Ostensibly, the one with less overhead. Part of the dream of DirectX was a lite statement that could focus on gaming — that ultimately became Xbox. So look at an Xbox One (not Series!) and run Linux on similar hardware (no SSD!) and see if you can beat it. I think it can be done but I’m not sure.
You’re right. Linux has always struggled to compete with hypothetical versions of Windows that aren’t available. But you see, for testing purposes, we’re forced to use the Windows version from this timeline.
Yeah, I kinda wish the Xbox One didn’t exist, too. I get what you’re saying though, that stripped-down version of Windows isn’t something you can get outside the console. Still, you not being able to use it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s still a fair thing to test against. Windows as a consumer grade OS isn’t really meant for gaming. Xbox is Windows stripped down to what’s needed for gaming. You can configure Linux to strip down for gaming, so why not compare apples to apples?
My commenter on the internet, consumer-facing Windows is bloat city and will not grant the freedom to cut down the garbage holding performance back like Linux Distros do. If you have Win10/11 Enterprise LTSC and run a few debloat scripts maybe, but that’s not something an ordinary person can gain access to without piracy, and it’s unlikely that the “stripped down Windows version for gaming” becomes a product without either restrictions or a price premium to the general public.
I know there are gaming-centric distros but I wonder, if someone built a Linux that was essentially a console equivalent, useless for anything else, how it would fare.
There is no fundamental performance difference between these “gaming” distros and any other ones. Some minor kernel tweak maybe net a few percentage points here and there, but the gaming stack is still the same across the board, and very little can be done to squeeze more performance there without each just getting performance improvements.
Even still, you’d just install those same versions on any other distro and get those performance benefits.
It would be just fine. You can look at SteamOS on the Deck for exactly that (and I would assume the upcoming Desktop version will be similar). Bazzite in handheld mode is similar.
Much of the extra overhead comes from the desktop shell and window manager, so anything that swaps out stuff like Plasma or Gnome for something lighter is already on better footing.
Overhead isn’t everything. Windows just handles swapping better than Linux. More efficient swapping can mean better performance even with more ram usage.
Ostensibly, the one with less overhead. Part of the dream of DirectX was a lite statement that could focus on gaming — that ultimately became Xbox. So look at an Xbox One (not Series!) and run Linux on similar hardware (no SSD!) and see if you can beat it. I think it can be done but I’m not sure.
You’re right. Linux has always struggled to compete with hypothetical versions of Windows that aren’t available. But you see, for testing purposes, we’re forced to use the Windows version from this timeline.
Yeah, I kinda wish the Xbox One didn’t exist, too. I get what you’re saying though, that stripped-down version of Windows isn’t something you can get outside the console. Still, you not being able to use it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s still a fair thing to test against. Windows as a consumer grade OS isn’t really meant for gaming. Xbox is Windows stripped down to what’s needed for gaming. You can configure Linux to strip down for gaming, so why not compare apples to apples?
My commenter on the internet, consumer-facing Windows is bloat city and will not grant the freedom to cut down the garbage holding performance back like Linux Distros do. If you have Win10/11 Enterprise LTSC and run a few debloat scripts maybe, but that’s not something an ordinary person can gain access to without piracy, and it’s unlikely that the “stripped down Windows version for gaming” becomes a product without either restrictions or a price premium to the general public.
I know there are gaming-centric distros but I wonder, if someone built a Linux that was essentially a console equivalent, useless for anything else, how it would fare.
Like the Steam Deck?
That’s just default Bazzite. There’s not much included out the gate other than gaming dependencies.
There is no fundamental performance difference between these “gaming” distros and any other ones. Some minor kernel tweak maybe net a few percentage points here and there, but the gaming stack is still the same across the board, and very little can be done to squeeze more performance there without each just getting performance improvements.
Even still, you’d just install those same versions on any other distro and get those performance benefits.
It would be just fine. You can look at SteamOS on the Deck for exactly that (and I would assume the upcoming Desktop version will be similar). Bazzite in handheld mode is similar.
Much of the extra overhead comes from the desktop shell and window manager, so anything that swaps out stuff like Plasma or Gnome for something lighter is already on better footing.
Nintendo and PS are allegedly some variant of BSD, as is MacOs
Overhead isn’t everything. Windows just handles swapping better than Linux. More efficient swapping can mean better performance even with more ram usage.