even really about Linux, you're whining about distros. Just pick one and get over yourself. If you cared (which you don't,) you would learn how to use it instead of whining about it.
> 
> You also must have missed this:
> 
> ...



It's not just him. He's speaking on behalf of a lot of people, whether he knows it or not. Pushing Linux on to average gamers and people is just misguided and misleading.


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## notb (Sep 23, 2018)

silentbogo said:


> Think of it this way (I'll try to describe it in noob-friendly terms, just to make it easier for you): terminal commands are like keyboard shortcuts - press a combination and you've already performed a task, while more intuitive UI is an equivalent of using mouse context menu for the same operation - even a grandma can do it, but it's painstakingly slow and has many unnecessary steps.


That's a funny example. You know why? Because vast majority of PC users don't know any combinations beside the few ubiquitous ones used in text editing (ctrl+z/x/c/v/f). Many PC users don't use keyboard shortcuts at all. *AT ALL.*
And you're asking people to use a terminal. :-o
@RejZoR is 100% correct in this case.


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## Vya Domus (Sep 23, 2018)

Aquinus said:


> Are you scared of the terminal



Most are, which is what matters most.


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## StrayKAT (Sep 23, 2018)

I'm not scared of the terminal, but I'm also like "Danny Glover".. Getting too old for this sh*t.

Also, I have to laugh that I can't even easily use a Netgear A7000 (usb wifi).. even though the drivers exist. The solution? Even on Ubuntu?

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install git dkms
git clone https://github.com/zebulon2/rtl8814au.git
sudo dkms add ./rtl8814au
sudo dkms build -m rtl8814au -v 4.3.21
sudo dkms install -m rtl8814au -v 4.3.21


lmao.. so I have to connect to the net and Github, in order to install a driver to connect to the net? 

It's still as pathetic as it was 20 years ago.

When people say they want an easier to use Linux, what they want is Mac OS X (which is BSD UNIX). And Jobs accomplished that years before Linux did with NextStep (which is what OS X is based off of). This is 1980s era tech and Linux is still a mess.

And what gamers specifically want in an easy to use *nix is basically the PS4. Which is also BSD. Sony accomplished this within a couple of years.. and conquers the world with it.


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## notb (Sep 23, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> It's still as pathetic as it was 20 years ago.


It is, because the whole Linux community would like it to be like 20 years ago. That's the goal.
Of course Linux could be made easier to use, more mouse-operated, automated and so on. But they choose it not to be.
That's the whole point.

MS and Apple make an OS that's for other people. They're making an advanced tech product easy and accessible for non-tech users.
Linux community makes OSes for the Linux community.
And it goes further in the whole FOSS world. Adobe makes a photo editing tool for people that take photos.
Linux community makes (multiple) photo editing tools for other coding geeks.

The whole environment is kind of messed up. :-/
For a long time I didn't really expect any solution to this problem, but there is one now. If Microsoft pushes WSL hard enough, it could force large Linux distros to adjust. We may finally see polished, paid versions for consumers. Canonical should have done that years ago.


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## Aquinus (Sep 23, 2018)

notb said:


> It is, because the whole Linux community would like it to be like 20 years ago. That's the goal.
> Of course Linux could be made easier to use, more mouse-operated, automated and so on. But they choose it not to be.
> That's the whole point.


None of that even has anything to do with Linux itself though which shows how ill-informed you are. What you're describing is how the window managers should work which is something different than the kernel itself. That's a complaint with Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Unity, i3, etc and not with Linux. The problem is that people don't even know what to actually complain about. Kernel development has absolutely nothing to do with what you described. It's not like when Windows 8 came out that people said, "This UI sucks, blame the NT kernel!" So why in the world would you blame Linux itself for a problem like this?

For clarity, lets get this out of the way: *Linux is the kernel, not the entire experience.*

The simple fact is that if you install Ubuntu and have a nVidia card, you don't even need to touch a terminal to get going. If you have an AMD card, you need it just to install the drivers (if you want something other than the Radeon or plain AMDGPU driver for newer GCN card,) and even that can be made to run automatically.



StrayKAT said:


> lmao.. so I have to connect to the net and Github, in order to install a driver to connect to the net?


That's not any different than needing a wifi driver in Windows but, needing to connect to the internet to get it. Windows doesn't solve that problem. 

I will admit that wifi support needs to be better but, who's fault is it that the driver is crap? The kernel team, the distro, or the *device manufacturer*? If AMD or nVidia makes a bad driver, who do you blame?


StrayKAT said:


> It's not just him. He's speaking on behalf of a lot of people, whether he knows it or not. Pushing Linux on to average gamers and people is just misguided and misleading.


Based on outdated information and pre-existing bias. Good job.


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## StrayKAT (Sep 23, 2018)

Aquinus said:


> None of that even has anything to do with Linux itself though which shows how ill-informed you are.



You lost me already. If you didn't read my input on this thread, I've been using Linux off and on within a couple of years since the first kernel.

Like I said, I'm like Danny Glover. Too old for this. Especially this.


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## Aquinus (Sep 23, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> You lost me already. If you didn't read my input on this thread, I've been using Linux off and on within a couple of years since the first kernel.
> 
> Like I said, I'm like Danny Glover. Too old for this. Especially this.


Yet the complaint you brought up is about wifi drivers when the thread is to talk about game support and Proton. 

In case you've forgotten this thread is about:


Easy Rhino said:


> I am curious to know if anyone considers themselves more than just a light gamer and also a full time linux user. I can't seem to make the full time jump because too many games that I *might* play rely on .NET. I know Steam is pushing their new wrapper but still...



I don't read that as an opportunity to go on some misguided rant about how Linux sucks when you're posting on a thread in the Linux sub-forum.

With that said, I am a full time Ubuntu user, I do light gaming, and I was playing Skyrim last night which required .NET. It works pretty good, even at 4k with my 390. Supreme Commander 2 also requires .NET, that works great as well.

Edit: As a side note, an OS will always be better when you control the hardware that it runs on. That's part of the reason why OS X and iOS are so hands off.


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## notb (Sep 23, 2018)

Aquinus said:


> For clarity, lets get this out of the way: *Linux is the kernel, not the entire experience.*


You see. This is exactly what's wrong with Linux community. You're instantly getting into this patronizing tone that Linux is the kernel and so on. :-D

Simple fact is: a typical user doesn't give a rat's ass. He downloads e.g. Ubuntu. It's and OS. It's a Linux.
He doesn't know what kernel is. He shouldn't know. He shouldn't have any contact this the basic layer.
For him, Linux is the GUI. Just like he sees Windows as a GUI.
And the GUI is bad. And the apps that install by default are bad (and inconsistent - even graphically). And the Office alternatives are bad. And mainstream games are difficult to use and the native ones are awful.
There's hardly any support as well (although with Ubuntu you can pay for it).


> The simple fact is that if you install Ubuntu and have a nVidia card, you don't even need to touch a terminal to get going. If you have an AMD card, you need it just to install the drivers (if you want something other than the Radeon or plain AMDGPU driver for newer GCN card,) and even that can be made to run automatically.


That's a best case scenario, which rarely happens.
Sooner or later you'll have some sort of issue, that will send you into a havoc of jumping between a terminal, config files and community forums.
I'm pretty sure I had problems with at least half of Linux software installed on my PC. And I try to buy mainstream, well supported hardware.
It's much better on VM, but there are still problems.

And it gets worse. Software developers are lazy with Linux versions. The same software made for Windows and Linux has drastically different setup processes. On Windows it's made as easy as possible (automated or done by clicking options during setup), with no need to have any coding experience or knowledge about how this software and the OS work.
To install the same software under Linux you often have to go through countless config files, role creation, setting permissions and solving issues that appear during the process.



> I will admit that wifi support needs to be better but, who's fault is it that the driver is crap? The kernel team, the distro, or the *device manufacturer*? If AMD or nVidia makes a bad driver, who do you blame?


Linux, obviously. It's fragmentation. It's lack of commercial support. Linux is just an OS (or as you like: kernel).
Windows is an ecosystem.

Microsoft, Google and Apple support hardware and software makers. That's why stuff works.
You can literally call any of these companies and say that "Hey, I'm John. I work for company X. We're making a new products and we want it to be compatible with your OS."
And they help you directly, or arrange a meeting with a partner, because they care about the "OS something compatible" sticker on the box. It's not always free and large companies have a priority, obviously.

There's no such thing with Linux (especially for consumers, e.g. gamers). Manufacturers have to sort everything out themselves or hire 3rd party consultants.
Of course it's easier with enterprise stuff. If, for example, you're making something for servers or networks, you might have luck contacting e.g. Red Hat or Oracle. But consumer stuff is left alone.


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## silentbogo (Sep 23, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> lmao.. so I have to connect to the net and Github, in order to install a driver to connect to the net?


You can thank hardware/chipset manufacturers, who's directly responsible for driver development. If you want to direct your frustration in the right direction, you can mail a dildo to Netgear, or send a big "Fuck you" postcard to Realtek. None of these complications are related to Linux in general, or any particular distro. 
And that's the reason why I'm avoiding anything based on Realtek wireless chipsets.


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## R-T-B (Sep 23, 2018)

notb said:


> You see. This is exactly what's wrong with Linux community. You're instantly getting into this patronizing tone that Linux is the kernel and so on. :-D



But I mean, it is.  It really isn't up for debate.  Being user friendly about that reality can fall to the distro.


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## RejZoR (Sep 23, 2018)

Aquinus said:


> None of that even has anything to do with Linux itself though which shows how ill-informed you are. What you're describing is how the window managers should work which is something different than the kernel itself. That's a complaint with Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Unity, i3, etc and not with Linux. The problem is that people don't even know what to actually complain about. Kernel development has absolutely nothing to do with what you described. It's not like when Windows 8 came out that people said, "This UI sucks, blame the NT kernel!" So why in the world would you blame Linux itself for a problem like this?
> 
> For clarity, lets get this out of the way: *Linux is the kernel, not the entire experience.*
> 
> ...



Bottom line is, I don't frigging care whose fault it is for garbage user experience. The fact is, no matter which distro you're using with what shell slammed on top, they all behave like shit. If I want to update a driver, I should be able to go to Settings, Devices and manage things there using MENUS. It's a normal thing to search for a function under naturally assumed name in the menus. It literally works this way for all devices in existence, be it a mobile phone, TV, car settings etc. I shouldn't be required to go on 15 forums to figure out 500 characters long noodles that you need to input into a Terminal. And for driver packages, it happened so many times I downloaded a "driver" for Linux, double clicked it and I was asked what program to use to run it. Dude, I don't freaking know, I just need the driver. You'll never see anything like that on Windows. On Windows, it's either EXE where you're basically guaranteed it'll install itself or it's some sort of standard archive like ZIP or 7z and you know you need to manually install it from there on using before mentioned Device Manager of some sort by pointing it tot he driver location and it should do the rest by itself. If that cannot be achieved, the developers of OS have failed.

