Ruining It For Everyone Else Since 2004
I stumbled across this in my RSS feed the other day, and as someone who traverses between Windows and Linux frequently I was quite happy to read about this. Apparently if you own an AMD GPU then congratulations, you’ll have better performance under Linux rather than Windows .
The fact there is no native Linux client for RDR2 and there is a considerable amount of performance compared to Windows is both hilarious and impressive at the same time. May we see more results as above.
I normally like ending the year with games that I’ve finished; But this year is a little different because we’re not just going into a new year. I wanted to recollect moments that made gaming even cooler for me over the last decade.
When I first caught wind of Left 4 Dead 2 being able to run under Linux I thought it was pretty cool. I’ve grown up playing with Linux since I was a kid, and at the time I was running (and still am) dedicated servers. The very idea of being able to install a free open source alternative to Windows seemed like a good direction. I was invited to the beta second wave, and I remember installing Ubuntu, figuring out how to install the proprietary AMD drivers and wanting to strangle someone whenever I borked the OS. But I got it all figured out and got Steam to run. The library was really small back then. Only a few GoldSrc titles like Half Life and Counter Strike were available to play. But eventually Left 4 Dead 2 was released to everyone in the beta, and eventually more games were ported over, Wine started improving, OBS became available outside Windows, and now thanks the birth of the Vulkan API and Steam’s version of Wine called “Proton” the gaming library under Linux is much more vast than it was earlier in the decade. I definately use Linux much more than I used to, and I’m happy to say at the end of the decade I’m using Linux more than I use Windows. I earned my TF2 Tux fair and square!
There are rare occasions where I will preorder a game, and in one particular case this controller. I remember reading early announcements about it and looking at prototype models they would tease, and the idea of having a fully programmable controller tickled my brain, and the built in gyroscope immediately sold me on the idea. Like with most of my preorder purchases I made a good gamble. See, when I was growing up I wanted the comfort of playing full PC games on the couch, and not just platformers and sidescrollers, but FPS’s and anything that felt more comfortable with a manual aim that I could never achieve with a Dualshock or XBox type controller. The Steam Controller enabled me to basically use an air mouse with the additional buttons and layout of a controller. It’s unfortunate that Steam is no longer making these versatile controllers, it seems too many people couldn’t grasp the concept of fully modifying their controller. They just wanted the plug and play console experience with a game working perfectly out of the box… sorry but if tweaking a config a bit is too much then you really need to re-evaluate why you bought the controller; You’re probably better suited for a console. I haven’t had any issues with mine, and even ordered another three during their last call to purchase them. I hope we see even cooler controllers in the future, and that possibly Steam will release their 2nd revision of the Steam Controller that was leaked awhile back. One can dream anyway.
I’ve always liked making and editing videos of one kind or another. I first played with Premiere Pro CS2 during my early years of YouTubing, and later on moved onto CS4, then eventually CS6. When Adobe announced that their newer version would be subscription based I pretty much signed off CS5 as my final Adobe Suite. I wasn’t going to pay a monthly fee for something I don’t have the time to do everyday. One day I ran into an audio issue that couldn’t be taken care of in CS6. After trying a few alternatives I finally settled on Shotcut; an Open Source free alternative that has a lot of cool editing features and is always being updated, and can also run under Linux (meaning all of my video creation can be done under there from start to finish). I’ve been editing with Shotcut for a couple of years now, and now my Adobe suites have collected cobwebs.
In the beginning there was only FRAPS for recording your desktop, but over the years there were other pay softwares that cropped up, and eventually NVidia and AMD made their own recording and streaming software for their GPU’s, and then eventually we had OBS and later on OBS Studio. OBS was once recommended to me by a friend on Steam when I was having issues with FRAPS after upgrading to an R9 290. I didn’t use it too much in the beginning other than for recordings. Later on when OBS Studio came out and they added a plugin to record directly from your GPU and stream using the CPU simultaneously I was quite happy with the results. Unlike FRAPS there are a bunch of optional plugins you can install, and if some of them become popular enough they will eventually be introduced into a newer version. I’ve tried AMD’s recorder, and I played a bit with PlayClaw and Shadowplay, and OBS Studio is always there for me. Now if they could add Vulkan support I can die happy.
