this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2024
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Gamers Nexus might start including Linux gaming tests in their hardware reviews (youtu.be)
submitted 1 day ago by azvasKvklenko@sh.itjust.works to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.ml
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Pretty exciting times ahead as Valve might finally release SteamOS to more hardware. This amount of Linux desktop coverage would be unimaginable few years ago.

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[–] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 minutes ago

It's the right thing to do. Windows isn't nearly as stable or reproducible as a testing platform anymore and I imagine it's a PITA to handle for benchmarking dozens of not hundreds of hardware configs.

Of course they'll still do those Windows tests, not suggesting they won't, but Linux may become a more useful benchmarking platform for reviewers thanks to the control and automation it provides.

A whole host of configurations can be quickly booted and tested on a benchmark suite to confirm performance of older hardware and provide context, whilst newer products can get a bespoke review on all platforms. If a new benchmark game comes out, it'll be way easier to insert into the Linux setups than Windows.

[–] squid_slime@lemm.ee 5 points 8 hours ago

Steve's so based.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 64 points 1 day ago

That's great news! Linux gaming is increasingly taken more seriously.

[–] mesamunefire@lemmy.world 16 points 21 hours ago

That would be great.

[–] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 47 points 1 day ago (5 children)

I remember back in the day, running Quake3 on linux provided better FPS than on windows. I haven't compared the two since then on any game.

Is it still the case? And is this difference (mostly) there in other games too?

[–] that_leaflet@lemmy.world 32 points 1 day ago (4 children)

On AMD, it’s not uncommon for games to perform better than on Windows.

For Nvidia, games almost always perform worse than on Windows.

[–] secret300@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 36 minutes ago

Borderlands 3 performed better on Linux for me with a 1650

[–] jul@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Your nvidia information might be outdated since driver version 560.x. And I'm getting tired of the anti nvidia circlejerk in the Linux communities on lemmy.

At least Shadow of the Tomb Raider (+20fps) and Cyberpunk (+5fps) run better than they did on windows with the same settings, for me. And those are the only games I tested, because they are the only AAA titles I own that come with a performance test.

I'm not defending nvidia here, there are still issues like missing multi monitor vrr or a few (!) titles that are too broken to play. And it's not as much of an out of the box experience as it is with AMD.

But for most people that own an nvidia card it's probably already a good idea to make the switch from windows.

So, to anyone owning a nvidia card having doubts: feel free to try things out!

[–] j4n3z@lemm.ee 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

You're pretty brave to call us "circlejerk" and then agree that there are flaws in drivers.

For you this can work. For my wife the nvidia works also. I mean, almost. Wayland buggy, poor VRAM management, from time to time fights with drivers. Compared to that my AMD journey is "set and forget".

I mean, yes, make a switch and test things out. But once you settle down on Linux OS, Nvidia is the worst choice you can make for purchase. World's shifting towards Wayland and it's not even worth your time to go and run Steam in Gamescope on Nvidia. And did you notice the push from distros to switch to wayland? Right now NV is same experience as was anything 10 years ago - hit or miss.

Just don't call anybody jerk when you don't share their experience. You are very low statistical sample and there are lots of us in the wild having real troubles with green team

[–] jul@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I'm not calling anyone jerk. I just don't like that every discussion involves 'nvidia bad' on here. That, to me, is a circlejerk. And repeatedly summing up the situation as 'nvidia is so bad, don't use it' puts people off from making the jump and consequently doesn't help the growth of linux in general, which doesn't help you, me or anyone else.

[–] 7toed@midwest.social 1 points 22 minutes ago

If I had feared about nvidia drivers, I wouldn't have been using Linux for 4 years straight now. Mint supported my 1060 and 2060 before now, PopOS was fantastic aside from a quirk with waking the screens with the 2060, and honestly those issues have worsened with AMD now. Admittedly I haven't tried much to remedy it as it's as simple as turning off my monitors.

But if you never try, you can never know 🤷‍♂️

[–] Vikthor@lemmy.world 14 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Well, no surprise, AMD's cooperation with Linux/Mesa/etc. devs is longer and deeper than Nvidia's. In fact, when Linus Torvalds was asked about how cooperative Nvidia are, he gave them the finger.

[–] kopasz7@sh.itjust.works 3 points 19 hours ago

For all the flak they (rightfully!) get, a 1st party open source nvidia driver is in the works.

Altough it's only the userspace part and it's not compliant (yet?) to be upstreamed into the kernel. It is still something.

[–] Kyatto@leminal.space 2 points 15 hours ago

To provide some additional anecdotes to support jul's comment. I've personally been experiencing better performance than windows even with nvidia. Though it does vary per game, with the occasional workaround especially when going outside the realm of plug and play to mod games.

I'd say most games are great, the "10% low" games are still good, and the "1% lows" where things just don't work are pretty rare but sometimes there is a fix. Proton.db is a good resource for those instances.

