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