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

However 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

Thought 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?

Yes 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.

You 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.

The 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.

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.

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. :)

See 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?

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?

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.

Pierre-Loup Griffais back in march 2017:

Welcome keithp to the team! Our open graphics group is now 5 strong, but still hiring. Shader compiler performance people especially wanted.

Pierre-Loup Griffais this month:

Welcome Daniel Schürmann to the Valve open-source graphics group! https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2018-February/184685.html

If my math is correct we now got 6 dedicated people at Valve. :)


Last edited by Peapoll on 10 February 2018 at 2:35 pm UTC

Great news! It always gives me hope when Valve announces they're doing more work on Linux open source graphics drivers. This can only be a good thing for Linux gamers. ^_^

Solution is quite easy and likely will be a common choice for many Linux gamers going forward. Ditch Nvidia and use AMD. It's a shame of course that Nvidia are being jerks when it comes to proper Linux support, but it's not our problem anymore.

Not so easy if you're doing stuff outside gaming. AMD open source drivers sucked when it comes to OpenCL and Vulkan support last time I've checked. And those may be a must depending on what you do.
Also if you're using 3d render engines like Redshift or Octane you're stuck with Nvidia as they require CUDA.
So yeah, I'd love to see Nvidia suck less when it comes to the way they handle their driver development and their general attitude (yup, I'm taking a long look at the Wayland case now), but that doesn't change that I have little choice...

OpenCL has worked out of the box for like forever on the prop stack tbh, oss opencl stack works fine too admittedly not as quick as the prop stack.

Vega is a little different due to ROCm .

Vulkan was sketchy I admit, now works fine, currently playing doom through wine with Vulkan.

The cuda bit is obvious, if you need it, NV only, but lets be honest here, it the sole reason why NV came up with it is? Vendor Lockin! It's no different to DX from MS

The choice you do have however is the software you use though. Buying software that uses cudu only does not help and only strengthens vendor lockin for instance

Edit:

Just to point out, the argument regards cuda is kinda moot based on the fact the very site you are discussing this on has GAMING ON LINUX in the title. Plus I would dare say the vast majority of uses here are gamers due to the nature of the content. Be a good metric for liam to include in the PC stats mind.

If it was renderingonlinux you would have a case :P


Last edited by pete910 on 11 February 2018 at 2:16 pm UTC

yeah, Pete, but as I've stated - it is not so easy if you use your box for work too, not only for gaming.
This really restricts your choices, especially when you add few options (or no options) with professional software outside dev / server side.
If I'd only done gaming on my PC - sure AMD could be taken into consideration. But I need to do actual work as well... Thus no "ideology" talk can make me switch (I'd like to) - I need to be pragmatic with my hardware choices.

yeah, Pete, but as I've stated - it is not so easy if you use your box for work too, not only for gaming.
This really restricts your choices, especially when you add few options (or no options) with professional software outside dev / server side.
If I'd only done gaming on my PC - sure AMD could be taken into consideration. But I need to do actual work as well... Thus no "ideology" talk can make me switch (I'd like to) - I need to be pragmatic with my hardware choices.

Have both :P

Gaming PC and a work station PC.

Gaming PC and a work station PC.

sure... if you promise to pay for it :P ...