SimCity4 on Ubuntu 8.10

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I was challenged by Zarek to try SimCity4 on Ubuntu 8.10 because I was “complaining” about Ubuntu performance. This will be the second time I have done this, but the first time I will have blogged about it. Here’s what happened…

  • Grabbed a fresh copy of Ubuntu 8.10
  • Ghosted Vista install out to another drive (to restore later)
  • Installed Ubuntu, took whole system drive.
  • Booted Ubuntu. Took about 10 seconds longer to boot than Vista. (Vista starts off booting slow, but as SuperFetch gets smarter, it boots faster and faster.)
  • Downloaded updates.
  • Marveled that Ubuntu auto-mounted my NTFS storage and app drives. No surprise there.
  • Activated the recommended Restricted nVidia driver for my 8800 GTS and set full resolution, then turned on the eye candy.
    • Fought with this, as I have to do every time I install Ubuntu on this video card, to get 1280×1024 resolution. I’ll spare you all the minute details, but I spent a good 45 minutes on it. Ubuntu refuses to detect this mode automatically and the GUI gives me no option to force my own settings. None of the command line options to force a redetect of video hardware seem to work anymore, or I am using them incorrectly. I have to edit xorg.conf manually to add in the proper modes, refresh rates and the like. It’s a PITA. I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO MANUALLY EDIT ANYTHING TO FORCEFULLY SET A VIDEO MODE THAT I WANT IF THE OS DOESN’T DETECT IT. Windows doesn’t make me do this. 1) It absolutely, 100% of the time, always has and probably always will detect my monitor’s native resolution JUST FINE and sets it to it out of the box and, 2) It just happily shows me all the resolutions the CARD supports and lets me set it to whatever I want in the event the monitor isn’t detected. See, Windows gives me a GUI for advanced options and assumes I know what I’m doing. XWindows on Ubuntu does not. (I cannot stress this enough, that Windows has never, as far as I can remember, failed to detect and either auto-set or allow me to set ANY LCD monitor’s native resolution EVER)
  • Marveled at how the default compositing engine is slower in Ubuntu 8.10 than it was in 8.04, and is subsequently slower than Vista’s compositing engine. (8.04 was faster last time I ran it, actually, dunno why that might be). I don’t care if it might benchmark faster, because it LOOKS and FEELS slower. For eye-candy, that’s what’s important.
  • Amazed that Firefox on Ubuntu renders this blog more slowly than Vista does, and scrolls pages slower too. It is positively choppy. Everyone says Ubuntu is supposed to be faster on the same hardware. Hmm…
  • Installed Wine from Ubuntu repository with Synaptic. Easy.
  • Tried to install SimCity4 and RushHour using ISO images.
    • This was a FAIL, most likely due to lack of experience on my part. Apparently, mounting ISO images over an SMB connection and getting them to show up to Wine is more difficult than I am willing to try to figure out. I just used the CD’s last time I did this, but I tried to save time and use my ISO files – no go.
    • Found out that the default way of mounting ISO files in Ubuntu doesn’t like Wine or vice versa, and is generally weird. I had to install gISOMount to get ISOs to mount well, using a GUI, in a proper way. I know, “use the command line, you noob”, but I shouldn’t have to use the command line to do something this simple. I don’t have to use the command line in Windows to do this.
  • Installed SimCity4 and RushHour using original CDs instead
    • This worked just fine, although the SimCity4 installer shows a constant 0% completed while installing.
  • Copied Plugins and Angel Coast Region from NTFS drive to linux home folder for testing.
  • Launched SC4RH for “play”.
    • Launched the game and waited… some more… a bit more.. THERE (about twice as slow loading as Vista/XP)
    • Loaded up Angel Coast/Buena Vista (My HUGE city, almost entire map of skyscrapers and 600k people) and waited. And waited, and waited.
    • Marveled at how slow it was compared to Windows. Thoroughly enjoyed the wonderful 1-3 FPS when scrolling around the city map (in Windows this is more like 6-10fps). Noticed issues with rendering the clouds (could see silohuettes of planes and mission bubbles left behind when scrolling). Watched as the color of the ground would randomly change color when it shouldn’t. Menus took longer to pop out. Options took longer to open up. Was slower trying to lay down roads.
    • Didn’t end up playing, because it took too long to do anything. Hell, its slow enough on Windows, I don’t need anything helping it to be slower.
  • Posted this complaint about how Ubuntu 8.10 and SimCity4 are slower on this computer than Windows Vista.
  • Went back to loving Ubuntu for servers and Windows for desktops.

