TF2 practically unplayable on Linux

[ᶜᵃᶠᵉNeoc]

Maybe this problem has been discussed before, but as the groups look like this

http://i.imgur.com/FZdfg.jpg

to me in Firefox, the forum is almost unusable for me. By the way: Why isn't Valve able to write a sane stylesheet for these forums?

Team Fortress 2 unfortunately is nearly unplayable for me on Linux because of some kind of lag issue. Under Windows everything works fine with Chris' FPS config, I get very good framerates and a very smooth TF2 experience.

After installing Steam for Linux (I'm not a participant in the beta), changing the Nvidia driver to the latest experimental 310, installing TF2 and configuring it exactly the same as on Windows, I tried to play some Harvest.

Measured framerates and parameters are just fine (seem to be the same as on Windows), but there is still some kind of lag which makes it impossible to react fast enough. It's as if the game is displaying the scene just a little too late to have a smooth TF2 experience. Things just happen and I get the pictures a little AFTER they happened.

So in fact TF2 is unplayable on Linux if you really want to play it. You're in no way competitive on Linux. Is this only my experience or a known issue? Because it's pretty disappointing considering the hype around Steam on Linux.

[matt]

Provide some system info: Steam > Help > System Information. Also remember that this is BETA, it's suppose to have bugs and problems, so spare us your disappointment :)

[ᶜᵃᶠᵉNeoc]

Linux gutigen o) a écrit :

Provide some system info: Steam > Help > System Information. Also remember that this is BETA, it's suppose to have bugs and problems, so spare us your disappointment :)

I already said I use an Nvidia card and have a very smooth experience on Windows. I'm able to run it on very high settings on Windows. I don't think that this is a system specific issue, I think many people experienced it, maybe even you if you play TF2. If you know anything about it you will be able to give some general advice. Else please don't instruct me or other people about how to post on these forums.

[ᶜᵃᶠᵉNeoc]

Fred a écrit :

Dr. Jekyll a écrit :

I already said I use an Nvidia card and have a very smooth experience on Windows. I'm able to run it on very high settings on Windows. I don't think that this is a system specific issue, I think many people experienced it, maybe even you if you play TF2. If you know anything about it you will be able to give some general advice. Else please don't instruct me or other people about how to post on these forums.

It was a suggestion, not an instruction. I experience the same issue as you, I can play everything fine on the highest settings on Windows, but on GNU/Linux it struggles.

But anyway, I see my suggestions are not appreciated here.

omg, I added the quote to make clear to whom it was meant... Hint: it was not you (as you could have grasped by yourself by the way).

[matt]

Dr. Jekyll a écrit :

Linux gutigen o) a écrit :

Provide some system info: Steam > Help > System Information. Also remember that this is BETA, it's suppose to have bugs and problems, so spare us your disappointment :)

I already said I use an Nvidia card and have a very smooth experience on Windows. I'm able to run it on very high settings on Windows. I don't think that this is a system specific issue, I think many people experienced it, maybe even you if you play TF2. If you know anything about it you will be able to give some general advice. Else please don't instruct me or other people about how to post on these forums.

Saying that you are using NVIDIA means nothing.
Are you on Ubuntu? If so which one, 12.04, 12.10 or perhaps 10.10? Huge difference there. Also which kernel version? From where you got your drivers, Ubuntu repos, Xswat, nvidia.com? What kind of GPU is this? Is it a laptop? If so, do you have NVIDIA optimus there? Are you using Unity, Gnome Shell, KDE, XFCE or LXDE as your desktop environment? Reason for your poor TF2 performance could lie in answer to any of above questions (and I could add few more).

Steam > Help > System Information, paste result or no one will be able to help you :)

Oh and I got same performance under Linux as I had under Windows in TF2, Ubuntu 12.10 with Unity, GTS250 - 60-300fps with no input lag of any kind at 32player server (no fps config etc).

