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My itch.io Linux (mis)adventure

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USrankRandomX
3 years ago
(edited 3 years ago)
The story so far:
I normally play on Windows, mostly because I like to have the latest video drivers on my gaming system. But recently I decided to try installing Zero-K on a Linux Mint partition. Got the Zero-K semi-portable file from itch.io. Noticed that there's a complaint in the comments that the libcurl3 library is no longer available. So what if libcurl4 superceded it? Everything still works. Zero-K_linux64.sh wouldn't run at first because my TERM variable was set for 256 colors... Fine, set that to xterm and run. No update screen ("Zero-K is updating, please wait..."), but the game runs. OK, how do I get my update screen? Well, just running the "old" script does that for me. Great, everything runs. On the wrong monitor. Fine, I'll keep dragging the window where I want it (a nightmare, but not limited to ZK). But the game version remains at 1.8.9 no matter what.

Question of the day:
How do I update my game?

Other questions:
I didn't try to create a new account or enter my old one, it's just a local game for now. Could that cause it to not update properly? If so, that feels like a bug.
Is the itch.io version no longer maintained?

Conclusion:
I will probably remove this installation. Sadly, it runs worse on Linux than it does on Windows on the same machine, with strange micro-freezes despite fewer backgrounds processes (nothing in the log to explain them afact) and windows that don't stay on the monitor that I put them on. Nevertheless, I'd still like to know how to update it in case I need to help someone else who might have the same issue down the road.
+0 / -0

DEranktrisolaran
3 years ago
if you like some experimenting you can try a Arch-based distribution, e.g. Manjaro, zero-k is there in the AUR, which is a special repo, but: installing zero-k from there can last some time, Manjaro is stable, but not as stable as Mint.
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USrankRandomX
3 years ago
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll have a look at Manjaro (heard some good things about it). I use Ubuntu/Debian-based distros mainly because they seem to play better with some of my older/more exotic hardware than others do out of the box.

I would still like to understand why my existing installation fails to update though.
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USrankfenrave
3 years ago
Having my own personal experiences in regards to the stuttering problems on debian based linux OS's, Its usually due to the kernel for your desktop environment having one of its funny run away memory leaks that they get sometimes. You can usually fix it by logging in and out, or restarting the desktop environment. Also turning off hardware acceleration for it sometimes does the job but then it'll be running on your CPU, the game will still use your GPU though.

Can't say for sure what the problem might be with zero-k on linux, last time I tried a year ago (mint 19?) it ran ok, with some minor instability that wasn't specific to zero-k. Though to be fair I had some dust in my ram slot which was causing a really bad memory corruption problem that i didn't know about at the time, so take this as you will.

As for it loading on the wrong screen? That might be something you can fix in the zero-k config for it, but considering how much of a pain i had with the display system for linux, this might not be something fixable from the games end. I think it just loads on your primary display, assuming you're using a nvidia GPU with your PC, you can easily swap around the primary displays in the control panel, and i'm sure you could do the same with the systems own settings but i hate the ones on debian based OS's so thats your choice.
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GBrankAdminDeinFreund
3 years ago
On Linux you can customize your experience to the better and to the worse. The choice of window manager probably matters a lot. With i3wm I find it to be a much more pleasant experience than on Windows. Zero-K stays in its assigned window and doesn't resize/move itself or stop me from switching to other applications even while loading.
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USrankRandomX
3 years ago
Thank you, I wasn't aware of i3's existence until now. Looks promising.

quote:
... I think it just loads on your primary display, assuming you're using a nvidia GPU with your PC, you can easily swap around the primary displays in the control panel,...

That, unfortunately, is not what's happening. The problem is that my secondary display is on the left of my primary display physically, and most windows want to open on the left regardless of which one I designate as primary. There is no physical space for me to move them around. Just telling Linux that the left one is on the right is not an option because I need to be able to move between them quickly, but moving the mouse to the left to go right gets very confusing and frustrating quickly.
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DEranktrisolaran
3 years ago
@manjaro: i have only one installation on a >10 year old laptop and it works fine there (even with spring, but not zero)
@monitors: in the AUR you will find all xrandr-tools available for linux, i tried arandr and it worked with it (maybe i3 would be a better choice, must try)
@playing: in my case i could run more games on mint than on other distributions
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