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- Dec 12, 2023
The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice
- Thread starter tehpope
- Start date
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- Mar 30, 2023
I've gotten some pretty good refurbished ex-corp Thinkpads off eBay. You have to buy a new drive and charger, but you can get a X1 Carbon with a 6th gen i5 for like $150
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- Aug 18, 2020
Pretty late on the WINE discussion, but in my experience with games from early 00s to early 10s, WINE has improved enough that a single prefix with DXVK installed can run all my games flawlessly. I only need a separate prefix for one game. Maybe I'm lucky, though.
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- Jan 3, 2024
You aren't, particularly. As a matter of fact for pre 2000 stuff I found wine to be superior to the old windows 98 computer I got off ebay because the drivers were easier to deal with.
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- Dec 17, 2019
That's the double edged sword with Wine. It's way behind the current Windows kernel and Win32 API, so it'll shit itself with a bunch of modern software, but it got the legacy compatibility on point, so it'll work better for the older stuff than the current Windows that throughout it's evolution broke a whole bunch of things.
For example, Wine has it's own VDM, Windows got rid of it in 64-bit versions because MS was too lazy to port it, so 16-bit Win32 software will work "OOTB" with Wine, but with Windows you'll have to install a backport of Wine's VDM to do the same. And then there's a bunch of broken legacy shit like DirectDraw that needs a dedicated wrapper under Windows and under Wine it's probably a part of the base experience.
But hey, at least there are ways to run this legacy code with Windows/Wine. Linux kernel axed a whole bunch of legacy code so a ton of old and abandoned Linux projects would have to be rewritten from scratch, and Apple gives zero fucks about backwards compatibility, move to PowerPC/x86/ARM or die.
For example, Wine has it's own VDM, Windows got rid of it in 64-bit versions because MS was too lazy to port it, so 16-bit Win32 software will work "OOTB" with Wine, but with Windows you'll have to install a backport of Wine's VDM to do the same. And then there's a bunch of broken legacy shit like DirectDraw that needs a dedicated wrapper under Windows and under Wine it's probably a part of the base experience.
But hey, at least there are ways to run this legacy code with Windows/Wine. Linux kernel axed a whole bunch of legacy code so a ton of old and abandoned Linux projects would have to be rewritten from scratch, and Apple gives zero fucks about backwards compatibility, move to PowerPC/x86/ARM or die.
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- Mar 30, 2023
to think you'd need to run wine on windows to run old windows games on windows
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- Aug 23, 2018
The best way I found to run old Windows games or asshole programs on linux is not Proton or Wine but to install VirtualBox, and install Windows through that, then run your games that way. Takes care of all nearly compatibility issues. The only downside is a super modern game will run weakly on a virtualbox due to the high demands. I got Windows 98 working just well that way.
Helpful video that covers Windows 10 in a virtual box with Linux host
Helpful video that covers Windows 10 in a virtual box with Linux host
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- Dec 17, 2019
VirtualBox is the shittiest virtualization software you could ever use, both under Windows and Linux. Even Terry Davis told people to use the proprietary VMware to run TempleOS because VirtualBox is so immensely shit. And he used VMware under Ubuntu when working on it.
Under Linux you have something infinitely time better, KVM. You can set up a Windows 10/11 VM with near bare metal performance, and with GPU passthrough. If you do it right, it'll feel like having an OS within an OS with no perceivable performance drop. And that'll also mean you'll be able to run modern games without a hitch, unlike with VirtualBox which will shit itself due to it's non-existent hardware acceleration.
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- Aug 9, 2019
I'm sufficiently ancient to remember when Virtualbox was good...
Letting Oracle borg Sun was a fucking crime against humanity.
Letting Oracle borg Sun was a fucking crime against humanity.
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- Aug 28, 2015
I agree with this and it was terrible. But Sun was headed for the circular file anyway.
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- Aug 17, 2022
I've never been that impressed with Virtual Box. Qemu is the best emulator, in my experience.
