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BSDs are off the table because Proton, the set of extensions to Wine for playing video games, uses Linux-specific system calls. Also, the major graphics hardwar

BSDs are off the table because Proton, the set of extensions to Wine for playing video games, uses Linux-specific system calls. Also, the major graphics hardware vendors don't release their first-party drivers for anything other than Windows and Linux. While open source drivers exist, they are not good enough for the latest games or the latest hardware.

BSDobelix 2y ago
> the set of extensions to Wine for playing video games, uses Linux-specific system calls. I have wine/proton on FreeBSD and FreeBSD has also a Linuxlator (a Linux system call translator), so no blocker here. But you are right, if you want a open-platform (opposed to Playstation), Linux is probably the better choice atm.
craftkiller 2y ago
FreeBSD package of proton: https://www.freshports.org/emulators/wine-proton https://www.freshports.org/emulators/wine-proton The steamdeck runs an AMD chip, which unlike nvidia, is an official first-party open source graphics driver with a decade of development behind it. It works for literally every game I've ever thrown at it. FreeBSD also runs the same open source driver.
- kbolino 2y ago
  This is good to know. I'd be interested to see a comparison in performance of the same (recent) game on the same hardware with Windows vs. Linux vs. FreeBSD; I assume there will be a small penalty from Windows to Linux (in general) and a larger one from Windows to FreeBSD, just because the games are not optimized for the best way to do things on the other platforms. Syscall emulation gets you comparable functionality but not necessarily comparable performance, given there's mismatch between the underlying abstractions. On the driver front, even if it's just nVidia that's holding things back [edit: apparently they're not], that's still going to affect most PC gamers.
yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
> Also, the major graphics hardware vendors don't release their first-party drivers for anything other than Windows and Linux. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix/ lists official drivers for FreeBSD and Solaris (which also apparently are used by illumos). In fact, I suspect they have a better time than Linux on account of having actual stable driver ABIs.
- kbolino 2y ago
  Good to know! It certainly looks like all the necessary pieces are there for FreeBSD at least.

BSDobelix 2y ago

> the set of extensions to Wine for playing video games, uses Linux-specific system calls. I have wine/proton on FreeBSD and FreeBSD has also a Linuxlator (a Linux system call translator), so no blocker here. But you are right, if you want a open-platform (opposed to Playstation), Linux is probably the better choice atm.

craftkiller 2y ago

FreeBSD package of proton: https://www.freshports.org/emulators/wine-proton https://www.freshports.org/emulators/wine-proton The steamdeck runs an AMD chip, which unlike nvidia, is an official first-party open source graphics driver with a decade of development behind it. It works for literally every game I've ever thrown at it. FreeBSD also runs the same open source driver.

kbolino 2y ago
This is good to know. I'd be interested to see a comparison in performance of the same (recent) game on the same hardware with Windows vs. Linux vs. FreeBSD; I assume there will be a small penalty from Windows to Linux (in general) and a larger one from Windows to FreeBSD, just because the games are not optimized for the best way to do things on the other platforms. Syscall emulation gets you comparable functionality but not necessarily comparable performance, given there's mismatch between the underlying abstractions. On the driver front, even if it's just nVidia that's holding things back [edit: apparently they're not], that's still going to affect most PC gamers.

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago

> Also, the major graphics hardware vendors don't release their first-party drivers for anything other than Windows and Linux. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix/ lists official drivers for FreeBSD and Solaris (which also apparently are used by illumos). In fact, I suspect they have a better time than Linux on account of having actual stable driver ABIs.

kbolino 2y ago
Good to know! It certainly looks like all the necessary pieces are there for FreeBSD at least.