Will you still use Linux after KSP 1.1?

[steve_v]

Well you *can* run KSP on FreeBSD... but you need a significant number of GNU/Linux libraries to do so. So much so that you might as well just run Linux.

BSD is awesome, In some cases It's "better" than Linux, but that's really just a matter of taste. Also the BSDs tend to be even more server-centric than Linux is - so available software for desktop/gaming purposes can be a mite limited.

[regex]

Well, that depends on your distro. I don't think slackware has the greatest package manager for instance~

Much as I love Slack, and consider it my favorite distro, a lot of work goes into it. I installed it on my work box a year or two ago and after a few months of manually updating things went back to Kubuntu (I run Mint XFCE now). Slack is a young enthusiast's game, it's not for angry, middle-aged developers who need to get work done.

Linux is getting much better for games, especially if you're into indie titles.

[peachoftree]

Much as I love Slack, and consider it my favorite distro, a lot of work goes into it. I installed it on my work box a year or two ago and after a few months of manually updating things went back to Kubuntu (I run Mint XFCE now). Slack is a young enthusiast's game, it's not for angry, middle-aged developers who need to get work done.

Linux is getting much better for games, especially if you're into indie titles.

Linux really is getting better for gaming. 1100 games on steam and counting

[soyouz]

I don't play KSP on Linux because of Optimus.... it's ....ty.

* If I play KSP with Intel IGP, it has texture flaws and it's slow.

* If I play KSP with Nvidia, either the GPU scale to lower frequency and it's slow, either it scales to max and the fan is too loud.

So I play on Windows, on my gaming computer.

I hope Optimus will have better support and Linux, with proper frequency scaling , so I can play KSP.

[Insanitic]

I would keep using Linux if the AMD graphics drivers weren't so s**t. If the opengl performance on Linux miraculously comes within a few FPS when using DirectX, then I'll use Linux again.

Other than that Linux (Ubuntu for me) is lightweight, fast, and intuitive to use.

Edited September 11, 2015 by Insanitic

[Guest]

I've honestly forgotten how to install Windows.

That's OK, so has Microsoft. Call it a wash.

[peachoftree]

Other than that Linux (Ubuntu for me) is lightweight, fast, and intuitive to use.

Is funny you say that, from my perspective, Ubuntu is just about as bloated, slow and heavyweight as a linux system can get. Switching to a lighter os (in terms of design, my computer can handle ubuntu just fine) makes me use my computer much more efficiently than I could with ubuntu.

[Insanitic]

Is funny you say that, from my perspective, Ubuntu is just about as bloated, slow and heavyweight as a linux system can get. Switching to a lighter os (in terms of design, my computer can handle ubuntu just fine) makes me use my computer much more efficiently than I could with ubuntu.

I use Windows primarily. Compared to Windows, Ubuntu being "Lightweight" and "fast" are understatements. Bootup times are halved compared to Windows, program opening times are faster and even the ISO file itself is much smaller than a Windows ISO.

Edited September 12, 2015 by Insanitic

[TranceaddicT]

I made the switch to Linux a while ago. Even with the learning curve, I have come to prefer it over windoze. Faster and far cheaper, I can do just the vast majority of what I need to without paying a dime to Micro$oft. OS ... free. Office suite ... free. Image manipulation ... free. All on a par with their windoze alternates.

So, I've relegated windows to a gaming platform for those games I play that are windoze only. KSP will be Linux all the way.

[chrt]

Yeah, I've been using it for over 10 years now, and see no reason to switch.

[78stonewobble]

I've dabbled in varying distributions of linux for years, but for gaming? Noooo, I have too many games for that.

Windows slow and bloated? Possibly, but... my computer isn't the fastest one by far... An i5-4690k, 8gb ram, gtx 770, 500 gb ssd, 2 old 640 gb harddrives in raid 0 and 2 tb backup drive running windows 7 64 bit... It's plenty fast for me for now... Sure I could probably improve some load times here and gain some fps there, but it isn't worth the work for me.

[klgraham1013]

I made the switch to Linux a while ago. Even with the learning curve, I have come to prefer it over windoze. Faster and far cheaper, I can do just the vast majority of what I need to without paying a dime to Micro$oft. OS ... free. Office suite ... free. Image manipulation ... free. All on a par with their windoze alternates.

So, I've relegated windows to a gaming platform for those games I play that are windoze only. KSP will be Linux all the way.

Indeed, but most of those free solutions are available on Windows as well. I use Open Office, GIMP, VLC. Near every program I use besides audio production and games were free.

I am still dual-booting, but the Windows hate is overblown.

