 Hello and welcome to the talk about the workstation state of gaming talk. I hope you're just as excited as I am With regards to the Linux gaming. I'll share the link to the slide in the chat section There you go and hop in being hop in somehow decides to report STTPS in front of the URLs Thanks I'm Akash Deepthal and I work as a lead representative for an objective in Fedora council As an engineer and then as an engineer in the red hat 20 platform engineering team Over the course of next 25 minutes or so. I'll be talking about the state of gaming in genie Linux 6 top Distributions as well as of course in Fedora workstation Moving on so what would we talk about? In a broad sense, we'll be talking about these three points that you see on your screen The first being how popular the Linux gaming scene it is How convenient it is to set up Linux gaming and how good it performs We'll have a comparison of sorts that helps us understand how far exactly we have come from our humble roots and what factors have been of and are of and will be of To account for for this development Do note that the start in sections will be general to entire genie Linux gaming community because we in Fedora Linux We like to believe that we can grow much faster if we are collectively putting our resources together and growing together All right then starting with the popularity of genie Linux gaming is a coin cases from the times There you go from the times where we were limited to complex setup procedures difficult travel installation methods and You know these were one of the reasons why people were keeping themselves off from Linux gaming to the new times which include Having maintainers putting their time and effort into making sure that the enthusiasts actually feel like staying back The documentations are a lot streamlined now and even huge corporates They see potential in those performance numbers which made them want to you know invest in these things And we have dedicated platform for emulation or handheld gaming for streaming video games I just think that we only get started So yeah, things do have changed for the better Moving on to a great extent. I think that we owe our popularity to these wonderful communities The likes of gaming on linux linus tech tips the linux experiment Genie Linux gaming subreddit So please feel free to take a look at the slide deck. It will have all the qr quotes That you can scan to know more about these things Let's talk about the convenience in genie linux gaming now. Shall we is it easy enough? from the time that we were limited to reading between the lines of long documentation boring stuff And continually interacting with the software that people did not even heard of And of course having to indulge in some black magic related command lines Have we have things changed from that? Let's find out Right now it's all cakewalk for people a community of users actually came together to tell about the things that they found difficulties in and the things that they found were easy And with that we found out that yeah, there can be graphical user interfaces that people can use to achieve stuff And these are well documented. So you don't quite interact with stuff that maybe you're not aware of So yeah, things do have changed and for better talking about these applications That were instrumental in making things convenient for the users You can find all these applications in our repositories starting from bottles Lutrous play on linux and the torch Then again, please feel free to open up the slide deck and scan the qr code to know more about these applications And finally let's talk about some performance numbers Coming to performance side of things is it achieving heights From the times when we were bound to experiencing substantive frame rates due to inefficient translation visual artifacts glitches Unrendered shadows and textures due to graphical api conversion inefficiencies And inconsistencies and frame rates here and there so People would be like yeah, I'm having good frame rate, but it suddenly dips down to a sub 20s or sub 30s Which is totally a no go Have things changed with developers putting their time into maintaining stuff and building new technologies We have faster frame rates due to precise and accurate translation of platform exclusive instructions Thanks to translating graphical instructions Direct x to welcome with the use of dx vk Direct x 12 to welcome using vkd 3d We're studying visuals and it's all done in an efficient manner So you're not dishing out your performance or a lot of power to achieve such a performance So low frame rates graphical glitches and artifact are all a thing of the past You would not face inconsistencies in most of the games out there So talking about the projects that were responsible for making these things happen These softwares are also available on their latest and greatest versions in pedo antenna So totally feel free to check them out game scope wine girls game mode and steam proton And as always eqr codes are there in the slide deck that I just linked in the start of the presentation So you could totally scan them and feel free to take a look at them to know more about what these softwares are all about But let's hold on right there It's all good and stuff with the entire genius gaming community. But how exactly does fedora workstation fit in this equation? Let me answer that question Over the course of the next few slides, we will go over some benchmark reports comparing fedora linux with other platforms That's us windows 10 with respect to gaming That's the information for newbies for ensuring that they know exactly where they are going at if they feel like that Yeah, this is the right time for them to take the leap And start using genuine distributions for gaming And finally the things that gaming enthusiasts can do on fedora linux Well apart from gaming that is Let's start then shall we? All right now now we have a lot of numbers on the slide there. Don't be beginning