|
This thread is to share the blood, toil, tears and sweat of the gaming on Linux experience. We've decided to abandon the golden handcuffs of the Microsoft world, and even though Linux is becoming a viable gaming platform, there is still a lot of effort and workarounds required to play some of the latest games on the market.   What do I need to play games on Linux?Steam is your best bet, it ships out of the box with the Proton translation layer, which lets you install and run Windows games, even those that haven't explicitly been made for Linux. Proton uses Wine under the hood, which is basically a reimplementation of the whole of Windows, but that can run on top of the Linux kernel. Since it's a massive effort from unpaid volunteers with no access to the Windows code, there might be some small bugs, unimplemented features and paper cuts, but in general, the vast majority of games should be able to run out-of-the-box. How do I know if my favourite game is compatible with Steam and Proton?ProtonDB is your new best friend: https://www.protondb.com/. Search for any game, and you'll see reports from other players, and which workaround you might need to apply to your game to have the best experience. Am I forced to use Steam to play on Linux?Not at all! There's plenty alternative ways of playing Windows-only games on Linux:
And you might also need, for an optimal gaming experience:
Why is my favourite game still unsupported?Proton and Wine these days are very mature and can run pretty much any Windows application unmodified, but the biggest hurdle nowadays are anti-cheat libraries. Anti-cheat works by detecting suspicious tampering in your system, i.e. anything out of the ordinary, and running a game under a completely different operating system trips any kind of cheat detection logic. Valve has worked hard with game and anti-cheat developers to support Proton, but there are still some games that are unsupported and either don't start on Linux, or get your banned if you even try running them, so be cautious. Who even cares about Linux gaming?With the enormous success of the Steam Deck, Linux is becoming a big target for any console and hardware developer that are looking into creating their own Steam Deck alternative. In fact, even cloud gaming companies, such as the upcoming Amazon Luna, will be using this technology to run games on their servers without having to pay for Microsoft licenses. The more money goes into open source gaming, the sooner you'll be able to remove that pesky Windows thing from your PC and join us on the other side. We've got penguins, booze, and it's all free. Lifroc fucked around with this message at 11:38 on Jun 23, 2022 |
#
?
Jun 20, 2022 18:16
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 02:58 |
|
|
reserved
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2022 18:16
|
|
|
Popping in to say hi! I'm a primarily Linux user who occasionally gives up and boots Windows when my games don't work, so I'll definitely hang out here to help out and motivate myself into relying less on the reboot crutch. Regarding steam, is there a convenient way to filter your library to only show native Linux games without having to disable proton? Sometimes I just want to list games that are basically guaranteed to work.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2022 21:43
|
|
|
Phosphine posted:Popping in to say hi! I'm a primarily Linux user who occasionally gives up and boots Windows when my games don't work, so I'll definitely hang out here to help out and motivate myself into relying less on the reboot crutch. Weird, I tried and there doesn't seem to be a way. But in my experience, many native Linux games are badly done ports, and in that case the Proton version works better or is more up-to-date. In my opinion the Windows API focused so much on backward compatibility that it's a better platform even for gaming on Linux; native Linux APIs are still in total flux (i.e. Wayland, pipewire, etc.) and what may work today might not in two years.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2022 22:28
|
|
|
I'll throw my use case into the discussion. I run a Plex server that has fairly modern hardware 2600X, GTX 1070, 16GB RAM. My wife plays games occasionally, so we're using our Nvidia Shield TV to stream from the server instead of her having to stream from my main gaming PC. We've only just set it up, so I'll update with how the performance is, especially when the GPU is transcoding on the Plex side. Edit: shield, not stream LRADIKAL fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Jun 21, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2022 22:45
|
|
|
