Live Linux Gaming 0.9.5 (live.linuX-gamers.net)
Virtual Machines: Problems and Headaches…Oh My!
Since I usually test my Linux distros in virtual machines, I thought I’d try it with the live.linux-gamers.net DVD. My experience was mostly negative and here’s why:
When I tested it in VirtualBox, I couldn’t get it to load no matter what driver I used (open driver, ATI or Nvidia). It just wouldn’t load no matter what I did for configuration and yes, 3D acceloration was enabled (though Space Invaders ran as it didn’t need me to actually load up the Arch Linux desktop). I experienced a similar result in Parallels as it simply wouldn’t load and dropped me back into the text-only screen no matter what I did.
VMWare was a different matter. It actually loaded just fine. I had no problems and I was able to try some games. Unfortunately 3D performance was god-awful so it really wasn’t practical to run it. However, non-3D games ran pretty well.
I was shocked that VMWare, out of all three virtualization products I use, worked the best. I had expected VirtualBox or Parallels to be better, particularly VirtualBox since the version I tested it on is the new 3.0 and that is supposed to have improved 3D support.
Despite the problems I had with my virtual machines, I’m not taking any points off whatsoever in terms of scoring live.linuX-games.net. Anybody worth their salt when it comes to gaming knows that virtualization usually saps the performance of games significantly and, in general, it should be avoided by gamers.
So I’m not counting any of the virtualization problems I saw against live.linuX-games.net and I don’t recommend that anybody actually try using VMWare, Parallels or VirtualBox to run 3D games using the live.linux-gamers.net CD or DVD.
Burn it to a real CD or DVD and try using that instead.
(3 votes, average: 2.67 out of 5)
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Hmm, sounds interesting! I am not a game player, but I have an eight year old son who loves to browse the Web and sometimes also play computer games. I built up a PCLinuxOS setup for him – and even named it “KarstenLinuxOS”, which he enjoyed. (He’s smart enough to know that it is really PCLinuxOS, but he thought it was cool that I made the boot loader have his name on it). I mentioned creating a “SimplyKatelyn” version for his sister with SimplyMEPIS, but he wondered if she’d realize that it was really MEPIS. I told him that there really was a KateOS a few years ago, but I think that faded.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Arch Linux is a really fast binary distribution, possibly the fastest there is. The pacman package manager is definitely the fastest binary packager out there, and Arch based systems run really fast, and you can have the latest stuff on them. Should anything ever be missing, you can use AUR instead of pacman to build your own packages from source. So having a gaming system based on Arch ought to be reasonably snappy, and if this system isn’t too loaded down, the live performance ought to be OK.
Based on your comments on it, I am tempted to grab a copy, not for me, necessarily, but for my son. It may be worth at least a look, and who knows, I may at least TRY one or two games. Just a lot of other things to do, that’s all.
Decent review; enough to get me thinking about it…
Good review.
I suspect you’d have trouble running many games on a VM, regardless of the OS involved. Games often want access to the underlying hardware, and VMs don’t usually provide that directly.
@ masinick:
Brian I’d definitely recommend giving it a download. All it will cost you is a bit of bandwidth and a CD or DVD. Not sure which games your son might like but just letting him play around with them could be a good time for him.
@ Kevin Wagner:
Yes, KG. I don’t recommend using a VM at all. I did it because I can never resist the urge to try it. But I’ve been down that road before, particularly with trying to run Warhammer Online on my macs, so I know that VM’s suck for gaming. They have gotten better over the years but still really aren’t viable for 3D games.
[...] Live Linux Gaming [...]
Just curious. Did you try to boot it up on your Mac? If you have a newer machine with Intel hardware, I would think it would work.
@ tlmck:
No, I didn’t tlmck. If I do at some point I’ll post back and let you know how it works.
may i suggest Unetbootin next time for this type of distro..
you can try the actual distro without burning it to a dvd or cd
works exactly as the live-cd was intended to , but much faster since it will actually run directly from HD, nothing gets installed, so no worries.
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