I always liked the idea of making my own videos, and have always been interested in animation since an early age. When I heard that Valve was officially releasing their tool, which has been used for every Valve title like Half Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal 2, the Left 4 Deads etc I was pretty stoked to finally get my hands on professional free software. I’ve dicked with it on and off over the years and finally was inspired to change up my video format a bit and create these abominations, as referenced in the most recent video:
Before Source Filmmaker was officially released back in 2012 I used Garry’s Mod for animating, and while that was fun I wanted something that could produce something semi-serious with a cartoonish edge and better animation tools for a better story telling experience, after all this software was designed by people who used to work at Pixar. I’m still finding surprises in this old software. In the future I can use it to render in 4K plus I found out recently that I can use a command line function to render using more than one thread on my CPU; Meaning I can export even faster. More on that another time though.
This was a more recent feature to pop up over the decade and I imagine it will get better and better assuming broadband companies don’t gauge people to the point of online gaming being impossible. Sometimes you want to play a game with a friend, but it doesn’t have an online option, or they don’t own the game. Now as long as its supported you can invite a friend from anywhere in the world to play with you, as if they have their controller plugged into your system!
I would list games over the last decade but I think the list is long and wordy to the point that only two or three people may read it before venturing off to the next shiny thing. If anyone would like to share memories of the last decade, be it tech, games or whatever I’d like to see it below.
Happy New Year, and many decades and melons to come. :melon:
It was six years ago today that Steam announced that they were working on a beta client for Linux. The beta was limited to only a little over 60,000, though later on in the month they would invite another 5,000, and I was among one of those that was honored to receive an invitation. I installed Ubuntu as that was the recommended Linux distro at the time, and began using Linux as a desktop alternative to Windows on the side much as I do now but with Mint instead, as well as Fedora and CentOS over the years.
I remember my library only having a couple of GoldSrc titles in it, but eventually that would expand and improve. Looking at back when I started, and then looking at my library today things have changed dramatically. I have more options for gaming under Linux thanks to certain developers keeping Linux in mind, the introduction to Vulkan (formerly AMD’s Mantle graphics api)and Proton as an added compatibility option to play Windows games under Linux. I can now look at my library and have access to a good chunk of it despite platforms, and depending on an older game it can sometimes run better under Proton instead.
This has also lead to other programs being developed under Linux, such as OBS Studio for making it easier for gamers to record their gameplay. There are also now more video editors for Linux (the video I released yesterday was entirely edited on the Linux version of Shotcut, as well as some others I have planned ahead).
These changes and improvements over the years may not have come at a fast pace, Windows may still hold the crown for PC Gaming, but people need to remember that Windows wasn’t always considered a gaming platform either. There were people like me back in the day having to exit Windows to use DOS which still had a larger game library at the time.
For some people who only play certain games, and having those games available on Linux could be a game changer for them. Me? As I’ve said many times before I still have certain things holding me back from switching completely… But I am using it now more than ever. If something becomes available under Linux, and it runs just as well if not better, that’s one less reason for me to use Windows.
After beating my head against the wall some more I figured out why my NVidia drivers were installing incorrectly. Disabling UEFI in BIOS seemed to do the trick, and hey! Suddenly I could install the latest graphics drivers via driver manager (with the proper PPA added)!. I now have Steam installed, plus Waterfox and some of the basics. Even got the Steam Controller udev rules sorted. Now I’m finally ready to test games on another computer and have a more portable version of Linux.
Now I’ll just need to remember to enable and disable UEFI when booting between Windows and Mint… ugh. :rick:
The last few days at work have been pretty rough. I came home today and immediately passed out after eating some leftover lasagna from dinner at a friend and former co-workers house. Today wasn’t as bad, but yesterday and Tuesday were crazy busy with no rhyme or reason. I played a bit of DMC1 today during lunch, that was fun. I also tried running DMC HD Collection in Mint today. The good news is that the launcher works perfectly, the bad news is that once you choose what game you want to play it’ll just crash to desktop. Of course you can still technically play it under Linux, but you’ll have to use an emulator instead and have the necessary ROMS or disks on hand.
