Linux Gaming: Are We There Yet?
by Christopher Rice on December 28, 2009 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Linux
The Good the Bad and the Ugly
What was supposed to be a few weeks project on reviewing Linux and gaming turned into an intense month long affair. To be fair, most of the issues that were encountered stemmed from attempting to benchmark multiple games across three different Wine projects. The problem with attempting that task was that each Wine project has different functionality with different games. For example where we could get a game to work in Wine, the game then in turn didn't work with Cedega and vice versa. We were able to get newer releases like Dragon Age Origins and Far Cry 2 to work in some of the different Wine projects, but none of the new releases would work in all projects. This lead us to regress to some older but still actively used releases in order to provide a more detailed report across the three projects.
The results on this page are a quick overview of recent titles and how they fared under the three Wine projects. Without a FRAPS-like utility, we are also left to reporting the overall experience without discrete frame rates.
Dragon Age: Origins
After many hours of research, patching, and game installations we finally managed to get DAO to a functional state using Wine. Once the game could functionally load and play we found we were still missing movies and there were a large number of graphical glitches, so at present we would call this "mostly unacceptable". Cedega is in a worse state at present as we could not get the game or installer to function under Cedega. The good news is that DAO is now working properly under Crossover after the latest patches. A hardware failure at this point (unrelated to the testing - we have a dead PSU and mobo now) halted our testing while we await replacement parts.
Far Cry 2
The installation of Far Cry 2 was extremely tricky under Wine, but eventually we were able to get the installation and game to function. In the end we had to change some registry settings, download a NoCD patch, unplug our network cable, and then play with the in-game video settings in order to make the game playable. We experienced some graphical glitches that make some things look quite odd (i.e. the tree leaves). The overall playability of the game was poor even after tweaking the video settings, so for now this is another of those titles I would skip on Wine. Cedega and Crossover Games are even worse, as we were unable to install or play the game at present.
Grand Theft Auto IV
Here we have our first complete failure to work under Linux. Regardless of Wine project, we were unable to install or run GTA IV at present.
While 3DMark06 isn't a game, we thought it would be interesting to include results. Windows easily outscored our Wine projects with 3DMark06. Cedega was unable to run half of the tests and thus there are no results to report. Both Wine and Crossover ran the benchmark flawlessly.
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DrMrLordX - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 - link
Funny you should mention this.Running Xubuntu 9.10 and the latest build of WINE I can get through Synaptic, I have had nothing but trouble with World of Warcraft.
The first problem is that every time you launch the game via launcher.exe, it will write-protect your entire WoW directory if you have the game "installed" to a Linux partition (it does not do this if you run the game from an NTFS partition). So you run the game directly with wow.exe. This write-protect scheme was apparently stealthily implemented to prevent multi-boxing. Fat lot of good it did.
Secondly, I get uncontrollable mouse spin that makes things . . . very interesting. Basically my character is mouse-turning in one direction constantly until I can get it to stop, which isn't very often.
Thirdly, sometime the server just punts me for no apparent reason when I'm running the game under Xubuntu 9.10/WINE. Why? I don't know.
Taking a few short minutes to do research on the problem, I found no explanation for the server disconnects and one solution for the mouse spin problem which, apparently, did not work for me at all (a package that I do not have installed was blamed for the problem).
Someday I might put in the hours, days, or even weeks of work necessary to get WoW running properly on my Linux install. For now, I boot to XP.
handbanana - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
Very nice job on the article. I am not a big fan of Windows and there lies the problem since I must swallow my pride and play games on it.. Its a vicious cycleatfuser - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
Nice write-up.It seems that things haven't changed much. Support seems a bit better with these commercial forks of the Wine project, but the support for these older games was spotty.
I personally wouldn't be able to justify paying $50 per year for the commercial versions. That's more (per year) than I paid for Windows (XP/7) Professional, and I can play any game out of the box.
Once you're talking about paying for a linux setup then you have to ask yourself why you're picking it instead of Windows 7. I know some people will make that choice because they hate MS or they want to support the open source community, but neither of those reasons offer enough incentive to me to make the switch.
ssj4Gogeta - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 - link
A $120 Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade will definitely last you a few years. It's cheaper than paying $50 every year for a Wine project and you can be sure that all the games will work out of the box, at full performance and with no glitches.Patrese - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
Nice article... things are actually better than I imagined regarding Linux gaming. But here's my question: the testbed is pretty much high end, and gets quite a respectable overclock... would there be a big drop in performance while using a mid end setup? It would be nice to see how things work on a Core2 (Duo or Quad) with a 9800GT or a HD4850, for instance.anactoraaron - Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - link
I am no linux expert in any way, but I was also curious in regards to stability with the overclock. Just because the system passes prime95 in windows does not guarantee stability in linux/wine, and by frying the motherboard and PSU (as stated by the article) I would only assume you were having issues related to the overclock, not just the wine projects.I would like to see this test again at stock everything, and maybe with a SSD. This would remove a few variables.
Then maybe throw in a normal linux box as part of the testing (like the core2 and 9800gt mentioned above), as I have yet to know a whole lot of people who go out and spend $1000 on a build and not get windows. Yeah, yeah, I know there are those who do, I just think those people would be in the minority with regards to linux.
ChristopherRice - Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - link
The computer failed due to multiple power outages because of an internal power source issue supplying the computer/ps. That has been remedied with some additional infrastructure. The OC running on the computer has been that way for over a year, and has caused no instability within windows or Linux. In fact many compiling tests had been run post the review for a future article. These tests put far more stress on the cpu then any of the games run. Also these tests did complete properly, the problem arose after these tests in which the computer received a series of surges that resulted in a failure. Yes it was on a pretty expensive surge protector, however its going to be moved to a full apc setup post rma.As for attempting some tests on a moderate setup, I couldn't agree more. I'll work on trying to source some parts so we can have a high end and a more common setup. In this article I really wanted to show the best case scenario in the comparison. Thanks for the feedback.
Spivonious - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
I hope to see more of your articles in the future.Just wanted to point out a small grammatical issue. When listing examples of things, use "e.g." not "i.e." Just a pet peeve of mine.
e.g. = "exempli gratia" -> "for the sake of an example"
i.e. = "id est" -> "that is"
marc1000 - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
I guess what he meant was "In Example", but I gor your point. I didn't knew the "official" meanings too.theqat - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
Just writing to mention that Heroes of Newerth (by S2 Games) also has a well-supported Linux-native client. It's currently in open beta but they always get the Linux client out for a new patch within a few hours, and they show no signs of halting support.