I paid $50 for the 2nd GPU to run Linux with the $350 GPU running games through the virtual machine. The only reason it cost me a lot of money is because my previous CPU didn’t support virt-io (I think that was it) that allowed for the 2nd GPU to be passed through to the vritual machine. And since my CPU didn’t support it that cascading into CPU + motherboard + memory + PSU (apparently) upgrade.
That makes sense, of course, but I’d still prefer running native Linux games on Linux, and not on a VM inside Linux.
Or can this second GPU actually be used normally while the VM isn’t running? Dual-GPU setups are really something I never invested much thought in.
Some AMD cards will support dynamic reallocation, which involves the VM shutting down the card then Linux being able to reload the video card. I think it does require an X11 restart. The problem is some cards (like the Fury I had at the time) had a firmware level bug where when the card is told to shut down it fully shuts down and cannot be brought back up until full reset (I think this doesn’t exist in 4xx and 5xx cards).
No idea about nvidia stupport.
AMD has some GPUs with VF support, but in general I think you need to blacklist the device to avoid a driver loading for it, and then load a pci stub for it to passthrough to the vm.
Yes, it all requires a bunch of manual configuration and is extremely far from “it just works”, even for linux. But it is definitely promising, even if it isn’t actually gaming in linux.
Dave Arlie has been working on something called virgl, which is a virtual gpu for qemu that passes opengl commands to the host. I’m not sure what state that is currently in.
AMD has virtual GPU support in the cards Google is using for Project Stream that use native linux ports of games AFAIK.
There’s also Looking Glass, which allows you to game in a Windows VM with passthrough GPU without a separate keyboard, mouse, and monitor. All still really hacky in-development software, but it’s starting to come together.
Looking glass is what I used and is an amazing piece of tech and is pretty much flawless by itself.
That’s neat. Seems like it just needs windows drivers to work.
My experience is Linux VMs on windows work super well(*). If you just prefer the linux environment but aren’t bothered about having Linux as your base operating system, that seems like a good solution to the “playing games” problem.
(*: Although admittedly that’s on my work machine, the spec of which is best described as ludicrous)
Run Windows? Do I look like some kind of a peasant?
@Teiman, I think you misunderstood my point. As much as I love Linux, (it basically powers the Internet) most of us use it headless.
Linux Desktop users belong to a rare breed that like to twink their systems, the mindset between power users who love to compile sources and tweek and build their OS and the apps and source level and the rest of us extremely different.
And I feel that this difference goes into the software installed. Again, How many SELF-RESPECTING Linux desktop will install a software that they have no access to the sources? It’s practically zero.
My feeling is that this extends into games. Practically nobody buys games for Linux, even when they exist. And that is the key point here. It’s less than 0.1% of sales. To put it into perspective, a game that sells 1,000,000 only made 1,000 units in Linux. That is abysmal for the necessary work required for launch and post sale support.
I mean, I do… once a year, and then it just keeps going.
I think the number of people who install the NVIDIA drivers puts a little dent on your argument :) anecdotally, I do think most users do, as long as it’s easy.
I think your average is off by an order of magnitude, but it can get a lot higher.
That is some interesting stats from Beamdog. 2% is quite respectable. I’m actually impressed.
Maybe you should be able to write off a Linux port on your taxes as a charitable act or donation.
Funny, but without those people making the software that allowed whistleblowers to communicate securely (since PGP, a small amount of them with threats), we wouldn’t know how uncontrolled intelligence agencies are because they’d all be quickly caught and silenced. Then again, no one cared, so maybe they should all be in jail and we could all have even more insecure NSA backdoors for our own safety.
Basically everyone uses the library from OpenSSL.org. The modern world depends on this library that is mantained by a small bunch of people.
Linux might have a better chance of catching on if their users weren’t insufferable twats.
It works for Apple, From Software or CIG…
Some are, some aren’t.
I think your record is broken.