I'm not one of those people who want Linux to fail, I genuinely want it to succeed, because that would mean a huge competition to Microsoft and it would create this natural state of forced improvement where companies would WANT to make experience better and easier with better driver support for Linux and Linux devs in general would also be forced to move boundaries further. But if you don't gain general public attention, no one will give a crap about those 5 screaming nerds. 

I also used CMD and now PowerShell in Windows, but only for things when I'm digging through deep sections of Windows, fiddling with undocumented settings and features, fixing something user isn't suppose to touch. Installing a simple driver for graphic card isn't that kind of scenario. And that's the kind of disconnect people behind Linux distros have in general. They live in their tiny little box not really thinking what's wrong with the OS that it hasn't gained any kind of serious traction in last 15 years. Microsoft doesn't have that luxury, they need to make a product people can use because their profit depends on it. Linux doesn't. It's just the same ever since I can remember it. Windows for example has gone from mediocre (Win9x) to damn good (Win2000/XP) to bad (Vista) back to mediocre (Win8.x) back to damn good with exceptions with Win10. We can bitch and complain over Windows 10, but as a professional, I absolutely understand what they are trying to achieve.

Unification of Windows will provide easier management long term because they'll get rid of massive fragmentation and forced updating ensures people don't run outdated and unpatched systems, creating armadas of zombie systems open to abuse. Byproduct of this is certain level of inconvenience to users when something doesn't work on some systems. But when you round it up, it's massively beneficial to them and to consumers. And Windows 10 is a good experience in general. They are still in phase of moving old things to new menus, but I must say they are doing a good job. Win8 Start menu was a mess and even I used the "old style" Start menu tools to replace it. Then Win8.1 came and that changed a lot. With Win10 it never even crossed my mind to crave for "old ways". I actually prefer the larger Start menu now. I just pin most used apps in it, few folder locations I use the most and it's great. And that's the kind of evolving people expect from Linux. To actually move anywhere. And they'll never achieve it with absolutely retarded fragmentation they have. Whose fault really is, it's up to them to figure it out, not on user shoulders.


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## Aquinus (Sep 23, 2018)

notb said:


> Linux, obviously. It's fragmentation. It's lack of commercial support. Linux is just an OS (or as you like: kernel).


Try realtek for not providing and maintaining an actual kernel module that can be installed. nVidia does it, why can't they? If they can maintain a github repo, they should be able to get this into the kernel. The reality is that the manufacturer has to care for it to get into any OS.


RejZoR said:


> Wall of text


The bottom line is that this thread probably isn't the place to be having this misguided discussion.


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## Kursah (Sep 23, 2018)

We don't mind if you guys disagree, but keep it constructive please. Otherwise infraction points and thread closure happen. 

I challenge some of you review the forum guidelines and make adjustments before posting again here or elsewhere. Seriously.


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## StrayKAT (Sep 23, 2018)

Aquinus said:


> Yet the complaint you brought up is about wifi drivers when the thread is to talk about game support and Proton.



The discussion moved to RTB talking ease of use and command lines. I'm just following the line of thinking, and getting into the mind of the average person who would run into this. Among other things.


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## LFaWolf (Sep 23, 2018)

I think thread has gone off topic. 

For OP, I spend about 25% of my work time in Linux - Ubuntu and CentOS. I am a very light gamer as I have no time to do so. My gaming machine runs Windows 10. Given my busy schedule, when I game I just want to game. I just want it to work. I don’t have time to troubleshoot or install any patches or drivers to make it work. 

I am not a game developer so I am not 100% certain about this, but if developers start developing using Microsoft .net core there will be much better compatibility as the game can be ported easier to Linux. .net core apps can run natively on Linux.

For others, Linux isn’t and will never be, made for general public. It is made for servers, developers, sys admin, people that have specific needs to do so. The Linux communities do not have the millions like microsoft to study human behavior, improve the user interface, etc. the majority of the people that use it do not complain about the UI but would rather have a rock solid kernel that won’t panic as Linux are used for servers, even the mission critical ones. It is what it is. My first OS was Unix, love it as a student in school, but Personally I actually prefer Windows now.


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## RejZoR (Sep 23, 2018)

Aquinus said:


> Try realtek for not providing and maintaining an actual kernel module that can be installed. nVidia does it, why can't they? If they can maintain a github repo, they should be able to get this into the kernel. The reality is that the manufacturer has to care for it to get into any OS.
> 
> The bottom line is that this thread probably isn't the place to be having this misguided discussion.



Why the F should Realtek give a flying fart about some OS with insignificant user share? And how can you improve that? Certainly not by making the OS absolutely idiotic and unfriendly to use. So, pick one.

Misguided discussion? What "misguided" discussion? It's a discussion of using Linux for gaming. And we're discussing how utterly moronic is to use in general, let alone doing gaming on it. But go on by calling several paragraphs of arguments against it "a wall of text".


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## Solaris17 (Sep 23, 2018)

RejZoR said:


> Why the F should Realtek give a flying fart about some OS with insignificant user share?
> 
> Misguided discussion? What "misguided" discussion? It's a discussion of using Linux for gaming. And we're discussing how utterly moronic is to use in general, let alone doing gaming on it. But go on by calling several paragraphs of arguments against it "a wall of text".



A: if we are speaking outside of discussion it would be beneficial for realtek to improve driver support and the chips in general because the server linux utilization is actually really high.

B: you kind of proved why it was a mis guided discussion you cant stay on topic (which im going to reccomend we start doing) and say how you are commenting on how it is in "general".

edit:: to be clear im referring to realtek in regards to networking cards.


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## king of swag187 (Sep 24, 2018)

I personally love windows for its plug and play and nature, but the amount of garbage hiding behind its shiny and somewhat appealing compatibility with hardware from the past decade is nice. Actually speaking of Linux, I use it for my schoolwork as Lubuntu gives a major battery improvement, and gaming with Proton isn't too bad (aside from the obvious performance disparity)


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## StrayKAT (Sep 24, 2018)

I'm beginning to entertain myself a bit too much, thinking of conspiracies. What if MS is behind this?  This stuff didn't start happening until they bought Github. And Microsoft has been "playing nice" with Linux lately. Maybe it was all a setup.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

edit: Another strange conspiracy is in Linus' email, where he talks about "looking in the mirror".. It has unicode in it (the rest of the message, outside a few strange lines like this, is ascii). And apparently, none of his emails had unicode before.


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## RejZoR (Sep 24, 2018)

Solaris17 said:


> A: if we are speaking outside of discussion it would be beneficial for realtek to improve driver support and the chips in general because the server linux utilization is actually really high.
> 
> B: you kind of proved why it was a mis guided discussion you cant stay on topic (which im going to reccomend we start doing) and say how you are commenting on how it is in "general".



a) servers don't need sound, which is why they don't care

b) I proved nothing except that Linux is garbage for most things, ESPECIALLY for gaming. You also can't call me Windows fanboy because the number of times I've criticized MS and Windows is far greater than I've mentioned Linux. In total. But they got their shit together for most things. Linux never does. And that's why it won't work for gaming for minimum of next 10 to even 20 years.


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## GoldenX (Sep 24, 2018)

Why all Linux-GNU/Linux-GNU+Linux discussions always end like that? Linux is the popular name, it's not the full OS, but people calls it that, same way people say .JIF instead of .GIF. It's stupid, it's the way it is.
@RejZoR You only need to mess with drivers if you use the stupid Nvidia driver, if they shared the info like Intel and AMD does, you would be updating drivers with software updates, with a proper GUI window, like a normal human being. Now, if you want to try the latest code in mesa-git or something like that (something you *can't* do on Windows unless you work for Intel/Nvidia/AMD), get dirty with the console for, like, 10 seconds. I don't think Nvidia developers have an installer set up for every time they change the driver internally.
The user experience is still far bellow Windows or Mac, but it's a LOT better than it was years ago, and it's improving. Now thanks to Valve and GOG, we are finally getting proper games support, slowly but surely.

I will keep using Arch, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. in dual boot as a way of supporting the underdog, Windows had a great time with 7, but this 10 sh*t is stupid. Having a free (both meanings of free, stupid english) alternative is not something bad, and it's slowly getting better.


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## RejZoR (Sep 24, 2018)

Also, Linux is a full OS. People don't care what's kernel and what's the shell on top of it. And they all share same crappy UX. People don't really care anymore what NT is underneath certain Windows version. We used to care back in Win9x days when NT4.x was so radically different nothing worked in between them and NT4 was mostly used by businesses. When Win2000 arrived, while marketed as business platform, Win2000 was widely used by consumers too. I've used it and experience was almost the same as WinXP later, minus the Luna GUI.

Windows 10 actually isn't stupid. First release maybe, but current one is very much mature. Only thing setting it back are GUI inconsistencies as they are still slowly porting old features into new GUI design. And dealing with updates that break things since they are force (which is to eliminate outdated vulnerable systems and unify the OS and decrease fragmentation).

Make no mistake, Linux is great for utility purposes, like live boot software based on Linux like UNETBOOTIN, Clonezilla and stuff like that. And can work fairly well if one only needs computer for the most basic things like browsing web, email and watching movies and music where you just install it, update it fully and select apps from the repository. For that, it's perfectly good and relatively easy to use. Certainly no worse than Windows. But once you wenture out of the stock out of the box experience and start doing more advanced things like trying to install a driver that's not on an integrated repository, you'll soon wish you were on Windows again...

Maybe Steam and GOG pushing their things might help, I hope it will because it would be nice to have an alternate OS option, but unless Linux ppl sort it out on their end, nothing will change. They need to change how repositories work with drivers important for gaming. So, audio and graphic drivers. They should be delivered to users directly without having to go anywhere. If they sort that out, they'll actually surpass Windows in that regard.


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## GoldenX (Sep 24, 2018)

I remember using Windows 7 64 bits on netbooks with 2GB of RAM and 80-ish MB/s disks, it was fast, and on a single core Pentium 3-level CPU.
Try using Windows 10 on a dual core with 4GB and a mechanical 110-ish MB/s drive (the standard cheap notebook, still way above the min. requirements), tell me how much time it takes to install the updates, with both full 100% hard drive and CPU use, how the interface lags, and the search function delays the results. Windows 10 is bloatware now, the first version had bugs but it wasn't this bad at the performance level, not even 8 or 8.1 was this damn slow on a non quad core+SSD pc. I hope 1809 is better.
And I'm leaving the "botnet" debate aside.


