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.
0 Likes
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
The comments on this article are closed.
Mohandevir Nov 10, 2014
SteamOS is a Console OS. It should be sold as such, IMO. Then, it's going to be a fight on the catalog aspect vs XBone and PS4.
With 750 + games already available, SteamOS is in good position, but it needs more AAA titles. Will there be surprises at the official launch? From what I read in many places, it is really likely. A 6 month exclusivity on a big title would help the matter too.
What I mean it's that those who buy a console don't really care about what's underneath. They buy the game catalog. Ex: Half Life 3 on Steam Machines (not available on XBone or PS4). Get the picture?
If Steam Machines can get some market shares out of PS4 and XBone, it will raise the Linux Desktop marketshare at the same time. That's the leverage Valve can get from playing on both "playgrounds".
March 2015, they say... :)
With 750 + games already available, SteamOS is in good position, but it needs more AAA titles. Will there be surprises at the official launch? From what I read in many places, it is really likely. A 6 month exclusivity on a big title would help the matter too.
What I mean it's that those who buy a console don't really care about what's underneath. They buy the game catalog. Ex: Half Life 3 on Steam Machines (not available on XBone or PS4). Get the picture?
If Steam Machines can get some market shares out of PS4 and XBone, it will raise the Linux Desktop marketshare at the same time. That's the leverage Valve can get from playing on both "playgrounds".
March 2015, they say... :)
1 Likes, Who?
I will join the guy who was dissing the XCOM port. The minimum requirements for the XCOM port are significantly higher on the linux version. They did not test (like, at all) the game with graphics cards that fit the windows requirements, leading to the game having a crash to desktop bug on the build facility screen which made it unplayable. When people brought this up after release, they claimed it was due to a driver problem and washed their hands of it, saying we should just wait for a driver update from Nvidia. On Archlinux, the update came months later. People who got this for non-bleeding edge distros and who do not have the technical ability to use ppas to get the latest drivers must not have been very happy... I understand that they can't control Nvidia, but testing the game before release would have brought this to their attention earlier.
To this day, the menus have huge bugs. They are very, very slow, but at least they don't crash to desktop anymore. Except there are other situations which can lead to unavoidable CTD, completely ruining your game unless you can finish your mission in windows... The game also gets massively slower if you have too many save files. And it frequently drops frames.
This is all stuff that's happened to me and to others.
If you had a computer built with the most recent cards, then I guess it was fine. But otherwise, it was not a good port. Certainly not the equal of the windows version, which worked flawlessly on my computer. I was not a happy customer when I bought this. In fact, I think I made my first post here to blast the port. I will be very skeptical of their future ports.
Similarly, it took months before Civ5 got some graphical updates to make it closer to the windows version. At least, it was completely playable before then, so I guess we should give Aspyr credit. Still, it was not as good of an experience as windows.
And let's not forget the articles which demonstrated that pretty much all linux games have lower fps (one of which the blog author links at the beginning of his post).
The whole "valve is dropping steamOS" angle is a bit ridiculous, but otherwise the guy has a point. The big games that have come to linux do not run as well as in windows, that's pretty much unarguable.
To this day, the menus have huge bugs. They are very, very slow, but at least they don't crash to desktop anymore. Except there are other situations which can lead to unavoidable CTD, completely ruining your game unless you can finish your mission in windows... The game also gets massively slower if you have too many save files. And it frequently drops frames.
This is all stuff that's happened to me and to others.
If you had a computer built with the most recent cards, then I guess it was fine. But otherwise, it was not a good port. Certainly not the equal of the windows version, which worked flawlessly on my computer. I was not a happy customer when I bought this. In fact, I think I made my first post here to blast the port. I will be very skeptical of their future ports.
Similarly, it took months before Civ5 got some graphical updates to make it closer to the windows version. At least, it was completely playable before then, so I guess we should give Aspyr credit. Still, it was not as good of an experience as windows.
And let's not forget the articles which demonstrated that pretty much all linux games have lower fps (one of which the blog author links at the beginning of his post).
