The official "ZDoom on Linux" thread.

[bLUEbYTE]

Here's a tip for Linux users who have recent Intel iGPUs (Skylake+ I think) and with recent version of MESA (20+).

What happened is that with the latest Mesa drivers they switched to a new opengl driver backend called 'iris', from 'i965'. While this seems to have boosted performance in other workloads, in GZDoom and LZDoom I verified that this actually has a significant hit to FPS.

I'd like to report that, I'm running on a Intel Iris Pro 580 for graphics and I don't get any performance loss using iris_dri rather than i965_dri. I'm currently on Mesa 20.2.3, judging by the name of the library itself I think the new iris_dri is geared towards Iris and Iris Pro graphics and not just the "Intel UHD" graphics family. I could be wrong though. I haven't run into anything other than maybe Blender that I need to manually override the driver to i915.

I even get 60 FPS in Total Chaos. Though it stutters a lot because Mesa's shader compiler is really slow apparently...

I hope it's okay to post this here to let other people know of my experiences with Intel graphics on Linux in regards to GZDoom.

In my case there's a definitive difference between the two. GPU is Iris Plus 655 on Kubuntu 20.04.1. GZDoom is configured with dynamic lights, 1080p in OpenGL mode (Vulkan is slightly slower).

FPS figures at the start scene of the map:
wine gzdoom.exe +vid_fps 1 +map map13 : 23 FPS
MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=i965 wine gzdoom.exe +vid_fps 1 +map map13 : 45FPS

I had observed a similar difference in native linux version as well, but I'm running the windows binary through wine because gamepad support in Linux is inferior.

[Nimlouth]

Hey all, recently hopped into Manjaro (which is an Arch based distro, btw) and started adventuring into LinuxGZDoom. I tried installing GZDoom from the AUR but it just wouldn't run propperly. So now I'm now using a snap and, though it works flawlessly (way better than when I was on windows actually), I'm also currently lacking a proper frontend/launcher. I mod my GZDoom HEAVILY, since I use lots of little HuD, music, QoL and misc addons. So editing GZDoom's shortcut each time I want to have a different load order is a bit cumbersome, not even mentioning that it requires me to have all my files in the same folder where the iwads are located, making my mod collection a nightmare to sort.

I tried twad and It just doesn't work somehow (a shame because it's a super cool terminal frontend), neither does qzdl. I'm in the dark, does anybody knows a frontend/launcher that does work for managing 20+ files load orders? thx in advance.

cheers!

[fakemai]

Try DoomRunner. It's what I use after getting sick of Bash aliasing and might work out pretty well for you. It works on a preset system but makes it easy to choose the IWAD/mapset/engine/INI and you can also uncheck mods in a given preset, as for example you might to enable different monster packs with a weapon mod, or the ones required for Wrath of Cronos with different IWADs. Also if you haven't, look at auto-loading since that works better to mods you may want universally (Episodic-EX and such) and can be turned off with a command switch, something that presets can also have if necessary.

[invictius]

Trying to get 1.8.2 working on latest i386 lubuntu. It won't install, I get "dependency is not satisfiable - libflac++6 (>1.2.1-1.2)

[yum13241]

Hey all, recently hopped into Manjaro (which is an Arch based distro, btw) and started adventuring into LinuxGZDoom. I tried installing GZDoom from the AUR but it just wouldn't run propperly.

That's because Manjaro fucks with repos. See https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KNK3e9ScPo.

Snaps have their own problems, like ALWAYS BEING SLOWER.

[cyber_cool]

Hey all, recently hopped into Manjaro (which is an Arch based distro, btw) and started adventuring into LinuxGZDoom. I tried installing GZDoom from the AUR but it just wouldn't run propperly. So now I'm now using a snap and, though it works flawlessly (way better than when I was on windows actually), I'm also currently lacking a proper frontend/launcher. I mod my GZDoom HEAVILY, since I use lots of little HuD, music, QoL and misc addons. So editing GZDoom's shortcut each time I want to have a different load order is a bit cumbersome, not even mentioning that it requires me to have all my files in the same folder where the iwads are located, making my mod collection a nightmare to sort.

Stable gzdoom release for manjaro gets updated once per decade or longer.
A couple of months ago I was able to build gzdoom from source quite easily on manjaro, the process is highly automated ("cmake ."->"make" ->"sudo make install" first for zmusic, then for gzdoom).
But recently I have been experiencing serious performance issues, and lately I can't even run any mods with it, seems to hard crash on load.
Maybe something is wrong with my installation or drivers, but other games seem to indicate otherwise. Can't really recommend.

I tried twad and It just doesn't work somehow (a shame because it's a super cool terminal frontend), neither does qzdl. I'm in the dark, does anybody knows a frontend/launcher that does work for managing 20+ files load orders? thx in advance.

What exactly doesn't work?

[yum13241]

But recently I have been experiencing serious performance issues, and lately I can't even run any mods with it, seems to hard crash on load.
Maybe something is wrong with my installation or drivers, but other games seem to indicate otherwise. Can't really recommend.

