Linux gaming is faster because Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features

https://www.xda-developers.com/linux-gaming-is-getting-faster-because-windows-apis-are-becoming-linux-kernel-features/

106•haunter•2d ago

Comments

ThrowawayR2•2d ago

“He who fights with Windows should see to it that he himself does not become Windows. And when you gaze long into ntoskrnl, ntoskrnl also gazes into you.”

Seriously, is it really a victory if you have to adopt the architecture of your sworn enemy?

tester756•2d ago

What you care more about?

technical details or real-world outcomes?

tardedmeme•2d ago

What is the purpose of achieving victory? Is it to produce the software that works better or is it to stick your fingers in your ears and lalala the loudest?

Windows copied futexes from Linux first, anyway.

pixl97•2d ago

I mean the NT kernel was never really the enemy, it was the company behind it.

breve•2d ago

Microsoft and Windows were never the enemy.

To quote Linus Torvalds from 1997: "I don't try to be a threat to Microsoft, mainly because I don't really see MS as competition. Especially not Windows - the goals of Linux and Windows are simply so different."

ThrowawayR2•2d ago

He got less humble later on when momentum started building behind Linux. To quote Linus Torvalds from 2003: “Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect.”

MisterTea•1h ago

We are so far removed from 1997 that this statement means nothing.

> the goals of Linux and Windows are simply so different.

So different that Windows muscle memory works on most main stream Linux UI's, Many (most?) Steam games run on Linux, and now we have Windows in the Linux kernel.

not2b•56m ago

Rather, several missing, useful APIs that were hard to emulate efficiently have been added. That's not "Windows in the Linux kernel".

Pay08•55m ago

Does Windows muscle memory work? The vast majority of shortcuts are completely different for the casual user, and for the power user, there's no regedit or control panel and other such things.

nottorp•48m ago

> there's no regedit or control panel and other such things

That's not a bug, it's a feature.

Pay08•15m ago

Be that as it may, it means that the muscle memory (or more accurately, the mental model of the system) is gone. I've long held the belief that power users or knows-enough-to-be-dangerous users have a harder time switching for that exact reason.

A control panel (or cross-distro YaST) would be very welcome in the ecosystem I think.

ms_menardi•55m ago

Um... Are you referring to WSL? Wouldn't that be the linux kernel running under windows?

ranger_danger•53m ago

How do we "have Windows in the Linux kernel"?

pjmlp•2d ago

Not really, in the drunken happiness to have games, Linux users keep forgetting those are games developed on game studios that the only place there are GNU/Linux installations running are their MMO servers.

It is no different from arguing how Linux is getting better GameCube games with Dolphin.

Also Valve is only as good as its current management is still around, eventually like any other company time will pass, and new warm bodies will take other decisions.

general1465•2d ago

If you are refusing to have a stable architecture, then you will maintain architecture of your enemy

weiliddat•52m ago

Is the intent of Linux the architecture, or the philosophy of free / open source software?

wwweston•43m ago

interface and architecture may influence each other, but interface doesn’t determine architecture

JoeAltmaier•2d ago

Used to be a staff member working on an x86 OS called CTOS. I realized if I implemented a couple of traps, we could run command-line DOS programs. So I did. And it worked. Dev tools, text processing, piped commands all worked.

It helped that the DOS executable format was the same as the CTOS format - because we had traded Bill Gates our linker (which produces executables) for his BASIC compiler.

actionfromafar•12m ago

That's a great twist! Very few people traded Bill Gates a linker for a compiler!

CyberDildonics•3m ago

if I implemented a couple of traps

What does this mean? System calls?

tetris11•1h ago

I wonder what spanners Windows can throw into the works to slow them down at this point, or if they're so checked out of the Desktop market as they suckle down hard on that Azure teat, that they're more than happy to let Linux eat their lunch

jdubs1984•57m ago

Microsoft/Xbox is in the process of losing the living room permanently in the next gen if you ask me.

I don't know what they could do spanner tossing wise to really screw w/ Linux gaming at this point that wouldn't just drive more frustrated customers off their platform.

doublerabbit•53m ago

Lock future game developers in to a corner forcing them only to produce compatible for WSL, Windows for Linux releases. Restricting the license of use on GNU/Linux.

weezing•43m ago

Their gaming marketshare is minuscule both on PCs and consoles already. It's a downward spiral for years already.

funimpoded•17m ago

That might make room for Apple to finally try. The AppleTV is already in a similar tier to modern consoles, as far as specs and benchmarks go. Most of what's missing is a first-party controller and a marketing push. Disk space is tight, too, I guess. Still, they're most of the way to having a horse in the race, if they want to.

