Commit | Line | Data |
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254d5bc3 NR |
1 | BATTLETECH LINUX BETA LOADING TEN TIMES FASTER THAN ON WINDOWS \r |
2 | 10? OH, THE IRONY... \r | |
3 | \r | |
4 | [linux_gaming] 2018-10-09_11-00\r | |
5 | \r | |
6 | o Reference: 2018-10-09_11-00_BATTLETECH_Linux_beta_l\r | |
7 | o News link: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/9ld2i1/battletech_linux_beta_loading_ten_times_faster/\r | |
8 | o Source link: https://steamcommunity.com/app/637090/discussions/0/1693788384146305062/?ctp=13#c2747650363470418004\r | |
9 | \r | |
10 | \r | |
11 | ive always noticed that stuff loads much faster on Linux\r | |
12 | compared to windows, can someone explain why?\r | |
13 | \r | |
14 | \r | |
15 | ** zee220\r | |
16 | ive always noticed that stuff loads much faster on Linux\r | |
17 | compared to windows, can someone explain why?\r | |
18 | \r | |
19 | ** pwgen-sy100\r | |
20 | Better filesystem's, better IO scheduling, better scheduling\r | |
21 | in general, less chances of some stupid ass av to clog up all\r | |
22 | the io is what I've found.\r | |
23 | \r | |
24 | ** breakbeats573\r | |
25 | Unless you open calculator on Ubuntu. It's comical\r | |
26 | actually.\r | |
27 | \r | |
28 | \r | |
29 | ** zebediah49\r | |
30 | Also what appears to be more aggressive caching, and less\r | |
31 | bloat to burn through memory that would otherwise be\r | |
32 | cached.\r | |
33 | I've note looked too carefully at it, but Windows machines\r | |
34 | usually appear to have a whole lot of free memory, and\r | |
35 | relatively little cached.\r | |
36 | Meanwhile, my laptop has 10GB of "stuff" just floating\r | |
37 | around in memory in case I happen to want it.\r | |
38 | \r | |
39 | \r | |
40 | \r | |
41 | ** jhansonxi\r | |
42 | Yesterday I updated a Win10 laptop that had been sitting on a\r | |
43 | shelf for two years. I could have installed a dozens systems\r | |
44 | with *buntu using a online install from a mini boot image,\r | |
45 | with all major apps installed and updated, in the time it\r | |
46 | took Win10 to finish its updates, update reattempts, and\r | |
47 | dozen or so reboots. What's worse is that most of the Win10\r | |
48 | updates were either for the OS or Office only. Any Linux\r | |
49 | package manager updates nearly everything and Steam handles\r | |
50 | most of the rest.\r | |
51 | \r | |
52 | \r | |
53 | ** Batolemaeus\r | |
54 | AV is the worst offender because it hooks into all I/O. But\r | |
55 | there's also significant overhead in NTFS when dealing with\r | |
56 | many small files. It's partially the cost of the much more\r | |
57 | involved security model on NT (and ACL processing). That's\r | |
58 | why compiling has an extreme performance penalty on Windows,\r | |
59 | since it reads and writes many small files.\r | |
60 | \r | |
61 | \r | |
62 | ** aaronfranke\r | |
63 | In addition to what's already been said, EXT4 doesn't\r | |
64 | fragment nearly as much as NTFS.\r | |
65 | \r | |
66 | \r | |
67 | ** Craftkorb\r | |
68 | Linux is pretty good when it comes to utilizing (otherwise)\r | |
69 | free memory, using it to cache ("buffer") parts of your\r | |
70 | drives. Just try to do an reading-intensive I/O task, like\r | |
71 | find / -name stdio.h . The first may take a while, but then\r | |
72 | just rerun the command. It's much quicker, because Linux\r | |
73 | cached (in this case) the file structure the first time, and\r | |
74 | now can just quickly grab it from there again for the second\r | |
75 | time.\r | |
76 | Want to see the caching of files (and not structures) in\r | |
77 | action? Find any medium sized file (about a gigabyte in\r | |
78 | size). Now, call md5sum path/to/the/file on it. Call it again\r | |
79 | afterwards. It should be much faster.\r | |
80 | Don't have such a file handy? You can generate a "large.file"\r | |
81 | using dd if=/dev/zero of=large.file bs=4096 count=262144 . Do\r | |
82 | note that by doing this, Linux will already have (all or\r | |
83 | parts of) the file cached, the difference between both calls\r | |
84 | should be much smaller.\r | |
85 | A much more file-centric system basically requires a good I/O\r | |
