Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is officially coming to SteamOS & Linux, port by Feral Interactive

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: throgh... protected firmware on NVidia-cards.

You're free to stick to your principles, but all major CPU and GPU vendors run proprietary firmware/microcode in their hardware, not just Nvidia. Your choice of drivers makes no difference either.

Sorry, but you either misread or are mistaken. Of the big three PC GPU vendors, only Nvidia implements "protected firmware". That is to say, only drivers signed by Nvidia are permitted to talk to the GPU's proprietary firmware. That's why free software drivers on modern Nvidia cards is impossible to fully implement without Nvidia's full corporation.

And Nvidia doesn't fully cooperate.

Eventually (well after the card release date) they will (or at least have so far) release a firmware that does permit unsigned drivers to talk to it, but the firmware has been partially crippled so it cannot function fully. To the best of my understanding, it is not technically possible (short of finding a way to bypass these digital restrictions) for free software drivers to ever match Nvidia's proprietary drivers. Contrast this to AMD and Intel, where it makes no sense for them to do this on GNU/Linux since the primary drivers for these vendors - the recommended drivers for most people - are the free software drivers.

So if using free software drivers is important to you, Nvidia is a really bad choice, and will always be a bad choice as long as they keep the requirement for signed drivers. Don't give them your support.

Quoting: boltronics

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: throgh... protected firmware on NVidia-cards.

You're free to stick to your principles, but all major CPU and GPU vendors run proprietary firmware/microcode in their hardware, not just Nvidia. Your choice of drivers makes no difference either.

Sorry, but you either misread or are mistaken.

I'm not so sure. I just think that for most of us protected firmware isn't much more of a problem than proprietary firmware blobs in general. As long as they provide working drivers, from a purely non-ideological standpoint it's all good.

Quoting: boltronicsSo if using free software drivers is important to you, Nvidia is a really bad choice, and will always be a bad choice as long as they keep the requirement for signed drivers. Don't give them your support.

I still think this is just about picking what you consider acceptable in your system. You draw the line at that particular detail, others think anything short of of fully open hardware is evil. Nvidia is probably slightly worse than the competition if you feel strongly about these issues though, that I'll agree with.

Quoting: tuubiI'm not so sure. I just think that for most of us protected firmware isn't much more of a problem than proprietary firmware blobs in general. As long as they provide working drivers, from a purely non-ideological standpoint it's all good.

Well I just got back from a Software Freedom Day meet-up, so... :)

Quoting: tuubiI still think this is just about picking what you consider acceptable in your system. You draw the line at that particular detail, others think anything short of of fully open hardware is evil.

That's true. I understand not everyone is as concerned about using free software, and it's up to the individual to make the call. I'll generally accept proprietary games since I only use them temporarily (but won't pay full price for games with nasty DRM or other mechanisms that disrespect or subjugate the user more than is typical), but I won't accept proprietary drivers since the OS would run those most/all of the time.

I do reluctantly accept proprietary firmware/microcode, but wouldn't if a 100% free microcode was available for modern hardware that can do what I want. Unlike some people, I don't care if it's loaded from the HDD or from flash embedded in the hardware (although many free software projects make the later much easier to deal with) - the risk is about the same either way.

For stuff not related to games and entertainment, I use a Lenovo X60 running Libreboot, which has 100% free software for the BIOS and HDD storage contents (which contains a dual-boot GuixSD and Parabola setup). The only proprietary code on the laptop I am aware of is in the HDD firmware, which I am not aware of any solution for.

I am also a backer of the EOMA68 micro-desktop and laptop on crowdsupply.com, so might switch to that later... although then instead of dealing with HDD firmware, I would need to deal with the firmware embedded in the SD card microcontroller. :)

accidental post


Last edited by m2mg2 on 17 September 2016 at 4:44 pm UTC

Quoting: boltronics

Quoting: tuubiI'm not so sure. I just think that for most of us protected firmware isn't much more of a problem than proprietary firmware blobs in general. As long as they provide working drivers, from a purely non-ideological standpoint it's all good.

Well I just got back from a Software Freedom Day meet-up, so... :)

Quoting: tuubiI still think this is just about picking what you consider acceptable in your system. You draw the line at that particular detail, others think anything short of of fully open hardware is evil.

That's true. I understand not everyone is as concerned about using free software, and it's up to the individual to make the call. I'll generally accept proprietary games since I only use them temporarily (but won't pay full price for games with nasty DRM or other mechanisms that disrespect or subjugate the user more than is typical), but I won't accept proprietary drivers since the OS would run those most/all of the time.

I do reluctantly accept proprietary firmware/microcode, but wouldn't if a 100% free microcode was available for modern hardware that can do what I want. Unlike some people, I don't care if it's loaded from the HDD or from flash embedded in the hardware (although many free software projects make the later much easier to deal with) - the risk is about the same either way.

For stuff not related to games and entertainment, I use a Lenovo X60 running Libreboot, which has 100% free software for the BIOS and HDD storage contents (which contains a dual-boot GuixSD and Parabola setup). The only proprietary code on the laptop I am aware of is in the HDD firmware, which I am not aware of any solution for.

I am also a backer of the EOMA68 micro-desktop and laptop on crowdsupply.com, so might switch to that later... although then instead of dealing with HDD firmware, I would need to deal with the firmware embedded in the SD card microcontroller. :)

I use Nvidia, but I'm waiting on AMDGPU to mature. If the performance comes up to par, Nvidia will get dropped quick. I love AMD, the performance just hasn't been there. It actually wasn't that bad with Catalyst, aside from having to patch the driver source before compiling it. With my old R9 270x there was only one game I couldn't play, all the rest performed fine. I haven't actually tried AMDGPU, just going by what I've heard. Also I got about $1000 invested between my 980 GTX and my GSYNC monitor to jump ship right now. The first game I go to install that prompts for privilege elevation to install, instant refund request.


