The Other Linux Thread

[Gfurst]

Same GPU that I have. The 25fps could be from V-Sync being enabled in combination with physics calculations. I had that issue too and those were the causes of it. Sadly, I could either get 25fps constant like that and stay in the Yellow no matter what or disable V-Sync and lower my physics calculations a bit and jump between normal and yellow with the framerate jumping between 9fps and 45fps depending on where I'm looking, where I'm currently at (orbit, Mun, launchpad, etc) or if my trajectory leaves the planet or not -- not sure why, but the second my trajectory exits the atmosphere I gain a massive FPS boost regardless of what's going on.

If you can, run a 3.17 kernel and update Mesa to 10.3. You'll get a decent increase in performance. If the AMD Radeon development keeps on like it is, we should have some awesome drivers around the 3.19 or 3.20 kernel releases. It looks like AMD missed the deadline to get the AMDGPU driver added to the 3.19 kernel. Hopefully Mesa 10.4 and Kernel 3.18 will be released soon and we'll be able to use those (Mesa 10.4 due in December IIRC; Kerenl 3.18 was RC3 the last time I checked).

Bonaire is the codename of the R7 260x. Thought I'd let ya know.

I'm gonna be a bit pissed off if AMDGPU (the upcoming new opensource radeon driver) doesn't support our card since they're doing in-house testing with GCN 1.1 cards like ours. Rumor is that AMDGPU will only support GCN 1.2 and up (R9 285x is the only GCN 1.2 card at the moment).

Hey there, thanks. I'm assuming that you're using Xorg drivers as well but you didn't actually say it.

I have V-sync disabled in game at least, Though I know the driver automatically enables Vsync to everything and I didn't find a way disable this. I also had in game framerate limit to 60 or 120 if it makes any difference.

I'm sure that whenever you active craft leaves the atmosphere calculations done reduce drastically, same for me, specially if you use FAR to better simulate aerodynamics.

I try to keep my system up-to-date at least with Debian standards, with Jessie passing from testing to stable any time now, I don't really know yet if I'm upgrading. Never delved on how to get bleeding edge stuff though.

It would be a shame if they didn't support our card, since its really recent and fast one.

[gsarducci]

So here's one for ya. I went ahead and installed Manjaro 0.8.10, got the proprietary drivers for my Radeon 7950 working with multi screen (and re-learned a lot of how to deal with CLI again in the process), exracted KSP into my /home/user directory (leaving it bone stock at the moment), created the ksp.sh shell file as per the OP (for quad core procs, I have an i5), made it executable, executed it and.....

nothing. Literally. No errors, no "hey, get bent we aren't running that" ..... boxes. a little blip of R/W from the HD and the quiet whirring of my chassis fans. Task Manager confirms that there's nothing KSP related running. Undeterred, I tried to execute KSP.x86_64 directly and still got nothing. Didn't even puke out a logfile. Just for turds and giggles I tried running both as root. Nada.

So, since Linux isn't even throwing me a bone here as to where to look to see where it's gone pear shaped, I got no ideas how to even START to troubleshoot this one... After spending several hours simply relearning how to crawl around in Linux, this wasn't quite the carrot I was hoping for in the end. Nice reminder of the old axiom my buddy and I had stuck to the top of our old RedHat webserver several decades ago: "It's not that Linux isn't user friendly, it's just very particular about who its friends are".

Help me, Obi-Wan.

[sal_vager]

Well, how about trying the ldd command?

ldd KSP.x86 | "Not found"

ldd KSP.x86_64 | "Not found"

Edit:

Better clarify, these commands will check to see if you have all the required libraries, one may be missing.

Edited November 10, 2014 by sal_vager

[Gfurst]

So, since Linux isn't even throwing me a bone here as to where to look to see where it's gone pear shaped, I got no ideas how to even START to troubleshoot this one... After spending several hours simply relearning how to crawl around in Linux, this wasn't quite the carrot I was hoping for in the end. Nice reminder of the old axiom my buddy and I had stuck to the top of our old RedHat webserver several decades ago: "It's not that Linux isn't user friendly, it's just very particular about who its friends are".

Sorry that it isn't working for you, but I have to say linux has been very friendly with kerbal as far as I know it.

First thing you should probably do is run the script or executable via terminal and observe whatever output it gives. And also note that .exe files are included but are not used....

I know these are obvious ones, but who knows right? akahm razor?

[gsarducci]

Well, how about trying the ldd command?

ldd KSP.x86 | "Not found"

ldd KSP.x86_64 | "Not found"

Edit:

Better clarify, these commands will check to see if you have all the required libraries, one may be missing.

