On Windows machines, I imagine that it is difficult for an organization to survey the arena that is the foundation for the activity, hard to detect any software cheats. That would be an obstacle for those who want to make advances for e-sports and make the movement grow. Would Linux solve any critical problems that hinder e-sport's rampage? Should e-sports advocates take a serious look at Linux?
Maybe, it partly depends on the game developers though, as not all e-sports games run natively on Linux (League of Legends), however games such as CS:GO and Dota 2 basically run the same on Windows/Linux, at least I haven't noticed a difference when I play them on Linux, but attempting to get players/e-sports promoters to switch from Windows to Linux would likely to very hard as the benefits in doing so would be unclear to them and may even cause problems (e-sports players generally do not like change as it could mess with their performance).
I'm an esports player, if you want to call it that. I treat every game as competition. I play league in linux too, no problems (normally, a recent gpu driver update kind of broke it for me but all before this one update it was fine). On my side League probably runs better in linux than it does in windows. Lately in windows I have had a lot of graphical issues; in linux those never seem to occur. There are other reasons I would want to play in linux instead.
For one.... It's linux. Thats freaking sweet. In some cases League will even let me integrate the game as part of me DE so I can watch hardware temps and usage meters. For another wine doesn't actually run DirectX from what I have been able to tell, and if it is then linux is handling DX9 a lot better than Windows 10 will ever be able to on my machine. It always looked like it was going through OpenGL, but again I'm not sure. In any case, because of that I get a pretty good FPS bump at about 20FPS more (averaging at 160-175 FPS from the normal 140).
The other reason I would use linux is swap. I have an SSD boot drive and the swap file is stored on it. This is also onone of the best SATA lines on the board with Hypertransport enabled (does a little better at speeds, not as fast as ram though). If my ram ever fills up (12 GB not likely) I would have 7 more gigs of "ram" waiting. My machine is set.
Yeah, there are endless reasons to use linux for E-Sports, no one is looking at them though because windows is waving it's butt at them.
I say No.
Reason I say this is because in the past I have witnessed Linux halt on multiplayer games for people plenty of times. One time a whole table of them within a couple hours.
It's a good alternative platform, but when Linux literally decides to halt it's processes for whatever reason, the easiest course of action is to format the partition....and in a worst case scenario depending on the distro, a full format of the entire drive (early arch adopters understand what I am talking about).
In my opinion, not yet. Linux GPU drivers still have a long way to go, blame AMD and NVIDIA.
So what does it boil down to? If there is nothing inherently wrong with Linux in this regard, is perhaps the problem the lack of good drivers and cant that be fixed if only hardware manufacturers see to it?
So, if only there was a good driver support you think it shold be fine? I agree with you that the hardware manufacturers play a importent role in this regard and Ill do my best to vote with my wallet:) Also, this migth be where steam OS can change the game.
Maybe it's true that people in general are unwilling to change a system that works. What I wondered was rather which system had the potential to work best, no matter the current situation with driver support and games available. However, I see your point.
Let's hope that steamOS change the trend and makes Linux an alternative for those who are not willing to cross the barrier that exists today!
What kernal would you recomend for gaming (Im fairly new to Linux)?
Good driver support would be a massive first step. Developers leveraging this support would be an even bigger second step.
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I'm excited for the new AMDGPU driver that is coming in on kernel 4. We'll not have to deal with the bullshit FGLRX gives us :P
Well theres no "Gaming Kernel". Thats sort of silly. The big question one would need to ask themselves, after doing a lot of research ind you, is do I want bleeding edge, or do I want the Long Term Support (LTS)...
I have old hardware. It's cheaper, gets better with each upgrade, and I'm happy with it. My phenom can be a pain in the ass so personally I want to have the newest kernel for the newest microcode, on top of the KVM features and better versions of SystemD. For a person starting out they could / you could do either one with ubuntu, sort of....
I'd love to be able to install Antergos and have all the stuff I love about arch already wrapped up for my desktop. But I have ubuntu for now until that fixes itself. I have the LTS kernel this time so my system freezes every once in a while, but that's my hardware's fault.
Until you got used to how linux worked I would go with LTS for anything. Start in ubntu, learn what you want to learn, move up from there.
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In my opinion, Ubuntu LTS is the best thing for stuff just working either out of the box, or having detailed instructions on how to get just about anything working on the net. It's a double edged sword though, because being that well supported means having software and drivers that's pretty far behind Arch or another bleeding edge distro.
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Okay, I have to say this.... Is watching porn online an e-sport? lol
Linux: The number 1 OS for porn.
I got like 20 fps in dota 2 with my 750K + 7850 under linux. maybe it's better now, been about a year I think.
@astor
Otherwise, possibly, but anyone who wants to cheat will certainly find software that runs under linux.
Mostly it would save them having to buy windows licenses, assuming they don't also pirate windows like everyone else.
I will speak from a CS:GO standpoint since its what I play.
Driver support is necessary. For a lan setting you would need all mice to have linux driver support and it simply isn't there yet. Most of the admins at these big lans don't know shit about linux. There is only one guy in the building that knows anything command line and he is the networking guy.
The second problem is for online qualifiers all the providers would need to have clients for linux as well as windows which probably wont happen any time soon. Making a linux client costs money for the providers and I highly doubt it will bring new paying customers. Yes some of the current customers like me would gladly switch to linux on our gaming machines but they wont make more revenue so its a waste of time and money for them.
I don't think you read what I wrote. Linux was the issue in the example I gave. Drivers were not the issue. If people have to completely reformat their entire drive because their partitions are not recognized it has nothing to do with drivers, and would have everything to do with stability of the operating system when it was running.
:-) Ok. So do you mean that it is a fact for all Linux distros?
I haven't used or even looked at "all" the distros for Linux. There's too many to even count. One could pop up tomorrow.
The fact is, is that Linux in itself is a very temperamental type of OS. If there is one hiccup with your install, consider a reformat...don't even bother diagnosing it. It's been the norm with Linux for years. That's why there is so much NAS talk lately and backing up.