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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rainyday - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
in my opinion linux is not yet ready for mass market use.linux still has inferior file management to windows. still no native file icon support in executable, icon association is annoying too. explorer is still superior than natilus/thunar in feature and presentation/interface.
uninstalling and upgrading programs in linux is still annoying and complicated. there are many ways to install a program (synaptic, rpm/deb, tarball, bin, subversion etc) and at least some of them are still annoying. these are pretty big issue for gaming.
file sharing and networking can still be unnecessarily complicated and there is still no user friendly driver installation procedure like windows.
devices in linux still work at generic mode, but windows users are used to having drivers tailors to their hardwares with all features enabled and usually have better presentation and interface.
in my opinion linux can be used as windows alternative only in computers having routine and specific duties. like checking counters at shopping malls, in cyber-cafes, children's school class room etc.
boltronics - Sunday, May 9, 2010 - link
> linux still has inferior file management to windows.Dreaming. Spoken like a real Windows user who has no understanding of anything else. Why are you in the "Linux" section?
> still no native file icon support in executable,
Thanks for the laugh. Funniest thing I've read all day. :)
> explorer is still superior than natilus
That's funny too (and I don't just mean your incorrect spelling). Last I checked, Explorer didn't support tabs. Nautilus also includes built-in support for all kinds of protocols too, such as SFTP. I can't think of a single way Nautilus loses to Windows Explorer.
> uninstalling and upgrading programs in linux is still annoying and complicated.
What? Learn the package manager GUI and never worry about installing or removing again too hard for you? Give me a break. You think manually installing from a CD or manually searching a website for an installer in Windows is easier? Windows doesn't even have a single consistent installation procedure - every program requires different steps and uses a different wizard. And how do you update those Windows programs? You open every single program and run the "Check for Updates" option or visit all the websites you downloaded the programs from to see if there's something new? No thanks - I've got more interesting things to spend my time on.
On the off chance I actually wanted to compile a program on GNU/Linux that wasn't in a package management system, it's almost always configure, make, make install. I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to do it under Windows. I'm pretty sure it would involve manually installing a compiler... and if you don't compile code under Windows, why would you mention installing software by compiling it under GNU/Linux?
> file sharing and networking can still be unnecessarily complicated
That has been the exact opposite of my experience.
> and there is still no user friendly driver installation procedure like windows.
That's because it is just so rare to ever need to install a driver. Drivers should be included as a module that came with your kernel, and as such should work automatically. The only main exceptions are ATI and nVidia proprietary graphics card drivers which are required for running some proprietary games, and even here a growing number of distributions have these available for installation through your package management system. Generally, you won't ever need to do a thing. As such, GNU/Linux clearly dominates in this area too.
> devices in linux still work at generic mode, but windows users are used to having drivers tailors to
> their hardwares with all features enabled and usually have better presentation and interface.
When it comes to ease of use, consistency is more important than having some unique interface. eg, I can tweak the settings of any installed printer using the CUPS web interface, and can also do this in the same way on basically any modern distribution. On Windows you likely have a different utility to change settings for every printer. How is that a benefit to the end user? It's just confusing and annoying. Unnecessary clutter.
As you might imagine, I fully disagree with your opinion. After all, I'm typing this in Firefox on GNU/Linux.
Headfoot - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 - link
Linux is only free if your time has no value.DominionSeraph - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 - link
Drop the GNU. Let Microsoft incorporate DirectX with copyright protections.Not rocket science.
marraco - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 - link
I have lots of games from before Windows XP, like some tomb raiders, and need for speed 4.They no more run on windows. No support. No compatibility. (and don't even try to run a game with a 16 bit installer on a 64 bit windows).
At that older times, nI never had a top video card to run them on all his full glory, and I was somewat disapointed. I just wish to run NFS4 with full antialiasing, and on his full glory.
I hope they run on Linux. That way linux can add more games that windows.
shangshang - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
while you're at it, why not go back further to make DOS games run under linux too, that way even more games will run under linux.Penti - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
Lol already done, but DOXBox/Dosemu works in windows too.Gonemad - Monday, November 8, 2010 - link
In fact, reading through the Dosbox "boot" and readme's you stumble on a lot of things seen in a Linux boot, suggesting the thing was first released to Linux, than ported BACK to Windows, which adds to the irony.Windows doesn´t support DOS games, but Linux does. How absurd.
Some games even play better on Dosbox than on native DOS, because of the 640kB memory thingy that was a real pain in the neck back then.
Schugy - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 - link
In theory wine/cedega has to be slower but as long as it is playable it is ok.Other competition is free Intel Linux graphics driver vs. Intel Windows graphics driver or AMD Catalyst Windows vs Catalyst Linux vs open Radeon or Radeon HD driver.
This article was rather disappointing
flywheeldk - Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - link
This article is utter B.S. - unless you do another article focusing on running native Linux games on Windows - then it would just be completely pointless.Regards
Peter