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> Now we just need the GPU manufactures to give Linus the same driver support Windows gets. We're already there: AMD has first class upstream Linux support! I

> Now we just need the GPU manufactures to give Linus the same driver support Windows gets. We're already there: AMD has first class upstream Linux support! I played steam games for ten hours on 6.11-rc3 last week with zero problems, on a very old userland (Debian bullseye). The amdgpu driver was built-in, not a module.

kmarc 2y ago
We organized a LAN PARTY (oh my, what a flashback) in 2005 in our student hostel, where we played CS / Half Life on wine, under Linux. I thought we were already there, 19years ago
- jcalvinowens 2y ago
  I'm not using Wine, it's all native. That's the big deal for me: it took zero effort from me, it Just Works.
  - xrd 2y ago
    Well, if this is steam, isn't it proton, which is wine underneath? I'm not discounting your experiences at all, btw. My 11 year old has been using Ubuntu as his main gaming rig, and the NVidia drivers work incredibly well and Steam games just work. It's still mind boggling to me that it works so well. And, I no longer have to troubleshoot removing Windows virii from his computer.
  - kmarc 2y ago
    Sure, I didn't want to belittle your experience at all. It's great that vendors think about Linux as first class citizens on desktop , too. My understanding though, is that most of "steam games" are still windows binaries + wine + patches (proton, etc). It's well hidden behind a nice GUI, but the tech couldn't exist without the legacy of pure old wine.
    - jcalvinowens 2y ago
      Hahaha not belittling at all, I'm just old enough that "running X with Wine" means "spending hours upon hours pulling your hair out until X barely works" to me. Getting it for free feels like cheating :)
  - frio 2y ago
    Yes you are :). You just no longer have to set it up yourself. Steam runs Proton (their own WINE fork/distribution) under the hood for windows games.
    - jcalvinowens 2y ago
      Well sure, but the point is it's done for me, and more importantly, actually tested by the developer in many cases.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        Developers don't care, they target Windows as usual, and let Valve do the needful.
        justinclift 2y ago
        Some game developers do test under Proton. Saying that because I'm in the discord server(s) for a few, and they mention stuff they're working on/support/etc over time.
        pjmlp 2y ago
        Likewise, some do write GNU/Linux games, yet that wasn't in a number relevant enough to keep the original SteamOS going as businesses, until translation of Windows APIs was added.
        skeaker 2y ago
        Sure, but I think the point is that that doesn't matter anymore. Not sure what you meant by restating this, seems irrelevant.
      - frio 2y ago
        Yeah that part is lovely. Having steam games “just work” for the most part is absolutely phenomenal.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- candiddevmike 2y ago
  UT2k4 supporting Linux was so progressive back then
  - randmeerkat 2y ago
    > UT2k4 supporting Linux was so progressive back then Will we ever get UT2k2X?
    - candiddevmike 2y ago
      I don't see Epic making anything that will take players away from their golden goose. Fortunately UT2k4 is still fun and plays well, even on an ancient PC, and looks decent enough.
      - randmeerkat 2y ago
        > Fortunately UT2k4 is still fun and plays well, even on an ancient PC, and looks decent enough. I’ve heard there’s still some folks on some self-hosted servers playing it, maybe I’ll have to look into that.
      - skeaker 2y ago
        Unfortunately when they pulled official servers they also yanked the game off of most storefronts, and now what few community servers still exist suffer from a complete lack of new blood. Sure, you can still play it, but I'll still miss its heyday.
    - nailer 2y ago
      There was a UT reboot, but as the other poster mentioned, when Fortnite eventually took off, they removed everyone from the project around May 2017. Website is still up, but only partially functional. Check out the character design for Samael. https://www.epicgames.com/unrealtournament/en-US/ https://www.epicgames.com/unrealtournament/en-US/ https://www.youtube.com/unrealtournament https://www.youtube.com/unrealtournament
      - 2y ago
- pjmlp 2y ago
  That was back when I still believed, eventually I decided running Windows with Virtual Box/VMWare or macOS UNIX, was less of an headache. Just a couple of months ago, yet another motherboard where UEFI and Linux distributions don't get along without some gimmicks.
kemotep 2y ago
Can confirm. Playing Elden Ring on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Just installed the Steam flatpak, enabled proton, installed the game, works just as well if not better than my Windows install. Nothing extra to install gpu driver wise this is practically vanilla OpenSUSE install with Steam really the only extra thing, playing online with multiplayer summons, etc.
- manmal 2y ago
  Interesting that multiplayer works well, I thought anti cheat guards would prevent this in many games running on Proton.
  - kemotep 2y ago
    Easy Anti cheat for Elden Ring works. No clue about other games.
  - akimbostrawman 2y ago
