Linux vs Windows
Back in the ’90s, when you couldn’t traverse through a college campus without the violent echoes of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” accompanied by the anxious clicks of a Doom deathmatch, Microsoft reigned king over PC gaming. At the time, using an operating system other than MS-DOS was today’s equivalent of using a controller to play a twitch shooter on a luxurious custom rig.
Times have changed since 1993. We no longer have to worry about JNCOs coming back in style or John Romero making anyone his bitch.
Instead, we’re welcomed with myriad options through which to play our games. With Linux finally emerging viable in the market, thanks in part to Valve’s Steam Machine initiative, no longer is Windows, or MS-DOS for that matter, the indisputable king of PC gaming. At least for this very moment.
Taking on the king
With Valve’s Steam client having gained traction as the most popular pick for digital PC game marketplaces, it’s worth noting that the company co-founder, Gabe Newell, boldly claimed as far back as 2013 that “Linux and open source are the future of gaming.” In fact, the lord and savior himself called Windows 8 “a catastrophe for PC gaming” little more than a year earlier.
But why? As of September 2015, only 1,500 Steam games were compatible natively with the entire range of Linux distributions. Meanwhile, Windows thrives on a 6,464 title count, more than four times as much as Linux, according to Phoronix. That number doesn’t even include the number of games exclusive to the Universal Windows Platform.
Many of the most-played Steam games, such as Dark Souls III, Grand Theft Auto V, and Rocket League still aren’t available on Linux, and some may never be.
It’s obvious then why PC World reported earlier this year that not only did Linux users account for less than 1 percent of Steam users at 0.91% in February 2016, but that was actually a dismal 0.04% decrease from the month prior.
Newell said all the way back in 2012 that Valve wanted to make 2,500 games available on Steam for Linux. Even after launching its own Linux kernel specifically geared towards gaming, the company has still failed to deliver on that promise nearly four years later.
SteamOS: holding Linux gaming back
There are undoubtedly perks to using Linux. Unlike Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s Mac OS X, the open-source operating system is available in a number of distributions, or distros, each marked with a unique set of benefits.
Among these distros is Valve’s own SteamOS, a proposition that would ostensibly bring PC gaming to the living room. And, had it been more than an Ubuntu port stripped of everything but Steam’s Big Picture Mode, maybe, just maybe, it would have stood a chance at normalizing PC gaming in your family’s home entertainment center.
But, alas, there was nothing new to see there. Truth be told, SteamOS wasn’t only limited in its functionality. Some hardware makers didn’t even release their Steam Machines because of the sheer performance issues they were running into with Valve’s custom operating system.
Falcon Northwest, for example, told Digital Trends last year that SteamOS “doesn’t support some common functions that you’d expect from an operating system.”
These issues simply wouldn’t persist in a Windows environment. What’s more, you can easily get the superior performance of Windows paired with the accessibility of SteamOS in as few steps as configuring Steam to launch at system startup while simultaneously getting the service to open in Big Picture Mode by default.
Linux is out of control
While there are some redeeming qualities about Linux, advanced customization and affordability aren’t really factors when you’re playing video games on what is most likely a $1,000+ hardware setup. What is important to take into consideration is your control input.
With Windows, you’re faced with a plethora of choices when it comes to controls – and that’s exactly what PC gamers like, right? Options. You can get a mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX Red switches or Cherry MX Brown; you can get you mouse wired or wireless, and you can even choose between a PS4 or Xbox One controller.
With Linux, though, many of these options aren’t natively supported. Sure, you can find a complicated workaround to use an Xbox One controller with your Ubuntu-equipped PC, or you could shell out a hundred bucks or so for Windows 10, where using an Xbox controller requires nothing more than plugging it into an open USB port.
Of course, with Valve’s proprietary Steam controller having arrived by the tail-end of last year, you can be confident in Linux compatibility from a company trying to push its own kernel. But, at the same time, the Steam controller is an impressively designed compromise – an attempt to shift controller users as well as mouse and keyboard fanatics toward a middle ground. Unfortunately, the result is a niche appeal, if any at all.
