I am currently dual booting between Arch Linux and Windows 10.
Moving to something like this one day makes me conflicted. On one hand I feel like I would betray open source, on the other hand I wouldn't have to restart my machine to play games...
If your hardware supports it, you may be able to pull a 180 and run a Windows VM on the bare metal using hardware passthrough. There's a great community here: https://www.reddit.com/r/vfio
Not necessarily. I managed to get it working with a single GPU, by unbinding it from the host and binding it to the VM. Unfortunately it does mean that you have to stop X11 and all programs, and going back doesn't work (the GPU freezes the machine when the proprietary NVIDIA driver loads), but it's still better than dual-booting because background services continue to run. It certainly is easier with separate GPUs, though.
You can always have multiple VM's with gpu passthrough, so it's almost like dual boot kind of setup, but you can still run other things on the host. It works pretty well for me, only downside being that you're limited to single VM running at the time.
You can run multiple VM's at the same time as long as you have a separate GPU to assign for each VM. There are videos on Youtube of people demoing this.
Wow, that works? Video games are pretty much the last thing that holds me on Windows. Everything else is solved on Linux. I am very interested in any solution for this problem.
It works, but you need to cherry-pick the hardware. I've seen GTA V running smoothly IN A VM with this configuration. The CPU must support VT-d, which my i7-4770k sadly doesn't. You also need a second GPU to use with the host operating system (nVidia Optimus for laptop users doesn't cut it).
It works, but it requires some time investment. Not everyone has the same quirks, so you will have to play around a lot and try to find the cause of different issues.
Totally worth it imho. It allowed me to go Full Linux
Yes. Most Intel CPUs from the past decade have supported hardware virtualization extensions (VT-x) that allow for efficient virtual machines, where the host system allocates CPU time and memory much as it would for an ordinary userspace process. Select Intel CPUs also support an IOMMU extension (VT-d) that allows PCIe devices to be virtually isolated from the host system; effectively, the device's DMA goes in to the VM's memory space instead of the host system's memory space. This can be done on a per-device granularity. It allows the OS in the VM to access the device exactly the same way it would if the OS were running on bare metal, so no driver changes are necessary.
Storage for VMs is still primarily emulated rather than virtualized, but you can use VT-d to grant a VM exclusive access to a HBA or RAID card or NVMe SSD, because VT-d works for any type of PCIe device.
e.g. with Xen (and probably ESXi/KVM?), it is possible to run FreeNAS in a VM with PCI passthrough of the storage controller, pfSense in a VM with PCI passthrough of physical NICs (or bridge to virtual NICs), Windows in a VM with a dedicated GPU, and Linux or OpenBSD in yet other VMs, all on one "desktop" that consolidates clients/firewall/NAS. If you get the right hardware, BIOS and PCI devices.
Why not just stop playing video games? There's a universal consensus that they're a waste of time anyway, no? I mean this seriously because it is my first thought when someone claims not to be able to switch to GNU/Linux because of games.
Why not just stop browsing Hacker News/hanging out with friends/working on side projects/trying to use Linux? There's a universal consensus that it's a waste of time anyway, no?
Serious general open question here. It strikes me as odd that on the one hand you say you want to ditch windows in favor of FOSS, but then go on to say that you use Windows just to play games.
The interesting thing is that games are some of the most costly and closed source things in software today. Windows costs the price of two games or less.
Further, if you own a PlayStation, an XBox it's likely you have spent hundreds of dollars on closed source games. If you bought a fancy graphics card, would you expect that to be free as well?
I love FOSS software as much a as the next person, but people who write software do have to live. Like game developers, employees of NVIDIA, even the people who make the Arch Linux distribution.
I'm truly not picking on you or FOSS, I just find it hard to rationalize FOSS zealotry that is almost universally hypocritical to some degree. Even Linus gets $10m a year or something like that. I'm not even sure to be honest what FOSS software IS any more.
It's a serious question, because I'm really confused.
> The interesting thing is that games are some of the most costly
Hah! I wish. I've spent thousands on single SKUs - yet SASS and anything B2B can make that look like chump change.
Meanwhile, Steam sales discount high quality, high end titles significantly pretty quickly - to the point where a lot of gamers basically never pay full price.
To say nothing of mobile being flooded with $0.99 titles.
To say nothing of the effectively free humble bundles.
To say nothing of all the free web and indie games out there.
