7 ms·

This is super cool. So, wait, does this mean that gaming is better on Linux, on a Mac?

by spease 2y ago

ojdon 2y ago
Yeah it has been for a while. The steam deck runs Linux out of the box. Valve and open source devs have put a lot of effort over the years on projects like Photon which is a translation layer for Windows games.
- brookman64k 2y ago
  Proton, not Photon. ;-) Here is a list with games and their support status: https://www.protondb.com/ https://www.protondb.com/
- zdragnar 2y ago
  The question was "better on Linux on a Mac", meaning specifically Asahi Linux. The correct answer is no, not yet anyway. Linux running on x86 with proton is still the bee's knees for most games though.
  - spease 2y ago
    > on a Mac Right. It sounds like the Asahi devs have implemented APIs which aren’t available under stock MacOS. Back when I was actively developing for Freespace, we had a Linux port that had a better framerate than Windows (the game’s original platform).
    - fl0id 2y ago
      Afaik they are emulating, which you can do on macOS too. Still great that it works with Linux
  - theLiminator 2y ago
    Better on Linux on mac (as compared to macos) maybe?
hu3 2y ago
I've been gaming on Linux since Warcraft 3 days. Wine is wonderful and with Valve's help it only got better. But why would gaming on a mac be better? Maybe one day, but for now: FTA: "While many games are playable, newer AAA titles don’t hit 60fps yet."
- Wowfunhappy 2y ago
  I read the GP differently. I think they meant: if you are on a Mac computer, is gaming better under Linux vs macOS? I think the answer might be yes, because it's possible to play so many more titles!
  - GeekyBear 2y ago
    Game emulation isn't a Linux only thing.
    - talldayo 2y ago
      But if anyone can name a non-Windows platform that does it better, I'll wait!
    - Wowfunhappy 2y ago
      Is there a way to run Control or Cyberpunk on macOS?
      - fl0id 2y ago
        Yes. Haven’t tried those games, but on apple silicon whisky app emulates with gameporting toolkit + wine/proton. For intel silicon I think it was also possible but not sure.
        Wowfunhappy 2y ago
        Oh, wow, I did not realize how many games worked with this: https://docs.getwhisky.app/game-support/index.html https://docs.getwhisky.app/game-support/index.html I had assumed the lack of Vulkan on macOS was a major issue. Apparently not!
GeekyBear 2y ago
Emulation has unavoidable overhead. For instance, Alyssa mentions in this post that most emulated games will need at least 16 Gigs of RAM at minimum. In addition, native ARM games on MacOS don't have the additional overhead of emulating a different CPU architecture and Graphics API. However, that doesn't take away from this emulated support being an amazing achievement.
- jillesvangurp 2y ago
  > most emulated games will need at least 16 Gigs of RAM at minimum That's because the RAM is shared with the GPU and most of these games would require a GPU with at least 2-4GB on top of the normal system requirement to have at least 8GB. So, 8GB of RAM would be cutting it close on a mac since part of that would have to be sacrificed for the GPU.
  - GeekyBear 2y ago
    Alyssa lays out the reasoning in the linked blog post. They are running emulated games in their own separate virtual machine, because Intel games expect a 4k page size and the OS is running with a 16k page size. Virtual Machines require their own chunk if memory overhead, so the resource usage can't help being higher than a native MacOS game's would be.
- nottorp 2y ago
  > at least 16 Gigs of RAM at minimum. And the minimum is pretty minimum. A 16 Gb arm mac will go into yellow memory pressure while running emulated games, I've noticed.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
m463 2y ago
If you mean "I have a mac, is it better to run linux to game?" Then there's a case for it, since you can run AAA games that apple + macos doesn't support / allow.
- GeekyBear 2y ago
  Nothing prevents you from running games under emulation on MacOS. Apple and Wine provide the tools, and apps like Whisky make them easy to use. > Essentially, this app combines multiple translation layers into a single translation tool. It uses Wine, a translation layer that allows Windows apps and games to run on POSIX-based operating systems, like macOS and Linux. It also uses Rosetta and the Game Porting Toolkit, which are two official Apple tools that allow x86 programs to run on Apple Silicon and serve as a framework for porting Windows games to macOS, respectively. Normally, this sort of process would require users to manually port games to Mac. But by combining Wine, Rosetta, and the Game Porting Toolkit, this can all happen automatically. https://www.xda-developers.com/hands-on-whisky-macos-gaming/ https://www.xda-developers.com/hands-on-whisky-macos-gaming/ However, as aleays, running games under emulation has a performance cost.
- kergonath 2y ago
  You’d need to compare with what can be done on macOS including with things like crossover and the GPT. AFAICT, the Linux side is making progress, but still more games can be run from macOS.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    > AFAICT, the Linux side is making progress, but still more games can be run from macOS. I don't believe that's true. According to ProtonDB, 80% of the top-1000 most-played games on Steam are confirmed working on Linux: https://www.protondb.com/dashboard https://www.protondb.com/dashboard I haven't seen any source documenting nearly similar success rates with Mac but I also haven't seriously tried gaming on Apple Silicon.
    - whimsicalism 2y ago
whimsicalism 2y ago
I will have to check this newest development out, but as someone who dual boots Asahi and MacOS - up until now MacOS with Crossover has definitely been the best experience, if you are willing to pay
dagmx 2y ago
No, you’ll still get better performance, more features supported and lower overhead running with Game Porting Toolkit currently. That includes raytracing support and heterogeneous paging support which are two things Alyssa calls out explicitly herself. Not to mention the VM overhead. That’s not to say Alyssa’s work is not very impressive. It is. But GPTk is still ahead. That’s not even including the other aspects of Mac support that Asahi still needs to get to. Again, very impressive work, but the answer to your question is No.
- coconut08 2y ago
  i haven't tested it extensively but i tried dark souls 2 on parallels and there were vertex explosions making it unplayable, using crossover and whisky it was a jittery laggy mess. after seeing alyssa's talk i decided to load up asahi and it ran perfectly max resolution 60 fps locked. gaming on macos in my experience has been unplayable to the point where i gave up even trying. after my experience with ds2 i think that it's going to be significantly better.
  - dagmx 2y ago
    What backend did you use? You get very different results if it defaults to MoltenVK versus d3dmetal DS2 comes in both DX9 and DX11 flavours. The latter should work better with d3dmetal and is more comparable to what proton is doing.
    - coconut08 2y ago
      i never tried to change between dx9 and 11 in parallels or crossover/whisky since i didn't know that was possible, so i was using whatever is default. that said i tried messing with all of the wine settings and it didn't seem to make a difference. i even messed with stuff like esync and msync (or whatever they were).
  - nottorp 2y ago
    How well do soulsbornes run on windows anyway? My strong conviction is that From is pretty much technically inept when it comes to Windows ports so I just play their titles on console... An emulated title that is in itself a not so great port will have trouble ofc...