with remedy entertainments control which released in 2019 As good a game as it is It's personally one of my favorite games It also had great tests on how good a platform is for rendering for playing that stuff Let me go over with the start from the frame rate Fedora linux has had around 12.5 percent of frame rate loss Not a good thing But a negligible difference if you don't have the statistics appearing on the screen So kudos to the maintainers who worked on minimizing the gap from a large gap from just sub 10s Then we had average of 6.25 percent of less cq power Being used which makes fedora linux a worthy distribution for trying it out on handheld Devices which don't have enough power or their battery power for that matter With around roughly two and a half percent of more cq power usage It's pretty much a margin of error for that matter But the gap is progressively going to go down as we speak And finally the memory usage Fedora linux is averaging around a 56.25 percent Lesser than usage as compared to windows 10 All thanks to a lighter that we have around This is something that I tried out with gnome and Who knows how big of a difference We would have if we tried some lighter desktop environments or tiling windows managers for that matter I will link one of my articles so you don't really have to take my word for it As you can totally feel to check out right now It's still on fedora magazine and we go way in detail about these statistics and how We were able to figure out the performance and how exactly fedora workstation able to do so Moving on The next thing that I would like to talk about is ubisoft spark ride 5 Which came out in 2018 It's an open world game a real torture for gaming devices or like I like to say it A real proving ground for platforms to prove their work So we are all in the green over here. What's the matter? With sd textures turned on in an average we have approximately 62.5 percent more frame rate Approximately 21.25 percent of lesser video memory usage And roughly 31.25 percent of lesser RAM The trend is continuing with non-sd textures although the difference slightly decreases when it comes to frame rate So we have 56.25 percent of more frame rate 31.25 percent of lesser video RAM usage and roughly 36.25 percent of lesser RAM usage So I guess with lesser Non-sd textures the game becomes a bit more cpu bound So the performance is not that apparent Even though the difference between the video RAM usage as well as the system RAM usage is significantly high So we see that fedora linux is clearly in the green over here And it's not just being clearly in the green But it's being In a large margin by making it evident that things do have changed around here and by a lot Please keep your eyes out for the fedora magazine because I would be following these claims up With an actual study with graphs charts and all these stuffs and about how fedora workstation was able to achieve this I don't know why I call this section notice but Well, it is something that people should keep an eye out for especially newcomers. So There are things that people should take care of before jumping into fedora workstation or on any GNU linux distributions for that matter Just letting folks know that grass is not only green on the other side, but It's RGB Sorry for the bad joke Um, all right then Let's start off with the incompatibilities Look, there can be games that would require some The items some certain kind of services running in the background to make sure that some anti-cheat measures are running Those things are a work in progress on linux Even though they work just as fine on the other platforms because well those were the platforms those applications were written for But uh, there are developers who are working on steam proton. For example, who are making sure that these Are working as well for linux with just as good of a performance. If not more in these places So it will be a time before these games would be able to run So please hold on And for the games that are running They might require some more patches for them to look feel and perform better There can be games that are let's say exclusive to a certain graphical api so They might have some visual glitches Totally feel free to wait as the developers and maintainers are introducing their patches, which they will and finally Fiddle in X can look and feel different for the most popular platforms And as much as I see it as the good thing I can understand that people can be habituated to a certain platform in the way they look and feel so totally Pick a desktop environment that is easier to get to get into and which looks similar to the desktop environment that you used to use before and maybe from there on move on to A different looking desktop environment and that is how a shift to a genuine distribution A desktop one at that will be a much more smoother one And I can assure you that you'd be enjoying your time here and look as we speak about all the great stuff and Not so great stuff about gaming on fiddle linux their devs and maintainers putting in their time in effort to making sure that your favorite video game Runs just as fast and if possible like shown in 5x5 Even more faster than it does on the other platform. So a big big shout out to them For enthusiasts You could use fiddle linux for building video games as there are multiple Properties and free and open source software is available on linux to do so You could also use fiddle linux to play games Well, this slide deck has been all about that With stunning visuals with optimized power usage and blazing fast performance Finally, you could join us in a friendly community to share your experiences You know finding some friends to play your games with along with sharing your configuration as to how you were able to do so Linux is all about sharing Right, so I do think that we have some time for some benchmarks. Don't we? Let me stop sharing my screen and Show some numbers. I guess that would be the