Unlike in Windows, in Linux the graphics UI concerns are outside the kernel, so graphics layers sit pretty close to the hardware, so even just from that higher performance was already expected as the adaptor layers such as Wine/Proton improved because the kernel itself is faster and gets less in the way.
Then, of course, the Linux kernel tends to be developed by people with lots of experience, overseen by people genuinelly at the Software Architecture level of experience and given its architecture benefits from know-how both from the server-side and the front-end sides of software development.
My point being that the Linux architecture is not only far more mature and controlled by far more experienced people than the Windows one, but it also gets way less in the way of graphics applications trying to squeeze as much performance as possible from the system hence in Linux improving such graphics applications or the adapter layers for them can go further in delivering better performance than in Windows were the kernel becomes a performance bottleneck sooner.
What we’re seeing now is those two effects delivering, especially once the Wine/Proton adaptor layers matured and entered a stage of more performance and stability improvements than feature implementations.
Unlike in Windows, in Linux the graphics UI concerns are outside the kernel
That’s not exactly correct. In Linux kernel talks to hardware and user space driver talks to kernel.
There absolutely is a kernel driver for AMD and Intel cards. It’s just there’s very clean separation between userspace driver that exposes APIs to the applications and kernel driver (which is part of the kernel, literally) that talks to hardware.
This allows inplementing all sorts of APIs without modifying the kernel driver. In principle you could make Playstation or Nintendo switch graphic API driver in userspace and it could work with existing AMD/Intel chips
Unlike in Windows, in Linux the graphics UI concerns are outside the kernel
is in the sense that the Linux Kernel isn’t in any way form or shape optimized for any kind of graphics features, unlike in Windows. The software design concerns about graphical interfaces are in user space and, as you say, the “kernel talks to hardware and user space driver talks to kernel”.
I don’t see how what I wrote is inconsistent with what you wrote: the kernel only delivers access to the graphics and leaves to user space the details of what’s done with it, most notably (by comparison with Windows) all the software design concerns from having a graphical user interface - I just described in high-level Software Architecture terms the “why” for the “how” that you described in Software Design terms.
Granted, with GPUs the complexity is so much more than with traditional systems (such as networking or data stores) that a lot of the performance improvement happens is in the graphics drivers, which is not quite kernel but kernel-adjacent, so it’s a little less perfectly split between kernel-space and user-space than what I wrote made it seem.
I always thought it would have been cool if some rogue and disgruntled programmer with the skills to do so, built DirectX and other Windows proprietary stuff natively into a Linux distro illegally.
That actually happened and it wasn’t illegal. There was gallium9 project that literally implemented DirectX9 natively in the open source graphics stack.
But the translation layer was so much easier to maintain and develop that gallium9 was discontinued
If it wasn’t illegal, it couldn’t have been that cool. 🤷♂️
Well Wine devs said they won’t support that due to amount of code to maintain. At the time that was weird decision since it required passthrugh to driver, not full translation (similar to what now wine does with Vulkan games) but I think in the long term they were correct
Man, what if they just made every windows app run natively on Linux like this…
I wonder how they like being on the other side of Embarce, Extend, Extinguish
Too busy crowbarring AI into the clock
how shit of a software company do you have to be where your own os’s software running through a translation layer on another operating system is threatening to run faster than natively on your os. somethings gotta snap.
We need MOAR Vibe Coding!!!
– Satya Nadella, probably
It’s less of a translation layer and more of a reimplementation. But yes, it does demonstrate how shitty Microsoft is that other people can implement its APIs better than it can.
a reimplementation built from reverse engineering and documentation that lies, meanwhile microsoft are the ones who should know how it all works, but apparently not.
https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/Clean-Room-Guidelines not even standard reverse engineering either. It’s incredibly impressive
The original code was probably sent through AI optimisation and the comments were lost
The news here is that NTSYNC is more efficient than the Linux emulations that came before it, not that it’s faster than the original Windows implementation.
with less LOC btw
NEEDS MORE COPILOT
…Copilot/Windows or as I like to call it, Copilot+Windows…
it’s not just the software that runs better, in many cases it’s the hardware too.
Take laptop batteries for example. users will state over and over how their batteries last a lot longer when their system is running linux as opposed to windows.
It used to be the opposite a lot of the time. Power management used to be a huge problem. Lately though things got a lot better.
I was about to say, my experience with battery life on Linux has not been a positive one.
To be honest, Microsoft’s software is running against an API that uses a translation layer to talk to an older API. Multiple layers of this happen before you get to hardware, mostly for compatibility with legacy software that uses the older APIs.
Not to mention MS have rewritten their frontends for their apps several times and keep them each time.
Threatening to? When was the last time you used Windows? Maybe you’ve forgotten just how much of a slug it is for gaming. Hell, just opening Steam can be a five minute ordeal depending on what Microsoft wants you to do first.
If you count all the aggressive pop ups and prompts and notifications and other bullshit that you can’t turn off any time you try to just use your own fucking computer… 10 minutes from power button to game launch. Linux? Less than 2.
Excuse me? Windows sucks on every front, not only for gaming. Get your facts right! /s
Sounds like you’re not running 32 ssd’s in raid 0 😏
IN THIS ECONOMY?
yeah switching to Linux is likely a lot less work if you factor in the price of the hardware you need to run games windows 11 smoothly at your current pay per hour(or salary/hours worked)…
Unless you “need” to play a game that uses “kernel level anti cheat”… then you’re SoL… 😞
My brother ordered an ssd and amazon sent him like 12.
I so wanted him to make a huge raid 0.
…god… god fucking damnit.
Screw Windows! I’m going to make my own Windows, with blackjack, and hookers!
In fact forget the windows!
Windows is pretty bad. Microsoft should be split up. If I had the magic powers, its leadership would be stripped of wealth, barred from holding similar positions for life, and have their faces on some sort of wall of shame. Everyone is allowed to throw trash at them, and they have to pick it up.