This is super cool. So, wait, does this mean that gaming is better on Linux, on a Mac?

by spease 2y ago

This is super cool. So, wait, does this mean that gaming is better on Linux, on a Mac?

Yeah it has been for a while. The steam deck runs Linux out of the box. Valve and open source devs have put a lot of effort over the years on projects like Photon which is a translation layer for Windows games.

brookman64k 2y ago
Proton, not Photon. ;-) Here is a list with games and their support status: https://www.protondb.com/ https://www.protondb.com/
zdragnar 2y ago
The question was "better on Linux on a Mac", meaning specifically Asahi Linux. The correct answer is no, not yet anyway. Linux running on x86 with proton is still the bee's knees for most games though.
- spease 2y ago
  > on a Mac Right. It sounds like the Asahi devs have implemented APIs which aren’t available under stock MacOS. Back when I was actively developing for Freespace, we had a Linux port that had a better framerate than Windows (the game’s original platform).
  - fl0id 2y ago
    Afaik they are emulating, which you can do on macOS too. Still great that it works with Linux
- theLiminator 2y ago
  Better on Linux on mac (as compared to macos) maybe?

hu3 2y ago

I've been gaming on Linux since Warcraft 3 days. Wine is wonderful and with Valve's help it only got better. But why would gaming on a mac be better? Maybe one day, but for now: FTA: "While many games are playable, newer AAA titles don’t hit 60fps yet."

Wowfunhappy 2y ago
I read the GP differently. I think they meant: if you are on a Mac computer, is gaming better under Linux vs macOS? I think the answer might be yes, because it's possible to play so many more titles!
- GeekyBear 2y ago
  Game emulation isn't a Linux only thing.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    But if anyone can name a non-Windows platform that does it better, I'll wait!
  - Wowfunhappy 2y ago
    Is there a way to run Control or Cyberpunk on macOS?
    - fl0id 2y ago
      Yes. Haven’t tried those games, but on apple silicon whisky app emulates with gameporting toolkit + wine/proton. For intel silicon I think it was also possible but not sure.
      - Wowfunhappy 2y ago
        Oh, wow, I did not realize how many games worked with this: https://docs.getwhisky.app/game-support/index.html https://docs.getwhisky.app/game-support/index.html I had assumed the lack of Vulkan on macOS was a major issue. Apparently not!

