Full time Linux user and gamer?

[Kursah]

We don't mind if you guys disagree, but keep it constructive please. Otherwise infraction points and thread closure happen.

I challenge some of you review the forum guidelines and make adjustments before posting again here or elsewhere. Seriously.

 

[StrayKAT]

Yet the complaint you brought up is about wifi drivers when the thread is to talk about game support and Proton.

The discussion moved to RTB talking ease of use and command lines. I'm just following the line of thinking, and getting into the mind of the average person who would run into this. Among other things.

 

[LFaWolf]

I think thread has gone off topic.

For OP, I spend about 25% of my work time in Linux - Ubuntu and CentOS. I am a very light gamer as I have no time to do so. My gaming machine runs Windows 10. Given my busy schedule, when I game I just want to game. I just want it to work. I don’t have time to troubleshoot or install any patches or drivers to make it work.

I am not a game developer so I am not 100% certain about this, but if developers start developing using Microsoft .net core there will be much better compatibility as the game can be ported easier to Linux. .net core apps can run natively on Linux.

For others, Linux isn’t and will never be, made for general public. It is made for servers, developers, sys admin, people that have specific needs to do so. The Linux communities do not have the millions like microsoft to study human behavior, improve the user interface, etc. the majority of the people that use it do not complain about the UI but would rather have a rock solid kernel that won’t panic as Linux are used for servers, even the mission critical ones. It is what it is. My first OS was Unix, love it as a student in school, but Personally I actually prefer Windows now.

 

[RejZoR]

Try realtek for not providing and maintaining an actual kernel module that can be installed. nVidia does it, why can't they? If they can maintain a github repo, they should be able to get this into the kernel. The reality is that the manufacturer has to care for it to get into any OS.

The bottom line is that this thread probably isn't the place to be having this misguided discussion.

Why the F should Realtek give a flying fart about some OS with insignificant user share? And how can you improve that? Certainly not by making the OS absolutely idiotic and unfriendly to use. So, pick one.

Misguided discussion? What "misguided" discussion? It's a discussion of using Linux for gaming. And we're discussing how utterly moronic is to use in general, let alone doing gaming on it. But go on by calling several paragraphs of arguments against it "a wall of text".

 

[Solaris17]

Why the F should Realtek give a flying fart about some OS with insignificant user share?

Misguided discussion? What "misguided" discussion? It's a discussion of using Linux for gaming. And we're discussing how utterly moronic is to use in general, let alone doing gaming on it. But go on by calling several paragraphs of arguments against it "a wall of text".

A: if we are speaking outside of discussion it would be beneficial for realtek to improve driver support and the chips in general because the server linux utilization is actually really high.

B: you kind of proved why it was a mis guided discussion you cant stay on topic (which im going to reccomend we start doing) and say how you are commenting on how it is in "general".

edit:: to be clear im referring to realtek in regards to networking cards.

 

[king of swag187]

I personally love windows for its plug and play and nature, but the amount of garbage hiding behind its shiny and somewhat appealing compatibility with hardware from the past decade is nice. Actually speaking of Linux, I use it for my schoolwork as Lubuntu gives a major battery improvement, and gaming with Proton isn't too bad (aside from the obvious performance disparity)

 

[StrayKAT]

I'm beginning to entertain myself a bit too much, thinking of conspiracies. What if MS is behind this? This stuff didn't start happening until they bought Github. And Microsoft has been "playing nice" with Linux lately. Maybe it was all a setup.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

edit: Another strange conspiracy is in Linus' email, where he talks about "looking in the mirror".. It has unicode in it (the rest of the message, outside a few strange lines like this, is ascii). And apparently, none of his emails had unicode before.

 

[RejZoR]

A: if we are speaking outside of discussion it would be beneficial for realtek to improve driver support and the chips in general because the server linux utilization is actually really high.

B: you kind of proved why it was a mis guided discussion you cant stay on topic (which im going to reccomend we start doing) and say how you are commenting on how it is in "general".

a) servers don't need sound, which is why they don't care

b) I proved nothing except that Linux is garbage for most things, ESPECIALLY for gaming. You also can't call me Windows fanboy because the number of times I've criticized MS and Windows is far greater than I've mentioned Linux. In total. But they got their shit together for most things. Linux never does. And that's why it won't work for gaming for minimum of next 10 to even 20 years.

 

[GoldenX]

Why all Linux-GNU/Linux-GNU+Linux discussions always end like that? Linux is the popular name, it's not the full OS, but people calls it that, same way people say .JIF instead of .GIF. It's stupid, it's the way it is.
@RejZoR You only need to mess with drivers if you use the stupid Nvidia driver, if they shared the info like Intel and AMD does, you would be updating drivers with software updates, with a proper GUI window, like a normal human being. Now, if you want to try the latest code in mesa-git or something like that (something you can't do on Windows unless you work for Intel/Nvidia/AMD), get dirty with the console for, like, 10 seconds. I don't think Nvidia developers have an installer set up for every time they change the driver internally.
The user experience is still far bellow Windows or Mac, but it's a LOT better than it was years ago, and it's improving. Now thanks to Valve and GOG, we are finally getting proper games support, slowly but surely.

