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Borderlands 2 Released For Linux With A Sale

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The day has landed folks. Borderlands 2 is now officially available for Linux and it brings us some excellent FPS action.

Courtesy of our friends at Aspyr Media the new port may have a few rough edges (what new port doesn't?), but it's a really great game to have on our platform. The game is also on sale, so there's never been a better time to pickup a copy, or if you already owned it be sure to grab some DLC to show your support.

Getting games like this shows the strength of our platform, and shows that Gearbox and Aspyr Media both see some sort of gaming future for Linux. We did interview Aspyr Media back in July, so check that out if you haven't already.

I still find it amusing that the head of Gearbox told us not to get our hopes up, and this was going on behind the scenes. When I asked Aspyr about it, they had this to say:
Michael Blair, Aspyr MediaYou know its funny because we just happened to approach 2K/Gearbox about the project right after Randy made those comments and have been working on the port since. We hope we made Gearbox proud with our effort. They are amazing to work with, and we are HUGE fans of their work.


We also spoke to Aspyr Media about how the port went and what they expect from the Borderlands 2 on Linux:
Michael Blair, Aspyr MediaWe are SUPER excited to bring this much beloved franchise to Linux and hope that we continue to meet expectations from the unbelievably supportive Linux gaming community.

This port was challenging, for sure. Performance was at the core of our efforts and while ATI and Intel didn’t make the cut for release, we continue to work on performance for those chipsets and hope to come to a level of performance we can stand behind as gamers in the near future.


Important Note
It is currently only supporting Nvidia graphics cards as it seems the Intel and AMD graphics chips don't give enough performance, but this isn't an issue on Mac. Looks like another driver issue. Would this be a good time to gloat that I use Nvidia? Of course it is! Woo!
In all seriousness though I sincerely hope AMD & Intel put out a quick fixed up drivers to enable all Linux gamers to have a decent experience.

Where do I buy it already?!
Also GameAgent.com which is run by Aspyr Media now supports Linux, so you can support Aspyr directly without Steam taking a cut if that's your thing. Seems like a great way to support the developer directly, and you get Steam keys of course. It was something Linux users requested, so they made it happen.

If you don't want to buy Borderlands 2 from GameAgent then grab Borderlands 2 on Steam. Can't see a reason not to support Aspyr Media directly though.

For this release Aspyr will of course realise there will be a lot of cross-over from people who used Windows/Wine, so this is why it's important to pick up a few DLC packs to not only give Aspyr some income, but to show them we are a market worth continuing and I cannot stress that enough.

I've played a fair bit of it already and absolutely love it. I already loved the Borderlands series of games after playing the first game years ago, but having Borderlands 2 on Linux is pure gold gaming.

The visuals are excellent and the game-play gets really frantic. Any shooter fans will be in heaven with it.

Be sure to let us know how you find it in our comments. This is going to steal a lot of my time away, now if you'll excuse me I have some loot to find and some bandits to annihilate. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: FPS, RPG, Steam
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About the author -
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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109 comments
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Kallestofeles Oct 3, 2014
Can't believe it.
Have been testing it for the whole evening now and runs silky-smooth. Truly, this port is an example how it should be done.

CPU: Phenom X4 965BE 3,4GHz
GPU: nVidia GeForce GTX 770 4GB
Storage: SSD 128GB
Memory: 4GB @800MHz
Drivers: nVidia prop. 343.22
OS: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64bit
coryrj19951 Oct 3, 2014
This port is great! I have played a couple of hours on my brothers' computer and cant find anything wrong with it!

Just another reason why I need to get a new computer, this time an actual Desktop! Any thing else from Aspyr?
lucifertdark Oct 5, 2014
I've got a GeForce 9800 GT & apart from having to turn the settings down it runs & runs, in fact I've logged 15 hours so far, the only crashes I've seen were on the day of release due to me fiddling with the .ini files.
sub Oct 5, 2014
Quoting: KiibakunCan't set MOUSE4 for reaload, the game don't detect that key.

I also can't use mouse buttons 4 and 5. :/
This is not the first Linux game having that "issue".
Shouldn't that all be abstracted away and available
more or less automatically by SDL?

On my Radeon HD 7950 with the newest Catalyst the performance
is indeed horrible. Even when I go to real low resolution and turn
all options to low or disable them.
I'm not complaining as Aspyr explicitly stated that at release.
However, I hope we'll see significant improvements soon.

My CPU is several years old. It's a Phenom II 940 BE.
Never had severe performance issues, but could it be that game
(or this port in particular) relies on a very fast CPU?
sub Oct 5, 2014
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: subMy CPU is several years old. It's a Phenom II 940 BE.
Never had severe performance issues, but could it be that game
(or this port in particular) relies on a very fast CPU?
Yes it is. This game is single-threaded (or at least uses only 100% of one core on my Core i3), which is why with nvidia hardware it’s better to set __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1.

In addition I also had to lower several graphical options (including disabling vsync) to come close to 60 fps on my GTX660.

Thank you!

I'm still hoping that Aspyr can boost the performance also for my system. :)
pete910 Oct 7, 2014
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Hi guys, New to forum.(Not the site though :D)

Just bought the 4 pack for me and my family! missed the sale :(

Wasn't expecting brilliant performance but I am shocked. It runs real well on my 290x @ 1440p all high/far :D

Seems to be using all cores fairly evenly on mine. (about 15% ish) Is that driver difference?

Using cat 14.9

Going to see what performance it is like on my old hd5870/1090t x6 my daughter has. Sons should be fine as he has a NV 560ti with an i5 2500k in his.(famous last words)

Have too meany games to play..... ( Still seems wrong saying that in *nix :D)
pete910 Oct 7, 2014
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Quoting: Guest
Quoting: pete910Seems to be using all cores fairly evenly on mine. (about 15% ish)
Well I don’t know how many cores your CPU has, but even 15% * 8 would be only 120%. Linux likes to move processes from one core to another very frequently so that may be the reason why you see all cores being used. Or the game is multithreaded after all :).

4790k.

Forgot about that, Made CPU graph full screen seems to jumping. looks even on the small one on desktop ;). I should have realized that.
sub Oct 7, 2014
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: subMy CPU is several years old. It's a Phenom II 940 BE.
Never had severe performance issues, but could it be that game
(or this port in particular) relies on a very fast CPU?
Yes it is. This game is single-threaded (or at least uses only 100% of one core on my Core i3), which is why with nvidia hardware it’s better to set __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1.

In addition I also had to lower several graphical options (including disabling vsync) to come close to 60 fps on my GTX660.

Ok, I simply installed Borderlands 2 on Windows 7.
Same machine.

Performance is stellar.
Really, even with a resolution as high as 1920x1200,
16x anisotropic filtering and high details it runs PERFECTLY smooth.
A difference like day and night.

So this machine is, in principle, more than capable of running Borderlands 2.
The port seems to be in a really bad shape for my configuration.
Aryvandaar Mar 22, 2015
Quoting: drmothI get a black screen on startup unfortunately.
Nvidia gtx 460, intel i7

Running from SteamApps command-line gives me:
./Borderlands2: error while loading shared libraries: libopenal.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
I have this file installed. Not sure what's going on.

A bit late reply, but install / reinstall openal. :)
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