Although I guess the right freemium Skinner box can also cost thousands in DLC and micro-transactions? But you can get games so cheap these days that people don't even get around to playing everything in their Steam libraries.
> I just find it hard to rationalize FOSS zealotry that is almost universally hypocritical to some degree.
On the more practical side of things, games are entertainment and frequently rely heavily on obfuscation to avoid hacking to gain unfair advantages in multiplayer. It's all somewhat fungible - if you can't play game X, you can still have fun playing game Y - the only real downside being your emotional investment in game X. Vendor lock-in isn't much of a problem, and a number of games are mod friendly.
Having your business and personal data stuck in vendor lock-in and being legally prohibited from taking over where they fuck up, or try to escape from their clutches should they jack up their prices, etc. is a whole new level of potential downside. Entire businesses die when twitter changes their API terms.
Meanwhile, if WoW ever shut down, gold farmers would find another MMO to abuse the same day.
Right I know, I've been there and witnessed it first hand trying to sell on the iPhone app store.
I was more thinking of zero day PC Games and especially console games in my comment but that should have been made clearer. I get that they do get heavily discounted though over time.
Totally agree with your penultimate paragraph, nobody likes it yet we still have our Netflix accounts AND our Amazon accounts.
To me it seems HN often picks on the little guys who are just trying to make a buck while actively supporting giant corporates and going Wheeee!
I didn't pick up many hints that they were using Linux purely because FOSS, that seems like a projection?; personally I went entirely Linux because I'm fond of the nearly infinitely granular controls I can make over the UI and UX (plus a few system level things) that I can share with others, get improvements on and reiterate into my daily use. Perhaps there's a similar trend here to the user you're responding to; I am merely speaking out of anecdote.
Aside from the other comment where I hope I pointed out the reasoning.. The "Betray Open Source" bit.
You might be right that there is some projection.
I've been working on a project for quite some time now, without any pay and it is close to completion, and I more and more frequently reflect on how it should be positioned, marketed and ultimately generate some revenue so that I can actually afford my own apartment.
When I read HN I see this tension. Something comes out and the comments will be. Oh that's cool but fuck you, it's not FOSS but at the same time I see yay, another gadget I will immediately go and buy.
You just can't win.
I develop on Linux mostly and Windows occasionally, and I've more than paid my dues to the community over the years, but at some point hard decisions have to be made. FOSS is great when you have enough cash stashed to not give a damn or you are just doing it as a hobby.
I feel like I'm staring down the barrel of a gun no matter which business model I choose sometimes, and it pains me to have to make a decision, and neither one looks pleasant.
I think everyone is a bit split on it. We realize how accessible and empowering open source software has made things, so there's a preference to encourage that. As a kid I was curious about Unix workstations, but knew they cost $30k and I wasn't going to get access to one unless it was a university or larger company shared with other people. Only a few years later Linux was released and today I could get a computer for less than $50 and dig through the source to my heart's content. I have access to a commercial quality Operating System, Databases, and Web Servers. All I have to do is download it.
In general the conceit seems to be paying for support and giving the source away for free (RedHat). Or selling a service and not making the source available (GitHub). It sucks because someone who writes an amazing tool still has to come up with a whole other business in order to make income from it.
There is commercial software on Linux where I don't hear people avoiding it because it's not open source: PyCharm, Sublime, Autodesk Maya, Foundry's Nuke, as well as (like you mentioned) games.
> FOSS is great when you have enough cash stashed to not give a damn or you are just doing it as a hobby.
FOSS companies make money by selling services, not software. Sometimes lots of it, and they're laughing all the way to the bank. FOSS also means "I can try it out in my own time, and not be hassled by sales staff or have to jump through hoops to get a trial", not to mention "I can tweak certain bits to better match my stuff".
I use Windows for games, because 'right tool for the right job', and the most polished games are on Windows. However, there is not a hope in hell that I'd use Windows for my day job - the one that keeps me fed and housed. Random (and LONG) forced update restarts. Broken/empty "click here for more info". Difficult to get at the system for troubleshooting. High minimum requirements. The list goes on and on. And even working as a dumb end user, I can't reskin the desktop anymore!
They didn't say anything about using Linux because of FOSS. They said games were the only thing keeping them on Windows. There is a possibility that they just enjoys using a Linux OS over Windows for general computing?
Actually that somewhat hits the nail on the head regarding how a lot of us feel. We'd love to do it but the pragmatic reality is that we can't do that all the time.
