Steam + Linux, a few questions?

[MNKyDeth]

I am in the process of deciding what distro I want to use for my everyday work and play. Normally I use something like Gentoo or Crux Linux. I am considering some other distro's right now as well because of steam. My questions are...

Does steam or the games that are available to Linux use pulseaudio directly or are the games linking to alsa or oss?
This is very important to me as if they link to alsa or oss I will stick with Gentoo since I don't want pulseaudio if possible.

Is it possible to run a game from steam and have it startup in a different X server? Or would we have to run steam in the seperate X server then start the game?
This is important to me so the desktop environment is not wasting GPU cycles by rendering the 3d accelerated desktop in the background.

I think that should be good for now, if I think of other important things I will ask. Thanks for any replies.

[phschm]

I am not part of the beta so I dont have anyting to say about the first question, but the second one is not exactly like that. What you want is not another X (it is not only for video, it also controls input/output and the latter is the reason it still runs as root), but screen unredirection for full screen applications. For windowed applications you would want to disable composing while playing. Also, you dont have to have a 3D accelerated desktop, there are alternatives aplenty for every distribution, some even by default within spins. Unfortunately I cant help further as I never use composition/3D desktops so I am not up to date as to how it is supported.

[RobbieThe1st [Linux]]

This is why KDE is so awesome, despite everyone considering it "heavy" as a DE - KDE can switch between composited mode and non-composited at the press of a key, and switch back just as easily, and all features work in both modes(though less shiny/no transparency or animations etc).

[MNKyDeth]

Well, it has been since about the start of 2011 (Jan, Feb) when I ditched Linux in favor of Win7. Mostly because certain things were ruining or hurting my user experience. I found a way around those issues but overall I wanted to play games. I have messed with FreeBSD, Mint, Arch (once with the systemd change) and various other distro's during this time.

I started on RH8 and RH9 around the year 2000, then moved to Arch Linux at version 0.6 I then moved to Crux at version 1.8 if I recall. I stayed there until 64bit Linux with Multilib became solid enough to play with and that was with Fedora 6 - 14. After Fedora 14 I left Linux because I could not deal with Pulseaudio and later systemd.

I have played and experimented with tons of distro's over the years. I would regularly reinstall up to 2-3 times a day to see how certain distro's worked with specific setup's. I know as of right now the only distro's that can fit my needs are Gentoo and LFS.

I am also considering FreeBSD very heavily at this point as well and am watching if steam works on it. As FreeBSD is my second choice with Gentoo being my first.

I wanted to explain this so people that read have an idea where I am coming from. If the games are using Pulseaudio directly and not alsa and oss for the sound server I will most likely toss in the towel of trying to keep a hardware driven sound card in my system. At the same time I can consider my distro's depending on the default desktop they use. I won't use gnome3 or unity as they just are not usable from my perspective.
I normally use e16 and every now and then KDE. I prefered KDE3 but KDE4 has been adequate for a full desktop when needed.

Anyways, thanks for the response on kde, that is good to know since it has been some time since I have used it. I just really need to know about how the games are using the audio system within Linux before I make my, most likely, final choice of Linux distro or if I jump ship to FreeBSD. The move from Win7 is inevitable since I will not go to Win8 and most likely anything past that.

[ThOR27]

The last time I had any major issues with audio was at least 5 years ago, when there wasn't any pulse audio (I even bought a Sound Blaster Live! card for me because I would get hardware mixing and not needing to mess around with software mixing). In the first one or two releases of ubuntu with pulseaudio I remember I got some issues also, but was with some specific programs only. But nowadays I can play any sound in any program under pulseaudio without any issues, software mixing and etc, even with old games that does not use pulseaudio. I don't know why so many people still complain about pulseaudio, as at least in 5 different computers I use, pulseaudio works reallly fine, even with bluetooth devices, changing to HDMI audio and etc.

