Kernel 2.6.0-test5-mm4 & Return to Castle Wolfenstein

[Tuxiscool]

Mostly, Kernel 2.6 has lived up to its hype on my computer but there is something quite strrange when using RTCW..

 

When i try to use RTCW in a window manager like KDE, the speed of RTCW can get quite bad, sometimes unplayable. Does anyone know why this would be? it works faster in 2.4 (through KDE). Would this be worth cantacting one of the kernel developers for?

 

Through "lite" window managers, like fluxbox and the mandrake "failsafe" wm, RTCW works at amazing speeds, a lot faster than 2.4. The future of Linux gaming looks very good indeed (especially with Reiser4 near completion).

 

Thanks

[Guest JaseP]

I would think that it would have to do with the dependencies of KDE and Gnome, rather than anything else. Remember that kernel 2.6 re-writes a lot of the rules with regards to how things work, so you might be running 2 identical or similar processes at the same time, which may "confuse" the machine, and slow things down (i.e. 2 glibc's running at once). There is a significant amount of overhead when running the development environments.

 

The work-around would be to install or run games to/from a user name with a lite manager instead of one of the heavier ones, and so have a seperate gaming user account. It's probably a good strategy anyway, as games sometimes have security holes (i.e. the Unreal engines). Eventually, a version of KDE will be compiled/developed that is optimized for the 2.6 kernel, but remember that 2.6 is still in development, and all the rest of the stuff that hangs off of it is still optimized for the 2.4 kernel.

 

One other thing you could try is to remove/rename old libraries and create new links to the newer ones. I forget the command to search an executable for its dependencies... but remember that this might "break" some things as the newer libraries might not be compatible with the older ways of doing things.

[Tuxiscool]

I thought glibc was a higher-level software, while 2.6 was only supposed to mess up with lower-level softwares like firewalls and some other system services (for instance, the version of shorewall shipped with 9.1 does not work with 2.6). Oh well

 

Thank you for your reply anyway

 

And what you said about 2 glibc's running at once, i will try and check that out with top, is that possible?? (not now, because i need to reboot into 2.6 since it's not compatible with my Conexant HCF modem, damn winmodems!!!)

 

And one more thing, a guy said on kerneltrap

 

Maybe you could try running the game at nice -10?

 

Does anyone know how to do this because....im just puzzled

[Guest JaseP]

You know you might be right about glibc, but what I was actually thinking about was the OpenGL core library...

 

That you can have multiple copies of (pretty sure) and they may interfere with one another (I think I remember an article about kernel 2.6 saying it handled having multiple instaces of things like that better than older kernels...) . Try pointing Wolfenstein to the one designed to be working with kernel 2.6.

[Guest c_m_f]

i noticed that when i iuse my LFS system (2.6 test 5 & 2.4.21 heads and gcc 3.3.1) in Enemy Territory when i try to list servers i get none, it soemtimes works, and now back in MDK it's all fine again!

 

anyone else?