Sorry, yeah. Bookworm. I’m terrible at remembering codenames.

Schedulers really don’t matter much for gaming workloads.

sched_ext is a bit more interesting. It’s not a scheduler with a new set of knobs to turn, but actually more of a BPF-powered scheduler framework. Being able to swap out the scheduler depending on the game’s needs could be a huge win, and there’s already a couple of schedulers like LAVD (phoronix article) that are designed for improving the Linux gaming experience.

Tweaking is usually not worth it. The most I really do is up sending like the mmap limit if a game is struggling.

Trying to squeeze every bit of performance out, yeah. I don’t want to waste my time trying to get a 1 FPS improvement either.

My concerns with tweaking are more along the lines of things like this happening. User reads about how to get better FPS, sees that some system package is really old, then tries to replace it with a newer one without knowing the risks.

That guy actually asked around and was convinced to just use Flatpak instead. But, suppose they didn’t ask around and instead followed a guide or YouTube video, breaking something in the process. The typical self-proclaimed “gamer” isn’t any more technologically savy than your average consumer, and probably isn’t going to spend the time learning how to fix their mistakes. It’s a more likely that they are just going to walk away with the impression that Linux sucks, and tell everyone else about how bad it was. And unfortunately, first impressions matter a lot when convincing other people to try things like ditching Windows for Linux. Avoiding stable distros is mitigation for that. If the package is already up to date or doesn’t require going off the happy path to update, it leads to less bad choices.

My overall perspective is that if you give gamers a gift-wrapped install that immediately just works, they won’t have a reason to improve or fix things until they’re actually ready to. If 19/20 of their games work out of the box, they’ll play those 19 games until they find the courage to try and learn how to make game #20 work. Or, maybe someone else will fix it for them first.

If 0 out of 20 games work and they need to follow a guide telling them to run various commands to install stuff and get started, they’re going to be overconfident and underprepared when they step outside of the guardrails and do at-your-own-risk stuff they find online.

Either you’ll have OS questions, in which case the generic help is ideal, or you’ll have game specific issues, in which case most distros will be extremely similar (e.g. proton db for game specific workarounds).

I meant game-specific issues, yeah.

Even with ProtonDB, I don’t think the typical coming-from-Windows gamer is going to end up having a simple experience.

With Windows, practically everyone is running the same system software. If some game is broken, they Google “windows 11 Cyberpunk crash” and get a bunch of suggestions and solutions relevant to them. I don’t like Windows, but it does have the fact that there’s a massive community of gamers running the same “distro” (or in this case, Windows version) going for it.

Even with ProtonDB, you have a bunch of people running different distros, different graphics driver implementations for a single graphics card vendor, and just a bunch of software fragmentation… A stable distro would probably be fine for newcomers if was tailored for gaming and had a critical mass of users, I’m sure. But in the current landscape, and for the reasons I listed in rant above, I simply don’t think it would be a good idea to put someone on a stable distro when they’re going to be surrounded with solutions from people on other distros describing how they fixed the problem by updating something or another.

For people coming to Linux, I’ll usually recommend sticking with Steam verified or playable games as well, since those should largely just work.

Absolutely. If it Just Works™, it leads to a better first impressions.

I see your point, but i don’t really agree that it doesn’t benefit gamers. In the 10 versions of kernels released since Bullseye released, we’ve seen improvements like the EEVDF allocator, sched_ext, the beginnings of ntsync, and an optimization to MDS mitigations for Intel processors. In a gaming-oriented distro, these would (ideally) be configured out of the box for the best gaming experience. Using a stable LTS distro, in contrast, would require manual tweaking and experimentation to achieve the same result.

But my understanding is that people (esp gamers) get annoyed more by stuff changing than missing out on new stuff.

They get annoyed when stuff visibly changes, like the desktop UI, userspace GUI programs, or noticable performance regressions.

Anecdotally, I have rarely seen the typical gamer complaining about or even noticing when something changes in technical stuff that they aren’t directly interacting with. Nintendo actually does a good job creating situations where you can observe that behavior, funnily enough. When they release a new console with a different UI, non-casual gamers vocally bitch about it being worse than the previous generation. But when it comes to updates, the complaints are pretty much all about how it only changes the bad word list, doesn’t have x in 2024, or how every update is just more “stability.” Meanwhile, they have successfully done major rewrites and changes behind the scenes without anyone but the CFW and modding scene actually noticing it.

The whole point of recommending a stable distro is to give the best chance of the person finding the help they need, as well as things not breaking randomly, and you get that with stable release distros.

I agree that a stable distro will be more stable, but I don’t agree that a stable distro is the best chance to get them help as a gaming newcomer. For newcomers in general, sure. But for gaming, it would be better to direct them towards a distro primarily focused on gaming, where they’ll have a likeminded community. A popular stable distro will have more community resources available overall, but most of that is just going to end up becoming noise that makes it harder for them to find a solution for game-related problems.

It’s not so much the lack of a rapid update cycle as much as it’s the pinned kernel version alongside the years-long pace of Debian’s stable upgrade cycle.

