Linux

Minor setbacks

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I was going to do some more polishing on my video tonight, but tried to compile the latest RC candidate for OBS and totaled my Mint install. Rather than sort through what went wrong it would be faster for me to do a clean install and then follow it with an image. On the bright side I backed everything important off using my portable Linux drive. I’ll see about doing a reinstall tomorrow or maybe over the weekend depending on how the chips fall. I should have made an image before experimenting, but things have been running so smoothly when I’ve compiled other programs… Still, it was bad on my part. If I wanted to I could work on my project file under Windows, as I do have Shotcut installed between both OS’s… but it’s late. 😛 Well, maybe just a little trim. :v:

I’m not sure if I want to stick with 18.3 or if I want to venture into 19.1… I’ll probably stick to 18.3 for stability purposes. I guess Windows will be keeping me warm tonight…

This is why I have two OS’s. 😛

Happy 6th Anniversary to Steam On Linux

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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.

Sunday Evening Open Thread: I’m still a nerd edition

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I worked on and rendered another video using the Linux version of Shotcut today. I don’t know what it is, but to me the Linux version performs better for me than the Windows version, which itself isn’t bad by any means, but to me it seemed even snappier under Linux. I won’t uninstall it from Windows just in case I need it under there (you never know), but I have a feeling I’ll be using it under Linux more. Hooray for progress! :meeseeks:

Other than that there wasn’t much else to my day. It was a nice warm morning, followed by large gusts of wind that brought fog and cold weather by the late afternoon. I sat inside drinking tea, getting my computer work done and trying to feel better. I reinstalled DOOM 2016 on my desktop to test it with the newest version of Proton, and I can say that I now have mouse movement, but it feels a bit janky… I know I could do some tricks to get it to work, and I probably will in the future. But for now I think I’ll hold off and see if newer versions of Proton will remedy the issue. I’ve already beat the game once, and I’m already replaying it under Mint on my laptop with flying colors. I have plenty of other games that need testing. :v:

Finally catching up!

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We had a surprise heatwave today, too hot for me to even want to take a nap. I ended up taking my laptop outside and play tested Prey on my Linux install, and surprisingly it works quite decently.

Speaking of Linux gaming I finished my first Linux related video. I’m not sure when I’ll release it, but it will probably be at the beginning of November at the very latest, with others hopefully following suit. I had to do a reinstall of Shotcut, the version I installed via my package manager decided that it didn’t want to launch anymore for whatever reason, so I tested with their portable version and that runs like a peach. It even has all of the same codecs I have under the Windows version… I’m wondering if I had an older version installed? Which is strange because it did report back the same version as Windows… Ponderous. If that’s the case I may start doing more of my video editing under Linux instead of keeping Linux and Windows recordings separate, and using Windows Shotcut to edit Windows video and Linux Shotcut for… well you get the idea. It’s kind of funny though when I think about it; Years ago when I first installed Linux to participate in the Steam Linux beta I couldn’t find any decent software to edit videos and always had to rely on Premiere Pro, among other programs that always had me going back to Windows (like game recording software for example). Fast forward to now, and we have several robust video editors to choose from, there are a couple options for game recording, and more and more everyday software being available to use. It’s amazing how much of this has grown since my early adventures of using Linux as a regular day to day desktop. Now here I am editing audio/video without having to rely as much or at all on Windows or Adobe for it. It feels good, real good.

As I’ve stated before though I’m nowhere near ready to completely ditch Windows yet, but the less time I spend under it the happier I am. I like having options.

Linux is now working on my ROG G752VT

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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 way its meant to be installed

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My new NVMe arrived this afternoon! :happy: When I first plugged it into my laptop it ate my boot order for some reason. It was reading my new 970 Pro, and then where my 960 pro should have been there was “SM_NVMeROM” instead. Swapping slots seemed to fix this issue for me.

I underwent my Linux Mint install, and it started off well. Watching it install at super speed was incredible, then once I restarted things began to get tricky… I ran my updates just as you normally would on a new install, and tried to install the latest NVidia graphics driver as the one in the default repo is slightly out of date. I tried running the .run file directly from NVidia’s driver site  and learned that it has to install at the CLI level… the fuck? I tried various tips and tricks from all over the internet but nothing seemed to work, then I saw someone mention installing a PPA and downloading the driver from choice from the driver manager… no dice.

With as easy as it was to setup Mint on my pure AMD desktop I was expecting flying colors on the greener side of the fence; after all I hear people crow all the time about how NVidia has THE BEST Linux drivers evar because they have tons of trained monkeys doing all of the programming!!!!11111… Why in the actual fucking hell do NVidia’s drivers have to be so difficult? It’s 2018… For fucks sake even AMD’s proprietary drivers have a working user interface… What’s NVidia’s excuse? Aren’t they the richer company? I shouldn’t have to search the four corners of the internet for obscure instructions on how to install a fucking graphics driver. As long as problems like these continue to exist on Linux it’ll continue make Windows look more attractive. :zorak:

At this point I can’t help but stare at my linux mint install with an angry glare… I wasted so many hours trying to get this to work, and now I’ll have to shelve it for another time.I’ll come back to it in a few days assuming I can muster up the nerve and set aside more time. Five fucking hours of my time that I could have set aside for a nap, a video, more game testing, gone… :zorak:  I’ll have to start fresh again, fortunately I mainly focused on updates and drivers so no programs or files were copied over. Would suck to do that all over again. I’m going to try and get it up and running as I really want to test Linux on another set of hardware as well as see how the new SteamPlay performs… but if I can’t get this sorted I’ll reformat it and use it for something else.

I hope the open source drivers continue to improve… NVidia can go eat a bag of polyester cockwombles.

Only half way through the week and I already want it to end

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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:

Linux Continues To Make Big Headlines

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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:

Steam Play Test Results 8/24/18 PLATINUM EDITION

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Oddly this all started when I tried to test Bayonetta via Steam Play, here are the results of that and some others:

  1. Bayonetta: Played perfectly fine until I quit and tried to restart, the window became unresponsive.
  2. NieR Automata: Despite being whitelisted by Steam this title will only load itself into memory and does fuck all on my distro.
  3. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance: Almost perfect, with only a couple glitches like small bits of lag and lights appearing through solid objects and people (including me). Is actually running on a hacked executable to run at 1440p as well as some graphical modding. Can restart the game multiple times and it won’t puss out like Bayonetta. No I’m not picking up any Nirnroot for you.
  4. Okami HD: Loaded a window, but it was nothing but a short lived world of graphical terror that would eventually collapse into itself, not even Amaterasu could save this poor world…

So out of all of those games I could only get MGR to work, that would be my fucking luck… :melon:

TF2 doesn’t like Open Source Drivers

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I ran into a bit of a problem running TF2 under Linux; I’ll be in the middle of a game and it’ll spit this engine error:

Out of memory or address space. Texture quality setting may be too high.

Doing a little research gave me an answer, but not one I like. Apparently this bug has been around since an update last year and seems to mostly be noticeable under Mac and Linux, especially if you’re running Open Source drivers (or if you’re trying to run the game on a potato). One “temp” solution is to delete the sound.cache file before launching the game. I say “temp” in quotes because it’s 2018 and this still seems to be an issue.

So it looks like my options are delete sound.cache every time I want to play, or play under Windows… which I planned to go both ways on anyway, but now it seems the Windows version will take precedence. I know I could play it via Wine if I wanted to, but considering I have this setup as a dualboot that seems rather pointless if I already have a native client…

Well, it is my weekend. I had plans to head back to Windows anyway at some point. I haven’t been there since Monday. 😛