right thing to do Where is the close button? Hmm. That is So now that I closed a slide deck Let's see some numbers Folks, please let me know if the screen is visible to you Uh Use a thumbs up or a yes or something like that Thanks, Anurag. Jason and Claudio All right, then um at the top left side of the screen you see something that we like to call mango herd It's the free and open source counterpart of something in the likes of msi after burner that we use in windows Which helps you to Analyze the performance that you get to see in games and it works for All kinds of games. It does not have to be a game running on wine or a native game for that matter because this thing clearly Is not a native game We have tpu metrics tpu metrics The ram used in the system as well as the video memory And finally in the very very short Way, I don't know if you're able to see it clearly or not We have the model of the gpu that we are making use of This if you write here uses rdna2 and if you know what rdna2 is Or if you don't let me tell that to you rdna2 is the underlying technology for steam deck and It's pretty much the underlying technology for the apu that they make use of so you can be pretty sure that if you factor in the battery The handheld a nature of the device you could totally Have this performance represent that performance with those things kept in mind But enough of speaking Let's look into some benchmarking But before that, let's look into the settings that we have over here We have every single thing set to ultra because why not but our Linux is totally capable of doing so And well, I don't like motion blur to be honest It looks the implementation of it looks a lot stupid In my opinion, but then again Just to make sure that we are testing our device and our platform in the best case possible I'm going to turn it on and then we have The v-sync turned off because we want to make sure that the game is not Limiting it's free me to the refresh rate of the monitor But rather going as high or low as possible Because it's not just about how good the fideliness performs if it's the consistency Which are there we should know about it and we should work towards making sure that those consistencies don't happen And finally we have set a resolution scale to one Which essentially means that if the game is rendered in 1080p So with the models and so with the The geometry the textures and everything else inside the game So enough of the metrics chat feel free to take your screenshots if you can but I guess this thing would be recorded so You need not do so Let's just just came in the benchmark And the platform as well That's what we have for I do want to note that The video feed that you would be receiving at your end might look a bit choppy because This thing is not a dedicated streaming platform as discord or something else might be So if it's choppy, it's fine But please take a look at the frame rates at the statistics of cpu and cpu Usages both in terms of their clock speed their wattages as well as the memory usage And that would be representative of what Petrolinux is capable of Oh, did I forget to mention that we do not endorse any kind of violence that's taking place in this benchmark? No, we don't It's a work of fiction and we'd like to stay just like that Alrighty then we do get to see some dips all the way down to 120 Not good. Maybe there's something that we can do to improve upon that But we have an average of 167 which is pretty great. It's like a couple of frame rates more than a refresh rate and I see bob saying that minimum of 120 is not good Well, bob, we like to think that when it comes to gaming when it comes to performance We'd like to have as less of limits as possible So if we can get more than 120 of a minimum frame rate, we totally should Um, and it went all the way up to a maximum of 240 Which is fine. I mean there are places where there are not a lot of textures not a lot of models, you know In the last part of the benchmark when it all pans to the sky There's just one plane And some trees in the distance so not a lot of work that needs to be done over there But to be honest the maximum frame rate is not a representative of the performance and so is the minimum What's representative of the performance is the average one? And what's representative even more is your experience while playing it because keep in mind 167 of an average frame rate is good But it might happen that it might have some stutters in between That the benchmark won't be able to clearly display and believe me when I say it And you'll get to know about that in some metrics that I'll be putting out in fedora magazine that These inconsistencies that I'm talking about What a thing in past I agree, but they are not existent anymore At least not in this game and I'll keep trying the games as they come out Right, so the number of frame rate frames rendered which is pretty much the duration for which this thing run for And the average frame rate multiplied by it 9864 pretty much a score which is great for a Linux distribution Even more so when it's running with all the settings turned too high and the SD textures turned on Keep in mind that the VRAM that the game shows you is like 4.3 GB But the one that you get to see at the top left side of the screen is almost like 6.2 What's going on over here so simply put The VRAM that the video game computes is an estimate It's estimated on a certain set of hardware that people may or may not have So if people supposedly had that hardware, they would have a 4.3 GB of VRAM usage I don't seem to have that so I have somewhere on 6.2 Which is pretty less as compared to what Uses that we get to see in other platforms the same goes for memory And I guess we have to thank the environment that we're using for that because no Uses such less memory and such less video memory From the ground up that it almost leaves everything else for what's important If you want to run your games or some scientific application that requires