Assuming this is the usual case where most games are within noise of each other, the ones that don’t run under linux are excluded, and nobody acknowledges that the need to precache/predownload shaders provides short term benefits.
Its like people miss the good old days of “This is the year of linux gaming. Everything works and is perfect. Okay, those games don’t work. But every game I care about works. Except the ones that don’t”. Like, we really are in a golden age of gaming parity but pretending there isn’t still work to be done serves no benefit.
Yup. Just use the same benchmarks major sites use and note any interesting differences. They usually pick games for specific technical reasons, so most of the work figuring out where Linux is weak is done for you.
I personally play on Linux because I use Linux, but because I think it has better performance than Windows or whatever. That should be the selling point, not slight differences in performance. Show that Linux is largely on par with Windows, and then go through all of the other benefits to using Linux, like privacy, package management, and user choice.
Yeah. More or less the same. Pretty much the entirety of my work day is in a terminal and I have increasingly liked “linux” as a desktop since Mint (and now Plasma) are “more windows than windows” in terms of UI/UX. WSL gets Windows a lot of the way toward the OS I want (a good nix-ish terminal with a strong GUI for day to day), but MS also add more and more spyware and stupidity with every update so…
But holy crap do the evangelists go out of their way to undermine widespread linux adoption. Whether it is pretending that opencad is at all a replacement for fusion 360 or that gimp is comparable to photoshop or it is inflating performance or compatibility numbers.
Like, I’ve tried to switch over a few times over the years. And it has always been a shitshow. ProtonDB goes a long way, but it is also prone to outdated information (since the one person still playing Tribes 2 has no need to try newer versions of wine/proton and so forth). And if you check message boards you get the same skewed bullshit. Which mostly boils down to “Okay, well. I figured out that game X won’t work. And I now assume that these fifty other games I care about won’t either”
These days? it is a lot easier because Valve have put in the work to the point that I can more or less just check games in steam. There is still the risk of a new patch breaking something, but it is a lot closer to the good parts of protondb where the steps to recover to a good build are pretty easy (Armored Core 6 was basically a case of just rolling back a major revision of proton) rather than the shitshow. Which then makes it “Well, game X won’t work. But I am reasonably confident that every other game I care about will run performantly so…”
This is exactly why I don’t recommend my distro, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It works well for me, but online help is more limited vs Fedora and the various Debian derivatives. I’ve been Linux only for something like 15 years, and I’d hate for someone to take my advice and have a bad experience.
So I recommend Linux Mint Debian, because I know Debian is solid and Linux Mint has a ton of support. I also tell people to not expect crazy performance and for some games to just not work, that way they’ll be pleasantly surprised when things work better than they expect. As they say, under promise, over deliver.
Of the two main games I play, one doesn’t work on Linux due to the anti-cheat they use, and the other has horrific stuttering while loading game assets.
But Linux works better for the curated selection for this article.
In the Steam settings there’s an option for “Enable Steam Play for incompatible games”, is that turned on? I think it’s a seperate option to just enabling Proton.
I think part of this that I’m not seeing talked about, and perhaps confused for “more tech savvy users”, is just the user hostility of Windows.
9 times out of 10 when a Linux app or game crashes I get a verbose error and more often than not one that I can simply copy and paste.
9 times out of 10 when Windows, or much of windows software, crashes it gives some random number or code and in a window I can’t even copy and paste out of.
My skill level doesn’t change. Linux just isn’t user hostile in nature making it easy to search for fixes and report issues. Where as on windows I can’t summon the care or effort to manually transcribe the error so I can then do something with it.
If the interactive session is still up, just screenshot it and OCR the image. Takes a few seconds, but it’s still easy. Win+S, select the area, paste into OneNote, right-click copy text.
In the absence of a gamersnexus video or phoronix article, I’m going to take this with a large grain of salt. Especially when a video like this one is showing much higher performance in windows. The different cpu shouldn’t account for much of a difference when playing at higher resolutions and the benchmarks shows the game being gpu limited.
Go into Steam Settings > Compatibility, and turn on “Enable Steam Play for all other titles”, Steam will then ask to restart. Install your game (which should now not complain because it’s getting the Windows version for proton) then go change the setting back.
Edit: Added the correct settings section and proper option name, because I was originally winging it, writing this comment on mobile.
Valve should consider making it the default at this point, and just give the user a warning the first time they launch a non-supported game. Because these issues happen often enough that people may be left with a bad impression of Linux (and Steam) game support.
