Former Valve engineer Rich Geldreich has written up a blog post about the state of Linux Gaming. It's an interesting read that's for sure.
When talking about recent bigger game ports:
QuoteSadly, it's pretty clear that if you run these games on Linux your experience isn't going to be as good, and you'll be getting less "gaming value" vs. Windows. We're not talking about a bunch of little indy titles, these are big releases: Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Borderlands 2, Tropico 5, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Sid Meier's Civilization V. My take is the devs doing these ports just aren't doing their best to optimize these releases for Linux and/or OpenGL.
Emphasis mine, and I don't agree with him on this. Obviously neither he, nor I have any proof either way that they are/aren't doing their best to optimise, but Aspyr & Feral making a living out of porting games to OpenGL, so why wouldn't they be trying to fix performance issues?
The performance has some way to go sure, but is that really the fault of Aspyr & Feral, or do the drivers still have ways to go to improve their performance? Who knows, I sure don't it goes way over my head at that point.
He does however note how hard it is to get performance on Linux equal to Windows:
QuoteI know it's possible for Linux ports to equal or outperform their Windows counterparts, but it's hard. At Valve we had all the driver devs at our beck and call and it was still very difficult to get the Source engine's perf. and stability to where it needed to be relative to Windows. (And this was with a ~8 year old engine - it must be even harder with more modern engines.) These devs are probably glad to just release anything at all given how alien it can be for Windows/Xbox devs to develop, debug, and ship stuff under Linux+OpenGL.
At least he is pointing out that fact that it's not easy to get decent OpenGL performance to match games on Windows, so he's not completely blasting Feral and Aspyr.
I agree with what he's saying about the Intel drivers 100%:
QuoteThe entire Intel driver situation remains in a ridiculous state. I know Intel means well and all but really, they can do better. (Are they afraid of pissing off MS? Or is this just big corp dysfunctionalism?) Valve is still paying LunarG to find and fix silly perf bugs in Intel's slow open source driver. Surely this can't be a sustainable way of developing a working driver?
No, it's not. Intel ideally needs to be doing this sort of work themselves to find bottlenecks and fix general performance issues in their own Linux drivers. I see this as a stopgap measure while Linux still isn't a focus for many people, and Intel included. This again goes into our marketshare issues, if we had a higher share then Intel would probably be doing it themselves.
His last point is a screen-shot of a slashdot comment where someone is basically saying that SteamOS is done, and that we will never get our hands on the Steam Controller. Their reasoning is that Microsoft snapped and allowed Alienware to create a Windows machine that boots to a Steam UI, and not Windows directly.
I agree that was a bit of a shocker, and I thought it wouldn't do SteamOS any good, but I think SteamOS hasn't even had a chance to have a go at it yet. SteamOS was delayed because Valve decided to revamp the controller again to get it right, so I think we should wait for it to be out before signalling its death.
Read his full blog post here.
What are your thoughts on it? Rich is good at stirring up the hornet's nest that's for sure, but just because he is a former Valve engineer doesn't mean he's going to be right on everything. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Citiroller Nov 10, 2014
It's sad to hear that even a former engeneer from valve doesn't believe in SteamOS.
1 Likes, Who?
Considering his heated blog posts on Valve, Linux, OpenGL etc it's reasonable to think he quit before he was let go by Valve. A jump before you're pushed type of thing.
I can't imagine him getting on well with others at Valve if he thought like this the whole time, but that's just my wild speculation.
I can't imagine him getting on well with others at Valve if he thought like this the whole time, but that's just my wild speculation.
5 Likes, Who?
There are hurdles, but I just don't see Valve giving up so easily. The Valve I know keeps going.
In regards to that Alienware PC that boots into BigPictureMode, personally I've always seen that as a last resort for Alienware to have something to display at the show when StamoS was delayed. I don't see it as much more than just that.
What worries me more than the technical hurdles is our market share. Cause with less than 2% of us being on Linux how can you possibly argue that devs should spend a lot on Linux optimizations?
To put it simple: We NEED SteamOS to do the magic on those numbers, or we'll remain a smaller gaming platform than Mac. It's just how it is.
So let's stop being petty and act like children and scream if we see "SteamOS" named instead of "Linux" or cry our heards out over some framerate issues.
If the ports are BAD, like Dead Island bad, then sure, that must be addressed. But a few frames less in Borderlands or Witcher under the current climate is like "stfu".
In regards to that Alienware PC that boots into BigPictureMode, personally I've always seen that as a last resort for Alienware to have something to display at the show when StamoS was delayed. I don't see it as much more than just that.