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## Kursah (Sep 24, 2018)

Cleaned up this topic a bit. Ready to deliver infractions to anyone that chooses to ignore my previous warning or go against the TPU forum guidelines.
If you can't be constructive, you might want to refrain from posting until you can be. Those of you that have been able to maintain a constructive conversation here, much appreciated!


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## StrayKAT (Oct 1, 2018)

*bump*

I'm just curious what people's drive layouts are like for Linux gaming? Do you dedicate a lot of space for /usr? Are partitions/separate drives even a popular thing these days? I haven't used Linux in awhile, but this was always standard practice before.


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## notb (Oct 1, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> I'm just curious what people's drive layouts are like for Linux gaming? Do you dedicate a lot of space for /usr? Are partitions/separate drives even a popular thing these days? I haven't used Linux in awhile, but this was always standard practice before.


Hardly important in this use case and just becomes irritating as you live on with the OS.
If you're installing something fairly robust (Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Fedora etc) just go full auto during the setup - of course excluding localization and stuff. Assume OS creators know what they're doing. 

Yes, there was a time when a swap partition was crucial, yet simple and greatly over-discussed issue. You could literally find 3-page magazine essays about the perfect swap size - just next to which file system is perfect for your zodiac and so on.
Everything else (like separating /var or /home) was really just hyped by administrator wannabes who wanted to setup their PC like if it was running a national nuclear program. 

If you just want to game, get the most mainstream distro that you like (preferably Ubuntu-based) and minimize the setup labor.


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## StrayKAT (Oct 1, 2018)

notb said:


> Hardly important in this use case and just becomes irritating as you live on with the OS.
> If you're installing something fairly robust (Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Fedora etc) just go full auto during the setup - of course excluding localization and stuff. Assume OS creators know what they're doing.
> 
> Yes, there was a time when a swap partition was crucial, yet simple and greatly over-discussed issue. You could literally find 3-page magazine essays about the perfect swap size - just next to which file system is perfect for your zodiac and so on.
> ...



ReiserFS definitely for Scorpio. 

I may just go with SteamOS..


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## silentbogo (Oct 1, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> I'm just curious what people's drive layouts are like for Linux gaming?


Pretty much the same as on windows, it all depends on your storage options and needs. 
My partitions are marked to the same drives as on Win10: /root on NVME SSD alongside windows and /home on SATA SSD where the rest of my crap is located.
Steam has all apps stored in user's home directory on Linux by default. 
If you wanna make your life easier, you can simply copy game data from Windows to Linux folder and re-sync it to update the platform-specific stuff. Worked for many games, including Bioshock Infinite, Shadow of Mordor etc.



StrayKAT said:


> I may just go with SteamOS..


Just go with Ubuntu. It's probably the best option so far. You can set it up to launch in Big Picture mode at startup later, if you want. 
i haven't checked SteamOS this year, but before it was nothing but trouble for me.


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## StrayKAT (Oct 1, 2018)

silentbogo said:


> Pretty much the same as on windows, it all depends on your storage options and needs.
> My partitions are marked to the same drives as on Win10: /root on NVME SSD alongside windows and /home on SATA SSD where the rest of my crap is located.
> Steam has all apps stored in user's home directory on Linux by default.
> If you wanna make your life easier, you can simply copy game data from Windows to Linux folder and re-sync it to update the platform-specific stuff. Worked for many games, including Bioshock Infinite, Shadow of Mordor etc.
> ...



I guess that would be the smart move. Do the saved games sync/work across both Win and Linux too? I don't plan on leaving Windows, but it'd be cool to dual boot every once in awhile.


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## Easy Rhino (Oct 1, 2018)

notb said:


> Hardly important in this use case and just becomes irritating as you live on with the OS.



I am very happy those days of managing the dir file structure for a desktop computer are over.

Just a follow up question, what are you full timers doing about Office products? My wife needs the entire suite for work. I think VMWare would be good to fire up a low power Windows 10 instance.


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## silentbogo (Oct 1, 2018)

Easy Rhino said:


> Just a follow up question, what are you full timers doing about Office products?


LibreOffice. Usually I set to save in MS format by default for compatibility's sake. 
There are still some issues w/ powerpoint presentations and rich media objects in general (sizing/misalignment when moving docs between MSO and Libre), but otherwise it works as expected. Even with PDFs.
Alternatively, she can use Google Docs. It's also pretty cool and more backwards-compatible w/ MSO and has all the necessary functions. The only con is that it's a cloud app, but it has offline access option in chrome.


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## GoldenX (Oct 1, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> *bump*
> 
> I'm just curious what people's drive layouts are like for Linux gaming? Do you dedicate a lot of space for /usr? Are partitions/separate drives even a popular thing these days? I haven't used Linux in awhile, but this was always standard practice before.


Once I had a 32GB SSD, and a 2TB drive, /home was on the 2TB drive, everything else in the 32GB, so basically just root.


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## StrayKAT (Oct 1, 2018)

GoldenX said:


> Once I had a 32GB SSD, and a 2TB drive, /home was on the 2TB drive, everything else in the 32GB, so basically just root.



Was 32GB enough to still install some userland stuff too (besides the games in /home)?


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## GoldenX (Oct 2, 2018)

Yup, more than enough. But i was using Arch with XFCE at that time, so space wasn't a problem even on a 16GB SD card.
By the way, you can still install Unity in Ubuntu 18.04 and save yourself a full GB of RAM usage from ditching Gnome.


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## notb (Oct 2, 2018)

Easy Rhino said:


> Just a follow up question, what are you full timers doing about Office products? My wife needs the entire suite for work. I think VMWare would be good to fire up a low power Windows 10 instance.


Office Online if she's ok with the limited feature set.
It's pretty close to the desktop experience and A LOT nicer to live with than free alternatives.

If she needs more (e.g. VBA) than go VM. Although I do recommend the opposite way: Windows hosting and Linux in VM. I've been doing that basically since VirtualBox 2.0.
Another possibility would be to go remote (either between your machines or just cloud-based).


GoldenX said:


> Yup, more than enough. But i was using Arch with XFCE at that time, so space wasn't a problem even on a 16GB SD card.
> By the way, you can still install Unity in Ubuntu 18.04 and save yourself a full GB of RAM usage from ditching Gnome.


That really depends what you're doing. A complete TeXLive takes 5GB. A feature-rich IDE could be 1GB or more.
For a pure gaming scenario 16GB for /root (sans games) seems an overkill.


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## silentbogo (Oct 2, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> Do the saved games sync/work across both Win and Linux too?


Yep, I believe it does. 



StrayKAT said:


> Was 32GB enough to still install some userland stuff too (besides the games in /home)?


Depends on the amount of software etc. For me 32GB is way more than enough, especially if it's a simple gaming machine. I'm running a plain Ubuntu (GNOME) on a 64GB partition, I have lots of dev tools installed (Android SDK, QT Creator, PMA etc), and I'm not even close to maxing it out.


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## Easy Rhino (Oct 2, 2018)

notb said:


> Office Online if she's ok with the limited feature set.
> It's pretty close to the desktop experience and A LOT nicer to live with than free alternatives.
> 
> If she needs more (e.g. VBA) than go VM. Although I do recommend the opposite way: Windows hosting and Linux in VM. I've been doing that basically since VirtualBox 2.0.
> Another possibility would be to go remote (either between your machines or just cloud-based).



She needs the entire suite for work because that is what they use at work along side the office 365 in the cloud. Anyway, I really hope M$ ports the entire office suite to docker. That would be amazing. Run Ubuntu or whatever as desktop and just click the MS Word icon and it launches Word in a container seamlessly.


----------



## StrayKAT (Oct 2, 2018)

Easy Rhino said:


> She needs the entire suite for work because that is what they use at work along side the office 365 in the cloud. Anyway, I really hope M$ ports the entire office suite to docker. That would be amazing. Run Ubuntu or whatever as desktop and just click the MS Word icon and it launches Word in a container seamlessly.



What is Docker exactly? Is it a wrapper for web apps.. or Win32/64?


----------



## Easy Rhino (Oct 2, 2018)

StrayKAT said:


> What is Docker exactly? Is it a wrapper for web apps.. or Win32/64?



https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/containers/what-is-docker


----------



## 8bitgamer757 (Nov 3, 2018)

Is there a way to run DX10.0+ games on linux? if so i might make 64-bit linux my main OS over 32-bit Windows


----------



## GoldenX (Nov 3, 2018)

8bitgamer757 said:


> Is there a way to run DX10.0+ games on linux? if so i might make 64-bit linux my main OS over 32-bit Windows


Proton/Wine+DXVK is the first option, with better results day after day. Ah, you don't have a Vulkan compatible GPU, then vanilla Wine is your only option via software.
The second one is PCI Passthrough, a bit hard to set up, but it gets native performance.


----------



## vectoravtech (Mar 15, 2019)

I use Sparky Linux stable LXDE, I'm playing Cube2 in this picture; I found some indie games on itch.io btw; theres a funny one called dont bite me bro. To get the game to work go into the properties and make it executable. A few might not work because of your system architecture.

I found a reddit reply under this title: What's the holdup with DX10 support in Wine?

It's an entire SDK that has to be black box replicated and reverse engineered, and that includes being able to handle undocumented features that game developers use, as well as being able to handle undocumented features that hardware drivers and game developers use.
All this is being worked on by an extremely small paid team and a somewhat larger but still comparatively small volunteer team. As long as DX10 is still receiving patches, games that run on DX10 are still receiving patches, and / or hardware drivers for video cards that do DX10 things are still receiving patches, this will be an impossible and moving target no matter what.


----------



## Darmok N Jalad (Jun 9, 2019)

I'm not really a big gamer, but I've made a commitment to run Linux Mint as my DD. I installed Steam today and enabled Proton and gave Shadow of the Tomb Raider a try. I'm running a meager GPU, the RX 560 with less-than-stock RAM clocks, so it wouldn't be the best example of performance. I ran the benchmark at 900p medium, and it managed to pull around 30fps. The only noticable issue I encountered was that there were these vertical beams/tearing that appeared to be coming from Lara's eyes! Not sure what that is all about. I was running AMD-gpu-pro drivers. Not great, but I was impressed with how far Linux gaming has come, as this is not a native game and its a relatively new title. 

As for UWP, I hate it. Not sure if it's just UWP, but MS's way of packaging apps is just plain terrible, IMO. Back when I was a devoted MS fan (I had it all--Phone, Band, Surface, Xbox), their app delivery was totally unreliable. There were times when apps refused to even download, much less install, and the troubleshooters did nothing. What I found was that when this happened, you had to delete a random app, and that would fix the installer. UWP seems better, though my most recent attempt to install Forza 7 results in a complete failure to launch, with no error messages whatsoever. I finally just deleted my W10 partition, as I haven't booted into it in weeks. I can always VM a Windows install if I get desperate, but it hasn't happened yet. I'm sure the full-on PC gamer can't do this yet, but I mainly game on a PS4 Pro, mostly for simplicity's sake.