I will keep using Arch, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. in dual boot as a way of supporting the underdog, Windows had a great time with 7, but this 10 sh*t is stupid. Having a free (both meanings of free, stupid english) alternative is not something bad, and it's slowly getting better.

 

[RejZoR]

Also, Linux is a full OS. People don't care what's kernel and what's the shell on top of it. And they all share same crappy UX. People don't really care anymore what NT is underneath certain Windows version. We used to care back in Win9x days when NT4.x was so radically different nothing worked in between them and NT4 was mostly used by businesses. When Win2000 arrived, while marketed as business platform, Win2000 was widely used by consumers too. I've used it and experience was almost the same as WinXP later, minus the Luna GUI.

Windows 10 actually isn't stupid. First release maybe, but current one is very much mature. Only thing setting it back are GUI inconsistencies as they are still slowly porting old features into new GUI design. And dealing with updates that break things since they are force (which is to eliminate outdated vulnerable systems and unify the OS and decrease fragmentation).

Make no mistake, Linux is great for utility purposes, like live boot software based on Linux like UNETBOOTIN, Clonezilla and stuff like that. And can work fairly well if one only needs computer for the most basic things like browsing web, email and watching movies and music where you just install it, update it fully and select apps from the repository. For that, it's perfectly good and relatively easy to use. Certainly no worse than Windows. But once you wenture out of the stock out of the box experience and start doing more advanced things like trying to install a driver that's not on an integrated repository, you'll soon wish you were on Windows again...

Maybe Steam and GOG pushing their things might help, I hope it will because it would be nice to have an alternate OS option, but unless Linux ppl sort it out on their end, nothing will change. They need to change how repositories work with drivers important for gaming. So, audio and graphic drivers. They should be delivered to users directly without having to go anywhere. If they sort that out, they'll actually surpass Windows in that regard.

 

[GoldenX]

I remember using Windows 7 64 bits on netbooks with 2GB of RAM and 80-ish MB/s disks, it was fast, and on a single core Pentium 3-level CPU.
Try using Windows 10 on a dual core with 4GB and a mechanical 110-ish MB/s drive (the standard cheap notebook, still way above the min. requirements), tell me how much time it takes to install the updates, with both full 100% hard drive and CPU use, how the interface lags, and the search function delays the results. Windows 10 is bloatware now, the first version had bugs but it wasn't this bad at the performance level, not even 8 or 8.1 was this damn slow on a non quad core+SSD pc. I hope 1809 is better.
And I'm leaving the "botnet" debate aside.

 

[Kursah]

Cleaned up this topic a bit. Ready to deliver infractions to anyone that chooses to ignore my previous warning or go against the TPU forum guidelines.
If you can't be constructive, you might want to refrain from posting until you can be. Those of you that have been able to maintain a constructive conversation here, much appreciated!

 

[StrayKAT]

*bump*

I'm just curious what people's drive layouts are like for Linux gaming? Do you dedicate a lot of space for /usr? Are partitions/separate drives even a popular thing these days? I haven't used Linux in awhile, but this was always standard practice before.

 

[notb]

I'm just curious what people's drive layouts are like for Linux gaming? Do you dedicate a lot of space for /usr? Are partitions/separate drives even a popular thing these days? I haven't used Linux in awhile, but this was always standard practice before.

Hardly important in this use case and just becomes irritating as you live on with the OS.
If you're installing something fairly robust (Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Fedora etc) just go full auto during the setup - of course excluding localization and stuff. Assume OS creators know what they're doing.

Yes, there was a time when a swap partition was crucial, yet simple and greatly over-discussed issue. You could literally find 3-page magazine essays about the perfect swap size - just next to which file system is perfect for your zodiac and so on.
Everything else (like separating /var or /home) was really just hyped by administrator wannabes who wanted to setup their PC like if it was running a national nuclear program.

If you just want to game, get the most mainstream distro that you like (preferably Ubuntu-based) and minimize the setup labor.

 

[StrayKAT]

Hardly important in this use case and just becomes irritating as you live on with the OS.
If you're installing something fairly robust (Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, Fedora etc) just go full auto during the setup - of course excluding localization and stuff. Assume OS creators know what they're doing.

Yes, there was a time when a swap partition was crucial, yet simple and greatly over-discussed issue. You could literally find 3-page magazine essays about the perfect swap size - just next to which file system is perfect for your zodiac and so on.
Everything else (like separating /var or /home) was really just hyped by administrator wannabes who wanted to setup their PC like if it was running a national nuclear program.

If you just want to game, get the most mainstream distro that you like (preferably Ubuntu-based) and minimize the setup labor.

ReiserFS definitely for Scorpio.

I may just go with SteamOS..

 

[silentbogo]

I'm just curious what people's drive layouts are like for Linux gaming?