What worries me more than the technical hurdles is our market share. Cause with less than 2% of us being on Linux how can you possibly argue that devs should spend a lot on Linux optimizations?
To put it simple: We NEED SteamOS to do the magic on those numbers, or we'll remain a smaller gaming platform than Mac. It's just how it is.
So let's stop being petty and act like children and scream if we see "SteamOS" named instead of "Linux" or cry our heards out over some framerate issues.
If the ports are BAD, like Dead Island bad, then sure, that must be addressed. But a few frames less in Borderlands or Witcher under the current climate is like "stfu".
5 Likes, Who?
Valva has completed their Linux port of Source Engine, and the performances are good, and better than windows... So the critic is about recent ports of non native engines... I think the linux gaming is on his 1st phase, testing the market, testing the public... With native engines we will have best performances.
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Emphasis mine, and I don't agree with him on this. Obviously neither he, nor I have any proof either way that they are/aren't doing their best to optimise, but Aspyr & Feral making a living out of porting games to OpenGL, so why wouldn't they be trying to fix performance issues?Aspyr is great and I love the job they've done but Feral is not good at all.
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Feral is just a garbadge.
This right here is what I talk about in my post above. Ferals work on Xcom is the exact opposite of garbage, it's one of the best ports to Linux so far, and to sit an spew out stuff like this on forums on the net... We're just in no position whatsoever to do so!
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First of all, I wouldn't have any trouble believing Linux OpenGL drivers have had less work put into them by their respective vendors than the Windows versions. I think that's just a reality of our current market share.
As a Linux gamer I'm actually ok with having slightly worse performance than Windows as long as the game work well otherwise (i.e. no crashes, graphical glitches and other kinds of bugs), again because of my first point. So Borderlands 2 has X% less FPS, who cares, it's fun, it's native and otherwise works very well.
As for the SteamOS situation, I hope Valve won't be giving up this quickly on it. I think if they wanted their own console, Linux (in some form) is their best bet anyway, so it's not like they're making a big blunder here. Also Microsoft allowing Alienware customizations... You can bet your ass if Valve dropped SteamOS they'd back-pedal on a lot of things immediately. I think SteamOS will serve Valve just fine even if it never graduates to primary product status and remains kinda niche. Wasn't the primary raison d'etre of SteamOS the threat of Microsoft locking down third party stores on Windows like Apple is doing on iOS/must be thinking of doing on OS X? If that was the situation a few years ago, and now we have Microsoft allowing unprecedented customizations to other companies, SteamOS has already kinda served its purpose (for now).
As a Linux gamer I'm actually ok with having slightly worse performance than Windows as long as the game work well otherwise (i.e. no crashes, graphical glitches and other kinds of bugs), again because of my first point. So Borderlands 2 has X% less FPS, who cares, it's fun, it's native and otherwise works very well.
As for the SteamOS situation, I hope Valve won't be giving up this quickly on it. I think if they wanted their own console, Linux (in some form) is their best bet anyway, so it's not like they're making a big blunder here. Also Microsoft allowing Alienware customizations... You can bet your ass if Valve dropped SteamOS they'd back-pedal on a lot of things immediately. I think SteamOS will serve Valve just fine even if it never graduates to primary product status and remains kinda niche. Wasn't the primary raison d'etre of SteamOS the threat of Microsoft locking down third party stores on Windows like Apple is doing on iOS/must be thinking of doing on OS X? If that was the situation a few years ago, and now we have Microsoft allowing unprecedented customizations to other companies, SteamOS has already kinda served its purpose (for now).
4 Likes, Who?
Is never a bad thing to admit the situation, or having a bad opinion about the situation.
It is just to look directly at the problem you have to solve.
With linux gaming, it is like doing a very large job whose first step has been made this year. Lots of steps have to follow on the next years.
Obviously, with some companies being so bad when doing games to pc, when they only care for consoles, you are going to see signs of that bad way to work when porting games from an OS to another one less used. (not fixing bugs, bad performance not solved), but this doesnt have to be valid for all. You are forgotting the Witcher 2 example. At first it was bad optimised, but it is up entirely to the style of work of the company. The developers released multiple patches to increase the game performance on linux, and now is fine.
There are many, many, many people who are in the same boat as us. That are with dual boot, are waiting for his favourite game to come to linux, or waiting the perfect moment to change. When this happens, we will be more than 1.16% and some developers will see us with different eyes. You have to think that, talking about performance, we are now the equivalent of windows in 1994.
There were performance issues when it was beggining for windows too.
It is just to look directly at the problem you have to solve.
With linux gaming, it is like doing a very large job whose first step has been made this year. Lots of steps have to follow on the next years.
