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fafferlicious ,

I dunno. I’ll probably get hate for this, but it’s not ready. It’s better. But Linux isn’t a good replacement for Windows yet. I love Linux. Love the customization, the *NIX filesystem makes sense, and it’s beautiful. Also no ads in my start menu!

I want to use Linux regularly, and I tried last week. It failed. Kind of miserably.

I need to pick a distro. Mint and Pop_OS were consensus recommendations.

Try mint: Installing dual boot alongside windows was beautiful. But no internet connection, says cable is unplugged (it’s not). Realize I downloaded an earlier version (20). Get the most recent version, and problem resolved. It’s kind of odd to me that even a pretty recent version wouldn’t support my adapter, but whatever. I tried to update and install Nvidia drivers: update fails because dependencies were not installed. Okay… Why not prompt me to install them? Why make me apt-get all the dependencies by hand? I don’t expect handholding, but some things should be. If I NEED something as a pre-req for what I’m trying to do, queue it up!

Fuck it. Let me try Pop_OS, instead - that has some gaming chops, right? Dual boot was more challenging to stand up, but it all worked. Nice. Fire up game: get ~20 fps drop compared to windows (108 from 130) with the same settings. I don’t want to troubleshoot the performance hit. It should just work. I want a tool not a project.

Never mind if you want HDR support. That seems to vary by distro. Variable refresh rate also seemed to be spotty from what I read in gaming distro recommendations. ALSO, do you need UEFI support? RIP. Enjoy toggling that on and off when you have to jump back and forth between Windows and Linux. Nvidia driver support I chalk up to those arseholes only now starting to open source some things.

And I don’t care that you were able to run everything fine. You had a flawless experience: great. Love that for you. I didn’t. I’m not a computer novice - I know to Google shit and how to implement it. I remember trying to fuck around with Ubuntu back in 2002.

I’m gonna continue trying to stand up Linux for everyday use because I love Linux and I want to use it, but it’s pretty clear that even as someone that wants to use Linux. I’ve been trying to switch to Linux every few years for decades. It’s still far short of being ready for average users.

TeryVeneno ,

This comment is tough because in its wrongness, it reveals a greater problem with Linux gaming. I think you’re right that it’s probably not ready outside of SteamOS. But it’s not correct to say it’s not ready in general. They are several distros that have all the latest features for modern gaming, the issue is you weren’t recommended even one of them. Pop_OS is currently outdated since they are working on their new desktop and mint is on the Ubuntu LTS version meaning they are both significantly behind. The community needs to take that into account when recommending things. That’s the reason I only recommend Bazzite. Cause it’s the closest to a SteamOS experience.

DoucheBagMcSwag ,

I will check out Bazzite over the weekend. Someone told me about Pop OS but this seems less of a tinkering hassle

fafferlicious ,

I appreciate your comment! I’ll take a look at Bazzite. How does it do with everyday tasks? Any other distros you’d recommend?

If what I said was so wrong, I feel even more like there’s a fragmentation issue with Linux (or something). This is especially true if some of the most well known distros have issues with gaming. It only fuels my urge to make a table of features for each distro and then evaluate pros and cons of what distro has what. But distro choice shouldn’t matter outside of UI, pre-installed programs, and maybe package management.

I was just super bummed that I didn’t have one of the perfect experiences that I had seen so many people talking about lately.

c10l ,

Hey! Sorry you had these bad experiences.

My setup is on Debian testing and is documented on this blog post: blog.c10l.cc/09122023-debian-gaming

I don’t have an Nvidia card but other than that, this should give you a head start, including virtual surround on headphones if that’s your thing!

I promise it’s not a lot of work and I tried to make it all easy to follow (feedback welcome though!).

If you decide to give it a go, let me know how it went!

djsoren19 ,

What e-sports have kernel level anti-cheat? Isn’t it just the crap published by Riot? I know both CS and Dota 2 work on Linux, I’m pretty sure you can get Overwatch 2 running. You can’t exactly play Smash on a Windows PC either, but I think the other major fighting games like Tekken and Street Fighter work. Are there any other serious contenders for a major esport I’m just forgetting?

mlg ,
@mlg@lemmy.world avatar

It’s just the usual “AAA” suspects

Valorant Battlefield 2042 Rainbow Six League

Even CS technically if you play competitive on faceit, which is still pretty dumb.