A catastrophe that’s here to stay
Evidently, Windows isn’t going anywhere, with a Steam market share of nearly 96% as of March 2016. In fact, Epic Games even recently called Microsoft out on trying to “monopolize” PC gaming with its Universal Windows Platform initiatives.
Although Microsoft has lost sight of what PC gamers want in recent years (see: Games for Windows Live), there’s no doubt that the current Xbox head Phil Spencer wants to bring the company back to its roots, namely by integrating features (and games) from the Xbox One into Windows 10.
An example of this is with Xbox Play Anywhere, which arrived just weeks after the Windows 10 Anniversary Update and gives Xbox One players who buy their games digitally a chance to access their library on PC for no added cost. ReCore and Forza Horizon 3, the latter of which we called a “true petrol-head’s fantasy,” are among the first to support Microsoft’s cross-buy program.
In contrast, Valve’s attempts at making Linux not only the best place to play games from your Steam library, but actually the heart of your living room are tough to jive with. Despite making an effort with SteamOS, it doesn’t help that a number of companies still haven’t released their November 2015-bound Steam Machines after neglecting to comply with the operating system’s handicaps.
There’s a clear winner here, and unless Linux rectifies its performance disparity, lack of natively supported control options and impoverished game library, the OS to beat for PC gaming will remain Windows 10.
Lead Image Credit: Gremlin (iStock)
Source: techradar.com
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You must be joking with the not having to see the CLI. I had to manually configure my touchpad using syclient through the terminal to make it usable, and employ trial and error to find the optimal config parameters for the fan control application I installed to get my cooling fan to only run when needed, as opposed to full speed all the damn time. That critical application (i8kutils) has no graphical frontend. It can only be used and configured through the terminal. Every app I installed was through the terminal, whether using apt or extracting a tar.gz. I could go on, but the point is you NEED to use the terminal to accomplish even basic tasks, as the GUI, even on 'user-friendly' distros like Mint or Elementary, is severely lacking.
I LOVE Linux. But right now I'm running only Windows 10 on my hard drive because unfortunately the software support just isn't there. Until the Adobe suite comes to Linux as well as AAA games like GTA V (VI?), Arma 3, Payday 2 and Just Cause 3, I can't and won't be able to abandon Windows. And until things like Microsoft Office come to Linux, most people won't be able to or want to either. Which is too bad, because I really really really like Linux.
DirectX only exists because of OpenGL. It started off as a blatant rip off. OpenGL's problem is that it's run by a comittee.
Windows dominates the PC gaming market, but there is potential for that to change. However will that potential result into reality is entirely different topic.
There is kind of Renaissance going on right now with Linux and open source OS in general:
– It is easier than ever to create cross platform software and more and more is created. This is in no small part true for gaming frameworks as Unity and Unreal Engine.
– Enterprise business more and more realizes that if your product should depend on a technology you should have the option to take the matters into your own hands, and rely on a widely implemented standard. The support for open source is at all time high from businesses.
– New gen File Systems (ZFS) are adopted across multiple OSes and will probably in several years be implemented on a the mass consumer market.
– New gen package managers, implementing ideas from software containers technology set the stage for a Repo system that rivals ease of use of Apple and Google application stores, with the benefit of better stability, sandboxing and overall better manageability.
– Although dragging behind the adoption of Wayland is an important direction for Linux as Gaming is not just the ability to run games – it is also a Culture, a Lifestyle.
– And last but not least – Vulcan to rival DirectX 12, at a time when Microsoft is sabotaging itself spectacularly with philosophies like the UWP.
But for this to become more than potential – to become reality, a lot of stuff needs to go right for Linux and a lot needs to go wrong for everybody else, especially Microsoft.
I ran Linux Mint 17.2 alongside Windows 10 for about a year and I struggled to find a reason to use it. Here's my experience:
1) It took me 2 weeks just to find a distro that would boot properly in a UEFI environment (Secureboot off).
2) Once I got Linux Mint with Cinnamon up and running, I had some fun setting it up. I learned how to use the terminal and apt.