----------



## Aquinus (Jun 10, 2019)

Some games are better than others. DOOM runs really well, I managed to get the Homeworld Remastered collection working well and Supreme Commander 2 runs really well. Regular Skyrim runs fairly well with a weird thing here or there, but the Special Edition has some serious issues. I wanted to get Elite Dangerous working, but the best I could do was to get the launcher to start. A lot of what I play runs natively in Linux though.


----------



## moproblems99 (Jun 10, 2019)

Easy Rhino said:


> I am curious to know if anyone considers themselves more than just a light gamer and also a full time linux user. I can't seem to make the full time jump because too many games that I *might* play rely on .NET. I know Steam is pushing their new wrapper but still...



I have been working on trying to dump Windows for a long time.  If CP2077 is native linux, I will do so.


----------



## Darmok N Jalad (Jun 10, 2019)

I’m curious if we will see MS/Xbox Studio titles on native Linux one of these days. They just announced eventual availability on Steam—so is it just a matter of time?


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 10, 2019)

moproblems99 said:


> If CP2077 is native linux, I will do so.


It won't be on launch, but later(not too much) very likely. CDProjektRed is a big fan of Linux.


----------



## SomeOne99h (Dec 17, 2019)

New Steam update for linux: 16 December - *Steam Client Update Released
Linux*

*Update steam runtime and container runtime (0.20191119.3): improved graphics drivers diagnostics.*
Implement a workaround for filesystems with failing 32 bit statfs64 calls (free disk space checks).
*steam runtime 0.20191210.1: gnutls update to support Proton, further improvements to steam-runtime-system-info.*


----------



## lexluthermiester (Dec 17, 2019)

SomeOne99h said:


> New Steam update for linux: 16 December - *Steam Client Update Released
> Linux*
> 
> Update steam runtime and container runtime (0.20191119.3): improved graphics drivers diagnostics.
> ...


That's a good indication that the GOG version will be Linux ready as well. Very cool indeed!


----------



## johnspack (Dec 19, 2019)

I just realized why us old timers can accept linux much better than the younger crowd...  we used dos!  When I first started using computers,  there was no windows,  there was only dos.
So bringing up a term box is just so simple for us.  I guess if all you are used to is guis,  a command prompt can be scary.....


----------



## Easy Rhino (Dec 19, 2019)

johnspack said:


> I just realized why us old timers can accept linux much better than the younger crowd...  we used dos!  When I first started using computers,  there was no windows,  there was only dos.
> So bringing up a term box is just so simple for us.  I guess if all you are used to is guis,  a command prompt can be scary.....



1. enter diskette
2. cd D:\wolfenstein
3. run.exe


----------



## lexluthermiester (Dec 19, 2019)

Easy Rhino said:


> 1. enter diskette
> 2. cd D:\wolfenstein
> 3. run.exe


Wouldn't that have been A:\ or B:\?


----------



## potato580+ (Dec 19, 2019)

johnspack said:


> So bringing up a term box is just so simple for us.  I guess if all you are used to is guis,  a command prompt can be scary.....


i know how scary it could be


----------



## johnspack (Dec 19, 2019)

Nope,  D:\ was cd drive,  A and B were floppy disks.
First computer I used in college was an IBM PC with 256k,  it had 2 full height 5 1/4 floppies.  You would boot the dos os from one drive,  and then put your program in the 2nd floppy drive.  Fun times!


----------



## lexluthermiester (Dec 19, 2019)

johnspack said:


> Nope, D:\ was cd drive, A and B were floppy disks.


He did say diskette...


Easy Rhino said:


> 1. enter diskette


3.5" Floppy disc's were often called "diskettes" back in the day. CD's were never called that, thus my question..


----------



## VulkanBros (Dec 19, 2019)

Holy...yes, I remember the first computer I worked with, IBM thing with a 8 inch floppy drive, some sort of host system with terminals, 
and then later on, my first home computer, with a 5 1/4 inch floppy and a x80286 CPU an 2 mb memory running DOS 3.0. Had to make optimizations in Autoexec.bat and Config.sys
in order to get as much lover memory (640 KB) free as possible........a thing or two has happend since


----------



## dorsetknob (Dec 19, 2019)

VulkanBros said:


> a x80286 CPU an 2 mb memory running DOS 3.0. Had to make optimizations in Autoexec.bat and Config.sys
> in order to get as much lover memory (640 KB) free as possible........a thing or two has happend since



Don't forget writing your own
Menu.bat for various configurations to optimize the 2 meg memory
mine had lots of ascii created art to make it unique ( and  pretty)


----------



## R-T-B (Dec 21, 2019)

I am doing an early new years resolution amd switching to a full linux gaming install this weekend.

It'll be gentoo based, because I like control over every little detail and am familiar with it.

Wish me luck.


----------



## FinneousPJ (Dec 21, 2019)

I don't know how you define light gamer but I have played games like Dark Souls, Sekiro and Metro Exodus on Linux in the past year. Works great!


----------



## lexluthermiester (Dec 22, 2019)

R-T-B said:


> I am doing an early new years resolution amd switching to a full linux gaming install this weekend.
> 
> It'll be gentoo based, because I like control over every little detail and am familiar with it.
> 
> Wish me luck.


I'm not going to wish you luck because you're an experienced Linux user. Instead, I'm going to hope for it to go swiftly and smoothly! Have fun!


----------



## R-T-B (Dec 22, 2019)

lexluthermiester said:


> I'm not going to wish you luck because you're an experienced Linux user. Instead, I'm going to hope for it to go swiftly and smoothly! Have fun!



The luck has more to do with how good the implementation of DX on Vulkan is now...  I have heard good things though.


----------



## blobster21 (Dec 22, 2019)

StrayKAT said:


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish



That was an interesting read, to say the least.


----------



## Aquinus (Dec 22, 2019)

R-T-B said:


> The luck has more to do with how good the implementation of DX on Vulkan is now...  I have heard good things though.


DXVK is pretty solid right now, not going to lie. It's probably a good time too because DXVK is pretty feature complete and it looks like it's about to go into maintenance mode.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=DXVK-Possible-Maintenance-Mode

Steam's Proton uses it and outside of that, it's the reason why I can play D3 or StarCraft 2 again.

Edit: What's even better is that Philip Rebohle has started contributing to VKD3D to translate DX12 and with DXVK 1.5, D9VK was merged in to handle DX9. So that's DX9, 10, and 11 support through DXVK.


----------



## R-T-B (Dec 22, 2019)

Elite Dangerous aparently even works now, which is what has me switching over.  Nice.


----------



## Aquinus (Dec 22, 2019)

R-T-B said:


> Elite Dangerous aparently even works now, which is what has me switching over.  Nice.


It wasn't when I tried a few months ago. I got the launcher to open and the application to begin starting, but that was all. I'm totally going to figure out if that's true *right now*. 

Edit: It still doesn't work for me, but I've also fiddled with the game a lot in order to try to get it to start. I might need to wipe the WINE config for it and try again.


----------



## R-T-B (Dec 22, 2019)

Aquinus said:


> It wasn't when I tried a few months ago. I got the launcher to open and the application to begin starting, but that was all. I'm totally going to figure out if that's true *right now*.
> 
> Edit: It still doesn't work for me, but I've also fiddled with the game a lot in order to try to get it to start. I might need to wipe the WINE config for it and try again.



I had it working months ago too but there were issues on planet surfaces.  My only guess is something with your distros config...  keep in mind the launcher is a .net mixed code nightmare and needs a lot of hackery via winetricks.

I also may have used proton, will find out shortly.


----------



## lexluthermiester (Dec 22, 2019)

R-T-B said:


> The luck has more to do with how good the implementation of DX on Vulkan is now...  I have heard good things though.


Oh, I get you now! Can't remember where, but I've read the same thing.


----------



## R-T-B (Dec 22, 2019)

Hey lookie it's a desktop:






I know some of you will say "ewww, KDE!" but honestly, it's not bad anymore (yes, it used to be awful).  They've fixed it up a ton and I like it now.  Gnome went to trash, anyways.

That's me fighting with a wine emerge in the background.  Still a lot to do...  I haven't even got steam on yet and it's Sunday.  Dem source based installs...


----------



## lexluthermiester (Dec 23, 2019)

R-T-B said:


> I know some of you will say "ewww, KDE!"


Why? I like KDE. Never had a problem with it. Of course I'm one of those open minded types who look at different GUI's and thinks there is always someone who will like one or another and that's cool, to each there own. I personally lean toward XFCE, but I can happily use any of them.


----------



## R-T-B (Dec 23, 2019)

lexluthermiester said:


> Why? I like KDE. Never had a problem with it. Of course I'm one of those open minded types who look at different GUI's and thinks there is always someone who will like one of another and that's cool, to each there own. I personally lean toward XFCE, but I can happily use any of them.



KDE was much more bloated in the past.  Sure, it had a lot of cool functions, but i couldn't use it until recently.

Just my opinion.  I love what it is now.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Dec 23, 2019)

R-T-B said:


> KDE was much more bloated in the past.  Sure, it had a lot of cool functions, but i couldn't use it until recently.
> 
> Just my opinion.  I love what it is now.



It was debloated compared to xfce.

I may start using a distro myself or reactOS or arcaos


----------



## Solaris17 (Dec 23, 2019)

R-T-B said:


> I know some of you will say "ewww, KDE!"



nah bro, I like KDE. always use it with my suse installs.


----------



## R-T-B (Dec 23, 2019)

eidairaman1 said:


> It was debloated compared to xfce.
> 
> I may start using a distro myself or reactOS or arcaos



Yeah, can't deny xfce is superfast, but with an 8-core, I figured I could run something a tad bit heavier.


----------



## lexluthermiester (Dec 23, 2019)

R-T-B said:


> KDE was much more bloated in the past.


Guess I never noticed. I've always had beefier machines to run Linux on.


----------



## R-T-B (Dec 23, 2019)

I mean the last time I properly ran it was KDE 4 (not even plasma) so I may be out of date by like, a decade too.


----------



## VulkanBros (Dec 23, 2019)

Can Proton run on any Linux distro? Or is there a "favorite" distro to use with Proton?


----------



## Aquinus (Dec 23, 2019)

VulkanBros said:


> Can Proton run on any Linux distro? Or is there a "favorite" distro to use with Proton?


Really just any distro that can run Steam. I've always used Ubuntu because most things just support it. Granted you need to makes sure that you have all of the vulkan libraries installed, but that's about it.


