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posted by LaminatorX on Saturday February 28 2015, @05:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the paging-Doctor-Freeman dept.

Ars Technica reports:

For decades after Linux's early '90s debut, even the hardest of hardcore boosters for the open source operating system had to admit that it couldn't really compete in one important area of software: gaming.

Now, more than a year into the SteamOS era (measuring from that beta launch), the nascent Linux gaming community is cautiously optimistic about the promise of a viable PC gaming market that doesn't rely on a Microsoft OS. Despite technical and business problems that continue to get in the way, Valve has already transformed gaming on Linux from "practically nothing" to "definitely something" and could be on the verge of making it much more than that.

For those already running Linux on their main machines, though, finally having significant gaming options on their platform of choice will continue to be a happy side effect of Valve's still-developing push into this new market. "I do know that in the absolute worst case, the chicken-and-egg problem is solved," Gordon said. "You get people to a platform with games, but games won't come until people are on a platform. Valve being there has clearly given developers the faith to stick their toes in the water right away."

Linux gaming has come a long way. I have a couple hundred games on Steam than run under Linux. (Well, most of them ;) Here's to the next era being freedom oriented from it's foundations. Oculus selling out to FB was a blow, but I think Steam will do it right if only because they have thrown their hat into SteamOS.

"Steam is bringing the best games and user-generated content to exciting new destinations. At GDC 2015, we’ll be giving demos of the refined Steam Controller, new living room devices, and a previously-unannounced SteamVR hardware system."

http://store.steampowered.com/universe/

http://steamcommunity.com/app/250820

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/02/23/steamvr-announced/

And because it's related, interesting and open source.

http://osvr.com/

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  • (Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @06:02PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @06:02PM (#151138)

    "Still pretty bad."

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Saturday February 28 2015, @06:10PM

    by Nerdfest (80) on Saturday February 28 2015, @06:10PM (#151141)

    I too have 100+ Steam games on Linux. As with buying laptops without the "Windows tax", I think this gaming is an area where you have to "put your money where your mouth is" and reward those that push things in the direction you want. I have an XBox 360, but won't likely be buying the new XBox because I want to support gaming on Linux and I've had enough of Microsoft's continued unethical behaviour towards Linux.

    It's pretty nice running games on Linux. I've had no problems with any of the games, and I got a kick out of how easy it was dealing with in-game voice under Linux compared to the person I was chatting with running Windows. I hope things continue to improve. I was a little worried when Microsoft backed off a little on the Windows 8 software store. I saw Windows 8 as the first step in a push towards an Apple-style curated "walled garden" when MS gets a cut of all software, and I think Valve saw this as well.

    • (Score: 5, Disagree) by Hairyfeet on Saturday February 28 2015, @07:23PM

      by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Saturday February 28 2015, @07:23PM (#151168) Journal

      I'll get hate for saying this but here goes, I will be amazed if Valve does not pull the plug on SteamOS in less than 3 years, probably less than 2, and here is why:

      1.- the reason for it to exist? Is no longer there. Look up the interviews with gabe before the release and it was ALL hate for Windows 8 and the appstore, well what happened? Windows 8 went down to be WinME The Second Coming, the appstore? Dead as a doornail, in fact running the Win 10 beta I didn't even know where the appstore WAS until somebody pointed it out on a forum and visiting it? Its a ghost town, overpriced under cooked apps not even fanboys would love.

      2.- Too many on Linux use it for philosophical reasons so they will kill any upward momentum. Agree or disagree with their beliefs but even the hardcore have to admit there is a LOT of Linux users that swear by everything GNU and HATE DRM with a rabid fiery passion. What is SteamOS? Its DRM, everything they despise about proprietary software...see the problem? Most of us on Windows do not care because we are happy to accept the DRM in return for what we get, ease of purchase, built in chat, banning of cheaters,ease of matchmaking, etc. While there is a subset of Linux users that will accept DRM I would argue the majority? Well they would be more likely to throw their PC in the trash rather than have it "tainted" by DRM. They are welcome to that belief, but it DOES seriously cut down on the amount of users Valve can get compared to Windows where the majority? Really do not mind DRM as long as they get the benefits.