    over 50% of multiplayer games with anticheat work and the ones that don't are doing it deliberately. see areweanticheatyet.com
  - k4rli 2y ago
    There's also the fun approach which Valve had for 10 years in CSGO until CS2 release. They just didn't run anticheat on Linux clients meaning an opensource cheat was absolutely undetected for years.
  - skeaker 2y ago
    EAC works fine with Proton, but compatibility is locked behind a toggle that the game developer has to enable.
brendoelfrendo 2y ago
Bought an AMD GPU as my most recent graphics card for this reason. I was able to play just about all my Windows games without issue, except for multiplayer games that rely on anticheat that does not run on Linux. When Win10 goes out of support I'll probably be using Linux as my daily driver for the foreseeable future, so I'm glad Valve put in the work.
Farfignoggen 2y ago
Now ask yourself the same question but only for iGPU/dGPU compute API support from AMD on Linux and I do not think that you or anyone will come to the same conclusion on Linux! And really Valve/Linux Community is more responsible for AMD's Opensource Radeon drivers and Gaming performance on Linux than AMD is! Even Intel has better Blender 3D iGPU/dGPU Accelerated Cycles rendering support for Intel's ARC/Earlier iGPUs and dGPU hardware(Via OneAPI/Level-0) and iGPU/dGPU compute API support on Linux. And so really one must first consider what Linux Opensource applications need proper iGPU/dGPU compute API support so they do not have to use the slow and power hungry CPU rendering/whatever fallback instead. And Blender 3D used to support OpenCL as the iGPU/dGPU compute API for AMD and Intel Graphics but even back then AMD's OpenCL component was not easy to get installed and working on Linux. And Linux/MESA had the old clover OpenCL implementation in the MESA drivers but that was not kept updated for OpenCL feature set support! And even with the newer Rusticl OpenCL Implementation in MESA that's just been created is that Rusticl/OpenCL implementation been fully enabled in any Ubuntu versions or Ubuntu derivatives currently? Look at support for AMD's ROCm/HIP in Linux and for Consumer/Client iGPUs and dGPUs and that's rather limited and Polaris dGPUs have long since been dropped form the ROCm/HIP support matrix and Vega iGPU/dGPUs are on borrowed time for ROCm/HIP support. So be careful there giving too much credit to AMD's iGPU/dGPU efforts on Linux as there's more to that story. And Look at Blender 3D where that works with Nvidia's CUDA and Works with Apple's Metal and iGPU compute API support there and dGPUs as well. And I'm on Linux Mint and never going back to Windows but all my older AMD iGPU/dGPU hardware has never been properly supported for Blender 3D's iGPU/dGPU accelerated Cycles rendering. Intel's got better iGPU/dGPU compute API support on Linux but for ARM Based Processors Apple's the only choice there for proper Blender 3D iGPU support and no mention of Blender 3D iGPU accelerated Cycles rendering support for Qualcomm's Adreno X1 iGPUs on the Snapdragon X Elite SOC based laptops or Mini Desktop PC(Coming soon for consumers).
- dangus 2y ago
  Creators can spend their life savings on Nvidia hardware, we're just here to play games.
  - t0bia_s 2y ago
rapatel0 2y ago
NVIDIAs latest Linux driver is open source (they were kinda forced to because of data center usage of GPUs and GPL requirements for kernel extensions) It’s a matter of time.
- entropicdrifter 2y ago
  They have an optional open-source kernel module. It's still pretty far away from being upstreamed and their userspace driver is still fully closed source
- jcalvinowens 2y ago
  Until it's part of the upstream kernel like AMD's driver, it doesn't count. Throwing a tarball over the wall and calling that open source is a joke. I strongly believe that AMD's driver is superior because the open source process makes it better. NVIDIA does not participate in that process.
CoastalCoder 2y ago
Is there a significant difference between built in and loadable module? Aside from source availability and maybe the risk of version mismatch, I mean.
- entropicdrifter 2y ago
  Yes, the Nvidia proprietary driver has a kernel module that must be installed separately from the kernel. Most distros that focus on desktop usage and/or gaming handle this for you in a relatively simple way, but even with that, if you use a cutting-edge kernel you'll often end up with an unbootable system due to the kernel updating before the nvidia kernel module does. If you need nvidia on Linux, either use the (much worse, but rapidly improving) open source drivers or a distro that uses consistently supported kernels like Ubuntu, Mint, or Pop!_OS
- jcalvinowens 2y ago
  I was trying to make it clear it was built as part of the kernel source, not as an external module. There are some subtle arguable advantages, for example on x86 static kernel text sits on 2MB hugepages while module text sits on 4K pages from vmalloc. The kernel on my gaming machine is actually built without loadable module support at all. It's a static binary with only the exact necessary set of drivers turned on.
ajvs 2y ago
It really hasn't got it still unfortunately. Been waiting for hot-unplug support for years, eGPU gaming is still not viable on Linux https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/1081 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/1081

