Linux gaming is faster because Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features

It helped that the DOS executable format was the same as the CTOS format - because we had traded Bill Gates our linker (which produces executables) for his BASIC compiler.

Decades ago I ported some games to linux but I do think proton is the correct approach now. One underappreciated advantage is you get most of the mod environment too. In ESO for instance, there is an addon (tamriel trade center) which lets you download item prices, but it requires a windows client exe to do that. That client works on proton.

I also do some modding myself and can cross compile my rust code to windows with cargo xwin, and run it right away in proton, which is fairly amusing to behold.

I actually don't mind windows generally (been a MS user since DOS 5), but Win11 is a game changer, pun intended, and not in a good way.

If you look at Steam, and OSs like Bazzite it’s clear the consumer-side is finally shoring up. But that aside, from an economic incentive, game providers (for example Amazon Luna), don’t want to be paying the licenses for running Windows machines for Video Game Streaming on Demand. In fact, at my time there one of the major thing I worked on was figuring out how to stream the games using Linux + Proton + Vulkan so we could use the AMD machines.

Honestly the biggest hurdle was (and probably still is) Anti-Cheat and BattlEye.

At any rate, I’m personally happy to see this trend as I haven’t had a Windows OS since Windows 7.

It is the absolute best for backwards compatibility: it runs 16 bit apps.

Now it is getting faster for gaming.

And the reverse relation is also true: In Linux, the best backwards compatible stable API is WinAPI.

I can play 30 year old Windows games in Linux. They just work and run better than ever.

For the same project (https://www.descent2.de), I can not even install the dependencies to compile it in a modern distro, as every library is deprecated and removed from the repositories. The precompiled native Linux binaries also can't work.

I can't prove it, but the Steam Deck has probably torn down a lot of barriers for mainstream use among the crowd that care about the game more than the OS. Getting some of the other games (League, Vanguard, Warzone, BF6, etc.) or whatever is popular in those segments onboard might be the critical mass that justifies fixing all the rough edges that get fixed when a big pile of users are represented.

This NTSync stuff is very impressive, but I haven't seen a lot of end-to-end numbers versus Windows. The last comparisons I saw showed pretty much every distribution on the order of 5-30% behind Windows, varying on the game. And Nvidia GPU support was still not great.

I WANT to swap. Please give me cause to do so. I'm sitting here with my finger on the button waiting for it to finally get good enough to make sense.

I'm just realizing that I can't play Battlefield 6 and I do wonder what the path is. I don't think it's ever going to be supported on Linux or Mac.

Fixed in Wine 11.0. Thanks to the Wine team.

Not sure if this was related to NTSYNC, but Wine's locking infrastructure definitely got an overhaul.

I recently completed Stellar Blade with zero issues.

I don’t even shutdown the machine, I just hit the power to sleep it. Instantly resumes where I left off.

Incredible to see just how far it’s come.

It's curious that they didn't do this as file descriptors that can be epolled. For example I think you could do semaphores and events with eventfd(2), which always struck me as inspired by those Win32 objects somehow. But maybe this is a simpler purpose built interface.

What changed? Do game manufacturers make special versions with toned down anti-cheat specifically to run on the steam box/Linux?

I had to ask google, because the article fails to explain it. Google says yes, this is something else than the fsync syscall (man 2 fsync).

The only thing missing is my Adobe stuff. I now run Lightroom in a VM and it's incredibly slow to unusable.

Tom's Hardware is a bit before my time, but I remember it being well regarded. I've seen a lot of similar articles under that name lately. I wonder if they've undergone similar fates.

In my eyes, Windows used to be the desktop environment that "just works and can run almost everything". Lately it's becoming enshittified, with weird bugs showing up more and more frequently (a memorable one is not being able to launch Notepad from the start menu!!). I think Microsoft is losing its best attributes when it comes to consumer software. Linux may not be perfect but it's looking more and more attractive in comparison, even with its imperfections.

Steam+Proton makes everything I play just work: Helldivers 2, Slay the Spire 2, No Rest For The Wicked, FF7 Remake, Stardew, modded Lethal Company (using r2modman) are the main things I've been playing recently, and all worked out of the box with Proton.

My PS5 controller may have needed me to install one package or something but has been working flawlessly after that.

I keep a Windows drive around for stuff like Apex Legends, Battlefield 6, but I pretty much never boot into Windows anymore except for those.

(I probably sound like a shill at this point, having commented something like this on multiple Linux threads now, but I continue to be impressed at how well Linux performs for gaming these days!)

1 + 1 = 2

How do I actually see the graph?

All I see is stats for April:

- Windows 93.47% +1.14%

- Linux 4.52% -0.81%

- OSX 2.01% -0.34%

It will be interesting to see how native Linux games differ in what fancy under the hood kernel or syscall features they use.

Which is a weird thing to think about, and not sure very lovely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjU4nyWyhU8

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/944362954/bapaco-the-wo...

Interesting, but I wish it was half the size folded...

Now seeing Linux just absorbing Windows APIs into the kernel to make gaming work better? That is the opposite direction. This is what PC gaming needs.

I got into PC gaming when I got my Ambra Hurdla SX25 in 1992. Back then it was the fantastic era of first for everything. We got Comanche, Alone in the Dark, Dune, Dig, etc. First of all game types, not just clones of the same concepts.

That's why Linux keeps getting better while the others keep getting worse.

It's true what Max Planck said that science advances one funeral at a time. So does the tech industry as a whole.

Lol.

Post doesn't sound explicitly vibewritten, so probably just a non-technical person.

You could be more like Plan9, Linux. You could actually innovate and create new paradigms that make people look at MacOS and Windows and think that they are no longer in the same league.

But you don’t want to do that. You want to play games faster.

Fucking children run the world today. There are no adults keeping track of things making sure that as we go forward that things make sense. There’s no adult supervision in the computing industry anymore. None. It’s all just profit margins calling all the shots. Asinine.

How did it turn out for windows, being “The OS for Games”? Not great, I’d say. Windows is quickly losing that title and will soon become more and more irrelevant for gaming. If you focus on games until you’re “The OS for Games” then decide to innovate on real things that matter outside the home, then you’ll lose that title just like Microsoft is losing it now, and it will happen a lot faster for you than it did Microsoft, because the Linux community is about as organized as an Oklahoma town recently destroyed by a tornado.

Games are fast enough for anyone and there are certainly enough games today that if 5 people lived for 500 years each, there’s not enough time for them collectively to play all games that are available today.

I don’t know what you gamers think the “end game” is for games. Graphics? When are you meant to be happy? When will you stop and say, “ok, we made it”?

Graphics. Pfft. Games do not get better with more realistic graphics, and you know it. Great games are great because they are well thought out and well tested. Great games are not great because the shadows are sharper or because the reflections are more accurate. Some of the shittiest games ever look amazing, and some of the shittiest looking games are S-tier. And you all know it.

Old man mode: off

Seriously, is it really a victory if you have to adopt the architecture of your sworn enemy?