Indeed. I had to run out the door for work so I will do this tonight or tomorrow morning.

@Gfurst Never assume anything with me! Last time I did battle with Linux a GUI was nothing but an amusement, and a FUNCTIONAL GUI was the punchline to a joke! To say I'm rusty is an insult to rust.

[gsarducci]

Sorry that it isn't working for you, but I have to say linux has been very friendly with kerbal as far as I know it.

...

I was running the latest flavor of Mint before this. KSP was working sort of, but would grenade when I started adding mods. I also couldn't get the video driver to play nice with multi-screen. Instead of trying to sort out what was going pear shaped there I saw that the OP had great success with Manjaro so I went ahead and slapped that on there (I'm only messing with Linux for experimenting with KSP, so reinstalls and the such aren't showstoppers). I'm sure it's something stupid that I'm overlooking so thank you ahead of time for occasionally pointing out the obvious.

[Gfurst]

Seriously, isn't this hilarious? People turning to linux for a better gaming experience? I knew this day would come!!! LOL only in KSP, must be the kraken

Edited November 11, 2014 by Gfurst

[Kamuchi]

Seriously, isn't this hilarious? People turning to linux for a better gaming experience? I knew this would come!!! LOL only in KSP, must be the kraken

Not really...

Installed linux and after half a day of getting the best out of it and ksp, the physics was crap compared to windows

Played another week on 32bit and then found a clue of using the flag of -force-d3d11-no-singlethreaded with a CCC profile with disabled crossfire.

1 crash after more then 12 hours of playing today due to my fault with a fully modded and growing game again

[steve_v]

the physics was crap compared to windows

Um, what do you mean? The physics is Unity/PhysX, and therefore exactly the same regardless of the OS.

[gsarducci]

So not sure what the heck is going sideways here... Ran from terminal. Got this:

[guido@guidosw KSP_linux]$ ./KSP.x86_64
Set current directory to /home/guido/KSP_linux
Found path: /home/guido/KSP_linux/KSP.x86_64
Mono path[0] = '/home/guido/KSP_linux/KSP_Data/Managed'
Mono path[1] = '/home/guido/KSP_linux/KSP_Data/Mono'
Mono config path = '/home/guido/KSP_linux/KSP_Data/Mono/etc'
Aborted (core dumped)

Ran ldd and got this:

[guido@guidosw KSP_linux]$ ldd ./K*4
	linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffff73fe000)
	libdl.so.2 => /usr/lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f1ef718a000)
	libpthread.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007f1ef6f6e000)
	librt.so.1 => /usr/lib/librt.so.1 (0x00007f1ef6d66000)
	libGLU.so.1 => /usr/lib/libGLU.so.1 (0x00007f1ef6ae5000)
	libGL.so.1 => /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 (0x00007f1ef684b000)
	libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00007f1ef6509000)
	libXext.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x00007f1ef62f7000)
	libXcursor.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXcursor.so.1 (0x00007f1ef60ec000)
	libXrandr.so.2 => /usr/lib/libXrandr.so.2 (0x00007f1ef5ee2000)
	libm.so.6 => /usr/lib/libm.so.6 (0x00007f1ef5bdd000)
	libgcc_s.so.1 => /usr/lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f1ef59c7000)
	libc.so.6 => /usr/lib/libc.so.6 (0x00007f1ef5624000)
	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f1ef738e000)
	libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007f1ef5315000)
	libexpat.so.1 => /usr/lib/libexpat.so.1 (0x00007f1ef50eb000)
	libglapi.so.0 => /usr/lib/libglapi.so.0 (0x00007f1ef4ec1000)
	libXdamage.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXdamage.so.1 (0x00007f1ef4cbe000)
	libXfixes.so.3 => /usr/lib/libXfixes.so.3 (0x00007f1ef4ab8000)
	libX11-xcb.so.1 => /usr/lib/libX11-xcb.so.1 (0x00007f1ef48b6000)
	libxcb-glx.so.0 => /usr/lib/libxcb-glx.so.0 (0x00007f1ef469c000)
	libxcb-dri2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libxcb-dri2.so.0 (0x00007f1ef4497000)
	libxcb-dri3.so.0 => /usr/lib/libxcb-dri3.so.0 (0x00007f1ef4294000)
	libxcb-present.so.0 => /usr/lib/libxcb-present.so.0 (0x00007f1ef4091000)
	libxcb-randr.so.0 => /usr/lib/libxcb-randr.so.0 (0x00007f1ef3e83000)
	libxcb-xfixes.so.0 => /usr/lib/libxcb-xfixes.so.0 (0x00007f1ef3c7b000)
	libxcb-render.so.0 => /usr/lib/libxcb-render.so.0 (0x00007f1ef3a71000)
	libxcb-shape.so.0 => /usr/lib/libxcb-shape.so.0 (0x00007f1ef386d000)
	libxcb-sync.so.1 => /usr/lib/libxcb-sync.so.1 (0x00007f1ef3666000)
	libxcb.so.1 => /usr/lib/libxcb.so.1 (0x00007f1ef3444000)
	libxshmfence.so.1 => /usr/lib/libxshmfence.so.1 (0x00007f1ef3241000)
	libXxf86vm.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXxf86vm.so.1 (0x00007f1ef303b000)
	libdrm.so.2 => /usr/lib/libdrm.so.2 (0x00007f1ef2e2e000)
	libXrender.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXrender.so.1 (0x00007f1ef2c24000)
	libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXau.so.6 (0x00007f1ef2a20000)
	libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXdmcp.so.6 (0x00007f1ef281a000)

