SimCity4 on Ubuntu 8.10

inanis — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 05:21:03 +0000

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.

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SimCity4 on Ubuntu 8.10