There’s plenty that actually work though, even with anticheat: areweanticheatyet.com

Anti cheat preventing gaming on Linux is honestly an outlier at this stage. It just means the devs don’t want to deal with working with an additional OS which several other devs and valve itself has shown is not a major issue anymore. Both EAC and BattleEye have had linux userspace clients for years, and both support WINE now.

Also because they probably can’t convince linux users to install a kernel level anti cheat as if that isn’t rootkit spyware lol. Akmod and dkms devs would probably laugh if Riot tried such a thing.

Buddahriffic ,

Personally, I see incompatibility with kernel-level anti-cheat as a feature rather than a limitation.

People can still cheat without involving any software on their PC because the game needs to display something to the user (which can be analyzed by another device, either intercepting the stream before sending it along to the monitor or even by using a camera to grab the pixels from the monitor, if there’s encryption used on the signal to prevent mitm). And it needs to accept input from the user, which another device connected to the device analysing the display can adjust to improve aim, prevent friendly fire, or just auto shoot when you’re pointed at a target. You could even write a full bot using that.

On the other hand, kernel level anti-cheat can be an attack vector to get into your machine in a way that existing malware detection will have a hard time detecting. Kernel modification is the level rootkits work at and an arbitrary code execution flaw could mean your hardware is forever compromised, or at least anything with flashable firmware storage (especially if that firmware also implements the flash capabilities, since it could then add its own code to any new firmware you try to flash).

I just don’t play many multiplayer games these days to avoid the cheating. And if I do get back into multiplayer games, I’ll either do it on a console where I don’t care as much about the kernel getting exploited or I’ll play a game where the servers are managed in a way that cheaters will get banned because an admin can see what they are doing.

Mandy ,

Man i wish, to this day, no matter the distro its like russian roulette with a revovler loaded with 5 bullets

And when it even starts im lucky it even runs reasonably well

Solus was the only one that worked a little better

And than enadeavouros AFTER several hours of stupid searching and installing some random crap i never found again

michaelmrose ,

If you really want to have a go of it you should either buy well supported hardware next time you buy or even better buy hardware that actually comes with Linux by an OEM that has already done the research and selection and then don’t run a kernel older than your hardware. Stick with boring well supported stuff neither bleeding edge nor ancient.

It’s great that you can at this point pick hardware out of a hat and have a lot of it supported by Linux but it doesn’t mean you should buy hardware this way if you want to have a good experience.

Aceticon ,

I’ve switched for over a month now and did had problems with 2 games out of the 6 I tried so far (all of which were both games installed via Lutris and I found solutions to fix them both).

Funnily enough one of the games I got via Steam which did not work before in Windows now works in Linux. Further, I was running Windows 7 (yeah, I know it was a bad idea security wise), so there are AAA games whose minimum Windows version is 10 which I now can play in Linux that I couldn’t before in the Windows I was using.

All in all it has been great and I have no intention whatsoever to go back to Windows.

Even if there are games that won’t work in Linux, there are so many good games out there that can entertain me for hundreds of hours that I won’t miss the handful I cannot get to run in Linux.

hperrin ,

I have a couple games that were Windows 98 and Windows XP games that don’t work on Windows 10/11, but work just fine on Linux. It’s funny that Linux is sometimes better at running Windows games than Windows is.

Aceticon ,

Wine and Proton manage to be better at both forward and backward compatibility with Windows than actual Windows.

NutWrench ,
@NutWrench@lemmy.world avatar

I haven’t had any problems running my Steam library under Linux Mint. Older games, like Deus Ex and Giants: Citizen Kabuto I can run directly in Wine.

If I could get Vortex Mod Manager working properly under Linux, I wouldn’t need Windows at all.

Bonje ,
@Bonje@lemmy.world avatar

You can!

Add Steamtinkerlaunch to your steam proton list with protonup‐qt Then, select it under the force compatibility menu. From there, just click the run vortex mod manager button.

You can also run steamtinkerlaunch standalone, which is what I did for cyberpunk2077, but I feel like I did more manual file moving than I had to.

Edit: can’t spell today

LMagicalus ,
@LMagicalus@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Nexus is running Linux tests for their new mod manager RIGHT NOW. I believe its still limited to Stardew Valley for now while in alpha, but they’re making strides here! nexus-mods.github.io/…/GettingStarted/

Cris_Color ,
@Cris_Color@lemmy.world avatar

Are there people telling linux folks to stop enjoying linux gaming…? I say ask as a linux person

scrubbles ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

Maybe I’m vain, but I posted a post a couple days ago celebrating my success with Linux gaming. So many games are like here.