I know that if many people complain about it have problems for sure. What I ask is just try it again, you may find that it simple works now for you, as it works for me.

[p1r8t3]

MNKyDeth, Linux is rapidly growing and these old issues u have with pulseaudio are gone, u just plug an play today.

And regarding gnome 3, i use it and find my self being faster than xfce or kde. Not only that but i find it "cleaner" and organized. Ive used KDE for a while, but its default setup did not suit me so i customized all of it, then it looked more pleasing, but the issue is the RAM consumption and heavy toll on the CPU is wat made me change. Now accepting gnome 3 and customizing it to my liking, i can see the idea behind the devs and why it works that way. I can officially say that its the proper DE tht could work on both desktops and tablets while looking good.


Anyways regarding u concern with pulseaudio, from what i know yes pulseaudio is the default, steam reverts back to alsa if pulseaudio is not available. Dont take my word on that, i could be wrong.

[blackout24]

Pulseaudio is a bit buggy on my machine. When I listen to a song on VLC and start Skype which also uses PA it suddenly ramps up the volume. And Videos in VLC have crackling sounds in the beginning until you change the volume a few times and it goes back to normal. Also volume control stutters like hell. Same happens when you listen to something with VLC and start a flash video on Youtube. Back when I was simply using ALSA with XFCE everything was flawless. Now I use Cinnamon which is basically the XFCE concept, based on newer Gnome 3 technology instead of GTK2 and looks more fancy I have to use pulseaudio because gnome-settings-deamon depends on it. Gnome 3.6.2 is nice but is still missing a proper panel with a systray and the ability to put launchers and a task manager on it.

[Mikolaj]

"Is it possible to run a game from steam and have it startup in a different X server?" AFAIK no. You need to start steam itself in a different x server.

[Szklanka Kompuntu]

I don't think anyone actually answered your original question yet, so... I'm using gentoo without pulseaudio right now and I play TF2 with sound here. I'm not sure if it's officially supported since I have to change one variable before launching steam every time (thank gods for scripts), but it certainly works. I think I saw one dev talking about maybe allowing us to choose alsa in some more official way(steam options?), but don't quote me on that.

[senshikaze]

t.jp, on the sound ramp up, make sure that skype is not set to automatically adjust sound levels. that got me the first couple of times using it.

[MNKyDeth]

Originally posted by Szklanka Kompuntu:

I don't think anyone actually answered your original question yet, so... I'm using gentoo without pulseaudio right now and I play TF2 with sound here. I'm not sure if it's officially supported since I have to change one variable before launching steam every time (thank gods for scripts), but it certainly works. I think I saw one dev talking about maybe allowing us to choose alsa in some more official way(steam options?), but don't quote me on that.

Thanks for that. Starting my Gentoo install now. :)

[Blumimic]

t.jp looks like you need to adjust a few things check out these https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pulseaudio#Glitches.2C_skips_or_crackling
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pulseaudio#Volume_gets_louder_every_time_a_new_application_is_started

[blackout24]

Thanks that fixed it. I knew there might be fix for this but I was simply to lazy to look for it.

[[LINUX] Schotty]

For starters, not trying to be rude, but there usually is one or more of the basic three reasons why Pulse doesn't work:

1) Distro is doing things weird or wrong. From my experience Red Hat, Mandriva, and SuSE have been excellent here. Its been a long time since I have had a chance to actually use and fully put to test Debian or Gentoo (more great distros). But from what I have seen from alot of my associates and internet chums that use Arc and Gentoo -- they are running into issues. Could be this or not.

2) User error. I ran into this earlier in the year. Had a RHEL system that just lost proper Pulse support. I ended up finding out that I had some botched half update that once corrected fixed the problem. To resolve this, depending on package manager, make sure an apt-get distupgrade (or however its actually done) is successful. Like I said, my problem was an "Andy error" and not the package maintainers or anything. Blame is mine.