----------



## VulkanBros (Dec 23, 2019)

I'll try ReactOS, although it is not Linux and still in alpha (the wiki says it has been in development since 1996, looooong alpha period )


----------



## Aquinus (Dec 23, 2019)

VulkanBros said:


> I'll try ReactOS, although it is not Linux and still in alpha (the wiki says it has been in development since 1996, looooong alpha period )


You can, but just keep in mind that it's intended to be a replacement for Windows and is kind of behind the curve in a lot of respects. I'm surprised that they're still pushing it forward.

This is the way I look at ReactOS. It's kind of like those smartphones that were trying to be both a phone and a tablet, but ended up doing neither well. If I'm going to be brutally honest, you're better off just going with well-supported Linux distro or just using Windows.


----------



## birdie (Dec 23, 2019)

Easy Rhino said:


> I am curious to know if anyone considers themselves more than just a light gamer and also a full time linux user. I can't seem to make the full time jump because too many games that I *might* play rely on .NET. I know Steam is pushing their new wrapper but still...



I've been a full time Linux user for over 20 years now but I game exclusively in Windows.

Even when native games are available for Linux they still don't feel/play like they feel/play in Windows for some reasons. I can't quite explain that but the feeling is there. Either it's down to latency, mouse sensitivity or something else.

Also, the number of triple-A games for Linux is just abysmally low and while Proton/Wine/DXVK exist, they incur quite a hefty performance loss and many games still don't work any in shape or form under them.

Proper performance/hardware monitoring and under/overclocking on Linux are just not there and most likely never will be.

Lastly, under Windows you have Fraps/HWiNFO64/MSI Afterburner/etc. and they just work. On Linux you don't have anything which can show an FPS counter in all games and I don't even want to talk about GPU/CPU use HUD. There's just nothing.

And don't get me started on everything else which is either broken, missing or doesn't work.


----------



## Aquinus (Dec 23, 2019)

birdie said:


> Also, the number of triple-A games for Linux is just abysmally low and while Proton/Wine/DXVK exist, they incur quite a hefty performance loss and many games still don't work any in shape or form under them.


Depends on the game. DOOM has almost native performance for me and I'll happily take a performance hit so I don't need to run Windows.


birdie said:


> Proper performance/hardware monitoring and under/overclocking on Linux are just not there and most likely never will be.


Tell that to radeontop, lm-sensors and overclocking via pp_od_clk_voltage with amdgpu. Only thing that's faky is altering voltages on my particular Vega 64, a problem that not many other people seem to have I might add. Otherwise, it works just fine and I have no problem using a terminal to do these things and I have a bash script for applying my overclock.


birdie said:


> Lastly, under Windows you have Fraps/HWiNFO64/MSI Afterburner/etc. and they just work. On Linux you don't have anything which can show an FPS counter in all games and I don't even want to talk about GPU/CPU use HUD. There's just nothing.


Not having an overlay from something like FRAPS really had zero impact on me choosing to not use Windows, but to each their own.


birdie said:


> And don't get me started on everything else which is either broken, missing or doesn't work.


Sure. It's definitely not perfect but that's not the point. It's _good enough_ where I was able to ditch Windows and not look back. Granted, I don't spend most of my time on my machine playing games, so gaming performance has always been a secondary concern for me. I used to dual boot with WIndows for the same reason and I cut my losses when a botched Windows 10 upgrade (for a second time,) caused Linux to not boot either because the NTFS partition on my RAID-5 didn't like getting mounted after an unclean shutdown and fixing that took WAY longer than it should have.

Since then I made the active decision to exclusively use Linux regardless of the gaming experience and that was the price I was willing to pay to cast off the shackles of WIndows. That's a cost that some people aren't willing to pay, but to me it's worth it. Now it's one OS for everything I do and to me, that's worth it. I'll be the first to admit that it's not for everyone and that my case is the exception, not the rule.

With that said, I dev in Linux and I run Ubuntu 18.04 on my work laptop as well, there is always that. So it's not like I'm an average user.


----------



## birdie (Dec 23, 2019)

What's extremely annoying about Linux fans is that they will always weasel their way into saying that Linux is decent despite _numerous_ showstoppers. And this shat, called _"radeontop, lm-sensors and overclocking via pp_od_clk_voltage with amdgpu ... a bash script for applying my overclock"_ - 99.9% of people will just look at you in utter awe and tell you to <swear> off. In Windows you just install and play. In Linux you have to break your neck reaching half the usability and applicability and you also have to devote long hours into sorting everything out.

I don't know how much your time costs but considering that a Windows license (Windows 8 Pro) can be bought for as little as $10 from eBay, I'd say that using Linux is just not worth it unless gaming for you is _playing a small number of carefully selected games for the rest of your life_.

And to this day I haven't heard one half-decent argument against using Windows. Spying/tracking? FFS, there are multiple Windows utilities which will erase all spying entirely. Also, how many of you, privacy related geeks, don't use a smartphone or any cell phone for that matter since cellular operators are known to be tracking you all the time? What about numerous social network accounts you're using like Google, Facebook, Twitter and others which follow you on the net? OK, you don't have any of that and you are such an anti-geek, you only have a landline. What about all your friends who don't give a damn about privacy and who have your number in their contacts?

I'm sorry if I've come off rude. It wasn't my intent - I just wanted to be straightforward, honest and blunt.


----------



## R-T-B (Dec 23, 2019)

birdie said:


> Even when native games are available for Linux they still don't feel/play like they feel/play in Windows for some reasons. I can't quite explain that but the feeling is there. Either it's down to latency, mouse sensitivity or something else.



vkdx has really changed things IMO.  I'd have agreed with you even a year ago.  It's amazing what I am experiencing right now, it's a near equal experience when it works (and it usually does).

I'm presently running the windows version of Ark as an example  because it runs better than the OpenGL linux native build, lol.

I will post some benches shortly.


birdie said:


> In Windows you just install and play. In Linux you have to break your neck reaching half the usability and applicability and you also have to devote long hours into sorting everything out.



If I care'd, I'd not have choose Gentoo.

That said, I'm sure it could be fixed to be as idiot ready in the OC department if someone devoted enough time.  Some have already tried, but they are missing the point a bit, IMO.

Either way, I got OC working with a simple x flag on nvidia.  Haven't set it yet, but it's there.  Fan speed control in another tab, too.  Just in the driver.  Too bad it doesn't support wayland, but that's on nvidia:







birdie said:


> There are multiple Windows utilities which will erase all spying entirely



Yeah, kinda more like.  The traffic still talks, it depends on host file edits.  I just like an OS that does what I want, ethically speaking.  Novel idea, I know.


----------



## Aquinus (Dec 23, 2019)

birdie said:


> What's extremely annoying about Linux fans is that they will always weasel their way into saying that Linux is decent despite _numerous_ showstoppers. And this shat, called _"radeontop, lm-sensors and overclocking via pp_od_clk_voltage with amdgpu ... a bash script for applying my overclock"_ - 99.9% of people will just look at you in utter awe and tell you to <swear> off. In Windows you just install and play. In Linux you have to break your neck reaching half the usability and applicability and you also have to devote long hours into sorting everything out.


Sure, but that's not where I'm coming from. As I said:


Aquinus said:


> I'll be the first to admit that it's not for everyone and that my case is the exception, not the rule.





birdie said:


> And to this day I haven't heard one half-decent argument against using Windows.


You mean other than automated upgrades bricking my installation twice before I jumped ship? I didn't have an issue with Windows 10 most of the time, it's just when I did that the consequences were huge.


R-T-B said:


> Yeah, kinda more like. The traffic still talks, it depends on host file edits. I just like an OS that does what I want, ethically speaking. Novel idea, I know.


This. It's actually part of the reason why I use AMD for GPUs as well. I also like being able to make my machine behave exactly the way I want it to, but I'm weird like that.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Dec 23, 2019)

Aquinus said:


> You can, but just keep in mind that it's intended to be a replacement for Windows and is kind of behind the curve in a lot of respects. I'm surprised that they're still pushing it forward.
> 
> This is the way I look at ReactOS. It's kind of like those smartphones that were trying to be both a phone and a tablet, but ended up doing neither well. If I'm going to be brutally honest, you're better off just going with well-supported Linux distro or just using Windows.



Windows 10 and 8 come to mind for that



Aquinus said:


> Sure, but that's not where I'm coming from. As I said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I noticed firmware updates are coming through WUD, thats another sin ms has committed


----------



## Aquinus (Dec 23, 2019)

eidairaman1 said:


> I noticed firmware updates are coming through WUD, thats another sin ms has committed


Nah. I get firmware updates just from `sudo apt upgrade`'ing my machine. Honestly, firmware updates aren't bad. What's "bad" (depending on how you look at it,) is how Intel's can harm performance to patch vulnerabilities. That's not a firmware or MS problem, that's an Intel problem.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Dec 23, 2019)

Aquinus said:


> Nah. I get firmware updates just from `sudo apt upgrade`'ing my machine. Honestly, firmware updates aren't bad. What's "bad" (depending on how you look at it,) is how Intel's can harm performance to patch vulnerabilities. That's not a firmware or MS problem, that's an Intel problem.



The last firmware update for a notebook of mine forced w10 into S mode which i didnt know about till i couldnt open a pdf reader.

W7 or Linux for me since They wont fix W10.


----------



## R-T-B (Dec 23, 2019)

Aquinus said:


> This. It's actually part of the reason why I use AMD for GPUs as well. I also like being able to make my machine behave exactly the way I want it to, but I'm weird like that.



Yeah if they had a GPU that was high end flagship-grade I'd probably go back next upgrade.

Ironic, it used to be AMD's drivers were the worst in Linux, but that was back when they were binary only.  Now NVIDIA's are worse just by virtue of being binary (mind you, they are still pretty darn good binary)


----------



## Aquinus (Dec 23, 2019)

R-T-B said:


> Ironic, it used to be AMD's drivers were the worst in Linux, but that was back when they were binary only. Now NVIDIA's are worse just by virtue of being binary (mind you, they are still pretty darn good binary)


Oh yeah, they're damn good drivers. It's more of a moral decision than anything else for me.


----------



## R-T-B (Dec 23, 2019)

Aquinus said:


> Oh yeah, they're damn good drivers. It's more of a moral decision than anything else for me.



That, and you can run Wayland, which nvidia is being a total butt about...


----------



## Aquinus (Dec 23, 2019)

R-T-B said:


> That, and you can run Wayland, which nvidia is being a total butt about...


I still use X. 

When push comes to shove, I haven't seen any performance metrics that would warrant a switch, particularly if some applications don't jive well with Wayland yet. I'll sometimes use it on my laptop for work... until it gives me a reason to switch back to X.


