Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.
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Completely missing from the article is the syscall user dispatch being utilized finally: hardcoded NT syscalls can be handled instead of crashing. So, a program which didn't work previously or crashed often may very well now work with Wine 11.5
windows games probably run better on linux than windows at this point
No joke: Cyberpunk 2077 actually does, for me.
Alright, NOW we're hypin'!
Can't wait for a new version!
Would be nice if wine prefixes were capable of reading and writing to other drives on the system and not just the drive the prefix is on.
Also the file manager wine uses sucks.
Wine can perfectly fine read/access all the drives on the System. Are you using some kind of sandboxing? Flatpak? Bottles?
The file Manager from wine is more or less the classic windows file explorer, and Yes it is very much outdated by now.
Wine can perfectly fine read/access all the drives on the System. Are you using some kind of sandboxing? Flatpak? Bottles?
It’s possible Lutris was isolating applications ran over Wine, never really considered that, from my experience when I installed game launchers such as Epic Games/Ea/GOG to the root filesystem and attempted to install a game on a separate drive it would claim the path could not be found or was invalid.
My brief research lead me to moving the Wine prefixes to the second drive and instructing Lutris to use that instead, which has worked for me.
Nice!
I've been on windows for ages because of EA anti cheat which drives me nuts (I enjoy the random game of battlefield or FC with friends)
I really want to make the jump for other games like Sims 3 etc which this update is amazing for but EA enabling Linux will be the final nail to make me jump
Why not dualboot?
I'm actually taking the plunge
I've basically reset my SSD entirely and have two partitions - 600GB for windows with FC / BF and then the remaining for Bazzite
So far it's been easy breezy with steam and bazzite after the initial downloads (thankfully I have fast internet else I'd be back to waiting days 🥲)
That's so nice to hear! Welcome to the land of the great Tux
Well, got most stuff working
Fallout 4 with mods was a bit of a ball ache but seems to be working now (had to use steamtinkerlaunch to get mod organiser 2 working and then I could install mods from my downloads)
The mods being the most annoying to figure out how to get mod organiser 2 to work, since downloads from Firefox got cancelled or failed after a period of time [had to use Jdownloader for larger mods to reconnect of any network public] - I want to get the nexus mod links working on mod organiser 2 instead but an issue for another time
I live in Linux in work, it's just come the evening I've genuinely been in the mindset of "launch game, play game"
The benefits of speed from Linux are finally pulling me over
I'm considering it a fair bit, fallout 4 and other games will work better on Linux at least
What is often overlooked
Those benchmarks compare Wine NTSYNC against upstream vanilla Wine, which means there's no fsync or esync either. Gamers who use fsync are not going to see such a leap in performance in most games.
Ntsync is great and there will be performance improvement. But not exactly massive
XDA was not always this sensationalist. With that said, I always welcome performance improvements.
My old ass remembers when XDA was a place where you learned how to put Android on your windows phone
Or hacked up your own android rom because even knowing jack and shit you could.
Yeah I remember getting the G1 weeks before it came out because the local TMobile store was just sick or me asking every fucking day. I remember rooting it, loving it, then moving to the n900 and thinking "I want this forever" only for fucking Microsoft to buy Nokia and tank Meego
Gamers who use fsync are not going to see such a leap in performance in most games.
I don't think that's overlooked at all. 99.9% of people using WINE/Proton aren't going to have any idea what fsync is, and almost nobody not using proton-cachyos is going to use it. fsync, itself a workaround, is niche within what's already a niche.
From what I found online, Steam enables esync by default, and fsync if your kernel supports it.
Lutris has both options nowadays in the runner settings. Idk if they’re both enabled by default, but in my case they’re enabled. ymmv there.
In short, LXDE was the measured as the fastest desktop environment for gaming, while XFCE with compositor disabled came in second fastest out of the ones tested. If you need the maximum performance XFCE may be a good compromise between looks vs performance. You can use the “Disable desktop effects” option in Lutris which may reduce the overhead of the desktop environment further.
any idea how this would compare to starting steam directly from a display manager using gamescope as the compositor?
I’m imagine gamescope is the best-case, since there’s no other apps or visual effects.
If NTSYNC is the headline feature, the completion of Wine's WoW64 architecture is the change that will quietly improve everyone's life going forward. On Windows, WoW64 (Windows 32-bit on Windows 64-bit) is the subsystem that lets 32-bit applications run on 64-bit systems. Wine has been working toward its own implementation of this for years, and Wine 11 marks the point where it's officially done.
