Leaving a Legend: Saying Goodbye to Windows 7

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

Apologies for the double-post but I didn't know of a good place to ask this...

So since this also means that Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 support is ditched, I've thought that it might actually be best to simply use either 5.0-16380 beta or 5.0-16391 dev for the updated CPU benchmark since being compatible with multiple OSes is arguably more beneficial and even more common for benchmark situations compared to real-world use-cases.

That being said, I would like a bit of insight - is there a preference on whether I use the 16380 beta or the 16391 dev version for such a thing? EDIT: I personally would prefer 16380 beta since, on Linux, that means one can just refer to the flatpak.


Secondly is the name - the existing benchmark was simply the "Dolphin 5.0 CPU benchmark" but that doesn't work for this, and it's certainly not 6.0 yet. I've thought about calling it the "Dolphin 5.7 CPU benchmark" to refer to it's compatibility with Win7 as well as the implication that it's a version between 5.0 and 6.0, and the theoretical implication that it's a version more similar to an elusive 6.0 than to the existing 5.0 since it's almost 6 years old now.

But I don't want to call it the "Dolphin 5.7 CPU benchmark" if the dolphin devs would prefer otherwise or if they have a better idea for a name.

Also, if there really doesn't end up being a "Dolphin 6.0" and Dolphin has basically switched to a rolling-release model, then this seems like as good of a time as any to put out an updated benchmark (I mean, it'll be the same "luabench" homebrew - just on a much newer version of Dolphin of course).


Additionally, I actually wouldn't be surprised if such a thing ends up being the final version of the Dolphin CPU benchmark since even modern U-series CPUs are getting fast enough that Dolphin's CPU performance is starting to become a non-issue, and modern CPUs are starting to lean more heavily on cache but Dolphin seems to be too old or light-weight enough or something to really take advantage of CPU cache (the 5800X3D doesn't seem to provide any benefit, and even the halved-L3 of the 5700G barely hurt performance compared to the 5800X) considering that more demanding emulators like RPCS3 actually do see benefit from the 5800X3D despite the CPU's lower clocks.

In other words, for future benchmarks, I may have to move on to more demanding emulators, especially since multi-threading above 2 threads is becoming more relevant in emulation due to the corresponding emulated console actually having multiple CPU cores and the like.

[linkdude64]

F                  

[Misaka Mikoto]

As a Windows 7 user who never enabled usage data reporting, I’m sorry to see Windows 7 support go. I’ve enjoyed my time with Dolphin as the project has progressed, but I’m running on my own Windows 7 installation media with slipstreamed NVMe and USB 3.1 drivers and have no plans to ever switch away from Windows 7, so for me this is goodbye. I’ll miss keeping up with the developments in the project, though—I always looked forward to these progress reports.

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

(06-17-2022, 02:55 PM)Misaka Mikoto Wrote: As a Windows 7 user who never enabled usage data reporting, I’m sorry to see Windows 7 support go. I’ve enjoyed my time with Dolphin as the project has progressed, but I’m running on my own Windows 7 installation media with slipstreamed NVMe and USB 3.1 drivers and have no plans to ever switch away from Windows 7, so for me this is goodbye.

May I suggest taking a dip into the Linux waters?


I was in your boat up until just earlier this year when I needed to migrate away from a slowly-failing motherboard and, as someone that likes using integrated graphics, I knew that no modern iGPUs supported Windows 7.

That being said, I had at least a beginner's level of experience with Linux since I put Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon on a basic email and web-browsing Core 2 Duo-era laptop with physical mouse buttons that didn't have Win7 64bit drivers for disabling tap-to-click, but Linux Mint has that option built-in by default.

Two benefits to using Dolphin on Linux that I accidentally discovered is that Vulkan was supported on my Haswell iGPU despite Vulkan never being support on Windows for Haswell, and the official 1st party GameCube USB adapter is a bajillion times easier to get working on Linux than it is on Windows (I only ever got it to work a single time on Windows).


If you do want to give Linux a try and you similarly want it to have an interface like Windows 7, then I would definitely suggest Linux Mint (Cinnamon version) - I've jokingly described it as more similar to Windows 7 than modern versions of Windows. Alternatively, if you prefer a Mac-like GUI, then I've heard good things about Elementary OS.

...that being said, there's going to be a big version update to Linux Mint (that being version 21.0) within a month or two, so maybe only take this time to experiment with it until then? For experimenting, I highly recommend putting Ventoy on a 4GB+ USB flash drive and then just use that for easy booting of Linux ISOs which you can try out without installing anything to your hard drive.

(heck, even I myself haven't fully "planted my roots" on Linux Mint 20.3 since there are some unfortunate bugs in the less-feature-rich XFCE version that I use which should be solved in Mint 21.0; this is another reason I suggest Cinnamon for true beginners_



Just note that, for a very beginner to Linux, I usually recommend using either AMD or Intel graphics for a guaranteed painless experience. However, Nvidia isn't that bad on Linux anymore, and older Nvidia GPUs work better than newer ones (your 960 should give you a better time than the 2060). Again, it's the sort of thing you could experiment with.

