Linux Gaming: Are We There Yet?
by Christopher Rice on December 28, 2009 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Closing Thoughts (for now)
What's the answer to the initial question, "Is Linux ready for gaming?" As you probably expected, the answer is both yes and no. If you're looking for an out-of-box solution for running older games, Linux is a decent alternative to Windows. The longer a game has been around, and the more popular the game, the better the odds that someone has already taken the time to get it working properly under one of the Wine projects. Naturally, that means the reverse is true: newer titles are less likely to work without some extra effort (and sometimes not even then). Even if you do manage to get a new release running, you should expect to see anything from graphical glitches to completely unplayable gameplay.
By now you're probably asking which of the three projects we recommend. Personally, I would use Crossover Games and Wine. We selected Wine because it's not only free, but if you're savvy enough you have a better chance of getting a new release game working right away. Since the Wine project is open source and extremely active in development, you can find patches around the net created on the fly for supporting specific games long before Crossover/Cedega come out with anything. We can then supplement Wine with Crossover Games when all else fails with installing or playing specific games.
Crossover Games provides a decent GUI and the ability to run additional games that Wine cannot. We have also found in many cases that Crossover Games will provide higher frame rates and a better gaming experience. Between both Wine and Crossover Games you should be able to get the majority of your games working with a reasonable amount of effort. If you're looking for the most functionality out of your Linux desktop and don't mind spending the extra money, then I would suggest getting all three. Having all three will give you the best possible chance to ensure all of your games are covered.
In an ideal world, Linux would be supported natively by games. Unfortunately, few developers are willing to take on that task. Eve Online used to have a native Linux client, but development was shut down this past year (in part because performance under Wine was more than acceptable). There was talk of a native UT3 client but it has yet to materialize. Some smaller projects (i.e. Penny Arcade Adventures and other indie titles) have been released with Linux clients, but for the most part major publishers are ignoring the platform.
One of the real problems we encountered is something we're going to address in a separate article. Our test system, if you notice, uses an NVIDIA GPU. We tried to be hardware agnostic, but the problems experienced with our test ATI HD 5770 and Wine eventually got the best of us. We could get the card to work with native Linux games, but Wine support at present was an absolute disaster. Part of the problem undoubtedly stems from the newness of the hardware, but we didn't have any alternative ATI GPUs available right now. The future of ATI GPUs on Linux isn't nearly so bleak, however, with some exciting developments coming from the open source driver. As stated, we'll be looking into that in a future article.
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. In the meantime, we welcome your comments and thoughts on other Linux areas you'd like to see us investigate.
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TheHolyLancer - Tuesday, January 5, 2010 - link
look try this, install vm-ware tools in ubuntu and tell me how it feels vs installing it in windows xp/server 2003/7 under vmware workstation or esx/ior how about drivers that you download and is not in the repo? unlike windows where you can either point the stupid wiazrd to the folder and let it do its thing, or run the .exe, its just CLI all the way...
sure, everyone blames .exe for troubles like viruses and what nots, but hey it is a surefire way for one to get something onto your computer, you may not know what it is, but with a simple double click and a few nexts, a driver, or a game, or a virus can be on your computer instantly (and for others to fix later...), and linux can't do that, maybe for security, but hell it's highly inconvenient to my mom when she can't double click through any issue.
this may be a simpler gripe than say the hardware support issue, but it is a large issue for everyday users, or lazy in-the-know user like me, for one, I always keep a backup for my ubuntu VM that has everything configured, while not for winodws as a reinstall is just that much easy...
phcoyote - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 - link
I've installed numerous Desktop Linux systems for a variety of users. It's a side business. A good number of them are of the type that barely know how to right click.The interesting part is that almost all of them are actually finding it easier to install software in Ubuntu than on Windows. Some use Synaptic but many are actually using Add/Remove which is even easier.
Click Applications - Add/Remove. Select a category. Put check mark beside desired app. Click Apply. Really, it doesn't get any easier than that.
LuCiPh33R - Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - link
The problem is that they don't ALL use it. Any CLI will never be acceptable to 90% of PC users.Veerappan - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 - link
I agree that a CLI package manager is more than we should expect the average user to be able to handle... but I would recommend that you check out Ubuntu's Synaptic. It's a GUI package manager that is launched directly from the "System->Administration->Synaptic Package Manager" menu entry present on the default gnome install.Launch Synaptic, select what programs you want to install/remove (it has a handy field for search keyword entry), and then click the Apply button. Synaptic handles figuring out all of the dependencies for you, and a minute or two later, your new program is installed and ready to use (relevant menu entries are auto-created).
Knock Linux for other reasons, sure, but Synaptic (admittedly only in Ubuntu right now) is pretty slick.
