5 ms·

I've gone over to Linux after using Windows for 25 years. As someone who enjoys older games, I am pleasantly surprised that Wine (with dxvk and cnc-ddraw) lets

I've gone over to Linux after using Windows for 25 years. As someone who enjoys older games, I am pleasantly surprised that Wine (with dxvk and cnc-ddraw) lets me run more games in a better way than I was able to on Windows. I can run some 16-bit games on a 64-bit OS! Games that rudely switch to fullscreen, I can run in Wine Virtual Desktop. Previously on Windows, I had to configure hacks like DxWnd and it didn't always work. I only wish Wine also allowed me to zoom 2x or 3x, but this is where Gamescope comes in: gamescope -S integer -F nearest --borderless wine game.exe Also there is a potential to use a different Wine configuration (prefix) for every game specifically. So far I haven't had to resort to this. I noticed some Unity games waste disk space with gigabytes of zeroes, Linux lets me run them from inside a compressed SquashFS image, this even makes the game load faster: mkdir ./game squashfuse ./game.squashfs ./game pushd ./game wine game.exe popd sleep 1 umount ./game rmdir ./game I encountered a game that crashes due to multiprocessor system, the fix is simple, restricting it to one CPU: taskset --cpu-list 1 wine game.exe

riizade 1y ago
Can you elaborate on Unity wasting disk space on gigabytes of zeroes? How did you discover that? Is it intentional on Unity's part? Percentage-wise, are we talking 2% of a 100GB game, or 50% of a 4GB game? I can't find anything about it online.
- Grom_PE 1y ago
  I suppose that is an issue how a specific game was made, not inherent to Unity. I like to look inside game files and a .zip archive of 1GB unpacking to ~10GB game made me suspicious.
  - marcosdumay 1y ago
    My first guess would be it has lots of uncompressed images or badly compressed videos as artifacts.
    - riizade 1y ago
      Same, but games run uncompressed assets as an optimization measure to trade disk usage for CPU usage, depending on which is the bottleneck for their particular game (iiuc) So it'd be surprising to me if a developer chose to use uncompressed/lightly compressed assets, and compressing them caused performance to increase; because you're intentionally choosing the tradeoff in the opposite direction the developer did Of course, there are game developers that are less technical and may not have knowingly made that tradeoff in which case all bets are off, but the games made by those developers tend not to be the kind that require beefy machines to run at 60fps+
      - wtallis 1y ago
        The right tradeoff for compression ratio can change with just a few years of technological progress, or even quicker if it's a half-assed port from console to a high-end PC. There are similar issues for a game's decision of how many threads to spawn based on the CPU's core count. The developer's assumptions may not have been right to begin with, and even if they were, they're not likely to stay right for long.
        dontlaugh 1y ago
        Exactly. Guaranteed SSDs and a spare CPU core have made compression almost always faster.
        wtallis 1y ago
        Being able to rely on fast storage makes compression less necessary for performance reasons. But the higher price/GB of SSDs mean users have a stronger preference for games to keep the install size under control.
        dontlaugh 1y ago
        There was a time when console games would avoid disc seeks at all costs, even duplicating uncompressed assets. Compression can easily interfere with laying data out in blocks to read sequentially. That’s not a problem with SSDs and most machines have more cores or even dedicated hardware decoders. Of course it’s also more worthwhile to compress since SSD storage is comparatively more expensive.
jayd16 1y ago
Reminds me of the mention of "contiguous zeroes" that used to be in the Apple App Store docs.[1] Which seemed like just a backhanded way to say "we encrypt and then compress so don't expect easy compression." I suppose this might be asset padding or perhaps these are raw textures with full alpha sections? Still, it seems pretty strange. What game, what asset? [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42478186/app-size-on-app-store-is-7x-larger-than-uploaded-app-size https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42478186/app-size-on-app...
raron 1y ago
> Games that rudely switch to fullscreen, I can run in Wine Virtual Desktop. Previously on Windows, I had to configure hacks like DxWnd and it didn't always work. Maybe Wine could be ported to Windows :-)
- usrusr 1y ago
  There will be a day when Microsoft ships a "Windows" that cuts all legacy compatibility except for an included distribution of Wine.
  - cogman10 1y ago
    Microsoft might not do it, but there's always reactos [1] [1] https://reactos.org/ https://reactos.org/
  - Tajnymag 1y ago
    At this point, that's exactly what Windows needs. As Microsoft only adds new features and doesn't remove almost any, Windows is getting reaaally bloated. And what was Microsoft's response? Everyone should buy a new faster computer to run Windows 11.
    - flohofwoe 1y ago
      Tbh, a better strategy would to slim down Windows again would be to remove all the new user-facing stuff which was added over the last two decades. There have been significant improvements in the kernel and DirectX, but on the surface, Windows somehow managed to remove user-facing features while at the same time adding an incredible amount of bloat in layers above the core operating system. From a usability perspective the Windows desktop UI in Win2k was singnificantly better than anything that came after.
      - avadodin 1y ago
        Win2k with WSL without systemd would be so kino
Dwedit 1y ago
OTVDM (based on Wine) allows you to run 16-bit programs on 64-bit Windows, so it's not just a Linux thing.
jeffbee 1y ago
Neat. I am in the habit of using the kernel squashfs with privileges. TIL about squashfuse.
apatheticonion 1y ago
Same! Fallout New Vegas runs phenomenally on Linux but struggles on Windows. Same with Call of Duty 2 and even some newer titles like Borderlands 2.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
throwaway2046 1y ago
>I only wish Wine also allowed me to zoom 2x or 3x, but this is where Gamescope comes in Also possible using dxwrapper (for DirectX 7-9 games): https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper Similarly to dxvk, you drop a few DLLs into the game directory then edit one config file. No need to use a dedicated program.

