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Windows 11 is last in gaming performance tests against 3 Linux gaming distros
- wef223dfggg 3y agoHey Linux gurus, I think we don't have enough linux distros. 700 of them is just too low and WE NEED MORE!
- gumballindie 3y agoYup, let’s talk to the Linux CEO and complain about it.
- 0dayz 3y agoNo, no, we need to buy stocks in Linux Corp. So we become the major shareholders and now the cep had to listen, it's the Law!
- gumballindie 3y agoThis is the way. I am surprised some clever “entrepreneurs” didnt come up with an NFT or token to “trade” Linux.
- hyperman1 3y agoI agree, in fact. An ecosystem this varied is the best protection against the current monoculture. It requires software writers to write against a standard instead of 1 specific implementation that might not be viable next year. All sign point to windows 11 going insane. Still, you can't leave them. They're a prime example of too big to fail. I'd love to see 700 win32 API implementations.
- mvdtnz 3y agoWake me up when my sim racing peripherals work in Linux.
- maxhille 3y agoI do flight simming in Ubuntu and have zero Problems with my peripherals. I also have some USB devices which work out of the box whereas in Windows I have to install some crappy driver first. Not saying your stuff is well supported but if it isn't, a bit of work/code from your side could share benefits with all others.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoThey do work but often Steam Input messes them up.
- svapnil 3y ago[flagged]
- i80and 3y agoAs the article says, Proton was used. So no, it's not limited to natively ported games. Note that Starfield and Cyberpunk 2077 are named.
- sudosysgen 3y agoThey tested games through compatibility layers that nowadays work for the vast majority of games, unless the anticheat specifically stops it, and Linux with a compatibility layer was still faster than Windows.
- protonboy 3y agoThat's because it's not actually an (extra) compatibility layer. It's literally just an open-source implementation of the APIs/ABIs used to support gaming on Windows. While the implementation is different and may do things differently, the code doesn't fundamentally do more stuff.
- sudosysgen 3y agoThat's still a compatibility layer, though, because the windows API is implemented on top of the Linux/UNIX APIs/ABIs. If it wasn't a compatibility layer it would run on any OS. The code fundamentally does do more stuff because anything strictly OS related (by the standards of the host OS) has an additional layer of indirection. The fact that it's still faster is truly impressive.
- clouddrover 3y agoThey ran Windows binaries on Linux using Proton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(software) Windows software running better on Linux than on Windows itself is not a good look for Microsoft.
- Affric 3y agoThe summary includes no details of the testing methodology, just results. No hardware. No justification of the games. I love gaming on Arch. But I am stupid enough to use an nvidia card, which means that I have no Wayland. I am eating shit due to the drivers every few months. There are a whole host of good games with awful DRM that I can’t play. Steam is good but it’s still DRM. The summary provided article gives the vibe that it wants to pump up Linux’s tyres rather than either demonstrating Linux’s superiority or making the case that you should be gaming on Linux.
- shmerl 3y agoYou should be gaming on Linux, but you should be using AMD for it too :) GOG games are playable fine, you don't need Steam to play them.
- cassianoleal 3y ago> Steam is good but it’s still DRM. Yes, most games on Steam have DRM. Steam is not synonimous with DRM though. https://www.howtogeek.com/813209/psa-not-all-steam-games-have-drm-heres-how-to-tell/ https://www.howtogeek.com/813209/psa-not-all-steam-games-hav...
- m463 3y agoMany of those games are on GOG as well, which is drm-free. https://www.gog.com https://www.gog.com "DRM-free makes it easy to re-download games, back them up on external hard drives, and enjoy their single-player mode offline." I am very happy with gog. though not all games are on there, if they are, it is a no-brainer to get them there.
- pezezin 3y agoSteam is the only platform that provides a Linux client, and Valve has provided massive support to Linux with the development of Proton, SteamOS and the Steam Deck. I have bought a few games in GOG, but until the give us proper Linux support, I won't give them any money.
- shmerl 3y agoEven if it's not, performance gap is not significant to use Windows. Gaming on Linux never has been better.
- jeppester 3y agoExactly. Gaming performance is not a good reason to switch to Linux. But there are many other good reasons (for instance no ads and telemetry, and no continuous nagging to use Edge). Being able to get a respectable gaming experience will for many be the reason that they can stay in the OS that they prefer for other reasons.
- pjmlp 3y agoPlaying games developed and sold for Windows on Linux never has been better. While playing games developed and sold for Android/NDK or developed and sold for GNU/Linux isn't really a thing.
- lividly3529 3y agoA solid 20% of games in my steam library have Linux versions and many (tens of them!) were built for Linux first. Its way more common for indie/smaller dev strategy games though. Also have you seen the android gaming market cap? Depending who you trust most numbers I've seen have double the number of players on Android and iOS then Windows, Mac, and Linux combined and 3-5x the revenue.
- pjmlp 3y agoGiven the 2% from usual reports on Linux gaming versus the rest of gamming world, not really.