3) There is no such thing as a 'user-friendly' Linux Distro. The GUI is always limited and you NEED to use the terminal, which isn't a problem as it's easily the best part of Linux.
4) The touchpad options in the control panel are limited, had to use synclient in the terminal to configure it with tons of trial and error. Still jumpy and and couldn't get palm rejection to work.
5) My laptop's cooling fan would run at full speed non-stop. Resolved by installing and manually configuring a third party app called i8kutils.
6) Thunderbird is an awful email client. Fortunately I installed Geary which worked pretty well. Internet Download Manager is not available and the alternative called Xtreme Download Manager wouldn't capture downloads from Chrome despite loading the extension.
7) Had to turn to google every time I wanted to install an app or change a setting or fix a problem. Community is active, so I was able to find solutions to most of the problems I ran into by just reading forum posts.
8) No standard way to install apps. Some come as .deb files. Most are either tar.gz archives or require addition of a repository. Then there would be the occasional ones that require compilation using ./configure make make install, which doesn't work until you set up a compile environment or something.
9) I tried updating to the AMD Crimson drivers, but failed because of unsupported hardware error. Tried 3 different methods, none worked. Needless to say, I didn't even bother with gaming on Linux. Installed the proprietary driver from the driver manager and disabled the dGPU.
10) Tried to do some writing work, cursor kept clicking and jumping around. Got pissed off so finally removed Linux a month ago.
So that's how my Linux experience went. Form your own conclusions, but in my humble opinion, Linux on the desktop desperately needs a standardized way to install apps and drivers that works on every distro, kinda like .apk on android. Until then, attempting to use Linux as a Windows replacement results in lots of time wasted solving trivial problems.
I have limited taste on games and if I do choose to play, I choose GNU/Linux games. It's almost 15 years since I've played a game in windows (or used windows as my personal computing OS)
You can't get 100% perf out of the box. That's why I use custom kernels that Ubuntu or Mint would die before they could support them, because they change weekly, along with being bleeding edge.
I don't know if whether an average user's skills is relevant. This is about PC gaming, and most gamers should be more familiar with how computers work than an 'average user'. I presume if you game on a PC you've either built your own PC or had to upgrade some components. And you've probably had to use cmd.exe at some point. Plus if you have ever played any older games you would be very familiar with MS-DOS. And I can wholeheartedly say Linux terminal commands are so much easier and more intuitive than using cmd/MS-DOS!
Why does the 2016-May article includes 2015-September data for Linux game statistics when everyone knows how fast the Linux game catalog is growing ATM? Maybe some bias to make it look worse?
Anyways, the current number of Games for Linux on Steam is 2143, which is a 41% growth in 8 months. This is an impressive rate of growth even if it hasn't been getting much closer to Windows (standing at 8442 ATM).
On the other hand, the Linux catalog is quickly eclipsing Mac OSX (standing at 3238). This is not surprising since Apple is segregating themselves from the game development by concentrating on Metal instead of providing a decent OpenGL experience + adopting Vulkan like everybody else. I suspect, they are loosing developer mindshare due to this and their models shipping with relatively weak GPUs.
I think it is not really realistic to expect Linux to make lot of headway until Vulkan gets properly utilized in games/game engines. Vulkan is fundamentally different from OpenGL in that it – being a low-level API – depends much less on driver hacks to speed-up certain high-profile games. Game performance will be much more uniform on Windows and Linux.
The only really troublesome bits were the touchpad and the amd crimson drivers. The inbuilt driver manager works just fine, but it offers an older version of the proprietary driver. And I'm not bashing the 'bash'. It's incredibly flexible, powerful and intuitive and not the thing holding back linux on the desktop. The problem is too much choice. I'm not a developer, but I imagine it can't be easy porting your windows app to Linux, what with the near-endless distros that are available, even if they're only like 5 main ones that provide a base for the rest.
