So far, XP 12 on Cachy OS is running fine, but this is an OLD, slow computer: an 8-year old Dell Inspiron Gaming

I used to run XP11 on Windows on this back when I first got it, and IIRC, it seemed to run a few addons fairly well.

Specs are okay except for GPU: RTX 1050Ti with only 4GB vram. Otherwise, the i5 cpu is also old, 32gb ram, everything running on an ssd.

Even with most settings on the very low side, I'm getting just under 30fps with the Default Cirrus Jet at a remote rural airport(!).

So, aside from the Defaults, do you have any recommendations for LINUX compatible addons that are High Fidelity but "Low Graphics"?

 

You're asking the question wrong. Most of the FPS hit with add-ons comes from the plugin side, with the amount of polygons usually a secondary concern. So what you want is third party stuff that's coded in a way to offer many clickable buttons with a minimum of slow code and is Linux compatible.

With that in mind, what you definitely do not want to touch is anything Zibo (plugin cost), anything commercial that runs SASL (plugin cost; too many products to list), the default A330 (plugin cost), anything that uses Gizmo (not for Linux; mostly found on X-Aviation store), the FJS Dash 8 (plugin cost).

VSKYLABS' entire fleet should run well, also X-Hangar's, maybe also the ToLiss buses. As for freeware, just download, test and keep or delete. The only no-go I can think of is that ex-payware Bellanca Aircruiser that does not have a Linux compatible plugin.

Most global plugins should be good in terms of Linux compatibility.

If you want to save FPS on the terrain, go for ortho without overlays or maybe X-World with the bare minimum of layers. In some situations, the ortho + X-World combo delivers marginally better performance than the autogen.

Edited May 9May 9 by Bjoern

9 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

, XP 12 on Cachy OS is

Very nice. I moved to Cachy last month and it's been amazing. I have MSFS running great on it too. XP of course is native. I have a powerful machine, but even so, Cachy is a lot smoother than Windows 11 LTSC. I'm very happy with Cachy.

Sorry for the offtopic, but nice to see more Cachy users )

2 hours ago, JonathanC said:

Very nice. I moved to Cachy last month and it's been amazing. I have MSFS running great on it too. XP of course is native. I have a powerful machine, but even so, Cachy is a lot smoother than Windows 11 LTSC. I'm very happy with Cachy.

Sorry for the offtopic, but nice to see more Cachy users )

Appreciate the vote of confidence since you’re further down the road than I! Esp since you’ve taken the plunge with MSFS, too 😁👍

Though it’s only been a few hours of installing and basic testing, I too am finding very good smoothness as you note, despite the extremely low fps on

Im seriously considering dual booting my secondary gaming rig (it’s older but still pretty good: Ryzen 5600 w RTX 3070 with plenty of spare disk space). Not quite ready to go single boot as that one runs Win 11 fine, and it is my actual backup rig if the primary has a component failure of some sort. 

3 hours ago, Bjoern said:

You're asking the question wrong. Most of the FPS hit with add-ons comes from the plugin side, with the amount of polygons usually a secondary concern. So what you want is third party stuff that's coded in a way to offer many clickable buttons with a minimum of slow code and is Linux compatible.

With that in mind, what you definitely do not want to touch is anything Zibo (plugin cost), anything commercial that runs SASL (plugin cost; too many products to list), the default A330 (plugin cost), anything that uses Gizmo (not for Linux; mostly found on X-Aviation store), the FJS Dash 8 (plugin cost).

VSKYLABS' entire fleet should run well, also X-Hangar's, maybe also the ToLiss buses. As for freeware, just download, test and keep or delete. The only no-go I can think of is that ex-payware Bellanca Aircruiser that does not have a Linux compatible plugin.

Most global plugins should be good in terms of Linux compatibility.

If you want to save FPS on the terrain, go for ortho without overlays or maybe X-World with the bare minimum of layers. In some situations, the ortho + X-World combo delivers marginally better performance than the autogen.

Ha! That seems like good advice - thank you! 🙏 

I’ll definitely try the ortho no overlay angle for Hawai’i. I like to fly there due to the great scenery and very low performance hit vs continental locations. 

I have a good handful of vSkyLabs addons but haven’t tried them as yet because he’s specifying 8GB vram for all, but I’ll give a few of those a shot anyway and see how they run (and I LIKE them, too!).

Great info re SASL & plugins - exactly the kind of advice I had been seeking. 

I did give the SimCoders REP a try for the Default Baron and SR22, and so far they’re running fine (which makes me REALLY happy).

So far, the old Carenado Cessna 210 with REP is eking out the most FPS by about 10 pct. GREAT plane and it still looks good too 🙂

Glad you recommended ToLiss as I do actually have their 346! And under Windows at least, it runs just as fast as the Cirrus Jet! So if that holds for this ancient laptop, too, I’d be pretty much set. 

Many thanks again! 🙏

Edited May 9May 9 by UrgentSiesta

21 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

I have a good handful of vSkyLabs addons but haven’t tried them as yet because he’s specifying 8GB vram for all, but I’ll give a few of those a shot anyway and see how they run (and I LIKE them, too!).

Don't read too much into what add-on devs require in terms of hardware

 

21 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

I did give the SimCoders REP a try for the Default Baron and SR22, and so far they’re running fine (which makes me REALLY happy).

Yes, forgot those. REP also places very little demand on the CPU.

 

21 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

So far, the old Carenado Cessna 210 with REP is eking out the most FPS by about 10 pct. GREAT plane and it still looks good too 🙂

Does the C210 require a product key? If yes, it also uses SASL. So if a 10% FPS hit is still acceptable, you can of course try other SASL powered aircraft and see how well they fare. Could be that they run better than expected.

