Linux or Windows?

[Cuchulainn]

if you buy a desktop computer with Windoze, I would suggest that you get one with Windows 7. I heard Windows 8 is not supposed to be a OS for desktop computers. And some programs do not work correctly in Windows 8 (such as VLC as example) or only in compatibility mode.

Another issue with Windows 8 is that it requires Secure Boot. Currently that would be a issue if you want to dual boot with Linux. Fedora 18 will be released in January, that's supposed to support Secure Boot though.

At home I only use Linux.

[DuoMaxwell]

Originally Posted by Shining-Scias

This.

Linux will require you to learn new things and change some old habits and your understanding of the system (which sadly most of people is totally unwilling to do).
If you aren't ready for it and only consider it as a free Windows, if you play mainstream games, use some professional video/image/sound editing or Microsoft programs (Photoshop, Office...), or you're just happy in your current environment, programs and don't want to bother with new things, just stay on Windows really.

RO might or might not perform better on Linux (in most of cases it won't), but it's not worth investing so much effort switching just for it.

And I say this as a happy Linux user since 6 years.

Hence the beauty of live CDs and dual boots. Linux costs nothing to try, if Thrillem has used multiple OSs the shock isn't that bad.

Also hardware support isn't that bad, it's only the random wireless card, printer or scanner, whatever the brand spanking new-just came out mobos and GPUs or oddball "high end" sound card or NIC that gives trouble.

The brand new stuff usually gets sorted out by the next update cycle which is every 6 months for the popular distros like Ubuntu, Fedora and Mint.

Also, Valve has also found that their games get about a 20-25% increase in performance moving from DirectX on Windows to OpenGL on Linux without months of tweaking to make it work: http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/1...dsrc=popbyskid

[kmdk]

Originally Posted by Thrillem

As I am buying a new computer I would appreciate if someone could tell me what OS is better for playing ROL. Until now I have been playing on Windows Vista but as someone told me that Linux was better for this game I thought I better ask it in this forum.

And yes ,Linux was better for ro before this new build-in engine revamp...i got over 450 smooth fps on a Puppy Linux Live stick,but now is not anymore...

I have 2 MAC with 3 boot .

On MacBookPro(laptop):
-Mac os x Lion 1.7.4
-LInux Mandriva 2011.2(linux)
-Windows 7

On MacPro:
-Mac OS X 10.6.8
-Linux Ubuntu and Mandriva
-Windows 7

The point is :from my tests i log on windows and play Regnum just because DirectX code is by far better that OpenGL code.At least on ATI cards,both my macs have ati cards.

On MacBookPro:
-OS X Lion (OpenGl engine) -safe mode around 50 fps ,non-smooth
-Linux Mandriva -safe mode around 60 fps
-Windows 7 - around 80 fps smooth and with shader..have no idea wich one

On MacPro:
-Mac OS X Snow leopard -safe mode around 77 fps (WTF ?) non-smooth
-Ubuntu -safe modearound 80 fps
-Mandriva -safe mode around 120 fps
-Windows 7 -with shader around 210 fps

From last revamp of NG3D OpenGl is lack of performances.
Now at the moment ,DirectX at least in my situation is by far better than OpenGl.

This new revamp givet to some people better performance because it use build-in bechmark ,but not for me .Mac client crash if you use shaders and so works only in safe mode,and linux decreased a lots.In my case total fail.

[NotScias]

Originally Posted by DuoMaxwell

Hence the beauty of live CDs and dual boots. Linux costs nothing to try, if Thrillem has used multiple OSs the shock isn't that bad.

Yes but LiveCDs don't answer mid/long-term questions like : Will I be able to play the latest <insert_latest_aaa_game> ? Will my new <printer/soundcard/gpu...> work fine without configuration ? Will I be able to read and edit perfectly my <insert_proprietary_format> without headaches ?

I'm not saying it's not worth it to try it, but the user needs to have an interest doing it, needs to be curious and willing to learn new ways, change old habits about how to use an OS because Linux is totally different, no matter how mainstream distros try to make it easier for newcomers.
Same thing about Dualboot, you won't waste hours and several gigabytes just for the sake of running one crossplatform program or messing with Compiz's wobbly windows animation effect. It needs an interest, (real) curiosity being the first. If the user just doesn't care and expects a virus-free Windows he will just ends disappointed and become a genuine anti-linux troll afterwards.

