Full time Linux user and gamer?

[R-T-B]

This. It's actually part of the reason why I use AMD for GPUs as well. I also like being able to make my machine behave exactly the way I want it to, but I'm weird like that.

Yeah if they had a GPU that was high end flagship-grade I'd probably go back next upgrade.

Ironic, it used to be AMD's drivers were the worst in Linux, but that was back when they were binary only. Now NVIDIA's are worse just by virtue of being binary (mind you, they are still pretty darn good binary)

 

[Aquinus]

Ironic, it used to be AMD's drivers were the worst in Linux, but that was back when they were binary only. Now NVIDIA's are worse just by virtue of being binary (mind you, they are still pretty darn good binary)

Oh yeah, they're damn good drivers. It's more of a moral decision than anything else for me.

 

[R-T-B]

Oh yeah, they're damn good drivers. It's more of a moral decision than anything else for me.

That, and you can run Wayland, which nvidia is being a total butt about...

 

[Aquinus]

That, and you can run Wayland, which nvidia is being a total butt about...

I still use X.

When push comes to shove, I haven't seen any performance metrics that would warrant a switch, particularly if some applications don't jive well with Wayland yet. I'll sometimes use it on my laptop for work... until it gives me a reason to switch back to X.

 

[birdie]

I have friends for whom I installed Windows 7 back when it was first released and they are still running it without a single issue. It's been like ... 10 years? Year, right, a little bit more than that.

Yes, you need to be somewhat careful with applications/drivers/AV in Windows but if you're, then there are no issues to speak of. And no one is forcing you to use Windows 10 anyways - Windows 8 will be supported for three more years.

(Again, when arguing with me remember that I've been using Linux exusively (aside from gaming) for over 20 years already - I do understand all the Linux issues all too well).

 

[R-T-B]

I still use X.

When push comes to shove, I haven't seen any performance metrics that would warrant a switch, particularly if some applications don't jive well with Wayland yet. I'll sometimes use it on my laptop for work... until it gives me a reason to switch back to X.

Good to know. I mean, who doesn't like badmouthing what they can't have? I am down with this.

 

[Aquinus]

I have friends for whom I installed Windows 7 back when it was first released and they are still running it without a single issue. It's been like ... 10 years? Year, right, a little bit more than that.

Yes, you need to be somewhat careful with applications/drivers/AV in Windows but if you're, then there are no issues to speak of. And no one is forcing you to use Windows 10 anyways - Windows 8 will be supported for three more years.

(Again, when arguing with me remember that I've been using Linux exusively (aside from gaming) for over 20 years already - I do understand all the Linux issues all too well).

Nah, that's okay. I'm happy with Ubuntu and I have no plans on going back. I've been using it since 8.04 and before that I was using Gentoo. Not exclusively because I was way more committed to gaming back then. I started using it exclusively (including for games,) 4 years ago or so.

Look, this isn't a pissing contest. I really don't care if someone has been using it for 20 years or 20 days and I'm sure you'd agree with me that the experience now is far better than it was even 10 years ago, but I've actively gone down this road for what I consider important which is very different than the average user and I've tried to spell that out. Most of what I do now is light gaming, development work, browsing the web, watching videos, and listening to music. I would hope you'd agree with me that Linux is more than adequate for those purposes. Even out of the box, Ubuntu isn't bad. It's not like i need Padoka or Oibaf's PPAs to do my thing or mainline kernels with the latest AMDGPU goodness and most of the time I don't even overclock the GPU. Hell, the only reason I overclock the CPU is because I'm too cheap to invest in a new machine.

So when arguing with me, remember that what I consider to be important is different than what you consider to be important... and that I've been using it for ~15 years.

 

[R-T-B]

Meh, I've had a gentoo box that ran near a decade. The wiki crash kinda made it stagnate though. But what did I care, it was essentially an NAS anyhow.

Not my longest running rig, that goes to an old OS/2 system that's still able to boot to this day. Not that it does anything but play old dos games, heh.

 

[R-T-B]

Short story of my current after-christmas experience is it's going well.

I installed my first steam game today, Deep Rock Galactic. It ran at 60FPS vsync'd the whole time, even when that Nyaka Trawler grabbed me. I was playing multiplayer too.

Now to try the rest of my library... got my work cut out for me:

That list scrolls down for a few pages. I'll report back with the heavy hitters. My expectation is that most will work other than maybe cutscenes in the few that use Windows Media Foundation, which currently seems broken (being worked on).

 

[johnspack]

Did some more testing, like to have at least 10 linux distros in vms heh... found that opensuse is very easy to add wine to. 1 single deb file to install, and you have full wine. Isn't this what ppl
keep biotching about? http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/x86_64/ for Tumbleweed for example. http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/x86_64/wine-5.0~rc2-1078.1.x86_64.rpm will install full wine. Nothing else to do. I still prefer ubuntu, as it is far more configurable, and far more is available for it. But the wine is harder to install....

 

[Aquinus]

Good to know. I mean, who doesn't like badmouthing what they can't have? I am down with this.

So, I decided to try using it again at work and instantly the first thing I noticed was that redshift stopped worked working which is really important when I'm in the office because I have two of those 5k LGs that are insanely bright.

