7 ms·

I very rarely play games, and for long time I had dedicated windows installation just for steam and friends. This was always annoying experience to reboot, hun

I very rarely play games, and for long time I had dedicated windows installation just for steam and friends. This was always annoying experience to reboot, hunt for grub, then half year of windows updates until I was able to enjoy my free time. But thanks to proton, I don't remember anymore when was last time I had to do that, everything just works great on Linux ootb including titles like cyberpunk. For people wanting dedicated (console like) gaming machine steam os looks really promising.

blueflow 2y ago
Bonus points: Have Windows ruin your current shooter session by downloading system updates in the background.
- high_na_euv 2y ago
  I cannot think about single time it happened, like seriously Maybe you are using wifi like majority of gamers and blame the wrong thing?
  - blueflow 2y ago
    I'm not accepting your implied premise: That Windows is allowed to use the scarce resources in a way that interferes with the User activity. This is independent of where the resource limit is.
    - high_na_euv 2y ago
      No, I suggest that there was no update at all and the lags were caused by wifi
      - blueflow 2y ago
        The update gives itself away by the "Update and Reboot" button appearing half an hour later.
        high_na_euv 2y ago
        If you are sure that it was Windows, then you can also disable it
  - tasuki 2y ago
    > Maybe you are using wifi like majority of gamers and blame the wrong thing? What does that mean? For most people, the wi-fi is not the limiting factor for internet speed.
    - BlueTemplar 2y ago
      Sure, but "most people" is a low bar : "most people" probably can't even afford a computer with a dedicated graphics card either : the median per-capita household income is only $2,920 per year. As for most people with a less than a decade old dedicated graphics card : I actually do believe that WiFi is a limiting factor for Internet speed.
    - high_na_euv 2y ago
      Internet speed is irrelevant Packet drops and ping spikes are the problem
      - kazinator 2y ago
        Packet drops are not entirely separable from speed. One reason packets get dropped is congestion, and speed obviously helps with congestion, since it is an important determiner of capacity. But, indeed, the speed of an uncongested hop is irrelevant, in that it could slower by some factor, yet without it making a difference to the packet loss.
- dageshi 2y ago
  I Pause updates for 7 days and run the updates on a sunday morning Windows gotta update sometime
  - blueflow 2y ago
    How can i do this?
    - dageshi 2y ago
      It's an option in windows update (for me at least, Win 10) There's a button called "Pause updates for 7 days" I run windows update on a sunday then hit the button again when it's done. Works pretty well.
  - danparsonson 2y ago
    Windows used to let the user choose when they wanted to update - that they force it to happen now is a situation entirely of their own doing.
    - dageshi 2y ago
      Yeah cause people just skipped installs forever. That's the reason. And as I said, you can run it once a week and control when it happens.
      - e3bc54b2 2y ago
        People skipped updates for a reason. Windows updates are slow as fuck, take forever to download, then forever to install, take your CPU, hog your storage and require multiple boots and MUST be finished after started. On everyLinux distro I've used, updates were single command/click at most, downloaded in the background, cleaned up from storage automatically, never used much CPU and rarely 'required' reboot. Yes my Linux distro is updated twice a week and Windows was deleted after being out of ~updates~ use for 6 months, why do you ask?
      - danparsonson 2y ago
- pmarreck 2y ago
  I think they actually fixed that with Gaming Mode or whatever. Even worse when a modal dialog used to pop up over your game... the way Windows used to constantly interrupt whatever you were trying to focus on drove me nuts (this never happened on macOS or Linux) but I think they also finally fixed that
sumtechguy 2y ago
> then half year of windows updates until I was able to enjoy my free time That sums up my experience with the PlayStation and switch. Don't touch them for awhile and 'we are installing updates for the next 2 hours'. I use my pc often enough that it is not an issue. But I have one computer I do not use very often and then it is update city.
- weberer 2y ago
  Switch updates take less than a minute for me. And this is even after several months of inactivity.
- kibwen 2y ago
  At the risk of defending Nintendo, the software update times on the Switch are notably zippy. I don't think I've ever had it take more than 10 seconds (including the reboot after). That's laudable, and nowhere in the ballpark of, say, Apple, where I once went to lunch and came back to find my laptop still installing updates.