Here's what dmesg shows when I plug in my Xbox controller with Xubuntu, a spinoff of Ubuntu:
[5001188.245974] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=045e, idProduct=028e
[5001188.245979] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[5001188.246009] usb 1-2: Product: Controller
[5001188.246012] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: ©Microsoft Corporation
[5001188.246014] usb 1-2: SerialNumber: 0043461
[5001189.930822] input: Microsoft X-Box 360 pad as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:15.0/0000:03:00.0/usb1/1-2/1-2:1.0/input/input6
[5001189.931218] usbcore: registered new interface driver xpad
That was hardly a "complicated workaround". All I did was plug it in. I've also used a Logitech Rumblepad II with Raspbian, the Debian based OS for a Raspberry Pi. They work right out of the box also. Then there are a few optional command line utilities to test and calibrate with your gamepad. Install jstest-gtk and it's dependencies.
As for keyboards, why wouldn't a Cherry-MX gaming keyboard intended for windows work with Linux again? It's called a "Generic 105 key Intl (PC)", and it plugs in with a USB port. I'm using a genuine Microsoft Sidewinder X4 Gaming Keyboard right now, typing this comment using Linux. Your macro buttons probably won't work but who uses that crap anyway? Cheaters? Meh!
But yes, the severe lack of decent "native" games on the Linux platform is probably a contributing factor to no one playing games on Linux. Still, you didn't mention Minecraft once, and while it's not everyone idea of gaming, it is nonetheless a very popular Java based game that is able to run on multiple platforms. There's also emulators, for access to volumes of abandon-ware games for Nintendo,SNES,N64,DOS,Amiga,Atari2600,Apple, etc. Linux plays Legend of Zelda like a champ, and with a Xbox controller too! FCEUX FTW!
Lately it seems like Windows gaming is taking a step backwards, possibly due the the popularity of "mobile gaming", and games are becoming more basic and "retro". I got a free game off steam where you water a cactus…..seriously! That's it!
I use RepoCK Arch repo, it has different scheduler than normal Linux, and is also compiled per-processor, so it includes ALL processor extensions I have, where if you run generic kernels, you have almost none. I get much, much better performance than basically any other system not doing the same.
Tar.gz and compilation in 2016? Maybe in 2003, but not today. Not unless you're on some obscure software.
The standard way to install apps is the package manager. Linux has had that since forever.
Every LAN event I go to, I see more and more users on some distro of Linux gaming. Personally, I only use Linux in my home and work and while many games are not available – I still game only on Linux and the games that I do enjoy run great with all of my controllers – So I'll be sticking with Linux.
…Until my graphics driver borks and I can't just use Device manager to delete the old one.
You're aware that Linux supports wireless Xbox controllers and PS4 controllers (if your computer has a Bluetooth dongle) out of the box, right? Xbox One wired controllers are also plug and play, but the proprietary wireless protocol isn't supported yet. The new Xbox One S controller with Bluetooth of course works.
I agree everyone should learn CLI. My first Linux experience was Ubuntu 9.04. Since then,all DE have become much more user friendly,though often need tweeking,my point, bringing up the terminal is needed much less,without doubt still required though. Back in theJaunty days you had synaptic,but on many occasions i was thrown into compiling something,these days folk whine having to type apt-get or yum install instead of using a bloated slow 1 click software centre install. Windows is certainly better at present for games,but in 2 or 3 years when every game is released with dx12/vulkan, instead of todays situation of ports using lesser quality Direct3D9 to OpenGL translation layer,it will go back to a level playing field.
Which custom kernel? Its been a while since looking at an ubuntu kernel .config Voluntary preemption, SCHED_ISO for x,Timer Frequency set 1000. What else would improve gaming?Cant find it now but i thought stock kernel tests performed as well as say zen-kernel?
Not sure why you had so much trouble. I've installed it on multiple laptops and everything just worked without any intervention on my part. Have Linux Mint 17.3 on 3 laptops and Antergos on my Desktop. Only thing I really need the CLI for is the AUR, but I certainly do like using it in many other cases. To be honest, MS-DOS was harder than what I'm doing now and I was using that when I was four years old.
Right click on tar.gz to extract.Click to istall through one of the many software centre, double click deb to install. I don't have a dell, but i thought i8kutils is bundled with i8kui (user interface of i8kutils).?