kmarc 2y ago

We organized a LAN PARTY (oh my, what a flashback) in 2005 in our student hostel, where we played CS / Half Life on wine, under Linux. I thought we were already there, 19years ago

jcalvinowens 2y ago
I'm not using Wine, it's all native. That's the big deal for me: it took zero effort from me, it Just Works.
- xrd 2y ago
  Well, if this is steam, isn't it proton, which is wine underneath? I'm not discounting your experiences at all, btw. My 11 year old has been using Ubuntu as his main gaming rig, and the NVidia drivers work incredibly well and Steam games just work. It's still mind boggling to me that it works so well. And, I no longer have to troubleshoot removing Windows virii from his computer.
- kmarc 2y ago
  Sure, I didn't want to belittle your experience at all. It's great that vendors think about Linux as first class citizens on desktop , too. My understanding though, is that most of "steam games" are still windows binaries + wine + patches (proton, etc). It's well hidden behind a nice GUI, but the tech couldn't exist without the legacy of pure old wine.
  - jcalvinowens 2y ago
    Hahaha not belittling at all, I'm just old enough that "running X with Wine" means "spending hours upon hours pulling your hair out until X barely works" to me. Getting it for free feels like cheating :)
- frio 2y ago
  Yes you are :). You just no longer have to set it up yourself. Steam runs Proton (their own WINE fork/distribution) under the hood for windows games.
  - jcalvinowens 2y ago
    Well sure, but the point is it's done for me, and more importantly, actually tested by the developer in many cases.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Developers don't care, they target Windows as usual, and let Valve do the needful.
      - justinclift 2y ago
        Some game developers do test under Proton. Saying that because I'm in the discord server(s) for a few, and they mention stuff they're working on/support/etc over time.
        pjmlp 2y ago
        Likewise, some do write GNU/Linux games, yet that wasn't in a number relevant enough to keep the original SteamOS going as businesses, until translation of Windows APIs was added.
      - skeaker 2y ago
        Sure, but I think the point is that that doesn't matter anymore. Not sure what you meant by restating this, seems irrelevant.
    - frio 2y ago
      Yeah that part is lovely. Having steam games “just work” for the most part is absolutely phenomenal.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
candiddevmike 2y ago
UT2k4 supporting Linux was so progressive back then
- randmeerkat 2y ago
  > UT2k4 supporting Linux was so progressive back then Will we ever get UT2k2X?
  - candiddevmike 2y ago
    I don't see Epic making anything that will take players away from their golden goose. Fortunately UT2k4 is still fun and plays well, even on an ancient PC, and looks decent enough.
    - randmeerkat 2y ago
      > Fortunately UT2k4 is still fun and plays well, even on an ancient PC, and looks decent enough. I’ve heard there’s still some folks on some self-hosted servers playing it, maybe I’ll have to look into that.
    - skeaker 2y ago
      Unfortunately when they pulled official servers they also yanked the game off of most storefronts, and now what few community servers still exist suffer from a complete lack of new blood. Sure, you can still play it, but I'll still miss its heyday.
  - nailer 2y ago
    There was a UT reboot, but as the other poster mentioned, when Fortnite eventually took off, they removed everyone from the project around May 2017. Website is still up, but only partially functional. Check out the character design for Samael. https://www.epicgames.com/unrealtournament/en-US/ https://www.epicgames.com/unrealtournament/en-US/ https://www.youtube.com/unrealtournament https://www.youtube.com/unrealtournament
    - 2y ago
pjmlp 2y ago
That was back when I still believed, eventually I decided running Windows with Virtual Box/VMWare or macOS UNIX, was less of an headache. Just a couple of months ago, yet another motherboard where UEFI and Linux distributions don't get along without some gimmicks.

kemotep 2y ago

Can confirm. Playing Elden Ring on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Just installed the Steam flatpak, enabled proton, installed the game, works just as well if not better than my Windows install. Nothing extra to install gpu driver wise this is practically vanilla OpenSUSE install with Steam really the only extra thing, playing online with multiplayer summons, etc.

manmal 2y ago
Interesting that multiplayer works well, I thought anti cheat guards would prevent this in many games running on Proton.
- kemotep 2y ago
  Easy Anti cheat for Elden Ring works. No clue about other games.
- akimbostrawman 2y ago
  over 50% of multiplayer games with anticheat work and the ones that don't are doing it deliberately. see areweanticheatyet.com
- k4rli 2y ago
  There's also the fun approach which Valve had for 10 years in CSGO until CS2 release. They just didn't run anticheat on Linux clients meaning an opensource cheat was absolutely undetected for years.
- skeaker 2y ago
  EAC works fine with Proton, but compatibility is locked behind a toggle that the game developer has to enable.

brendoelfrendo 2y ago

Bought an AMD GPU as my most recent graphics card for this reason. I was able to play just about all my Windows games without issue, except for multiplayer games that rely on anticheat that does not run on Linux. When Win10 goes out of support I'll probably be using Linux as my daily driver for the foreseeable future, so I'm glad Valve put in the work.

