Comments on: Valve Beginning to List Linux System Requirements for Select Titles on Steam

By: Joe Flambe

Joe Flambe — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 19:04:00 +0000

I have to see Linux ported games to believe it. And hopefully the games won’t be 60 bucks a throw.

By: Kou

Kou — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 23:12:00 +0000

The only part of this that is factually “True” for me, is that it’s smoother on games that haven’t been updated on windows in awhile. Games like Killing Floor were basically the same. Also the drivers for the Linux versions are far more up to date..not really a fair comparison. My system isn’t super high but most the games run about the same on it…It seems to me there’s a rather low point physically where there difference becomes negligible.

By: Trygve Vea

Trygve Vea — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 12:59:00 +0000

There are several challenges with accelerating 2d graphics in Linux. Resulting in having to reimplement 2d renderers in OpenGL to get a decent result – which is fune, but not optional when you just need to blit things fast.

Chrome doesn’t have a hardware accelerated html5 canvas, for example. And SDL’s hardware accelerated surfaces doesn’t work in X11. So even though Linux wins on several points, there’s still a lot of things that can be severely improved.

By: mewo

mewo — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 02:58:00 +0000

Yes it is much faster, at least for me playing Killing floor. Its amazing how smooth the game runs compared to windows.

By: Rob Williams

Rob Williams — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 23:47:00 +0000

When I said “Not too much should change”, I meant that the game should look great under the OS and become a showpiece of sorts for what’s possible.

Regarding Valve’s tests, I’m holding off on assuming that all gaming under Linux is going to perform better than in Windows just because. Linux has an efficient kernel, but more important are the GPU drivers. So far, the only performance information Valve/NVIDIA has released has been for Left 4 Dead 2, which is outdated in terms of graphics technology. SS3: BFE is in a much different league.

If SS3: BFE does happen to run better under Linux, I just hope it’s not because the OpenGL API didn’t allow some of the graphics options to remain. I didn’t play the game too much under Windows, but I recall there being an unbelievable number of graphics options to tweak.

I’ll install Ubuntu to our GPU test rig this weekend and see if I can’t run some simple tests to see where things stand (though I have to make sure I can even share performance results).

By: Mike Frett

Mike Frett — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 23:04:00 +0000

No disrespect, but why wouldn’t it be faster? Linux is generally more responsive and less difficult on system resources. Not to mention in Valves own tests, Linux was generally faster for gaming.