{"id":73797,"date":"2015-03-31T11:00:47","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T09:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=73797"},"modified":"2015-03-31T12:10:14","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T10:10:14","slug":"gaming-on-linux-doesnt-suck-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/features\/73797-gaming-on-linux-doesnt-suck-anymore","title":{"rendered":"Gaming on Linux doesn\u2019t suck anymore"},"content":{"rendered":"

One fateful Wednesday in 2010, the fortunes of gamers that preferred Linux over Windows changed forever when the good folks at Wolfire Games launched the inaugural Humble Indie Bundle<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not only were they doing something really cool \u2014 \u201cPay what you want for X games and donate money to charity\u201d \u2014 the games in the bundle would all support Linux.<\/p>\n

Many of the games in these Humble Bundles already had Linux builds, but what the Linux community didn\u2019t really have was a place that offered great deals on games, or a place where some of the best the scene had to offer were highlighted.<\/p>\n

The Humble Indie Bundle was such a success that more bundles followed, and by the time Valve confirmed that the \u201cSteam for Linux\u201d would, in fact, be Steam for Linux, there had already been 5 Humble Indie Bundles with a bunch of other bundles in-between.<\/p>\n

Between July 2012 and February 2013, when Steam for Linux officially launched, two more Humble Indie Bundles had been launched.<\/p>\n

By the time Steam for Linux was officially launched, there had been 21 Humble Bundles in total, of which 7 were indie bundles, 4 were Android & PC bundles, and the rest were bundles with specific studios or that featured other media (music, e-books).<\/p>\n

This revolution in Linux gaming was a steady trickle compared to what was coming, though.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, 14 February 2013, the flood gates opened.<\/p>\n

It started with 26 games during the Steam for Linux Beta in 2012<\/strong><\/a>, but quickly became 50 games by the time of launch.<\/p>\n

By 5 June 2014<\/strong>, Phoronix reported<\/a> that there were 500 games for Linux on Steam<\/strong>. On 11 March 2015 it reported that that number had doubled<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Some of the Linux-supported titles include BioShock Infinite, Metro 2033 and Last Light, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Hotline Miami 2, and Pillars of Eternity.<\/p>\n

Still not a cakewalk, but not the technical challenge it used to be<\/h3>\n

Though support for Linux gaming has increased tremendously over the past 5 years, getting everything to work like it\u2019s supposed to can be tricky.<\/p>\n

Graphics drivers in particular can be a chore to get working, with both Nvidia\u2019s binary driver (i.e. not open source), and AMD\u2019s fglrx binary driver giving problems under the latest version of Ubuntu (14.10, \u201cUtopic Unicorn\u201d).<\/p>\n

For example, I wanted to try out BioShock Infinite on Ubuntu using my old AMD Radeon 5870. Upon launching the game, I found that no textures were being drawn on a number of the models.<\/p>\n

\"Linux<\/a>

Well that just happened. Linux broke BioShock Infinite<\/p><\/div>\n

A quick sojourn to Google revealed the cause<\/a>: \u201cWe listed below Radeon HD 7xxx series as unsupported, because there is currently a bug in Catalyst with ARB_texture_compression_rgtc support on Terascale hardware. This causes textures in this format to fail to render, which is what you are seeing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Naturally, when the time came to upgrade I chose a Nvidia card. Aint nobody got time for lack of ARB_texture_compression_rgtc<\/em> support.<\/p>\n

It turns out that newer Nvidia cards (I have a GTX 970), come with problems of their own. Installing Nvidia\u2019s binary driver caused the Ubuntu window manager to fail at boot, preventing me from using the PC at all.<\/p>\n

Nothing a seasoned user can\u2019t fix, but if you\u2019re a newcomer to Linux that might be enough to put you off for life.<\/p>\n

Fortunately my Nvidia driver issues could be resolved by installing newer software from officially unsupported, experimental sources (learn to love xorg-edgers<\/a> as an Ubuntu gamer).<\/p>\n

BioShock Infinite now runs beautifully on my Ubuntu machine.<\/p>\n

\"Linux<\/a>

Linux sometimes just needs a guiding hand before it works as it should.<\/p><\/div>\n

This brief battle with Linux drivers had me thinking that Linux gaming is still not ready for the mainstream.<\/p>\n

Then I remember where we\u2019ve come from: duking it out with Windows emulators, complete lack of 3D acceleration on some hardware, and hacking at the X window server config files to just get basic graphical stuff to work (to just name a few challenges).<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s not quite ready for the mainstream yet, but at least gaming on Linux doesn\u2019t suck anymore.<\/p>\n

More Linux gaming news<\/h3>\n

Remastered Grim Fandango coming to PC, Mac, and Linux<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

GOG.com to launch and support Linux games<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Linux needs one killer game to explode: DICE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Linux the future of gaming, Steambox imminent: Valve<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Steam for Linux beta launches with 26 games<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s still not easy enough for your grandmother to use, but at least it doesn\u2019t suck<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":163,"featured_media":73799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[283,725,1966,13433,2065,85,13431],"class_list":["post-73797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-bioshock-infinite","tag-column","tag-games","tag-humble-indie-bundles","tag-linux","tag-steam","tag-wolfire-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/163"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73809,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73797\/revisions\/73809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}