Unless things have changed recently, GPU passthrough seems a little pointless - your graphics card can only be controlled by one OS at a time. So either you fork out for a second card, or you log out of everything and shut down X every time you want to you use your Windows VM. By which time, you might well have rebooted to Windows anyway.
Unless things have changed recently, GPU passthrough seems a little pointless - your graphics card can only be controlled by one OS at a time. So either you fork out for a second card, or you log out of everything and shut down X every time you want to you use your Windows VM. By which time, you might well have rebooted to Windows anyway.
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- Dec 19, 2022
This is why I use two graphics cards. The monitor is plugged into the iGPU, and a dummy HDMI plug is connected to the dGPU. As long as I’m not running anything on the GPU, for example a game, it’ll start the VM just fine without logging out, and I can control it with very little performance loss using LookingGlass (doubly so with the new RC version, which no longer uses CPU to memcpy the framebuffer into shmem, tldr much better performance). When the VM isn’t running the host can still use the dGPU even without it being the output device, thanks to the same hybrid graphics solutions laptops use. Performance loss from that is around 1-5%.
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- May 15, 2023
On top of everything that's already been said about VB, it being virtualization relies on the host's CPU instructions. For a while now the CPUs on the market already don't have all of the instructions the CPUs from the Win9x era did. Under those circumstances your only hope is an emulator, like PCem or 86Box.
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- Dec 19, 2022
x86-64 is backwards compatible all the way back to like the 8088, you absolutely can install DOS or Win9x on a modern platform, there are countless videos of just that on YouTube. You’re only going to get a single thread on core 0 and very barebones functionality in general, since multi processor back then was literally multiple processors (which worked more like accelerator cards in practice) and nobody is going to bother backporting modern drivers, but it’ll install and run just fine. But since a lot of games back then, especially on DOS, didn’t actually keep track of time, whereas a processor of the time would have rendered an entirely playable twenty frames per second or something, a modern processor will run the game as quickly as the monitor can refresh, which will likely be unplayable. That’s something an emulator would help you handle.
Modern processors use microcode over an invisible underlying architecture (which is actually very RISC-like), which allows you to keep backwards compatibility with such obsolete chips without affecting the performance of more modern instructions.
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- Jun 24, 2019
That's mostly the case, but there are weird implementation details that some programs rely on. I'm struggling to remember, but I'm sure there's at least one then-popular videogame that has that problem.
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- Aug 17, 2022
Some modern processors don't have support for the 3DNow instructions. There were also some instructions added for AMD's Bulldozer that were removed in subsequent chips.
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- Jan 3, 2024
Thats not how that works, old instructions are microcoded
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- Dec 19, 2022
That’s true. Yeah, some software is coded specifically around quirks or specific timing of individual hardware. Especially in the pre-486 era, when assembly was the most common way to do it for performance reasons and portability was less of a concern. Just look at the original Elite for an extreme example, that game overwrites parts of the operating system memory just to squeeze more data in.
Mostly by the time those extensions like 3DNow and MMX came around, you’d have options to just use software rendering instead, no? Games like POD would have run very poorly without them at the time, but today’s hardware would have no problems.
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- Apr 16, 2024
I would love to run Linux but it seems like every distro refuses to cooperate with my wifi adapter.
>get ethernet
No. Layout doesn't allow it. Can't move the line into the house either.
>get ethernet
No. Layout doesn't allow it. Can't move the line into the house either.
indomitable snowman
Can't stop, won't stop (unless it gets above 32°F)
True & Honest Fan
kiwifarms.net
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- Dec 13, 2022
I've been debating installing it on my Legion Go. Right now running pure arch with KDE, but it is not a super pleasant experience as a touch only device. While KDE/Plasma does have some good touch support, it is not as good as windows is at this point. I may have to try bazzite as when I installed arch, there was little to no support for the Legion Go and it's come a long way.