- lividly3529 3y agoI was saying for games I own. Not gamers I know. Either way Linux and MacOS have been growing thanks to the increased compatibility through proton, wine, and whiskey and when has increased compatibility ever been bad for the consumer? If I was to play a game or do my taxes why should I be forced to buy a Windows computer is I own a Mac? If I want to write programs or run LLMs why should I be forced to struggle through some obscure arcane Linux distro if I have a perfectly functional windows machine?
- gnabgib 3y agoPreviously: "Three gaming-focused Linux operating systems beat Windows 11 in gaming benchmark" (120 points, 95 comments, 3 days ago)[0] [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38510805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38510805
- footlose_3815 3y agoI use POP OS lately, and as much as I want it to succeed, it is unstable when running games. Civ6, random crashes. TF2? Random crashes. I really dislike Microsoft, but I'm mid-30s, and my whole life, the gaming support for Linux has been tangential at best. I want to convert to Linux fully, but I can't commit yet. It's still too unstable. I have a feeling I will die unhappy and unsatisfied with Microsoft's marketing's answer to graphics called DirectX.
- robertVance 3y agoFor civ 6 if you haven’t already try the proton version I’ve found it much more stable than native Linux.
- protonboy 3y agoI basically never run the native Linux versions anymore, Proton is always more stable and more performant. I think that's actually Valve recommendations to developers as well: don't bother with the fast-moving and always breaking APIs and ABIs of native Linux support, just make sure your game works well with Proton.
- mkozlows 3y agoThis is probably related to your hardware. I've been using Steam to play games -- Civ6, BG3, Pillars of Eternity -- and everything has worked fine across multiple computers and the Steam Deck. A big caveat here is that I've been using AMD everything, due to their Linux support being better, and also doing everything through Steam, because Valve makes stuff work well. I think that pre-Proton, Linux gaming was somewhat marginal -- some things worked, but a lot of AAA stuff didn't -- but these days, it's much, much better.
- footlose_3815 3y ago8th gen intel i7, RTX3070. It's aging a little, but it's about as standard as standard can get. I have dual monitors which might contribute to the complexity, but it's still a low bar to expect dual monitors to work on a gaming OS.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoHave to say it’s in no small thanks to Valve this is happening.
- adamrezich 3y agoI was initially skeptical of the effectiveness of their hedge against Windows but in the end, over time, it ended up being quite fruitful
- hx8 3y agoI am personally reaping the benefits of their labor. I do wonder how much business impact it has. The steam deck has sold about 1/10 of the units as the PS5. On Steam all Linux is 1.5% of users. I think the biggest business impact might be behind-the-scenes negotiations with Microsoft. Of course, this is a seed that might bare more profitable fruit in the future.
- lnxg33k1 3y agoI am not sure why you compare PS5 sales to Steam Deck, Playstation is a brand that has been around from the 90s, has been advertised left and right, and so is known in every angle of the world, and are not even the same format/segment, I'd compare Steam Deck sales to ASUS Rog Ally if anything, since they've been around for pretty much the same and have been advertised as much?
- hx8 3y agoI compared the Steam Deck to the current market leader in console sales.
- justinclift 3y agoDo Playstation still have a portable unit of some sort? Like the PSP used to be. If so, that's probably the thing to compare it against. :)
- qudat 3y agoI find the most brutal part about gaming on linux is not the performance once I'm in the game, but getting into the actual game. Launchers via Lutris (e.g. battle.net) take forever to bootup, which was not the case on windows. Overall experience feels a little janky, but once you get into the game, it seems fine.
- jaimex2 3y agoHeroic Launcher is a lot more polished
- shmerl 3y agoYou can just make your own scripts. No bloat, instant launching.
- qudat 3y agoAre there guides anywhere for that? I literally boot Lutris just for battle.net
- shmerl 3y agoNot specifically, but you should get more familiar with how to use Wine yourself, how to create Wine prefixes, what environment variables to set, how to enable dxvk/vkd3d-proton and such. It's not hard to learn, then you won't need to depend on any of these launch managers. I'm not using Lutris, just my own scripts for launching both native and Wine games. You can start here for example: * https://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#Wineprefixes https://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#Wineprefixes * https://www.winehq.org/docs/en/wineusr-guide.html https://www.winehq.org/docs/en/wineusr-guide.html
- iforgotpassword 3y agoAnd you suppose lutris adds random bloat to make things launch much slower than they actually would, because they decided that's what people would expect from a game launcher? Like, what exactly would that be? Mind you, this is explicitly about game startup time, not lutris itself. I started out doing what you suggest here, but it's a ducking pain in the butt after a while, every couple months there is a new version of X, then Y is deprecated and you should switch to Z... I do this kind of crap as my day job already, no need to keep going in the evening when I just want to have some fun with friends.
- jaimex2 3y ago[flagged]
- jaimex2 3y ago[flagged]
- INTPenis 3y agoI've used Linux since the 90s and I'm a huge advocate for it, but I just can't take these tests seriously. Phoronix has also posted a lot of these tests where Linux seemingly performs better than Windows. I don't have the technical wherewithal to challenge their methodology but it just doesn't seem right that you would add overhead and still outperform Windows on a system barely used by 1% of gamers. It seems like Linux fanatics fantasizing. I love what Valve have done, thanks to them I am never bored on Linux and never wish I had a windows PC anymore. But something is rotten in the state of denmark.