Also, Valve has also found that their games get about a 20-25% increase in performance moving from DirectX on Windows to OpenGL on Linux without months of tweaking to make it work: http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/1...dsrc=popbyskid

I know about it. But that's on a specific hardware (NVIDIA I guess), on an engine that has been deeply optimized for OpenGL (who knows it could have been room left to enhance their D3D backend) while closely working with GPU companies that optimized their drivers for that engine. No matter there's progress.
But besides that, the current Linux's graphical stack is terrible. Horribly complex, slow and outdated especially when we talk about X11 and Mesa.
About GPU drivers : Besides NVIDIA's proprietary ones that are decent enough but totally non-integrated with Linux's standards, the rest is between mediocre and broken. Proprietary ATI drivers are bugged, underperforming, lack many features, and support only recent GPUs. Older ATIs need to use open-source ones that are very underperforming, lack most of features and especially dynamic power-management.
So we have Intel left, and even if their open-source driver is the most complete one, Intel GPUs aren't fit for heavy 3D games at all.

Yes I don't deny there has been progress (yay I can finally play a video with a compositor running !), and will be, thanks to Valve urging ATI/NVIDIA to fix their blobs, but saying that gaming on Linux outperforms Windows is a lie in most of cases. Actually like many other say and I join them, RO performs worse on Linux, mainly because the OpenGL renderer of it isn't on par with the D3D one, but for people with badly supported GPUs using half-backed drivers like I mentioned above it will be even worse.

[Kyrottimus]

Originally Posted by Shining-Scias

...but saying that gaming on Linux outperforms Windows is a lie in most of cases. Actually like many other say and I join them, RO performs worse on Linux, mainly because the OpenGL renderer of it isn't on par with the D3D one, but for people with badly supported GPUs using half-backed drivers like I mentioned above it will be even worse.

"Performs" is a very broad term. If you're talking raw FPS, that's one thing, though anything past 65 or 70fps usually goes beyond the refresh rate of the monitor (and the human eye) and I doubt anyone will notice anything past that.

While RO is obviously optimized for D3D, there are some benefits to playing in linux. For one, the input (controls) are far more responsive than on windows. Also, for systems with marginal RAM resources, the game will have an easier time managing ram if the OS isn't hogging a bunch of it.

This is obviously just an opinion, and different PCs, operating systems and software settings/drivers will change the performance dramatically.

For me, I'll sacrifice FPS for a more responsive game (keyboard/mouse inputs having less delay). And on my current computer, having tried windows (several times) vs linux, I only see about a 5-10fps increase and IMO the sluggishness of the controls on windows (and the random crashes) just simply isn't worth it.

[NotScias]

Originally Posted by Kyrottimus

While RO is obviously optimized for D3D, there are some benefits to playing in linux. For one, the input (controls) are far more responsive than on windows.

There's also some Linux-specific quirks on RO aswell. Like crashes when changing workspace/maximizing or bugged fullscreen support.
I haven't played RO on Windows since years, but I didn't have more issues than playing it on Linux. Also this input issue must not be that bad for most of people to not switch on Linux and run into a load of other non-RO related issues just because of it.

Also, for systems with marginal RAM resources, the game will have an easier time managing ram if the OS isn't hogging a bunch of it.

This is obviously just an opinion, and different PCs, operating systems and software settings/drivers will change the performance dramatically.

Yes. But you can have bloated Linux environments aswell.
Example : now most of mainstream distros always have a Desktop Compositor enabled by default (Unity, Gnome Shell, KWin...), which, because of the awful state of X11 and the graphical stack, heavily drains a good share of FPS away in 3D apps. Hopefully Wayland will improve some things on this side but we're not there yet...

[kmdk]

Originally Posted by Kyrottimus

"Performs" is a very broad term. If you're talking raw FPS, that's one thing, though anything past 65 or 70fps usually goes beyond the refresh rate of the monitor (and the human eye) and I doubt anyone will notice anything past that.