You know it’s not ready for VR yet. yeah I played VR for about a month 4 years ago and that was enough.

You can’t play games with anti cheat personally I don’t play many of those, but obviously if you do that will play into your decision

Anyway, people are always negative about everything, especially against things other people like

mortalic ,

For real though I’d like a VR system (modern) that can use the steam store natively.

tabular , (edited )
@tabular@lemmy.world avatar

I doubt that literally is a significant concern.

When I can’t join others is when I hear confusion as to why I use GNU+Linux, and disappointment when I refuse to use Windows to play a certain game.

onlinepersona ,

I have a buddy who kept asking me to install windows in order to play one of those rootkit games. Had to disappoint him every time. No fucking way am I doing that. Fuck that.

Anti Commercial-AI license

tabular ,
@tabular@lemmy.world avatar

I’m trying to cut back on proprietary software until I’m only using free software but I make a small exception for some games (usually bought by friends, or to play with them).

bitwolf ,

The SteamDeck subreddit is full of Windows shilling.

The Finals subreddit during beta was full of complaints about SteamDeck users asking for them to allow Proton.

There’s def a vocal minority out there that will die on the Windows horse, infected with rootkits and all.

grandkaiser ,

Nah. It’s just projection. Even though I use Linux myself, it’s nearly always the other way around with the lecturer trying to tell Windows users to switch to Linux while the average gamers are just happily gaming away on what works for them.

Hell, you could take many of the comments in this post and turn them into things the guy on the left is saying while Windows gamers are having fun.

MasterNerd , (edited )
@MasterNerd@lemm.ee avatar

To be fair there still is a lot of tinkering involved to get gaming on Linux working properly (unless you’re on the steamdeck, but even them you’ll have to tinker for anything that’s not verified). Switching proton runners, changing launch options, fighting updates. It’s definitely more than most people are willing to deal with. For me personally, I’ve had to stop updating my video drivers because Nvidia 555 causes all Proton games to crash for me.

I enjoy the experience of tinkering and troubleshooting, so I’m okay with all that, but I completely understand why most people wouldn’t want to use Linux for gaming.

Womble ,

I honestly cant remember the last time I bought a game and it didnt just work with no tinkering on proton. Though I am on AMD not Nvidia which makes things a lot easier.

PancakeBrock ,

Ive had a handfull of games that work on steam deck but had to tinker on my laptop. Cyberpunk would crash on the first splash screen and stormworks would only run on my igpu and not dedicated. But also im also using nvidia.

MasterNerd ,
@MasterNerd@lemm.ee avatar

I guess this could also be based on the distro you use as well as your graphics card. For me, I use EndeavourOS, which is very close to base arch, so I had to do some extra setup to get proton working on it. For some reason, Proton refused to work on the Arch repo’s Steam package, so I had to use the flatpak version instead

noobdoomguy8658 ,
@noobdoomguy8658@feddit.org avatar

Pure Arch here, no issues with Proton whatsoever.

Any chance this could have been related to EndeavourOS in any way? Like with something pre-installed?

I’m just being curious and throwing ideas here.

MasterNerd ,
@MasterNerd@lemm.ee avatar

The only thing really preinstalled is basic stuff like desktop environments and a few tools to help with updates and manage the system (eos-update, etc). Even almost all the package repositories are the ones maintained by arch.

CubitOom ,

I’m on EndeavourOS with an Nvidia gpu. I’ve not had to do anything extra for the the version of proton that comes with steam to work besides install the os with the Nvidia proprietary drivers. And then running eos-update --aur --nvidia

I did notice that I got a lot of screen tearing if using Wayland and that more recent versions of proton didn’t work if either Force Composition Pipeline or Force Full Composition Pipeline were enabled; which should have fixed the screentearing so I just use x11 for now.

There are some things I did to make my experience better however. Like installing an proton-ge. Here is a list of what I installed.


