For those still not convinced, the number of windows games that actually run faster in linux+wine than in windows, is expanding. With wine 1.7.1, this will be the case for quite a few games, and this is only the begin of the optimisation process of wine for windows games, and it already shows a 50 to 100 % increase in framerate.
So instead of buying an expensive new graphics card or processor, that will give maybe a 10-15 % increase in speed, maybe go for a completely free linux install to play windows games on.
1. C++ executables run a hell of a lot faster in linux than in windows, like night and day, the reason why this is has to do with the open source compilers that linux uses and the much better quality open source code of linux;
2. linux uses the hardware much more efficiently, it does load distribution as standard, and only uses resources for the stuff that the user actually needs, not for gigabyte of behind your back stuff;
3. DirectX is quite the dysmally bugladen fuckup we're used to from closed source software houses, the abstraction layer that wine is, actually sets more and more things straight, so that it can run faster and with less problems;
4. Wine can reiterate the workload of the game in a more efficient way, and this is being improved on all the time as the closed source software slowly gives up it's dark secrets, so that the hardware can be used optimally to run all the thinsg the game needs, whereas it runs more than suboptimally on windows, that needs ever larger and more expensive hardware to make the whole thing happen;
Yup, but some games were already faster on linux than on windows before the patches, and this is only the beginning, wine 1.7.1 is just a dev release for the upcoming wine 18 in a few weeks.
I've patched it and tested it out with some games, I get 10-30 % better framerate in linux+wine than windows on the same hardware on several FPS games, and the coolest thing is, that the windows errors (vertex index buffer errors and stuff) are not there anymore, it's actually perfectly stable.
The way wine has been accelerating in development lately, things will go very fast now, and Valve can falsify stats as much as they want, if even windows games run faster on linux than on windows, gamestudios will develop natively for linux instead of windows, and at that point, games will run multiple times faster, because just by switching to openGL instead of D3D and native linux code (which takes much less time to develop and thus is much cheaper to develop than windows games, reference example, just one of many: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/), it's game over for windows as gaming platform, and that can happen fast.
What kind of games, aren't most PC games not compatible with linux, like can you run bf3, crysis 3 metro last light black list etc on linux. I just know nothing about Linux so that's why I'm asking, and since it doesn't have directx doesn't that mean all those graphical features wouldn't be there.
Wine translates D3D calls to faster openGL calls. Metro LL is coming natively for linux, because it's one of those games that doesn't even perform well on a GTX Titan in Windows on highest settings, but it runs perfectly fine on an APU in linux. That's the whole thing. The new CryEngine is being developed natively for linux, and it will be just like Metro Last Light in Windows, but it will find the performance for next-gen graphics and game dynamics that it needs in linux. In comparison to a linux install running on a cheap APU, an expensive Titan-based Windows computer is just a limited console, that's just the way it is, because Windows is the problem, not the hardware, and that problem has become so big now, that people keep buying CoD and other DX9 games instead of buying new Crysis games, because most people don't buy a new 1000 USD graphics card every 6 months, and Crysis has had to deal with this for a long time, which is why Crysis2 was already lighter than Crysis 1 and Warhead, and why they are developing their new CryEngine natively for linux, because they want to be able to sell their innovation, instead of being held back by the handicapped software console that Windows is.
So yes you can run windows games in linux, and as wine evolves those will run faster in linux than in windows, but on the other hand, if game studios want to really unlock the performance needed for innovation in gaming experience, they will develop natively for linux, and save money doing it because developing for OpenGL takes a lot less time than developing for DirectX, because OpenGL is open source, much higher quality software, and doesn't require as much trickery and debugging. Everybody wins. There will always be sceptics, and the brainwashing power of cuttroath marketing tactics is strong, but in the end, you can't argue with the logical and self-evident.
It should be in the repos of your favorite linux distro. In linux you don't download stuff from websites like in windows, you only use the software center/package manager to install software from trusted sources. Everything is already there, and installs in seconds. Forget the windows methods, linux is a different system.
Because closed source is so fragmented and all over the place and has only specific hardware compatibility, most games will not be optimised by default, and you'll need specific settings to get good performance. Open Source is not as fragmented as closed source, because everyone uses the open source standards that are transparant for everyone and all the best code is always contributed to those, so everything works on everything, and there is an awesome choice for à la carte customisation. You don't have to buy new stuff or do things a certain way like on fragmented closed source systems, everything is always possible.
The best source for those settings is to automatically let wine apply them by installing wine-tricks also. But the really best settings can be found on numerous linux gamer forums, that's where you get the settings for the best performance.
Well, there are no bugs in linux or wine, but there are so many bugs in closed source games and windows' directx system that it sometimes takes a bit of tweaking. Best is to consult linux gamer forums to get the best settings.
I remember it having some pretty bad issues with later .NET versions and XNA, along with some adobe stuff like Air, which made league of legends unplayable.