Valve has boosted their Linux ranks by hiring another developer to work on open source graphics

Quoting: ZybersunHowever my patience is not infinite. How does AMD compare to Nvidia now in the graphics area? Price, speed, etc?

AMD is competitive driver wise (Mesa), but somewhat lacking hardware wise on the high end if you value good TDP. I think the later point should improve with 7nm Vega. I can't really comment on prices - they are all over the place, because of the mess caused by cryptomining craze.


Last edited by Shmerl on 9 February 2018 at 8:35 pm UTC

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: EikeThought from the other end, would you be happy being able to play all Windows games via WINE (and probably not getting any support by companies) and having no more games compiled to target Linux?

I personally will be more happy to have native games naturally. But playing them through Wine is better for me than "playing" through Feral's wrapper that I can't even access in my store at all (which means not playing at all).

Besides, Feral wrappers don't encourage native releases unlike some claim above. Actual support for Linux in game engines does, that's what we get from Unreal, Unity and the like who actually make native option available.

You make it sound like all feral is doing is wrapping the game. You do know they do real work right?

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: ScooptaYes but wine isn't a port. Feral might be doing some wrapping but they're not wrapping the entire binary. I'll take ports over wrappers any day even if the port has wrapper libraries.

I disagree with saying that Feral's wrapper has no effect on native gaming. It has. It reduces incentives to make native ports. It doesn't mean it's a bad thing, since wrapped release is better than no functioning option at all. But then your claim that binary wrapper somehow discourages native ports more doesn't make sense to me. It's IMHO completely irrelevant what kind of wrapping takes place if you are analyzing it as alternative to native port. It's all a shortcut that allows playing something without spending a lot on native rewrite. The only difference is that Wine allows it for anything, and Feral allow it for what they selected only.

So this whole argument is about marketing only (i.e. "viewed as Linux release" ), not about actual effect on native releases. Nothing stops developers doing what Topware did, and use Wine for marketed "official" Linux release.

This whole topic started as an answer to "Wine discourages native ports, while Feral are encouraging them". I don't see that difference. If anything, both provide non native options in different fashions, and one being a closed controlled by Feral product, while other is FOSS and can be used by anyone.

The difference is wine users = windows users. When you buy a game from feral you're quite obviously not a Windows user. Even if you argue feral is damaging wine is more so from that point alone.

Quoting: ScooptaYou make it sound like all feral is doing is wrapping the game. You do know they do real work right?

Define wrapping. It's far from trivial obviously. Unlike Feral's code that we can't really see the source for, we can see it for Wine, and you can get the impression how complicated it can be.

Quoting: ScooptaThe difference is wine users = windows users.

Wine users = Wine users. Whether anyone cares to measure that or not, is a question to them. Developers who make officially supported Wine wrapped releases probably do measure it.

Seriously, take the Wine talk to the forum. If this mess of a comment section keeps spiralling out of control further I'll have to close it.

Quoting: SamsaiSeriously, take the Wine talk to the forum. If this mess of a comment section keeps spiralling out of control further I'll have to close it.

Agreed, haha, why are Wine, Feral ports and different wrappers being discussed on an article about Valve hiring a graphics driver engineer? :D

Mesa development affects every kind of port, but also helps people who do video editing, 3D content creation, and even helps people who just want to watch a movie through a player with GPU acceleration. I think it's awesome what Valve is doing and it will likely affect more than just games. :)

Quoting: ZybersunSee the problem I have is way back Nvidia was the only good supporter for Linux. So I have always stayed with them, even through their stupidity. ATI, what it was called at the time, just sucked and forget about Intel graphics.

I'm in the same boat. Last time I upgraded my GPU, everyone said to use nVidia because it was the only thing getting proper drivers for gaming on Linux. I have no clue why everyone is complaining about them now since I haven't had any trouble with that card except for the occasional bug in driver updates, but I suppose it has to do with the newer cards' support?

Quoting: SalvatosI have no clue why everyone is complaining about them now since I haven't had any trouble with that card except for the occasional bug in driver updates, but I suppose it has to do with the newer cards' support?

I don't see much complaining NVidia user, it is more that some AMD users feel the need to highlight what NVidia users seem to miss ;). I'm still more than happy with my newer NVidia card.

My feeling is that all newer cards are perfectly supported by both vendors. Both choices are still very valid:
- Go for NVidia when looking for speed and compatibility with all games but expect some hassles with driver installation and a "tainted" system due to the closed source nature.
- Go for AMD if you are looking for the perfect fit into the Linux ecosystem, though expect slightly lesser performance and be aware that you might need a lot of bleeding edge components (kernel, mesa) for newer games to run well.

(This will be my only post on that subject, I don't want to start another off-topic discussion ;))


Last edited by jens on 10 February 2018 at 11:00 am UTC

Back to the original. I am glad Valve has not given up on Linux. I know of a few companies that just used Linux to get where they are and than they turned their backs on it.