      3.- Gabe ROYALLY FUCKED UP, I'm talking "peed in the chili,took a dump on the boardroom table" level of fucked up and I seriously doubt there will be any coming back...what am I talking about? I'm talking about how badly he buttfucked the OEMs WRT to SteamOS! You had all these OEMs sink an INSANE amount of money building all these "console PCs" only for Gabe to say "its not ready yet" and leave them hanging in the breeze! Since PC parts have a shelf life, they had no choice but turn them into Win 8 boxes...and watch them bomb HARD as Windows PC gamers already HAVE gaming PCs (and more powerful ones for cheaper at that) and console users had no reason to buy an overpriced Windows PC so who did that leave? Nobody because without SteamOS there was nothing to make them stand out from the crowd. No way in hell gabe gets 'em onboard again after that clusterfuck.

      So for all these reasons, not to mention you will never have more than a small subset of the Windows Steam library (since the majority of Windows games are DirectX and it makes no sense financially to port to OpenGL) i believe SteamOS will just slowly peter out before getting a little "it was a nice idea, but its over" press release that hardly anybody will notice in a couple years. they will probably offer to let Linux users switch their games to Windows, maybe throw them a few Valve titles as a "our bad" but with Win Mist8ke a bad memory, the appstore a bad joke, and Win 10 shaping up to be another Win 7? The reasons Gabe had to be pissed? Just no longer there. If it works for you now? I'm happy for ya, just don't be betting the farm on it, i have a feeling like Gamespy and GFWL it'll be a "whatever happened to?" a few years from now.

      --
      ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
      • (Score: 1) by hottabasco on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:45PM

        by hottabasco (3316) <nicholas_wils84NO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:45PM (#151500)

        "1.- the reason for it to exist? Is no longer there. Look up the interviews with gabe before the release and it was ALL hate for Windows 8 and the appstore": - Steam was around before the Windows 8 and the appstore, so I don't think that true.

        • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Sunday March 01 2015, @03:20PM

          by LoRdTAW (3755) on Sunday March 01 2015, @03:20PM (#151532) Journal

          SteamOS. Not Steam itself.

        • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday March 01 2015, @06:12PM

          by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday March 01 2015, @06:12PM (#151593) Journal

          Uhhh TFA was about SteamOS, not Valve nor Steam. In fact the headline was "The State of Linux Gaming in the SteamOS Era" so yeah, kinda missed TFH as well as TFA didn't ya chief.

          --
          ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
  • (Score: 1, Disagree) by ThG on Saturday February 28 2015, @06:17PM

    by ThG (4568) on Saturday February 28 2015, @06:17PM (#151145)

    2015 will be the year of the Linux desktop!

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @06:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @06:26PM (#151148)

      The Linux gaming console, maybe (time will tell). Just remember that BSD kinda got there first ;)

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by stormreaver on Saturday February 28 2015, @06:49PM

      by stormreaver (5101) on Saturday February 28 2015, @06:49PM (#151155)

      2015 will be the year of the Linux desktop!

      I think SN should add a moderation: "-5: The 90's Wants Its Dead Horse Back"

  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @06:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @06:31PM (#151149)

    Sorry, this is off-topic, but I don't know where else to put it.

    I know there have been changes to the mod system here lately. Some of the new mod categories like "Touche" and "Disagree" are good. But "Flamebait" is being horribly abused.

    I'm seeing lots of good comments getting modded "Flamebait". Here are some recent examples:

    https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6320&cid=151058 [soylentnews.org]
    https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6320&cid=151118 [soylentnews.org]
    https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6321&cid=151045 [soylentnews.org]
    https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6320&cid=151050 [soylentnews.org]
    https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6318&cid=150913 [soylentnews.org]
    https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6318&cid=151110 [soylentnews.org]
    https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6317&cid=150981 [soylentnews.org]

    The "Flamebait" mod is clearly being abused far more often than it's ever used appropriately. Those are all good comments, even if some people may disagree with them.

    I'd like to see the "Flamebait" mod completely removed.