[Red Iron Crown]

I made the switch to Linux a while ago. Even with the learning curve, I have come to prefer it over windoze. Faster and far cheaper, I can do just the vast majority of what I need to without paying a dime to Micro$oft. OS ... free. Office suite ... free. Image manipulation ... free. All on a par with their windoze alternates.

So, I've relegated windows to a gaming platform for those games I play that are windoze only. KSP will be Linux all the way.

This comic is 13 years old and still relevant: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/07/22/

Seriously, the second I see "M$", "Micro$oft", or "Windoze" I ignore the rest of the post. Is your position not strong enough to make your points without childish name-calling?

[xtoro]

This comic is 13 years old and still relevant: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/07/22/

Seriously, the second I see "M$", "Micro$oft", or "Windoze" I ignore the rest of the post. Is your position not strong enough to make your points without childish name-calling?

Agreed and funny! It's as much sense as buying a PC and screaming "how dare my ISP make me pay for internet access!"

[adsii1970]

This comic is 13 years old and still relevant: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/07/22/

Seriously, the second I see "M$", "Micro$oft", or "Windoze" I ignore the rest of the post. Is your position not strong enough to make your points without childish name-calling?

Agreed and funny! It's as much sense as buying a PC and screaming "how dare my ISP make me pay for internet access!"

I see this in my classes all the time. As a college professor, I often play the devil's advocate to challenge a student's beliefs of the world around them. Too many people today do not know how to have an opinion and defend it with anything other than raw emotion and childish personal attacks on the one challenging their world view. One of my favorites is when a student will tell me "it's the only fair thing to do..." because usually their viewpoint means punishing someone who has had more success than them with some punitive actions... The way I see it, if you don't like Microsoft, then do not use their products. It's that simple. I cannot stand General Motors since the buyout, so I have made the choice not to buy any more GM products; however, I do not lecture others as to why they should or shouldn't. It is their choice alone to make and it is my obligation to respect their choice without name calling.

Last week, a student of mine found me playing KSP during office hours. I was in the process of landing a probe on Duna and the student made the observation "you're landing on other planets already? I still can't get into orbit..." followed by "Dr. Simmons, you're too old for that game, you should be ashamed that you're wasting your time doing this..." All I could do was laugh. I began to explain that I had been following the game since .22 as a paid subscriber, but had downloaded the .17 demo. I then told this student that the reason I was landing a probe on Duna is because I play KSP the same way I play card games - want to win big? Bet big! Want to walk away with just the money you came to the table with? Play conservatively and don't take risks. Sure, there's been a few missions I've blown, but then there's the really big payoff when the mission exceeds expectations.

[xtoro]

... The way I see it, if you don't like Microsoft, then do not use their products...

Exactly. As a user of Microsoft since 3.1 AND Linux since my original Slackware distro I was using in the early 90's, I like both for different reasons. I still to this day use both with dual boot. I just think that a company making an OS that's on over 90% of all PC's must be doing something right. And I've purchased well over a dozen licenses for several PCs over my lifetime, but many of them were inexpensive upgrades. But one thing I did learn is that new versions of Windows require more recent builds. You can't take your 12 year old PC and slap Windows 10 on it expecting it to run great. If you have an old PC, stick with an old version, or upgrade your hardware. Linux is a totally different beast and runs well on older hardware provided you don't install all the newest gadgets that come with distros now.

I'm not against either OS and I use both, and I think they're both great. Although until Squad fixes 64bit Windows KSP, I'll stick to playing it on Linux. Not because I prefer Linux, but because the Linux version of KSP runs flawlessly.

[arieloq]

I have a 3 boot pc with GNU/Linux, Windows and OS X... In Linux KSP goes well even with 100+ mods that i put on them, I've tested KSP in osx and windows but is not the same experience, because is not for the graphics that i like the game... i prefer linux over the rest...

[WeirdCulture]

I don't know.. it depends on the performance... when it performs better then windows then yes, if not then no... At the moment it performs much better than windows (it starts...)

I still have some graphical mods which I would like to use and don't get physics lag on a fast machine(smokescreen with insane particle numbers, or engine lightning in general)

[nalitia]

Yes, but only in VMs. I answered "no" because with respect to this question, my bare metal Ubuntu install is going away. I use Linux for some development work, but dual booting is just a hassle. KSP was the only reason I was doing it. The nVidia driver situation on Linux is a mess, and performance in most games isn't as good as on Windows.

[soulsource]

It's a Unity issue/flaw. OpenGL is already faster and more efficient (and more correct and less idiotic and less LPHURTSMYHEAD) than Direct3D. The fact that Unity is a dog under OpenGL tells us that Unity is badly written (quelle surprise!). Of course the fact that it doubles textures in DX9 tells us the same thing as well.

