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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ficarra1002 - Friday, February 11, 2011 - link
Most people don't use Linux because it's free. They get it because its better. You may think its too much work, but that's you.stoggy - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
Yea those linux gui server utils are great they make it really easy. then its worth the trouble.why did you even read the article if its not worth the bother?
why do i use linux for a desktop? Because windows cant do what linux can do, period. Even worse is when Windows makes me do what linux does for me.
zerobug - Saturday, January 2, 2010 - link
Very good move from Anand, hiring a Linux expert for a better coverage on what's going on in the OSS arena. I welcome this initiative. The present article was a good choice and I'll be checking often for what's following. Good luck and a happy new year to the team and all their readers.ReviveR - Saturday, January 2, 2010 - link
Comparison is quite unfair, but Linux doesn't actually have to win Windows to become a gaming platform.Just today I connected my N900 to TV and played some Star Control 2. It worked really well as cheap console replacement.
It probably also has more processing power (CPU & GPU) than Nintendo DS or PSP. You can connect it to PC, use some bluetooth based controller like Wiimote etc. I think that when Maemo starts gaining some speed it could be a very nice Linux based gaming platform also.
If you think how successful Wii has been and then consider that something like N900 can handle bigger resolutions than Wii, offer all the development advantages of Linux etc... The tech is there, all it would need is users realising the possibilities.
minime - Saturday, January 2, 2010 - link
I'd like to see more real-life server test (incl. Linux [based] solutions). Something like "Which software stack/solution is able to serve the most users (while being practical meaning, incl. security)" (use-case: webserver, database, java, etc.).Then the other way around, keywords: AMD, Intel, PCI-E SSD vs. SATA SSD, GPGPU, etc.
ChristopherRice - Saturday, January 2, 2010 - link
In the future, I'd like to do some server articles for sure.minime - Sunday, January 3, 2010 - link
Cool, thanks! I do believe this is something a lot of readers would like to see and would differentiate from the ordinary IT-blog/news-saucejediknight - Saturday, January 2, 2010 - link
I'd be interested in seeing what performance would be like using a VM. Or Is performance so poor as to not even be worth attempting?FluffyTapeworm - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
It would be interesting to see how well running windows + games under vmplayer, virtualbox, etc stacks up. I assume it's likely to be less efficient, but it might still be useful for many older games.vol7ron - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
This article didn't really introduce anything new. All it says is that some people have found a way to manipulate Linux using Wine/etc to play some games.That sounds no better than someone issuing a keygen to use an application. Of course, the legalities are better, but you get the point: to only be able to play SOME games at a considerable performance impact does not make this option enticing if you already have Windows.
All it says is: if you're a Linux user and you want nice gameplay, we recommend you dual boot, as always, because the games you probably really want to play, won't be worth the effort.