    If something needs to take its place, I'd like to see a "Stimulating" mod put in place, and it's an upmod instead of a downmod.

    The comments incorrectly modded as "Flamebait" tend not to be trying to provoke flamewars. Rather, they just express an opinion that is unique or contrary to that held by the majority.

    Those kinds of comments should be celebrated here. They make the discussion here interesting, as compared to the bland and mindless discussion over at Reddit or HN or even Slashdot.
     

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @06:57PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @06:57PM (#151157)

      This is stimulating flamebaitery, and will be modded appropriately. Off-topic, too. And I disagree. Touch@!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @07:18PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @07:18PM (#151164)

        I don't see that comment as flamebait. It's pointing out some real problems. I think it should be modded up even if it isn't about this particular story. It's a good comment.

        • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @07:32PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @07:32PM (#151169)

          Wait a minute! Aren't you the same poster what posted the astonishingly brash flamebait? Yep, AC! You could claim you are a different AC, but that won't fool anyone. We AC's must stick together, because we are all the same and no one pays attention to our complaints disguised as flamebait.

          • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:32PM

            by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday February 28 2015, @08:32PM (#151194) Homepage

            I would have modded those funny instead of flamebait.

            • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:21AM

              by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:21AM (#151304) Journal

              That is what I did, I mean only 100 Chinese names? It was obvious the person was using a classic "modest proposal" style of satire and the "comrades!" at the end really should have given the modder a clue it was satire. Just sad that we really do need some "I'm being a smartass" symbol because so few have a sense of humor anymore.

              --
              ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:05AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:05AM (#151360)

                Not only OT but completely Off Thread? Are you in the Chinese government requiring real names thread instead of the Steam on Linux thread? I like your style!

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @09:52PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @09:52PM (#151223)

            Nah, I don't really post here often. I didn't post the earlier comments with the links, either. I'm just a /. refugee who agrees that bad modding ruins a community like this faster than anything else, including beta sites and video ads.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by moondrake on Saturday February 28 2015, @10:48PM

      by moondrake (2658) on Saturday February 28 2015, @10:48PM (#151259)

      I disagree. Several of those were inflammatory and off-topic. Perhaps they were intended to discuss some politically incorrect issues, but if so, they lacked the skill to do this without making it same racist or insulting. I would not have modded most of them down, but I can certainly see why others did.

      For 2 of them i cannot understand why they were downmodded, but I am doubtful that his points to a pattern of abuse.

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @10:57PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 28 2015, @10:57PM (#151264)

        They're only "inflammatory" if you're a left-leaning weirdo who sees "racism" absolutely everywhere, even when it isn't at all present.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:57AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:57AM (#151359)

          And that "insightful" mod yet further proof that something is wrong with moderations!
          Thanks for demonstrating the full range of errors.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:08AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:08AM (#151363)

      I'm seeing lots of good comments getting modded "Flamebait". Here are some recent examples:

      Big deal. At the time of this writing not a single one of those is suffering from excessive down-modding.
      Here are the current net moderations on them:

      https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6320&cid=151058 [soylentnews.org] [Net moderation: +3 ]
      https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6320&cid=151118 [soylentnews.org] [Net moderation: +0 ]
      https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6321&cid=151045 [soylentnews.org] [Net moderation: +0 ]
      https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6320&cid=151050 [soylentnews.org] [Net moderation: +2 ]
      https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6318&cid=150913 [soylentnews.org] [Net moderation: +0 ]
      https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6318&cid=151110 [soylentnews.org] [Net moderation: +0 ]
      https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=6317&cid=150981 [soylentnews.org] [Net moderation: +0 ]

      There is nothing extreme going on here. There are plenty of good up-mods that far, far out weight your neutral examples. Your complaints, like nearly every other complaint about moderation ever at this site, are about making the perfect the enemy of the good.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:25AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:25AM (#151372)

        They only got upmodded because that AC brought it to our attention. They would've remained incorrectly modded had the effort not been made to remedy the injustices they suffered.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:35AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:35AM (#151378)

          Sure...