And being honest... windows has those moments too, people just ignore them because windows is the ubiquitous gaming OS.

It's a lot better than when I had last "tried" and it may be more impactful to bring up that this time I haven't gone back even once, and I actually went ahead and pulled the plug on my windows partition.

Linux is just better now, there's one thing windows had but I gave it up. Linux is just better for most things now and to make that win even better.. windows has increasingly been becoming worse than itself.

[–] mesamunefire@lemmy.world 10 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Quite a few games work better on Linux now than windows.

[–] lepinkainen@lemmy.world 4 points 15 hours ago

World of Warcraft was a big one, it was faster on wine than native windows

[–] Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

there are edge cases where linux performa better, especially with older apis because dx9/dx11 to vulkan allows for more draw calls than thr native language can do.

then you have rare situations like elden rings launch ehere shader caching was broken on windows and vulkans shader caching on linux worked making elden ring play better on linux

[–] pineapple@lemmy.ml 2 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Do you think most games might perform better on linux in the future? When game makers put more effort towards optimising for linux considering linux has less bloatware etc?

[–] Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip 3 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Do you think most games might perform better on linux in the future?

maybe, depends on steamOS hardware adoption rate. You're far more likely going to see windows regress in performance rather than linux get better upper tier performance on average (imo)

When game makers put more effort towards optimising for linux considering linux has less bloatware etc?

theyll optimize for linux whent he market grows enough for it, which I personalyl believe will only happen when Linux gets at least ~30% of the steam hardware survey OS market.

[–] mesamunefire@lemmy.world 1 points 20 hours ago

Given that quite a few consoles use Linux or a variety of it, it's definitely coming around. Plus s lot of video game creation engines now have a Linux export option.

[–] LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The Sims 2 performs better on Linux than it ever did on Windows.

Y'know, for what it's worth.

[–] Grapho@lemmy.ml 1 points 21 hours ago

Mad Max too, my computer doesnt heat up and the framerate is smoother when I'm not running 6gb ram worth of bloatware before the game

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 day ago

I remember playing Neverwinter Nights and running it on Linux providing a more stable and clean experience than on Windows. Even modding it was easier.

[–] qyron@sopuli.xyz 14 points 1 day ago

Finally!

[–] PetulantBandicoot@aussie.zone 9 points 23 hours ago (6 children)

SteamOS is going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting. I reckon there are quite a few people who are waiting for its release before trying Linux.

Does SteamOS even have functional desktop, or is it just Steam big picture wrapper thing?

[–] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 1 points 22 seconds ago

It boots into Game scope (as others said, it's not "big picture mode" it's a compositor stack tailored for high gaming performance) but it's nothing more than an immutable arch distribution (and immutability can be disabled for tweaking) so you could definitely swap the defaults if someone has documented how.

Would be a nice feature to have once SteamOS becomes independent of the deck.

[–] EddyBot@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I reckon there are quite a few people who are waiting for its release before trying Linux.

I always recommend against it people wanting a gaming linux desktop
SteamOS being an immutable operating system works a bit different to most well known operating systems
albeit this also makes any breackage almost impossible

[–] PetulantBandicoot@aussie.zone 2 points 1 hour ago

I am pretty sure even LTT Linus said he was waiting for a SteamOS release before trying again. I was thinking, like damn dude, if you can't use PopOS, how will this be any different for you.

albeit this also makes any breackage almost impossible

Maybe, just maybe, this will stop people like him from catastrophically uninstalling their entire desktop environment.

[–] GhiLA@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 hours ago

Does SteamOS even have functional desktop

Unlike Windows, yes. It does.

[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 24 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

It uses KDE for that

[–] PetulantBandicoot@aussie.zone 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Yep. What I was meaning, will SteamOS boot right into KDE and be a computer operating system first, or boot into big picture mode and be a gaming system first.

[–] solarisfire@mast.solarisfire.com 1 points 1 hour ago

@PetulantBandicoot @bdonvr It's more advanced than a "Steam Big Picture Wrapper thing". When you're in gaming mode it runs it's own gamescope window manager, etc. In desktop mode it's full plasma with KWin. I'd expect it would boot into gaming mode first, with desktop as something you can switch to.

[–] Metostopholes@midwest.social 11 points 23 hours ago

Yes, on the Steam Deck you can restart into KDE.

[–] Giloron@programming.dev 6 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, but it is also set up as an OS image.

I think there is a process for persistence, but without some effort, changes are lost for OS updates.

[–] skimm@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 21 hours ago

Changes aren't lost on update. If you enable a sudo user/password, and make changes to the system that way, those changes can be lost when applying the new system image.

Its an immutable Arch-based distro and you have full readwrite to your home directory and all config, settings, and files within persist.

[–] Viri4thus@feddit.org 5 points 1 day ago

Can't wait, bazzite is niffty but In my exp SteamOS worked best.