6 thoughts on “SimCity4 on Ubuntu 8.10”

  1. I think the misconception you have is that linux is a replacement for windows, some people may bill it as that but it is not. Linux is something entirely different, yes it would be nice if it autodetected your resolution correctly but just because windows does it doesn’t mean linux has to. Also how can you compare a windows game performance in Linux? you should be amazed that the game runs at all not complain about the framerate…can you play linux games in windows? A more fair comparison would be a game that runs on both, warsow or something like that. It does sound like theres something wrong with your setup though, I only have an 8500gt and it’s pretty snappy(haven’t tried simcity though).

  2. I always have the same problem with video modes and ubuntu. They have a gui tool that can fix it, but I’m arsed if I can remember the name.

    For various reasons I don’t use ubuntu any longer, choosing instead to focus on SuSE, since we have a few OpenSuSE servers.

    Any sort of advanced gaming on linux is going to forever be frought with failure, I expect, especially if one is forced to rely on wine (nevermind the lack of DirectX). And, in the end, there is little point in suffering inferior performance when Windows is a platform that will simply do the job. But, then, I don’t subscribe to the whole Software As A Moral Choice idiocy.

  3. Wow, two comments from different ends of the spectrum.

    First, iggy, I have no misconception that Linux is Windows or a replacement as such. I was taken to task for previous comments (http://www.inanis.net/blog/index.php/2008/11/01/avg-8-vista-sp1-poor-network-performance/#comments) about Linux and I wanted to make sure that my viewpoints weren’t misplaced. I was actually doing due diligence for someone else indirectly claiming that windows and Linux are interchangeable. They obviously are not. I know and knew that SimCity 4 works under linux. That’s great. However, the other person’s comments were implying that Linux would be just fine for SimCity 4. For my needs, it isn’t. So, basically, my post really just confirms your comment and vice versa. Thank you for your viewpoint.

    As for Mr. Anon, I think I more follow your line of thinking: Linux is freaking awesome for servers, and just not there for desktop use for certain people, including people who need to play certain games or use certain applications and don’t want to spend time fighting the system to use them. (I happen to be one of those people.)

    I’m one of those people: I want my desktop to just work. My server, well, I like a challenge and most of the time Linux does servers without challenge anyway.

    Discuss amongst yourselves.

  4. Well thern, for the screen resolution problem, did you try using the nVidia X configuration utilities? In my tests with SC4 Deluxe on Ubuntu 8.10 under WINE, SC4 runs FASTER than on Windows. It must be your machine. As for Firefox and your blog, it renders faster on my Ubuntu install as Windows is about 10% slower! Even on a fresh Windows install, compared to a full-of-crap Ubuntu install.

  5. Pingback: Zarek’s Blog » Blog Archive » SimCity4 on Ubuntu

  6. Zarek,

    Yes, I tried that. It would not show my resolution. I had to manually rewrite xorg.conf. I’m pretty sure the problem is not a physical issue with my machine, as it runs flawlessly and quite impressively for being a year old. (the Crysis demo runs at about 50fps…)

    I tried an old nVidia driver in the past (version 73 or something like that) and the newer one and this did not improve performance then. This last time I used the latest one available and performance was about the same.

    In Windows, I am using 7.15.11.6906, which is pretty old, and SC4 runs very well on small cities, and gets me down to 6-10fps on huge cities. Ubuntu is worse than that on this machine. I don’t know exactly why, but it is.

    If you have any suggestions on making SC4 run faster under Ubuntu 8.10, I am willing to try them out. I don’t want to be the kind of guy that’s a total a**hole unwilling to hear out criticism.