How Valve Made L4D2 Faster On Linux Than Windows

[RealNC]

I never had freezes in W7. Not a single time. Application crashes, yes. System freezes, never.

[mirv]

This. I'm confused by everything that's being said here. Direct3D translators? What is all this crazy talk?

void DrawSomething()
{
    #if defined(WIN32)
        D3D9Blahblah();
    #elif defined(__linux__)
        glBlahblah();
    #elif defined(__APPLE__)
        glBlahblahAPPLE();
    #endif
}

Certainly this is what most devs do right?

Not really, as it turns out. Sometimes things just aren't that simple, which is why different render backends are used (ogre uses plugins for that). Even simple things like matrix manipulation can be different, depending on if the underlying graphics API uses row or column major.
In the case of OpenGL, you also have to look at which version you're using. OpenGL 3.x and 4.x do things a little differently to 2.x, so depending on which one you want to support, things are done differently.
Also, trying to get a large code base maintained with #define's sprinkled throughout the rendering calls is the stuff of nightmares.

[kraftman]

I never had freezes in W7. Not a single time. Application crashes, yes. System freezes, never.

So you're lucky. However, there are many examples of such crashes:

http://support.dell.com/support/topi...t?docid=543301

To answer some Elanthis stupidity:

http://www.definiteanswers.com/q/Why...-4be52b8dec601 - this for sure made Windows much more secure! What a dumb. And... if he's assuming Linux is faster in graphic than Windows, because of Windows' additional security he's mistaken as usual:

Linux and Windows are two operating systems that use supervisor/user-mode. To perform specialized functions, user-mode code must perform a system call into supervisor mode or even to the kernel space where trusted code of the operating system will perform the needed task and return it back to user space.

But Linux does it in a much more efficient way:

There's also the other way around. The Linux kernel, e.g., injects a VDSO section in processes which contains functions who would normally require a system call, i.e. a ring transition. But instead of doing a syscall, these functions use static data provided by the kernel which prevents the need for a ring transition which is more lightweight than a syscall. The function gettimeofday can be provided this way.

PS. Here's more about Windows graphic and security as a bonus:

http://www.reactos.org/en/dev_faq.html [graphic part]

[smitty3268]

I never had freezes in W7. Not a single time. Application crashes, yes. System freezes, never.

I've had the GPU driver crash and recover a few times on W7 while rendering 3D content. It's a very nice feature compared to what used to happen.

I also had it hard crash the system for a while - it was whenever it tried to decode h264 content, which was extremely annoying. I finally ended up just playing everything through an app which didn't trigger the GPU decoding assistance, until they fixed that driver bug.

[kraftman]

I also had it hard crash the system for a while - it was whenever it tried to decode h264 content, which was extremely annoying. I finally ended up just playing everything through an app which didn't trigger the GPU decoding assistance, until they fixed that driver bug.

This nicely reflects situation in Windows. There aren't any "special" crash protection mechanisms like Elanthis' imagination wants, but they just try to iron out some bugs in drivers.

[curaga]

I never had freezes in W7. Not a single time. Application crashes, yes. System freezes, never.

Lucky you. I've too seen both behaviors, the errors it recovers from in a few seconds and the hard crashes.

[AJSB]

I never had freezes in W7. Not a single time. Application crashes, yes. System freezes, never.

Both in Windows XP and 7 i had:

Application Crashes

System Freezes

System Freezes that not even pressing the RESET botton can clear !

System Freezes that not even pressing the POWER botton in the front panel of the PC tower can clear ! Yeah, the PC got so locked that I had to switch off in the rear of the PC !!!

[entropy]

I use W7 for gaming since two years and
never experienced a single crash. It just behaves fine.

I'm a Linux/UNIX guy but claiming W7 is a bad OS seems to be heavily biased, really.

[AJSB]

I use W7 for gaming since two years and
never experienced a single crash. It just behaves fine.

I'm a Linux/UNIX guy but claiming W7 is a bad OS seems to be heavily biased, really.

...and how many games do you played in those 2 years ?

Lately i also don't have problems , but this can happen when a new game is launched and that game makes weird things with graphics...
(then again lately i don't have problems because...)

I used Windows for gaming since 2006 but now i ditched it...

I played maybe +60 games in those 6 years...not counting with the mods for them.

In ETQW alone i have more than 800 hours of online play and i had a period that i didn't played it for 1-2 years at all.

I can play easily 4-6 hours per day and at Sundays it can go up to a number that i don't want to tell

[entropy]

...and how many games do you played in those 2 years ?

Lately i also don't have problems , but this can happen when a new game is launched and that game makes weird things with graphics...
(then again lately i don't have problems because...)

I used Windows for gaming since 2006 but now i ditched it...

I played maybe +60 games in those 6 years...not counting with the mods for them.

In ETQW alone i have more than 800 hours of online play and i had a period that i didn't played it for 1-2 years at all.

I can play easily 4-6 hours per day and at Sundays it can go up to a number that i don't want to tell

Admittedly I'm not a hardcore gamer.
Nevertheless, I have quite a big list of games released on Steam that I play now and then.
All *I* can say is that W7 feels like quite a good OS.
Even the AMD Radeon 4850 driver has been rock stable while I heard lots of bitching about it.
Only minor graphics corruptions occurred with Rage but this is known issue.
Apart from that, seems like everything is fine *here*.

Still, I hope Steam with a steadily increasing catalogue of native (AAA) games will find the way soon to Linux.