----------



## birdie (Dec 23, 2019)

I have friends for whom I installed Windows 7 back when it was first released and they are still running it without a single issue. It's been like ... 10 years? Year, right, a little bit more than that.

Yes, you need to be somewhat careful with applications/drivers/AV in Windows but if you're, then there are no issues to speak of. And no one is forcing you to use Windows 10 anyways - Windows 8 will be supported for three more years.

(Again, when arguing with me remember that I've been using Linux exusively (aside from gaming) for over 20 years already - I do understand all the Linux issues all too well).


----------



## R-T-B (Dec 23, 2019)

Aquinus said:


> I still use X.
> 
> When push comes to shove, I haven't seen any performance metrics that would warrant a switch, particularly if some applications don't jive well with Wayland yet. I'll sometimes use it on my laptop for work... until it gives me a reason to switch back to X.



Good to know.  I mean, who doesn't like badmouthing what they can't have?  I am down with this.


----------



## Aquinus (Dec 24, 2019)

birdie said:


> I have friends for whom I installed Windows 7 back when it was first released and they are still running it without a single issue. It's been like ... 10 years? Year, right, a little bit more than that.
> 
> Yes, you need to be somewhat careful with applications/drivers/AV in Windows but if you're, then there are no issues to speak of. And no one is forcing you to use Windows 10 anyways - Windows 8 will be supported for three more years.
> 
> (Again, when arguing with me remember that I've been using Linux exusively (aside from gaming) for over 20 years already - I do understand all the Linux issues all too well).


Nah, that's okay. I'm happy with Ubuntu and I have no plans on going back. I've been using it since 8.04 and before that I was using Gentoo. Not exclusively because I was way more committed to gaming back then. I started using it exclusively (including for games,) 4 years ago or so.

Look, this isn't a pissing contest. I really don't care if someone has been using it for 20 years or 20 days and I'm sure you'd agree with me that the experience now is far better than it was even 10 years ago, but I've actively gone down this road for what I consider important which is very different than the average user and I've tried to spell that out. Most of what I do now is light gaming, development work, browsing the web, watching videos, and listening to music. I would hope you'd agree with me that Linux is more than adequate for those purposes. Even out of the box, Ubuntu isn't bad. It's not like i need Padoka or Oibaf's PPAs to do my thing or mainline kernels with the latest AMDGPU goodness and most of the time I don't even overclock the GPU. Hell, the only reason I overclock the CPU is because I'm too cheap to invest in a new machine.

So when arguing with me, remember that what I consider to be important is different than what you consider to be important... and that I've been using it for ~15 years.


----------



## R-T-B (Dec 24, 2019)

Meh, I've had a gentoo box that ran near a decade.  The wiki crash kinda made it stagnate though.  But what did I care, it was essentially an NAS anyhow.

Not my longest running rig, that goes to an old OS/2 system that's still able to boot to this day.  Not that it does anything but play old dos games, heh.


----------



## R-T-B (Dec 26, 2019)

Short story of my current after-christmas experience is it's going well.

I installed my first steam game today, Deep Rock Galactic.  It ran at 60FPS vsync'd the whole time, even when that Nyaka Trawler grabbed me.  I was playing multiplayer too.






Now to try the rest of my library...  got my work cut out for me:





That list scrolls down for a few pages.  I'll report back with the heavy hitters.  My expectation is that most will work other than maybe cutscenes in the few that use Windows Media Foundation, which currently seems broken (being worked on).


----------



## johnspack (Dec 27, 2019)

Did some more testing,  like to have at least 10 linux distros in vms heh...  found that opensuse is very easy to  add wine to.  1 single deb file to install,  and you have full wine.  Isn't this what ppl
keep biotching about?  http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/x86_64/  for Tumbleweed for example.  http://download.opensuse.org/reposi...bleweed/x86_64/wine-5.0~rc2-1078.1.x86_64.rpm  will install full wine.  Nothing else to do.  I still prefer ubuntu,  as it is far more configurable,  and far more is available for it.  But the wine is harder to install....


----------



## Aquinus (Dec 27, 2019)

R-T-B said:


> Good to know.  I mean, who doesn't like badmouthing what they can't have?  I am down with this.


So, I decided to try using it again at work and instantly the first thing I noticed was that redshift stopped worked working which is really important when I'm in the office because I have two of those 5k LGs that are insanely bright.  


johnspack said:


> Did some more testing,  like to have at least 10 linux distros in vms heh...  found that opensuse is very easy to  add wine to.  1 single deb file to install,  and you have full wine.  Isn't this what ppl
> keep biotching about?  http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/x86_64/  for Tumbleweed for example.  http://download.opensuse.org/reposi...bleweed/x86_64/wine-5.0~rc2-1078.1.x86_64.rpm  will install full wine.  Nothing else to do.  I still prefer ubuntu,  as it is far more configurable,  and far more is available for it.  But the wine is harder to install....


I've found that Wine's apt source is finicky at best in Ubuntu. Once it's installed though, it works pretty well but it can easily turn into mismanaged dependency nightmare.


----------



## johnspack (Dec 28, 2019)

Aquinius,  can you elaborate on the winehq implementation  for ubuntu that you find difficult?  I have used winehq to install to probably  dozens of ubuntu installs at this point.  It installs perfectly,  it configures perfectly,  and runs anything I can throw at it.  It takes about 3 minutes to copy and paste text from the winehq  ubuntu repository page to  a term box,  and you are running wine!  I simply don't understand the difficulty.  And no,  don't use ubuntu's wine,  go to  winehq.org for your wine.


----------



## R-T-B (Dec 28, 2019)

I had to give in.  For now.  I'll certainly be back.  Right now Windows is being regretfully reloaded...

Mind you, not because of any GAME issue (they all worked more or less fine).

Why?  Ask Easy AntiCheat.  Damn that thing.  If you want to game with your friends on Linux it will kill all your hopes and dreams.


----------



## Aquinus (Dec 28, 2019)

johnspack said:


> Aquinius,  can you elaborate on the winehq implementation  for ubuntu that you find difficult?  I have used winehq to install to probably  dozens of ubuntu installs at this point.  It installs perfectly,  it configures perfectly,  and runs anything I can throw at it.  It takes about 3 minutes to copy and paste text from the winehq  ubuntu repository page to  a term box,  and you are running wine!  I simply don't understand the difficulty.  And no,  don't use ubuntu's wine,  go to  winehq.org for your wine.


I've had issues where some of the multiarch 32-bit dependencies clashed with the ones already installed and apt complained about an impossible situation with respect to resolving package dependencies.


----------



## JoeyJoeJoe (Jan 14, 2020)

I myself have used linux since 2013 quite a lot, then went back to Windows for a few years, then back to linux in late 2018, and have barely touched Windows, and I consider myself more than a light gamer. I'm playing through shadow of the tomb raider, and it's great.


----------



## R-T-B (Jan 20, 2020)

I threw my last easy-anticheat game under the bus and am going full linux again.  Got an Navi to play with now too, heh.

I'm assuming I should use amdgpu, and not amdgpu-pro, correct?  Better performance and all that?


----------



## GoldenX (Jan 20, 2020)

Yes, stick to amdgpu (radeon) as much as possible. amdgpu-pro is only intended for professional apps.
You will have to pick which vulkan driver use thou, you have radv and amdvlk.


----------



## R-T-B (Jan 20, 2020)

GoldenX said:


> Yes, stick to amdgpu (radeon) as much as possible. amdgpu-pro is only intended for professional apps.
> You will have to pick which vulkan driver use thou, you have radv and amdvlk.



and what's the difference between them exactly?

*googles*

Looks like amdvlk is amds open-source baby, while radv is fully OSS-community work and integrated with mesa.

Definitely looks like radv is better in benches.  Going with it first.


----------



## Aquinus (Jan 20, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> and what's the difference between them exactly?


AMDGPU Pro has some proprietary stuff when it comes to OpenGL 4.5+, but the actual kernel driver is more or less the same. The last time I used it was when I couldn't get AMDGPU to work on my older 390 until experimental support was released. With my Vega, I've had zero reason to use anything other than the OSS driver and stack. I use RADV because it's the least amount of work and it seems to work well enough. I've also heard good things about the ACO backend though.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/1640915206474070669/?l=czech&ctp=5


----------



## GoldenX (Jan 20, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> and what's the difference between them exactly?
> 
> *googles*
> 
> ...


radv should be the obvious choice, but it has missing stuff that may break some games, amdvlk while it is slower, it's on parity with the windows driver. So pick your poison.


----------



## R-T-B (Jan 20, 2020)

GoldenX said:


> radv should be the obvious choice, but it has missing stuff that may break some games, amdvlk while it is slower, it's on parity with the windows driver. So pick your poison.



Good to know, appreciate the advice.


----------



## biffzinker (Jan 20, 2020)

What's the current driver situation for Nvidia's cards? Which driver would you pick?


----------



## R-T-B (Jan 20, 2020)

biffzinker said:


> What's the current driver situation for Nvidia's cards? Which driver would you pick?



The binary nvidia driver, usually whatever latest edition of that your distro offers.  Later tends to be assumed by games.

Being an open source advocate, I'm somewhat upset that nvidias driver is binary only.  But on the bright side, it is pretty dang good.


----------



## Aquinus (Jan 20, 2020)

biffzinker said:


> What's the current driver situation for Nvidia's cards? Which driver would you pick?


nVidia's proprietary drivers have always been pretty good so long as you're not using a bleeding edge kernel (but even that has improved.)


GoldenX said:


> radv should be the obvious choice, but it has missing stuff that may break some games, amdvlk while it is slower, it's on parity with the windows driver. So pick your poison.


What issues have you had with it? I haven't had issues with radv for quite a while. For me, it has been very stable.


----------



## R-T-B (Jan 20, 2020)

Update:  X is running.  No wayland, I'm still too confused by it.  Now Plasma.

I feel like I just did this gentoo install...  lol.  Need to make up my mind for good.

BTW the last EAC game was "Vermintide 2."  It ran without EAC in non-loot modrealm.  Shame.


----------



## GoldenX (Jan 20, 2020)

Aquinus said:


> nVidia's proprietary drivers have always been pretty good so long as you're not using a bleeding edge kernel (but even that has improved.)
> 
> What issues have you had with it? I haven't had issues with radv for quite a while. For me, it has been very stable.


Mostly a corner case, but for yuzu, it lacks some critical extensions like VK_KHR_16bit_storage and VK_KHR_8bit_storage.


----------



## Darmok N Jalad (Jan 21, 2020)

I’ve thought of going back to Mint. I’ve gotten quite used to using Darktable for my photo needs. What would be the best way to go about OpenCL implementation? I previously had trouble getting it going, and I killed X once trying to upgrade GPU drivers for my RX 570.