For me, I'll sacrifice FPS for a more responsive game (keyboard/mouse inputs having less delay). And on my current computer, having tried windows (several times) vs linux, I only see about a 5-10fps increase and IMO the sluggishness of the controls on windows (and the random crashes) just simply isn't worth it.

Agree with fps and human eyes.
At least for me i dont care how many fps are showed if game does not flickr when i turn camera.
Thats the issue that i have with my systems even show lets say 80 fps ..game is not smooth ,and camera flickr.
Thats horible for gameplay when you try to rotate and clik someone and in next frame just flickr instead of 30 degree to 80 degree,and you try to rotate camera back to target and instead of 50 degree jump/flickr again to 80 degree.
Thats the point refresh and rotate camera smooth ,at least for me is horible ,many time i die just because camera jumps instead of turn around smooth.
But your argument with 70-80 fps and human eye is correct one..now the question ,are the fps showed in the game correct or fake ?....
And thats the main issue on my systems ,OpenGL just flickr ,directx runs smooth.
I dont care about OS because i am a cross-platformer ,from 8 years i use linux,os x,and windows ,my issue is about how game runs in a certain coding.

[DuoMaxwell]

Originally Posted by kmdk

And thats the main issue on my systems ,OpenGL just flickr ,directx runs smooth.

Ever heard of Sync to vBlank? Turn on vBlank, it will cap your framerate at your montor's refreshrate removing the flicker as it tels the card to only produce frames that the monitor can actally display instead of it sending parts of different frames as the monitor scans down the single frame giving you bits of 2-3 frames that the card spat out while the monitor couldn't keep up.

Originally Posted by Kyrottimus

"Performs" is a very broad term. If you're talking raw FPS, that's one thing, though anything past 65 or 70fps usually goes beyond the refresh rate of the monitor (and the human eye) and I doubt anyone will notice anything past that.

Just a side note. While you are right that past 60FPS you are beyond the ability of the current generation of VGA, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort video connection standards to feed video to the monitor the human eye can actually see far more then that, as fighter pilots have been tested at 100FPS to be able to correctly identify the model of aircraft only displayed on a single frame.

Unfortunatly the next generation of DisplayPort, which while it will handle the new 4K video resolution standard it won't do anything to increase framerate.

Not like it wil help thoguh, outside of Apple, the industry has trended toward lower resolution, 4 years ago almost every laptop had the option of a 1920x1200 screen, now most come with 1366x768 as the only option... And it's not like there wheren't laptops that even higher resolutions then that, if you knew where to look you could get laptops with 3840x2400 res. They wheren't good for games as they could only do 24FPS, but they existed and the industry is now working backwards...

[DuoMaxwell]

I say the switch isn't much more painful then switching form 98SE to XP, XP to Vista or from Win7 to Win8. No matter what the OS, even revisions of the same OS you will have problems. Those moves had tons of driver problems, often times ones that would never be fixed or could never be fixed.

Originally Posted by Shining-Scias

I'm not saying it's not worth it to try it, but the user needs to have an interest doing it, needs to be curious and willing to learn new ways, change old habits about how to use an OS because Linux is totally different, no matter how mainstream distros try to make it easier for newcomers.
Same thing about Dualboot, you won't waste hours and several gigabytes just for the sake of running one crossplatform program or messing with Compiz's wobbly windows animation effect. It needs an interest, (real) curiosity being the first. If the user just doesn't care and expects a virus-free Windows he will just ends disappointed and become a genuine anti-linux troll afterwards.

True enough, I'm different then most people since I learned MSDOS, Win 3.0, Apple IIe and Apple's System 6 in kindergarten and have built or rebuilt over a hundred computers since my first 286 when I was only 12 out of a few dead computers I had found on the street. I've used BeOS, OS/2, Solaris so I'm pretty well versed in just picking up a random OS and running with it.

Personally I've had no real trouble with Linux on most of the machines as I've been using it for a decade now and have been using it exclusively since 2006, I even use Debian on my old PPC Macs which only have the long dead OS X 10.4.11 and OS 9.2.2 on them to play the old Mac games I have which I have allot of since DRM was nonexistent on OS X for quite some time.