GeekyBear 2y ago

Emulation has unavoidable overhead. For instance, Alyssa mentions in this post that most emulated games will need at least 16 Gigs of RAM at minimum. In addition, native ARM games on MacOS don't have the additional overhead of emulating a different CPU architecture and Graphics API. However, that doesn't take away from this emulated support being an amazing achievement.

jillesvangurp 2y ago
> most emulated games will need at least 16 Gigs of RAM at minimum That's because the RAM is shared with the GPU and most of these games would require a GPU with at least 2-4GB on top of the normal system requirement to have at least 8GB. So, 8GB of RAM would be cutting it close on a mac since part of that would have to be sacrificed for the GPU.
- GeekyBear 2y ago
  Alyssa lays out the reasoning in the linked blog post. They are running emulated games in their own separate virtual machine, because Intel games expect a 4k page size and the OS is running with a 16k page size. Virtual Machines require their own chunk if memory overhead, so the resource usage can't help being higher than a native MacOS game's would be.
nottorp 2y ago
> at least 16 Gigs of RAM at minimum. And the minimum is pretty minimum. A 16 Gb arm mac will go into yellow memory pressure while running emulated games, I've noticed.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

m463 2y ago

If you mean "I have a mac, is it better to run linux to game?" Then there's a case for it, since you can run AAA games that apple + macos doesn't support / allow.

GeekyBear 2y ago
Nothing prevents you from running games under emulation on MacOS. Apple and Wine provide the tools, and apps like Whisky make them easy to use. > Essentially, this app combines multiple translation layers into a single translation tool. It uses Wine, a translation layer that allows Windows apps and games to run on POSIX-based operating systems, like macOS and Linux. It also uses Rosetta and the Game Porting Toolkit, which are two official Apple tools that allow x86 programs to run on Apple Silicon and serve as a framework for porting Windows games to macOS, respectively. Normally, this sort of process would require users to manually port games to Mac. But by combining Wine, Rosetta, and the Game Porting Toolkit, this can all happen automatically. https://www.xda-developers.com/hands-on-whisky-macos-gaming/ https://www.xda-developers.com/hands-on-whisky-macos-gaming/ However, as aleays, running games under emulation has a performance cost.
kergonath 2y ago
You’d need to compare with what can be done on macOS including with things like crossover and the GPT. AFAICT, the Linux side is making progress, but still more games can be run from macOS.
- talldayo 2y ago
  > AFAICT, the Linux side is making progress, but still more games can be run from macOS. I don't believe that's true. According to ProtonDB, 80% of the top-1000 most-played games on Steam are confirmed working on Linux: https://www.protondb.com/dashboard https://www.protondb.com/dashboard I haven't seen any source documenting nearly similar success rates with Mac but I also haven't seriously tried gaming on Apple Silicon.
  - whimsicalism 2y ago

whimsicalism 2y ago

I will have to check this newest development out, but as someone who dual boots Asahi and MacOS - up until now MacOS with Crossover has definitely been the best experience, if you are willing to pay

dagmx 2y ago

No, you’ll still get better performance, more features supported and lower overhead running with Game Porting Toolkit currently. That includes raytracing support and heterogeneous paging support which are two things Alyssa calls out explicitly herself. Not to mention the VM overhead. That’s not to say Alyssa’s work is not very impressive. It is. But GPTk is still ahead. That’s not even including the other aspects of Mac support that Asahi still needs to get to. Again, very impressive work, but the answer to your question is No.

coconut08 2y ago
i haven't tested it extensively but i tried dark souls 2 on parallels and there were vertex explosions making it unplayable, using crossover and whisky it was a jittery laggy mess. after seeing alyssa's talk i decided to load up asahi and it ran perfectly max resolution 60 fps locked. gaming on macos in my experience has been unplayable to the point where i gave up even trying. after my experience with ds2 i think that it's going to be significantly better.
- dagmx 2y ago
  What backend did you use? You get very different results if it defaults to MoltenVK versus d3dmetal DS2 comes in both DX9 and DX11 flavours. The latter should work better with d3dmetal and is more comparable to what proton is doing.
  - coconut08 2y ago
    i never tried to change between dx9 and 11 in parallels or crossover/whisky since i didn't know that was possible, so i was using whatever is default. that said i tried messing with all of the wine settings and it didn't seem to make a difference. i even messed with stuff like esync and msync (or whatever they were).
- nottorp 2y ago
  How well do soulsbornes run on windows anyway? My strong conviction is that From is pretty much technically inept when it comes to Windows ports so I just play their titles on console... An emulated title that is in itself a not so great port will have trouble ofc...