It's worth gaming with Linux OS?

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Lester23

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May 10, 2016
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Is it good ? I'm tired of Windows and I just want to try something new. I'm mostly playing games via steam, so what are the pros and cons for playing with Linux ?
 
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TechyInAZ
While Linux support for games has gone up a ton, it's still pretty limited. I suggest you dual boot steamOS if you want to give it a shot.
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Only if the games that you play are supported in Linux. The majority aren't.
 
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it's good , but i tried installing it on my own computer , and it didn't install on my ssd
 
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I've been trying to set up my machine for gaming under Ubuntu, but I have run into many difficulties. I found many web pages describing how to set up Windows games, specifically World of Warcraft, using WINE, but I have found that there is startling inconsistencies in instructions and implementations, varying in both versions of the OS, from Ubuntu 14.04 to the latest Fedora, to different versions of WINE. Many of the instructions include steps for things that are completely missing, probably because of changes in WINE or the OS.

That's the BIG problem with the whole Linux concept: inconsistency. There is no overarching guiding authority, leaving all the developers to do things their own way, and change things radically from one version to the next. There is not a single mote of consistent logic in anything in Linux. In Windows, you figure out how to do one thing in one version of the OS, and that logic extends to related items in other versions pretty well. In Linux, figure out one thing in one version of the OS, and it doesn't relate AT ALL to ANYTHING else. A person who wants to become competent with Linux has to pick a favorite distro and memorize a great many things just to deal with that one. It takes extreme genius to be able to get good at multiple apps in multiple versions of Linux, and sometimes I think that's the point. Those behind Linux want to secure their authority in it by keeping ordinary people out, which is a downright wicked thing to do, and will bite them in the behind eventually. Linux will NEVER be mainstream so long as this continues.
 
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Here's how I'd try it out:

a) Install the Saga of Ryzom for Windows. I would recommend the "native" client as opposed to the Steam version which has performance and stability issues. The game is available in 4 languages has communications support for many more and works on Windows, Mac and Linux. Its F2P up to level 125; P2P gets you to level 250 in 63 skill trees, no classes, consensual PvP.

Create an account here: http://ryzom.com/

Official downloads here
http://devl1.ryzom.com/ryzom_installer_windows.exe
http://devl1.ryzom.com/ryzom_installer_linux.tar.bz2
http://devl1.ryzom.com/ryzom_installer_osx.pkg

Latest Betas are here. I am not sure what is the default version from above links (might still be 32 bit) so I would recommend getting the latest 64 bit beta here

http://ryzom.kervala.net/clients/

b) Get in there or check the forums asking about Linux and peeps favorite distributions.... being new to Linux, you will want to have someone knowledgeable to call on if you have issues.

c) Install your selected distro on a separate HD or SSD. Get it set up and comfy with it

d) Install the latest Linux version on the same drive as which you installed Linux.

e) hang out and enjoy the game, ask fellow Linux users about "using Linux", ask what other Linux games they play.

f) I just logged in and nobody was available .... So, once ya in, just ask in Universe channel for some Linux geeks.... tho many are happy with the Steam client, I'd say about 1 in 5 has had issues which were resolved with native client.

2820 games are now supported on Linux

 
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i have nothing against linux , and i'm not a windows fanboy either but there seems to be something keeping linux from the gaming market , i don't know what it is , but if steam worked on porting their games to the steamOS i think every one would really appreciate and it would be a market hit .
 
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Look, love it or hate it Windows is here to stay. Besides limited Linux support for a lot of software the main reason you should just stick with Windows is familiarity. Between my time in the military, my time in college and my time in civilian employment I never had to work in any other environment than Windows; not including some proprietary systems I used in the Army. Sure I could wrestle with Linux or Steam OS at home in order to get a handful of games to run and try to learn the intricacies of those environments but I already know Windows. And when I get home from work and fire up my PC for a session of GTA V I don't need to switch gears into a different OS. Linux might be the best thing in the world if you're a programmer or otherwise know how to manipulate it. But if you're just a common PC user like me it's probably more of a pain in the butt than anything.
 
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It is simply $$$.
And it's not Steam that has to do the porting, but the game dev companies.

Who would you rather throw money and resources at? The 98% of gamers who are on Windows? Or the theoretical 2% on a Linux platform?
 
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Steam has lots of money i'm sure if they tried it would be a success , maybe they are waiting for windows 10 to fail
 
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It's not simply money. It's consistency and ease of learning. People won't adopt things that take too much effort to learn.

With Windows and other Microsoft software, there is a consistent logic, which makes it easy to learn. So, people closer to average can learn it, and learn it well. This means that more people can support it, and that means the supply reduces the cost of such support. A typical Microsoft experienced sysadmin gets around $60k/year.

With Linux, the logic is all over the place, and nothing is consistent. This means it takes a lot of brain power to memorize things, meaning fewer people are around to use it or support it. This means it costs more money to support it. A typical Linux experienced sysadmin makes closer to $80k/year. A good one earns six figures easily. Despite the lower licensing costs of Linux, the support costs push it above Windows in most cases.

My company uses a combination, but Linux is left in low level roles: HA, proxy, cheap iSCSI SDS. (The cheap iSCSI SDS implementation, a couple Supermicro servers running Ubuntu Server, are on the way out anyway.) The main roles, web services, database, user accounts, print servers, file servers, backups, are all done with Windows.

It's the same with games. It is so hard to do anything in Linux, and so inconsistent, that it just isn't worth the effort. It takes ten times the effort to get a game installed in Linux as it does with Windows. Linux just isn't going to be mainstream until this is corrected.
 