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:36PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @01:36PM (#151512)

          Rubbish. I actually modded some of them down because they were brought to my attention.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:14PM

      Bad downmodding is always going to be a problem, no matter if we only have one downmod or thirty. Which is why we have more mod points in circulation right now in the hopes that the community will self-police and take care of bad downmods themselves. Look for an RFC for some upcoming changes after NCommander gets a status update on his RFC from last week out.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Saturday February 28 2015, @10:08PM

    by SlimmPickens (1056) on Saturday February 28 2015, @10:08PM (#151241)

    This too is a bit OT, but since it's mostly about IOMMU it kind of is a Linux question.

    So who has VM gaming setups they are happy with, and how does it work?

    • (Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:07AM

      by wantkitteh (3362) on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:07AM (#151297) Homepage Journal

      Tried to set one up a few years ago under ESXi. It didn't go well, Windows 7 point-blank refused to use the graphics card directly through IOMMU, despite using a known-good combination of motherboard, graphics card and ESXi version. What worked for someone else just stubbornly refused to work for me - I would be happy to give an IOMMU VM another shot for gaming once some visible progress has been made sorting out it's issues.

    • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:34AM

      by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday March 01 2015, @12:34AM (#151317) Journal

      Uhhh...why would you even WANT that? Seriously, why would you want to deal with the overhead and bullshit of having your game run in an OS ON TOP of an OS when an SSD that will hold multiple OSes can be had for like $50? These days you can literally boot from one OS to the other in mere seconds, so why would you even want to try to tie a boat anchor to your games by running them in a VM?

      Thinking about it some more the only place I can think of where that MIGHT be a benefit is if you have a raging boner for playing those games created between 1995 and 2001 that were Win9X only, as running a Win9X VM would be of such little overhead (since the OS was made to run on a little weak 486 with 16Mb comfortably) and the games back then ran on seriously weak GPUs like VooDoo II so the overhead of translation should be trivial, but other than that pretty small niche I just don't see a reason why you just wouldn't dual boot.

      --
      ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:13AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:13AM (#151366)

        > Uhhh...why would you even WANT that?

        Because I like the ability to multitask. I don't want to have to shutdown and reboot just find out if I got email or not. If want to browse the web, I want to be able to just pause my game. I have daemon processes handling stuff like my personal webserver with dyndns, I don't want that to go down just because I am playing a game.

        Get out of your zero-empathy bubble, that ignorant smugness is really annoying.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Sunday March 01 2015, @04:35AM

          by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday March 01 2015, @04:35AM (#151417) Journal

          So you just answered your own question...run Linux in the VM! After all running a web browser takes a trivial amount of resources, doesn't need a lot of GPU, its the completely logical choice...unless you are refusing to run Windows NOT based on reason but a prejudice against one and towards the other? After all if all Windows is doing is running the game you have absolutely nothing to worry about and no reason to care if Linux is the VM, yes?

          --
          ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
          • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday March 02 2015, @01:54PM

            by urza9814 (3954) on Monday March 02 2015, @01:54PM (#151864) Journal

            There are some potential problem with this too through, due to the fact that *Windows is not intended to be a server*. At least not the version of Windows you'd probably use for gaming. I used to have a ton of problems with Freenet -- exact same program (it's Java) running with the exact same configuration file, ran fine under Linux but brought the whole computer to a crawl under Windows. Looked into it some more and discovered the reason was that the settings I had configured were opening too many network connections at once, and Windows couldn't handle it! I mean you can hardly blame Microsoft for that, it was WinXP *Home Edition* I believe, so of course it couldn't handle being a server, it was never designed to. But if you've got a heavy web server running in a VM on a Windows box, you're making that Windows box act as a server too. All the connections have to route through that Windows box. So depending on how many hits that server is getting, that might not work so well.

            • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday March 02 2015, @03:47PM

              by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday March 02 2015, @03:47PM (#151910) Journal

              Uhhhh...again THAT IS WHY you run Linux has the guest and Windows as the host! And I've run plenty of VMs using VirtualBox with Windows Home as the host and various OSes as the guest...no issues, especially when it came to net applications.

