Preferred OS

[Tulsa299]

What D'yall think of the difference in operating systems? Like most i use windows 7. I've heard certain linux distros' are good for gaming, I want to try skyrim on unbuntu.

 

What's your experience with this?

[Werne]

Well, I play games on Linux (Ubuntu 12.04.1) and have been using various Linux distributions for quite a while now. While it's not exactly a gaming platform (not many native games), it can run a lot of Windows games under Wine. Wine and PlayOnLinux have been quite good recently, they can get a lot of Windows programs running (not NMM though).

 

There are downsides to playing on Linux though, the first one is the fact that AMD dropped Linux driver support for 3xxx/4xxx/5xxx series cards, the open-source Radeon driver is not good enough to support gaming (not so good 3D support). There are Arch patches though (up to kernel 3.9 and Catalyst 13.1) and the 3.2 kernel still supports AMD drivers up to Catalyst 12.8 for all cards.

 

Then you have the fact that Wine, unless used along with PlayOnLinux, needs to be set up through the Terminal (command line interface), a lot of things get done through CLI on Linux. Not complicated but some people think it is.

 

When it comes to performance, it's pretty much the same thing, at least to me. Some games tend to have lower framerate (Age of Empires 3, -4 FPS) and some tend to have higher framerate (Oblivion, +7 FPS), but those FPS differences are rare and that's on a Radeon 4350 card which sucks badly, higher-end card probably won't have any FPS difference.

 

And the upside is, graphics card overclocking is better (at least when it comes to AMD). On Windows, Catalyst locked my max GPU clock to 650 and Memory clock to 450, there are no clock limits on Linux (same driver version, 13.1). And Linux can take higher CPU clock frequency, on my PC Win7 would go BSOD on 2.73GHz while Linux works perfectly on 3.0GHz, kernel panic if over 3.07GHz though. Not to mention that you don't have to pay 200$ for it (that means a lot to someone like me who doesn't have much money).

 

When it comes to general use, it can be simpler or far more complicated than Windows, depends on DE. Depending on distro, Linux can be a lot or a bit more responsive than Windows. Viruses for Linux are, well, I haven't found any in the past 10 years but I'm not saying there aren't any. Installing/removing software is much easier, no need to look around on the internet (Software center, type the name and click install). You are not limited to one desktop look, there are plenty of those (somewhere around 50 I think, and that's without themes). There are a lot of other things as well but that would take a lifetime to write.

 

If you want to try it out, I'd advise to make a dual-boot with Linux, that way if you like it you can keep it and if you don't, you can remove it, Windows will stay where it was in the first place. And please, if you decide to install Linux, do read up on it before trying, a lot of problems with Linux, and with installing it, are caused by not reading instructions.

Edited July 12, 2013 by Werne

[Tulsa299]

Interesting, right now it doesn't sound like a good option for me, I'm stuck with a radeon 4200 on an acer laptop, so I can feel your money woes.

It would be fun though, since I started modding skyrim I've had more fun troubleshooting than actually playing the game, I've use unbuntu before, I still have a lot to learn about it though. Sorry to go off topic but could you reccomend me a decent driver? I've tried a few i was think maybe 12.3 have you had any experience with that. And thanks for the insightful info

[Werne]

Graphics driver for which OS? Doesn't matter, I'll just explain for both.

 

When it comes to graphics drivers for Linux, depends on the distro, I prefer Catalyst 13.1 on Debian Wheezy, Catalyst 12.8 on Ubuntu 12.04.1 and open-source on Arch Linux. If you don't play games on Linux, open-source is the best choice.

 

For Ubuntu 12.04 (provided that it uses 3.2 that's compatible with your card, meaning 12.04/12.04.1 or 12.04.2 with 3.2 linux-image package and older Xorg), see here.

 

For Linux =<3.2 up to 3.8 there's a pre-packaged driver here on Debian forums, or you can get Arch patches from AUR and install them before installing the driver from AMD site. Install process differs from distro to distro so some tweaking is needed.

 

I currently use Arch which has decent open-source Radeon drivers, it plays games like Age of Mythology, even Age of Empires III on my card, but the driver needs to be tweaked for performance by editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-radeon.conf, no overclocking unfortunately. Kernel on Arch gets upgraded so fast it often breaks proprietary drivers so open-source is the best way to go. I heard the new drivers that will come with Linux 3.11 are much better (3.11 will be used on Ubuntu Saucy, or is it 3.10, not sure).

 

Most Gamebryo games (Fallout and TES series for example) work perfectly fine under Wine/PlayOnLinux, it's just that proprietary drivers for old cards are a bit problematic to install, with newer cards there are no problems.

 

 

 

On Windows I always just got the latest driver since most were usually buggy on my PC and newer versions solved a lot of problems. Older drivers (I think Catalyst 12.8 and older or 12.6 and older) don't support Skyrim, for example, it can work fine but it can be utterly unstable or not be able to start at all, same goes for Linux driver versions. As I recall, 13.1 is the latest AMD driver for 4000 series cards on Windows but at least 4000 series are still supported, only Linux support was dropped.

 

I don't have Windows anymore (Windows-free for 6 months now) so I don't know much more about it.

 

By the way...

since I started modding skyrim I've had more fun troubleshooting than actually playing the game

That sounds familiar. It's the reason I started making mods, I like the challenge and I much more prefer fiddling with something than actually using it. Also the reason I opted for using more and more complicated Linux distros, Windows doesn't challenge me (as in, at all).

 

And I swear, every game Bethesda releases has more bugs than the previous. Maybe Fallout 4 and TES VI will have a CTD keyboard shortcut, crash on demand, along with random CTDs for fun every now and then. ;D

[Tulsa299]

ive got 13.1 installed right now its thrown up a few hdmi problem, i put a plaster on it... i nearly fried my gpu tryna overclock it im gonna leave anymore tweakage unti i get a new rig

 

i want to try a mod for myself, I've got the creation kit, i'd like to hit on something massive and immersive. It would be great if i could build a whole new skyrim from it foundations (no quests n so on) but that would be a huge project and i haven't even fired up the creation kit yet, but oh a man can dream. Out of curiosity what mods have you done?