I reckon a successful launch of the Steam box (or whatever they're calling it) with its enormous library could develop into something that really challenges what's left of Microsoft's piece of the console market (and threaten Sony a little, for that matter) though it's looking like the memory shortage is gonna kneecap that by forcing the price too high. Bad timing.

whywhywhywhy•45m ago

You are not gonna get promoted slowing down Linux gaming at MS today, the thing they want is Netflix of gaming where the platform doesn’t matter but everyone’s paying them $20 a month

Dwedit•57m ago

Headline says "Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features", but only provides two actual examples? It lists NTSYNC, and waiting on multiple events at once.

the8472•5m ago

[delayed]

las_balas_tres•57m ago

I developed for windows before moving to linux. I was surprised to find that was no system call similar to windows WaitForMultipleObjects. Sure you can implement something similar using poll() or using condition variables. but WaitForMultipleObjects seems so much simpler and more versatile

FuckButtons•52m ago

Epoll / select? since everything is a file, you can wait on everything.

gpderetta•39m ago

The last time I asked the same question here, someone finally pointed out [1][2] a significant difference: wfmo can actually acquire semaphores in addition to waiting for them, which poll can't do in a non-racy way and efficient way. It can also do rendezvous synchronization (i.e. signal-and-wait).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47513667 [2] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/f4cc1a38-1441-62f8-47e4-0c67f5a...

wtallis•33m ago

A lot of that flexibility is what makes it hard to efficiently emulate (especially without kernel level support), but some of it seems too flexible to make sense as the default choice. How often does a video game really need a lock that can be shared between processes, and why should that lock type be the one that a game engine uses for almost all of its locks?

caycep•44m ago

If you purpose build a Linux gaming PC, would you lean more towards AMD GPUs over Nvidia?

guizadillas•41m ago

yes

notac26•39m ago

Def AMD. And if your focus is gaming I’d give SteamOS a go. With a full AMD setup you should basically be plug and play.

graynk•38m ago

AMDs are much better supported. There is life with NVIDIA GPUs too, I am on 4070Ti currently doing fine, but for new builds AMD is clearly a better choice with better drivers

eikenberry•37m ago

AMD. The final holdout, HDMI 2.1 support being blocked by the HDMI group, has been overcome w/ the HDMI group relenting and support is now landing in the kernel (expected in 7.2).

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/05/further-expanded-amd-h...

cute_boi•28m ago

any reason why we are using hdmi over display port?

saidinesh5•25m ago

The vast majority of the TVs only come with HDMI .. not even good enough analog inputs anymore..

0cf8612b2e1e•18m ago

I have been told (but not confirmed) that is mandated by the HDMI mob. If you want HDMI on your TV, it cannot also have DP.

okanat•11m ago

This can only be true for consumer-grade stuff. Even then I just guess the manufacturers kind of cheap out.

I have a dumb-ish Samsung Hotel TV / commercial TV at home. It has DP.

bisby•21m ago

Some people have TVs or displays that only use HDMI. I personally wouldn't recommend HDMI if DisplayPort is available, but if HDMI is your only option, then having it work properly will be important.

jaxefayo•18m ago

For one, DisplayPort doesn’t support HDR output

Gracana•3m ago

Do you mean in practice, or something? DP definitely supports HDR, and it seems to work fine for me.

hmry•2m ago

That can't be right. I'm reading this comment on an HDR monitor over DP.

Don't all USB-C video outputs use DP alt mode too, with an HDMI adapter at the end? And they can do HDR too.

somat•21m ago

I sort of figured that HDMI stupidity was strategically a good thing as it sort of brought the dynamic of the HDMI consortium and VESA. specifically how they treat the end users, more to the public eye.

That is, more people being subtly pushed to using display port is not a bad thing.

_puk•4m ago

I was faintly surprised that my recent monitor purchase came with a displayport cable.

Didn't help connecting it to my Macbook, but still..

anschl•36m ago

People say you will have less problems with AMD but I am using a Nvidia GPU for years now (on Cachyos and Pop OS) without issues. I'm using Steam and Proton pretty much exclusively though.

stuxnet79•31m ago

Which card and which drivers? I switched from Windows 10 to Xubuntu last year and have had endless issues with my Nvidia card (GTX 970). At the moment, I can't even use the desktop without annoying flickering & hard to diagnose / fix bugs.

Its an old card so I have no idea why I'm still struggling to get it to work. Is it perhaps because I'm using Xfce? I heard that Nvidia cards play better with Wayland although I haven't tested this myself.

maplant•25m ago

I can't speak for the parent but I have a 5090 and it works perfectly fine

davidspiess•20m ago

I run a GTX 970 on Fedora 44 KDE Plasma (Wayland) without issues. Make sure to use the 580.xx Nvidia driver.

okanat•5m ago

Anything between 700 and 2000 series (inclusive) is in this "completely proprietary due to signed firmware but also not fully supported in Wayland" zone. You need to have at least 3000 series to have proprietary drivers with open kernel driver and good KMS/GBM/Wayland support.

saidinesh5•23m ago

Nvidia on desktop has been mostly fine, if not rock solid, on the happy path they provide.