LRADIKAL posted:I'll throw my use case into the discussion. Is Nvidia Stream TV better than the Steam Link? I got an Nvidia Shield and it was a pain trying to stream some games with the Steam Link app, it didn't work perfectly because my desktop is in 4K and for some reason I had a ton of input lag. I've never tried on Windows or with another controller, so I don't know who exactly was the culprit. Oh, the joys of Linux gaming... though when it works, it's exhilarating
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2022 22:47
|
|
|
I've primarily gamed on my Linux desktop for the last year and it's been great. Some things run even better in Linux! I boot into my Windows partition pretty rarely, most recently for the Overwatch 2 beta which ran like dog poo poo, perhaps because it wouldn't properly identify my gpu as a 3070. If you're playing a lot of anti-cheated multiplayer games it's not the right call for you but overall everything I wanna run does so well and the overall desktop experience is much more satisfying to me than Windows.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2022 23:13
|
|
|
Lifroc posted:Is Nvidia Stream TV better than the Steam Link? I got an Nvidia Shield and it was a pain trying to stream some games with the Steam Link app, it didn't work perfectly because my desktop is in 4K and for some reason I had a ton of input lag. I've never tried on Windows or with another controller, so I don't know who exactly was the culprit. I never had good luck with steam link so I’ve just been using parsec which works so much better. I use parsec on my steam deck as well which works great. No fuss no muss.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2022 23:19
|
|
|
MarcusSA posted:I never had good luck with steam link so I’ve just been using parsec which works so much better. Oh, it's even packaged as a Flatpak (I got Fedora Silverblue on my desktop). Neat, I'll give it a shot this weekend.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2022 23:34
|
|
|
Lifroc posted:Oh, it's even packaged as a Flatpak (I got Fedora Silverblue on my desktop). Neat, I'll give it a shot this weekend. Parsec paid for them to make this video so take it with a grain of salt but DF is very happy with the results. https://youtu.be/BKd6vTE3xgk
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2022 23:38
|
|
|
I have never heard of Bottles before. (actually all 3 of the things you mentioned.) I'd love to stick with Linux full time but the gaming side has always been frustrating. It's better than it's ever been nowadays all things considered. I'm going to look into this Bottles thing. Looks very customizable. I do run some low level stuff on an RPI4 running Ubuntu (with mono), but I'd really like to use my main rig with Linux instead of Windows. I'd love to learn more about switching over full time. Especially if I can bring all of my games with me.
|
|
#
?
Jun 20, 2022 23:53
|
|
|
Besides all the new & improved ways of making windows games run on Linux, there's also another path: virtual machines with direct hardware pass-through, which have functionally no overhead compared to running the OS natively. So instead of running a windows game with proton or whatever, just run a Windows VM for games. And it even solves the anti-cheat problem for many games (but not all). The downside: you need a 2nd GPU, because the only GPUs that allow shared access from host+VM at the same time are workstation cards. And maybe some extra ram to fit 2 OSes + a game. And a lot of time to learn how to set things up if you're not familiar with VMs. Seeing a demo of Looking Glass on the L1Techs youtube channel was one of the things that put "hmm yes, maybe linux" in my mind quite some time ago. poo poo is amazing. (And then Win11 was like  time to get serious about linux.)Right now I've reached the learn how to VM step. Now I just need a 2nd GPU. C'mon bitcoin, crash faster!
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 03:36
|
|
|
TY for making this thread. Linux gaming (and personal computing in general, but especially gaming!) has come so far in the last few years. I no longer have a Windows machine in my home, but between the Deck and a Tumbleweed laptop, I'd say that the majority of gaming that I do is PC gaming. There is virtually zero drama, and the upsides of ditching Windows totally outweigh needing to add some flags to a launcher or something once every few months.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 03:51
|
|
|
I dont have anything to really contribute to this thread other than the burning desire to be free of Windows-as-a-service, and a simple question or two: 1) is that richard stallman2) did he really eat his own foot goo?
