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And I'd love to avoid putting another layer between the games and the hardware if I have to. I remember using Wine. I agree, that makes perfect sense. and in

by Annatar 10y ago

And I'd love to avoid putting another layer between the games and the hardware if I have to. I remember using Wine. I agree, that makes perfect sense. and in any case I doubt they're good enough to get the games talking to my GPU properly. Now that's a whole different story: NVIDIA provides Solaris-native packages for their drivers, and they JustWork(SM). Way back in the day, NVIDIA engineers were stunned that they didn't have to produce a completely recompiled driver for every Solaris release: thanks to device driver interfaces/driver development kit[1], one could develop the driver on an ancient version of Solaris and have it work flawlessly on the latest-and-greatest one. When I wrote that I'm using Mac OS X, that was the truth, but it wasn't the entire truth: I am typing this on my intel-based workstation I put together myself, with Solaris 10 running on it. And it has an NVIDIA GTX 980 accelerator, the top of the line model one could buy at the end of 2014. Downloaded the driver from NVIDIA's site, installed it with pkgadd(1M), and it JustWorks(SM)[2]: > pkginfo -l NVDAgraphics NVDAgraphicsr PKGINST: NVDAgraphics NAME: NVIDIA Graphics System Software CATEGORY: system,graphics ARCH: i386 VERSION: 343.22,REV=2014.09.11.17.06 BASEDIR: /usr VENDOR: NVIDIA Corporation DESC: X and OpenGL Drivers for NVIDIA Quadro graphics INSTDATE: Dec 04 2014 22:37 HOTLINE: Please contact your local service provider STATUS: completely installed FILES: 188 installed pathnames 30 shared pathnames 2 linked files 42 directories 7 executables 405482 blocks used (approx) PKGINST: NVDAgraphicsr NAME: NVIDIA Graphics System Device Driver CATEGORY: system,graphics ARCH: i386 VERSION: 343.22,REV=2014.09.11.17.06 BASEDIR: / VENDOR: NVIDIA Corporation DESC: Kernel Drivers for NVIDIA Quadro graphics INSTDATE: Dec 04 2014 22:37 HOTLINE: Please contact your local service provider STATUS: completely installed FILES: 6 installed pathnames 3 shared pathnames 3 directories 52151 blocks used (approx) However, all of that is not to say you could play games on Solaris. If they were really optimized for Solaris, then they would fly, as Solaris is really, really, really fast, especially on intel. But since they aren't, and that's not realistic right now (and might never be realistic), I completely understand where you're coming from. As for Mac, OS X has plenty of major and indie titles in the Apple app store. But, it's for people who are actually willing to pay for that. [1] http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/816-4854/ http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19253-01/816-4854/ [2] http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/105347 http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/105347

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
I was really concerned with a) driver perf, and b) how the drivers worked in an LX-branded zone. Steam and the Humble Bundle will leave me set for games. And now, because you didn't ask for it, Game Reccomendations: Have you tried out TIS-100? You can get it through Steam, and maybe a few other places, it runs on Mac, and I'm willing to bet it'll run in an LX-brand. It bills itself as "the assembly language puzzler nobody asked for," and has a focus on minimal instruction count, maximum speed, and paralellism. You should know by this point if you're interested. You also may want to check out Xonotic, which is an arena FPS with a relatively lively community, which may compile on Solaris. Think a mixture of Quake and UT.
- Annatar 10y ago
  I didn't ask for it, but I love the clues you drop... "TIS-100"? "Xonotic"? My interest is further piqued, now I have to go and research... Apropos Qt, it is not for the faint of heart: even on platforms it officially supports, it is very hard to build, at least it was last I had to do it professionally, back in 2013. Qt is really unprofessional as a product, I remember it involved a lot of hacking and coercion of the build engine to get it to build. And it's monstrously large. Post scriptum: ah, "Xonotic" is a fork of "Nexuiz". Okay, that's clear now. "TIS-100" is a puzzle game. So these are individual titles, not technology which enables running on a different operating system. "The Ur-Quan Masters" used to build and run superbly on Solaris; it showcased just how good of a gaming platform Solaris could be if the code is good and clean. lx-brand could be made to work, this screenshot shows it's possible: https://www.perkin.org.uk/posts/whats-new-in-pkgsrc-2013Q2.html https://www.perkin.org.uk/posts/whats-new-in-pkgsrc-2013Q2.h... I haven't researched how to translate that into the lx-branded zone though (what the package equivalents would be), primarily because I viewed even the above as too much work: for example, the desktop would have to be brought over to somewhere with an X server. I don't see how it could be made to start on the bare metal's display when it's running in one of the hypervisor's zones?
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Yes, that's why I said game reccomendations. I've been meaning to check out UQM for a while now. Xonotic should run on Solaris. DarkPlaces, the engine codebase, is fairly portable last I checked. TIS-100 runs atop Mono, but it's probably not using GPU heavily, so it'll probably run in an LX brand if you can get X up and running. As for running X11 on LX, the answer is both simple in its phrasing and hellish in its implications: X Forwarding. I kid. Although it does seem like X forwarding is the easiest option. Luckily, you're not forwarding over the net, so you should be fine. But yeah, it's nice to have a simple discussion about running video games in ways not intended, and what games are good, after spending a while explaining why systemd is a bad idea for the 15th time, because some people are still taken in by the sparkly unit files, and aren't paying attention to the beast lurking below the surface. (If such people are reading this thread, I'll give you a hint: Separation of concerns is a good thing, and if the process will panic the kernel if it crashes, I want it doing the job it's required to do. AND NOTHING ELSE.)