86 | cache to get good performance. Crucial for slow spinning\r | |
87 | drives (or worse, magnetic drives), but still really\r | |
88 | important for SSDs.\r | |
89 | \r | |
90 | \r | |
91 | ** robot_rover\r | |
92 | It’s because windows search and windows compatibility\r | |
93 | telemetry are currently using 100% or ur hard disk time\r | |
94 | \r | |
95 | \r | |
96 | ** JackCourtney\r | |
97 | Not a game, but GIMP loads so much faster on linux than windows\r | |
98 | \r | |
99 | ** 8bitcerberus\r | |
100 | Pretty much all of them, GIMP, Krita, Inkscape, Scribus,\r | |
101 | Kdenlive, Blender, etc. Faster than Windows and way faster\r | |
102 | than OS X. Blender is probably the closest I've seen between\r | |
103 | the 3 OSes, but it's still measurably faster on Linux, the\r | |
104 | others though, there's no contest.\r | |
105 | \r | |
106 | \r | |
107 | ** pooerh\r | |
108 | Yeah that's probably mostly because you have gtk libs in\r | |
109 | shared memory from either other open apps or even your entire\r | |
110 | DE, while GIMP is the only thing that needs them on Windows.\r | |
111 | \r | |
112 | ** one_is_the_loneliest\r | |
113 | Don't Windows apps typically bundle their own deps, so\r | |
114 | you'll end up with several of the same dep in memory at a\r | |
115 | time?\r | |
116 | However, libraries are typically pretty small, so I'm\r | |
117 | guessing it doesn't explain most of the difference, but\r | |
118 | it's certainly a contributor.\r | |
119 | \r | |
120 | ** pooerh\r | |
121 | Whole UI libraries like gtk or Qt are pretty big\r | |
122 | actually, which is why they usually start slower on\r | |
123 | Windows than on Linux. Most Windows apps are written\r | |
124 | using either Win32 API or .net and these aren't bundled\r | |
125 | with apps, these usually start up pretty quickly.\r | |
126 | \r | |
127 | ** one_is_the_loneliest\r | |
128 | Huh, I just figured that Windows apps would bundle\r | |
129 | their UI libs, but I guess that makes sense.\r | |
130 | \r | |
131 | \r | |
132 | \r | |
133 | \r | |
134 | \r | |
135 | ** Swiftpaw22\r | |
136 | Now, maybe they're not comparing fresh load to fresh load, but\r | |
137 | it wouldn't at all surprise me if it was true when comparing\r | |
138 | second+ load to second+ load as Linux has always shined very\r | |
139 | brightly when it came to caching games to RAM better than\r | |
140 | Windows. Secondary loads in most of the games I've seen load\r | |
141 | faster than on Windows.\r | |
142 | \r | |
143 | ** pdp10\r | |
144 | Both the Linux storage I/O subsystem and the Linux\r | |
145 | filesystems themselves are known to be faster than Windows\r | |
146 | NTFS.\r | |
147 | On the majority of modern games you don't see much of a\r | |
148 | difference, though, because the assets are packed into\r | |
149 | ordered binary files and then memory-mapped. In a way, the\r | |
150 | devs are working around something of a Windows weakness by\r | |
151 | doing that (though it's a performance win in general).\r | |
152 | That's a common pattern -- developers architect the game to\r | |
153 | work around Windows weaknesses, and of course don't take\r | |
154 | advantage of the strengths on Linux/POSIX. In principle\r | |
155 | someone could go the other direction, and design for some of\r | |
156 | POSIX/Linux strengths; I've pondered the topic in posts here\r | |
157 | before but neither I nor anyone else has a coherent thesis on\r | |
158 | the topic yet.\r | |
159 | \r | |
160 | ** s0v3r1gn\r | |
161 | The largest differences between EXT4 and NTFS that affects\r | |
162 | the I/O are the maximum cluster size and the\r | |
163 | “allocate-on-flush” method of allocating disk space.\r | |
164 | The latest version of NTFS substantially increased the\r | |
165 | maximum cluster size and both the cluster size and the\r | |
166 | “allocate-on-flush” method are substantially less\r | |
167 | impactful on loading times on SSDs than they were on HDDs.\r | |
168 | The largest difference in load times is probably caused by\r | |
169 | Windows memory management being far more zealous in\r | |
170 | purging garbage.\r | |
171 | \r | |
172 | ** piotrj3\r | |
173 | This. On loading screen there is a lot of memory\r | |