  - ryao 2y ago
    Nintendo must have changed things since the early days then, since I recall switch systems updates taking as much as a half hour. You must endure the long download. Then you had to wait a while for it to actually update.
matheusmoreira 2y ago
This is great but we must still be careful. Games have come to Linux but so has a lot of the suckiness associated with them. The video games industry wants to own your computer. They don't want you to copy their games or cheat. Taking over your machine is the only way they can possibly hope to accomplish that. Therefore they think nothing of shipping literal rootkits directly to you. This is software whose only distinction from malware is a terms of service buried somewhere that you probably clicked through without reading and technically accepted. There's also the fact they are proprietary software. There's no telling what they are doing. Sometimes there's literal malware in these things. I'm not kidding about this. https://www.vice.com/en/article/fs-labs-flight-simulator-password-malware-drm/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/fs-labs-flight-simulator-pas... https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/23/capcom_street_fighter_v/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/23/capcom_street_fighter... https://twitter.com/TheWack0lian/status/779397840762245124 https://twitter.com/TheWack0lian/status/779397840762245124 https://fuzzysecurity.com/tutorials/28.html https://fuzzysecurity.com/tutorials/28.html https://github.com/FuzzySecurity/Capcom-Rootkit https://github.com/FuzzySecurity/Capcom-Rootkit I seriously doubt there's any effective way to sandbox them either, they probably need extensive permissions to even work. I wouldn't want to run these things in my personal computer. For these reasons, you might want to set up a completely separate virtualized Linux system just for this purpose. IOMMU and VFIO technologies allow you to map a discrete graphics card to the virtual machine which enables hardware accelerated graphics at near native performance. You might want to consider a dedicated gaming machine. To me it feels like a waste since the hardware is great and should also be used for other things.
- basfo 2y ago
  Does steam run on GNU/Hurd?
- wqaatwt 2y ago
  > They don't want you to cheat Why do you think that is? I’m sure they wouldn’t bother with it if most gamers were fine playing against cheaters.
  - matheusmoreira 2y ago
hn8726 2y ago
My gripe with proton and linux gaming is GPU drivers — on Windows, I have AMD Adrenaline software where I can undervolt the GPU and adjust performance for every game individually. This drastically cuts power consumption, noise and temperature levels, especially for newer games played in 144hz or 4k. Is there a way to adjust the same things on Linux, preferably without restarting anything and messing about in the terminal?
- nottorp 2y ago
  Don't know about amd or a gui tool, but at least for nvidia cards you can just set a power limit from the command line.
  - gpderetta 2y ago
    you should also be able to use Green With Envy.
- nikitoci 2y ago
  I’m using LACT[1] which is essentially Adrenaline software. It allows to undervolt/change clock for core, vram; adjust fan speed and all you need. [1]: https://github.com/ilya-zlobintsev/LACT https://github.com/ilya-zlobintsev/LACT
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  I spent a couple dozen hours trying to tweak and tune my desktop this spring, get the watts down & see what Linux could do. CoreCtl was the best utility I found for the gpu, even though it left much to be desired & would sometimes work sometimes just not; my memory notably would get locked at max speed sometimes & not be adjustable, taking 20w right away. But it has the obvious knobs; adjusting clocks and mV per each state on each power profile, adjusting fan curves. (Alas my motherboard appears to lack a ton of controls in Linux. I have been having to go into bios to do cpu undervolting and fan speed controls.) More recently, I turned on the newer power tuning utility 'tuned' and it's been amazing. I'd fought down from 140 to 110w on my desktop but it still felt absurdly higher than it should be. Turned on tuned and now it idles at 85w. I haven't tried to sit and tweak it and see what it can do, but my impression is it's not as good at letting users tweak stuff endlessly. But it does do a ton of tweaking itself, and it's smart about adapting - switching to gaming profiles when games start. I could be wrong but it seems like there aren't standards for motherboard management around platform details like fan speed control. And there's many many ways motherboards do things. Where-as gpu's apparently are just much more normative, are tweaked via pretty standard interfaces. Still, a lot is possible. I definitely recommend tuned, as a very all encompassing system tuner.

