Debian gaming wasn’t great when a lot of the landscape was changing (around 2016?) and even one of my very Debian friendly colleagues switched his gaming machine to Arch back then because getting the new stuff like AMD Vulkan drivers and DXVK running was really hard on Debian. Don’t think he migrated that particular machine back since then.
The thing is, back then, for the stuff to work on Debian, you needed to
compile your own newer kernel
compile the new mesa that depended on that kernel
and with how frequent updates were, this was something you’d probably do multiple times per month – at this point, why bother with Debian when you need to compile all the packages yourself? Remember that was a gaming machine… so why bother with Debian and spend hours each month when with Arch, it was just a pacman -Syu followed by a reboot and you could try out all that fancy new stuff?
That really was not my experience. I didn’t game much. WoW mostly. Some StarCraft. Minecraft. Online games. Debian unstable worked fine and I don’t think I had to compile my own kernel (for gaming) at any point past 2005 or so.
The discussion was implicitly around the changes brought by Vulkan and DXVK which enabled playing Windows Direct3D (this part is important) 11 and later 9 games without performance penalty. You could previously play Windows Direct3D 9 titles using Gallium Nine if you had an AMD card, though this was a bit iffy.
WoW mostly.
That’s OpenGL, so not affected.
Some StarCraft.
Not 3D even.
Minecraft.
Neither Windows nor Direct3D, but Java with OpenGL.
True, if all the games you played were OpenGL-accelerated, these changes didn’t matter. But about 95% of games on the market weren’t.
I’m glad you’re here to tell me how my experience the last 30 years was. Thank you for enlightening me as to how my choices were wrong and how I was silently suffering.
Yeah, but the post I replied to said “since 1998”. That is prior to bookworm.
Personally, I don’t care for it too much. Every time I try it (which is rare) something annoys me. "DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE"s, deviation from upstream that renders official documentation less valuable. With Arch (which I don’t use anymore), you can be pretty sure that what’s on your machine is what’s currently released by upstream. This refers both to version and the software itself. Remember cdrkit? xscreensaver? The weak OpenSSH keys? Sure, these must notable examples are from long ago, but there were just so many issues over the course of my “career” that the distribution for me is somewhat burned. Also because all of this could have been easily avoided.
Anyhow, use what you want, but it’s for sure not my favorite distro.
Debian since 1998. No reason to change.
that should be their mission statement.
“You’ve done a lot of work to make this work. Do you really want more work?”™
I’m okay with it.
I can think of one. The Debian logo is boring!
Consistent branding over multiple decades!
Debian gaming wasn’t great when a lot of the landscape was changing (around 2016?) and even one of my very Debian friendly colleagues switched his gaming machine to Arch back then because getting the new stuff like AMD Vulkan drivers and DXVK running was really hard on Debian. Don’t think he migrated that particular machine back since then.
I’ve always enjoyed the tinkering. My gaming habits pretty much grew up with WINE. DXVK was very exciting!
Never been a stranger to compiling my own kernel or mucking about with DLL overrides.
The thing is, back then, for the stuff to work on Debian, you needed to
and with how frequent updates were, this was something you’d probably do multiple times per month – at this point, why bother with Debian when you need to compile all the packages yourself? Remember that was a gaming machine… so why bother with Debian and spend hours each month when with Arch, it was just a
pacman -Syufollowed by a reboot and you could try out all that fancy new stuff?That really was not my experience. I didn’t game much. WoW mostly. Some StarCraft. Minecraft. Online games. Debian unstable worked fine and I don’t think I had to compile my own kernel (for gaming) at any point past 2005 or so.
The discussion was implicitly around the changes brought by Vulkan and DXVK which enabled playing Windows Direct3D (this part is important) 11 and later 9 games without performance penalty. You could previously play Windows Direct3D 9 titles using Gallium Nine if you had an AMD card, though this was a bit iffy.
That’s OpenGL, so not affected.
Not 3D even.
Neither Windows nor Direct3D, but Java with OpenGL.
True, if all the games you played were OpenGL-accelerated, these changes didn’t matter. But about 95% of games on the market weren’t.
I’m glad you’re here to tell me how my experience the last 30 years was. Thank you for enlightening me as to how my choices were wrong and how I was silently suffering.
I gamed on Debian. I was so wrong.
Not sure how you can read my comment that way, but you do you.
Consider not responding with all the reasons someone’s lived experience is impossible in future.
Prior to bookworm making non-free easy and nvidia driver opening one could make some arguments.
These days, though, nothing compelling can be said to walk past Debian.
Yeah, but the post I replied to said “since 1998”. That is prior to bookworm.
Personally, I don’t care for it too much. Every time I try it (which is rare) something annoys me. "DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE"s, deviation from upstream that renders official documentation less valuable. With Arch (which I don’t use anymore), you can be pretty sure that what’s on your machine is what’s currently released by upstream. This refers both to version and the software itself. Remember cdrkit? xscreensaver? The weak OpenSSH keys? Sure, these must notable examples are from long ago, but there were just so many issues over the course of my “career” that the distribution for me is somewhat burned. Also because all of this could have been easily avoided.
Anyhow, use what you want, but it’s for sure not my favorite distro.
What about Debian’s inability to run Proton 10?
News to me. I’m running GloriousEggroll with proton 10…
That’s what beta is for right?