So two topics, and it would be great to get as many people posting as possible on this one.
Does anyone have the Dogwood Librem 5 yet? And if so ALL news would be great.
On a slightly unrelated but related topic Linux games? Many people would love to move from windows to Linux, and so on, but can you get, for sure, 100% most games to play on Linux that only seem to run on windows?? This is a question I get asked a lot.
GTA, Dead Red 2, and so on, many “mainstream” games do not appear to be workable on a Linux platform, although I have heard that some games are…? Any advice and guidance on this topic would be great.
I don’t think anyone has a Dogwood in hands yet. My guess is wait about two or three weeks from today to give time for them to ship.
On Linux (desktop), and while I cannot play 100% of my games library, I can easily play 90% or more using Steam/Proton, or using Lutris for any non-Steam games. This is on my desktop PC with an x86_64 processor, though, not on a Librem 5 with an ARM CPU, less RAM, and no beefy GPU like my PC.
I think, like with Chestnut and prior batches, simple touch-friendly games will work just fine, but anything advanced or 3D will probably be slow or completely unusable.
Also, how would you expect to play GTA or RDR2, (even if they did work) using only a touchscreen?
If your computer (GPU) is new enough to have full vulkan support, it can run just about any windows game. The only issue you’re likely to have is with copy protection (some old games) and anti-cheat (mostly Epic Game Store titles, but some others). Note that it is a serious security issue to run the kernel-model anti-cheat used by some titles.
Hi spacemanspiffy, sorry for the confusion the second part of my question was relating to Linux in a more general sense, as in running Linux on a laptop or desktop, not the Librem 5, sorry about that.
I don’t think anything beyond simple sudoku and chess type games will be playable on the L5. Heh. Maybe a few more iterations and availability of more capable, more open hardware and we’ll be able to play 3D stuff.
I hope I’m wrong and this happens sooner than later.
Then again, I kind of just want this to be a phone used for communication. I’d like to see other devices for other purposes.
A little work is too much work. I want it to just work. Heh. Open up a package manager of some sort, click, enter password, then open and be off to the races.
I have been able to get several of my favorite Windows games to run under linux using various versions of wine or dosbox. But if you don’t enjoy hacking to make things work, it’s probably not going to work before you run out of patience. Yet another level of hacking will be needed to get any Windows programs running on your L5, because the Arm architecture will not natively support the execution of x86 operational codes. I actually got the original version of Wolfenstine running on a rooted Android phone, in a Debian chroot, under Wine, sitting on top of an x86 emulation layer. It took weeks of hacking in my spare time and there was that feeling of conquering Mount Everest when it actually works. But then again, most people have no desire what-so-ever to scale Mount Everest. I don’t think I could do it again now because the x86 emulation layer that I used (called Exagear), is no longer on the market. I suspect that someone with ownership of the intellectual property rights may have forced him out of business. The last I saw, Exagear was still making Android apps but they quit selling the x86 emulation layer that runs on Debian or Ubuntu linux. Without an x86 emulation layer it’s a waste of time trying to get x86 programs to run on an Arm device.
Yes, my experience as well. I like how easy DOSbox is, the hardware and software is old and well-understood enough to emulate. Newer games on WINE on the other hand, is finnicky enough on x86 hardware, let alone with an additional emulation layer for ARM. You’d likely even have more luck with Android ARM games.