But their happy path hasn't included proper wayland support for a long time.

Nvidia on laptops? Insert the famous Linus Torvalds meme here

the_af•2m ago

> Nvidia on laptops? Insert the famous Linus Torvalds meme here

I have an RTX 5070 (whatever the laptop variant is) and it absolutely rocks with almost everything I throw at it, running Ubuntu+Steam+Proton. I no longer worry whether a Windows game is going to run, because almost all of them do with good performance.

SimianSci•26m ago

AMD does a lot of work to ensure their support for Linux is first-class. With the kernel now natively supporting their systems, you can expect good support. It's earned them some good will over Nvidia which has gotten better recently with the rise of AI, but still requires users to jump through a couple of hoops due to their attempts to protect their IP.

somat•9m ago

It is more than that, I really like openbsd as a desktop system. This is niche enough that I have zero expectation for any sort of support from the hardware vendors. However, because the amd drivers are opensource. Heroic people in the obsd dev community are able to make it work there. I don't strictly need a gaming gpu for my desktop work, but it is nice to have a setup I can boot linux on to play games with.

Heroic because the amdgpu driver is strangely huge, more code than the rest of the obsd kernel combined, It has something to do with gpu's having no isa stability and the generated code for each card present in the driver.

tapoxi•20m ago

I built a Linux gaming PC a few years ago, running Bazzite.

AMD is much better. Nvidia has been improving but stuff "just works" with AMD because the kernel (amdgpu) and userspace (RADV) drivers are open source. Valve is a major RADV contributor too.

I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything with my 9070 XT. Performance is great.

everdrive•16m ago

AMD for sure. Years ago for Linux NVIDIA was the sure winner. At the moment, AMD beats it out soundly on both cost and performance. ie, the same game running on either an NVIDIA or AMD GPU in Linux will generally run much better on the AMD GPU.

tryauuum•12m ago

both are shit

I used a recent nvidia blackwell GPU with linux, periodic crashes. Blackwell generation is shit.

Used recent builtin AMD GPU... Even worse, super reproduceable X crashes when using firefox

lunar_rover•11m ago

Right now AMD is the better choice due to support from Valve. It might change in the future due to Red Hat's effort.

the8472•8m ago

[delayed]

MattPalmer1086•4m ago

Just anecdata, but I just got a Lenovo T16 with AMD. Graphics is just painless, everything works with no issues. My old system with an Nvidia card running the same O/S keeps running into weird issues. It mostly works, just needs attention and little tweaks and extra stuff sometimes.

ammut•2m ago

End of 2024 I did exactly that. Ryzen and RADEON all the way. Rocking Fedora right now but was using Ubuntu for a bit. I have no reason to use Windows at all.

wwweston•40m ago

I only hope this eventually reaches enough coverage to support media production. It’s the last commercial area I care about. I’m entirely willing to pay for good work here (and have) but both major commercial desktop OSs are exhibiting significant warning signs of contempt for the users.

mifydev•35m ago

I predict that ntsync will eventually evolve into full blown ntoskrnl.ko and there would be virtually no overhead on calling Windows API. You can almost call it a Linux Subsystem for Windows.

advisedwang•23m ago

It would be fun to call it Windows Subsystem for Linux!

bsimpson•34m ago

I remember when XDA was the home of Android homebrew hackers working on things like CyanogenMod. It's so strange to see it repurposed as the brand for the same quasi-correct tech article slop that seems to go around all the big blogs.

Tom's Hardware is a bit before my time, but I remember it being well regarded. I've seen a lot of similar articles under that name lately. I wonder if they've undergone similar fates.

sphars•25m ago

Same with all the bigger tech blogs from a decade ago. How-To Geek is completely overrun with the same sort of slop. Finally had to remove it from my RSS reader.

Oh look at that, XDA and HTG are both owned by Valnet:

https://www.valnetinc.com/en/technology

r_lee•10m ago

private equity, what would we do without you?!

TheRealPomax•30m ago

This page really does not like playing nice with reader mode, making it near impossible to read unfortunately.

torusle•29m ago

Linux does not dragged down in performance by the thousands of virus and malware scanners.

dmvvilela•4m ago

What about macos?

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Linux gaming is faster because Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features

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Linux gaming is faster because Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features

A History of IDEs at Google

Launch HN: Ardent (YC P26) – Postgres sandboxes in seconds with zero migration

Xs of Y – roguelike that names itself every run. Written in 4kLoC

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The Emacsification of Software

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Heritability of human life span is ~50% when heritability is redefined

Twin brothers wipe 96 government databases minutes after being fired

Preserving Fisher-Price Pixter

Substrate (YC S24) Is Hiring a Technical Success Manager

Telegram Is Gone

Show HN: Needle: We Distilled Gemini Tool Calling into a 26M Model

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Nailing jelly to a wall: is it possible? (2005)

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Linux gaming is faster because Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features

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