On the Fence: Linux for Programming and Gaming

Hello. I'm on the fence about switching to Linux and loading it on my new pc. Most of the games I want to play are supported on Linux, but, some of threads I've seen say that there is a massive performance hit to games. Is this true? I don't have the strongest PC. All non Linux support games on windows compatible with Wine and PlayOnLinux? Also, are there any good development tools on Linux?

Some games performs better on Linux than Windows (for example those based on the Source engine). But it really depends on how well coded and optimized the linux port is. What are the specs of your PC and what games would you like to play?
If you want to check how a game runs on wine, you can search it on WineHQ data base

Linux has really good dev tools, what kind of programming language you want to use?

I can't speak for many games, since I don't play many at all, but all the ones I've played on Linux have been as good or better in speed than their Windows versions.

As far as development tools, I think there's plenty. I can tell you for a fact there's plenty for C++ and web stuff, as well as Python, but I can't speak for any other languages since those are the only ones I've messed about with.

If you're "on the fence", I'd do what I did: dual boot Ubuntu GNOME and Windows. I have Ubuntu GNOME and Windows 7 on my laptop, and I love the combo! I have Ubuntu set up to mount my Windows partition, and my Documents/Music/Pictures/Videos folders in Ubuntu are symbolic links to the libraries in Windows 7. Translation: all my crap is there across both OSes!

My specs are:
i3 3240 (Stock cooler) , P8Z68 V-LE motherboard, R9 270x, 550w antec base plus, and 8gb ddr3 ram.
The games I want to play are Garry's Mod, Half life 1+2, CS:GO, Citites Skylines, Goat Simulator+Goat Z, Fallout New Vegas, Sid Meier's Civilization V, Mass Effect series, GTA V, Life is Strange,and Bioshock Infinite.
I know that some of them have Linux ports, but some don't. The languages I want to code for are Python, Ruby, C++, C#, and Java.

Most of those games should work fine. They natively support linux or work on wine, I don't know about GTAV tho, it doesn't work with wine

Regarding those programming languages they all have dev tools on Linux. To use C# you have to download Mono tho. You can find more about the Mono project here, here and here.

You may want to dual boot it, if you want to play some unsupported games or test how the performance of some games are. Just my two cents. :)

Thank you so much. The PC community is so nice and helpful.

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You're welcome ;-)

I have the same graphics card. The open source drivers work Really well. Ive tested two games on your list with it, cities skylines and civ 5. They run perfectly.

I should point out, they run perfectly on updated drivers, i.e. i ran them on Linux 4.0.2 and the latest mesa and xorg. With the open drivers you tend to find vast improvements with only a few version changes especially recently with AMD.

The catalyst proprietary drivers also work well, and will work better with a number of other games. but doesnt always support the latest releases of supporting packages (Linux, mesa, xorg, etc) it usually drags behind by one version.

That said, the open source drivers are the way to go if you find you can play all your games on it. You may or may not see differences in performance with certain games though using the open drivers, as they are not complete, and are missing features.

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Apart from that ill give the same advice i give everyone who switches over. Remember that you've used windows for [insert number of years :P ]. GNU/Linux is a new OS, and with it you might have to learn new ways of doing things, if you like computers, take it as a challenge its always good to learn new things and having experience with GNU/Linux is good for your future if you are looking for a career in tech.

Keep in mind as well, that your computer was bought initially for windows, sometimes this includes crap hardware that moves hardware functions to software which relies on bloated windows drivers to even function. luckily your smart and got a decent ASUS motherboard which has very nice Intel hardware like Intel NICs which have excelent support on Linux like most drivers. (anyone using killer NICs.. learn for next time, killer NICs are not nice.)

Cool. What is an intel nic? Also, does it matter what version of Linux I use?

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An Intel NIC is the Network Interface Card (NIC). Your Ethernet controller. Intel are generally the better make of NICs out there.

It doesnt matter to much which version of Linux you use, keep in mind when i say version of Linux im referring to the kernel. Most distros are on 4.0.* which is pretty much the latest. You find that especially in the graphics area the newer the kernel the better support there is.

An example, the new Lenovo thinkpads have a new touchpad which was a bit flaky on GNU/Linux distros and didnt work very well, the latest kernel 4.0.3/4.0.5 and 4.1 fixed those problems. Same with the new Dell XPS lapatop

Give it a go. What is the worst that can happen? You may realize Linux isn't your cup of tea but what ever just put what ever OS you want over it.

At the very least you expand your horizons and learn something new.

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That would be the bleeding edge distros. The bulk of distros are actually on "stable" i.e. older kernels. Latest "unstable" Ubuntu is 3.19, for example. LTS/Debian stable is 3.16. If you want the latest kernel you need to run one of the bleeding edge like the latest Fedora, Arch or something. Not for a beginner I would say, but I pretty much always recommend Arch to people who really want to learn the nuts and bolts of linux. If you're a "just work" person then ubuntu or something similar would be a good idea.

But yes, the open source driver especially for AMD have improved dramatically and probably will improve more in the coming years. Nvidia couldn't care less about linux, locking us out of features etc.

About games not on linux, it is mostly old ones that work in wine/playonlinux. Wine has good DriectX9 support. Dx11 not so much, if at all. So don't count on never games that don't have a linux version to work. That said, more and more games get linux versions. I was very pleasantly surprised when a couple of years old games are getting a big update that includes linux support. Like Shadow Warrior 2013. Devolver Digital freaking rocks as a publisher.

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Personally I'm sick and tired of the bugs and problems I have with windows. I'm a system admin, I've use windows since the DOS days and they still fuck it up on a regular basis. The other week my gaming machine at home crapped out. No idea what really happened, some games would just not run anymore, got really silly error messages. SFC /SCANNOW did find corrutpion, but could not fix it. DISM /CheckHealth would of course find errors and tell me they where possible to fix. Buut /RestoreHealth would give me arbitrary errors every time. Only way was a Refresh (practically a reinstall). I never have these kind of problems in linux. Sure I have problems, but not the kind that fucks up my system and is impossible to fix. Dammit MS. Sorry for the rant.

Linux is THE programming environment that you want to use. Everything that you need is easily accessible, there is almost a limitless amount of free books and tutorials, you can look at the source code of every application (you learn a lot by looking at other people's code), and most importantly, you can freely contribute to the said applications with your own code.

Windows is only (somewhat) good for gaming, but only because there are still games on Windows that don't work on linux. That's about the only reason I would ever consider using Windows these days.

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I was under the impression the latest Ubuntu was on 4.*, its really surprising if its not. That said your right the more "stable" distros if you can call them that tend to lag behind and when it comes to the kernel sometimes considerably. A number of distros has testing repos though that tend to be very stable as well which usualy include the newer Linux kernel versions.

I think theres a gap in that recent games (dx11) dont work well in wine and missed the linux transmission, newer games are coming out on GNU/Linux as well, a lot of engines now support GNU/Linux so theres no excuse, and older games work well under wine or dosbox for the most part.

15.04 officially is on 3.19 but there are ubuntu kernel kernel packages for 4.0 already i believe.