              Again playing games? Unless the game you are running is something from the early days its gonna be more CPU/RAM/GPU bandwidth intense than a net application by a country mile, and moreover you can get one of a couple dozen Linux VirtualBox VMs already preconfigured and ready to go. Puppy Linux works REALLY well for this as its file system is designed to be run from RAM, but there is Xubuntu, Slax, OpenSUSE, just set the VM to take 1 or 2 cores and a GB of RAM and BAM, there ya go, instant net application/s in a box. Again if you run them on SSD its really gonna only take a second or two to launch and load, so if You have Windows running ONLY the games and the Linux VM for your net apps? You have exactly what you want, full speed Windows games without a translation hit while your Linux programs can runn full speed in the VM...logical, yes?

              --
              ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
              • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday March 02 2015, @06:53PM

                by urza9814 (3954) on Monday March 02 2015, @06:53PM (#152027) Journal

                Uhhhh...again THAT IS WHY you run Linux has the guest and Windows as the host! And I've run plenty of VMs using VirtualBox with Windows Home as the host and various OSes as the guest...no issues, especially when it came to net applications.

                The program I was talking about -- Freenet -- is a secure, onion-routing P2P network. Depending on how it's configured, it can be holding hundreds or even thousands of network connections open at any one time. If Linux is your guest, all that traffic has to be routed through *both* the Windows and the Linux machine. If Windows is your guest, it only routes through the Linux system. Since the problem with Windows at that time was that it couldn't handle the volume of active connections, putting Windows as the host will screw your Windows performance, where putting Linux as the host won't because Windows won't even see those connections. Of course, this issue could be fixed in newer versions -- I haven't tried that since WinXP. So it's certainly been a while.

                Again playing games? Unless the game you are running is something from the early days its gonna be more CPU/RAM/GPU bandwidth intense than a net application by a country mile

                The issue isn't the game, it's the server. And it's not just the bandwidth, it's also the number of active sessions.

                so if You have Windows running ONLY the games and the Linux VM for your net apps

                But unless your server isn't doing anything, *that's not what you have.* Whichever system is the host is also acting as a router. That's the issue. Windows (XP at least) isn't as good *as a router* as Linux, because that version of Windows was never designed to be used as a router. I suspect Windows still isn't designed to be a router, because that would be absurd. I also suspect there are Linux distros that might fail this test just as badly as Windows has if they're specifically tuned for home desktop use. So it's less Linux vs Windows, more about if your server should host your home system or should your home system host your server. And that answer depends on the specific load on each system.

                • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday March 04 2015, @07:07PM

                  by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Wednesday March 04 2015, @07:07PM (#153198) Journal

                  If you are doing Onion routing of hundreds of connections? Honestly you should have a small dedicated box for the routing, trying to get 1 box to do it all is just gonna suck dick performance wise.

                  Look if you wanna game? You are gonna have to run Windows as the host because of the simple fact that translating all those GPU and memory calls in real time? Is just gonna tie a boat anchor to performance. Pretty much any graphics intensive game and most games made after 06? Its just gonna suck dude, the performance hit is just too high. I've talked to enough guys in the VM forums attempting this to know you are gonna take a huge penalty on performance, sometimes as much as 60%-70%. If you have a quad core with a Gb of VRAM? Its gonna run like a weak dual core with less than 512Mb of VRAM thanks to the extra layers between the game and the hardware.

                  Considering that most places you can grab a C2D on Craigslist for dirt cheap or pick up an ULV AMD E350 or Celeron dual board refurb on Amazon for like $30? It really just doesn't make any sense to try to force one box to do it all, not when you are running a shitload of connections like that. Just slap it on a C2D or ULV box and SSH into it and leave the gaming for the gaming PC, or if you are just dead set against running Windows on the main unit you'll just have to deal with a console and their shitty prices and paying for MP access. Because unless your standards for gameplay and graphical quality are REALLY low you just aren't gonna be happy with running the games in a VM, it just ties too big a boat anchor to the game. Don't take MY word for it, head over to the VirtualBox or VMWare player forums and ask around, you'll find out the same thing, unless of course you are willing to pay out the ass for ESX Server and run everything off a low level hypervisor but even with those they are having to run some crazy expensive beefy cards to get any real performance, which you'll find its often just cheaper to slap a cheapo ULV on your network and let it deal with the netapps.