I’ve only ever had to deal with this issue when it comes to installing a demo of something. Generally Steam already knows if there is only a Windows build of a game or not and acts accordingly. If this is the thing that causes a bad impression of gaming on Linux, then you’ve probably already overlooked (or been blind to) other annoying situations.
You must already have the setting enabled (as do I). But on a new install of Steam, only games that have been approved by Valve will run. And that’s using the old system, and not the new system that the Deck uses. So there’s is only a small amount of games supported.
Because can you imagine the outrage if GTA6 or the latest Call of Duty is called “an unsupported game”?
I can see the youtube titles now: “SHOTS FIRED!!! Gabe Newell attacks Ubisoft by warning gamers about buggy games” with a nice video of someone launching the latest tom clancy wankfest and showing the pop-up.
Same with all the fun “quirks” that make sites like protondb so useful. You don’t want someone to accidentally play Dragon’s Dgoma with no cutscene audio or Kingdoms of Amalur with busted ass shaders.
I can see the youtube titles now: “SHOTS FIRED!!! Gabe Newell attacks Ubisoft by warning gamers about buggy games” with a nice video of someone launching the latest tom clancy wankfest and showing the pop-up.
They already do this with the deck verified system. I’m not sure how it would be more of a problem on desktop.
Is this really that rare? Maybe it’s because I pretty much exclusively game on Linux but I feel like I see that message rather often.
On a side note I feel like Linux gamers could help each other out by mentioning how well the game works with Proton in their review. Also if there’s any tweaks you need to do like using a specific version or bugs you encountered.
It doesn’t need to effect the over all review. Good to know though.
Oh yeah I typically check there and the PCGamingWiki if I run into difficulties but it’s nice to not have to leave the Steam store page. Though admittedly I should probably check ProtonDB anyway in case an update caused a game to stop working with Proton.
i think it would be a good thing to also mention it on an normal steam review because that could mean that other user switch to linux that would have not because they think thair games don’t run on linux
Rasies hand. Finally jumping back into Linux after years of Windows. Didn’t really think of the gaming impact other than “so many games don’t work on Linux so I can’t use my main machine.” I’m lucky enough to have 3 computers currently even though 1 of them is a third gen i7 and the other I got for free out of the trash so it’s specs aren’t great either. Enoug for me to install Endeavor then Mint to see how it goes gaming on them.
@ono I thought protondb reports brought you closer to what you were looking for. IDK if sifting through uncurated steam reviews would be helpful without Steam first implementing such filters that would remove all other reviews.
Bought a second drive to run Linux on my gaming PC. It’s been a month and I haven’t had the need to boot into Windows yet. I had some initial troubles during installation but it’s smooth sailing since. After owning the Steam Deck for 1+ year and already running Linux on my laptop, it was the last step towards ditching Windows entirely.
As a Linux user, the Steam Deck is an amazing system to work with. I kinda dropped off with gaming in the last few years and the SD really rekindled my desire to game both solo and doing cozy co-op with my partner.
Truly a game changer and I’m so happy it’s supporting Linux while doing it
Haha forreal, my Steam Deck is the primary thing getting me to play through my backlog of single player games. Spent the past 2 weeks playing a ton of Yakuza 0 and will now probably go back and play the rest of the series in order on this thing. What a beautiful device
Terraria and deep rock galactic are good starters, but this post sounds insanely paranoid for the wrong reasons. Just because you got infected with malware in the past doesn’t mean you need to lock down your internet access. You’ll gain nothing from it. All you need is an adblocker (+ something that blocks trackers) and not running suspicious files.
Just because you’re connecting to a remote server (like any website ever) doesn’t mean you’re susceptible to attacks. Ditto for almost any modern video game, there are protections in place so nobody can run code or send you harmful files on your machine.
If a curious desire for awareness of the the details that surround me is somehow offensive or off putting I apologize. I find it is a catalyst for learning and contextualizing information in several areas of personal interest and plugs some holes in my ignorance.
If you’re not having a good time, stop. Life is too short.
If you’re still interested in using linux, LinuxMint or PopOs! are what most people would recommend to a new user, not Arch.
Arch can be perfect for users with the time, knowledge, and effort to perfectly tailor things to suit their needs. They can make it perfectly efficient, without any excess.
I just want to use my computer whenever I want it to work. I am fine with it having a few extra packages/applications that I might never use. I’ve being using linux as main (or only) operating system on/off for about 20 years, and I currently use Mint.
KDE Plasma is the only desktop with a functional screen reader on Wayland and even then its limited. Other than that, KDE has a magnifying glass setting bound to Super + +/-/0 you can enable.