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Just what USAFRet said. It's all about investment.

Sure they could chuck a huge amount of money into the Linux gaming market by adding more linux supported games, but that doesn't mean 20% of the gaming population will come and start playing on steam. If they do a full on thing with linux, and it fails, that's a lot of wasted resources.

I would love to see Linux get more popular, but honestly it's more up to the users, not the big software companies to make that happen. Linux distros like Ubuntu already have all the necessities for the vast majority of people using a computer.
 
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I had some hopes for Steam OS but between that and Steam Boxes I sort of get the feeling that unless they can make a quick nickel Valve half asses everything. I mean I haven't heard anything about Steam OS in at least a year and a half but Valve was able to monetize Skyrim mods over a weekend.
 
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EDIT: to above post ....

The beta clients have been closed. The home page for SOR has installer which picks appropriate 32/64 bit client to install.

As for the 98% ... Not quite that high. Windows 7 has th bulk at 47%, 10 stuck at 23%. XP has 8% and 8/8.1 have about 10%. Vista has 1 % still and NT about 0.3% ... 2000 / 98 have 0.01%
BTW, went on looking for Linux folks in SoR ... I don't have Steam account so can't check, but user there told me Steam now offers 2820 Linux games. Of course the big shocker remains that 8/10 users eligible for the free upgrade to Win 10 didn't take it. Biggest question on why choosing what and why is what will those folks eventually do ?

With AutoCAD being my primary application and having to print to large format plotters, I'm pretty much w/o a choice.
 
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Pros:
-- Potential for it to require less resources, so your system may run faster.
-- cheaper price (most distros are free to download or maybe charge $5-10 US for a disk, & generally you can replace down the line with another free distro)

Cons:
-- Picking your distro. Note that this is where Microsoft has the leg up. Anytime they've released a version of Windows, they usually only release 3 or 4 versions of it (i.e. Home, Enterprise, Professional) in 2 flavors (originally 16-bit & 32-bit, now 32-bit & 64-bit). Linux, OTOH, has a lot of different "kernel" versions out there, each of which has a plethora of GUI variants; some of them try to emulate Windows (or Mac OS X) as much as possible in the way they look (& sometimes even in the way they behave), but others don't care as much about it.
-- spotty driver support (although it's much better, driver support is 100% up to the vendor, so there's no guarantee of finding a driver for your GPU, sound card, printer, Ethernet/Wi-Fi adapter, etc.). A lot of that has to do with the fragmentation (see con #1).
-- spotty app support (although most Linux apps are distro-neutral, you may run across some that aren't as compatible). Again, a lot of that is due to the fragmentation (see con #1).
-- very spotty game support. This is the kicker. There are only maybe a handful of games that have ever been released on Linux -- I don't mean "available through Steam", either, I mean actually available as a direct download or physical disk for Linux. That means...you're going to be gaming in an emulator, which means that a) you have the usual problems to deal with when using an emulator, & b) you still have to deal with spotty support for the emulator app (as pointed out in a prior post). And then there's the patching, because you'll have to then worry about getting the patching to run in the emulator...

If you're the kind of person that's run Windows 7 on a Mac Pro, or found it easy to run Mac OS X in a Windows virtual machine, then you're probably going to be OK. If not... I wouldn't recommend it.
 
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98% was just a number I threw out.
Plus, that was 98% of gamers, not the general population.

47+10+8+23 = 88% in the Windows ecosystem.
What are these other 12% using? Apple.

From Steam:
All games - showing 1 - 25 of 23629
Filter for Windows - showing 1 - 25 of 23615
Filter for OSX - showing 1 - 25 of 9167
Filter for Linux - showing 1 - 25 of 5971
 
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@Lester23
The fact that you "just want to try something new" is reason enough to dual-boot and discover, on your own, whether Linux is worth the time invested. It is not a complete replacement for Windows as a gamer system, but very rewarding in its own right. If you already have some technically inclined skills (partitioning hard drives, editing files, more...) then you'll probably find that working with Linux is a game in itself.
 
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I put windows at closer to 90%. I don't have it bookmarked so I usually do a yahoo search and get this site within 1st 2-3 hits. If ya want to keep up to date, it's reliable.

https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0

The one stat I find most interesting tho is that with Win 10 out just short of 18 months, let's look at that compared to a very generous PC replacement cycle of 6.0 years.... I'd say in reality its less than 4 , but for the sake of argument...

After 1.5 years, it's reasonable to expect that about 1/4 of PCs in use today have been built since 10 came out. That would mean that if everyone accepted the purported "latest and greatest" about 25% of the installed windows base would be on Win10 if no one took advantage of the upgrade offer. So with 90% of the world on Windows, that would be a market share of 22.5%.

It has 23.7% which means a whole lotta lotta peeps decided to purchase an older OS for their new PC and / or a lotta lotta peeps declined the upgrade offer.

There was a web site tracking upgraders but web search not finding it today. Last I looked, (June) it was about 1 in 8 eligible users had upgraded. ... May and June 2016 was expected to be a huge month for 10 with the offer expiring but while it did increase in those months, Win 7's market share actually went up also over those 2 months.
 
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No argument here :)

How peeps make decisions, what they consider important, why they consider some sources reliable and others irrelevant is something that I spend hours pondering ... and two old geeks like us could go on for hours ... and yet still irrelevant tot he OP.

But I'm not gonna feel guilty about it. Since OP never came back, can't feel too guilty about the scenic side trip :)
 
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