Obviously, with some companies being so bad when doing games to pc, when they only care for consoles, you are going to see signs of that bad way to work when porting games from an OS to another one less used. (not fixing bugs, bad performance not solved), but this doesnt have to be valid for all. You are forgotting the Witcher 2 example. At first it was bad optimised, but it is up entirely to the style of work of the company. The developers released multiple patches to increase the game performance on linux, and now is fine.
There are many, many, many people who are in the same boat as us. That are with dual boot, are waiting for his favourite game to come to linux, or waiting the perfect moment to change. When this happens, we will be more than 1.16% and some developers will see us with different eyes. You have to think that, talking about performance, we are now the equivalent of windows in 1994.
There were performance issues when it was beggining for windows too.
1 Likes, Who?
Aspyr is great and I love the job they've done but Feral is just a garbadge.This right here is what I talk about in my post above. Ferals work on Xcom is the exact opposite of garbage, and to sit an spew out stuff like this on forums on the net... We're just in no position whatsoever to do so!
I get these mixed up a lot. Feral did X-COM? I personally have been very satisfied with X-COM, so here's some love: <3
3 Likes, Who?
If you're saying Feral is not good just because of the 64bit-only binaries for Xcom, that's ridiculous.
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Arrgh, not Rich again....I find myself compelled once again to wade in and debunk his tabloid journalism. The problem with that guy is that he is dangerously well informed enough (not to mention an ex- Valve employee) to persuade people to think that what he's saying is gospel, when in fact it's just pure speculation and very biased at that. Read the comments from Mattias Goldberg at the end of the article, that's where you're more likely to find the voice of reason.
Point #1: native ports are always going to be fast.
Mattias touches nicely upon this - planning for the software architecture you're targeting has a huge performance impact. Porting that same architecture to another SDK or platform is an act of shoehorning, forcing a problem into an existing solution, irrespective of whether that's the best solution for the task at hand. Not only does Linux suffer less performance than Windows for these games, but so does OSX, precisely because the original games were written for DirectX. The real test will be when truly cross-platform engines such as Unreal Engine 4 fail to perform under Linux (and no, Unity is not particularly high performing for any platform).
The telling response from Rich to this is:
"I wonder how many devs will spend the time (like yourself) to properly create an AZDO backend for what will probably be a single digit percentage of the marketplace?"
THIS is the core of the problem. Windows fan boys totally incredulous as to why anyone would want to leave the MS ecosystem. To his credit, Rich alludes to why we need to leave Microsoft behind and create a new gaming platform: "But no, the Microsoft Experience is inviolate, the holiest of holies, eternally immutable. No matter how much hatred it gets, it Must. Not. Be. Changed ."
Alienware's "Steam Box": Bouahahahahahahahahahahahahah!
Rich's comment: "When no-one was looking, Steam took Microsoft and snapped it like a twig." Duh, this happened a LONG time ago. The Alienware box is useless, it's just a quick money grab. It has a totally uncertain future, uncertain updates, is a closed system used by only a single hardware partner. Compared this to a slow burning increasingly well engineered OS by the company that owns the digital distribution platform. As has been said elsewhere, Valve's delay (Valve time anyone?) in releasing the Steam Box hurt Alienware's plans, so they fought back and released their own skin. Good for them, it was the right strategic thing to do.
Point #2:
X11/DRM: Mattias again touches on the real problem - the X11 Windowing system and DRM stack. I currently suffer horrible VSync issues on my GTX660, and I'm pretty sure it's X11 and Compiz that are to blame. Bring on Wayland and Mir and the new buttery smoothness.
Point #3:
Intel's Open Source driver.
Intel's driver is amazing, it has progressed in leaps and bounds. However the team working on it is indeed smaller than the Windows driver team, and yeah, Intel is married to Microsoft at the moment, as they should be as Windows has the largest PC market share. Which is why Valve has to hire 3rd party companies to fix driver bugs. All this means is that the current computing culture and status quo is Microsoft and Windows focussed. Is this news? Of course not, it's been like that for ages, which is why SteamOS is so exciting, because it could break that hegemony and usher in a brand new culture. So yeah, I might be currently losing some 2-10 fps by not using the Windows Intel driver, but I get an amazing out of the box experience with no extra driver installs, no annoying pop-ups and ugly Intel GUIs. Just wait till the Linux Intel driver is faster...because this WILL happen (it's already happening in the OpenGL space, just read Phoronix for more details)
So yeah, in retrospect Rich Geldreich must have had a BIG fall out at Valve...he's certainly still harbouring some grudges. Either that, or he's decided to change career and become a tech shock-jock....I'm sure there's money to be made there, maybe some ugly PR company will hire him.