I'd highly recommend against manjaro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KNK3e9ScPo & https://manjarno.snorlax.sh/.

Note that in the video, there's one inaccuracy which is rectified by the link.

serious performance issues, and lately I can't even run any mods with it, seems to hard crash on load.

I think that it's trying to use libraries that aren't available in a proper way.

[Nimlouth]

Oh hi!

What exactly doesn't work?

Since I posted that, I haven't gamed that much on linux because I stopped using tha laptop I installed manjaro in (hardware finally giving up after years, that poor cheap laptop) and so I game on windows mostly. I did started using a different (significantly less powerful) laptop for studying but this time with Mint. And ofcourse I installed doom on that PC too, and I'm using twad because it is the one launcher that I managed to make work on that system.

Still, I have several problems with twad that persisted from one system to another. I use the Crispy Doom and prboom+ sourceports and both have problems with twad that I haven't been able to fix. Crispy Doom in particular doesn't like the save file structure that twad gives it and when I save my game it crashes to desktop with a message saying that it can't load from where twad wants it to load/save and that there is a backup save file on my usr folder. It kinda makes CrispyDoom unplayable at that point since I can't neither save or load. I'm not on that laptop rn but I'm fairly sure my copy of crispy doom there is a flatpak, so I'm sure the problem has to do with that.

The problem with prboom+ on the other hand (which is installed directly from the linux mint repository) is that it just won't load AT ALL with twad. The path to open it is correctly set on the twad "sourceports" options but it just won't run. I can launch prboom+ from the terminal OR the apps menu shortcut no problem tho, so IDK.

Haven't fixed the issues bc I'm truly lost in the dark, googling and searching formums yeilded no results... and I'm currently bussy a f with uni so I'm not really gaming on that laptop anyways. If it is in your interest to help me with that, I can provide screenshots and a more detailed problem "log" but don't worry about it haha I might post at some other time when I have more time to find help to make twad work properly.

Cheers!

EDIT: I f'd up the formatting lmfao

[yum13241]

You'll want to set DOOMWADDIR (for IWADs) and DOOMWADPATH (for PWADs) in .profile.

1. Open your favorite text editor.
2. Open .profile with it.
3. Type export DOOMWADDIR = /path/to/iwads/.
4. Type export DOOMWADPATH = /path/to/pwads:/path/to/more/pwads. Anything after the colon is optional if you only have 1 directory. I. myself, categorize my PWADs, so I need to use the colon. Paths ARE NOT recursive.
5. Log out and back in.

PrBoom+ is deprecated, try DSDA-Doom.
Manjaro does weird stuff with their repos.
Linux Mint ships really old software tbh. Same with all Debian based distros (except Debian Sid).

[Nimlouth]

You'll want to set DOOMWADDIR (for IWADs) and DOOMWADPATH (for PWADs) in .profile.

1. Open your favorite text editor.
2. Open .profile with it.
3. Type export DOOMWADDIR = /path/to/iwads/.
4. Type export DOOMWADPATH = /path/to/pwads:/path/to/more/pwads. Anything after the colon is optional if you only have 1 directory. I. myself, categorize my PWADs, so I need to use the colon. Paths ARE NOT recursive.
5. Log out and back in.

PrBoom+ is deprecated, try DSDA-Doom.
Manjaro does weird stuff with their repos.
Linux Mint ships really old software tbh. Same with all Debian based distros (except Debian Sid).

Well, for the kind of old and weak hardware I'm running linux in, mint actually works fast, stable and has all the software I would want to use anyways. After distro hopping a lot on that little laptop, mint was the cleanest distro I tried. Def will try more modern distros in the future if I get new PC hardware.

Regarding the instructions, not super clear on where to find .profile actually. Can you explain it a lil bit more? I'm super sorry but I'm a complete gnu/linux baby haha. Also, is that fix for the crispy doom issue I mentioned or for prboom+ not running? tysm btw for taking your time to answer

[yum13241]

.profile is a hidden file. Anything with a dot in the beginning is hidden. To fix, press CTRL + H. You should see a lot more files. If you see less, then press it again.

If it does not exist, create it in /home/<YOUR USERNAME HERE>, which the ~ can serve as a replacement for.

If you are using ZSH, then use .zprofile. Odds are, you're using bash. if you aren't sure, then you're using bash, as that's Linux Mint's default.
(I personally use ZSH)

Also, is that fix for the crispy doom issue I mentioned or for prboom+ not running?

If they're crashing because "no IWAD", then yes.

---

Anything that starts with a # is a comment.

nano .profile # nano will create it on save if it does not exist.

# type the stuff from the first post.
# Save and quit. CTRL + S & CTRL + X.

ln -s .profile .zprofile # just in case you use ZSH. This makes a symlink called .zprofile, which points to .profile

# log out and back in.

Can you also try with DoomRunner (or any other launcher)? Maybe twad is the problem.