What viruses do you think you’re going to catch on a Linux host? Nobody is packing Linux viruses into torrents so they might affect the < 1% of people who download it.
I mostly pay for games, but this is a really dumb take.
The classical Windows viruses that run fairly well under Wine? Sure, the impact is not as high as on Windows but pretending there’s no risk is extremely dumb. I do security for a living. Your “argument” is just plain wrong and I hope I never get your PC on any network I am part of.
i’m of the same mindset when it comes to pirating any executable - it really is just not worth the effort to me to go through the steps to ensure the file isn’t malicious, and a signature-based virus scan won’t catch everything.
Perfect security is impossible. It’s always a trade off between convenience and assurance. Can you be 100% certain that the official source of software hasn’t been compromised? Remember CCleaner for Windows? It was distributing malware at one point.
I cannot purchase certain games any longer, for instance Outrun 2006. A downloaded copy is the only reasonable option. Purchasing a used copy doesn’t benefit the rights holder, so I don’t bother.
Take reasonable steps to limit any access the program would have - scan files, use a separate limited-rights user, a sandbox, etc. - and live your life.
right - obviously when piracy is the only option then you get what you get and you need to do the legwork to make sure it’s safe.
i do take proper security precautions (at least i hope i do, i have a degree in it lol)
i more meant that i’d rather not deal with an executable i don’t trust at all since i’m lazy and generally trust the official sources more than the illegitimate ones.
Virus is just a program that tries to whatever its malicious intent is while being as minimal and portable as it gets. It it’s a ransomeare to encrypt all your data or a program that looks for passwords in your files, it can still be fairly successful when running through Wine. There is a chance through, that it assumes typical paths where Windows keeps files and if it never tries other drives than C, it will only affect Wine prefix and not your actual files.
You can run Bottles in Flatpak and cut out access to any of your files if you’re afraid it can be malicious
Right, agreed. I basically just said that last part to someone else.
The problem with seeing danger in every shadow is that you’ll never feel safe is safe enough. There is only so much a person can do to protect themselves, but there comes a point where you’ve made everything so inconvenient for the sake of security that you can’t just live your life. Take reasonable steps and don’t worry beyond that.
The idea that Linux is not susceptible to malware is a really dumb take, in my opinion. I work in security and see Linux machines get popped all the time. Also, wine is good enough that malware will run under it.
Btrfs is amazing for a steam library. The single best feature is the compression. Games tend to have lot of unoptimized assets which compress really well. Because decompression is typically faster than your disk, it can potentially make games load faster too.
I put a second dedicated nvme drive in my PC just for steam. It’s only 512GB but it holds a surprisingly large library.
I actually found the opposite with my steam library; on ZFS with ZSTD I only saw a ratio of 1.1 for steamapps, not that there’s really any meaningful performance penalty for compressing it.
If you’re messing with ACLs I’m not sure deduplication will help you much; I believe (not much experience with reflinks) the dedup checksum will include the metadata, so changing ACLs might ruin any benefit. Even if you don’t change the ACLs, as soon as somebody updates a game, it’s checksum will change and won’t converge back when everyone else updates.
Even hardlinks preserve the ACL… Maybe symlinks to the folder containing the game’s data, then the symlinks could have different ACLs?
I wrote a blog about it last year with my method of deduplicating. I really need to update that bit because steam keeps writing files that don’t uphold the group permissions, and others get permission errors that need to be fixed by admin. Steam also failed to determine free space on a drive when symlinks were involved.
I even found recently that steam would write files in /tmp/ as one user, and fail when you logged in as another user and tried to write the same file. Multi-user breaks even without messing around.
My current solution doesn’t use symlinks. I just add two libraries for each user. One in their respective home directory, and another shared in /mnt/steam. It means that any user can update a game in /mnt/steam, and it cleanly updates for all users at once.
For example, you would have to defragment your filesystem again with btrfs filesystem defragment -r -v -czstd /. Where zstd is an algorithm and /, a root path. With this command, the default compression level will be used, which is level 3.
Be careful, defragmenting the btrfs file system will/can duplicate the data.
As for a mount point, if you decided to use zstd algorithm with level 1 compression, just add the compress=zstd:1 or compress-force=zstd:1 to the mount options (fstab or while mounting manually)
So I set up my system with btrfs in the last days and I converted two external drives (from ext4) (mainly game) and run defrag and balance, because it was mentioned in a guide to compress the existing files. Was that a bad idea? Didn’t read anything about duplicates.
Defragmentation does not preserve extent sharing, e.g. files created by cp --reflink or existing on multiple snapshots. Due to that the data space consumption may increase.
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