Linux Gaming: Are We There Yet?
by Christopher Rice on December 28, 2009 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Closing Thoughts (for now)
What's the answer to the initial question, "Is Linux ready for gaming?" As you probably expected, the answer is both yes and no. If you're looking for an out-of-box solution for running older games, Linux is a decent alternative to Windows. The longer a game has been around, and the more popular the game, the better the odds that someone has already taken the time to get it working properly under one of the Wine projects. Naturally, that means the reverse is true: newer titles are less likely to work without some extra effort (and sometimes not even then). Even if you do manage to get a new release running, you should expect to see anything from graphical glitches to completely unplayable gameplay.
By now you're probably asking which of the three projects we recommend. Personally, I would use Crossover Games and Wine. We selected Wine because it's not only free, but if you're savvy enough you have a better chance of getting a new release game working right away. Since the Wine project is open source and extremely active in development, you can find patches around the net created on the fly for supporting specific games long before Crossover/Cedega come out with anything. We can then supplement Wine with Crossover Games when all else fails with installing or playing specific games.
Crossover Games provides a decent GUI and the ability to run additional games that Wine cannot. We have also found in many cases that Crossover Games will provide higher frame rates and a better gaming experience. Between both Wine and Crossover Games you should be able to get the majority of your games working with a reasonable amount of effort. If you're looking for the most functionality out of your Linux desktop and don't mind spending the extra money, then I would suggest getting all three. Having all three will give you the best possible chance to ensure all of your games are covered.
In an ideal world, Linux would be supported natively by games. Unfortunately, few developers are willing to take on that task. Eve Online used to have a native Linux client, but development was shut down this past year (in part because performance under Wine was more than acceptable). There was talk of a native UT3 client but it has yet to materialize. Some smaller projects (i.e. Penny Arcade Adventures and other indie titles) have been released with Linux clients, but for the most part major publishers are ignoring the platform.
One of the real problems we encountered is something we're going to address in a separate article. Our test system, if you notice, uses an NVIDIA GPU. We tried to be hardware agnostic, but the problems experienced with our test ATI HD 5770 and Wine eventually got the best of us. We could get the card to work with native Linux games, but Wine support at present was an absolute disaster. Part of the problem undoubtedly stems from the newness of the hardware, but we didn't have any alternative ATI GPUs available right now. The future of ATI GPUs on Linux isn't nearly so bleak, however, with some exciting developments coming from the open source driver. As stated, we'll be looking into that in a future article.
We have some other Linux articles in the pipeline as well. In retrospect, we should have started with something a little less daunting, as gaming and Linux was plagued by more problems than other aspects of the OS. In the meantime, we welcome your comments and thoughts on other Linux areas you'd like to see us investigate.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
126 Comments
View All Comments
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.