What experience do you have with Linux? There are several incredibly user-friendly Distros. Linux Mint and Ubuntu offer a very similar experience to using a Windows or Mac.
You can't even make this a call to action for anything. The reason Linux has such a bad performance hit when it comes to running $1,000 setups is the fact that most hardware manufacturers are not building their hardware drivers with Linux in mind. Windows has been the end all be all OS to everyone and their grandparents for the last 2 decades and the only reason Microsoft can sit on such high prestige is because of the hardware and software support.
Look at all the work done in Linux and you can understand why; every piece of hardware has to be tested by the community and if it doesn't work 100% then someone has to go out and try to make sense of it all and write up the correct modules which means that it probably cannot utilize all 100% of the hardware's potential because the hardware vendor has proprietary blobs created to handle that heavy lifting but its all for Windows. Yes there has been a push that has made it better today than say 5-10 years ago but its still a touchy issue in Linux.
Another big issue is the fact that PC gaming has this lovely thing called "Windows Exclusive" games. The big titles like Fallout, Grand Theft Auto, and even Battlefield (Call of Duty too) do not hold official support for Linux or any other OS for that matter. The whole reason why Linux saw a drop in user share on Steam is because of these games coming out. Nobody is going to sit there and wait on Linux for the port to happen because we all know its not going to so what do they do? They do what every other Linux user does and has to dual boot Windows.
Valve has already done Linux a service and disservice, they brought plentiful titles over to Linux but then they dropped the ball, no Linux/Steam OS exclusives and their reasoning behind it just angers me. I don't care if people can't use Linux and complain to support when it just doesn't work, it would be Linux exclusive for a reason. If I had a 5 dollars for every game on Steam that held Windows only support then I'd be a millionaire and I guess under the same logic I should be able to go review all my Windows only games and say the game sucks because I couldn't get it to work under Linux so that must mean the game is bad.
People just need to open their eyes and realize that Linux is not a bad platform, everyone who complains and doesn't take the moment to think for one moment that Linux has been and always will be a community effort. Businesses can contribute all they like but until the hardware and software vendors start actually contributing ether Open Source or Closed source drivers that work under Linux then things will not get better.
tl;dr Blame your hardware vendors and the gaming industry for not supporting Linux in the first place. Linux as a community effort has done more for supporting unsupported hardware and just making it work even with limited/restricted knowledge of how they are suppose to work in their proprietary drivers.
Yes the bash shell is incredible and a lot of fun to mess around with. You can be proficient in the terminal within 2 weeks, but Linux is still a massive pain to set up. In some ways, the experience is superior to Windows (I liked the Cinnamon DE), but the apps are a let down. You can find alternatives to Windows applications, but they're mostly inferior. The only semi-decent music player I could find for Linux was Clementine, and it hadn't been updated in years. Every time you wanna change something, use a new peripheral, update drivers, you have to dive deep into the forums and spend hours trying to solve trivial problems that you really shouldn't have to deal with in 2016. I tried updating the AMD graphics drivers in my dell notebook on Mint, but the standard way and the alternative method both failed. I kept at it for 2 days but eventually gave up. Moreover, my touchpad was jumpy and jittery on Linux and no amount of tweaking would bring its behavior on par with Windows, not to mention the fact that Palm rejection wouldn't work no matter what I did with synclient. It's just not worth the hassle unless you're a die-hard FOSS believer.
Are you winding me up? There are driver management GUIs available (with popular distros including a very capable one baked in to the core settings).
Stop saying you have to work with Windows and then giving examples that apply to other OS's too! I can't tell if you're trolling!
I never heard of i8kui till you mentioned it, but googling it seems to bring up a couple github links. Probably need to compile it. The point I was making it is that every Linux user needs to learn to manipulate the CLI as it's easily the best part of Linux and as such they'll find themselves in quite a few situations that call for its usage. As for tar.gz, in my limited experience some archives didn't extract properly if I decompressed with the file manager rather than the terminal. Maybe I was doing something wrong.