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 04:19
|
|
|
buglord posted:I dont have anything to really contribute to this thread other than the burning desire to be free of Windows-as-a-service, and a simple question or two: 1) yes 2) all we know is he ate something off his foot, the nature of it is beyond mortal knowledge On topic: as the kind of nerd with no friends to play multiplayer games with I've had basically no issues with gaming on Linux via Proton, it's been pretty sweet. The closest thing I've had to an issue lately is 20 Minutes Till Dawn exploding if I try to run MangoHud with it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 05:00
|
|
|
Linux gamer checking in. Been running Manjaro Linux as my main OS since 2020 and haven't found a reason to boot to Windows in a year or so. I have to do a little more research before buying a game but pretty much my whole Steam library works just fine these days, and the Heroic launcher works well for GOG stuff
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 05:02
|
|
|
Crossover works really well on a Mac but what about their Linux version? https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 06:33
|
|
|
I mostly created this thread because I self banned myself from Reddit (used to be a regular on /r/linux and /r/linux_gaming) and I really want someone to tell me when Chivalry 2 is playable on Linux. It looks fun, but it's got a crappy anticheat.Fistmaker posted:I have never heard of Bottles before. (actually all 3 of the things you mentioned.) I'd love to stick with Linux full time but the gaming side has always been frustrating. It's better than it's ever been nowadays all things considered. I'm going to look into this Bottles thing. Looks very customizable. Bottles is great (so much so I give them money every month) and is basically a simpler better looking UI than Lutris, with all the knobs and toggles if you want to customize the Wine environment to your liking (i.e. install a particular DLL, force DLSS/FSR, etc.) buglord posted:1) is that The one and only, though he'd be horrified to see people play on GNU/Linux thanks to a for-profit corporation that _rents_ DRM-protected games on their proprietary platform. Tux Racer ought to be enough gaming for anyone.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 08:34
|
|
|
Emong posted:1) yes Be wary with MangoHud: it's great, but playing Hollow Knight with it on I discovered it causes a lot of microstutters (looks a bit like screen tearing), so now I keep it off by default.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 08:37
|
|
|
Thanks for making this thread. I've been telling people that I "tragically became a Linux gamer during the pandemic" and it'll be nice to have a reference point when I'm struggling with one issue or another. Haven't really had many problems, but didn't play much of anything during 2021. The last half-year, it's been either PS4 (Bloodborne) or swapping to Windows for performance gains (Elden Ring; Elden Ring runs bafflingly well for me under Windows, while its Linux performance is ... about what I realistically feared/expected it might be for my system). I mean, I guess I did just also replay SUPERHOT and start MIND CONTROL DELETE without the slightest problems or difficulty ...
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 08:59
|
|
|
I was afraid Elden Ring would be the game that would force me back to Windows but there was a proper multiplayer implementation within like a day or so of release and I have put well over 100 hours into it at this point with only minimal issues. I think I've spent the most time over the last year playing Guilty Gear Strive, which does have some bizarre framerate issues on Linux, at least for me (framerate steadily degrades over a play session unless I periodically restart the game) but that got way better in the latest version of Proton.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 09:35
|
|
|
I've been playing exclusively on Linux for over a decade, and dual-booted before that. It's pretty incredible how much has happened over the last twenty years, from barely any linux-native games (ty Loki and LGP for their efforts, and especially Ryan Gordon) together with a then-rough Wine. These days, excepting some anti-cheats, most things just work with either native or proton. Wish more companies had first-part Linux versions (❤️ paradox among many others) instead of relying on proton, but it is what it is. I think I have some of my old wine wrapping scripts around, thank God I don't need them anymore.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 11:30
|
|
|
Vavrek posted:The last half-year, it's been either PS4 (Bloodborne) or swapping to Windows for performance gains (Elden Ring; Elden Ring runs bafflingly well for me under Windows, while its Linux performance is ... about what I realistically feared/expected it might be for my system). Elden Ring actually works better on Linux than Windows, because DXVK has a patch to mitigate the loading issues that cause stutters. But to get the best performance, you NEED mesa 22. It is crucial. I've played 100h on Linux on 4K maxed with no frame drop. This is with an AMD card, as usual with Nvidia YMMV.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 12:12
|
|
|
As someone looking to get their toes into the switch to linux as main os but like to play videogames is there a good distro for that? I try googling and get a list of distro's that have positives and negatives. Is it possible to just use ubuntu?
