Software in Kubuntu vs. Ubuntu - difference in 18.04?

[mastablasta]

I received an odd reply from a company to a support request for game. They said the game i downloaded on Steam is not running because i use Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu. Is there really any major difference? OK, Ubuntu might be using Wayland by default, but that is about the only major difference i can see.

The game runs, but very very slow and it looks like hardware acceleration is not used (loud CPU fan, lag in game menu...). I know i installed it on old PC, but game is old and based on specs it should run very well (in fact by default game sets all settings on high).

Is there anything else someone could think i could try in Kubuntu to make it use the GPU (nvidia GT730 with nvidia drivers)? It's the first time i saw something like this. I have quite a few games installed via Steam and they run as expected and some via Play on linux. so far about a third of PoL games run better than in windows, about half run the same and a small percentage runs slower (but that is only via PoL/wine)

[claydoh]

Which game? Is it running full screen or in a window? Moar system specs?

There is zero differences between Kubuntu and Ubuntu in terms of kernels drivers etc.
The game most likely is running on xorg even in a wayland session so that is not a likely issue.

Probably the games tech support staff or whomever they have farmed it out to simply do not know that Kubuntu and Ubuntu are the same OS.

You could tell them this, or tell a small non-fib that it is happening in Ubuntu as well.

Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk

[mr_raider]

WHat game is it?

Are you running it under native Linux or Proton?

[GreyGeek]

I have a Steam account and run Universal Sandbox^2, Kerbal Space Program, Castle, Turbo Mount, Portal and a couple others on my K20.04 with GT 650M as the DE driver. I have 16GB of RAM. They run great.

[mastablasta]

That's what i though as well.

It's Feral's Linux port of Mediaval 2: Total War. It's an old single core game anyway. or at least it should be. i run it in full screen. changing to windowed mode has little effect. i did try it and saw the CPU at 100% in game menu.

i have a very old PC. but it can run many newer games due to the GPU and many old ones since they were mostly on single core anyway. i have source games (Portal, L4D, CS:GO. HL series), KSP, Hearts of iron 3 and non native Far Cry 1&2, COD4:MW, Fear, Oblivion... Much of stuff that is older than 2013 runs with no issues. and if i had some stuttering i would just reduce the GPU settings to medium or low and it would work. Total war is somewhat CPU intensive. I played Rome on WindowsXP part of this PC, but mostly it ran fine with no lag as long as didn't increase the numbers of troops too high. but even then it just ran a little bit slower than expected and it was playable. and since the whole thing normally does it's job (web browsing, playing some old or newish games...), i haven't upgraded yet.

:-)

maybe it doesn't know how to use swap? since i manually created a partition.

Inxi output:

System:    Host: stari Kernel: 4.15.0-111-generic x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.12.9
          Distro: Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS
Machine:   Device: desktop System: Gigabyte product: M56S-S3 serial: N/A
          Mobo: Gigabyte model: GA-M56S-S3 v: x.x serial: N/A BIOS: Award v: F3 date: 12/04/2007
CPU:       Single core AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (-UP-) cache: 512 KB speed: 2400 MHz (max)
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA GF108 [GeForce GT 730]
          Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.19.6 ) drivers: nvidia (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa,nouveau)
          Resolution: 1280x1024@60.02hz
          OpenGL: renderer: GeForce GT 730/PCIe/SSE2 version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 390.138
Audio:     Card-1 NVIDIA MCP65 High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel Sound: ALSA v: k4.15.0-111-generic
          Card-2 NVIDIA GF108 High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel
          Card-3 Logitech Webcam C270 driver: USB Audio
Network:   Card: NVIDIA MCP65 Ethernet driver: forcedeth
          IF: enp0s6 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 4000.8GB (14.3% used)
          ID-1: /dev/sda model: ST1000DM003 size: 1000.2GB
          ID-2: /dev/sdb model: ST2000DM006 size: 2000.4GB
          ID-3: /dev/sdc model: WDC_WD10EARS size: 1000.2GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 1.8T used: 527G (31%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sdb1
          ID-2: swap-1 size: 6.00GB used: 0.27GB (4%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sdb5
RAID:      No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 30.0C mobo: N/A gpu: 33C
          Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 154 Uptime: 4:36 Memory: 958.3/3944.1MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.56

[claydoh]

System:    Host: stari Kernel: 4.15.0-111-generic x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.12.9

It might help trying a more recent kernel. 18.04 usually has the HWE stack enabled, but only for installs after 18.04.1, but this can be enabled (without losing the stock kernel)
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack
The current kernel is 5.3 on 18.04.

[mr_raider]

My best guess is that game is not detecting your 3d card appropriately. Might be a piss poor implementation on Linux. When in doubt, try removing and re-installing the game.

Look into upgrading to the nvidia 440 driver and see if it helps. I don't remember if the gt730 is using the current or legacy driver only.

Also try manually diabling the KDE compositor before starting the game with shift+alt+f12

There are also some rare games that paradoxically run better using the windows native run time under proton emulation. You can force proton in teh steam advanced settings for the game.

[claydoh]

There are also some rare games that paradoxically run better using the windows native run time under proton emulation. You can force proton in teh steam advanced settings for the game.

Yeah, that is a great thing to try, especially if Feral's Linux port isn't optimized well for this sort of hardware.

[mastablasta]

System:    Host: stari Kernel: 4.15.0-111-generic x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.12.9

It might help trying a more recent kernel. 18.04 usually has the HWE stack enabled, but only for installs after 18.04.1, but this can be enabled (without losing the stock kernel)
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack
The current kernel is 5.3 on 18.04.

i doubt this will have any effect since it is very old hardware. and GPU drivers are outside of kernel anyway.

My best guess is that game is not detecting your 3d card appropriately. Might be a piss poor implementation on Linux. When in doubt, try removing and re-installing the game.

Look into upgrading to the nvidia 440 driver and see if it helps. I don't remember if the gt730 is using the current or legacy driver only.

Also try manually diabling the KDE compositor before starting the game with shift+alt+f12

There are also some rare games that paradoxically run better using the windows native run time under proton emulation. You can force proton in teh steam advanced settings for the game.

GT730 is in "legacy mode". i believe 3.90.something is the latest. will go out of support in about 2 years. so i am guessing with slower kernel upgrades in Ubuntu i should get maybe 5 years out of this card.

yes it looks like implementation is not done well. I read that Windows users have issues as well. mostly related to multicore CPU but there are other issues as well. It is quite interesting how the amount of work to get Crysis working is the same in linux than in windows 10. windows usually had descent support for older stuff. i remember we still have DOS app and win95 app running in windows 8 at work.

i will try manually disabling compositor, just to see if it makes a difference.

i will look into proton. i haven't used it yet, just PoL. you mean force the linux version via proton? would that even work?
older Total War games had a bad run with wine. usually the issue was mouse cursor and unresponsive mouse, which is kind of essential in strategy games. :-) that is why i was hopeful with this Feral port. plus i wanted to give my share of enthusiasm in having ported games available.

i cleared cache and some other stuff as per their instructions, but haven't done the reinstall. i will try that. it's a big game and they don't use torrents for download that would check the hashes. so maybe a file is corrupted. I will try a reinstall with overnight download.

[mr_raider]

I mean force the windows version. Proton is steams implementation of wine. You can do it with the game advanced properties and select proton from the list of versions.

It may not work on a card that old, since I suspect it has no Vulkan support.