Linux Gaming: Are We There Yet?
by Christopher Rice on December 28, 2009 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Linux Gaming Performance
We'll start with a look at games where we were actually able to get results from all three Wine projects. This was no small task, as numerous games worked under one or two options but not all three. We confined our testing to games that were at least rated Bronze (although as noted that doesn't necessarily guarantee success).
We begin with some very interesting and somewhat unexpected results with Team Fortress 2. Here we see an actual performance improvement over Windows with Cedega. Although all of the FPS reported are well above the minimum necessary to play TF2, functionality of play within Wine was not good. We experienced frequent FPS drops and stuttering with Wine when we tested overall functionality. Cedega, Crossover, and Windows all ran smoothly during the functionality testing.
Moving to Unreal Tournament 3, again all the frame rates are well above playable. We did find that on the Linux side, Crossover provided the best in-game experience with no glitches or stutter. Windows worked as expected with no issues to report.
Windows easily beats our Wine projects for overall FPS in TrackMania. Both Windows and Wine projects play this game flawlessly with no graphical glitches or stuttering. This is a case where if you have sufficiently fast hardware, you can run this game on either Linux or Windows without issues.
The results in Eve Online are very interesting. During all our previous benchmarks the Wine projects have been competitive with windows, but Eve Online shows a huge gap. I re-ran all these tests twice to ensure all settings were set exactly the same across tests and came up with the same results. Windows and Linux gameplay ran smoothly with no noticeable stuttering or graphical glitches, though, so this is another game that runs on all platforms. The difference here is that you can potentially run at higher resolutions/settings under Windows and get better performance.
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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.