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[Biopass]

I know there are a few linux threads kicking around, but has anyone ever tried optimizing a lightweight linux distro for DF? In leu of my hard drive dying, I'm loading Puppy Linux on an old thumb drive, installing WINE (because dwarf fortress running on booze gets a faster framerate than running natively linux), and being unproductive for the next few days. Puppy linux doesn't use much in the way of resources, so I'm hoping for good speed.

But. Has anyone actually messed with linux for optimal DF speed? If not, we need someone who can do this now, because Dwarf Linux (Dwarf Distro?) is just something the world needs.

[freeformschooler]

Only thing I know is to turn off weather and maybe even temperature, and change your display setting to possibly standard? (I think 2D might be the default for linux but i could be wrong)

[Biopass]

Haha, no, not quite what I meant. I'm talking about a linux distro made solely for running DF.

[Cyntrox]

Well, you'd probably want a linux distro made for Wine since that's the only way you'll get DT working. Not that it's impossible to play without - hell, that's what I'm doing now on my Mac - but I figure most people would want it.

[_DivideByZero_]

That's incorrect. Dwarf Therapist and DFHack both run on linux with no problems. On the other hand, DF running on booze is about as unreliable as a dwarf. Always cashes and on my machine it runs slower than it does natively.

[Biopass]

Well. DF on booze in Ubuntu worked beautifully, I got better speeds than both windows and linux native versions. I'm in Puppy Linux now though, and although I have wine, it's giving me errors. I worked out a openGL error, but it won't read anything from the directory (won't read init.txt so it goes to default settings, then dies when it can't find the curses file even though it's there). I've played with permissions, I'm stuck.

As for a distro intended for booze, I've not had much luck finding one. Granted, most of my time has gone towards using my all-too-small technical knowledge to make the puppy work (sounds dwarfy).

[DrKillPatient]

I'm on Mint 10 (fairly Ubuntu-based), and although DF works fine on Wine, it seems to perform worse for me than the native version. It's rather late now, but I'll see if I can do some benchmarking at some point soon to make sure of that.

[CaptainMcClellan]

Jawohl!! I've done this. Currently, I dislike running DF on Booze. I just run it straight on my Slacko Puppy and it works fine. By fiddling with boot manager and running it in "TEXT" mode with nox, I got a pretty reliable "DF dedicated" build. There are a few issues, however. For example, if Dwarf Fortress hangs or overloads the memory while you're running from the raw commandline, you're screwed. The game will crash and the computer will too most likely. If you run it inside of the X, you can always drop out of X with Ctrl+Alt+backspace making it more reliable to do so. Another thing is, with 5.5 you have to custom configure the sound drivers and libraries or play without.

[rmblr]

A dedicated distro really isn't necessary except for novelty's sake.

Just run the Linux DF LNP installer on any modern distro and you're good to go. Running natively is definitely faster than through wine.

Dwarf Therapist, dfhack, soundsense, stonesense, and friends all work fine.

[CaptainMcClellan]

Yeah, true. Still, it's a fun thing to do, and theoretically it'll get better FPS.

[puke]

Running natively is definitely faster than through wine.

Dwarf Therapist, dfhack, soundsense, stonesense, and friends all work fine.

Really?  How does that work?  Are those not memory hacking programs, and does not Linux fully sandbox the memory used by different applications?

[catpaw]

Really?  How does that work?  Are those not memory hacking programs, and does not Linux fully sandbox the memory used by different applications?

Its no big difference to how the Windows NT ( a.k.a 7 and 8 ) kernel runs. Both sandbox applications, and in both another process given the appropriate rights can hijack the memory.

These mechanisms have been developed on both kernels originally for debugging purposes.

[Maul_Junior]

Jawohl!! I've done this. Currently, I dislike running DF on Booze. I just run it straight on my Slacko Puppy and it works fine. By fiddling with boot manager and running it in "TEXT" mode with nox, I got a pretty reliable "DF dedicated" build. There are a few issues, however. For example, if Dwarf Fortress hangs or overloads the memory while you're running from the raw commandline, you're screwed. The game will crash and the computer will too most likely. If you run it inside of the X, you can always drop out of X with Ctrl+Alt+backspace making it more reliable to do so. Another thing is, with 5.5 you have to custom configure the sound drivers and libraries or play without.

As someone who knows nothing about Linux it's amusing to read all these names.

For example, here I pictured a drunk puppy that likes to lounge around the house.

D'awwww.......


And of course it must run on Booze! DF needs alcohol to get through the working processor (Disclaimer: See above)

[Flarp]

A dedicated distro really isn't necessary except for novelty's sake.

This. And while this community would be nothing if it weren't for doing stupid crap for novelty's sake, I suspect any FPS boost you would get would be pretty infinitesimal compared to the effort involved.

[CaptainMcClellan]

A dedicated distro really isn't necessary except for novelty's sake.

This. And while this community would be nothing if it weren't for doing stupid crap for novelty's sake, I suspect any FPS boost you would get would be pretty infinitesimal compared to the effort involved.

You say that like it's a lot of work. My method takes roughly 30 minutes to set up. However, you're pretty much right. My personal benchmarking has shown an increase of maybe 2 FPS on average. With a few exceptions where for whatever reason I got like... a 15 FPS gain for a little while. * shrugs * Most notably though, using a DF-dedicated distro allowed me to escape from an FPS Blackhole whereas using Windows would not. ( Mind you, it still took about an hour. There were twenty lairs all right beside one another and for no apparent reason at all, they all started spawning pieces of leather everywhere. To this day I can't go to East Spicyparched. )