<span style="color:#323232;">nvidia-dkms
</span><span style="color:#323232;">nvidia-settings
</span><span style="color:#323232;">libva-nvidia-driver </span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;"># required by vlc to play mkv files with nvidia gpu
</span><span style="color:#323232;">nvidia-tweaks </span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;"># https://github.com/ventureoo/nvidia-tweaks
</span><span style="color:#323232;">lib32-nvidia-utils
</span><span style="color:#323232;">gamemode
</span><span style="color:#323232;">proton-ge-custom-bin
</span><span style="color:#323232;">lib32-libudev0-shim </span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;"># fixes Steam runtime's super old 32 bit version of libnm
</span><span style="color:#323232;">lib32-libnm </span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;"># required if using systemd 253.5-2 or newer
</span>

I would also install nvidia-dracut-hook if you are using both Nvidia and dracut. Dracut is the default on recent versions on endeavorOS.

For proton ge, I also added myself to the games group with


<span style="color:#323232;">sudo usermod $USER -a -G games
</span>

I also like to prepend the following to my games launch options in steam


<span style="color:#323232;">gamemoderun PROTON_CONFIG=dxr11,dxr PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 PROTON_HIDE_NVIDIA_GPU=0 VK_ICD_FILENAMES=/usr/share/vulkan/icd.d/nvidia_icd.json VKD3D_CONFIG=dxr11,dxr VKD3D_DISABLE_EXTENSIONS=VK_KHR_present_id,VK_KHR_present_wait VKD3D_FEATURE_LEVEL=12_1 VKD3D_SHADER_MODEL=6_6
</span>

And I set proton-ge as my default proton version on the steam options.

OR3X ,

I’m on Nvidia and have had the same experience as you. Everything just works.

noobdoomguy8658 ,
@noobdoomguy8658@feddit.org avatar

Mostly that for me on Nvidia (proprietary drivers), although 555 broke my 2nd DVI-D monitor (which is admittedly old, but I don’t have any reasons to replace the little guy).

Nevertheless, I’m very set on getting an AMD GPU whenever I have to replace my GTX 1080 from 2017.

OR3X ,

I’m unfortunately stuck with Nvidia for the time-being because I need NVENC.

RmDebArc_5 ,
@RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works avatar

What does NVENC do that VAAPI doesn’t?

OR3X ,

Speed. Unfortunately (at least the last time I looked into it) NVENC still beats the socks off of VAAPI in render times and I’m sure Nvidia likes it that way.

RmDebArc_5 ,
@RmDebArc_5@sh.itjust.works avatar

Isn’t that only on NVIDIA cards?

Moghul ,

Yup. I know exactly what you mean. I bought Nobody Wants to Die, which is rated platinum on protondb, and it just crashes within 1 second of startup for me. 3h of fucking around with proton versions, launch arguments, even tried lutris, nothing. The only error I could see took me to a stackoverflow thread about vga to dvi adapter issues and the fix was not relevant. My protontricks is apparently also broken which I have no idea why or when it broke.

I got it refunded, it is what it is. I’ll look into fixing my protontricks when I have more time…

laurelraven ,

Funnily enough, I’ve had almost this exact same thing happen… On Windows. More than once. Spending days getting it to run hardly at all and weeks trying to figure out how to make it run well. On modern hardware, with both old and new games alike.

I’ve not had that much trouble yet with Linux gaming, with only a few exceptions where I needed to tweak a couple things stuff has pretty much just worked.

Moghul ,

I’ve never rarely ever had that except one or two games in the last 15 years…

iorale ,

Same for me with DRG and Dolphin+XLinkKai+ZeroTier, they just didn’t work for me on Fedora 40 no matter how much tinkering I did.
Lemmy’s response? sKiLl IsSuE.
Well sheesh… Seems I’ll stick to Windows since I lack the skills to use Linux then.

my_hat_stinks ,

I’m on Mint with a nvidia card, I haven’t really had to do any tweaks since I stopped trying to install games on an NTFS-formatted drive and nearly every game works perfectly out of the box. There’s a lot of very loud voices complaining about nvidia/tinkering but it’s definitely not universal; you won’t necessarily need to put in a lot of effort to get games to work on Linux.

Mwa ,
@Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

agree

frezik ,

On my Ubuntu system, I installed Steam. That was it, the things I want mostly work.

Gerudo ,

I made the same statement you did a while ago about having to tweak stuff to get it to work. I just don’t have the time and patience to do it, and I got voted down for saying Linux isn’t for me. I work tech, the last thing I want to do when I get home is mess with more settings and drivers etc.

The Linux and steamdeck forums EVERYWHERE constantly make apologies and excuses for having to tweak things to get gaming to work.