174 | allocation and thread creation and so on and this is\r | |
175 | where linux is faster.\r | |
176 | \r | |
177 | \r | |
178 | \r | |
179 | ** Tom2Die\r | |
180 | I've pondered the topic in posts here before but neither I\r | |
181 | nor anyone else has a coherent thesis on the topic yet.\r | |
182 | I have faith that some day when you mature a bit more and\r | |
183 | become a PDP-11 you'll find the answers you seek.\r | |
184 | \r | |
185 | ** pdp10\r | |
186 | And drop 20 bits from the word?\r | |
187 | \r | |
188 | ** Tom2Die\r | |
189 | Wait, did they really? There must be a good reason,\r | |
190 | but I'm not too familiar with older tech.\r | |
191 | \r | |
192 | ** pdp10\r | |
193 | The short version is that the PDP-10 is a very\r | |
194 | large 36-bit mainframe, and the PDP-11 is a\r | |
195 | 16-bit minicomputer that only took up a couple of\r | |
196 | racks originally -- a small fraction of the\r | |
197 | physical size. Even thought the model lines sound\r | |
198 | similar, they were very different product lines\r | |
199 | that were used for different purposes.\r | |
200 | PDP-11s were the second model of computer to run\r | |
201 | Unix, and the place where most of Unix was\r | |
202 | invented. Only PDP-11s ran Unix until the late\r | |
203 | 1970s. Later, the most popular hardware to run\r | |
204 | Unix were VAXes, the 32-bit replacement for the\r | |
205 | venerable PDP-11s. DEC didn't really like it when\r | |
206 | customers bought their hardware but not their\r | |
207 | operating systems. Unix never ran on 36-bit\r | |
208 | machines. The big tens are rather unique in\r | |
209 | history.\r | |
210 | However, the command-line syntax was quite\r | |
211 | similar on all of the DEC operating systems.\r | |
212 | Kildall used much of it in CP/M, and through that\r | |
213 | path, much of it went into DOS. DOS also\r | |
214 | inherited a bit of syntax from Xenix, which\r | |
215 | Microsoft had licensed a year or two prior to the\r | |
216 | IBM PC project.\r | |
217 | Microsoft wanted to license Xenix to the\r | |
218 | different OEM computer manufacturers, and sell\r | |
219 | their apps for Xenix in addition to other\r | |
220 | operating systems, prior to the IBM PC\r | |
221 | opportunity falling into their laps. Microsoft\r | |
222 | did continue to make apps for other operating\r | |
223 | systems, most fervently MacOS, the home of Excel.\r | |
224 | Word was on Xenix first, and only much later came\r | |
225 | to the Mac and to the fledgling Windows.\r | |
226 | Unix was originally invented for gaming and word\r | |
227 | processing, and Microsoft Word was originally\r | |
228 | made for Unix. History is stranger than you\r | |
229 | think.\r | |
230 | \r | |
231 | ** Tom2Die\r | |
232 | The odd thing is that at one point in time I\r | |
233 | knew most of that, but it's the sort of trivia\r | |
234 | that if one doesn't engage with it it just\r | |
235 | vanishes from memory without notice.\r | |
236 | \r | |
237 | \r | |
238 | \r | |
239 | \r | |
240 | \r | |
241 | \r | |
242 | \r | |
243 | ** ihjyuhgyhhg\r | |
244 | Can confirm, witcher 3 and GTA sa loading on Linux is\r | |
245 | unbelievably faster than windows.\r | |
246 | \r | |
247 | ** sixsupersonic\r | |
248 | Which is interesting considering those are windows games\r | |
249 | running in wine.\r | |
250 | \r | |
251 | ** ihjyuhgyhhg\r | |
252 | Exactly and also w3 runs at 24fps compared to 29fps on\r | |
253 | windows. It was already amazing that game was working but\r | |
254 | this. Linux is future.\r | |
255 | \r | |
256 | \r | |
257 | \r | |
258 | ** airspeedmph\r | |
259 | Not surprised, I have an old X-Plane benchmark where you can see\r | |
260 | also a striking difference in loading times (link at the\r | |
261 | respective test):\r | |
262 | [1]https://youtu.be/M5ygXe9fWR4?t=12\r | |
263 | I also see very long loading times on Windows for Arma3, Rust\r | |
264 | and a couple of others, so yeah, not surprised.\r | |
265 | Edit TL;DW: X-Plane scenery and all loading in 00:56 min for\r | |
266 | SteamOS and 02:33 min for Windows.\r | |
267 | \r | |
268 | \r | |
269 | \r | |
270 | \r | |
271 | [1] https://youtu.be/M5ygXe9fWR4?t=12\r | |
272 | \r | |
