To OP, I’ll add that it’s very important to force the amdgpu kernel driver on your GCN 1.0 GPU, as it’s the only way to get Vulkan support (required by pretty much all of the GPU compatibility layers that Proton/Steam uses).
Linux gaming often requires tinkering if there is no native port of the game, and that is unlikely to change in the near future or ever. If you are not the tinkerer type you should keep a Windows partition for games. I’ve been playing exclusively on Linux for the last two years and almost always the bigger AA games require some adjustment and “Googling” But if it is the cost of my freedom and system that I enjoy to use everyday then I accept it.
It’s runs really well, actually. I don’t have any solid numbers because I wasn’t really into that side of it, but I had a fairly large base going, about 20 hours past endgame (no where near a megabase, though) and no performance issues.
I exclusively play Steam games on my Ubuntu machine because I don’t have to do anything, it just works for me (only had to set up proton once on Steam and I was done forever).
There are sim games that I just boot into Windows to play them.
The boot up time of programs and privacy is worth it in my mind.
Even with Steam there can still be some strange issues. For example, Far Cry 4 will crash with no error messages if it can see more than 31 logical CPU cores. You have to use the WINE_CPU_TOPOLOGY environmental variable to limit it to less cores. Apparently, windows has been programmed to limit the number of CPU cores in certain games to work around bugs that the game developers should have fixed instead. I guess Proton should start doing that too since high core count CPUs are becoming more common.
(note: this ended up being long, but I promise it’s worth it to read)
Learning to use Linux is as easy (if not easier) than when you learned to use Windows, and you probably did that when you were younger, even less experienced with technology, and didn’t have the benefit of comprehensive online help resources.
To start, the main thing to know is that unlike Windows or MacOS, the Operating System “kernel” (the bit that actually handles the core tasks of an OS which allows software to run on your hardware which you don’t ever need to understand) does not have many of the usability features you associate with Windows or MacOS such as the Desktop Environment, default programs, apps store, etc.
Instead, Linux comes in different **“distributions” (“distros”)**which facilitate all these things. So it’s more accurate to think of a Linux distro as analogous to “Windows” or “MacOS” rather than just Linux.
The awesome thing about this is that while they’re all similar enough that almost anything you learn will be applicable to all of them, the variety of options means you can find one that works well for you. So when it comes time to try Linux, here’s what to do
Pick a Linux distro that is super non-tech user friendly. If you want to have it chosen for you, just “Linux Mint” (but also look into “Pop OS.” Both are very user friendly)
Search for “How to install <name-of-linux-distro>” on the Internet
Follow the most official guide you find
Done.
Then, once it’s installed, any time you want to learn how to do a thing on it that isn’t intuitive to you, try the following in order until you get useful results:
Search for "how to do <thing-to-do> on Linux"
Search for "how to do <thing-to-do> on <your-linux-distro>"
Make a post on a distro-specific subreddit, Lemmy community, discord server, etc asking how to do the thing
Realistically, #1 & #2 should solve all your problems unless you’re doing complicated stuff, but #3 will almost always solve the rest.
Also, welcome to the club! You won’t wanna go back, trust me :)
The reality is that those people just run Windows 10 (or even 7) until WELL after updates have stopped being pushed. There is a narrow window of people who care about updates who won’t upgrade (because EOL for Windows 10 is 2025), but they are very much the minority.
And of those who care about gaming? You are likely already running “ps4/x1” levels of hardware and we are going to be seeing the refresh SKUs late next year (probably). So it is even more likely that an upgrade will occur.
That said: Linux Mint is pretty much plug and play for most people. Hell, I reformatted my parents’ laptops to Linux Mint and they still think they are running Windows but I have fewer weekends of “Okay, time to do tech support until they start blaming their viruses on jewish space lizards” because they can’t break it. And with the ever bigger push for Steam Deck support, most games, once you enable proton (which is a checkbox), “just work”.
I get the open source support part of your comment, but you are taking out the fact Steam/Valve has done a lot …A LOT…to get games working on Steam. Additionally, for the first time every they have driving Linux marketshare higher than MacOS as a result. So, to dismiss them completely is wrong. They have done a lot for linux…and linux gaming.
I don’t think its as mutually exclusive as you make it sound. Personally, I think showing that there’s a bunch of Linux users interested in buying and running games in general is helping out the Linux gaming scene, regardless of whether its a native port or not. We need to shortcut the chicken-and-egg problem of not having enough marketshare and I think Proton and Steam Deck have been instrumental in doing that and getting developers to even be aware of Linux. It’s a slow and steady march onwards, but I firmly believe one day we’ll have enough marketshare to start demanding native ports from non-indie game devs.
You could go with System76, I think they have a high-end “graphics” laptop, which would be suitable for gaming. Open source company so you are guaranteed everything is compatible with Linux.
However, if money is an issue or you find something else you like, for example the Dell XPS laptops ( in the past have been very compatible with linux,) here is a tool to check the model and/or the parts (important) such as wifi, etc., to see if they are compatible for a lot of laptops.
Flightless Mango has some comparisons for ‘newer’ games, in case you were concerned about performance. Short answer is that you might expect to lose a percent or two on frames vs. Windows, which is not really worth fretting over. Some games are worse, usually until the underlying issue is fixed. Some games are substantially better - usually Vulkan-based ones. The additional Linux efficiency is real, when it doesn’t have to translate all the DirectX calls.
Don’t know about missing, sorry. The problem is more that some games that use cutting-edge features might have really bad performance, since there’s been no priority on optimising it yet. The last game I played that was that troublesome was Horizon Zero Dawn - was almost unplayable on Linux at launch; couple of updates later, equally as good as Windows.
Never tried raytracing, would imagine that would probably have some issues. But I hear that even at best, RT is a horrific performance hog.
I was using linux for gaming until recently. I need to repair it, and also have been using some windows centric software. So booting mainly into windows right now.
But one thing I noticed was that on nvidia blob drivers at least (cannot attest to amd), in FPS games, where every millisecond does count. There's definitely a bit more latency on linux compared to windows. Enough to feel it for sure.
Otherwise almost everything (windows store games being mostly the exception) worked fine or could be made to run fine in linux and performance aside from what I am feeling as added latency was on par and sometimes better than windows.
I haven’t seen too many positives regarding Radeon on Linux
Funny you say that, because Linux users have a lot of hate for Nvidia due to its poor support and closed-source drivers, and lots of love for AMD with it’s great support and open source drivers.
I think i’m just naive. I did a bit of searching but didn’t find much. I didn’t realize the drivers are built into the kernel which makes me feel much better.
KDE currently. Modern GNOME drives me somewhat insane - too “streamlined”. I used WindowMaker for a long time and somewhat miss it, but I’ve had problems with compatibility with some software (Steam).
I use XFCE mainly because I’m running older hardware. But I really do like it. I have been wanting to try out window managers but have just been too lazy… 😂
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