Gaming Does linux run minecraft better then windows?

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I've run some experiments before in the past and found hit n miss results based on hardware. Low end hardware that is strong enough to play Minecraft, tends to work better with Linux than with Windows because Linux is less resource heavy.
Higher end hardware really doesn't seem to make too big a difference.

The Catboy

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I've run some experiments before in the past and found hit n miss results based on hardware. Low end hardware that is strong enough to play Minecraft, tends to work better with Linux than with Windows because Linux is less resource heavy.
Higher end hardware really doesn't seem to make too big a difference.
 
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grossaffe

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Xubuntu is a popular variant of Ubuntu and the one I tend to use. Lubuntu seems to be climbing in popularity; I tried it out awhile ago and didn't think it was great, but it was still in beta at that point, so it's probably come a long way. Both of these variants are known for being lightweight.
 

Mikemk

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Use Mint. Ubuntu is slow and unstable, and the Linux Mint team delays updates a few months to work out bugs and performance issues.

As for which Mint, I prefer MATE, but Cinnamon gets the most support (and eye candy). xfce is supposed to be fastest, but IMO it doesn't make much difference except at the very low end.
 

LongTimeLurker

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I usually recommend Debian. It's stable, fast, and runs Minecraft. Ubuntu is built off of Debian. Some argue that it's easier to use, I flat-out disagree.

Debian has a lot of community support. A lot of Linuxes do (Arch Linux, Debian, RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, Fedora, and more).
 

Supster131

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On my shitty laptop, I don't think I noticed a difference between playing Minecraft on Linux and Windows.

As for what distro you should go with, my vote goes towards Antergos. It's an Arch based distro. Antergos let's you choose a Desktop Environment during installation, so you don't have to download multiple ISOs depending on the DE you want. Antergos is also very user friendly.
 

dpad_5678

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Minecraft doesn't even need a high end PC. My Dell Inspiron 700m with a 1.7GHz Single Core CPU and 512MB of RAM runs Minecraft at 720p 45fps w/ OptiFine. Minecraft is a lot more CPU heavy then RAM, fyi. You only need ~1GB of RAM to get perfect performance for regular play, I.E. without shaders, etc.
 

Futurdreamz

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Heh. I came here expecting a bunch of comments each recommending a completely different distro and I was right. I'll throw in Elementary OS. It does have an unskippable donation page (but you can donate $0 without needing credit card info) but it has the most cohesive interface and is so worth it.
 

Jayro

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I got a 20+FPS boost in Minecraft by just using Linux Mint instead of Windows. Same hardware and everything.I can now run Minecraft with my intel graphics and get 70FPS on a default generated world without resourcepacks.
 

driverdis

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I did not notice a huge difference using NVidia cards on Linux and Windows as NVidia has good OpenGL support on both.

I have had mixed results on ATi cards with Windows performance being better as ATi seems to have not as good OpenGL handling than on Windows.

for newer Intel IGPs, the difference around the same as for NVidia cards.

I have noticed that depending on the GPU, the open source drivers are better. this usually the case for older cards in which the closed source official drivers are either old or non existant. the newer cards work better with the closed source drivers.

EDIT:
The most consistent vanilla Minecraft experience is playing on PS4 or Xbox One. since neither use Java and are optimized for the console hardware, It just works, with very little to none of the chunk loading issues or performance drops the Java PC version has.
 

RikuKawai

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I can get 30-40 FPS with Optifine on my laptop, and my specs are certainly much lower than yours. I get like, 350 FPS on my desktop on maxed out settings.

Are you trying to play on Far render distance or something? Turn the settings down.

Also, @driverdis the console version lacks core features such as infinite worlds and not paying for resource packs
 

Jayro

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My suggestions are for your laptop:

Load it with as much RAM as it supports, and at the fastest speed it supports. (8GB or more recommended for this experiment.)

Then, make a 2GB RAMdisk with SoftPerfect RAMdisk. It's freeware, and totally amazing. Install your minecraft to the ramdisk, and point the Launcher to that location.

After that, edit the last line in the launcher to give Java at least 2 or 3GB of RAM to use. You should now have no more lag spikes, and it's cheaper than an SSD upgrade for the same-ish performance.
 

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