Not sure what any of it means but nothing show "not found" which is good. However, on the 32 bit side there are some missing:

[guido@guidosw KSP_linux]$ ldd K*6
	linux-gate.so.1 (0xf77a1000)
	libdl.so.2 => /usr/lib32/libdl.so.2 (0xf7751000)
	libpthread.so.0 => /usr/lib32/libpthread.so.0 (0xf7735000)
	librt.so.1 => /usr/lib32/librt.so.1 (0xf772c000)
	libGLU.so.1 => /usr/lib32/libGLU.so.1 (0xf76a6000)
	libGL.so.1 => /usr/lib32/libGL.so.1 (0xf7602000)
	libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib32/libX11.so.6 (0xf74cb000)
	libXext.so.6 => /usr/lib32/libXext.so.6 (0xf74b6000)
	libXcursor.so.1 => not found
	libXrandr.so.2 => not found
	libm.so.6 => /usr/lib32/libm.so.6 (0xf7468000)
	libgcc_s.so.1 => /usr/lib32/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xf744d000)
	libc.so.6 => /usr/lib32/libc.so.6 (0xf7295000)
	/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xf7780000)
	libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib32/libstdc++.so.6 (0xf719f000)
	libatiuki.so.1 => /usr/lib32/libatiuki.so.1 (0xf7183000)
	libxcb.so.1 => /usr/lib32/libxcb.so.1 (0xf715c000)
	libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib32/libXau.so.6 (0xf7158000)
	libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib32/libXdmcp.so.6 (0xf7151000)

So, I seem to be missing something, like for example:

libXcursor.so.1 => not found

So I do looking for it and lo and behold:

[guido@guidosw lib]$ ls libxcursor*
libXcursor.so@  libXcursor.so.1@  libXcursor.so.1.0.2*

Dafook? So I have it, but it can't find it?

My head assplode. This really shouldn't be this hard.

Oh, I tried the whole "Not Found" trick. Amusingly:

[guido@guidosw KSP_linux]$ ldd K*4 | "Not found"
bash: Not found: command not found

I think I've been punked.

Edited November 11, 2014 by gsarducci

[Kamuchi]

Um, what do you mean? The physics is Unity/PhysX, and therefore exactly the same regardless of the OS.

The physics yes, the calculation was nearly at half time.

Relative simple stuff that was green in windows was yellow/laggish in linux.

Anyway, win 64bit works just great now so it`s a moot point

[Padishar]

Oh, I tried the whole "Not Found" trick. Amusingly:

[guido@guidosw KSP_linux]$ ldd K*4 | "Not found"
bash: Not found: command not found

I think I've been punked.

No, you haven't been punked (do you really think a senior forum moderator would do that?). He simply missed a bit of the command you need to type. Try:

ldd K*4 | grep "Not found"

However, all this does is "pipe" (|) the results of the ldd command to another command that filters the output. Grep simply outputs all the lines of input that contain the string given so it should simply output all the lines that contain "Not found".

As for your problem with 32bit, I suspect that whatever mechanism you are using to run the 32 bit version is not setting up the path to the lib32 folder correctly. I have no experience with KSP on Linux so somebody else will need to step in if you can't find the answer in one of the Linux info threads.