your GPU you can have your Performance book or totally dedicated to that stuff and none of that or let's just say less the amount of it Very little amount of it would be used by your actual Linux distribution But that's about it for the performance. I'll stop sharing my screen or maybe just Yep, stop sharing and start sharing the slide deck again. So give me a moment folks Present share a window Oh, did I mention that all these tests were done on valent so we get to See all the good stuff that valent could provide you with And no, no, no, I'm not going to let you do all the presentation from the very start. We are going to skip to the end and Right, there we are Geez now that the Nvidia drivers are getting open sourced I don't know if you're following the news But I certainly am and you should look for them as well And this team deck making sure that Linux gaming is becoming mainstream I cannot wait to see what future holds for us And I don't know if it's the year for linux desktop But I'm sure as hell that this year would definitely be for linux gaming and the years that will come as well up It's it does not have to be people who have huge GPUs or great configured rigs in order to be able to pay these schemes as evidenced by our performance results Linux is able to render just as much more performance and to a certain extent even more While using lesser resources So if you feel like that you would want to give this a try Now it's the best time to do so With all the helpful applications out there Totally feel free Hey there, buddy Hi, that's been going great I really hope that I did not skip over the time Oh, no, you haven't we're at five minutes to The end of the session so I figured I'd jump in and we could do a couple questions Like anyone has more questions feel free to drop them in the q&a now All right, first one is what was the hardware specs when you test because numbers Your sharing could be different based on hardware as well as W10 version also Right, so the thing is I try to make sure that the software that I'm using is as recent as possible both for windows as well as for fedora to have a fair Comparison so I'm running fedora 36 as the software and the windows 10 version is updated to the most recent version When it comes to the hardware, I'm using a Radeon RX 6800 XT It's a fairly recent GPU with a great amount of frame buffer As well as the 5900 X as the cpu I hope that answers your question moon rather Cool. All right next question Do you think using a custom kernel like xan nod provides better performance over a normal curve? Yep, it can but it depends on the hardware if you have a more recent hardware It can help to a greater extent Uh, the very point of this presentation was to make sure that the people who don't have a lot of experience in linux Let alone in linux aiming can actually be able to do so in a matter of clicks so Well, just install the software from gnome software for looters and it's a gooey So you can download a wine from it and then install stuff from there on The very fact that it has become more accessible to people and they don't have to be a command line magician Or or an engineer for that matter That is the emphasis that makes uh Speems that linux gaming is now becoming more and more mainstream and it does not have to be Ingenious who are able to do so It's not limited Cool someone in the chat here is saying that Elden ring works better on linux and windows That's true. Uh, I gave a little ring a try as well But owing to the fact that I need to run some tests on it You know get some nice looking graphs like I did for part i5 for control as well So I'm going to wait on it But you'll probably see some results on that in fedora maxin pretty soon I like to see that fedora state of gaming fedora workstation state of gaming is going to be a recurring thing Where I'll be publishing some reports to prove the fact that yeah There are things that fedora linux has improved upon and then there are things that fedora linux could potentially improve upon so We are never the perfect platform, but we are a platform that keeps on growing and keeps on becoming better All right, this isn't a question from the chat. It's actually a question for me. Um Are you aware of any development for the steam deck with fedora? Um Well some a couple of years ago I do remember that uh, there were rumors what fedora workstation or just fedora linux being used as a base for the steam deck os but I suppose it was one of the rumors people are trying to make sure that fedora linux works in the current state in steam deck because well team Did a good work on steam deck the platform is open people can totally install windows on it if they want to And when it comes to fedora, I think there's a custom spin of fedora called nobara workstation an engineer from red hat Who goes by the name of glorious egg roll? nice name He is maintaining that stuff and there are a lot of packages that you can install on Fedora as well. It's in the copper repositories So you don't have to install a custom version of fedora when you can just install fedora And those packages are on the top of fedora linux to be able to do the same thing So to answer that question mary, uh, all I have are tumors But you know from the past but right now I've seen people who are trying that stuff And they have some good results Cool, there's a question here in the chat um Just to the chat, but I'll I'll also ask you real quick. This will be our last one Do you think that pipe pipe wire helps with linux as a gaming platform? um, it does but then again do not a greater extent because It does help in recording stuff in streaming stuff. So if people are using Linux as a streaming platform popular streamers like Pay for instance, uh, some ordinary gamers on youtube if they use fedora linux as the Prepared gaming or streaming platform it would help them But if you're just gaming by yourself and your friends and you're not streaming I don't think it would be of that help