Linux Gaming: Are We There Yet?
by Christopher Rice on December 28, 2009 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Linux
Closing Thoughts (for now)
What's the answer to the initial question, "Is Linux ready for gaming?" As you probably expected, the answer is both yes and no. If you're looking for an out-of-box solution for running older games, Linux is a decent alternative to Windows. The longer a game has been around, and the more popular the game, the better the odds that someone has already taken the time to get it working properly under one of the Wine projects. Naturally, that means the reverse is true: newer titles are less likely to work without some extra effort (and sometimes not even then). Even if you do manage to get a new release running, you should expect to see anything from graphical glitches to completely unplayable gameplay.
By now you're probably asking which of the three projects we recommend. Personally, I would use Crossover Games and Wine. We selected Wine because it's not only free, but if you're savvy enough you have a better chance of getting a new release game working right away. Since the Wine project is open source and extremely active in development, you can find patches around the net created on the fly for supporting specific games long before Crossover/Cedega come out with anything. We can then supplement Wine with Crossover Games when all else fails with installing or playing specific games.
Crossover Games provides a decent GUI and the ability to run additional games that Wine cannot. We have also found in many cases that Crossover Games will provide higher frame rates and a better gaming experience. Between both Wine and Crossover Games you should be able to get the majority of your games working with a reasonable amount of effort. If you're looking for the most functionality out of your Linux desktop and don't mind spending the extra money, then I would suggest getting all three. Having all three will give you the best possible chance to ensure all of your games are covered.
In an ideal world, Linux would be supported natively by games. Unfortunately, few developers are willing to take on that task. Eve Online used to have a native Linux client, but development was shut down this past year (in part because performance under Wine was more than acceptable). There was talk of a native UT3 client but it has yet to materialize. Some smaller projects (i.e. Penny Arcade Adventures and other indie titles) have been released with Linux clients, but for the most part major publishers are ignoring the platform.
One of the real problems we encountered is something we're going to address in a separate article. Our test system, if you notice, uses an NVIDIA GPU. We tried to be hardware agnostic, but the problems experienced with our test ATI HD 5770 and Wine eventually got the best of us. We could get the card to work with native Linux games, but Wine support at present was an absolute disaster. Part of the problem undoubtedly stems from the newness of the hardware, but we didn't have any alternative ATI GPUs available right now. The future of ATI GPUs on Linux isn't nearly so bleak, however, with some exciting developments coming from the open source driver. As stated, we'll be looking into that in a future article.
We have some other Linux articles in the pipeline as well. In retrospect, we should have started with something a little less daunting, as gaming and Linux was plagued by more problems than other aspects of the OS. In the meantime, we welcome your comments and thoughts on other Linux areas you'd like to see us investigate.
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ficarra1002 - Friday, February 11, 2011 - link
Most people don't use Linux because it's free. They get it because its better. You may think its too much work, but that's you.stoggy - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
Yea those linux gui server utils are great they make it really easy. then its worth the trouble.why did you even read the article if its not worth the bother?
why do i use linux for a desktop? Because windows cant do what linux can do, period. Even worse is when Windows makes me do what linux does for me.
zerobug - Saturday, January 2, 2010 - link
Very good move from Anand, hiring a Linux expert for a better coverage on what's going on in the OSS arena. I welcome this initiative. The present article was a good choice and I'll be checking often for what's following. Good luck and a happy new year to the team and all their readers.ReviveR - Saturday, January 2, 2010 - link
Comparison is quite unfair, but Linux doesn't actually have to win Windows to become a gaming platform.Just today I connected my N900 to TV and played some Star Control 2. It worked really well as cheap console replacement.
It probably also has more processing power (CPU & GPU) than Nintendo DS or PSP. You can connect it to PC, use some bluetooth based controller like Wiimote etc. I think that when Maemo starts gaining some speed it could be a very nice Linux based gaming platform also.
If you think how successful Wii has been and then consider that something like N900 can handle bigger resolutions than Wii, offer all the development advantages of Linux etc... The tech is there, all it would need is users realising the possibilities.
minime - Saturday, January 2, 2010 - link
I'd like to see more real-life server test (incl. Linux [based] solutions). Something like "Which software stack/solution is able to serve the most users (while being practical meaning, incl. security)" (use-case: webserver, database, java, etc.).Then the other way around, keywords: AMD, Intel, PCI-E SSD vs. SATA SSD, GPGPU, etc.
ChristopherRice - Saturday, January 2, 2010 - link
In the future, I'd like to do some server articles for sure.minime - Sunday, January 3, 2010 - link
Cool, thanks! I do believe this is something a lot of readers would like to see and would differentiate from the ordinary IT-blog/news-saucejediknight - Saturday, January 2, 2010 - link
I'd be interested in seeing what performance would be like using a VM. Or Is performance so poor as to not even be worth attempting?FluffyTapeworm - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
It would be interesting to see how well running windows + games under vmplayer, virtualbox, etc stacks up. I assume it's likely to be less efficient, but it might still be useful for many older games.vol7ron - Thursday, December 31, 2009 - link
This article didn't really introduce anything new. All it says is that some people have found a way to manipulate Linux using Wine/etc to play some games.That sounds no better than someone issuing a keygen to use an application. Of course, the legalities are better, but you get the point: to only be able to play SOME games at a considerable performance impact does not make this option enticing if you already have Windows.
All it says is: if you're a Linux user and you want nice gameplay, we recommend you dual boot, as always, because the games you probably really want to play, won't be worth the effort.