Dankpods used 12 computers with different hardware to test the performance of 5 games in 1080p and 4K, comparing the average fps results of the games’ built in benchmarks to determine which OS ran the game better across the same hardware: Windows or Bazzite.
Some notes on methodolgy under this spoiler
Each game uses the same in game graphics settings in Windows and in Linux. The Linux distro used was Bazzite, using the version specific for the graphics card hardware fpr each individual machine. To be clear, this means that he installed the Bazzite version for (legacy) nVidia as appropriate.
Each bazzite install was fresh, no copying installs or swapping around a drive with it pre-installed. After install, it was updated using system update and rebooted, repeated until no updates remained.
Screenshots of some of Dankpods’s comments to this effect:
There are many comments under the youtube video pointing out that in many of the Linux runs, it was not actually using the correct driver, comments about the experience using other distros, and comments about various potential fixes and workarounds.
This misses the point. Dankpods intentionally tested this way, and used Bazzite, to try and show what this would be like for the average gamer schmuck without a ton of technical skill interested in switching to Linux. Out of box experience matters in this situation, even though it’s not quite fair to compare that between free opens source distros and an OS created by a megacorp. To the average end user, it won’t matter. They just want it to work.
Prepare to be upset. With this particular testing methodology, Linux doesn’t really win overall.
I’m interested to hear the community’s thoughts on this.
That’s the issue though. When everything works it’s great. But it’s so easy to bungle something up (be it user error or bugs in distros).
I’m running a 4070. Performance is really nice. Modern games pinned at vsync speed of 144FPS. The next day I’m down to 0.2FPS. Stays like that for a few days. Reboots don’t help. Can’t find anything debugging or googleing. After a few days it’s back up.
Turns out, I run games through heroic installed via flatpak, and flatpak keeps its own copy of Nvidia drivers. That version needs to be perfectly in sync with the system driver version. So
dnf updatebreaks that and the games fall back to CPU rendering, andflatpak updateplus reboot fixes it again. Runningflatpak updatefirst followed bydnf updatemakes sure performance always sucks.Took me a very long time to figure that out, and I imagine someone without an IT background might never figure that out.
Agreed. I think the main takeaway from the video is that it’s still hard to set up Nvidia GPUs on Linux, even on Bazzite :(
I love flatpak for how easy it makes it to install apps on almost any distro, but I also hate the spokes that it puts in the wheels. Drivers are ugly (that’s true for containers in general) and I also often stumble over file system permissions issues :(
No it isn’t. Wade specifically admitted that he didn’t do any “setup” beyond installing and updating the system. If he had done a minimum amount of superficial research, like googling “how do I install driver”, the numbers wouldn’t have been held back by NVK or llvmpipe. The video is not representative of Linux gaming, or Bazzite even. He half-assed his way to some kind of result.
One of the main selling points of Bazzite is that it works out of the box. They even advertise this on their website:
On Bazzite, one should not need to look up how to install drivers.
Exactly.
But there is a very small minority of people who just get irrational and hostile to anything done wrong on linux, especially if its not the end users fault.
Yeah, the video’s length is absurd. I enjoy his content, but an hour of watching clips of the same damn benchmarks isn’t particularly interesting. Definitely should have been cut down further, imo.
Anyway.
I think as people with technical background, we need to understand that for Linux to eventually overtake Windows it needs to work for the average knuckledragger.
Wade didn’t have to google how to install the driver on Windows in advance (as far as we know, that’s some important clarification that’s needed).
Bazzite is supposed to be the distro for minimum hassle gaming, and they even have specific distro releases for these old nVidia cards, which he used.
What is the point of having a specific release for that hardware if it doesn’t work? If users have to take extra steps after the install, there should be something that pops up on first boot to direct them to it, or a warning about this when you download the iso.
It shouldn’t be on the user to have an issue first, then guess at what they need to search to get useful info.
I get that Linux maintainers are loathe to turn the experience into “Windows Lite” where it reminds you to wipe your own ass with their proprietary paper, but at some point I think we need to accept a bare minimum level of hand holding can be useful for user experience.
How hard would it be for a message box to pop up: You’re using NVM/llvmpipe and you may not be getting the full support for your GPU. Click here for more info. Click here to never show this again.
This.
The only point of brazzite is that you don’t have to spend hours setting up, configuring and debugging. If that doesn’t work, there is no point in using brazzite.
Did he actually install a (correct) bazzite image to each machine or did he just swap hard drives? Because that matters.
There’s half a dozen different versions of bazzite and bazzite installers. Each for different use cases. All that allows automated driver installs, but how you got there makes a difference. Swapping a hard drive to a new machine might make the NVIDIA drivers just not be there (because it was installed using an image for AMD GPUs). It will boot and the OS will work, but it will not use the graphics card appropriately.
I know you’ve been told as responses to your other comments, but for anyone else browsing, he didn’t just swap drives. He did fresh installs of the correct versions for the hardware.
It seems that he likely did this during a period where the nVidia drivers were not supported, which still isn’t a mark in the favor of Bazzite that something like that can be easily missed by the end user.
I think he got hung up on how long this took him personally when he was editing, and used that to justify a long fucking edit. I have no idea how he managed to strecth this into a freaking hour.
It is an issue that lasted a week at most. It actually was such a non issue that it wasn’t even picked up as a bug report. Dude just had the absolute worst timing in the world. If he had waited a couple days or updated the systems again then, he wouldn’t have even noticed.
This is the worst case escenario being amplified and showcase as the typical OOB experience. There’s a reason benchmarks are such a niche in content creation, specially when the audience knows way more than the creator about the subject matter. When people like nexus exist, it is a risky business.
I get that he was going for his typical silly and goofy vibe, but he missed the mark. Shouldn’t have tried to showcase this results at all. It’s like saying to showcase the out of the box experience of a new car and getting hung up that the car ran out of fuel on the highway. Like, fueling is the bare minimum a car requires out of the dealership. Drivers check and install is the bare minimum every gaming computer requires on a fresh install. Not even windows can do gaming without installing proprietary drivers first. It is disingenuous. I love this bloke but he should stick to pouring extraneous liquids into oil pans in cars, he completely misread the benchmark audience.
That was the entire point of the video, which was even mentioned by the guy making it. It’s supposed to show it from the point of view of your average person who heard “Linux games just work” and decided to try it out. They won’t spend the next hour figuring out what’s wrong when their system is broken OOTB. They will just leave.
I know. I was responding to the comment, not the video.