Oh well, maybe Unity 5's OpenGL render path is less broken. :/

That's now just a gut feeling, but from how playing the Unity 5 based Cities: Skylines feels on my PC, it seems that indeed better GPU-utilization is possible with Unity 5. But, as said, that's just a feeling, no solid evidence for it, and also, the graphics of these 2 games are quite a bit different...

Anyhow, I'm really looking forward to Unity 5 based KSP for this reason. And if the graphics performance doesn't improve, well, there are still physics optimizations that I can't wait to see.

I stopped using Windows at home some time ago, and won't be back without a compelling reason. You probably don't need to shell out for VMWare if you don't need to swap VM images with work. Unless you need special features you can probably get by with a linux-based VM (see virt-manager and libvirt) that's free. (Since you've been using VMWare obviously your hardware is sufficient.)

The obvious choice here would be qemu using the kernel-based virtual machine (kvm).

I would keep using Linux if the AMD graphics drivers weren't so s**t. If the opengl performance on Linux miraculously comes within a few FPS when using DirectX, then I'll use Linux again.

Other than that Linux (Ubuntu for me) is lightweight, fast, and intuitive to use.

The open source AMD Linux drivers (which, by the way, will soon be the officially recommended drivers for consumer usage) improved a lot in the last two years. The open drivers meanwhile can compete with the proprietary drivers, which in turn are approximately as slow as their Windows drivers when it comes to OpenGL.

Also, the d3d9 AMD drivers for Linux can actually outperform the Windows drivers, but they still have rendering errors in many games, making them usable only for select titles (and, of course, only when running Windows games through WINE).

Anyhow, these recent improvements are not yet available in any Linux distribution by default, and a few more months will have to pass before we can see them in widespread use. Of course one can install them already (on Ubuntu for instance via the Oibaf PPA), but using bleeding-edge drivers always carries the risk of instability.

It seems that great things are coming in the future, but let's wait and see if the AMD drivers really bring the improvements that AMD developers keep promising.

[cantab]

The way I see it, if you don't like Microsoft, then do not use their products. It's that simple.

Unfortunately it's not that simple. Microsoft hold monopoly positions in multiple markets, and it's not uncommon for there to be no viable alternative. If only MS Office will render a job application form properly then I need MS Office to apply for that job, if the employer receives a form that's been garbled by LibreOffice it's just going straight in the trashcan. (And if I'm claiming unemployment benefits at the time then I am legally obliged to apply for the job.)

To paraphrase Interstellar, disliking Microsoft while using their products isn't possible, it's necessary.

[radonek]

The open source AMD Linux drivers (which, by the way, will soon be the officially recommended drivers for consumer usage) improved a lot in the last two years.

I hear this repeated all the time since I bought my first nvidia card (440MX) - that there is some great project that will stop all ATI troubles, if you wait just a bit longer. I have bought several new cards since then, always done a research and always ended with some miraculous new driver or improvement that will make it work in some unspecified future. Always ended up with nvidia because it worked then and works now. IMO only good that could actually get out of such promises would be pushing nvidia to help noveau with open driver or open it's own.

[Freds]

Yes.

I only use for Windows in my computer to play games that runs only on windows..... For everything else, its linux.

If a game runs on linux, i run it on linux: Kerbal Space Program, Prison Architect, Empire Total War, Civilization 5, Bioshock Infinity,Xcom, all old games that run in dosbox, runs on linux.

[Mat2ch]

I hear this repeated all the time since I bought my first nvidia card (440MX) - that there is some great project that will stop all ATI troubles, if you wait just a bit longer. I have bought several new cards since then, always done a research and always ended with some miraculous new driver or improvement that will make it work in some unspecified future. Always ended up with nvidia because it worked then and works now. IMO only good that could actually get out of such promises would be pushing nvidia to help noveau with open driver or open it's own.

Well, this time it's true. The recent radeon-Kernel driver plus the recent mesa driver support OpenGl 4.2 now and they are heading for Vulcan support. Though OpenGl 4.5 support has to come first, but if they keep their pace they may get this done this year.

[Kerbal007]

Im running Xubuntu, considering Mint tho.

I moved because 1. Studies and 2. KSP on windows modded after 1.0 was baaad.

Will I go back to windows? Not sure, If I can run the same ammount  of addons then yes I suppose. 

 

BUT. This is only cause my 560Ti is griefing me with a screen tear glitch I cant shake as a whole in linux. Also within the game Internal view plays up. I belive tho this is to do with the "reports" on my mouse as its programable. (thats a entirely different issue I think I mentioned in a thread along time ago )