Edited November 11, 2014 by Padishar

[steve_v]

Been a while since I last used Arch or Manjaro, IIRC: enable multilib in /etc/pacman.conf, install lib32-* packages.

[Gfurst]

Yeah, but still the 64bit should be working. I don't know how it is on Manjaro, but debian needs to enable multi-arch with dpkg, to use 32bit libs and apps.

Don't give up, with linux things don't usually work for very small and simple reasons, as such are very easy to fix as well, all it takes is a bit of perseverance and help from others.

[cantab]

So, questions a-coming:

Is there any important difference between the scripts given in the OP, and doing the variable settings in a one-liner as shown in The Linux Thread?

What benefits will Xorg-edgers actually bring, and would you recommend it for my "main" Xubuntu 14.04 install that I do 95+% of my computing on?

Regarding Steam using its own old versions of libraries, is there a way to launch games through Steam (for overlay, hours played, etc) but make them use the system libraries on a per-game basis? (Just in case any other games give errors with them.)

Related to my report here, http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/99430-Running-KSP-0-25-with-glxosd-results-in-missing-characters-in-text , any other suggestions for FPS monitoring? Time Control is a pretty big mod for the job with its own risk of causing problems.

[sal_vager]

I just find the one liner easier, there's lots of ways to do it though

Edgers provides more up to date drivers, if the normal drivers are good enough for you, that's fine.

[cantab]

Ah right. In my case I use the proprietary nVidia drivers, so I'm guessing I could get a PPA with more up-to-date versions of those if I wanted.

[gsarducci]

No, you haven't been punked (do you really think a senior forum moderator would do that?). He simply missed a bit of the command you need to type. Try:

ldd K*4 | grep "Not found"

I certainly meant no disrespect at all. Text lacking inflection for the fail. I apologize. I am very grateful for all of your help you guys are giving me. after 20 years I have apparently completely lost my Linux mojo, but it's slowly coming back.

However, all this does is "pipe" (|) the results of the ldd command to another command that filters the output. Grep simply outputs all the lines of input that contain the string given so it should simply output all the lines that contain "Not found".

As for your problem with 32bit, I suspect that whatever mechanism you are using to run the 32 bit version is not setting up the path to the lib32 folder correctly. I have no experience with KSP on Linux so somebody else will need to step in if you can't find the answer in one of the Linux info threads.

Once I figured out how to parse the ldd output it made sense. The next problem was trying to get the dependency seen by the program. Before all that happened though, I let Manjaro do its updates (there were several hundred it kept hounding me about and I figured perhaps that might solve some problems). It proceeded to completely nuke itself, so I finally got fed up and reinstalled Mint. Trying to install the proprietary drivers using the instructions provided (essentially mkconfig and it compiles deb files, yadda yadda) resulted in bricking THAT installation, so now I've moved onto Ubuntu 14.04. Had to head back to work so didn't get to try to blow that up with new vid drivers, so I'll proceed in doing that tomorrow, at which point I will concede defeat and just deal with the limitations of the 32 bit Winblows app until such time as Unity gets its crap together with the 64 bit stuff....

Now I remember why I got out of the IT business. I have a 6 year old boy. My frustration reservoir meter is already solidly in the yellow.

[cantab]

On Ubuntu I would install the proprietary graphics drivers using a package manager. Or one could use the "Additional Drivers" utility or similar. I've not used Mint, but it's based on Ubuntu so I expect it works the same way. At most, you might have to add or enable a repository for the proprietary drivers. It sounds like you tried to do things an unnecessarily complicated way. Unfortunately instructions for doing things an unnecessarily complicated way aren't uncommon.

As for the dependency issue you encountered before on Manjaro, system libraries come in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. My guess is that that you simply didn't have some of the 32-bit libraries installed. You'll probably find the same on Ubuntu - in general a 64-bit Linux distribution isn't going to pull in a load of legacy baggage needlessly, and the OS doesn't know you have KSP until you try to run it.

How to install the 32-bit libraries varies, but on Ubuntu and I expect Mint they will have the same name but followed by :i386, you may need to search for them explicitly in a package manager or can install them from the command line with apt-get.

[gsarducci]

On Ubuntu I would install the proprietary graphics drivers using a package manager. Or one could use the "Additional Drivers" utility or similar. I've not used Mint, but it's based on Ubuntu so I expect it works the same way. At most, you might have to add or enable a repository for the proprietary drivers. It sounds like you tried to do things an unnecessarily complicated way. Unfortunately instructions for doing things an unnecessarily complicated way aren't uncommon.