That's not to say that SteamOS won't fail, but you can be sure that Valve will give it a seriously red hot go, or come out of this experience looking pretty stupid, which they obviously are not.
Point #1: native ports are always going to be fast.
Mattias touches nicely upon this - planning for the software architecture you're targeting has a huge performance impact. Porting that same architecture to another SDK or platform is an act of shoehorning, forcing a problem into an existing solution, irrespective of whether that's the best solution for the task at hand. Not only does Linux suffer less performance than Windows for these games, but so does OSX, precisely because the original games were written for DirectX. The real test will be when truly cross-platform engines such as Unreal Engine 4 fail to perform under Linux (and no, Unity is not particularly high performing for any platform).
The telling response from Rich to this is:
"I wonder how many devs will spend the time (like yourself) to properly create an AZDO backend for what will probably be a single digit percentage of the marketplace?"
THIS is the core of the problem. Windows fan boys totally incredulous as to why anyone would want to leave the MS ecosystem. To his credit, Rich alludes to why we need to leave Microsoft behind and create a new gaming platform: "But no, the Microsoft Experience is inviolate, the holiest of holies, eternally immutable. No matter how much hatred it gets, it Must. Not. Be. Changed ."
Alienware's "Steam Box": Bouahahahahahahahahahahahahah!
Rich's comment: "When no-one was looking, Steam took Microsoft and snapped it like a twig." Duh, this happened a LONG time ago. The Alienware box is useless, it's just a quick money grab. It has a totally uncertain future, uncertain updates, is a closed system used by only a single hardware partner. Compared this to a slow burning increasingly well engineered OS by the company that owns the digital distribution platform. As has been said elsewhere, Valve's delay (Valve time anyone?) in releasing the Steam Box hurt Alienware's plans, so they fought back and released their own skin. Good for them, it was the right strategic thing to do.
Point #2:
X11/DRM: Mattias again touches on the real problem - the X11 Windowing system and DRM stack. I currently suffer horrible VSync issues on my GTX660, and I'm pretty sure it's X11 and Compiz that are to blame. Bring on Wayland and Mir and the new buttery smoothness.
Point #3:
Intel's Open Source driver.
Intel's driver is amazing, it has progressed in leaps and bounds. However the team working on it is indeed smaller than the Windows driver team, and yeah, Intel is married to Microsoft at the moment, as they should be as Windows has the largest PC market share. Which is why Valve has to hire 3rd party companies to fix driver bugs. All this means is that the current computing culture and status quo is Microsoft and Windows focussed. Is this news? Of course not, it's been like that for ages, which is why SteamOS is so exciting, because it could break that hegemony and usher in a brand new culture. So yeah, I might be currently losing some 2-10 fps by not using the Windows Intel driver, but I get an amazing out of the box experience with no extra driver installs, no annoying pop-ups and ugly Intel GUIs. Just wait till the Linux Intel driver is faster...because this WILL happen (it's already happening in the OpenGL space, just read Phoronix for more details)
So yeah, in retrospect Rich Geldreich must have had a BIG fall out at Valve...he's certainly still harbouring some grudges. Either that, or he's decided to change career and become a tech shock-jock....I'm sure there's money to be made there, maybe some ugly PR company will hire him.
That's not to say that SteamOS won't fail, but you can be sure that Valve will give it a seriously red hot go, or come out of this experience looking pretty stupid, which they obviously are not.
5 Likes, Who?
Cyba.Cowboy Nov 10, 2014
Meh.
I don't care anymore, our entire household now runs Ubuntu in a single-boot scenario (I just changed the last of the computers - mine - to a single-boot setup this past weekend)(we previously dual-booted everything)...
Going forwards, it's Linux-based operating systems and only Linux-based operating systems - no Tux, no bux.
It's as simple as that - if a developer can't be bothered to release their games for Linux-based operating systems, they'll get nothing from this household... Every dollar counts at the end of the day and in our household, we're all gamers with our own respective Steam accounts.
I don't care anymore, our entire household now runs Ubuntu in a single-boot scenario (I just changed the last of the computers - mine - to a single-boot setup this past weekend)(we previously dual-booted everything)...
Going forwards, it's Linux-based operating systems and only Linux-based operating systems - no Tux, no bux.
It's as simple as that - if a developer can't be bothered to release their games for Linux-based operating systems, they'll get nothing from this household... Every dollar counts at the end of the day and in our household, we're all gamers with our own respective Steam accounts.
6 Likes, Who?
well dont forget that he is a former employee,a former employee is someone who worked for a company in the past but no longer does ...Rich Geldreich has left Valve.
