Linux as a gaming platform in 2019

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Oct 27, 2014
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Reading the Phoronix complete review of the Raedon VII, the take home for me is that Linux is finally a great platform for gaming on be it binary Nvidia or FOSS AMD. 4k results with over 100fps and no severe stuttering or frame latency, nor any graphical bugs, it's amazing how far things have come. Pretty much outside of a few wonky native ports (( which can now be run sometimes faster on Steamplay as their windows counterparts using the new compatibility tool in steam instead of running the native port.. yea that's a real twist :confused: )) the performance & stability is great. Vulkan is making DX11 games really smooth.

In a few months time when Steamplay/proton incorporates Wine 4.0 & combined with Kernal 5.0 and MESA 19.0 with the next ubuntu 19.04 release in late march/april (which also will bring stable freesync for normal users) i think it's going to be the baseline where everything is 'good enough' out of the box. If your someone who already uses Lutris+wine+dxvk then your already able to run the vast majority of AAA windows games at comparable framerates.

There are a few sticking points however..

1. DRM. There isn't much anyone can do but plead with developers to make it compatible with wine/proton.

2. VR. It works in a fashion and now you can run missing native VR titles use Steamplay but performance and desktop integration is going to have to leap forward.

3. Some high end peripheral support could be better for things like racing wheels that aren't just logitech.


Maybe by the end of 2019 valve will incorporate all of these changes into SteamOS 2.0 :penguin:
 
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While I certainly do hope this is the year for Linux gaming (just like any other year), I'm here for the comments
 
SteamOS is still a thing? HL3 confirmed...


Plenty of threads already about gaming on Linux here. Happy to see Steam helping the cause, but it still has a long way to go yet.
 
I'm finding many of the Windows games I actually do play (not all) work pretty well with Steam's patched wine on my RX 480, so one can hope.... (but yeah DRM/anticheat seems to be another story)

There are a lot of people who run VFIO setups, Linux as base OS and Windows in a VM, passing through the GPU into the VM, which is probably the best solution right now. (I've yet to setup my new build to do this.)
 
It really comes down to what type of gamer you are. Yes I feel zero need to ever touch windows again. DRM VR and a few odd controller situations. Sounds about right to me. DRM will change with pressure no doubt at some point, as long as the number of people applying pressure outweighs the number of people not willing to vote with their wallets. Same applies to the niche controllers... if the demand is high enough support will come. Linux drivers aren't any harder to code for mfgs they simply need to be show its worth their time to provide general purpose Linux drivers to the kernel.

As for VR it just like 4k gaming ect... simply require more horsepower. As AMDs Radeon VII launch is showing... its is actually possible to get HIGHER performance on Linux even on day one of a launch. I think its pretty amazing that AMD newest card is performing better in Linux vs the NV cards then it is under windows. At some point we have enough horsepower that a small hit from a DXVK layer is nothing to worry about. Many many games are now running with low single digit hits vs windows performance. Right now I think it might be possible that in a handful of windows DX 11 games.... at least with the Radeon VII Linux might actually edge out running them on windows. Of course that could also be a bit of a statement on the state of AMDs windows drivers.... the open source Linux MESA team seems to have them beat in terms of raw performance.
 
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