That would be fine if the kernel didn’t see much improvement over ~2 years of development, but there’s constantly new stuff being added or optimized with every kernel release. It’s just not much of a friendly introduction to Linux gaming for a newcomer to either have to pick between missing out on recent improvements, or diving into the intimidating realm of fiddling with packages and backported kernels—especially if they’re not coming from a tech savvy background.

Also, kernel upgrades. Unless the user knows about and specifically opts to use Debian backports, they’re going to be on the same kernel version until the next stable Debian release. It’s not the end of the world to leave performance on the table, but some people are picky about getting their money out of their hardware.

Using backports and upgrading to a newer kernel is fine for someone familiar with Linux and confident enough to tinker and make at-your-own-risk changes. Having to do that can be offputting for newcomers, coming across as intimidating or unnecessarily complicated.

I agree with your sentiment, but I disagree with your conclusion of using any major distro. If you’ve ever had to fix a corrupted package manager database caused by an in-place distro upgrade or had to install third-party package repositories to get access to up-to-date software, you’ll understand where I’m coming from.

Beginners should start with something that either has bells and whistles included for out-of-the-box gaming, or comes with an easy way to un-fuck itself when you end up breaking something. It doesn’t need to be Nix, but it probably shouldn’t be Debian (which has a slow release cadence) or Ubuntu (because fuck Canonical and their “my way or the highway” approach to doing desktop OSes).

And at the same time, they’re using Android phones…

I guess, yeah. I will say, though: it feels morally wrong to acknowledge their existence as anything other than a anti-consumer cashgrab, and thus give them legitimacy as a competitor to Steam, GOG, and Itch.

I’m not sure which part of that guys comment suggests anything other other than “fuck epic,” but here’s a short and sweet list:

• Designing a service for their customers instead of relying on paid exclusivity to encourage social pressure or FOMO
• Halfway decent customer support
• Unreal Engine 5’s performance
• Keeping their old of games accessible
• Not scamming kids out of virtual money

The approved competitor to a monopoly is… *checks notes* a wannabe monopoly that’s trying to buy their way into the position by providing less for the customer and instead bribing the publishers for exclusivity?

No, thanks. I would rather stick with the existing monopoly than reward Epic’s anticompetitive and anti-consumer bullshit.

But how would we get through to normie 12-year-olds who just want to play Valorant and not have their face constantly rubbed in the dirt by “hackers”?

I think it would be good for them to be told the truth: you aren’t being killed by hackers, you just suck.

Fair point with neither being publicly traded. I should have been more clear on that.

Unreal the engine, or the game series? From the perspective of a consumer, I don’t think either of them seem to be in good shape these days, unfortunately.

Er… Carmarck is in Id. Epic’s founder and CEO is Tim Sweeney.

“Fucking hypocrite” and “Epic Games”. Never have any other set of 4 words fit together so perfectly.

“Making yourself suffer” by boycotting Steam.

It goes against every fiber of my being to not utterly despise a multi-billion dollar corporation, but I just don’t have the energy that I used to. I have to pick the battles I want to fight, and they haven’t done enough to make it worth it for me to do that.

Some perspective from someone vocally against Epic:

They entered the market and tried to get their foot in the door not by providing a better service or experience to the consumers, but by being underhanded and anticompetitive while accusing their competition of being underhanded and anticompetitive. Add on that with the fact that their CEO lacks any sort of humility and integrity, and I simply do not trust them to give a single shit about me as a customer. If they achieved their goals, I’m confident that they would leverage their position to extract value out of me immediately—be it through ads, increased prices, or selling my data to third parties. I don’t want to support that by giving them any of money.

While I don’t think Valve is my friend either, they at least:

1. Have a history of doing things that provide some benefit to their users, even if its clearly out of self-interest.

2. Aren’t publicly traded.

When it turns to shit, we have the high seas.

Everything goes to shit eventually, but pre-emptively making yourself suffer is just silly. Enjoy the time you have, and vote with your wallet once they start doing anticompetitive crap like paid exclusivity deals. Until then, we might as well enjoy the fact that Valve isn’t a public company obligated to chase short term profits for shareholders.

Epic is the pro-developer storefront.

I think their historically-bad UE5 documentation and laser focus on adding features optimized for Fortnite but terrible for other uses beg to differ.

They’re the pro-shareholder storefront. Nothing more, nothing less.

Reposting my comment from another thread because it needs to be made clear:

Those mod devs are absolute assholes.

As per the decompiled code, the game will refuse to load in certain cases with the message “Upgrade your PC, the current hardware is just ridiculous.” I can understand not wanting to field support requests from extremely outdated hardware, but being condescending and not even giving players the option to try playing it…

Ubisoft and Logitech right now:

Every 3 years, and only “top of the line” if your definition means 4 generation old parts that have been refurbished.

The impressive part is that some of those games can actually run even better than on Windows.

Fun game. Controller support is a bit limited but still playable. For less than $1, I agree with OP and can absolutely recommend it.

Microsoft normally solves problems like this by abusing their monopoly and crushing their competition. In this case though, Microsoft is the underdog since Steam is the one with a much larger gaming monopoly. They’re going to have to spend billions and billions if they want to stand a chance against the Steam Deck.