Did some more testing, like to have at least 10 linux distros in vms heh... found that opensuse is very easy to add wine to. 1 single deb file to install, and you have full wine. Isn't this what ppl
keep biotching about? http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/x86_64/ for Tumbleweed for example. http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Emulators:/Wine/openSUSE_Tumbleweed/x86_64/wine-5.0~rc2-1078.1.x86_64.rpm will install full wine. Nothing else to do. I still prefer ubuntu, as it is far more configurable, and far more is available for it. But the wine is harder to install....

I've found that Wine's apt source is finicky at best in Ubuntu. Once it's installed though, it works pretty well but it can easily turn into mismanaged dependency nightmare.

 

[johnspack]

Aquinius, can you elaborate on the winehq implementation for ubuntu that you find difficult? I have used winehq to install to probably dozens of ubuntu installs at this point. It installs perfectly, it configures perfectly, and runs anything I can throw at it. It takes about 3 minutes to copy and paste text from the winehq ubuntu repository page to a term box, and you are running wine! I simply don't understand the difficulty. And no, don't use ubuntu's wine, go to winehq.org for your wine.

 

[R-T-B]

I had to give in. For now. I'll certainly be back. Right now Windows is being regretfully reloaded...

Mind you, not because of any GAME issue (they all worked more or less fine).

Why? Ask Easy AntiCheat. Damn that thing. If you want to game with your friends on Linux it will kill all your hopes and dreams.

 

[Aquinus]

Aquinius, can you elaborate on the winehq implementation for ubuntu that you find difficult? I have used winehq to install to probably dozens of ubuntu installs at this point. It installs perfectly, it configures perfectly, and runs anything I can throw at it. It takes about 3 minutes to copy and paste text from the winehq ubuntu repository page to a term box, and you are running wine! I simply don't understand the difficulty. And no, don't use ubuntu's wine, go to winehq.org for your wine.

I've had issues where some of the multiarch 32-bit dependencies clashed with the ones already installed and apt complained about an impossible situation with respect to resolving package dependencies.

 

[JoeyJoeJoe]

I myself have used linux since 2013 quite a lot, then went back to Windows for a few years, then back to linux in late 2018, and have barely touched Windows, and I consider myself more than a light gamer. I'm playing through shadow of the tomb raider, and it's great.

 

[R-T-B]

I threw my last easy-anticheat game under the bus and am going full linux again. Got an Navi to play with now too, heh.

I'm assuming I should use amdgpu, and not amdgpu-pro, correct? Better performance and all that?

 

[GoldenX]

Yes, stick to amdgpu (radeon) as much as possible. amdgpu-pro is only intended for professional apps.
You will have to pick which vulkan driver use thou, you have radv and amdvlk.

 

[R-T-B]

Yes, stick to amdgpu (radeon) as much as possible. amdgpu-pro is only intended for professional apps.
You will have to pick which vulkan driver use thou, you have radv and amdvlk.

and what's the difference between them exactly?

*googles*

Looks like amdvlk is amds open-source baby, while radv is fully OSS-community work and integrated with mesa.

Definitely looks like radv is better in benches. Going with it first.

 

[Aquinus]

and what's the difference between them exactly?

AMDGPU Pro has some proprietary stuff when it comes to OpenGL 4.5+, but the actual kernel driver is more or less the same. The last time I used it was when I couldn't get AMDGPU to work on my older 390 until experimental support was released. With my Vega, I've had zero reason to use anything other than the OSS driver and stack. I use RADV because it's the least amount of work and it seems to work well enough. I've also heard good things about the ACO backend though.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/1640915206474070669/?l=czech&ctp=5

 

[GoldenX]

and what's the difference between them exactly?

*googles*

Looks like amdvlk is amds open-source baby, while radv is fully OSS-community work and integrated with mesa.

Definitely looks like radv is better in benches. Going with it first.

radv should be the obvious choice, but it has missing stuff that may break some games, amdvlk while it is slower, it's on parity with the windows driver. So pick your poison.

 

[R-T-B]

radv should be the obvious choice, but it has missing stuff that may break some games, amdvlk while it is slower, it's on parity with the windows driver. So pick your poison.

Good to know, appreciate the advice.

 

[biffzinker]

What's the current driver situation for Nvidia's cards? Which driver would you pick?

 

[R-T-B]

What's the current driver situation for Nvidia's cards? Which driver would you pick?

The binary nvidia driver, usually whatever latest edition of that your distro offers. Later tends to be assumed by games.

Being an open source advocate, I'm somewhat upset that nvidias driver is binary only. But on the bright side, it is pretty dang good.

 

[Aquinus]

What's the current driver situation for Nvidia's cards? Which driver would you pick?

nVidia's proprietary drivers have always been pretty good so long as you're not using a bleeding edge kernel (but even that has improved.)

radv should be the obvious choice, but it has missing stuff that may break some games, amdvlk while it is slower, it's on parity with the windows driver. So pick your poison.

What issues have you had with it? I haven't had issues with radv for quite a while. For me, it has been very stable.

 

[R-T-B]

Update: X is running. No wayland, I'm still too confused by it. Now Plasma.

I feel like I just did this gentoo install... lol. Need to make up my mind for good.

BTW the last EAC game was "Vermintide 2." It ran without EAC in non-loot modrealm. Shame.