He feels the pain, I feel the pain, and I'm sure a lot of other people do as well.
The fact remains if he or I play games, or I buy a tv or a washing machine. Well screw us both because on some level we are betraying open source. It's 50 shades of gray.
Anyway, it doesn't really matter. I'm no less confused.
I have nothing against closed source, and I don't think FOSS is inherently good. I am a long-time fan of Windows and Microsoft, and I owned two Xbox 360 and an Xbox One. I just noticed a trend in Windows: Less customizability, less control, more automatic updates and erratic behaviours (recently, a Windows update caused my screen to turn black randomly on my Laptop. While I was working on my thesis that was due in a few days! Uninstalling the offending 'update' fixed the bug...).
I can slap a Linux distro on my PC in 30 minutes and be ready. Copy over your home folder and apt-get your software and you're ready to go. You can even install it on a USB drive. On the other hand, with Windows, I have to worry about licensing, version (will Windows 10 install home or professional?? It's the same image and it decides by itself...) and just a ton of other stuff. We're at the point where Windows has no advantage over Linux (except for games). A decade ago, you would always run into driver problems, packet manager bugs, configuration problems, etc. on Linux. Today it is rock solid. I am just choosing the better system here - who programmed it and how available the source is does not matter to me.
Okay I understand, and I more or less feel the same way for the most part.
Although I use Linux 95% of the time, and I think Windows has lost its way a little. I would disagree that it isn't robust. The kernel at least is quite excellent. But that's another topic.
Sorry for raising this issue, it's the "I will pay $1000's of dollars for hardware, and games", but I can't spare change for an OS that got me started. Apologies.
Oh, and I also think the Windows kernel is quite excellent. Based on my past experience with how quickly my laptop battery is being depleted, I also feel like Windows 7 saves more energy than Ubuntu. It is just that with the advent of Windows 10, I cannot help but feel like Microsoft adopts some infantilizing practices which I cannot stand. In particular, that my OS is permanently communicating with the internet and doing stuff with compressed memory now - something it never did in such scales on Windows 7. I just want a solid, predictable system. Not one that shoots my CPU usage up to 100% at a random time during the day because "system and compressed memory". If an idle system makes my CPU fans howl at random times of the day, doing unspecified work that I cannot control, it does something wrong. Period.
The bit... "Moving to something like this one day makes me conflicted. On one hand I feel like I would betray open source, on the other hand I wouldn't have to restart my machine to play games..."
Well that part I understand, but freedom has a price, and to make that work the onus is on the community to prop you up. Unfortunately, the human genome is pretty selfish in my personal experience.
Windows 10 licencing from dream spark seems to work in qemu-kvm. Idk how normal Windows 10 works with that, I only use it to run the occasional required software for class.
Or you could just only play Linux games. I mean sure, you'll eventually get tired of Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of Mordor. But when that happens you can just play Shadow of Mordor.
I realize you were attempting to make a joke, but there's a ton of great games on Steam for Linux nowadays, and GOG.com has been porting some of their games to Linux as well. Anything made in Unity, Unreal engines, and id Tech engines can be easily ported to Linux.
Beyond native ports, one can use PlayOnLinux or just plain Wine with varying degrees of success.
Yeah I was exaggerating a bit, I find plenty of games to play. If you're not too picky about which game you play, you can find a lot of good games. It's when all your friends are playing something specific and telling you to play it with them but it's Windows only that you feel the pain and are tempted to reboot into Windows :)
anecdotal, but about 2/3 of the games in my steam library had linux versions available when i switched to desktop linux a couple of years ago. granted, i'm not exactly a aaa title kind of guy
2644 games for Linux, and 10750 results for Windows. There's a good deal of high-profile stuff, but Linux support definitely does skew toward the indie side of things.
Just take the Linus Torvalds school of open-source philosophy and don't give a shit whether your software is open source, closed source, free, or $299. Just use good software that makes you happy.
Exactly the same for me! Got bash for Windows up and running with i3 on vcsrt. Ff is running in i3 and it is relatively smooth (I have a beefy specs). Almost all my settings have been ported. However, emacs is struggling because of some weird issue not going fullscreen and there's lots of issues with other execs (GUI in particular) because of dbus (I think)...
There's also a super annoying issue with the windows button which I normally use as meta key for i3....
I suppose by open source you mean free software (because I can't see how you can betray software development methodology by switching OSes). If this is so, than do you understand how silly your alternative sounds? It feels almost like a sarcasm.