The whole "valve is dropping steamOS" angle is a bit ridiculous, but otherwise the guy has a point. The big games that have come to linux do not run as well as in windows, that's pretty much unarguable.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: MohandevirAnyone runs an AMD R9 or R7 GPU, on Linux?
I have an R7 260X running on Ubuntu Gnome 15.04 daily build. Been playing CS:GO, Borderlands 2, Defence Grid 2 and a few other games on the machine.
Can't really give a good account of performance though as the machine is a mix of old and new parts, the CPU is a Core2Duo which hurts the performance. But the RadeonSI driver (the open source driver in case you are not aware) runs those games listed just fine (Defence Grid 2 has a graphical glitch with the mouse pointer at times but everything else renders correctly).
With AMD graphics...having the latest stable open source driver code (mesa/llvm/kernel) is often necessary to get good performance and stability. Catalyst...well I avoid it. :D
0 Likes
Oh, and I forgot to mention the whole Witcher 2 situation. :D But I guess nothing needs to be said about that.
0 Likes
Mohandevir Nov 10, 2014
Quoting: SkarjakOh, and I forgot to mention the whole Witcher 2 situation. :D But I guess nothing needs to be said about that.
No you don't! :)
They should have stated it was a beta, not an official release... In fact there is still a beta available for that game and it solves the last bugs that I had to deal with.
To gabsd84:
Good to know and it confirms what I was reffering to... Compromises.
0 Likes
Quoting: subQuoting: mr-eggthe mis-information here..I can only speak for BL2 and I must say - from the perspective
Borderlands2 and Borderlands TPS are excellent ports.
of an AMD GPU user - it is NOT a good port.
Performance is abysmal compared to the same computer running BL2 on Win7.
Yes, they stated that at release time and even marked AMD "unsupported".
Still, *I* want an update on that matter. What's the reason for the bad performance?
Is it really just the well known "it's AMD drivers quality and we're waiting for a fix"?
When can we (AMD user) expect an update which *significantly* improves performance?
Go talk to AMD. They LAID off all of their Linux Driver Team in 2010 and expect the community to develop their drivers for them. I have bought Nvidia ever since. Yes Nvidia uses close source drivers but guess what, every game I have try works without issues. Nvidia close source drivers work with every distro so I dont know why people get so upset if its close source. As a gamer all I care is for my games to work on the OS I want to use.
1 Likes, Who?
This guy is either an idiot or he's paid by Microsoft. Or he left Valve on bad terms. I've seen his rants before about OpenGl and now he's dissing Linux gaming. The fact that he's knocking Steam Machines before they've even been released tells you everything.
Best to just ignore him.
Best to just ignore him.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: peterp771This guy is either an idiot or he's paid by Microsoft. Or he left Valve on bad terms. I've seen his rants before about OpenGl and now he's dissing Linux gaming. The fact that he's knocking Steam Machines before they've even been released tells you everything.
Maybe he left on bad terms, but that guy is a professional with many years of experience to show off. He has the expertise to judge the state of Linux gaming and his words carry some weight. It'd be foolish to just dismiss him.
Also, even without much expertise, everyone can easily see that most of the Linux graphics drivers are not in best shape.
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: peterp771This guy is either an idiot or he's paid by Microsoft. Or he left Valve on bad terms. I've seen his rants before about OpenGl and now he's dissing Linux gaming. The fact that he's knocking Steam Machines before they've even been released tells you everything.
Best to just ignore him.
As much as I want linux to succeed as a gaming platform, we're not helping by staying blind to issues. This guy is calling it like it is.
0 Likes
Mohandevir Nov 10, 2014
Nvidia are working with Valve for the Steam Machines development and AMD proposed to supply Mantle (in part or in totality, I don't know) for the development of OpenGL-5.
Valve never said it was going to be an overnight revolution. In fact, they said many times that it would be a slow build-up.
We have to keep faith... :)
Valve never said it was going to be an overnight revolution. In fact, they said many times that it would be a slow build-up.
We have to keep faith... :)
3 Likes, Who?
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me