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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niva - Monday, January 4, 2010 - link
This is not true. Most games these days are designed for windows almost from the ground up. Most graphic engines, to speak of your argument, are optimized for dx and d3d which is Windows. The opengl branches get very little attention because of the smaller user base. Look, even id software seems to be dropping opengl in the future, at least I heard rumors of this.Windows has won the gaming front hard. They don't seem to be paying much attention to it so there is a chance new platforms like the iPhone could take over at some point with different apis.
CastleFox - Friday, April 9, 2010 - link
I have been searching all around the internet for linux gaming coverage. I have had success with WINE myself but I know for the higher end games it can be more of a struggle. I hope to see more Linux coverage soonSetsunayaki - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link
I've done linux gaming for many years...The reason I switched to Linux years ago for some gaming was because I was part of a highly oppresive shooter community. The community was small and used everything from IP tracing tools to disrupt your privacy and threaten you over MSN. These people also attempted to create modifications that would scan your computer in search of any modifications your were working on, along with a lot of information being transmitted.
Linux allowed me to control the access levels a lot closer, and it also helped me make a better gaming server using Wine due to how Windows XP was an OS from 2001, while the Linux version I was using was far more reliable and its netcoding was a lot better.
The key thing to Linux is Nvidia Cards. Forget ATI. Sure, ATI may have the performance crown due to the price crown...but when you factor in the best video card for cross-OS performance you will find that Nvidia Cards win in Linux, Mac and for the most part challenge ATI cards well on Windows as well....making Nvidia the leader it truly is (as much as I love ATI/AMD)...
Once I had Linux setup, I found myself that although my framerate was lower than Windows PC Gaming, I still had over 60 FPS which is one really needs and some overhead in my favorite games and due to the netcoding, I had lower ping in every game I played vs Windows based PCs possibly due to the fact Linux is about networking and its netcoding and processor scheduling was far better.
olbrannon - Friday, September 17, 2010 - link
http://www.playonlinux.com/en/SniperSlap - Tuesday, October 12, 2010 - link
First off, I didn't see anything about World of Warcraft or any other games running in OpenGL mode. Let's keep in mind that the difference in performance between WINE and Windows is mostly due to the fact that WINE will always be playing catch-up to DirectX. When games are run using their OpenGL renderers, I've noticed a bold increase in performance when running under Linux. This is largely due to the fact that Linux makes use of internal resources more effectively, conducts HDD access more efficiently and overall is much leaner.Second, I'd really like to see the comparison between nvidia and AMD video drivers soon. On top of that, in the same review, I'd like some looks at how AMD is planning on improving support and performance in Linux.
My understanding is that they've made some pushes in this regard somewhat recently, but still have a long way to go. The biggest concerns with AMD drivers that I have isn't strictly about performance. It's also over the quality of the drivers and userspace utilities. In the past, I've seen far too many obscure quirks when using AMD/ATI video cards under Linux. From full-screen rendering literally being upside-down when output over digital DVI (but right-side-up on analog dsub!), right the way to inexplicably poor performance.
AMD needs to iron out all these quirks and strange situations which will have people going and disabling this, or tweaking that in their WINE settings. They need to take a page from nvidia and rally around the standards and smooth out the architecture and lifecycle of their drivers.
Which brings me to my third "hope"... I'd like to see any review of nvidia and AMD drivers also look at how the drivers get themselves into the system. Compare the different ways the drivers are modeled. A kernel module? Or is it DRI? What userspace garbage will nvidia or AMD pollute our systems with, and how bad is the interface?
I recently got an AMD video card and am thoroughly impressed with it. But I'm using it on a Windows system and don't have high hopes that my life will ever be as easy under Linux with AMD as it is with nvidia.
Any review of linux drivers and 3D will have to be quite comprehensive. We're talking a 10+ page article! ;)
Yfrwlf - Wednesday, January 19, 2011 - link
"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."Gaming and Linux? WINDOWS gaming INSIDE of Linux. The fact that you can do that is AMAZING. Can you play Linux games inside Windows?? lol
Then the title: "Linux Gaming: Are We There Yet?" Wow. Just, wow. That's the most deceptive article title ever.
Windows gaming in Linux: Are We There Yet?
Answer: No, and never will be, as playing perpetual catch-up to Microsoft and DirectX will be just that, perpetual.
Linux Gaming: Are We There Yet?
Answer: Mostly, since games made for Linux mostly work on Linux, barring some games that aren't packaged well and don't include everything in the archive/installer. In that case, you can run into dependency hell. This is largely the fault of Linux STILL not having a good open standard (cross-distro, otherwise not a standard) for Linux programs. However, things which are packaged right and contain everything within the archive are fine.
The number of Linux game titles has been increasing at a faster rate recently due to the increase in adoption, but of course Linux is behind Mac, and both are way behind Windows in quantity. That being said, most anything that is made for Mac as well as Windows should run perfectly in Wine, because usually the Mac version is simply the Windows binary wrapped in a Wine (or Cider, as it is known on Mac) wrapper. (Mac IS Unix after all, too, specifically BSD, so it's basically the same thing as Linux anyway.)
So, message to AnandTech: How about write up some fair articles about Linux gaming. Some things in this were good, and Linux definitely has problems and sore areas still, but the way you presented this article, like gaming on Linux WAS running Windows games, is stupid as it is always going to be more difficult and a bit silly for anyone to be trying to run one platform's games on a different platform. The best you'll be able to ever hope for, more than likely, is to be able to flawlessly run older programs. Wine is excellent for that, as using Linux + Wine it allows you to run some old Windows programs which aren't based on DOS (otherwise, you can use DOSbox). Some of those programs won't even run on modern Windows machines any more, so Wine can give you a lot of flexibility in running old Windows programs while still running a modern OS. THAT is what Wine is mainly good for, running WoW, and Diablo II, and other games especially those that are OpenGL-compliant and/or have Mac versions, but Wine being the solution for Windows gaming? That is, and will always be, laughable. Microsoft will help ensure that's always the case for as long as they're big enough.
The best solution for Linux gamers is more Linux games, not more Windows games in Linux. That's what your articles should be focusing on, the biggest games coming, and which have already come, to Linux.