[No-Neck]

I don't seem to be having this problem using AMD graphics. It's hard to compare because I've not played TF2 since the Orange Box came out, but I'm able to get a very respectable score considering I've been out of the FPS loop for a few years now,

I never liked Unity, it's always felt laggy to me, and there's plenty of talk online about it's poor performance and probably more so now that Steam is out. I'm running GNOME.

I had to change some settings in compizconfig-settings-manager (not installed by default) to make full screen games run properly. It wasn't really performance related but my PC is so far above the recommended specs that it shouldn't be noticeable anyway. There's plenty of talk about performance loss with compiz, and again, probably more so with Steam being released.

Might be worth a tinker.

[Toquita]

Dr. Jekyll a écrit :

Linux gutigen o) a écrit :

Provide some system info: Steam > Help > System Information. Also remember that this is BETA, it's suppose to have bugs and problems, so spare us your disappointment :)

I already said I use an Nvidia card and have a very smooth experience on Windows. I'm able to run it on very high settings on Windows. I don't think that this is a system specific issue, I think many people experienced it, maybe even you if you play TF2. If you know anything about it you will be able to give some general advice. Else please don't instruct me or other people about how to post on these forums.

Go to Help->System Information

should output like this

Processor Information:
Vendor: AuthenticAMD
Speed: 3613 Mhz
2 logical processors
2 physical processors
HyperThreading: Unsupported
FCMOV: Supported
SSE2: Supported
SSE3: Supported
SSSE3: Supported
SSE4a: Supported
SSE41: Unsupported
SSE42: Unsupported

Network Information:
Network Speed:

Operating System Version:
Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (64 bit)
Kernel Name: Linux
Kernel Version: 3.2.0-35-generic
X Server vendor: The X.Org Foundation
X Server release: 11103000

Video Card:
Driver: NVIDIA Corporation GeForce 9800 GT/PCIe/SSE2

Driver Version: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 310.14
Desktop Color Depth: 24 bits per pixel
Monitor Refresh Rate: 75 Hz
VendorID: 0x10de
DeviceID: 0x614
Number of Monitors: 1
Number of Logical Video Cards: 1
Primary Display Resolution: 1280 x 1024
Desktop Resolution: 1280 x 1024
Primary Display Size: 12,20" x 9,06" (15,20" diag)
31,0cm x 23,0cm (38,6cm diag)
Primary Bus: PCI Express 16x
Primary VRAM: 512 MB
Supported MSAA Modes: 2x 4x 8x 16x

Sound card:
Audio device: VIA VT1705

Memory:
RAM: 3954 Mb

Miscellaneous:
UI Language: English
LANG: pt_BR.UTF-8
Microphone: Not set
Total Hard Disk Space Available: 274159 Mb
Largest Free Hard Disk Block: 225974 Mb

Installed software:

Recent Failure Reports:

[scraze]

Have you guys tried different window managers yet, or fiddled with WM options such as compositing? Some of those window managers are quite large and affect your resources, so it might be a good idea to remove those factors from the equation by using a very light WM such as blackbox, just to get a grip on what conditions it takes for this to occur.

Also, I'm still not entirely clear what delay you're speaking of - apart from actual lag, everything seems smooth over here, but then I don't have a Windows install to compare to.

[Wheelgun]

Game plays great for me on 64-Fedora17 and 64-OpenSUSE12.2 using an old nVidia card.

[A Dude Named Arms]

I don't want to start a flame war but I had the same problem with my nvidia card under Windows 7! I suspect what you are referring to is "jittery" gameplay like some sort of lag. FPS will show an avg of 100-200 on max but it looks more like 30. I had this problem up until the 310 series drivers were released. It didn't happen on just TF2 but on many games. If nvidia has a hard time making good drivers for Windows, it's not a stretch of the imagination to expect Linux driver development to be worse.

I never had a problem with drivers when I used an ATI card (now "AMD"). FPS dropped when the hardware got taxed all very predictably, not at random like my nvidia card. When I get enough money, I'm buying an AMD card and not looking back.

