Linux

[P8rpl3h4z3]

Hello wizards, im thinking to change win7 to linux but im wondering does games work in it well? i mean do they work great or have  compatibility problems. i dont rly play anything else than ET and nhl09 but sometimes i try other games too.

what version of linux would you recommend? thx for info

[SunLight]

Arch Linux user here. The only game I (rarely) play is ET.

 

That being said, it runs as fast as Windows (maybe even better, less fps spikes, and also on Linux I have no antivirus and other things doing stuff behind my back) but with some minors problems, that is:

 

- can't paste in the console, you have to paste in the terminal

- minimizing is a pain, I play in window mode in another desktop so I can switch easily

 

I have never really tried other games, but I've tried running some Windows things via Wine (Windows emulator), and sometimes they don't work at all, sometimes they do.

 

Problems:

I would say there are some problems. For example, proprietary drivers for the gfx card. Arch Linux doesn't support AMD drivers officially, there are some unoffical repositories for that, but here comes the thing...

 

They don't support the latest xorg version (i.e. desktop) so I have to use an older one.

They don't support the latest kernels, so I temporarily use an older one (Arch Linux generally is more up to date if compared to, say, Ubuntu, at least afaik, and this is not necessarily a good thing), then when they will decide my card is too old, I won't have drivers anymore, or I will have to stop updating the kernel, etc.

 

Open source drivers are way too slow to play games, maybe with a supercomputer, who knows...

 

And also some minor annoying things here and there, for example recently I noticed in those unofficial repos for Catalyst a newer version of xorg, I upgraded and I noticed my mouse speed on the desktop changed. No big deal, I thought, but then after a long time I played ET and my mouse was really weird, like it forced me to move in horizontal or vertical lines, and sometimes not moving at all. I tried all in_dgamouse and sh*t. Nothing. I thought what the hell and I downgraded xorg again ^^.

 

So I'm not saying it's everything nice... sometimes I think I should play from Windows. For the rest, great OS, every time I load Windows I remember how much it sux, especially some things like the terminal/console omg... recently I use a Linux-like one but it still sux, in a way

 

TL;DR

ET works but there's some problems you need to fix sometimes

[P8rpl3h4z3]

I search some info bout linux and what i understood from all that tech stuff was that there many version of linux and you need to install updates manually, graphic crad, sound etc. drivers, its not that big deal i can do that just need guidance and there was some instructions about that.

My graphic card is ATI Radeon HD 4670 so there should be drivers for that, right?

[Vanaraud]

http://store.steampowered.com/browse/linux/

 

There are handful of linux ports to AAA games also(Witcher, XCOM:EU, Metro and JABIA afaik, maybe couple more, not enough to move to linux though...

 

But you could start with Steam´s own SteamOS, which is based on Ubuntu and is basicly a modified "desktop", can be toggled to old good Ubuntu desktop also. Worked fine when I tried it out last time.

 

On one hand Sunlight brought up that you need to keep old kernels but on the other hand old versions are killed pretty brutally by just outdating "internet protocols"- had to move to newer Fedora just because old 1 didn´t connect to internet anymore. Didn´t fully understand why, but I guess IP topology changed or sumthing. Also updates to programs are cut, like for ID-authentification programs. So eventually you have to move on to newer linux even though its LTS(long term support version) and newer versions don´t support older HW;)

 

If you have spare HD\SSD, worth to play around besides Win for starters.

Oh do backups b4 starting to mess around with ur system !

[SunLight]

I search some info bout linux and what i understood from all that tech stuff was that there many version of linux and you need to install updates manually

In general, you don't need to install updates manually. At least, I guess that's the case for most Linux versions.

 

As regards the one I use (Arch Linux), it's a bit harder maybe, because when you install it for the first time, you need to install everything from scratch, and I mean everything, after like 2 hours of work I didn't even have a desktop yet. I don't know if they changed the install procedure, but I guess they didn't.

 

And when you do the updates, sometimes there's config files that would get overwritten, so you need to manually check what has changed, and if you need to merge or change something, plus in rare cases you cannot even upgrade unless you do some other manual intervention (always explained in the website, though). And every time there's new gfx drivers I have to compile with a script, again manually.

 

So I would consider it a bit more 'for experts', but not so much.

 

If you use, for example, Ubuntu Linux instead, after the installation (which is waaaaay easier and quicker) you already have everything, desktop and all, and when you update you don't really need to do anything, so it's more 'for beginners'.

 

But you cannot update it forever, Ubuntu has versions and afaik after a while you cannot update anymore and you have to install the new version (or upgrade? at least with Fedora it was possible, but still a pain), while Arch is a rolling release, and you can update it forever. So if you go for Ubuntu you should pick the lts one imho, because it lasts longer.

 

 

My graphic card is ATI Radeon HD 4670 so there should be drivers for that, right?

yeah, at least I checked the Arch Linux wiki and it says it's among the legacy drivers, but keep in mind that once a card is regarded as 'old' and they don't support it anymore in the drivers, you need to use old drivers, and maybe they aren't compatible with the latest Linux Kernel, so you have to use an old kernel as well, and old this old that... it's all a chain of things