                  Anyway if you decide to go the ULV route and need some help picking parts just let me know, depending on how many parts you got lying around you can throw together a pretty nice ULV X86 for between $80-$120, and if Freenet runs on ARM you can always grab an ultra cheap Linux dual core box for around $50, those use less than 15w and are smaller than your average router,so they make a pretty cheap and easy solution to your problem. But even if your CPU has VM extensions the GPU and memory hit is gonna be pretty rough, I just wouldn't recommend gaming on a VM for most genres, its just gonna suck.

                  --
                  ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by SlimmPickens on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:16AM

        by SlimmPickens (1056) on Sunday March 01 2015, @02:16AM (#151367)

        Why?

        - Trust Debian and their keys more than MS. Security first!
        - I don't game much, it's more for other software that I don't necessarily want to reboot for.
        - I like the idea of having the choice of moving a running VM between machines, or accessing it remotely.
        - VMs for different tasks are easier to isolate in VLANs etc.
        - There is effectively no processing overhead nowadays with the hardware extensions and SSD's.
        - Virtual storage servers would allow me to dynamically choose what is stored locally or on the server (I don't need a 50GB synth installed on every SSD I own for example)
        - Because VM's and SDN are the future and I'd like to know more about them.
        - Because it's fun.

        * Much of this is not implemented yet...one thing at a time. My network is not hobby #1, just something I chip away at, and getting all that stuff working takes a lot of reading.

        PS, Hairyfeet, you'll be pleased to know I bought my first AMD system since that old K8 a few days ago (because my K-series doesn't support VT-d).

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by urza9814 on Monday March 02 2015, @01:45PM

        by urza9814 (3954) on Monday March 02 2015, @01:45PM (#151861) Journal

        Uhhh...why would you even WANT that? Seriously, why would you want to deal with the overhead and bullshit of having your game run in an OS ON TOP of an OS when an SSD that will hold multiple OSes can be had for like $50? These days you can literally boot from one OS to the other in mere seconds, so why would you even want to try to tie a boat anchor to your games by running them in a VM?

        Thinking about it some more the only place I can think of where that MIGHT be a benefit is if you have a raging boner for playing those games created between 1995 and 2001 that were Win9X only, as running a Win9X VM would be of such little overhead (since the OS was made to run on a little weak 486 with 16Mb comfortably) and the games back then ran on seriously weak GPUs like VooDoo II so the overhead of translation should be trivial, but other than that pretty small niche I just don't see a reason why you just wouldn't dual boot.

        Yeah, I've got a Windows XP VM I use for exactly this reason -- to play all the actually decent games made before EA came through, bought everyone, and turned every single game into an overpriced clone of every other game...

        Anyway, couple good reasons for using the VM. First is because I'm running XP. It's EOLed, it's insecure, I don't want it online or on my network. But the bigger reason is *Microsoft's installer*. You can't install Linux and then install Windows. You can't install Linux then *reinstall* Windows. Or repair Windows. Or upgrade Windows. Doing any of those things will wipe your bootloader -- and with some versions your *entire hard drive*. I've had my data wiped by Microsoft one too many times to trust those bastards with access to my actual hard drive.

        • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday March 02 2015, @04:02PM

          by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday March 02 2015, @04:02PM (#151917) Journal

          I'm sorry but you are invoking meme 27, imaginary problems kill Windows [tmrepository.com] only switching the kill target, although one could argue you are trying to invoke meme 52 Windows is buggy [tmrepository.com] and simply invoking it poorly.

          in either case you are showing both your biases AND your age as the behavior you describe, Windows wiping the drive? Hasn't been the default for Windows since Windows 98SE which has been EOL since 2004. From Win2K on up the default behavior if Windows encounters a drive that isn't already pre-formatted is to ASK what size a partition you want, you can tailor it down to the MB. If you are attempting to install Windows on a drive preformatted to EXT 3 for the entire drive? That is YOUR fault as Windows doesn't support EXT 3 anymore that Linux supports WIMBoot and ExFAT. As for the bootloader? No different than how most Linux installers do, in both cases they figure if you are intelligent enough to attempt to set up a dual boot you are intelligent enough to add a line to the boot loader, takes all of 15 seconds to do in either OS.