Oh, they still do it regardless. There was a handheld that was supposed to release with HoloISO (SteamOS) preinstalled instead of Windows to hit a lower MSRP.

Microsoft stepped in (and probably gave them free Windows licenses) just so that wouldn’t happen.

Source:

News article from January showing the spec sheet saying “pre-installed HoloISO”.

Product website with the spec sheet saying “pre-installed Windows 11”

If I recall correctly, the “next gen update” for The Witcher 3 was UE5.

I did not recall correctly.

Monopoly is absolutely the answer. You’re not going to have anything else to entertain yourself with once the “unlimited” internet gets throttled to 25kbps after using too much of it.

10 Pbps  |
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200 Mbps | # #
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           V O
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           R H
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           O S
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*latency not pictured
**measurements taken in test environment under ideal weather conditions

I have a small local provider.

I suspect you would have a different experience if you had a larger regional provider.

Oh, I was criticizing other stores.

The offerings of Origin, UPlay, EGS, and Battle.net pale in comparison to what Steam makes available to customers. And out of those, the only one that isn’t a heaping dumpster fire is Battle.net–which actually put effort into its UX and design.

Let’s see…

• “No takesies-backsies” refund policy.
• User “reviews” are hidden and only used to serve you better ads.
• Supported platforms are Windows and Windows.
• “Join our Discord to discuss game.”
• Controller input rebinding is nonexistent; disabled people don’t matter.
• Controllers are supported… except when doing anything before the game is actually launched.
• Download strange DLLs from websites to install mods.
• Alt-tab between your game and YouTube to read guides.

And little Timmy said gaming would be better without a Steam monopowly.

Might be ported to PC after a few years.

Considering their track record with Bloodborne, I doubt it.

I’m calling it now: for Flight Simulator 2025, they’re going to pull a Windows update “energy saver” and have it stream data peer-to-peer wherever possible.

Thanks for the correction. I sometimes get those two mixed up in my memory, and it’s a really stupid problem that I need to fix.

While it’s true that they’ve been trying to stop emulators for a long time, they haven’t been able to do too much about them because of Sony v Bleem.

Modern emulators exist in a legal gray area, though, and might be violating the DMCA. The more of these assholes that pop up and get sued, the higher the likelihood that one of them refuses to settle, gets steamrolled by Nintendo, and gives them and every other console manufacturer the legal precedent that emulators are piracy/DRM-circumvention tools.

Even if you disagree with my belief that Nintendo would be less aggressive this year if people hadn’t been spotlighting emulation-based piracy and provoking them, you should be concerned about that.

Is that directed at me… or?

Either way, there’s going to be a fair bit of that here. A lot of Lemmings come to the same conclusions, but the reasons are very different and sometimes incomprehensible from an outside perspective.

You’re entitled to your own opinion, but keep in mind that it’s people like him who make corporations condemn the technology instead of the users of the technology. He’s blatantly pirating, trying to profit off of it, and taunting Nintendo to do something about it.

And what they’re doing about it is not just going after him but also the people who created the emulators, so more people like him can’t exist. Nintendo wasn’t nearly as aggressive about going after emulators until people started using them to play unreleased games, and now, in the span of a year, they took out the main developers of both major emulators.

As someone who suffers from severe motion sickness and uses emulation with framerate unlocking patches to alleviate it, these people’s actions are screwing over me and other gamers with accessibility challenges.

Agreed, but this asshole deserved it. He

• Streamed unreleased games
• Handed over prod.keys and firmware files to anyone who asked.
• Told Nintendo “I can do this all day” after being copyright striked.
• And set up a CashApp to make money from all of it.

All while using an emulator. That kind of shit makes emulation look like a tool for bad actors and pirates, which is going to ruin it for the rest of us.

While Nintendo sucks for their highly litigious nature, this guy deserves zero sympathy. Play extremely stupid games, win extremely stupid prizes.

On October 24, after unnamed platforms had shut down Keighin’s streams in response to Nintendo complaints, the gamer reportedly sent the company a letter in which he claimed to have “a thousand burner channels” to stream from and “can do this all day.”

The complaint further alleges that after Keighin’s monetized YouTube account was set to be shut down, he added a CashApp handle in order to profit from streaming Nintendo’s games.

There’s some things you just don’t do if you have any intelligence whatsoever, and making a profit by streaming dubiously-obtained unreleased games and poking the lawyer-happy hornet’s nest is one of those.

The 650 job cuts will primarily impact “corporate and supporting functions,” according to Spencer, meaning cuts to HR and marketing roles.

I was going to make a joke about HR and DEI getting the axe, but reality surpasses satire once again…

Oh, that is great. I have fond (painful) memories of I Wanna be the Guy, and this seems right up my nostalgia alley.

Quest Master. Mario Maker meets Zelda dungeons, done well. It deserves way more attention than it’s currently getting, and it’s pretty fun with huge potential despite being early access.

100%. Whatever Intel does at this point, I don’t trust it to be a fix so much as a mitigation or attempt to delay the inevitable until a few years after the warranty period.

If it’s possible for people to return their 13th/14th gen processor and trade up for a 12th gen, that would be the safest solution.