Before people start telling me I need to upgrade here are my stats:
Phenom II x6 @3.4GHz
8 gig @ DDR 1750
Zotac 460 GTX 1GB

Forgot my current Linux install: Mint 14 x64 with MATE and 310.19 drivers

[bl33ding_silence]

As it stands, this post is pointless without information like:

- Distro
- Which Nvidia card
- Exact Nvidia driver version (310.19 or 310.14)
- Which window manager

Instead of posting relevant information, OP seems more inclined towards arguing and name calling. TF2 works fine for me on Intel HD 3000, and my brother with an Nvidia 9000 series card reports the same.

Or is this just a comparison post, "Hey look! TF2 doesn't work well on linux but works quite well on windows! Linux sucks!" ?

P.S. It seems this is a common problem: http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/

[A Dude Named Arms]

In reference to the OP, I would apt-get purge nvidia-experimental-310, then follow these instructions:
(credit to Tekky Cakes)
1.)Uninstall the nvidia-current drivers if you tried WILLWH'S workaround. (Willwh's workaround worked at first but after restarting drivers/config would stop working and I'd get no desktop).
2.)Install the the NVIDIA drivers from GEFORCE.COM. Answer "Yes" to disabling NOUVEAU and "Yes" to installing NVIDIA's 32-bit OpenGL compatibility libraries.
3.)Restart, just in case.
4.)At this point I'd get the following error if I tried to load steam: "failed to load steamui.so "
5.)install ia32-libs from synaptic or "sudo apt-get install ia32-libs"
6.) Run the command in terminal: "sudo sh -c 'echo "/usr/lib32\n/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa\n" >> /etc/ld.so.conf.d/steam.conf' && sudo ldconfig" without the quotes.

[matt]

Sir Nose d'Voidoffunk™ a écrit :

In reference to the OP, I would apt-get purge nvidia-experimental-310, then follow these instructions:
(credit to Tekky Cakes)
1.)Uninstall the nvidia-current drivers if you tried WILLWH'S workaround. (Willwh's workaround worked at first but after restarting drivers/config would stop working and I'd get no desktop).
2.)Install the the NVIDIA drivers from GEFORCE.COM. Answer "Yes" to disabling NOUVEAU and "Yes" to installing NVIDIA's 32-bit OpenGL compatibility libraries.
3.)Restart, just in case.
4.)At this point I'd get the following error if I tried to load steam: "failed to load steamui.so "
5.)install ia32-libs from synaptic or "sudo apt-get install ia32-libs"
6.) Run the command in terminal: "sudo sh -c 'echo "/usr/lib32\n/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa\n" >> /etc/ld.so.conf.d/steam.conf' && sudo ldconfig" without the quotes.

Don't do that if you are using Ubuntu, just don't. This "solution" is not gonna fix anything (rather brake, since people report that using standalone installer create problems) unless we know source of the problem, which we can't know without some input about system information. Also it's always better to use packages from official repositories then installing things manually. This is not Windows, repos are for a reason :)

[A Dude Named Arms]

I'm assuming the OP is using Ubuntu and I want to encourage the poster to give Linux a second-chance. This is only a suggestion. The nvidia drivers/libraries (current and experimental, 304 and 310) through the debian repositories gave me the problem that has been alluded to for both Ubuntu and Mint.The standalone installer will cause problems because it breaks Multiarch dependencies but these are re-established in the steps I used. Unfortunately, no PC Linux distro is command-line free apart from web browsing, word processing, etc. Ubuntu doesn't have any unique ability to patch these problems though maybe it will in the future.

[SinSchism]

I'd like to chime in here... I used a startup flag for TF2 to lower the DX level that added smoothness. Further, many people had an issue with multiple instances of vsync functioning at the same time.

[matt]

Linux MrSchism a écrit :

I'd like to chime in here... I used a startup flag for TF2 to lower the DX level that added smoothness. Further, many people had an issue with multiple instances of vsync functioning at the same time.

Just to clarify, TF2 doesn't use DirectX under Linux, but OpenGL, yet adding -dxlevel 80 or 90 to your startup commands still lowers some settings, like LOD value or picmip, is that correct?