Linux and Lutris?

OldGI

Member
I have a post here about doing something with my Windows box. The new Ryzn chips have me switching gear a bit.

Apparently Steam is making strides to support Linux. A few programs for Linux will download games from sites like Steam and Good old Games and convert them to run native in Linux. Just out of curiosity, has anyone smarter than me checked this out? I would love to dump Windows and MAC. I'm not a fan of Steam but, it would be the lesser of two evils.

Trainz a new era, maybe 2019, X-plane 11 and a bunch of my older titles from Good old Games on Linux would be heaven.
 
I have a post here about doing something with my Windows box. The new Ryzn chips have me switching gear a bit.

Apparently Steam is making strides to support Linux. A few programs for Linux will download games from sites like Steam and Good old Games and convert them to run native in Linux. Just out of curiosity, has anyone smarter than me checked this out? I would love to dump Windows and MAC. I'm not a fan of Steam but, it would be the lesser of two evils.

Trainz a new era, maybe 2019, X-plane 11 and a bunch of my older titles from Good old Games on Linux would be heaven.

The trouble is getting good video card drivers and Windows has a very large market share.

Cheerio John
 
N3V said they are going to work on a Linux version of TRS19, or whatever it'll be called by the time they come out with a working version, but the problem with Linux is which flavor are they going to support.
 
N3V said they are going to work on a Linux version of TRS19, or whatever it'll be called by the time they come out with a working version, but the problem with Linux is which flavor are they going to support.

Which brings us back to the US government procurement standard for UNIX. They had a problem what was UNIX, with so many different companies claiming to have UNIX, so they came up with a procurement standard called POSIX. The first operating system to be fully compliant with POSIX was of course Windows NT.

Cheerio John
 
Honestly, I've just come across this. It does look promising for those who want to dump Windows and MAC. I fear our new overlords will be Steam, though. I just thought it interesting enough to bring up. Along with Vulkan to replace MS D'S video.

I'm going to look at the new Ryzn processor and dual boot Linux and Windows once the coinage becomes available. Probably over the winter. Too nice outside to play on a computer.
 
This machine is running Linux and Win10. It is a Ryzen 2 2700 with the Nvidia RTX 2070 w/8g. It absolutely flies on Linux. And Nvidia does support Linux quite well with video drivers. Radeon drivers work well, too.

The Win10 portion of this machine is ONLY for Trainz: Linux runs everything else. I would love to see a Linux version so that I could rid myself of Windows altogether.

To the powers that be at Trainz: I am retired and should you ever decide to try a Linux version, give me a call and I will be glad to do any beta testing! I will stick a 4th SSD in here just for testing.
 
One doesn't have to be tied to Steam for Linux versions, in most cases with OpenGL just needs a Linux binary, if available, to replace the Windows exe files, may have to compile it yourself though if source code is available such as with Doom3. Then of course you can always try using WINE or the derivatives such as Crossover. That won't work beyond TS12 and that didn't work particularly well as far as Content Manager was concerned, I did however manage to get the game itself to run in Opengl with better frame rates than DirectX in Windows.

Never had any issues with 3dFX then Nvidia Drivers for Linux, ATI used to be a bit iffy until AMD took over, I was using Linux before Windows 95, wouldn't bother with Intel graphics though if intending to use Linux for games. Interestingly with Wine some older Windows games you can run off a Windows install direct using Wine.

Haven't really bother with Linux in the last couple of years though as it's not that friendly for creating content for Trainz, still run Mint on an old core duo laptop, however if an N3V version was ever to happen I can easily dual boot on one of my PCs, got plenty of disk space and SSDs.
 
For those in the UK, Scan Computers are taking pre-orders for the new 3rd edition Ryzn CPU and AMD X570 motherboards today unfortunately some of these motherboards are more expensive than the CPU's so you might need deep pockets if you wish to be first on here running TRS2019 on such a new setup.

As for the choice OS, I use Windows 10 for Trainz only and Linux for everything else other than my mobile which is Android. All versions of Trainz up to and including 2010 I have run well through Wine on Linux. I'm getting there with TS12 but it takes a long time to load and is very sluggish, Content Manager is a disaster for some reason. T:ANE/TRS2019 are no go. I'm reluctant to purchase Crossover (the commercial version of Wine) which has probably had more development and have never heard of anyone in the Trainz community who has tried it. I'm unable to say what ATI drivers are like but Nvidia are catching on and their recent drivers have been good and only a few weeks behind Windows with their updates.

Steam have had a catalogue of Linux programs for quite a long time unfortunately many are legacy titles. In the last couple of months some of the top Linux distributions have said they will no longer support 32 bit versions of their respective OS from 2020. This will impact on Steam as many of these legacy titles are 32 bit, and as I understand it meaningful discussions are ongoing but my personal view is that there will be many 32 bit versions of Linux for a few more years yet.

In fact I really hope there will be because some of the older versions of Trainz do not run very well, if at all, on the likes of Windows 10. I tried 2004 a week ago on Windows 10 just after this latest update and while 2004 loaded I couldn't load any of the individual built in routes. I also read of others on the Forum having similar issues. What might be interesting is a future Android version of Trainz running on Linux as many Android application already do.

For those who have yet to experience Linux but would like to try and without dual booting your PC it runs well from a USB stick. USB3 and about 8GB is preferred and Youtube is full of videos on how to do it. It will load slower than if it was installed on a hard-drive/SSD as will the individual programs but once up and running you are unlikely to notice the difference in use.

In the mean time if you take your Trainz seriously its still good old Windows, did I really say that. Peter
 
In the mean time if you take your Trainz seriously its still good old Windows, did I really say that. Peter

The last good Windows that I used was 5.0. It started to suck after that and continues to get worse.
 
I had Crossover a few years back, actually got better results using Wine so didn't bother to continue with it. Most legacy Titles I had running in PCLinuxOS with Wine or Linux Binaries, all Dooms and games based on the same engines up to Doom 3, HL1 non Steam and HL2 Minus Steam - don't ask! Unreal 1 and 2 Quake1 2 etc. To be honest getting wrapped up with Trainz and Content Creating, I lost interest in getting games to work in Linux. Had better results with Wine using RPM distros rather than Debian.
 
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