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Gaming on Linux is great!

I know, lame post, but I wanted to say that Linux gaming has gotten soooo much better, to the point that I honestly think my games are running better than on Windows. I’ve played so many games, but notable ones are Halo: MCC, MS Flight Sim 2020, Satisfactory, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, and right now I’m starting a full playthrough of Dragon Age.

Dragon Age is notorious even on Windows for being a pain because it’s such an old game. You have to install the 4gb patch, and even then it’s a bit rocky. Not on Linux though! I did have to install PhysX but I googled it and saw it was 2 buttons to install on Linux! Now it’s been rock solid and stable, with no crashes.

Linux gaming may have a high bar to learn, but that bar is constantly getting lower! Exciting times!

Emotet ,
@Emotet@slrpnk.net avatar

Ehhh.

Yeah, compared to a few years ago, it’s very much improved and a lot of games, especially those on Steam, run pretty good and in rare cases even better than on their native platform, Windows.

But the pretty much broken state of VR support combined with some annoying bugs that are very hard to troubleshoot even for advanced users, the decision by most AAA and even some smaller studios to actively block Linux clients in multiplayer games via anti-cheat measures and the usual Linux fuckery of HDR, VRR (which hopefully will get better now that Wayland is getting there) and some NVIDIA fuckery (which is also getting better) leads to the following conclusions for me:

  1. Linux Gaming is improving.
  2. If all you play are some indie titles and/or single-player titles, you may be good.
  3. If you want to play in VR, most popular multiplayer titles and rely on features such as HDR and VRR, you’ll still need to dual boot into Windows.

I’m very much looking forward to the day when I can fully banish Windows, at least from my private machines. I’m very tolerant towards debugging and living on the bleeding edge, if that is needed. But I don’t see the need for Windows for PC gaming to go away anytime soon for most users and, frankly, writing love letters to Linux Gaming without mentioning even some hurdles can, has and will take new Linux users by surprise and turn them off. Communicating transparently, so the user can make their own informed decisions, is a better strategy.

scrubbles OP ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

Linux gaming may have a high bar to learn, but that bar is constantly getting lower! Exciting times!

I’m very aware of the tinkering involved, that’s why I’m not telling people to “just install linux”, but after futzing with Wine for 15 years now, I can finally say it’s in a state where most things are plug and play. Yes, there are outliers that you kindly called out, but I’m very happy with the progress.

Klaymore ,
@Klaymore@sh.itjust.works avatar

HDR (and VRR) have been working for me for the past few months (Plasma 6, AMD), but I still keep Windows around for some games and yeah there’s no way I’m trying VR on Linux. I think I get noticeably worse performance on Linux as well, I think there’s some issue I need to fix with that.

Damage ,

PC gamers are not usually averse to tinkering, so Proton might just be right for them

A_Random_Idiot ,

VR is very niche though, when compared to the bulk of gaming activity.

Niche always takes more time to mature.

llothar ,

Yesterday I’ve spent an hour to figure out how to make Cities Skylines use my RTX 2070 instead of the integrated one on PopOS. For me this is the main issue I face with games. Is having a dedicated AMD card instead better?

meldrik ,

Afaik AMD has always been better supported on Linux.

nfsm ,

I don’t think that just by having an AMD card would solve your issue. Granted that with AMD there’s hardly any setup required.

scrubbles OP ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

AMD is easier for sure, but not for this. I think you may have to tell proton to use a specific card when starting up, or display. I’d start by googling environment variables with vulkan or proton to tell it which card to use. I think there was something like DEVICE=1 or something like that that you put before your command

limitedduck ,

Have tried any VR games? It’s one of the few things I still keep Windows around for

scrubbles OP ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

I have not, although I might. The only HMD I used was a Windows Mixed Reality one, which they just torpedoed support on Windows anyway. I hear it works on Linux, so that might be a weekend project

CaptDust ,

It’s been a while so my info is likely out of date- but my vive worked perfect with Linux, steam VR support was great. Meta/oculus support was non existent.

victorz ,

Out of curiosity, would you mind sharing the resource you followed to get PhysX to install on Linux?

scrubbles OP ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

I’m using Lutris, and Wine is my runner. On my game I could see this button here, for Wine.

https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech/pictrs/image/0db00a81-004e-4695-94b0-28abe4e59659.png

Select the arrow and hit “winetricks”. Then in there it’s a bit convoluted, but

  • Install an Application
  • Cancel
  • Install a Windows DLL or Component
  • Select physx and go!
victorz ,

Lutris seems really cool. I couldn’t get it to work.