Last edited by m2mg2 on 17 September 2016 at 4:44 pm UTC

Quoting: m2mg2[I use Nvidia, but I'm waiting on AMDGPU to mature. If the performance comes up to par, Nvidia will get dropped quick.

Even under Windows the performance of AMD's best cards do not quite match those of Nvidia's, but there's a point where games are "quick enough", and AMD's cards are often much better value for money.

I have two Fury X GPUs. Hopefully when more games support Vulkan, games will make effective use of both GPUs. fglrx has some Crossfire support (and Fury X cards are just old enough to be supported by Catalyst), but I've never noticed the second card being utilised. AMDGPU has no Crossfire support at all, which sucks for the moment. But the performance of AMDGPU right now is otherwise quite good and still improving. The only game I have which doesn't work fine with AMDGPU/Mesa that I'm aware of (and I have a *lot* of games) is Dying Light. Having said that, it's been a couple of weeks since I tried so I should probably test that again.

My monitor is the BenQ XL2730Z which has FreeSync support, but none of AMD's GNU/Linux drivers support that yet. It seems to be on AMD's radar however and I'm hopeful it will all be working by early next year. I imagine Intel will add Adaptive-Sync support at some point too, at which point hopefully people stop purchasing proprietary G-Sync hardware and it can be killed off. Nvidia will need to support FreeSync eventually anyway.


Last edited by boltronics on 18 September 2016 at 3:48 am UTC

Quoting: boltronics

Quoting: m2mg2[I use Nvidia, but I'm waiting on AMDGPU to mature. If the performance comes up to par, Nvidia will get dropped quick.

Even under Windows the performance of AMD's best cards do not quite match those of Nvidia's, but there's a point where games are "quick enough", and AMD's cards are often much better value for money.

I have two Fury X GPUs. Hopefully when more games support Vulkan, games will make effective use of both GPUs. fglrx has some Crossfire support (and Fury X cards are just old enough to be supported by Catalyst), but I've never noticed the second card being utilised. AMDGPU has no Crossfire support at all, which sucks for the moment. But the performance of AMDGPU right now is otherwise quite good and still improving. The only game I have which doesn't work fine with AMDGPU/Mesa that I'm aware of (and I have a *lot* of games) is Dying Light. Having said that, it's been a couple of weeks since I tried so I should probably test that again.

My monitor is the BenQ XL2730Z which has FreeSync support, but none of AMD's GNU/Linux drivers support that yet. It seems to be on AMD's radar however and I'm hopeful it will all be working by early next year. I imagine Intel will add Adaptive-Sync support at some point too, at which point hopefully people stop purchasing proprietary G-Sync hardware and it can be killed off. Nvidia will need to support FreeSync eventually anyway.

I think Dying Light was the one that wouldn't run when I was using the r9 270x. I could deal with somewhat less performance but not being able to run a game at all is a real bummer. I'm not really into multi card setups. I ran SLI quite a few years ago, but the benefit was almost unnoticeable and the additional complexity wasn't worth it. The extra space in the case, heat considerations, troubleshooting when one of the cards start having issues. I've rma'd so many cards due to failure under warranty, it is just double the work having two at the same time. That said I do have a GTX 560 that is going on 4 or 5 years without problems. When I was running SLI I went through 4 980 GT's (GT not GTX) in two years (heat was not a problem, just failure prone cards).

Quoting: m2mg2I think Dying Light was the one that wouldn't run when I was using the r9 270x. I could deal with somewhat less performance but not being able to run a game at all is a real bummer. I'm not really into multi card setups. I ran SLI quite a few years ago, but the benefit was almost unnoticeable and the additional complexity wasn't worth it. The extra space in the case, heat considerations, troubleshooting when one of the cards start having issues. I've rma'd so many cards due to failure under warranty, it is just double the work having two at the same time. That said I do have a GTX 560 that is going on 4 or 5 years without problems. When I was running SLI I went through 4 980 GT's (GT not GTX) in two years (heat was not a problem, just failure prone cards).

I did end up testing Dying Light with the latest amdgpu on 4.8-rc6 kernel and libdrm+ddx+mesa (all from git master), and the game still doesn't work. Apparently it's never going to work.

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=96449

So I guess there will always be the odd game that won't work with AMD until Mesa devs change their mind and support 3.3 compatibility profiles. In the meantime, hopefully other games recognise this issue and refuse to use them going forward.

Quoting: TemplateRWell thats great. But I wouldn´t be better to port the predecessor "Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut" first and then the successor? I mean it is better to understand the story, when you play the first part directly instead of watching a reacap intro.

Better for us, but it may be finances that're involved or SquareEnix decided they wanted Mankind Divided out instead and cut a big discount on things for Feral as a result.

Do remember something, folks, for the most part, each and every one of these games NOT made available under Linux by the studio and/or publisher directly ends up costing the porting entity MONEY. The titles I've ported didn't cost me a dime, but those are mostly Indie titles with a couple of "B" titles and one older "AAA" title I've got source access to, not Deus Ex.

AAA titles as often as not require a rather royalty payment up-front (Unless you get a sweetheart deal from the rightsholder, you're looking at as much as 250k to get the privilege to look at the code to port a AAA title...), then there's the expense of doing the porting work, then there's the production to SKU costs, followed by the per-unit royalties that usually goes WITH the game in the first place.

Unless you've got a deal or the money, the title doesn't happen. I strongly suspect that in this case.