Proton is good enough that I’m extremely confident that games will “just work” even if it’s a fresh release. If it for some reason doesn’t, refunding is free and easy. Though it sounds like it’s an unoptimized mess regardless lol.
Typically it’s only “good enough” because the community has rallied and written the scripts to tailor the wine prefix for that specific game’s peculiarities.
A demo would probably do it, or an advance copy, or a leak. But it might not “just work” from 12:01 after the midnight release.
Uh when is the last time you used proton? That’s not even slightly true. I just beat Baldur’s Gate 3, it “just work”, zero issues from proton’s side of things. I play Genshin Impact too, which works with zero configuration or anything. Even the anti cheat they made compatible with it.
I can attest to this. I don’t play the absolute newest games, but I can’t think of a single title that did not work with Proton-GE, without any tinkering past like… early 2022. It has been very smooth, no matter the kind of game. Of course, minus the known offenders like Destiny 2 or R6 Siege
Every other game I play needs some special command line argument.
Baldur’s Gate, for example, but that was the other comment that used that as their example.
Yes, but generally it’s not “the community” like how mods work, it’s a project run by Valve who controls the review and release process. Sometimes patches come from “the community,” and sometimes they come from paid developers, but they all go through Valve.
You can choose to use a community Proton build like GloriousEggroll’s builds, but them that’s something more like a mod than a patch to an official project.
You’re confusing Proton with community efforts like Lutris. Proton is a package of technologies (Wine, DXVK, Vessel), not a configuration manager. Each individual game gets an identical, isolated runtime environment without any bespoke modifications except for downloading precompiled shaders (if available).
It’s certainly true that Proton has hardcoded quirk flags for specific applications, but these are exceptions which prove the rule – there are <200 of these compared with thousands of Verified status games. Almost always, Valve prefers to fix the upstream Wine/DXVK bug rather than hacking around it. Any hacks which Valve does ship are in the Proton source code, not per-game environment scripts.
I wonder how well the EA App will work - not because of Lutris, but because of how broken it is. Many people still cannot play games they have purchased for many months now. EA doesn’t care and is still selling games on Steam that are broken due to their shitty launcher. For a while, some solutions to keep using Origin worked, but not anymore, least for me.
On a different note: when will this update be out on Flathub? I can’t seem to find that info anywhere. Anyone knows?
I’ve been running the EA app through Lutris as just a regular program and it works “fine”, Sometimes it crashes on launch but all games I’ve played through it from Battlefield to Titanfall 2 have worked.
Funnily one of the things that got me to try Linux was the EA App randomly stopped working on my Win10 install. Seriously how has EA kept their desktop client such a buggy messes after all this time? Origin was a load of crap but I still had less issues overall with it.
Yes I’ve been running it like that too but sadly many games don’t work with the EA App at all. Just by a glance at the official forums one finds lots of threads complaining about it, asking how to keep using Origin instead and the like. Respectively on Steam, same complaints. I’m having the “you don’t own this game” issue with Mass Effect 3 since June now and there is no fix. And I own it of course. Been playing Multiplayer for years now. I was just hoping that with the integration to Lutris some of the issues might get addressed.
Wow, you nearly described the same experiences I had just recently - when I installed steam and a few games for the first time on Linux. And I was also like “Oh, what? It actually works!!”
I immediately shrunk my windows on dual boot and will likely uninstall it completely in near future. No need for bloated windows anymore
Yeah, I nuked my windows drive about a year ago, there’s still some games I’d like to play that don’t work, but they’re few enough that I just don’t play them and don’t really mind.
I use Arch for my daily, and I would highly recommend against it for new users. 99% of the time it’s just fine. 1% of the time some edge case sneaks by and you update before a fix is pushed. In those cases, I’ve had installations be deeply broken, far beyond my expectations of normal users.
For actual recommendations, something Debian based for sure. Vanilla Debian, Mint, or Mint Debian edition. If you wanna live on the edge, Sid is rolling but in my experience was more stable than Arch.
I made a video going over my own experience. But I feel the biggest tip is to understand the difference between the OS and the Desktop Environment, since in Linux these are separate.
In Windows I found myself identifying the OS based on how the start menu looks and how the file explorer is.
But in Linux these are separate and are called Desktop Environmenta (DE). Your desktop can look like Windows with DE’s like KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, or Mate. It can be Mac like with KDE Plasma, or Gnome. Or it can be unique like Gnome.
If you noticed I repeated a few names, that’s because they can be customized, and some distributions make them look and feel the way they want them too.
Meanwhile the distro is more focused on what applications are pre-installed and what software will run and are available. I.e. Debain is more stable while arch is more up-to-date.
There are many guides going over this, but distro hopping is the best for narrowing this down. I found finding applications that need to work and seeing if the distro can do it, can weed out any distro that won’t work for you. If you don’t like the feel of a distro but like the functionally, then look for a similar distro but with a new GUI.
For example Ubuntu ships with a mostly unmodified Gnome. I personally am not a fan of Gnome and prefer a more Windows-like feel. So I look around and find Zorin, Kubuntu, and Mint.
Word of the wise though, while you can install more than one de on install, you are better off either making a new profile or not swapping your de. Something something shared resources, something something breaking your install.
Pick something basic like PopOs or Mint or whatever to start with. If youre trying to avoid distrohopping, install a virtual machine and test out distros with.
Avoiding any kind of distrohopping is kinda silly in the long term. You will want to find the distro that suits your needs best. By using a virtual machine, you can basically hop on the side, and keep a working system around til you find your goldilocks distro.
Ive been using linux for over 20 years. Ive daily driven several different distros for years at a time. If you stick with linux, you will most likely do the same.
The kind of game-specific fixes that get added to GPU drivers on Windows are typically added to Proton, not the Linux GPU drivers. Waiting a week for the Nvidia driver so you can be sure it won’t break your system is only a plus in this instance.
We have a lot to thank Joshua Ashton for. He started D9VK as a personal project whilst still at school, then went on to work on DXVK etc amongst other things. That bloke works all year round to make Linux gaming work better.
There was a good interview with him on gamingonlinux.com a few years back.
RuneLite is linux native though. If you want something specifically through Wine, others have said Guild Wars 2 and FFXIV, but I’ve also heard good stuff about STAR WARS: The Old Republic. And if you’re okay with something a little more obscure/“out there”, Shakes and Fidget has great reviews (it’s a satire on MMORPGs).
I think it’s part of their style. A considerable portion of Apple owners use Apple products for the social look. I have heard many people say they like Apple because it’s the fancy luxurious phone/computer which makes the owner/user seem more fancy and cool. The blue bubble is a social indicator to them. Computer games are for nerds. I don’t agree with any of that, but I have known people that do.
Eh, I’ve known plenty of artsy people who use macOS who also play games, but they tend to play more casually. You don’t buy a Mac to play games, but that doesn’t mean they don’t like to play games.
Same. I never got into Shadow Tactics, but DIII clicked with me straight away (and that’s in spite of having mix feelings about Westerns). Hopefully someone also picks up this type of game, as it’s quite a specific niche.
Ooh awesome. There are a ton of great custom maps and mods for Warcraft 3. I used to hang out at wc3campaigns as a teen so I have a ton of nostalgia thinking about wc3 now.
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