I’m on Arch and I tried both the native package as well as the Flatpak version. None of them worked. Something going wrong when installing some shit in an automated installer, I dunno. I wish I could find a good guide. I’m usually handy with these things but I don’t understand the error messages, so…

brocon ,

I’m in the same boat. I installed Bazzite oh my desktop as well as on my Legion Go. Everything runs out of the box. Except Lutris.

victorz ,

I just don’t get it. 😔

AmosBurton_ThatGuy ,
@AmosBurton_ThatGuy@lemmy.ca avatar

I’ve been using Bazzite for about 2 months now (daily driver for about a month and a half) and Lutris came preinstalled for me. I’ve had zero problems using it, I have battle.net games and EA app (fuck that app BTW) games installed and it just works for me.

Was it not preinstalled with your initial installation of Bazzite?

brocon ,

Nevermind. Found out it was a failure on my part. By default it does not show un-installed games. Because I had no games installed, it always showed no games. And I assumed it was broken.

AmosBurton_ThatGuy ,
@AmosBurton_ThatGuy@lemmy.ca avatar

Trial and error, I feel your pain. I’ve learned a lot since switching and I’m loving it tbh!

Glad you got it figured out!

Bishma ,
@Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

It’s gotten to the point that I buy games without looking them up first. I’ve been running Linux as my daily driver for over a decade, and buying a game used to take research. Is there a native version (probably not but it happens once in a while)? What it scoring on ProtonDB? What have the Lutris folks figured out?

Now I just buy the game and play it. Granted I don’t tend to play competitive multiplayer games so I don’t run into cheat prevention system nightmares.

CaptDust ,

This has been the best part of how it’s developed the past few years. I’ve recently bought lies of p, baldur’s gate 3, and sons of the forest (at 1.0) without needing to look up anything. All three simply installed and ran great. So nice not having to fiddle with launch options and stuff.

Rayspekt ,

Yeah me too. I only look up aaa stuff because of intrusive anti cheat or other launchers and stuff. But I don’t play much of this anyways atm

circuitfarmer ,
@circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

It’s gotten to the point that I buy games without looking them up first.

Same here. That was how I knew things had changed.

Let’s also not forget that while Elden Ring was waiting for a patch on release day to avoid stuttering on Windows, it never stuttered on Linux due to shader precaching in Proton. I try and tell that story to people on the fence about switching. A lot of people have this idea that Linux is “catching up” – in some sense, it is the opposite, in that I can sometimes get better performance on Linux vs Windows even with Windows binaries.

orca ,
@orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts avatar

I recently moved my ASUS ROG Zephyrus entirely over to Linux and it’s been seamless. I’ve been able to play every game without issue. Between my Steam Deck and the laptop, my console days may be numbered.

scrubbles OP ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

I have one last windows machine hooked up to my TV, using Steam Big Picture. I’m going to wait until Dragon Age Veilguard just to see a new game how quickly it becomes supported/how difficult it’ll be to set up, but if I can get it working pretty quickly, I think that’ll be off Windows

orca ,
@orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts avatar

What I usually do is change every Steam game to use the “Experimental” version of Proton. As soon as I enable that, basically any game in my library becomes installable. Even non-Steam games can be added in and use Proton iirc. My success rate has been pretty good, but some games are still a little rough (mostly lack of controller support, or things like traversing dumb launchers like in GTA).

scrubbles OP ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

Oh yeah, the number one issues were with non-steam games, getting EA play to launch by itself. Learned a lot about Lutris and wine for that, DA:O and ME:L were both like that, but got both to work perfectly!

Blisterexe ,

btw bazzite.gg is cool for living room pc’s

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