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 13:10
|
|
|
Blue Waffles posted:As someone looking to get their toes into the switch to linux as main os but like to play videogames is there a good distro for that? I try googling and get a list of distro's that have positives and negatives. Is it possible to just use ubuntu? I'm using pop_os, which is designed for basically this. It is very similar to ubuntu, similar enough that when I need to google "how do I do this thing in linux" if I search ubuntu it works the same way in pop os. the only game I've had to switch back to windows for so far is ArmA 3 multiplayer, mainly because I'm using a bunch of weird mods, some of which integrate with teamspeak. I may even have been able to get it working on linux but I ran out of patience.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 14:01
|
|
|
Sup. Been doing this thing as since putting full blown Linux on a Chromebook I bought almost a decade ago. It's kind if incredible how massively things have improved since then.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 14:13
|
|
|
Blue Waffles posted:As someone looking to get their toes into the switch to linux as main os but like to play videogames is there a good distro for that? I try googling and get a list of distro's that have positives and negatives. Is it possible to just use ubuntu? Everyone's going to recommended something different, but I think if you're gaming you should make the same choice Valve did and go with an Arch derivative. Manjaro is the popular option but it's not quite a rolling distro, software packages are updated in stages, ostensibly to help with stability but in my experience it causes more problems than it solves. Particularly with games, where things are happening so fast. EndeavourOS is my choice, it comes with a nice installer with sane defaults. Purestrain Arch can be more if a hassle to set up, it's easier than it used to be but you might want to get more experience first. Ubuntu is okay, but package versions lag behind and while has a large userbase (and therefore support network) Arch isn't far behind and the Arch wiki is a fantastic resource. PopOS is okay but after moving to KDE Plasma it's hard to go back to Gnome (Linux being Linux it's possible to replace the desktop environment but adds hassle). SCheeseman fucked around with this message at 14:28 on Jun 21, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 14:21
|
|
|
I've been using Arch exclusively for a bit more than a year and the only thing for which I've had to use a Windows VM was Space Station 13, because it relies on a specific version of internet explorer for UI stuff.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 14:34
|
|
|
Blue Waffles posted:As someone looking to get their toes into the switch to linux as main os but like to play videogames is there a good distro for that? I try googling and get a list of distro's that have positives and negatives. Is it possible to just use ubuntu? PopOS or Mint are definitely better than Ubuntu -- Ubuntu has gone off the deep end on this new app packaging called Snap, which puts all apps inside a container. It's good for some things but the way Ubuntu is doing everything as snaps is dumb as hell and means your browser takes 3-15 seconds to start up. A pair of questions: how tech savvy & good at troubleshooting are you, and how often do you update PC gear to the latest & greatest? If the answers are "very" and "often", you might consider a rolling release distro. Upside is that you get fast kernel updates which may have improvements for hardware support etc. Downside is some change that breaks things can happen at any time rather than once or twice a year. Personally I'm using Manjaro, which I chose because it was easier than real arch but I can still draft off the excellent Arch wiki. I'm generally happy with it, but I also can't give it 2 thumbs up. (Very amusingly, on the day I chose to install it Manjaro was having problems with their security keys for the repos. So I updated the OS, restarted, and then pacman was broken and I couldn't install anything new. Easy fix to google, but still, start to broken in under 30 minutes.) A lot of people in the linux thread in SHSC think Suse Tumbleweed is pretty good, if I was trying over again I might do that.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 15:09
|
|
|
I used to work in IT but its been well over ten years ago, used to be able to set up linux servers and stuff but most of it is gone in terms of memory, I do not mind having to search and fiddle to get something running, it is mostly so many different distros to choose from and everyone have their preferred one. Currently running a new machine I got after christmas, which were the first upgrade in seven years so not very often I update hw. Mostly just do not like the way windows is going, well since windows 8 to be honest and it looks like I can do the jump to linux more easily now. Thinking maybe trying out EndeavourOS, if it isnt for me not much I need to do to change I guess if I have not set up much.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 15:41
|
|
|
I've been gaming on Linux since early wine days but it is so much less painful now with proton. Besides the eternal foe EAC, pretty much everything works now. Absolutely amazing how far we've come from having to do dynamic binary analysis to get your anime titties to boot up.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 15:48
|
|
|
There's a lot of love for Fedora across the various nix threads, I've been running it for nearly a decade and its  . It hits the sweet spot of new enough for active development of games / wine utils like Arch, general OS stability, and ease of use (installation, upgrades, etc). Personally I'd recommend KDE on Fedora for the "this is what windows should be" experienceMy other gaming OS recommendations would be Manjaro and PopOS. It'd probably be worth having a section in the OP about recommended OSes I'm sure it'll be a regular question. Mr. Crow fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Jun 21, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 15:51
|
|
|