273 | ** Leopard1907\r | |
274 | Well , that is a known perk of Linux\r | |
275 | Once upon a time PenguinRecordings ( a Youtube channel ) was\r | |
276 | doing Linux game benchmarks.\r | |
277 | He was always comparing load times on Linux vs Windows. Let it\r | |
278 | be Feral ports or something else , always Linux was faster one.\r | |
279 | \r | |
280 | ** Two-Tone-\r | |
281 | PenguinRecordings\r | |
282 | I miss his benchmarks. :c\r | |
283 | \r | |
284 | ** Leopard1907\r | |
285 | Yeah , i also miss.\r | |
286 | His enthusiasm was really something else.\r | |
287 | Right after doing Doom 2016 via Wine video , he gone mute.\r | |
288 | \r | |
289 | ** Swiftpaw22\r | |
290 | Yep, sad, wonder what happened to him. Sounds like it\r | |
291 | may have been a side project while he was in school.\r | |
292 | \r | |
293 | ** Leopard1907\r | |
294 | I hope he is enjoying SteamPlay like we do and\r | |
295 | living his life. :)\r | |
296 | \r | |
297 | ** Swiftpaw22\r | |
298 | That doesn't mean we don't still need Linux game\r | |
299 | benchmarking. At least we have Phoronix and a few\r | |
300 | other youtube channels that do it somewhat.\r | |
301 | \r | |
302 | \r | |
303 | \r | |
304 | \r | |
305 | \r | |
306 | \r | |
307 | ** mykro76\r | |
308 | ITT - many apps and games do load faster on Linux.\r | |
309 | This seems like something worth promoting to game devs as a\r | |
310 | benefit of developing on Linux. How much time must they spend\r | |
311 | staring at their own loading screen when tweaking and testing\r | |
312 | their game?\r | |
313 | \r | |
314 | ** Swiftpaw22\r | |
315 | Good point!\r | |
316 | \r | |
317 | \r | |
318 | ** ThenewLore\r | |
319 | If it only would load the actual missions and not crash on the\r | |
320 | mission title...\r | |
321 | \r | |
322 | ** Atlas__risen\r | |
323 | I noticed a big improvement in FFXV on Linux vs Windows as well.\r | |
324 | \r | |
325 | ** Offensive_joke_lord\r | |
326 | My windows-using friend is always so impressed by how fast my\r | |
327 | games load. Well, it's happened twice, once with invisible inc\r | |
328 | and once with crusader kings II. I'm pretty sure his computer is\r | |
329 | better spec-wise as well\r | |
330 | \r | |
331 | ** Swiftpaw22\r | |
332 | On the first load, or subsequent loads, or all loads? Because\r | |
333 | Linux generally seems faster to load all games on subsequent\r | |
334 | loads at least, but also sometimes on first loads as well.\r | |
335 | \r | |
336 | ** Offensive_joke_lord\r | |
337 | Both first loads actually, we only play, and have only\r | |
338 | played, those games together at my house\r | |
339 | P.S. (yes, they're both singleplayer haha, we have fun\r | |
340 | playing singleplayer games and exchanging the controls.)\r | |
341 | P.P.S. (we even divide controls, one time we had 3 people\r | |
342 | and we played the binding of isaac where one person moved,\r | |
343 | one attacked, and the other used items)\r | |
344 | \r | |
345 | ** Swiftpaw22\r | |
346 | Cool, and sounds fun, playing together is always best!\r | |
347 | :3\r | |
348 | \r | |
349 | \r | |
350 | \r | |
351 | ** Greydmiyu\r | |
352 | For me it is both. But that is because when I dumped Win10\r | |
353 | off my gaming rig I purposely went the LVM route so I\r | |
354 | could clear off my largely unused SSD and make it a\r | |
355 | [1]cache for my HDD.\r | |
356 | The problem I had before was that I would get a game, put\r | |
357 | it on the SSD for fast loading, then move on to another\r | |
358 | game and not swap the games out from the SSD. With LVM\r | |
359 | using the SSD as a cache anything I use often gets loaded\r | |
360 | onto the SSD. If it ever fills up stuff I've stopped using\r | |
361 | gets removed from SSD. No need for me to manage it\r | |
362 | manually.\r | |
363 | Recently it has been Warframe and World of Warcraft that\r | |
364 | take up the bulk of my time. From boot to shutdown about\r | |
365 | 80-90% of my file-system calls hit the SSD. I have a 120Gb\r | |
366 | cache for a 2Tb drive and so far it's only about 60%\r | |
367 | utilized.\r | |
368 | A few months of that without touching the Win10 drive I\r | |
369 | still have sitting there and I can drop the cache, add the\r | |
