Episode 21: Amazon Luna and Distro testing marathon

Crowbar Kernel Panic

This episode we discuss the latest news of possible Activision Blizzard purchase, Amazon Luna testing, and which Linux distro is the easiest out of the box for game performance.

News

Humble Bundle “Humble Trove” dropping Linux support - https://kotaku.com/latest-humble-bundle-change-leaves-mac-linux-gamers-ou-1848356728
Valve squeezing more battery life out of Linux drivers - https://www.pcgamer.com/valves-tweaking-linux-drivers-to-squeeze-more-battery-life-out-of-the-steam-deck-on-steamos-30/
Microsoft set to buy Activision what does this mean for Linux gamers? - https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/18/microsoft-acquire-activision-blizzard/
Microsoft's New Metaverse - https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/01/25/microsoft-activision-blizzard-isnt-metaverse-play/
Sony to buy EA? - https://www.techspot.com/news/93143-sony-could-respond-microsoft-acquisition-activision-blizzard-purchasing.html

Amazon Luna Testing

Luna+ - 5.99
Ubisoft+ - 17.99
Family - 2.99

Games I played on Luna

• Control
• A Plague Tale
• RE: biohazard
• Blair Witch

Distro Testing

Linux Mint the clear winner
I have been testing a ton of games with a ton of distros lately on my new laptop and the results speak for themselves Linux Mint just came out on top.

Games I tested

• Horizon Zero Dawn - There was a fix for the messed up grass and sound crackling during my testing so I went back and tested this one again and is now actually mostly playable on every distro except Garuda and ZorinOS.
• Witcher 3 - This game had a lot of stuttering under anything but Linux Mint.
• Metro Exodus (Linux Native and Proton) - Linux Native was not playable on any Distro I tried due to being half cut off of my screen or severe stuttering. Proton on the other hand was not too bad for the most part but Linux Mint still was the smoothest.
• Halo CE Anniversary - Played mostly smoothly with some stuttering on the arch distros but was totally playable on all the Ubuntu distros.
• Splitgate - Has some general Linux issues when comparing it to Windows but is playable on Linux with over 200 FPS on my system just some stuttering issues.
• Valhimne - Playable on all distros except Garuda.
• Project Zomboid (This game ran fine everywhere I tested probably due to low system requirements)

Arch Distros I tried

• Manjaro - Was mostly fine but had some glaring issues such as multi monitor issues and gaming performance issues.
• Endeavor - had some fairly deal breaking bugs like OBS and Screenshots not working with Plasma and generally more stuttering than on most other distros.
• Garuda - Just plain didn’t work out of the box with its dragonized plasma desktop.

Ubuntu Distros I tried

• Ubuntu Gnome 21.10 - This statement goes for all but Mint but basically stuttering was very prevalent on all distros except Mint. Other issues I had were getting optimus to work properly.
• Kubuntu 21.10 - Other issues I had were, games not popping up on the right screens I wanted and super + shift + arrow keys did not help.
• FerenOS - Same kinda issue as Kubuntu with games not working on the right screen
• Zorin OS 16 - Extreme stuttering in most games even with graphics set to low
• Linux Mint 20.3 - Once vulkan shaders were compiled ( which I allowed every distro to compile that I tried) The games ran smoothly with little to no stutters or slowdowns. Even my laptop fans are controlled correctly on mint out of the box. Caveat to that is I do have to set the speed profiles under windows but once thats set mint uses the correct settings.

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Music from this episode
"Bit Quest" and "Basic Implosion" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/