PC Gaming on Ubuntu Linux

[jwcalla]

What? You don't find OpenArena benchmarks all that informing?

Seriously, though. They only test free games and wonder why no one takes them seriously.

It's only one guy running the website and he only uses benchmarks that are open source and can be scripted for repeatability.

Benchmarks of closed-source applications are worthless.

Actually, most benchmarking sites out there are kind of idiotic because the results really aren't reliable or don't sufficiently isolate the hardware itself (e.g., AT).

 

[Ashbringer]

Preach it!
I tried to put Linux (fedora, uduntu and OpenSuse) on an Acer 8943G with a AMD 5850 mobile gpu sometime last year. Quake 3 was a slide show. Installing either the 13.4 or 13.12(or was it 13.11) resulted in a Black screen of death on all distors.

I use Intel, AMD, and Nvidia graphics and I can tell you that Nvidia ain't all that and a cup of soup.

Intel is pretty straight forward. They have open source drivers that work, and get faster and faster with each update. But, it's stuck on OpenGL 3.3 unlike AMD and Nvidia.

AMD is kinda in a strange spot. Their open source drivers aren't bad, but aren't good either. They're good enough for most things, but you want the binary drivers. Problem though is that AMD tends to mix and match newer GPU's with older GPU's. Like my laptop with a HD 4250 has a discrete HD 5470. Except that I can't use Catalyst 14.4 with the 5470, when the HD 4250 is a restriction. Just going to point out that it's an issue for Windows as well, but still sucks. So intead of using Legacy drivers 13.1, I went with open source drivers. Much less of a headace.

And there's Nvidia. No doubt their binary drivers are unmatched, when they work. Installing them is usually a painful process. Mainly because switching kernels is not something the drivers approve of. Seriously, who doesn't update their linux kernel? So you either wait for Nvidia to fix the problem, or patch the driver. I use kernel 13.14.1 and the Nvidia drivers 337.12 don't need patching for it. Also, unlike AMD there's no open source drivers. And my GPU is a 9600M GT, which is more then enough to get the job done for what I do. But I imagine that by next year Nvidia won't be supporting those series of graphic cards for much longer. Which means I'll be screwed out of drivers eventually. At least on AMD I can rely on the open source.

 

[Zakarro]

Steam OS nuff said