Gaming and Linux

[Anonymous]

Well, I am hoping that over time my dependence on Windows will be cut down.

I spend a lot more time on my MacBook Pro now, using it for programming, learning and general browsing the net in bed. The PC has stood idle for a while and recently I’ve got the itch back to gaming. So after blasting some soviets and NOD, solving some portal puzzles, I needed a break (I used to be able to game for days, now I feel a couple hours is enough).

But I thought maybe I could try and start using linux for gaming. So I installed an SSD that wasn’t being used and put Ubuntu 16.04 on there. After doing a dist-upgrade to 16.10 and finding my sound no longer worked, I rolled back to 16.04.

Then I installed Steam, this will clearly be the easiest way of gaming on Linux, what with a nice store and a whole host of games.

It was anything but easy. Issues and errors, slow laggy playback. It took me best part of 4 hours, trying various commands, rebooting and all sorts before I could get Portal 2 to work reliably. Now that it works, it’s great and hopefully all other games will install and work just great.

But it just goes to show, Linux has a long way to go before it’s going to get close to usurping Windows for most people. Not everyone will be technical enough, or motivated enough to google around to solve these issues.

Maybe the fault is at Valve’s door, and they should sort out so that the environment is the same for everyone, so there’s no difference in libraries or files that are used to game, but this could get messy. But for now, Windows will remain king for gaming.

Either way, for now dual-booting will be required for me. Gaming on windows, as well as so I can learn and build my own games in Unity.

So to try and stop this from being a whinge: What else do you guys still have to use Windows for? Maybe forumites have alternatives that can be used instead.

[Ed P]

I’m afraid it looks as though the failure of the Steam Machine has blighted the chances of games playing natively in Linux. Most of the majors now seem to have abandoned the Linux platform for cutting-edge games. I now tend to use a Windows 10 host then run Linux vms for Internet use, and Windows 7 or 10 vms for games. Although a bit of speed/frame rate is lost by doing this, I get the advantage of being able to snapshot or pause ANY game!

If you want to get into other alternatives to Linux you could try ReactOS. https://www.reactos.org/
At present this is a poor games machine but the development group have games playing as one of their objectives:
https://www.reactos.org/wiki/Games_ROS_Testing

[Anonymous]

Well now that I have it sorted, any Steam games that have linux support should be good to go.

However, I’m not counting my chickens on that either.

What system do you use to play games through VM?

I liked the idea of reactos when I first heard about it, but it’s far too slow a development process to be of any use. It’s a shame, but thinking about it now, I think it’s probably the wrong thing to attempt.

[Ed P]

Gog also have a small selection of (mainly old) Linux games:

One or two (Witcher & GrimRock) are fairly new, but nearly all are of the RP/Adventure genre

 

[Drezha]

I’m trying to use Windows less at home but I’m required to boot up the Windows machine for actual work (i.e. my day job) as we use Office 365 and I can log on and use Office and Outlook.

I was missing apps like Breevy but I’ve sorted that now on Linux with some command line scripting. I’ll miss Doxie as well, as that was simple and straightforward for my scanning needs. However, I can still use the Doxie, I’ll just get JPG files by default which I’m sure I could then pass through some Linux commands to get OCR’d copies. Switching to the Doxie Q could be on the books though and that would make it easier (it would all go to my iPhone instead and could then be moved over).

Gaming would still be on the Windows box, but then I have a separate Linux box which is lower powered than the Windows rig, so I wouldn’t really want to play games on it just yet.

From my Mac days, I miss 1Password (it’s just much nicer on iOS than to use a Keepass file) and nValt/Ulysses – I can’t seem to find a writing app on Linux like these two apps, especially Ulysses which is a real shame.

"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett

[D-Dan]

I’m not much of a gamer, but I can’t understand why you have problems, unless it’s Canonical’s patching that’s doing it.

 

On Arch, wine happily lets me play Trackmania, and I have Steam installed with no problems, and games advertised as Linux compatible just run. (I may even purchase Trine 2, since the demo is fun).

 

I suggest trying a non-ubuntu distro to rule out canonical carp.

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[Bartinili]

I went through this evolution back at Bham, UT2004 had native Linux support which was brilliant and the classics like DOD ran fine.

Like you have the MBP for doing life things, but after dusting the cob webs the tower has been put back in service for gaming.

the debate in my mind currently stand at, is there really anything I want to play so badley I can’t run it on Linux or the MBP.

For me i am still undecided, having spent half a decade away from PC gaming pretty much everything I enjoyed playing is either ported to the fruit or wine compatible.

But… what is the harm in having an extra disk in the box with windows on, just for games? Especially when you can have the MBP sat next to monitor with anything else entertainment wise on the Retina display?

The old and wretched E4500 2.2 with a GTX750Ti
Macbook Pro 2015 (i am a grown up now -.- ), Travelmate 8371G
IPad Mini 2, Asus Nexus 2012

[Anonymous]

One issue with Linux actually is the things that are small but huge stoppers to it working.

I’m picking up Unity at the moment and thought I’d give it a whirl on Ubuntu. But after about 10 minutes, the menus stopped showing up, meaning I couldn’t save the work I had done. So have hopped over to my Mac instead. It’s small things, but it just doesn’t work.

So now I’m actually thinking any time I need Linux, I’ll spin up a VM instead.

[Author]

Posts