370 | 1Tb of space to my volume, expand my file system, put the\r | |
371 | cache back on and have a 3Tb seamless logical volume to\r | |
372 | play with. :)\r | |
373 | \r | |
374 | \r | |
375 | \r | |
376 | \r | |
377 | [1]\r | |
378 | https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/using-lvms-new-cache-\r | |
379 | feature/\r | |
380 | \r | |
381 | ** Swiftpaw22\r | |
382 | The problem I had before was that I would get a game,\r | |
383 | put it on the SSD for fast loading, then move on to\r | |
384 | another game and not swap the games out from the SSD.\r | |
385 | With LVM using the SSD as a cache anything I use often\r | |
386 | gets loaded onto the SSD. If it ever fills up stuff\r | |
387 | I've stopped using gets removed from SSD. No need for\r | |
388 | me to manage it manually.\r | |
389 | I was about to ask wtf the point of this would be, lol,\r | |
390 | but that clears things up, thanks!\r | |
391 | I guess since RAM is more expensive than a SSD, having\r | |
392 | the SSD cache things makes sense as long as RAM is\r | |
393 | still used first and foremost for file caching.\r | |
394 | \r | |
395 | have a 3Tb seamless logical volume to play with\r | |
396 | As long as you have a backup somewhere of all your\r | |
397 | important stuff! Since HDDs are big and cheap I prefer\r | |
398 | just using one big one. Hell, there are 10TB ones out\r | |
399 | now and higher.\r | |
400 | \r | |
401 | ** Greydmiyu\r | |
402 | As long as you have a backup somewhere of all your\r | |
403 | important stuff! Since HDDs are big and cheap I\r | |
404 | prefer just using one big one. Hell, there are 10TB\r | |
405 | ones out now and higher.\r | |
406 | These are the two largest drives I have. I used to\r | |
407 | have Win10 on the 1TB and used the 2TB to record\r | |
408 | gaming videos. When I wanted to switch I realized I\r | |
409 | could just drop Linux on the 2TB drive and have the\r | |
410 | 1TB Win10 to fall back to if my litmus test for\r | |
411 | Linux wasn't passed this time around (Warframe & WoW\r | |
412 | being playable).\r | |
413 | Being able to merge the 1TB into the file system is\r | |
414 | just an added bonus for when I'm ready to get rid of\r | |
415 | the safety blanket. Been a month and I think I've\r | |
416 | thought about booting to that drive... once? But the\r | |
417 | desire to try Destiny 2 again passed. :)\r | |
418 | \r | |
419 | \r | |
420 | \r | |
421 | \r | |
422 | \r | |
423 | ** yoshi314\r | |
424 | too bad this beta won't load its own saves. i am reluctant to\r | |
425 | replay game from scratch again, because neither autosaves nor my\r | |
426 | manual saves will load.\r | |
427 | \r | |
428 | ** Dakkaface\r | |
429 | Haven't have that issue myself, it's been working for me\r | |
430 | aside from some graphical glitches. Hopefully they get it\r | |
431 | working for everyone soon.\r | |
432 | \r | |
433 | \r | |
434 | ** MJBrune\r | |
435 | I will say while I do think there is some sort of faster load on\r | |
436 | linux, one user randomly staying on a forum shouldn't really be\r | |
437 | big news and certainly shouldn't be held as true to any real\r | |
438 | means.\r | |
439 | \r | |
440 | ** Swiftpaw22\r | |
441 | Linux loading times being faster for many games, especially\r | |
442 | during 2nd+ loads, is 100% confirmed. As for this particular\r | |
443 | game, other users have confirmed the same thing within this\r | |
444 | very post.\r | |
445 | So, while wanting evidence is amiable, we already have it.\r | |
446 | \r | |
447 | ** MJBrune\r | |
448 | I mean sure. And there are plenty of benchmarks to show\r | |
449 | it. I just think "10 times" is a bit excessive and random.\r | |
450 | I dunno. Am not trying to crap on your joke either.\r | |
451 | \r | |
452 | ** Swiftpaw22\r | |
453 | I don't know how accurate "10" is hehe, but some of the\r | |
454 | benchmark videos show huge differences, so I totally\r | |
455 | get someone say "10 times faster". But we don't have to\r | |
456 | be overly anal, they just mean it's "much faster" I'm\r | |
457 | sure, and that much is confirmed.\r | |
458 | Nothing against anal. :3\r | |
459 | \r | |
460 | \r | |
461 | \r | |
462 | \r | |
463 | \r |