 

21 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Many thanks again! 🙏

No problem. Anything that helps people to convert to the Linux Church. 😁

Edited May 10May 10 by Bjoern

https://github.com/mSparks43/747-400/releases/tag/3.8

30 minutes ago, mSparks said:

https://github.com/mSparks43/747-400/releases/tag/3.8

SOLD! 😁👍

2 hours ago, Bjoern said:

Don't read too much into what add-on devs require in terms of hardware

 

Yes, forgot those. REP also places very little demand on the CPU.

 

Does the C210 require a product key? If yes, it also uses SASL. So if a 10% FPS hit is still acceptable, you can of course try other SASL powered aircraft and see how well they fare. Could be that they run better than expected.

 

No problem. Anything that helps people to convert to the Linux Church. 😁

More good info 🙏

Im excited to try the VSL birds now - esp that very nice MD902 and the Pond Racer 😎

IIRC the 210 does need a key. But so do the REP packages…

Anyhow, so far, so good with the REP birds so they get to stay, for sure 🙂

TBH since this tired old laptop is so perf limited I’m looking to keep it to the minimum number of addons. And since I love the VSL and REPs, that’ll be enough to keep me busy. 

I am going to give the A346 a try, but mainly out of academic interest.

mSparks 744 as well as I know he’s a Linux guy, too. 

Probably not going to do much tubelining on this one, tho. Dinking about with simple aircraft at Hi Fi levels is always more fun 😁 

Edited May 10May 10 by UrgentSiesta

Bjoern has covered it well! I run Linux on an I5(multithreaded) with an RTX 2070 Super NVIDIA. Have been caught out with a few non linux buys but way it is live and learn! Overall with the last XP12 update I am seeing standard FPS of about 80 at a rural or non major city airport environment. I know a lot of folk go for the dual boot solution but I just opted to do a full clean Linux install and run no other O/S at all now on my PC just pure Linux. 

If the developers cannot get with the program and go Linux I just leave them alone. As Bjoern says it is the plug ins that cause the issues dependant on what they have gone for. It is all a learning curve but sincerely no regrets at all moving to a pure Linux O/S and giving Windowns the flick!

21 minutes ago, coastaldriver said:

Bjoern has covered it well! I run Linux on an I5(multithreaded) with an RTX 2070 Super NVIDIA. Have been caught out with a few non linux buys but way it is live and learn! Overall with the last XP12 update I am seeing standard FPS of about 80 at a rural or non major city airport environment. I know a lot of folk go for the dual boot solution but I just opted to do a full clean Linux install and run no other O/S at all now on my PC just pure Linux. 

If the developers cannot get with the program and go Linux I just leave them alone. As Bjoern says it is the plug ins that cause the issues dependant on what they have gone for. It is all a learning curve but sincerely no regrets at all moving to a pure Linux O/S and giving Windowns the flick!

Great news, too!

I did a wipe and Linux-only for this gaming laptop and had zero issues so far. 

Im going to use it as a test mule for my Steam games (which includes MSFS, so 🤞).

Then to my main concern: DCS World 🙏

If all goes well aside from the old hardware, then that’ll give me the push to put it on my last rig, but again, I’ll probably dual boot that one at least for awhile. 

On the non-Linux devs, yeah, I agree. 👍

Fortunately it seems like most of the important addons for me are also Linux compatible. But I can’t think of an addon that’d keep me on Windows. 🤙

Edited May 11May 11 by UrgentSiesta

20 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Im excited to try the VSL birds now - esp that very nice MD902 and the Pond Racer 😎

These should run fine. VSL fortunately only does very little on the plugin side.

 

20 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Probably not going to do much tubelining on this one, tho.

Tubelining on a laptop isn't fun anyway. Too many buttons, switches and levers to click on too small of a screen.

 

Oh, by the way: If your laptop has a webcam, install Opentrack from your package manager and connect it to XP via plugin (not sure where a package managed version stores that one by default though; best to do CTRL+F for "opentrack.xpl" on your root partition). Then, you can use face tracking for looking around and save yourself the coolie hat inputs.

(Opentrack also works with WINE/Proton games, so MSFS and DCS, by the way.)

 

10 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Im going to use it as a test mule for my Steam games (which includes MSFS, so 🤞).

Then to my main concern: DCS World 🙏

MSFS should run, DCS requires specific launch parameters (see ProtonDB), but I had it working, at least the parts that are $0. The Marianas map had black textures, but I think that's because it uses some texture compression that AMD does not like.

@Bjoern @coastaldriver

FWIW, I Installed a couple of the VSL addons and they run SPLENDIDLY. 😁

The SimCoders Marchetti (pretty much my favorite piston) runs well and fast.

The AoA T-6 Texan II is also as good as on Windows.

I took a chance and installed the Colimata F-104, and it, too seems to run fine. And even that gorgeous polished bare metal shines through on my potato settings. 

Finally, and most shockingly, the ToLiss A346 runs within 1-2 fps of even the Default addons!!! “Well optimized”, indeed!

Thanks again for all the tips & guidance - it’s been eye opening (in a good way)! 😁🤙

i can but say I cannot think of a single addon that has been a problem on my linux dist and XP12.4.3, They all work Fels, Tolliss, Rotate, XHangar, XAviation, AFL and off course Thrandas. Infact spoilt for choice really - whenever I start Xp12 and make a choice (place and plane) I think WOW! This sim is amazing now, stunning in its fidelity. IF I missed the Starky not deliberate where would we be without the efforts of the Starky, Shensee and FlyingTak!