As for the dependency issue you encountered before on Manjaro, system libraries come in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. My guess is that that you simply didn't have some of the 32-bit libraries installed. You'll probably find the same on Ubuntu - in general a 64-bit Linux distribution isn't going to pull in a load of legacy baggage needlessly, and the OS doesn't know you have KSP until you try to run it.

How to install the 32-bit libraries varies, but on Ubuntu and I expect Mint they will have the same name but followed by :i386, you may need to search for them explicitly in a package manager or can install them from the command line with apt-get.

It seems Ubuntu is more widely adopted and there is much more guidance on how to resolve common issues, so for a hack like me who is trying to re-learn the nuances of this OS it's probably a good place to experience the least desire to see how a CPU fares against a Glock.

I will make this work. Oh yes, I WILL make this work!

[Gfurst]

It seems Ubuntu is more widely adopted and there is much more guidance on how to resolve common issues, so for a hack like me who is trying to re-learn the nuances of this OS it's probably a good place to experience the least desire to see how a CPU fares against a Glock.

I will make this work. Oh yes, I WILL make this work!

I don't know how Majaro roll out its updates, but based on Arch, it is pretty frequent, I think the whole purpose of Majaro was to have less breaking updates.

Anyway, either with mint or Ubuntu. You should probably be in the green by installing propiretary drivers, the system does this automatically with tool mentioned - Additional Drivers.

Don't go about downloading extra drivers, either directly from Nvidia or AMD, these are often not very compatible with system, the packaged version provided by the distribution is usually compatible.

Other note, if you're with a AMD card, depending on which card, chances are it will probably work better with open-sources drivers, that should be working automatically out of the box.

I'm on Debian, and though its a bit harder to setup it works like a charm. Finally, always try to follow up guides, as these are plentiful and easy to follow instructions, usually provided by the dist themselves.

[gsarducci]

Thanks Gfurst! I've taken a bit of a step back as I was getting a little frustrated with the whole ordeal and have found that, at least for me, KSP64 works fine on the Windblows side.

I downloaded the latest ATI drivers (I have GeForce 7950 card) in an attempt to get multi screen working (I have a 3 screen setup.. Well, actually 4 screens, with the 4th connected to the internal GPU on the i5 proc, but Ubuntu ignores it, which is fine with me for this operation). It was working until I attempted to rearrange the screens in CCC and set it up to allow dragging windows between screens and it awarded me with a black screen on boot. I haven't had a chance to dig into X11 config file yet to see if it's doing something goofy, but will here soon. I'm SLOWLY starting to remember this stuff... Thanks for the hand holding through this! I have read elsewhere that the proprietary drivers were preferred for gaming. I'm concerned that using the open source drivers might turn KSP into a slideshow.

[cantab]

ATI drivers, GeForce card? One of those is wrong...

As for multiple monitors, I've been able to set it up alright using the nvidia settings tool. If you bork things up, on modern distros you should just be able to rename the X config file outright and allow it to autoconfigure - won't get the monitor layout you want but at least you'll be back in the GUI.

On the nVidia side the open source drivers will indeed make KSP a slideshow.

[gsarducci]

So... Dumped and re-installed Ubuntu 14.04, did nothing else to it and installed KSP. Bone stock game starts, though I'm having trouble with the mouse pointer disappearing, which is annoying and I need to find a solution to, but at least it works... Sort of.

I got ahead of myself and dumped my Gamedata folder in its entirety into the Gamedata of the Linux installation and fired it up. It started to load and then hard locked the entire OS (which I didn't even think was possible in Linux). There are mods-o-plenty in there though so I guess I need to just go back and manually install each one and run the program to see which one is causing KSP to blow up, which sounds about as much fun as smashing my hand with a hammer....

[gsarducci]

ATI drivers, GeForce card? One of those is wrong...

As for multiple monitors, I've been able to set it up alright using the nvidia settings tool. If you bork things up, on modern distros you should just be able to rename the X config file outright and allow it to autoconfigure - won't get the monitor layout you want but at least you'll be back in the GUI.

On the nVidia side the open source drivers will indeed make KSP a slideshow.

Derp. AMD, not ATI. Oy...

I get multi-screen working sort of with the AMD drivers. I got the screens and resolutions all set up, but I couldn't move windows to different screens. There was some Xandia or X-something thing that us supposed to allow you to do this if you check it on in CCC, but when I did that it caused it to grenade. Since I had dorked up GRUB I just went ahead and wiped and re-installed, so I'm back to baseline.