----------



## R-T-B (Jan 21, 2020)

Darmok N Jalad said:


> I’ve thought of going back to Mint. I’ve gotten quite used to using Darktable for my photo needs. What would be the best way to go about OpenCL implementation? I previously had trouble getting it going, and I killed X once trying to upgrade GPU drivers for my RX 570.



Well considering the drivers are open source now really, you don't "update" the drivers so much as just update your kernel.

Pretty hard to forget that.  If you're installing a "driver" you are probably doing something wrong, nowadays.

Yes, for the tech minded amongst us:  I am aware there are other components.  But my point was no binary driver download to kill your install.


----------



## Darmok N Jalad (Jan 21, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> Well considering the drivers are open source now really, you don't "update" the drivers so much as just update your kernel.
> 
> Pretty hard to forget that.  If you're installing a "driver" you are probably doing something wrong, nowadays.
> 
> Yes, for the tech minded amongst us:  I am aware there are other components.  But my point was no binary driver download to kill your install.


Last I tried, the AMDGPU-pro drivers were needed to get OpenCL working, which is very beneficial in Darktable. I'm not sure if it's technically a driver, but AMD had updated this, so I followed their instructions to uninstall and then install the updated version. This is when it fell apart. If OpenCL was available from the start, I would have left the default drivers in place.


----------



## GoldenX (Jan 21, 2020)

Darmok N Jalad said:


> Last I tried, the AMDGPU-pro drivers were needed to get OpenCL working, which is very beneficial in Darktable. I'm not sure if it's technically a driver, but AMD had updated this, so I followed their instructions to uninstall and then install the updated version. This is when it fell apart. If OpenCL was available from the start, I would have left the default drivers in place.


In case of doubt, always check the arch wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GPGPU#AMD/ATI
You have several options, including the open ROCm, which is compatible with Polaris/GCN4. That one should be the best one.


----------



## R-T-B (Jan 21, 2020)

GoldenX said:


> In case of doubt, always check the arch wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GPGPU#AMD/ATI
> You have several options, including the open ROCm, which is compatible with Polaris/GCN4. That one should be the best one.



Anything bad about me just having choosen the mesa stack for OpenCL on Gentoo?

Bear in mind, my only use case for OpenCL is for a limited wine-based gaming role:  Wine+Elite Dangerous aparently depends on OpenCL or something for Horizons support.  I believe it's being used to compute a terrain shader or something.


----------



## GoldenX (Jan 21, 2020)

Not much, but the mesa one is really lacking in stability for what i tested. If it works, just leave it.


----------



## R-T-B (Jan 21, 2020)

Lol, haven't found out yet.  I'll keep ROCm in mind as a fallback for when it doesn't work.

If it can do just this one thing, couldn't care less really.

Next update, guess who's using ROCm due to graphics glitches like voxels jutting into space on planets?


----------



## R-T-B (Jan 27, 2020)

So wine-tkg...

How did this stay hidden from me for so long?  It's like, my thing now.  I will use this.  Even if it sucks.  Because it's for frogs...


----------



## SomeOne99h (Mar 27, 2020)

27 March - *Steam Client Update Released

Linux*

Disabled CEF keyring integration by default. The -enable-keyring option can be passed to the Steam client to reinstate it.
Fix race condition that could cause some Proton-enabled games to redownload
Fixed Big Picture Mode on-screen keyboard not popping up when clicking on text fields with Touch Screen Mode enabled
Fixed Big Picture Mode on-screen Keyboard not allowing more than 3 clicks on a key in quick succession with mouse/touch input
Fixed a client crash occasionally happening while iterating directories
Fixes to Steam overlay for titles that use XInput2

*Linux Steam runtime 0.20200318.1*

*Updated to latest version of libvulkan*
Added exports for more WSI functions for Proton
Improved runtime diagnostic tools


----------



## cjcox (Mar 27, 2020)

My desktop (several over the years) is Linux has been for 20+ years.   I don't game 24x7 like many.  But obviously, it is my primary rig.

Currently an HZ840 with a Quadro K5200 using openSUSE LEAP 15.1.  Works fine for what I do and the games I play.


----------



## johnspack (Apr 1, 2020)

Well,  do almost all my gaming under linux now...  running Kubuntu 20.04,  which by the way stays up to date on nvidia drivers.  Newest nvidia drivers auto installed with control panel ect.  I only reboot to win 8.1 from time to time to fly Flying Circus,  but I expect I'll get it to run under linux soon with the way wine is progressing.


----------



## Zedicus (Apr 10, 2020)

as a (previous) linux gamer i always used PlayOnLinux. it was an amazing wrapper and looks like it is still active even today.


----------



## WyCKyD (Apr 25, 2020)

I am a full-time Linux user and gamer. With Steam and Lutris, you can play most titles with little to no configuration needed. I even use PlayOnLinux to play certain titles.


----------



## remixedcat (Apr 26, 2020)

Easy Rhino said:


> I am curious to know if anyone considers themselves more than just a light gamer and also a full time linux user. I can't seem to make the full time jump because too many games that I *might* play rely on .NET. I know Steam is pushing their new wrapper but still...


My hubby and soon to be me switching full time to Linux. Sick of windows.


----------



## R-T-B (Apr 26, 2020)

remixedcat said:


> My hubby and soon to be me switching full time to Linux. Sick of windows.



Couldn't be a much better time to do so.

If it were not for work I'd be there already.


----------



## remixedcat (Apr 26, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> Couldn't be a much better time to do so.
> 
> If it were not for work I'd be there already.


Win 10 makes me stabby AF. Mint Linux makes me feel ok


----------



## R-T-B (Apr 26, 2020)

remixedcat said:


> Win 10 makes me stabby AF. Mint Linux makes me feel ok



I get stabby every time update season for 10 rolls around.


----------



## SomeOne99h (Apr 26, 2020)

Easy Rhino said:
			
		

> I am curious to know if anyone considers themselves more than just a light gamer and also a full time linux user. I can't seem to make the full time jump because too many games that I *might* play rely on .NET. I know Steam is pushing their new wrapper but still...


I am not sure about it, but maybe *Mono* is an alternative to Microsoft .NET and is cross-platform so you can install it in Linux. R-T-B and everyone, could this help Easy Rhino?





						Home | Mono
					






					www.mono-project.com


----------



## R-T-B (Apr 26, 2020)

SomeOne99h said:


> I am not sure about it, but maybe *Mono* is an alternative to Microsoft .NET and is cross-platform so you can install it in Linux. R-T-B and everyone, could this help Easy Rhino?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Mono is basically a dead project right now, and it's winforms support (what you want for .net) is meh.  It's not very helpful really for anything greater than a .net 2.0 app, maybe.

You can install .net 4.5 in wine with mixed results.  It's hacky and weird but it usually works.


----------



## SomeOne99h (Apr 29, 2020)

Thanks R-T-B for the info!. Rest in peace Mono I guess  
*28-April Steam update:* *Container runtime: better support for newer glibc versions and Arch glibc configuration.* and other suff.


----------



## R-T-B (Apr 30, 2020)

SomeOne99h said:


> Thanks R-T-B for the info!. Rest in peace Mono I guess
> *28-April Steam update:* *Container runtime: better support for newer glibc versions and Arch glibc configuration.* and other suff.



It's technically still alive, but the progress is abysmal since MS aquired Xamarin and monetary resources kinda dried up.  Sad, yes.


----------



## R-T-B (Jun 17, 2020)

I've been gaming on a linux install this past month on my second machine with good results.

I don't have time for a full Gentoo setup like I wish I did, so it's just Kubuntu for now.  It's been working well now, and my friends have stopped playing Vermintide 2, so EAC is no longer a blocker for me...


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 18, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> so it's just Kubuntu for now.


That's a very solid distro. Arguably better than Gentoo. Mint, however, is the shizznit....


----------



## R-T-B (Jun 18, 2020)

lexluthermiester said:


> Arguably better than Gentoo.



No, not performance wise if you put the time in.  Nothing beats compiling from source to the target hardware.  But it takes so damn long.


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 18, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> No, not performance wise if you put the time in.  Nothing beats compiling from source to the target hardware.  But it takes so damn long.


While a valid point, very few people go to that much trouble. Have never done so myself, no desire to either. Standard distro installers are excellent these days.


----------



## R-T-B (Jun 18, 2020)

lexluthermiester said:


> While a valid point, very few people go to that much trouble.



You literally have to if you load gentoo.  There is no choice, nor installer.

It's not what you'd call a "normal" distro lol.


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 18, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> You literally have to if you load gentoo.  There is no choice, nor installer.
> 
> It's not what you'd call a "normal" distro lol.


That could be why I've never used it.. Only read about it in passing.


----------



## R-T-B (Jun 18, 2020)

lexluthermiester said:


> That could be why I've never used it.. Only read about it in passing.



It's sort of a "build your own distro" toolkit.  Hard to beat in performance but also hard to actually get working.


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 18, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> It's sort of a "build your own distro" toolkit.  Hard to beat in performance but also hard to actually get working.


Are you sure? Went looking to refresh my memory and...








						Downloads – Gentoo Linux
					

News and information from Gentoo Linux




					www.gentoo.org


----------



## Aquinus (Jun 18, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> It's sort of a "build your own distro" toolkit.  Hard to beat in performance but also hard to actually get working.


The payoff is also usually pretty minimal. I live in Linux and I'd be the first to tell you that it's not worth it. If you really need performance, just use Clear Linux. If you want something that is going to be on a server, us something like Ubuntu, but I don't think that you really need to compile everything from source. It's a lot of time for minimal gain (in my opinion.) Particularly when you have distros already tuned for performance (like Clear.)


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 18, 2020)

Aquinus said:


> If you really need performance, just use Clear Linux.


Haven't heard of that one before. Looks interesting. Thanks for mentioning it.


----------



## DrCR (Jun 18, 2020)

Clear Linux is a new one for me as well. Interesting that Intel decided they wanted their own distro.

For those interested:








						Linux distro review: Intel’s own Clear Linux OS
					

Clear Linux OS is the best benchmarking distro. But what's it like to live with?




					arstechnica.com
				








						Making The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X Run Even Faster - By Loading Up Intel's Clear Linux - Phoronix
					






					www.phoronix.com


----------



## R-T-B (Jun 18, 2020)

lexluthermiester said:


> Are you sure? Went looking to refresh my memory and...
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yep, that's just boot media.  It only gets you to a live command line to start the install on your own.  The process is basically extracting a stage tarball yourself into a disk that you partitioned yourself, and then editing a plethora of config files by hand just to get the thing to boot to a package manager-enabled command line.

They have a GUI download too, but it doesn't have an installer either.  Just enables you to read help docs while you work.