[Misaka Mikoto]

Thanks! I have indeed toyed with the idea of Linux, but I use my computer heavily for PC gaming, and I have always had the impression that Linux doesn’t do that well. But maybe things have come a long way since I last looked into it.

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

PSA: if you read the initial version of this post from 30 minutes before this was posted, then note that major edits and additions have been, well, added.


EDIT: Quick general protip for Dolphin on Linux Mint - Dolphin's configuration and users directory is located in /home/][username]/.var/app/org.DolphinEmu.dolphin-emu/

(06-17-2022, 04:09 PM)Misaka Mikoto Wrote: I have indeed toyed with the idea of Linux, but I use my computer heavily for PC gaming, and I have always had the impression that Linux doesn’t do that well. But maybe things have come a long way since I last looked into it.

Are you familiar with the Steam Deck? It runs Linux and therefore, by definition, any game that works on the Steam Deck using it's default "SteamOS" operating system willl almost certainly "just work" on any modern version of Linux. You can see what works and what doesn't via ProtonDB:

• http://protondb.com/

...which, for reference, means that Mint 20.3 does not count as modern. Though the "Edge" version of Mint 20.3 could work as it has a kernel version that's similar to the one on the Steam Deck; Mint 21.0 for reference would have a kernel that's actually newer than what the Steam Deck uses.

That being said, I tend to not actually do much in terms of native PC "gaming" - for me it tends to usually just be console emulation and visual novels, and most VNs seem to either run through WINE without issue, have a native Linux version (any semi-modern VN that uses Ren'Py can natively run on LInux - double-click on the .sh file in the same folder as the .EXE), or are light-weight enough on the graphics side to even run in a Windows virtual machine with VirtualBox's relatively basic 3D acceleration graphics driver (I imported my existing Win7 installation as-is into VirtualBox using Disk2vhd v2.01 - make sure you uncheck "Use Vhdx").

And, at least on Mint, installing WINE is pretty darned easy; afterwards you can double-click on EXE files and have them "just work" like they should (use "Staging" if you don't want outdated versions of WINE as it's kind of equivalent to the Dolphin beta versions; you can ignore everything under "If you have previously used the distro packages"):

• https://wiki.winehq.org/Ubuntu

Honestly the biggest issue I had was just figuring out how the heck to get non-unicode Japanese programs running in WINE; it's similarly not difficult but you do need to know how to do it:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/mga4d6/tutorial_how_to_run_any_visual_novel_on_linux/

Minor protip for beginner Mint users: for any terminal command that says nano, replace it with xed instead, e.g. rather than sudo nano /etc/locale.gen instead run sudo xed /etc/locale.gen

Also, Lutris is optional; I personally prefer to "keep things simple" and I generally avoid front-ends even on Windows, preferring to instead just make basic custom .sh bash scripts located in the program folder to launch a .EXE with the necessary locale (a .sh bash script is the Linux equivalent of a .BAT batch file whereby it is a plain-text file that simply runs the saved terminal commands when double-clicked). So, for example, to run Fate/stay night trial, I have a .sh bash script with the following located in the same folder as the .EXE:

Code:

#!/bin/sh

LANG="ja_JP.UTF-8" wine FateTrial.exe

And for reference, one needs to actually make .sh files "executable" first before they can function, but that's easy enough on Mint - you right-click on the .sh file -> Properties -> Permissions -> check "Allow this file to run as a program"


Installing fonts also tripped me up, but the easiest way was to literally just copy and paste my whole contents of the "Fonts" folder from my existing Windows 7 installation into WINE's according font folder located at ~/home/[username]/.wine/drive_c/windows/Fonts/


Regardless, emulation-based gaming is something that Linux actually handles very well and has done so for a long time - considerably longer than the modern-day decent support for native PC gaming. As I alluded to above, I actually had a better experience with emulation on Linux than on Windows.


...I should probably stop there before I take over this forum thread and turn it into a "beginners guide for Linux". I'm active on the Linux Mint forum if you care:

• https://forums.linuxmint.com/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=205840

(though, as I'm only a sort of beginner to intermediate user, I usually the one asking for help instead of providing it)

[NaturalViolence]

Imo the devs should take the last build that supported windows 7 and release it on the website as Dolphin 6.0. That way anybody that is using windows 7 in the future doesn't have to dig around to find the optimal build to use. We're overdue for a naming release anyways.

[Nintendo Maniac 64]

(06-21-2022, 11:03 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: Imo the devs should take the last build that supported windows 7 and release it on the website as Dolphin 6.0. That way anybody that is using windows 7 in the future doesn't have to dig around to find the optimal build to use. We're overdue for a naming release anyways.

That would certainly solve the benchmark version question that I had inquired about.

[MayImilae]

The current thought among developers is that there won't be a traditional 6.0 release. If we're going to do a release again, it's going to be something different.

[NaturalViolence]

Can I ask why? No doubt a lot of people are downloading dolphin 5.0 instead of the latest because it's "official" and missing out on a lot of improvements.