tweaking/optimizing slackware
 

Slackware works as an awesome server here at home, and runs superbly on my laptop for work. The only role that I'm having a little trouble with is having it as my gaming OS. I had it running with Descent3 and Unreal Tournament 2003, but was amazed when I rebooted into Windows XP to have much smoother and faster gameplay. I don't want to sound like a super-zealot, but I really want to boycott Microsoft from at least my home use...

what I'm getting at is, Slackware seems to be an efficient and fast distro. How can I take advantage of this for gaming? Is there a specific web site you guys recommend?

If you run it in a minimal window manager like twm or no window manager at all it should be a lot faster

how would I run the games without a window manager? I thought Descent 3 and ut2003 required X11? Am I just confused??

You can run no window manager by just using xinit. TWM is just slightly more than that, but xinit is as basic as it gets.

I believe this is what David meant in his reply :)

Cool

cool, I'll check it out tonight when I get home... thanks!!:)

It also depends on your graphic card setup. I assume you have a Nvidia since you mentioned playing ut2k3 on slack. Well, first off make sure you have the newest drivers. Then there are a couple of options to tweak in your XF86Config, i suggest you thoroghly read the NVIDIA readme, especially the appendices at the end. I have some extra options added for AGP port controlling and all my games are quite much faster in Linux than in windows.
I used to use a dualhead in Linux, and UT (normal UT 2000) was faster on a dualscreen in Linux then on one screen in windows on the same computer!!
(But it was very difficult to play over two screens, quite pointless but fun nonetheless...)
-NSKL

One thing, if you run xinit and you get your regular window manager or some other window manager then mv the .xinitrc in you home folder to some other name. When you are ready to restore things move it back.

I also realized that setiathome was slowing mine down, so I exit it first.

I use ksetisaver to controll my seti client, it works in the same way as the windows client, it's a kde saver, but that dosn't mean it can't be ported.

cool, I have a script that stops seti and starts ut, then starts seti again

It really doesn't bother me doing anything except playing games.

1.) Make sure the agpart module is loaded at boot time. You can verify this quickly by doing:

$ lsmod

If you don't see agpgart in the output, edit your /etc/rc.d/rc.modules file and make sure "/sbin/modprobe agpgart" is not commented-out.

2.) Make sure your AGP is being recognized by the 2.4.18 kernel. After a reboot, do:

$ dmesg |grep agp

You should see some kind of reference to the name of your AGP chipset in the output (you didn't mention what kind of motherboard you have.) If you see any errors, then you might need a kernel upgrade.

agpgart is loading on boot time, and I did read alot of the README that came with the NVIDIA drivers, but ended up a little lost. If I want FSAA disabled, I need to set the __GL_FSAA_??? (sorry don't remember the rest of it) to 0 (export __GL_FSAA=0)?? When I had done that, the framerate plummeted into an unplayable state.

I added the NvAgp option in the kernel to use Nvidia's agp driver if possible, but I also read that agpgart cannot be compiled into the kernel in order NvAgp to work, so I'm assuming I'm still using AgpGart. Also, I have downloaded and installed the IA32 NVIDIA drivers. Should I have gotten the Athlon64's? I'm running at Athlon XP 1700, which is a 32-bit chip. Is there something in the XF86Config file I need to set in order to enable 4X AGP? I'm not unfamiliar with Nvidia cards, I'm just unfamiliar on tweaking them in Linux.

By the way, what is seti? I don't understand.

NSKL, would you mind posting some shots of your XF86Config and environment variables?

edit:
After reading some more, I'm thinking that my games are not using the correct libraries. I tried (as the NVIDIA README suggested) and 'ldd' on the 'ut2003' file, but it reports it not being a 'dynamic executable'.