Here, have a looksie at the handbook:






						Gentoo AMD64 Handbook - Gentoo Wiki
					






					wiki.gentoo.org
				






Aquinus said:


> The payoff is also usually pretty minimal. I live in Linux and I'd be the first to tell you that it's not worth it.



If you mean from compile flags, I'd agree.
You get more from picking and choosing what goes into it and what features are on/off, what versions are used, etc.  Which is precisely why I don't have time for it, that's time consuming shit that you can get lost in.

But at any rate, at the end of the day I've reached the point where I just have to USE my computer, lol.  So yeah, what good is optimizing the heck out of it for an even (theoretical, not likely) 10% increase if you never get to use it?

So yeah, I agree completely from the point of view of compile flags, and mostly alltogether agree unless you have excess time and nothing better to do.


----------



## Solaris17 (Jun 18, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> No, not performance wise if you put the time in.  Nothing beats compiling from source to the target hardware.  But it takes so damn long.



I miss gentoo performance, but man that install time like bruh.


----------



## R-T-B (Jun 18, 2020)

Solaris17 said:


> I miss gentoo performance, but man that install time like bruh.



It doesn't help that you are the installer, so you can't walk away either.

Yeah I miss Gentoo but I don't miss Gentoo, if you catch my meaning...


----------



## Solaris17 (Jun 18, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> It doesn't help that you are the installer, so you can't walk away either.
> 
> Yeah I miss Gentoo but I don't miss Gentoo, if you catch my meaning...


Yeah like I’ve mentioned earlier I’m a suse guy, and to be clear as I’m sure a bunch of people will itch to tear apart my previous comment.

I was agreeing to enforce the idea of gentoo performance, the reality is that in my opinion unless a specific application is needed (scientific) then another distro is more or less totally fine. as the performance differences in any user scenario would likely be negligible.

gentoo is an OS for purpose I wouldn’t say it’s a stretch of the imagination to think most of the username was lost during the install process.


----------



## R-T-B (Jun 18, 2020)

Solaris17 said:


> Yeah like I’ve mentioned earlier I’m a suse guy, and to be clear as I’m sure a bunch of people will itch to tear apart my previous comment.
> 
> I was agreeing to enforce the idea of gentoo performance, the reality is that in my opinion unless a specific application is needed (scientific) then another distro is more or less totally fine. as the performance differences in any user scenario would likely be negligible.
> 
> gentoo is an OS for purpose I wouldn’t say it’s a stretch of the imagination to think most of the username was lost during the install process.



Fun fact, Suse was actually my first linux I ever tried.  Because it was my first and I was coming from windows XP (this was like circa 2003-2004), I hated it.  Fortunately I got over that nearly 10 years later, and find it pretty nice today.

I just went with Kubuntu because I want a mostly bug free experience and let's face it, they got manpower.  It was that or redhat really and I can't stand redhat since a guy I hated back in highschool wouldn't shut up about it, so admitedly biased there.


----------



## Solaris17 (Jun 18, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> Fun fact, Suse was actually my first linux I ever tried.  Because it was my first and I was coming from windows XP (this was like circa 2003-2004), I hated it.  Fortunately I got over that nearly 10 years later, and find it pretty nice today.
> 
> I just went with Kubuntu because I want a mostly bug free experience and let's face it, they got manpower.  It was that or redhat really and I can't stand redhat since a guy I hated back in highschool wouldn't shut up about it, so admitedly biased there.



I can’t blame you I’m a KDE fanboi and conical has hella money to throw at consumer OS development, suse likes to play around in ent like rhel.

you take a look at budgie? That environment I honestly stumbled on by accident earlier this year. Gorgeous.









						Ubuntu Budgie
					

Ubuntu Budgie is a community developed distribution, integrating the Budgie Desktop Environment with Ubuntu at its core




					ubuntubudgie.org


----------



## johnspack (Jun 18, 2020)

Heh,  many years ago opensuse was my first taste of linux.  I did like it,  but it wasn't enough to wean me off windows.  It wasn't until windows 10,  and kubuntu arrived,  when I
knew I had to change.....


----------



## lexluthermiester (Jun 18, 2020)

johnspack said:


> Heh,  many years ago opensuse was my first taste of linux.  I did like it,  but it wasn't enough to wean me off windows.  It wasn't until windows 10,  and kubuntu arrived,  when I
> knew I had to change.....


You really should give a look at Mint;





						Home - Linux Mint
					

Linux Mint is an elegant, easy to use, up to date and comfortable desktop operating system.




					linuxmint.com
				



My personal fav is XFCE. Lean, clean and performs like Windows wishes it could.


----------



## R-T-B (Oct 20, 2020)

I thought I should check in.  I'm using Xubuntu at present to reduce the CPU load on my Kerbal Space Program game.  It works great.  I haven't used windows for gaming in months and have not missed anything much really either.

The only thing I feel Linux needs in the gaming department is HDR support, even though it's hit and miss in practice.  I still would like to see them attempt to do it.  But otherwise, one very happy froggy.


----------



## remixedcat (Oct 20, 2020)

lexluthermiester said:


> You really should give a look at Mint;
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Brought new life to my t430 Lenovo.


----------



## R-T-B (Oct 20, 2020)

remixedcat said:


> Brought new life to my t430 Lenovo.



XFCE is my new fave Desktop.  Not that KDE is bad, but XFCE has no business being that functional and fast.  It's like having your cake and eating it too.


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## DrCR (Oct 20, 2020)

I found Mint's QC to be slightly lacking. Ran it on a family computer for many years. Quirks like the random disabling a network printer persisted from release to release. Switched to straight Ubuntu this spring. All good now, as inconvenient as it was for the family to get a acclimated to the GUI change.

Using a XFCE Slackware-based distro for my personal daily driver. It's like a good Japanese car, gloriously boringly reliable. Ubuntu on a second distro for Steam and GOG gaming.


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## FinneousPJ (Oct 20, 2020)

DrCR said:


> I found Mint's QC to be slightly lacking. Ran it on a family computer for many years. Quirks like the random disabling a network printer persisted from release to release. Switched to straight Ubuntu this year. So far so good, as inconvenient as it was for the family to get a acclimated to the GUI change.
> 
> Using a XFCE Slackware-based distro for my personal daily driver. It's like a good Japanese car, gloriously boringly reliable. Ubuntu on a second distro for Steam and GOG gaming.


You can get cinnamon on ubuntu if they only care about the gui


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## remixedcat (Oct 20, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> XFCE is my new fave Desktop.  Not that KDE is bad, but XFCE has no business being that functional and fast.  It's like having your cake and eating it too.


Eeyup. Very stable too


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## Aquinus (Oct 20, 2020)

R-T-B said:


> HDR support


The 5.3 kernel added the kernel bits to support HDR in AMDGPU, but I don't know if there has been any movement in userspace code to support it. I don't think nVidia supports it at all though.


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## Sandbo (Oct 24, 2020)

I tried to be one, but there are many things that just won't work:
-Ray tracing games, in particular, I play minecraft a lot and am really looking forward to the upgrade
-Amazon. This company hates Linux and its HD audio and Prime Video HD will only work on Windows/mac. On linux you are stuck with SD.

I use ubuntu wherever I could (my office computer, my Proxmox VM workstation all runs ubuntu), but my home desktop which I rely on for entertainment unfortunately has to be goddamn windows.


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## R-T-B (Oct 24, 2020)

Sandbo said:


> Ray tracing games, in particular, I play minecraft a lot and am really looking forward to the upgrade



That's missing a functional API for it mostly.  Vulkan is really the only hope there.  You'll never get minecraft though, the ray tracing one is a Windows Store exclusive.



Sandbo said:


> Amazon. This company hates Linux and its HD audio and Prime Video HD will only work on Windows/mac. On linux you are stuck with SD.



Amazon actually loves linux, at least on their sever end.  The DRM is the issue there.  No one likes a platform they can't control, DRM wise.  Linux is just that.


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## Aquinus (Oct 24, 2020)

Sandbo said:


> -Amazon. This company hates Linux and its HD audio and Prime Video HD will only work on Windows/mac. On linux you are stuck with SD.


I never had any issue watching video on Prime in Linux to be honest. In fact my daughter uses my laptop with Ubuntu to watch video on Prime on a regular basis and it looks and behaves fine.


Sandbo said:


> -Ray tracing games, in particular, I play minecraft a lot and am really looking forward to the upgrade


The only way you're getting ray tracing is if you're in Windows 10 with the right updates and the right games. I know of no ray traced games support RT in Linux or OS X. They just don't exist and I can live with that.


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## Sandbo (Oct 25, 2020)

Aquinus said:


> I never had any issue watching video on Prime in Linux to be honest. In fact my daughter uses my laptop with Ubuntu to watch video on Prime on a regular basis and it looks and behaves fine.


Pretty sure you are watching in SD quality all along. You could look it up and see how people tried different ways to trick the browser but now nothing works, except maybe some customized media player (never tried).



R-T-B said:


> That's missing a functional API for it mostly.  Vulkan is really the only hope there.  You'll never get minecraft though, the ray tracing one is a Windows Store exclusive.
> 
> 
> 
> Amazon actually loves linux, at least on their sever end.  The DRM is the issue there.  No one likes a platform they can't control, DRM wise.  Linux is just that.


Basically everyone else uses Linux for servers LOL
Yes it's DRM, but I just want to point out Netflix has no problem showing HD content on Linux, but Amazon has this:




__





						Prime Video: Help
					






					www.primevideo.com
				





> Prime Video playback is supported on these web browsers. If you are running an operating system other than Windows or Mac OS, playback is restricted to standard definition.



update: on checking, for Netflix whether it plays HD on Linux is show-dependent, so it sucks too.


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## FinneousPJ (Oct 25, 2020)

Sandbo said:


> Pretty sure you are watching in SD quality all along. You could look it up and see how people tried different ways to trick the browser but now nothing works, except maybe some customized media player (never tried).
> 
> 
> Basically everyone else uses Linux for servers LOL
> ...


That's a bit odd. I would have guessed many smart TVs are running on Linux (kernel).


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## R-T-B (Oct 25, 2020)

Sandbo said:


> update: on checking, for Netflix whether it plays HD on Linux is show-dependent, so it sucks too.



It's all about whether the program requires HDCP 2.2 or not.  I don't think linux has that setup yet.



FinneousPJ said:


> That's a bit odd. I would have guessed many smart TVs are running on Linux (kernel).



They are but they also use signed kernels/bootloaders where they control what you can run.  This pleases them over an open ecosystem like PC.


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## Sandbo (Oct 25, 2020)

FinneousPJ said:


> That's a bit odd. I would have guessed many smart TVs are running on Linux (kernel).


I should have been more specific: It's linux PC that doesn't work. TV/Android Phone is not (necessarily) affected.


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