Steam for Linux

Steam for Linux

For those of you whom use Optimus/Bumblebee/Primusrun...
How is the performance compared to Windows? Itd be a shame for me to drop a bundle of money for this 765m laptop and have to suffer a % 20 reduction in frame rates, especially since desktop nvidia cards have the same performance across OSs.

Also, how do you even install this, and does it actually work? I heard native optimus from nvidia is in its infancy, primusrun is some unstable hack that works with bumblebee to go fast, and bumblebee is slow. Do you guys just give up on battery life and just run the gpu all day or do you hack together this bumblebee thing to help battery life?

Edit: is the 765m just broken on linux? Google has me believing so.
Legutóbb szerkesztette: |Pro Kittens| Medic Plz; 2013. okt. 21., 1:39
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I cannot talk about the 765m, as I have a 640m LE myself.
However, my experiences with bumblebee were mixed.

You can choose to use two different bridges, virtualgl and primus. The latter offers superb performance.
Howver, currently there seem to be some issues for some users (including me) when using a kernel newer than 3.9, so I had to downgrade. This shouldn't be a problem for Ubuntu users though, since they're not so up-to-date.
Other than that it seems to be really good. When disabling vertical sync (I find input lag worse than tearing) and using primus as bridge, the performance is high enough so I don't notice any difference.

That's not to say that there isn't any, but I honestly cannot tell.

Or to put it like this:
If a game runs on Windows, it'll run with bumblebee.
If a game barely runs on Windows, it's possible it won't run with bumblebee.

That being said, gaming on notebooks is generally ♥♥♥♥. I learned it the hard way. :(
I'd say don't buy a laptop for gaming, especially not for linux gaming.
^This a thousand times.
LOLCAT eredeti hozzászólása:
I'd say don't buy a laptop for gaming, especially not for linux gaming.

What makes laptops bad for gaming? The form factor, or the performance, or...?


|Pro Kittens| Medic Plz eredeti hozzászólása:
LOLCAT eredeti hozzászólása:
I'd say don't buy a laptop for gaming, especially not for linux gaming.

What makes laptops bad for gaming? The form factor, or the performance, or...?

He's probably not versatile enough to use a laptop.
|Pro Kittens| Medic Plz eredeti hozzászólása:
LOLCAT eredeti hozzászólása:
I'd say don't buy a laptop for gaming, especially not for linux gaming.

What makes laptops bad for gaming? The form factor, or the performance, or...?

He means it in the respect that theres no 1 to 1 preformance from desktop to laptop... Highest end laptop is still upper mid lower end ultra desktop for 2 -3 x the cost.
That's right.
As a rule of thumb, you usually pay twice the money for half the power.

Gaming-notebooks are poor gaming machines:

The experience just doesn't compare. Playing on a notebook display isn't the same as playing on a +22" monitor or a television, even if the notebooks weren't so loud while playing.

"But I can connect my notebook to my Monitor/TV!!!11!"
Sure, but it's about as mobile as a desktop then while still having less performance, making more noise and being more expensive.

"But can I play with my desktop on the go?"
No, but neither with your gaming-notebook. If you're really on the go (as in: nowhere to plug it in), it'll eat through your battery in no time. Besides that it's also easy to piss people off by turning on a jet-turbine next to them.

They only have an advantage over desktops when you're playing stationary in many different places. Then it's slightly more comfortable to just carry such a gaming notebook with you.
Let's be honest: Do you really play somewhere else every week?

Gaming-notebooks are poor notebooks:

What are the qualities that define a great notebook?
It's compact, light, doesn't run hot while staying cool and lasts long on its battery.
This is an exact list what gaming-notebooks aren't.

There are exceptional notebooks, but those aren't gaming-notebooks but premium-class business notebooks. However, these offer less performance than gaming-notebooks while being much more expensive; and those are still hot and loud though.

I'm writing this post from one such device, so I have first-hand experience. It's an awesome machine which does its job as desktop-replacement very well.
However, if I could travel back in time, I wouldn't buy it.
Instead I would get a cheap-ass notebook for all the stuff I do at the university, a decent gaming PC which would easily outperform my current notebook and, as a bonus, a headphone amplifier and the headphones I want so bad.
All of this for the same amount of money of course.
Legutóbb szerkesztette: TheSniperFan; 2013. okt. 23., 13:34
|Pro Kittens| Medic Plz eredeti hozzászólása:
LOLCAT eredeti hozzászólása:
I'd say don't buy a laptop for gaming, especially not for linux gaming.

What makes laptops bad for gaming? The form factor, or the performance, or...?
All of these, plus battery life, tiny screen, crap keyboard, slow HDD etc.

If you intend to attach a keyboard, mouse, monitor (or HDTV) and plug the rig into the power outlet, you really should ask yourself why you have a laptop in the first place.

