Pretty happy Genshin Impact hasn’t gone scorched earth against Linux users who have to rely on custom launchers, yet. What’s ironic is that Apex Legends is supposed to be officially supported on Linux though.
Proton is basically a wrapper for wine with pre-installed dependencies for whatever program you want to run, often with specific fixes and settings for it, in its own instance/environment (usually with a separate C: drive and all those associated paths). It gets rid of the headache of trying to run all of it manually, but it’s good to know how it works in case something breaks or you want to tinker with it, but even then there are programs to automate that process (like protontricks for those specific instances or winetricks more generally).
I’ve only played Chiv 2 on my desktop, but for EAC games I had to install EAC seperately. I’d assume the SteamDeck would do this for you, but maybe it didn’t install properly?
I have two of them, and they’re great controllers. It has a really nice dpad and the joysticks never had any reputation for stick drift. The Bluetooth implementation suffers from the same problem all Bluetooth controllers have though, latency. If it weren’t for the shoddy Bluetooth implementation it would be the perfect controller.
Sure, but it works pretty well for me. I have BT headphones and DS4 controllers, and they work reasonably well together. I don’t really notice the latency for the type of gaming I do (non-competitive SP games mostly).
Honestly the Stadia controller was great. I still have it and it’s my favorite. The Bluetooth implementation just isn’t that great since it was never intended to be used that way anyway
Hopefully HDR starts working outside gamescope in KMS within the year. Or the quirks get ironed out of the latter as it was still a bit buggy last time I checked. Oh and HDMI 2.1 working on AMD cards will be nice, although some DP -> HDMI 2.1 converters have finally started working near fully this year.
Nice to see the progress though, and it’s good to have somewhere to test out this bleeding edge stuff.
To be honest, I’ve never used or heard of a keyboard or mouse that doesn’t work with Linux. The space is pretty well standardized so generic drivers work for everything. I don’t have experience with keyboard layouts that aren’t English QWERTY, though. The safest option would be something basic from a major brand, extra stuff like RGB is not 100% guaranteed to work.
You can reprogram individual keys if you need to in Linux, so even if your preferred layout doesn’t exist, you can get what you want working.
I personally use Dvorak, and it hasn’t really been an issue. That’s pretty mainstream though, so YMMV.
Regardless, I’ve never even considered Linux support for a keyboard. Some parts may not work, like maybe RGB or macro software, but if you don’t need that, the basic keyboard should be absolutely fine and you can tune from there with standard Linux layout tweak tools. If your keyboard supports QMK, I think that works on Linux so you can go wild with that if you like.
If the brand is large enough, it’s probably already supported by OpenRGB or purpose-made alternative for that brand (OpenRazer, for example). That said, in a lot of cases only rgb changes are supported, and things like rebinding keys/macros is not. Layout doesn’t matter, your keyboard doesn’t control that
Logitech MX Master 3 doesn’t work well in Bluetooth mode, at least for me it’s unusable. MX Master 2S works great on the same computer. But neither of them supports remapping the extra keys, so I’d say neither of them works 100%.
I really like this post. While I’m a self-proclaimed tinkerer, running window managers, Arch and NixOS, I never really understood gaming on Linux: it jusy went over my head, with all the Heroic, Bottles, Lutris, launching through Steam, etc. It feels like I should have understood it months ago. It’s so simple once you see someone describe it simply and properly. Thank you so much for that. I can’t describe how much I appreciate it.
I only just realised you were the person who wrote this as well. I should be the one thanking you! Thank you, thank you very much, for making Linux Gaming accessible and easy to understand.
Keychron K4v2 with SonixQMK can be customized to anything you want. I daily it in Linux and windows. I game in Linux, and work in windows (bleh) but I still want Macro’s to pass the HID port on my KVM so I just build custom key codes.
Any of the QMK/VIA supported boards are great in linux, so find the layout, and style you want. The K series are the older ones and they require more effort to get QMK running since they run on the Sonix/Evision MCU.
As for mice, i have a Glorious D- because I have small hands, and its fine. I could control it with OpenRGB but I dont care enough and it gets messy with a KVM.
The Glorious mouse is a pain in the ass. It literally prevents my laptop from booting sometimes when it’s plugged in.
Keychron, however, I can back 100%. I have two of their C2 wired mechanicals, one with white backlight and one without. I use the backlit one on my personal gaming machine and use the non-backlit one on my work machine in the office. Sometimes gaming is in the dark but work never is. They make a very well built keyboard. Robust, easy to repair when anything goes wrong.
The glorious was a replacement for my razor death adder which lived up to it’s name and died. It was also even worse with Linux and a KVM. Plus it’s software was behind required account.
Problem is a lot of vendors that used to use Sonix/EVision chips have switched to Sinowealth or other chips during the chip shortage and haven’t switched back. They do this without changing the model numbers. Sinowealth’s chip is inferior in every way and does not have any QMK port so if you get stuck with a new PCB revision you’re screwed.
I can’t recommend anyone try to buy a Sonix/EVision board anymore for this reason unfortunately. It was awesome when every cheap keyboard on the market had one of these chips though.
I yield to the world expert, also Hi Calc, nice to see you on the fediverse!
My understanding is that Keychron stuck with Sonix/Evision on the K series, but yes my D- is sinowealth which is part of why I dont bother tweaking it.
I wouldn’t call myself the world expert on Sonix these days, haven’t messed with it in over a year. I occasionally check up on the Sonix hacking discord and it looks like some people over there are still making progress, have rebased to master and such. I have been focusing on OpenRGB itself mostly and once the Sinowealth boards started coming out I kinda lost interest in keeping up with SonixQMK since it felt like the work we were doing was getting undone.
I did try to JTAG a Sinowealth keyboard but thus far have been unsuccessful in talking to the chip. I would at least like to dump its firmware.
Yea I still mod on the Sonix discord but its somewhat dead since the number of Sonix/Evision based keyboards has dropped to near 0 and Keychron started making actual QMK compatible boards.
Are you connected with Wendel at Level 1 Techs who are working to get a open RGB protocol supported by all the manufacturers?
Not in any official capacity, but I know about what he and Steve from GN are doing. Their project aims to get vendors to provide documentation on their control protocols, not to standardize around a a single unified protocol.
The Windows RGB implementation might get companies to standardize around the HID Lamp Array protocol though.
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