I’ve been collecting video footage documenting my adventures with Proton, and plan on making an introductory video showing my desktop as well as games that work under Linux via SteamPlay. I watched a couple big YouTubers about the subjects, and I can tell they’re mainly making videos about Proton and Linux gaming just to garner attention and rake in the ad revenue. I can tell especially when I compare their videos to other YouTubers who actually do use Linux on a regular basis. For example I’ve been reading and seeing others try to add their Windows Steam Library straight from their Windows game drive, which causes the desired game to download in a loop over and over again, as well as potentially corrupt your game on the Windows side.
Even though Proton uses the same install paths as Windows you can’t install or mount games from a drive that uses the ntfs file system (you can thank Microsoft for not wanting their filesystem to work properly with other operating systems). Best results are achieved if you use ext4 instead. This is one the many things inspiring me to make my own Linux videos, plus YouTube could use more Tux love. :v:
Spent the earlier part of the morning going through my closet; it didn’t take me very long as things were already well sorted, then I had my stitches removed AND even got a phone call from my doctor telling me that I’m fine. That’s great news for me and bad for everyone else. 😛
I opted to play Hard Reset Redux in Mint today just to see if I could crash the game, made it to the 2nd level with no glitches or anything. It would still be nice if they made a native version considering the Shadow Warrior Linux Port runs quite decently given the beefy hardware. But it is nice to play the Windows version using Proton with impressive results. :happy:
I also tried a bit of Dishonored and a couple Sonic games; Dishonored works fine though it seems to pause while loading certain scenes. Sonic Generations however tried to rape my ear drums with corrupted audio, as well as possessing my controller to do weird voodoo bullshit, Mania worked fine, but the sound was a slowed down and distorted.
I’m going to be looking into getting another NVMe drive for my laptop, with how often I’ve been using Linux lately I’d like to dualboot it on my laptop and see how it performs on different hardware.
Last but not least I installed Borderlands 2 onto my laptop, thinking I’ll play it during lunch tomorrow. It’s a good thing I tested it out a bit, because for whatever reason it crashed like a drunken sailor numerous times. I think lowering PhysX may have fixed the problem, but considering that it has a 970m GPU in it that would be rather strange… I guess tomorrow will be my live test. I’ll be working full shifts every day this week, so my laptop is going to get some good usage. :happy:
I’ve been wanting to check out Yakuza 0 for awhile now, and figured why not try it and see how well it performs with via Proton? Performance wise its a nice steady 60fps with everything turned up with only a few dips during cutscenes and once running through the streets of Kamurocho. There were no graphical glitches , but I did kind of run into a wall in game play. As I tried to perform a rush combo the game crashes instantly to desktop. I’ve tried changing a couple settings but it fails to progress. I’ve even tried rolling back to the non beta branch of Proton, but that only causes the game to not load at all. Perhaps this will remedy itself in future releases. Still, this kinda felt like a tease to me. Everything was going so well until I had to right click. :v: Of course right clicking itself isn’t an issue, but something about performing that combo causes Yakuza to commit Seppuku. :morty:
I’ll have to give this game a go on my Windows side, if it performs this well graphically under Linux I imagine it’ll be just fine under Win 10. Seems to be really well optimized. :happy:
I know I’ve been talking about Linux lately, with the latest install, Steam’s Proton,, Vulkan among other things, but I’m not alone. Even someone at Forbes has been getting on the bandwagon. This is the second article I’ve seen there, and this time he interviewed the owner of Gaming On Linux, another website that I read quite frequently. They discuss the myths, pros and cons of using Linux vs Windows and its a really interesting read.