          --
          ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
          • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday March 02 2015, @07:03PM

            by urza9814 (3954) on Monday March 02 2015, @07:03PM (#152033) Journal

            As for the bootloader? No different than how most Linux installers do, in both cases they figure if you are intelligent enough to attempt to set up a dual boot you are intelligent enough to add a line to the boot loader, takes all of 15 seconds to do in either OS.

            No, most Linux installers will autodetect other operating systems or your existing bootloader and chain that into Grub or whatever. Windows doesn't. Most Linux installers give you an option during the install process to make any necessary changes to the bootloader. Windows doesn't. Doesn't take that long to reset the bootloader if you've still got your Linux installation media laying around, but I've got exactly one flash drive that I always use to burn installers, so I'd probably have to go re-download that...and get some awful shareware app to do it since Windows doesn't have dd...yeah, it's simple, but it's not always that simple. It'd take at least an hour just to restore the bootloader on my current laptop if I had to do it right now in its current state. It'd take around 30 minutes to install Windows in a VM.

            in either case you are showing both your biases AND your age as the behavior you describe, Windows wiping the drive? Hasn't been the default for Windows since Windows 98SE

            I'm 24 years old. I started playing with Linux when I was 15 or 16. Win98 was *long* gone by then. I've never installed anything earlier than XP SP0 on bare metal. But I did have my entire drive wiped by that Windows installer once. I think I used a Dell OEM install disk though so I suppose there could have been something different because of that.

            • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday March 03 2015, @03:56AM

              by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday March 03 2015, @03:56AM (#152304) Journal

              Uhhh...dude? They are STILL overwriting the installed bootloader FOR THEIR OWN. If it was a truly logical and non biased system it would ask "Would you like to have Grub, have grub and add a line for the Windows OS, or keep the Windows bootloader and add a line to it for our OS? Please note if you choose 3 you will have to DIY" but that is NOT what it does, it does the exact. same. thing. Windows does and overwrites the previous bootloader without prompting. This is why I recommend Linux in a VM now, got tired of doing the "Fix MBR, fix boot" dance because none of the Linux installers would just install the OS and give ME, the user, the choice of what to do on the bootloader issue.

              And you just told us all we need to know, because you have AAMOF NEVER installed Windows even once! A Dell recovery disc says quite clearly it is A RECOVERY DISC, it is NOT a Windows installation disc! How you think you can say you know how Windows behaves when you do not even understand the difference between recovery OEM and install CD/DVD? Again shows your bias and lack of actual real world experience. A Dell disc is designed to put a PC back to factory image...that's it, you can NOT install Windows from this disc, in fact if you try to run it on anything other than the model it came with all it will do is make a big fucked up mess, as everything from the registry to the boot order has been PRESET by Dell at the factory. The reason why they do this is two-fold, 1.- They get paid $$ to install bloatware, the bloatware is already baked into the recovery disc so if you recover? You get the bloatware back. 2.- If you want an actual Windows install disc you can get one from Del...at an additional fee.

              But just FYI saying you "installed" an XP RTM recovery disc so you "know" how Windows behaves? Not only makes you look uninformed, it makes you look like a dinosaur. It would be like me giving a review of Linux by trotting out the first edition of Debian...you see XP RTM was released FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, a full decade and a half, and has about as much to do with how modern Windows operates as Debian 1 is a reflection of how the latest Mint behaves. And again you didn't even install a single copy of XP RTM, you used a Dell disc image of a crapware loaded preinstall, and you are using THAT to judge how Windows behaves? Dude get with this decade, okay? Try an actual copy of Windows 7, you might actually like it!

              --
              ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @04:30AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2015, @04:30AM (#151414)

    I still mourn the LGT. Sure, most of the games listed were shitty, but with the newer more modern games coming to *nix, it would've been nice if someone picked up the ball and ran with it, instead of allowing the site to die.