Probably the only reason is a way of life when you're on the move all the time and spend only days at a single place. Then a gaming laptop is reasonable, but it's also unlikely that you have to live like that but have time for gaming. Who knows of course...
LOLCAT eredeti hozzászólása:
|Pro Kittens| Medic Plz eredeti hozzászólása:

What makes laptops bad for gaming? The form factor, or the performance, or...?
All of these, plus battery life, tiny screen, crap keyboard, slow HDD etc.

If you intend to attach a keyboard, mouse, monitor (or HDTV) and plug the rig into the power outlet, you really should ask yourself why you have a laptop in the first place.

Probably the only reason is a way of life when you're on the move all the time and spend only days at a single place. Then a gaming laptop is reasonable, but it's also unlikely that you have to live like that but have time for gaming. Who knows of course...

You have to follow the trend dude. :-)
I don't intend to replace my desktop with a laptop, I already know it will have lower performance, low battery life, stupid keyboard, smaller screen, super loud, etc.. What I'm asking is whether or not the performance and battery issues will be amplified by me using Linux and whether or not optimus/primusrun/bumblebee/nvidia will solve these issues and also if Windows-level performance can be achieved.

|Pro Kittens| Medic Plz eredeti hozzászólása:
I don't intend to replace my desktop with a laptop, I already know it will have lower performance, low battery life, stupid keyboard, smaller screen, super loud, etc.. What I'm asking is whether or not the performance and battery issues will be amplified by me using Linux and whether or not optimus/primusrun/bumblebee/nvidia will solve these issues and also if Windows-level performance can be achieved.


Honestly it depends on the game... SOme games work extreamly well on a laptop and desktop without much preformance diffrence between the 2... Its newer games that typically have the issue with high end laptops vs high end desktops..

Example is i have a Toshiba x70 series gameing laptop wich is a haswell i7 32 gb of ram and nvidia gtx 770m which equates to about a intel i5 desktop with a geforce gtx 670-680 desktop counterpart. Now on older games it wont matter much TF2 runs the same as it would on a desktop..

I also have a system 76 gameing laptop which pretty much the same specs as the toshiba that gets about the same preformance as it would if it was running windows so example is

Linux gameing laptop
windows gameing laptop

Given the game has the same quality software eg not bad port its going to be about the same preformance maybe a few fps better or worse under linux Even windows.

Gameing laptop vs desktop

Example is i still have a intel core 2 quad with 12 gb of ram and a nvidia geforce gtx 460 that would punish some high end laptops in the 2k range. Were talking some older hardware vs newer laptop..

Desktop vs laptop
Intel i7 laotop
8-32 gb of ram pick your poison
nvidia geforce gtx 670m

will be about the same preformance litterly as a core 2 or i5 desktop with a geforce gtx 460 1gb edtion the one with 192 bit pipeline and a little slower then the same setup with the 256bit pipeline

as far as laptops haveing slower hdd that used to be true they would use lower 5200 rpm hdds because of heat issues.. With the advent of SSD and Hybrid drives that is pretty much negated.
Legutóbb szerkesztette: JamieLinux; 2013. okt. 23., 17:19
Thanks! I was hoping to hear that nvidia linux vs windows on laptops have the same performance, since the two drivers share a lot of the same code and you can expect the same performance on desktops. Now, how is optimus handled on your system76, to achieve that kind of performance?
i have a bumble bee applicaton lets me assign the gpu to said application so when i run it it uses the nvidia gpu.. Desktop is handled by intel games are run using nvida card but compizition is still handled on the intel card... Preformance wise i tested tf2 lfd2 and a few other linux games and didnt notice any real preformance diffrences... Benchmarks were to be expected.. I tested tf2 and lfd2 on my windows 8 laptop toshiba x70 vs my system 76 and they preformanced pretty much identical....

So long as your not trying to run games though wine dont worry about the preformance.. Valve games have good ports.. Games that have bad ports example would be Serious sam 3 preform worse... THen again its windows preformance isnt much better...

as far as the laptop dont really worry to much 99 percent of the games and especaly if ur just going linux games u will be able to max out... (at least tell metro last light when the linux port comes out).... With that expect a mix of some medium some high settings ...
Legutóbb szerkesztette: JamieLinux; 2013. okt. 23., 18:05
For bumblebee, do you use optirun to run your games or primusrun?
|Pro Kittens| Medic Plz eredeti hozzászólása:
For bumblebee, do you use optirun to run your games or primusrun?

Its the bumblebee backend optirun for programs that dont work with optirun u can manually edit fr primusrun... Eather way as i said i use the backend applicaton config which i havent ran into any issues with.

on that note if your gong to get a linux based laptop use system 76 as all the parts are 100 percent complient and work with linux... So you wont have issues with bios settings hardware compatablilty and so forth.

That and the system will run you about 1000 dollars less then the same system under windows..
Legutóbb szerkesztette: JamieLinux; 2013. okt. 23., 18:12
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Közzétéve: 2013. okt. 21., 1:35
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