- ParetoOptimal 3y agoCyberpunk gets an extra 20 frames on Linux for me versus windows with an nvidia card.
- raws 3y agoDenmark?
- robin_reala 3y agoIt’s a Hamlet reference.
- jraph 3y agoWhat added overhead? There's no emulation, just alternative implementation (kernel, drivers, userspace, including Windows APIs with Wine). I don't play and I haven't looked at the results but it does not surprise me that an alternative implementation can perform better.
- iforgotpassword 3y agoDxvk/vkd3d, although as seen with arc newer cards might actually implement older dx Standards in such a crappy way that software translation to Vulkan is still faster.
- RealStickman_ 3y ago
- dartharva 3y agoIt might just be personal experience but I've found things always look crappier on Linux than on Windows. I have been off-and-on Windows and several Linux distros on my laptop, and I have found GUIs and multimedia graphics on Windows are always a tad bit more vibrant, clearer and better-looking in general than on Linux. There is just something inexplicably wrong with how Linux setups render things, even in the OS's own GUI (for both KDE and GTK-based DEs) - fractional scaling (if it exists) just makes everything blurrier and worse-looking, fonts look wacky with uneven kerning and ineffective anti-aliasing, colors are dull, etc. Not to mention GPUs just go ballistic and drown out the game's sound with fan noise every time even when you're running a simple 2D game. You always have to keep the iGPU on and the discrete card off by default because it apparently has just two modes - off, or full-power. Smart throttling like on Windows is non-existent. I don't mind the extra effort needed to set things up and gather knowledge on running it for the trade-off of a truly free system. But these things are out of any user's control and keep me from completely shifting over.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoWhat ICC color profile do you use? do you use a driver setting like NVIDIA digital vibrance? what DPIs are you using? Are you using font antialiasing? if so, what font hinting setting are you using? are you using subpixel ordering? What CPU frequency scaling governor setting are you using? What power setting did you set for your GPU? NVIDIA has Powermizer settings which have adaptive clocking for the GPU and there's a GUI control panel for it that comes with the driver. Most of what you've mentioned here sounds like you misconfigured your system (e.g.: wacky fonts). Default settings often do not produce the problems you've mentioned. If you have a HiDPI setup like a 4K screen, simply set your resolution to 4k (3840 x 2160), scaling to 2x, 96 DPI and get a proper font of your liking. You can even get the fonts used on Windows if you install the TrueType font file (I think "Segoe UI Variable Regular" is the font name you would be looking for), with anti-aliasing y hinting set to Slight.
- dartharva 3y agoI didn't configure (or misconfigure) any of what you've listed; I don't even know how to do that yet. All was default settings, both on Linux and on Windows. The only configuration I did was install Nvidia's correct proprietary drivers and turn on fractional scaling and font antialiasing (with correct subpixel ordering) on Linux. On Windows, even that was on by default.
- samyar 3y agoI think this is bullshit.
- thealistra 3y agoWouldn’t a metric called frametimings be lower is better?
- ortichic 3y agoYes, if you look at the source, these are actually FPS. The frame times look much less one sided, although overall, Arch manages to beat windows.
- 999900000999 3y agoIn my experience Linux gaming is amazing until it's not. And no one can tell you what's not going to work before hand.
- bastard_op 3y ago> I love gaming on Arch. But I am stupid enough to use an nvidia card, which means that I have no Wayland. I am eating shit due to the drivers every few months. There are a whole host of good games with awful DRM that I can’t play. Steam is good but it’s still DRM. Not sure what you're doing wrong, but using arch with latest kernel, nvidia drivers, and I play Steam game daily on it with xorg or wayland to mostly stop using my PS4/5 again. I tend to flip back and forth between xorg and wayland, and xorg I still get odd kde compositing bugs, and wayland the compositor has a persistent memory leak that'll use all 128gb of my ram within a few days. I get lots more fps with wayland (particularly yuzu for switch emulation), but I have to restart kde every few days, which is a KDE problem, not Steam. Otherwise gaming has been great since Proton picked up, but if you do still have problems, use install Proton GE from AUR. If anything doesn't work with default, it does almost certainly with GE. If games use invasive DRM, or like Epic/Ubisoft/EA with their garbage launchers, F-em - they don't get my money anyways. Plenty out there that don't to have to deal with crappy mega company BS.
- rldjbpin 3y agofor me, it was anyways the case because of windows 11 limitations (inability to undervolt on laptops) and the hardware issues of my laptop (heavy thermal throttling) it was much easier in the past (when hyper-v is disabled) with windows compared to using specific tools in linux. however, now it is a matter of whether it is possible at all or not. on the flip side, the metrics don't matter if the game doesn't run to begin with. many of the online multiplayers are plagued with AC not working on linux (at least the last time i checked).