So how many games are actually available to play on Linux today? “That’s a little tricky, considering the amount of different stores that actually sell Linux games like Steam, GOG, itch.io, Humble Store and so on,” Dawe says. “Take Steam as an example, specifically looking at just games for Linux it shows me right now there’s 4,800 whereas Windows has 23,882. So on Steam specifically, we have about 20% of the library, which is incredible when a few years ago that was a big fat zero.”
In the last five years I too have seen a multitude of changes. I still remember when I made it into the Steam Linux Beta (I still wear my official TF2 Linux shirts with pride), I remember when there were only a few GoldSource games in my library and not much else, there was no way to really record your gameplay… but it was a starting point. As things progressed we soon found more and more games being ported, game recording programs such as SimpleScreenRecorder came onto the scene and eventually OBS started developing for more than just Windows; known back then as OBS Multi-platform before being known as OBS Studio as it is today, and now we have programs like PlayOnLinux and Lutris for us to play and use our non steam games. Wine has made great improvements over the years, we have DXVK now for running DirectX 11 and 12 via Vulkan, proper audio and video software to showcase our games just as we can under Windows. It isn’t perfect, and they even say that in the article, but Windows wasn’t always the godly OS for gaming. There was once a time when Direct X sucked, and eventually when it did improve they ignored PC users for several years in favor of their precious XBox.
The unofficial Steam Play Compatibility website has been tracking the testing of every Windows game now playable on Steam for Linux. To date, more than 3200 titles have been tested. Of those, nearly 1300 have received “Platinum” status, meaning they not only launch with the simple click of the “Install” button on Steam, but they also have Windows-level performance and framerates.
If you go with a distro like Mint, Ubuntu or a few others they make it really painless for you to get set up compared to how it used to be. This isn’t the case for everything under Linux, after all I did have to research what PPA to download my graphics drivers from, fortunately that information has become easier to find.
I’m seriously considering doing some video tutorials for people who might be interested in playing games on Linux, and Linux videos in general on top of the other videos I crank out. More people need to know that an alternative to Windows might be waiting for them, or at the very least to try dualbooting between Windows and your Linux distro of choice to see how you’ll fare under it. As I’ve stated quite a few times I’ve been staying more in Linux lately, in fact I only went into Windows once this week to do some Photoshop and play a couple games that don’t quite run well under Linux. Am I ready to ditch Windows 10? Not even close, but with the way things are going we may get there someday, or at least scare Microsoft enough to pull their heads out of their asses and make another Operating System that’s on par with WinXP or 7. :trollface:
Here’s today’s roundup of games tested under Proton using some more modern game titles:
Wolfenstein II was most of my prime focus for today, felt good to blast nazi’s again AND on a different platform! I’m surprised it hasn’t been whitelisted yet. For me this runs better than DOOM 2016 (which would be perfect if I could figure out how to get the damned mouse to function). I wish Quantum Break worked just as well… I played that under Windows 10 last night and I think I’ll have fun with that one. I think I’ll save that game for another post though, it was a lot to take in despite only having played it for an hour.
Carrying on from yesterdays mood I tested both Max Payne 1 and 2 under Linux, and I’m happy to say they work quite smoothly. Unlike Windows they were ready to play the moment they were installed with no tinkering with compatibility modes. I even played with some mods too:
I’ve played Max Payne 1 for an overall total of 93 minutes today, and 41 minutes for the sequel. I’m really impressed with how stable they are! They also maintained a good 60fps which isn’t too big of a surprise for such old games, but having this run under Linux with or without mods has been a nice experience.
I should probably update my list of games that I have working perfectly on Linux via Proton thus far:
I consider it perfect if it does the following:
I may only have five games that have passed the test thus far, and all of them may be older, but this is a really good step towards making Linux a competitor with Windows. I already have support for most of the daily programs I use under it, and if more things become comparable it would be nice to get off of it completely. But for now (and probably quite some time) it shall remain a dualboot. Though I’m still happy to say I’ve spent equal or more time under Linux than Windows these last few weeks. :happy: I may have to head under there tomorrow though; I’m thinking maybe a little Fallout 4 tomorrow if I have time.