The biggest problems I've had are from laptops with really funky parts or the occasional printer that doesn't play nice. the GPU problems have actually mostly been with Intel which only has an OSS driver anyways, the reason is that they keep redoing their driver arch and when they do they stopped supporting GPUs that where used literally everywhere for years and where still being sold on new hardware only a year before on. which forced me to only have an 800x600 VESA driver.

The only other major ones where the odd SiS or S3 GPU or the 6 month window where the Gallium3D drivers didn't compile right on PPC which was fixed by using the 6 month old, but still supported version of the unofficial Ubuntu PPC build.

Configuration of the Opensource Gallium3D drivers for AMD/ATI or Nvidia on Ubuntu was as hard as adding the Xorg-Edgers "crack-pushers" PPA off Launchpad to Synaptic > running Synaptic and picking the Edgers repo from the origins list, hitting select all and apply. I do that since I have several cards from both AMD/ATI and Nvidia, never had a problem with system stability with it either. the OSS drivers now support OpenGL 3.0 and the most of the rest of the .1.2and .3 revisions with the last few pieces for 3.3 falling into place in the next few months. OpenGL4 will be more problematic as to claim full compatibility some features may not be able to be included in standard distros for fear of lawsuits on a few patent encumbered bits.

The Nvidia blob has actually gotten worse in recent years, taking quite some time to get Tesla GPUs supported while video playback is still an issue for the AMD blob has improved quite a bit since they do have a month to month release cycle. I'll stil stick with the OSS Gallium3D drivers though.

Originally Posted by Shining-Scias

Yes. But you can have bloated Linux environments aswell.
Example : now most of mainstream distros always have a Desktop Compositor enabled by default (Unity, Gnome Shell, KWin...), which, because of the awful state of X11 and the graphical stack, heavily drains a good share of FPS away in 3D apps. Hopefully Wayland will improve some things on this side but we're not there yet...

Never hear of Mate, LXDE, XFCE, Trinity? They all get the job done without sacraficing any much or any functionality. Just because the distro has decided to use a craptacular DE like Unity, Plasma Active or Gnome-Shell doens't mean you can't swap it out in under 5 mins for something that is lean and mean requiring no more then a logout. Not even a reboot.

[kmdk]

Originally Posted by DuoMaxwell

Ever heard of Sync to vBlank? Turn on vBlank, it will cap your framerate at your montor's refreshrate removing the flicker as it tels the card to only produce frames that the monitor can actally display instead of it sending parts of different frames as the monitor scans down the single frame giving you bits of 2-3 frames that the card spat out while the monitor couldn't keep up.

Yes,i heard and does not work.
Now from a usual player perspective:

1.)Game worked fine before

2.)With other games as Assassins Creed II ,StarWars or Batman all of them are in OpenGl because i play them on mac ,i have no issue of rendering(i know they are offline games but no issue with rendering world details even on my macpro everything is at hight)

3.)Why this does not happens with DirectX ?

4.)Why shall as player to try to twick my pc to make a game to work and not works in natural habitat ?

Technicaly ,sound true that you say there but ,as player i have no time to stay and search solutions for this.I report them and i expect that programers to fix they own issue because for this they are payed.

Anyway ,this issues come out of the box when make a cross-platform game.

Before,long time a go when i was beginer in linux was cool to compile vga drivers,to compile thinks around and make them work faster and better.
Now i hate them ,i have no time to waste with compile and fix thinks around,i like box delivered think such as rpm or deb.

Now i am a lazy guy ,i like to make scripts,that why i like os x and linux,when i need i make a script that will make lots of my job.

Tryng many Linux distributions ,found out how game work and different build of them:

-Fedora ,best network protocol ,but need it to compile vga drivers.
-Debian good network protocol and compiled vga drivers worked cool.
-Ubuntu ,horrible network protocol ,even comes from debian ,seems think or some daemons stuck think in network card,vga drivers out of the box was good and runs smooths.
-Mandriva very good support for VGA drivers,tons of kernel builds with specific vga drivers and has support even for very old ati vga drivers ,good enaught network protocol since it use redhat/fedora one.