ChristopherRice - Wednesday, December 30, 2009 - link
Isn't synaptic functional in fedora as well?Jackattak - Tuesday, December 29, 2009 - link
Precisely. sammyF, I know of what you speak, and you know darned well that isn't the case in every single scenario.ProDigit - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
I'm using Linux right now!I've been using it for quite a while now.
The only reasons I use windows at times is because of it's ability to compress data on NTFS partitions (eg: on external HD's). Also for it's ability and range of games.
A lot of games no longer work on the latest U/Ku/Xubuntu (v9.10 and up), something with the kernel.
In Windows, there's some sort of compatibility. Linux changes every 3 months in kernel(or so), which is why so few companies tend to build something good (like a decent game) for Linux. Yes, there's DOOM and Quake, and you can emulate PS2 and DOSBOX, but that's nothing like running a modern game in it's own window (say Crysis, or Rally 2, or even simple games and creators like spore)!
For applications, there are little applications I use in Windows only. Most of my tasks consist of viewing video files, and audio files, creating a document in open office (sometimes gives smaller font errors when using it on MS Office), transfer files, and be on the internet a bit.
Those tasks I can do on Linux pretty fine.
Like some user said,Windows is only there mainly for the games! If Linux has stable builds that will be supported for years instead of months, and graphic card manufacturers will recognize the need for those cards in a Linux environment, and more and more games will become available on Linux, I guess near to half the population will start using some form of Linux OS, because it is free, and hopefully will have a database of compatible games available too!
jmurbank - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
The kernel has nothing to do what program works or what program does not work. The kernel controls hardware, so nVidia and ATI have to follow the versions and game developer companies does not need to unless they created special modules or drivers to increase performance of their game. The problem that companies have is there are several thousand Linux distributions to make sure the software works while Windows has only one. The problem with all these distributions is each one uses different library versions. Probably your problem is the libraries in your distribution or to be more precise is the glibc library is not using the required version. If your distribution has the required libraries, then it is not compiled with backwards support. In this case, complain to the maintainer to make sure they include the backwards compatibility for the library or just do it your self.The real problem for game developers trying to write games for Linux is there are no tools to aid designing in OpenGL. Also OpenAL, multi-platform audio, is controlled by Creative Labs and they have not pushed it to where DirectX is where today. SDL is a combination of OpenGL, OpenAL, and input device support for multi-platforms is limited because it does not have any network support.
It is not just libraries and no OpenGL developer tools that causes problems. ATI is also causing problems with their poor software support since they started their company. Using ATI's proprietary drivers in Linux provides limited 3D commands. These limited commands makes using Cedega and other similar programs becomes unstable and unreliable. Do you think game developer companies like EPIC want to be stated to be providing favorites to only nVidia because nVidia is the only company to provide full support. If EPIC does publicized Unreal Tournament 3 for Linux and it only supports nVidia graphic cards and not ATI's, EPIC will have a big problem that will be more complicated than Verizon and AT&T.
Another thing businesses are tightly wrapped around market share. If they see Linux that has the most share, they will develop programs for that OS instead of Windows. Since Windows has the most market share, they design for that OS. The market share is only the tip of the ice berg which means there are more issues in the waters that makes market share irrelevant, but companies do not want to buried their head in these issues because to them it will cost them money. Unfortunately, money controls everything.
Penti - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
Games are created for a game engine, it's their job (the game engine developers) to create tools for development and designing. There's no reason to do the bulk of development on Linux either. It's just the game engine that must support Linux, there's no reason to support every distro or glibc version, however distros should be better with backwards compatibility so you don't need to run an old distro or such. It's a problem and an old version of glibc should be able to be included just as you have old VS c++ runtime environments in Windows. However a game engine should be very portably either way. It should be code that can be easily recompiled for newer glibc/other libs. Not optimal maybe, but now we see backwards compatibility dropping and introductions of XP mode in W7, same can of course be done in linux distros to provide backwards compatibility. To integrate an old virtual distro into the new distro to run apps for the old distro. That as a feature in itself. Of course also Apple shows what can be done with GCC if they do it slightly different. But developers should expect to have to upgrade for/support the latest OS, service pack/upgrade any way no matter if it's Windows, OS X or Linux. A lot of Win apps are broken when service packs come out, new OS versions come out and so forth.Drivers are a big problem though. But it's overcomeable if they get ATI and nVidia on the boat. Maybe they should release their own distro for gaming just to show what can be done if collaboration is done properly... Finish is what most distros lack.
darkstar56 - Monday, December 28, 2009 - link
WOW usually does pretty well on linux. I know a few people that run it fine on it, they don't lag or have problems in raids.Though wow is usually stable on all platforms, except Mac OSX atm.