Farfignoggen 2y ago

Now ask yourself the same question but only for iGPU/dGPU compute API support from AMD on Linux and I do not think that you or anyone will come to the same conclusion on Linux! And really Valve/Linux Community is more responsible for AMD's Opensource Radeon drivers and Gaming performance on Linux than AMD is! Even Intel has better Blender 3D iGPU/dGPU Accelerated Cycles rendering support for Intel's ARC/Earlier iGPUs and dGPU hardware(Via OneAPI/Level-0) and iGPU/dGPU compute API support on Linux. And so really one must first consider what Linux Opensource applications need proper iGPU/dGPU compute API support so they do not have to use the slow and power hungry CPU rendering/whatever fallback instead. And Blender 3D used to support OpenCL as the iGPU/dGPU compute API for AMD and Intel Graphics but even back then AMD's OpenCL component was not easy to get installed and working on Linux. And Linux/MESA had the old clover OpenCL implementation in the MESA drivers but that was not kept updated for OpenCL feature set support! And even with the newer Rusticl OpenCL Implementation in MESA that's just been created is that Rusticl/OpenCL implementation been fully enabled in any Ubuntu versions or Ubuntu derivatives currently? Look at support for AMD's ROCm/HIP in Linux and for Consumer/Client iGPUs and dGPUs and that's rather limited and Polaris dGPUs have long since been dropped form the ROCm/HIP support matrix and Vega iGPU/dGPUs are on borrowed time for ROCm/HIP support. So be careful there giving too much credit to AMD's iGPU/dGPU efforts on Linux as there's more to that story. And Look at Blender 3D where that works with Nvidia's CUDA and Works with Apple's Metal and iGPU compute API support there and dGPUs as well. And I'm on Linux Mint and never going back to Windows but all my older AMD iGPU/dGPU hardware has never been properly supported for Blender 3D's iGPU/dGPU accelerated Cycles rendering. Intel's got better iGPU/dGPU compute API support on Linux but for ARM Based Processors Apple's the only choice there for proper Blender 3D iGPU support and no mention of Blender 3D iGPU accelerated Cycles rendering support for Qualcomm's Adreno X1 iGPUs on the Snapdragon X Elite SOC based laptops or Mini Desktop PC(Coming soon for consumers).

dangus 2y ago
Creators can spend their life savings on Nvidia hardware, we're just here to play games.
- t0bia_s 2y ago

rapatel0 2y ago

NVIDIAs latest Linux driver is open source (they were kinda forced to because of data center usage of GPUs and GPL requirements for kernel extensions) It’s a matter of time.

entropicdrifter 2y ago
They have an optional open-source kernel module. It's still pretty far away from being upstreamed and their userspace driver is still fully closed source
jcalvinowens 2y ago
Until it's part of the upstream kernel like AMD's driver, it doesn't count. Throwing a tarball over the wall and calling that open source is a joke. I strongly believe that AMD's driver is superior because the open source process makes it better. NVIDIA does not participate in that process.

CoastalCoder 2y ago

Is there a significant difference between built in and loadable module? Aside from source availability and maybe the risk of version mismatch, I mean.

entropicdrifter 2y ago
Yes, the Nvidia proprietary driver has a kernel module that must be installed separately from the kernel. Most distros that focus on desktop usage and/or gaming handle this for you in a relatively simple way, but even with that, if you use a cutting-edge kernel you'll often end up with an unbootable system due to the kernel updating before the nvidia kernel module does. If you need nvidia on Linux, either use the (much worse, but rapidly improving) open source drivers or a distro that uses consistently supported kernels like Ubuntu, Mint, or Pop!_OS
jcalvinowens 2y ago
I was trying to make it clear it was built as part of the kernel source, not as an external module. There are some subtle arguable advantages, for example on x86 static kernel text sits on 2MB hugepages while module text sits on 4K pages from vmalloc. The kernel on my gaming machine is actually built without loadable module support at all. It's a static binary with only the exact necessary set of drivers turned on.

ajvs 2y ago

It really hasn't got it still unfortunately. Been waiting for hot-unplug support for years, eGPU gaming is still not viable on Linux https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/1081 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/1081