blueflow 2y ago

Bonus points: Have Windows ruin your current shooter session by downloading system updates in the background.

high_na_euv 2y ago
I cannot think about single time it happened, like seriously Maybe you are using wifi like majority of gamers and blame the wrong thing?
- blueflow 2y ago
  I'm not accepting your implied premise: That Windows is allowed to use the scarce resources in a way that interferes with the User activity. This is independent of where the resource limit is.
  - high_na_euv 2y ago
    No, I suggest that there was no update at all and the lags were caused by wifi
    - blueflow 2y ago
      The update gives itself away by the "Update and Reboot" button appearing half an hour later.
      - high_na_euv 2y ago
        If you are sure that it was Windows, then you can also disable it
- tasuki 2y ago
  > Maybe you are using wifi like majority of gamers and blame the wrong thing? What does that mean? For most people, the wi-fi is not the limiting factor for internet speed.
  - BlueTemplar 2y ago
    Sure, but "most people" is a low bar : "most people" probably can't even afford a computer with a dedicated graphics card either : the median per-capita household income is only $2,920 per year. As for most people with a less than a decade old dedicated graphics card : I actually do believe that WiFi is a limiting factor for Internet speed.
  - high_na_euv 2y ago
    Internet speed is irrelevant Packet drops and ping spikes are the problem
    - kazinator 2y ago
      Packet drops are not entirely separable from speed. One reason packets get dropped is congestion, and speed obviously helps with congestion, since it is an important determiner of capacity. But, indeed, the speed of an uncongested hop is irrelevant, in that it could slower by some factor, yet without it making a difference to the packet loss.
dageshi 2y ago
I Pause updates for 7 days and run the updates on a sunday morning Windows gotta update sometime
- blueflow 2y ago
  How can i do this?
  - dageshi 2y ago
    It's an option in windows update (for me at least, Win 10) There's a button called "Pause updates for 7 days" I run windows update on a sunday then hit the button again when it's done. Works pretty well.
- danparsonson 2y ago
  Windows used to let the user choose when they wanted to update - that they force it to happen now is a situation entirely of their own doing.
  - dageshi 2y ago
    Yeah cause people just skipped installs forever. That's the reason. And as I said, you can run it once a week and control when it happens.
    - e3bc54b2 2y ago
      People skipped updates for a reason. Windows updates are slow as fuck, take forever to download, then forever to install, take your CPU, hog your storage and require multiple boots and MUST be finished after started. On everyLinux distro I've used, updates were single command/click at most, downloaded in the background, cleaned up from storage automatically, never used much CPU and rarely 'required' reboot. Yes my Linux distro is updated twice a week and Windows was deleted after being out of ~updates~ use for 6 months, why do you ask?
    - danparsonson 2y ago
pmarreck 2y ago
I think they actually fixed that with Gaming Mode or whatever. Even worse when a modal dialog used to pop up over your game... the way Windows used to constantly interrupt whatever you were trying to focus on drove me nuts (this never happened on macOS or Linux) but I think they also finally fixed that

sumtechguy 2y ago

> then half year of windows updates until I was able to enjoy my free time That sums up my experience with the PlayStation and switch. Don't touch them for awhile and 'we are installing updates for the next 2 hours'. I use my pc often enough that it is not an issue. But I have one computer I do not use very often and then it is update city.

weberer 2y ago
Switch updates take less than a minute for me. And this is even after several months of inactivity.
kibwen 2y ago
At the risk of defending Nintendo, the software update times on the Switch are notably zippy. I don't think I've ever had it take more than 10 seconds (including the reboot after). That's laudable, and nowhere in the ballpark of, say, Apple, where I once went to lunch and came back to find my laptop still installing updates.
- ryao 2y ago
  Nintendo must have changed things since the early days then, since I recall switch systems updates taking as much as a half hour. You must endure the long download. Then you had to wait a while for it to actually update.