3) Crap hardware. This is where I run into alot of issues. Some headsets I have used (USB) this was a nightmare. Luckily I figured this out quick enough that I was able to return the bogus headsets in time to get decent ones. And let me say this --- pricetag is irrelavent. This is one of the last bringers of nightmares I see on Linux in general, crap hardware that somehow barely works on WIndows, and not on anything else. Thankfully one vendor has been %100 perfect for me, Logitech.

The one question I would ask, is where are you having issues with Pulse? Older versions of Pulse didn't play well with WINE, namely pre 1.0 versions. I run into that on my RHEL6 based systems. That is because of WINE and Pulse not talking well, and new versions of each have resolved that (actually a while ago, so its moreso EL distros that are problematic there).

Is it latency issues? There are alot of resources to resolve this.

Is it quality? Sometimes a legit issue, I presume, but in my experience its codec problems at heart. I had some MP3 files that sounded like rectums speaking to the procelain gods. It was ugly. Fix was to use one of my Fluendo licensed codecs and things were lovely again.

Like I said, not trying to be mean, but the tech is fine, the implementation sometimes isn't. And with alot of people (myself included) early efforts at something new don't always go so smooth as others can have.

My take is I am glad Pulse is there, and hope that latency and RT issues can be cleaned up so its less of a pain. Thats where I still see issues from time to time and would love to never see another one.

Seeing you are happy with Gentoo and Crux, I would say stay there and find out how to make sure Pulse behaves (presuming that its something you have already ripped out). I can say from my time with toying on Ubuntu over the years, they have gotten better here, but need to chat with some pros at SuSE or Red Hat for the finishing touches. Bribes work well :P I would hope from what I have last experienced with the Gentoo folks that they already have that wrapped up and taken care of. Pros are not in shortage in that camp. A badge I do not just hand out, and they should be proud of. And pros with great docs, that I have referred to from time to time on non-Gentoo systems.

If you don't mind, I would love to know how things work out for ya, and if Pulse does behave well for you without _any_ toying around. Thats the key. With enough fiddling anything is possible, but that is hardly an optimal situation as its less game time in what if your life is like mine -- short of free time more and more as I age.

Good luck,
Andrew.

[Tai]

I use Kubuntu 12.04 and found Pulseaudio behaved itself...until I brought Skype into the mix and it refused to play ball with devices (I tend to hot plug a USB headset a lot). Then I installed Steam and returned to the land of audio sounding like it's being played down a crackling tube.

Had to change Pulsaudio from Time Scheduling to Interrupt and all was fine again. For now.

Lots of fixes here: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=225660
I just did the tsched=0 bit and it worked after a restart.

[MNKyDeth]

I will have some time for testing later this week most likely. Also the main issues I have with Pulse is a latency issue with games that use oss (open sound server).

The audio plays but if I was playing say Unreal Tournament whenever I fire my weapon the sound effect happens anywhere from 2-6 seconds after I fired the weapon.
I found this is almost always the case with any game that uses oss.

Kohan: Immortal Soveriegns - No sound with or without padsp.
Postal (The first one) - No sound with or without padsp.
Rune: Halls of Valhala - Sound happens for an action about 3-6 seconds after the action happened.

Those are just some examples using Fedora 14 duing some tests I did last year. Granted these are older games on Linux but I bought nearly all of the Loki games back then and I have always supported Linux gaming. On that note I also expect Linux to enable me to fix my games as needed to continue playing them even if they are not open source games. Otherwise what is the point of buying a game in the first place?

I understand things will break. But there should be a way for us to fix the problem without having certain software shoved on us with no way to fix the programs we purchased. Maybe I am overlooking something in this regard but as it stands my Gentoo = USE="-pulseaudio".

This is why I wanted to know if the games on steam are using pulseaudio directly or if the games are using alsa or oss. If they are using pulse then I will start thinking of using my lower quality audio chip that came on my mobo vs the add in card that works perfect without pulse.