riizade 1y ago

Can you elaborate on Unity wasting disk space on gigabytes of zeroes? How did you discover that? Is it intentional on Unity's part? Percentage-wise, are we talking 2% of a 100GB game, or 50% of a 4GB game? I can't find anything about it online.

Grom_PE 1y ago
I suppose that is an issue how a specific game was made, not inherent to Unity. I like to look inside game files and a .zip archive of 1GB unpacking to ~10GB game made me suspicious.
- marcosdumay 1y ago
  My first guess would be it has lots of uncompressed images or badly compressed videos as artifacts.
  - riizade 1y ago
    Same, but games run uncompressed assets as an optimization measure to trade disk usage for CPU usage, depending on which is the bottleneck for their particular game (iiuc) So it'd be surprising to me if a developer chose to use uncompressed/lightly compressed assets, and compressing them caused performance to increase; because you're intentionally choosing the tradeoff in the opposite direction the developer did Of course, there are game developers that are less technical and may not have knowingly made that tradeoff in which case all bets are off, but the games made by those developers tend not to be the kind that require beefy machines to run at 60fps+
    - wtallis 1y ago
      The right tradeoff for compression ratio can change with just a few years of technological progress, or even quicker if it's a half-assed port from console to a high-end PC. There are similar issues for a game's decision of how many threads to spawn based on the CPU's core count. The developer's assumptions may not have been right to begin with, and even if they were, they're not likely to stay right for long.
      - dontlaugh 1y ago
        Exactly. Guaranteed SSDs and a spare CPU core have made compression almost always faster.
        wtallis 1y ago
        Being able to rely on fast storage makes compression less necessary for performance reasons. But the higher price/GB of SSDs mean users have a stronger preference for games to keep the install size under control.
        dontlaugh 1y ago
        There was a time when console games would avoid disc seeks at all costs, even duplicating uncompressed assets. Compression can easily interfere with laying data out in blocks to read sequentially. That’s not a problem with SSDs and most machines have more cores or even dedicated hardware decoders. Of course it’s also more worthwhile to compress since SSD storage is comparatively more expensive.

jayd16 1y ago

Reminds me of the mention of "contiguous zeroes" that used to be in the Apple App Store docs.[1] Which seemed like just a backhanded way to say "we encrypt and then compress so don't expect easy compression." I suppose this might be asset padding or perhaps these are raw textures with full alpha sections? Still, it seems pretty strange. What game, what asset? [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42478186/app-size-on-app-store-is-7x-larger-than-uploaded-app-size https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42478186/app-size-on-app...

raron 1y ago

> Games that rudely switch to fullscreen, I can run in Wine Virtual Desktop. Previously on Windows, I had to configure hacks like DxWnd and it didn't always work. Maybe Wine could be ported to Windows :-)

usrusr 1y ago
There will be a day when Microsoft ships a "Windows" that cuts all legacy compatibility except for an included distribution of Wine.
- cogman10 1y ago
  Microsoft might not do it, but there's always reactos [1] [1] https://reactos.org/ https://reactos.org/
- Tajnymag 1y ago
  At this point, that's exactly what Windows needs. As Microsoft only adds new features and doesn't remove almost any, Windows is getting reaaally bloated. And what was Microsoft's response? Everyone should buy a new faster computer to run Windows 11.
  - flohofwoe 1y ago
    Tbh, a better strategy would to slim down Windows again would be to remove all the new user-facing stuff which was added over the last two decades. There have been significant improvements in the kernel and DirectX, but on the surface, Windows somehow managed to remove user-facing features while at the same time adding an incredible amount of bloat in layers above the core operating system. From a usability perspective the Windows desktop UI in Win2k was singnificantly better than anything that came after.
    - avadodin 1y ago
      Win2k with WSL without systemd would be so kino

Dwedit 1y ago

OTVDM (based on Wine) allows you to run 16-bit programs on 64-bit Windows, so it's not just a Linux thing.

jeffbee 1y ago

Neat. I am in the habit of using the kernel squashfs with privileges. TIL about squashfuse.

apatheticonion 1y ago

Same! Fallout New Vegas runs phenomenally on Linux but struggles on Windows. Same with Call of Duty 2 and even some newer titles like Borderlands 2.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

throwaway2046 1y ago

>I only wish Wine also allowed me to zoom 2x or 3x, but this is where Gamescope comes in Also possible using dxwrapper (for DirectX 7-9 games): https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper Similarly to dxvk, you drop a few DLLs into the game directory then edit one config file. No need to use a dedicated program.