Geldreich was involved with Valve's OpenGL and Linux efforts and has spoken at Steam Dev Days, GDC, SIGGRAPH, and other conferences along with contributed to some open-source projects.
As a foot note to his latest blog post, Rich Geldreich says he is no longer working at Valve nor is he contributing anymore to the Valve VOGL OpenGL debugger targeting game developers. He didn't shed anymore light on his departure and offhand I am not aware of what company (if any) he's ended up at for now. So I am thinking that his holding something up against Valve.
I think he left from Valve around May so I dont know how much Valve has improved the VOGL OpenGL Debugger.
SteamOS isnt done at all it just started...
Geldreich was involved with Valve's OpenGL and Linux efforts and has spoken at Steam Dev Days, GDC, SIGGRAPH, and other conferences along with contributed to some open-source projects.
As a foot note to his latest blog post, Rich Geldreich says he is no longer working at Valve nor is he contributing anymore to the Valve VOGL OpenGL debugger targeting game developers. He didn't shed anymore light on his departure and offhand I am not aware of what company (if any) he's ended up at for now. So I am thinking that his holding something up against Valve.
I think he left from Valve around May so I dont know how much Valve has improved the VOGL OpenGL Debugger.
SteamOS isnt done at all it just started...
2 Likes, Who?
I think as long as we do our part to keep it profitable, the SteamOS initiative will remain alive up through a final release of OpenGL Next. I'm not holding my breath for Mantle, but I'm not skeptical of it arriving to Linux either. Until Mantle is adopted by Intel and Nvidia, it's all on the OpenGL Working Group to make a ripe fruit of SteamOS.
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Cyba.Cowboy Nov 10, 2014
Next. I'm not holding my breath for Mantle, but I'm not skeptical of it arriving to Linux either.
Mantle?
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Cyba.Cowboy Nov 10, 2014
Next. I'm not holding my breath for Mantle, but I'm not skeptical of it arriving to Linux either.Mantle?
Never mind.
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Isn't Nvidia the exception to this entire topic? All I've ever seen is benchmarks showing Nvidia's closed driver is on par with Windows for the same games. Maybe it doesn't help that Michael Larabel won't forego a fully scientific set of benchmarks to include all the games which we actually play. Michael Larabel refuses to benchmark like he's a Mythbusters employee.
More benchmarks of Linux games we actually play using Nvidia GPUs would certainly breathe fresh air into this conversation.
Just to make everyone aware, all I own is an HD5870. My position is based on firsthand experience, scientific evidence concerning Phoronix and anecdotal evidence provided by other Linux gamers.
More benchmarks of Linux games we actually play using Nvidia GPUs would certainly breathe fresh air into this conversation.
Just to make everyone aware, all I own is an HD5870. My position is based on firsthand experience, scientific evidence concerning Phoronix and anecdotal evidence provided by other Linux gamers.
1 Likes, Who?
I've gotten the impression that AMD's OpenGL performance is worse than their DirectX performance while Nvidia's OpenGL performance is on par with their DirectX performance.Isn't Nvidia the exception to this entire topic? All I've ever seen is benchmarks showing Nvidia's closed driver is on par with Windows for the same games. Maybe it doesn't help that Michael Larabel won't forego a fully scientific set of benchmarks to include all the games which we actually play. Michael Larabel refuses to benchmark like he's a Mythbusters employee.Both nVidia and AMD share most of their OpenGL stacks across their supported platforms, so you should see comparable OpenGL performance between Windows and GNU/Linux when using their blobs.
More benchmarks of Linux games we actually play using Nvidia GPUs would certainly breathe fresh air into this conversation.
Just to make everyone aware, all I own is an HD5870. My position is based on firsthand experience, scientific evidence concerning Phoronix and anecdotal evidence provided by other Linux gamers.
Of course, there are other things to take into account (e.g I've had vsync problems sometimes - it being forced on even when the game settings should have it disabled, then there's threading differences, and so on) and so the results won't be exactly the same, but should at least be comparable.
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Cyba.Cowboy Nov 10, 2014
I've gotten the impression that AMD's OpenGL performance is worse than their DirectX performance while Nvidia's OpenGL performance is on par with their DirectX performance.
That's always been my impression, too...
2 Likes, Who?
Emphasis mine, and I don't agree with him on this. Obviously neither he, nor I have any proof either way that they are/aren't doing their best to optimise, but Aspyr & Feral making a living out of porting games to OpenGL, so why wouldn't they be trying to fix performance issues?Aspyr is great and I love the job they've done but Feral is not good at all.
You and your 32 bits :><:
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