Pretty much the same as on windows, it all depends on your storage options and needs.
My partitions are marked to the same drives as on Win10: /root on NVME SSD alongside windows and /home on SATA SSD where the rest of my crap is located.
Steam has all apps stored in user's home directory on Linux by default.
If you wanna make your life easier, you can simply copy game data from Windows to Linux folder and re-sync it to update the platform-specific stuff. Worked for many games, including Bioshock Infinite, Shadow of Mordor etc.

I may just go with SteamOS..

Just go with Ubuntu. It's probably the best option so far. You can set it up to launch in Big Picture mode at startup later, if you want.
i haven't checked SteamOS this year, but before it was nothing but trouble for me.

 

[StrayKAT]

Pretty much the same as on windows, it all depends on your storage options and needs.
My partitions are marked to the same drives as on Win10: /root on NVME SSD alongside windows and /home on SATA SSD where the rest of my crap is located.
Steam has all apps stored in user's home directory on Linux by default.
If you wanna make your life easier, you can simply copy game data from Windows to Linux folder and re-sync it to update the platform-specific stuff. Worked for many games, including Bioshock Infinite, Shadow of Mordor etc.


Just go with Ubuntu. It's probably the best option so far. You can set it up to launch in Big Picture mode at startup later, if you want.
i haven't checked SteamOS this year, but before it was nothing but trouble for me.

I guess that would be the smart move. Do the saved games sync/work across both Win and Linux too? I don't plan on leaving Windows, but it'd be cool to dual boot every once in awhile.

 

[Easy Rhino]

Hardly important in this use case and just becomes irritating as you live on with the OS.

I am very happy those days of managing the dir file structure for a desktop computer are over.

Just a follow up question, what are you full timers doing about Office products? My wife needs the entire suite for work. I think VMWare would be good to fire up a low power Windows 10 instance.

 

[silentbogo]

Just a follow up question, what are you full timers doing about Office products?

LibreOffice. Usually I set to save in MS format by default for compatibility's sake.
There are still some issues w/ powerpoint presentations and rich media objects in general (sizing/misalignment when moving docs between MSO and Libre), but otherwise it works as expected. Even with PDFs.
Alternatively, she can use Google Docs. It's also pretty cool and more backwards-compatible w/ MSO and has all the necessary functions. The only con is that it's a cloud app, but it has offline access option in chrome.

 

[GoldenX]

*bump*

I'm just curious what people's drive layouts are like for Linux gaming? Do you dedicate a lot of space for /usr? Are partitions/separate drives even a popular thing these days? I haven't used Linux in awhile, but this was always standard practice before.

Once I had a 32GB SSD, and a 2TB drive, /home was on the 2TB drive, everything else in the 32GB, so basically just root.

 

[StrayKAT]

Once I had a 32GB SSD, and a 2TB drive, /home was on the 2TB drive, everything else in the 32GB, so basically just root.

Was 32GB enough to still install some userland stuff too (besides the games in /home)?

 

[GoldenX]

Yup, more than enough. But i was using Arch with XFCE at that time, so space wasn't a problem even on a 16GB SD card.
By the way, you can still install Unity in Ubuntu 18.04 and save yourself a full GB of RAM usage from ditching Gnome.

 

[notb]

Just a follow up question, what are you full timers doing about Office products? My wife needs the entire suite for work. I think VMWare would be good to fire up a low power Windows 10 instance.

Office Online if she's ok with the limited feature set.
It's pretty close to the desktop experience and A LOT nicer to live with than free alternatives.

If she needs more (e.g. VBA) than go VM. Although I do recommend the opposite way: Windows hosting and Linux in VM. I've been doing that basically since VirtualBox 2.0.
Another possibility would be to go remote (either between your machines or just cloud-based).

Yup, more than enough. But i was using Arch with XFCE at that time, so space wasn't a problem even on a 16GB SD card.
By the way, you can still install Unity in Ubuntu 18.04 and save yourself a full GB of RAM usage from ditching Gnome.

That really depends what you're doing. A complete TeXLive takes 5GB. A feature-rich IDE could be 1GB or more.
For a pure gaming scenario 16GB for /root (sans games) seems an overkill.

 

[silentbogo]

Do the saved games sync/work across both Win and Linux too?

Yep, I believe it does.

Was 32GB enough to still install some userland stuff too (besides the games in /home)?

Depends on the amount of software etc. For me 32GB is way more than enough, especially if it's a simple gaming machine. I'm running a plain Ubuntu (GNOME) on a 64GB partition, I have lots of dev tools installed (Android SDK, QT Creator, PMA etc), and I'm not even close to maxing it out.

 

[Easy Rhino]

Office Online if she's ok with the limited feature set.
It's pretty close to the desktop experience and A LOT nicer to live with than free alternatives.

If she needs more (e.g. VBA) than go VM. Although I do recommend the opposite way: Windows hosting and Linux in VM. I've been doing that basically since VirtualBox 2.0.
Another possibility would be to go remote (either between your machines or just cloud-based).

She needs the entire suite for work because that is what they use at work along side the office 365 in the cloud. Anyway, I really hope M$ ports the entire office suite to docker. That would be amazing. Run Ubuntu or whatever as desktop and just click the MS Word icon and it launches Word in a container seamlessly.