by Annatar 10y ago

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

I was really concerned with a) driver perf, and b) how the drivers worked in an LX-branded zone. Steam and the Humble Bundle will leave me set for games. And now, because you didn't ask for it, Game Reccomendations: Have you tried out TIS-100? You can get it through Steam, and maybe a few other places, it runs on Mac, and I'm willing to bet it'll run in an LX-brand. It bills itself as "the assembly language puzzler nobody asked for," and has a focus on minimal instruction count, maximum speed, and paralellism. You should know by this point if you're interested. You also may want to check out Xonotic, which is an arena FPS with a relatively lively community, which may compile on Solaris. Think a mixture of Quake and UT.

Annatar 10y ago
I didn't ask for it, but I love the clues you drop... "TIS-100"? "Xonotic"? My interest is further piqued, now I have to go and research... Apropos Qt, it is not for the faint of heart: even on platforms it officially supports, it is very hard to build, at least it was last I had to do it professionally, back in 2013. Qt is really unprofessional as a product, I remember it involved a lot of hacking and coercion of the build engine to get it to build. And it's monstrously large. Post scriptum: ah, "Xonotic" is a fork of "Nexuiz". Okay, that's clear now. "TIS-100" is a puzzle game. So these are individual titles, not technology which enables running on a different operating system. "The Ur-Quan Masters" used to build and run superbly on Solaris; it showcased just how good of a gaming platform Solaris could be if the code is good and clean. lx-brand could be made to work, this screenshot shows it's possible: https://www.perkin.org.uk/posts/whats-new-in-pkgsrc-2013Q2.html https://www.perkin.org.uk/posts/whats-new-in-pkgsrc-2013Q2.h... I haven't researched how to translate that into the lx-branded zone though (what the package equivalents would be), primarily because I viewed even the above as too much work: for example, the desktop would have to be brought over to somewhere with an X server. I don't see how it could be made to start on the bare metal's display when it's running in one of the hypervisor's zones?
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Yes, that's why I said game reccomendations. I've been meaning to check out UQM for a while now. Xonotic should run on Solaris. DarkPlaces, the engine codebase, is fairly portable last I checked. TIS-100 runs atop Mono, but it's probably not using GPU heavily, so it'll probably run in an LX brand if you can get X up and running. As for running X11 on LX, the answer is both simple in its phrasing and hellish in its implications: X Forwarding. I kid. Although it does seem like X forwarding is the easiest option. Luckily, you're not forwarding over the net, so you should be fine. But yeah, it's nice to have a simple discussion about running video games in ways not intended, and what games are good, after spending a while explaining why systemd is a bad idea for the 15th time, because some people are still taken in by the sparkly unit files, and aren't paying attention to the beast lurking below the surface. (If such people are reading this thread, I'll give you a hint: Separation of concerns is a good thing, and if the process will panic the kernel if it crashes, I want it doing the job it's required to do. AND NOTHING ELSE.)