matheusmoreira 2y ago

This is great but we must still be careful. Games have come to Linux but so has a lot of the suckiness associated with them. The video games industry wants to own your computer. They don't want you to copy their games or cheat. Taking over your machine is the only way they can possibly hope to accomplish that. Therefore they think nothing of shipping literal rootkits directly to you. This is software whose only distinction from malware is a terms of service buried somewhere that you probably clicked through without reading and technically accepted. There's also the fact they are proprietary software. There's no telling what they are doing. Sometimes there's literal malware in these things. I'm not kidding about this. https://www.vice.com/en/article/fs-labs-flight-simulator-password-malware-drm/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/fs-labs-flight-simulator-pas... https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/23/capcom_street_fighter_v/ https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/23/capcom_street_fighter... https://twitter.com/TheWack0lian/status/779397840762245124 https://twitter.com/TheWack0lian/status/779397840762245124 https://fuzzysecurity.com/tutorials/28.html https://fuzzysecurity.com/tutorials/28.html https://github.com/FuzzySecurity/Capcom-Rootkit https://github.com/FuzzySecurity/Capcom-Rootkit I seriously doubt there's any effective way to sandbox them either, they probably need extensive permissions to even work. I wouldn't want to run these things in my personal computer. For these reasons, you might want to set up a completely separate virtualized Linux system just for this purpose. IOMMU and VFIO technologies allow you to map a discrete graphics card to the virtual machine which enables hardware accelerated graphics at near native performance. You might want to consider a dedicated gaming machine. To me it feels like a waste since the hardware is great and should also be used for other things.

basfo 2y ago
Does steam run on GNU/Hurd?
wqaatwt 2y ago
> They don't want you to cheat Why do you think that is? I’m sure they wouldn’t bother with it if most gamers were fine playing against cheaters.
- matheusmoreira 2y ago

hn8726 2y ago

My gripe with proton and linux gaming is GPU drivers — on Windows, I have AMD Adrenaline software where I can undervolt the GPU and adjust performance for every game individually. This drastically cuts power consumption, noise and temperature levels, especially for newer games played in 144hz or 4k. Is there a way to adjust the same things on Linux, preferably without restarting anything and messing about in the terminal?

nottorp 2y ago
Don't know about amd or a gui tool, but at least for nvidia cards you can just set a power limit from the command line.
- gpderetta 2y ago
  you should also be able to use Green With Envy.
nikitoci 2y ago
I’m using LACT[1] which is essentially Adrenaline software. It allows to undervolt/change clock for core, vram; adjust fan speed and all you need. [1]: https://github.com/ilya-zlobintsev/LACT https://github.com/ilya-zlobintsev/LACT
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
I spent a couple dozen hours trying to tweak and tune my desktop this spring, get the watts down & see what Linux could do. CoreCtl was the best utility I found for the gpu, even though it left much to be desired & would sometimes work sometimes just not; my memory notably would get locked at max speed sometimes & not be adjustable, taking 20w right away. But it has the obvious knobs; adjusting clocks and mV per each state on each power profile, adjusting fan curves. (Alas my motherboard appears to lack a ton of controls in Linux. I have been having to go into bios to do cpu undervolting and fan speed controls.) More recently, I turned on the newer power tuning utility 'tuned' and it's been amazing. I'd fought down from 140 to 110w on my desktop but it still felt absurdly higher than it should be. Turned on tuned and now it idles at 85w. I haven't tried to sit and tweak it and see what it can do, but my impression is it's not as good at letting users tweak stuff endlessly. But it does do a ton of tweaking itself, and it's smart about adapting - switching to gaming profiles when games start. I could be wrong but it seems like there aren't standards for motherboard management around platform details like fan speed control. And there's many many ways motherboards do things. Where-as gpu's apparently are just much more normative, are tweaked via pretty standard interfaces. Still, a lot is possible. I definitely recommend tuned, as a very all encompassing system tuner.