MarcusSA posted:I never had good luck with steam link so I’ve just been using parsec which works so much better. I'll have to give this a go. My steam link hasn't worked with Linux for months now, I've basically given up. I assume it's to do with discord not being able to screen share also. Mr. Crow posted:There's a lot of love for Fedora across the various nix threads, I've been running it for nearly a decade and its Same, it's a really got a really nice placement amongst distros. Only issue is getting people to look past the name. I wouldn't recommend it to someone new to Linux though. Mega Comrade fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Jun 21, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 16:01
|
|
|
Blue Waffles posted:if it isnt for me not much I need to do to change I guess if I have not set up much. Make a separate dedicated partition for /home. That way if you want to switch distros, you can keep pretty much your entire set-up as long as you're using the same desktop environment & WM. (Plus steam and all games.) Mr. Crow posted:It'd probably be worth having a section in the OP about recommended OSes I'm sure it'll be a regular question. LMAO is there any way this doesn't end up with "all of them"? The main reason that choosing distros is hard is that every choice has its fans who think that it is the best, or at least top 5. You should obviously choose the one they use. Because why wouldn't you, it's great! And in the rare cases when a distro alienates its fans (ubuntu), they immediately go off and fork a new distro that they can be fans of. Probably the main thing to note would be which distros make the nvidia experience the least pain in the rear end, because a lot of gamers who might come to linux for the first time will have a nvidia card.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 16:16
|
|
|
Klyith posted:Make a separate dedicated partition for /home. That way if you want to switch distros, you can keep pretty much your entire set-up as long as you're using the same desktop environment & WM. (Plus steam and all games.) As a general OS sure, but eh, I feel like there are certainly wrong choices when it comes to choosing a distro for gaming if you're not familiar with Linux: Arch, Debian and Ubuntu all spring to mind, all for different reasons that are otherwise solid distros. Obviously if you're comfortable with Linux you can use whatever you want and it'll probably work well, but I'm guessing a fair number of the people that end up reading the OP will be curious about trying Linux coming from windows and the least we could do is give them some known frictionless choices for modern gaming. I agree adding some blurbs about nvidia and maybe if we have a section for distros we can include how to install them, since its a pain in the rear end in different ways for nearly every one. Also on X11 and Wayland. I could write up reasons for fedora and a basic gaming setup if OP wants to do something like that, crowdsource it and all that. Mr. Crow fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Jun 21, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 16:26
|
|
|
I remember like a month or two ago that Nvidia was making their drivers open source or something (definitely misremembering specifics here). Does this help using Linux with an nvidia card going forward?
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 17:34
|
|
|
They've removing the need to use closed blobs that typically need to be jammed into the Linux kernel, but all their userland stuff is still proprietary. This does enable Nouveau, the reverse engineered open source Nvidia driver, to work properly but that still isn't good enough to be used as a daily driver. They're also finally putting in the work to enable Wayland support, a replacement for the positively ancient X windowing system that has a bunch of features very relevant to gaming which are already being taken advantage of by the Gamescope compositor used in SteamOS/Deck, but that's early days too. So you can get Nvidia cards to work, but every experience I've had I ran into weird problems with performance and stability and the most recent developments are still largely WIP. With AMD or Intel, everything Just Works. SCheeseman fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Jun 21, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 17:48
|
|
|
Thank you for creating this thread.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 17:51
|
|
|
buglord posted:I remember like a month or two ago that Nvidia was making their drivers open source or something (definitely misremembering specifics here). Does this help using Linux with an nvidia card going forward? Not really no. It might be a sign of them trying to transition to more open source like AMD but as of now it does nothing and they moved a bunch of the code into firmware blobs as part of this too so... who knows. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia-open-kernel&num=1 goes into more detail but it's a little hard to follow what it actually means.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 17:59
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 02:58 |
|
|
buglord posted:I remember like a month or two ago that Nvidia was making their drivers open source or something (definitely misremembering specifics here). Does this help using Linux with an nvidia card going forward? Yes, kinda, with asterisks. What nvidia is actually doing is making the kernel-end part of their driver open source. The user-end parts (including openGL, vulkan, etc) remain closed-source binaries. And a bunch of kernel functionality got moved into firmware. It's still much less open than AMD. What this will do is make the parts that absolutely suck (driver-kernel conflicts) much less sucky. However, many distros may still ship Nouveau because it's fully open, so that may still need post-install work to change out the driver. Also "going forward" is still a ways in the future -- nvidia has published, but it might be a while before it all gets taken up into the kernel. Also also, it will only support Turning & newer, so the 16xx 20xx and 30xx cards. Owners of 10-series cards are SOL.
|
|
#
?
Jun 21, 2022 18:13
|
|