What this means in practice is that you no longer need 32-bit system libraries installed on your 64-bit Linux system to run 32-bit Windows applications. Wine handles the translation internally, using a single unified binary that automatically detects whether it's dealing with a 32-bit or 64-bit executable. The old days of installing multilib packages, configuring ia32-libs, or fighting with 32-bit dependencies on your 64-bit distro thankfully over.
This might sound like a small quality-of-life improvement, but it's a massive piece of engineering work. The WoW64 mode now handles OpenGL memory mappings, SCSI pass-through, and even 16-bit application support. Yes, 16-bit! If you've got ancient Windows software from the '90s that you need to run for whatever reason, Wine 11 has you covered.
For gaming specifically, this matters because a surprising number of games, especially older ones, are 32-bit executables. Previously, getting these to work often meant wrestling with your distro's multilib setup, which varied in quality and ease depending on whether you were on Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora, or something else entirely. Now, Wine just handles it for you.
Oh, thank heavens. I remember advising some users here to look for specifically missing 32-bit host Linux library support; I'd run into that problem before.
One thing kind of interesting is that not even the Windows WoW64 allows running 16 bit applications. Officially, if you want to run 16 bit applications on 64 bit Windows, you have to get a VM or an emulator.
I just installed wine and launched Noita (a very cpu intensive game) with it, and the stuttering I've been experiencing since switching to linux has vanished. The game has never run smoother. Cant wait for proton to get up to date.
iirc these changes have been in proton ge for quite a while now for supported installs.
Every time I see something that points at Microsoft losing market share, I get really excited. This is great.
Wine 11 >> Win 11
To be fair, pretty much anything >> Win 11
Elizabeth Figura is my new hero
I'm less interested in games and more interested in creative apps. If Affinity on Linux is actually useful now, I'd make the transition. Gimp still lacks layer masks for adjustments. I want better tools.
@Paranoidfactoid @monica_b1998 We actually do have masking on Adjustment Layer Groups. Basically, make a layer group in passthrough mode, put whatever combination of filters you want on it, then add a layer mask.
Someone even made a plug-in to simplify that process while we continue to work on the UX: https://github.com/yousei3/GIMP3-Aseudo-Adjustment-Layers/releases/tag/Ver1.0
Come on. Since 1997 and Ps 7, every adjustment had its own alpha mask to paint where and how much that adjustment would take place in the frame. Affinity does this. Hell, Krita has done this for nearly 20 years.
Gimp 3 is a genuine improvement. But what you propose is the kind of delusional thinking seen in 'Gimp is better than Photoshop' advocacy videos on YouTube. The kind of advocacy that has ruined GIMP's reputation among people who actually use this software.
Your half baked solution does not do the job.
@Paranoidfactoid Trust me, I'm well aware the UX can be a lot better - I'm the person who implemented initial non-destructive filters for GIMP 3.0. :)
I'm just saying that it can be done in GIMP right now, and I linked a plug-in that makes it easier (it adds a menu option that does all I said in a single step). I'm happy to hear feedback from people who use GIMP on how to improve it further.
I realize Gimp is a free project and has limited resources. I'm thankful there are people (like you) who maintain and improve it. Because I run Linux, Gimp and Krita have been my only available go-to tools. But it is painful. I really hope you guys rework the alpha mask code so each adjustment filter gets its own mask. Maybe in 3.4 or whatever.
Layer styles for text are a big deal. Being able to reorder adjustments in the stack is a big deal. Vector layers are a big deal. Real improvement has happened. But I do actually use adjustment masks. A lot of people do.
Thank you for these updates. Another thing I'd really like to see is better integration with Inkscape. It does text better than Gimp. Being able to craft text there and flawlessly import that into Gimp, with all its filters and effects, would really be nice. Inkscape is quite good.
@Paranoidfactoid No worries! I think I misunderstood what you meant by "mask". Technically, each filter has an associated mask (set to the active selection when applying the filter) - we just don't have the UI yet to edit it after the fact. It's on the TODO list.
I have a pending merge request for exporting Inkscape SVGs that didn't quite make it into 3.2. I'd like to add better SVG import (as vector not raster) integration as well - Inkscape is awesome.
Inkscape has a few text deformation tools Gimp lacks. Importing svgs produced from Inkscape would be a big win. People will use that.
An alpha mask on an adjustment layer allows for all sorts of useful adjustment blends using paint brushes or black and white gradients. I'm sure you've seen how Ps handles adjustment layers. Krita is similar. This is just a common interface element now. It works well. Shrug.
Good luck. Thank you for Gimp 3. It is a real improvement over prior major releases.