I just want Linux to be an out of the box great gaming experience, and I would sing to the rafters it’s praise. It just isn’t, and unless developers make their stuff work for 3-5% of an install base, I just don’t see it happening. I want it to, I really do, but it’s just not for the masses.

_Sprite ,
@_Sprite@lemmy.world avatar

I can get some old ass terminal based JRPG and Sims 3 which can barely run on windows working using bottles but I can’t get the linux version of Hearts of Iron IV to recognize dlc wtf is this

RememberTheApollo_ ,

Well it’s not wrong.

I switched over my steam and epic games to my Linux install and there’s plenty of games I can’t play because of the anti-cheat or other issues. Can’t install my EA games at all.

Still made the switch and hoping things will catch up as time goes on.

Karyoplasma ,

The only EA game that is worth playing is C&C Generals anyway.

flerp ,

You’re the person in the meme

drmoose ,

I love my Steamdeck so much. Been like 2 years now? still rocking every game I want to play.

Playing through ZenlessZoneZero rn which isn’t even officially supported in any extent and runs flawlessly! Also it’s a real computer that you can do real work on.

SteveFromMySpace ,

Have you been able to make any tweaks to the settings or something that makes the transition from gaming mode to desktop mode more reliable? I particularly have issues when I go from docked to undocked. The resolution gets borked randomly and other silliness like that

Sabin10 ,

I find that happens if my docked and undocked resolution scales are not the same.

SteveFromMySpace ,

Right but why would I ever have my computer monitor set to the deck’s resolution?

Sabin10 ,

Resolution scale, not resolution. On my monitor I run a 4k resolution with a 125% resolution scale. When I undock the resolution scale stays at 125% so everything looks too large on the decks display.

SteveFromMySpace ,

Interesting I’ll check that out. Thanks!

IndiBrony ,
@IndiBrony@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve been playing OG PS2 San Andreas. Absolutely loving it ❤️

Lettuceeatlettuce ,
@Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml avatar

My Steam Deck has been awesome, money very well spent.

And Valve has made a good chunk of money off me since buying it too lol. I keep getting games specifically for the Deck.

drmoose ,

I bought like 200 games since I had mine though mostly indie and actually played a lot of them! I spend quite a bit of time traveling and it’s awesome to play some strategy with the trackpad - the trip just flies by!

runjun ,

I upgraded my PC and now I barely touch my steam deck. The money spent on it is still VERY worth it. Even if I never touched it again, I use it when traveling, I would still be unbelievably satisfied with my purchase.

bitwolf ,

In a similar boat. However I now have games strictly for the Deck and games strictly for the Desktop.

Amaterasu ,

I’d use a Steamdeck mini if was available. The current size for my needs makes me classify it as a non-portable. Hope the next version they have a smaller variant along with the larger one.

tomkatt ,

Same. I was very impressed by the games that work despite being unsupported. Heck, I’ve got Rainbow Six: Vegas working on it with gamepad support. I couldn’t even do that in Windows.

_____ ,

The sheer power of instantly switching desktops in Linux makes the windows user afraid.

But I have seen a lot of old windows heads look at Linux for gaming performance where Microsoft is failing them with bloatware such as copilot.

I don’t think the rootkit anti cheats would ever work to a level windows games developers want it to on Linux though.

Halosheep ,

Anticheat will have to just come from other methods that people will also hate.

Imagine, for example, if they required a form of government issued ID and the account was tied to you specifically. Despite privacy nightmare that it is (plus other issues, especially around globally accessed games), bans would have significantly larger impact if they’re tied to a real-world identity.

_____ ,

Yeah, AC overall is very anti OSS philosophies

cmnybo ,

It doesn’t matter to me if games that use rootkit anticheat don’t work on Linux. I would never install anything that requires a rootkit.

coffee_with_cream ,

Bazzite is awesome 😎

lowleveldata ,

It’s more about that small old indie game instead of AAA games tho

theshatterstone54 ,

Oh yeah. For me, it’s a Match-3 game that I stopped playing specifically because it didn’t support Linux. Too bad it’s also the best release from the franchise imo (The Treasures of Montezuma 4).

abfarid ,
@abfarid@startrek.website avatar

Dang, Alawar getting mentioned.

bigboig ,

Mfing world of goo 2 offers an appimage file instead of a flatpack, so I have to monkey around with the console or lutris to get it to work on steamdeck. I just want to play my puzzle game, not puzzle how to play my game. Ah well

laurelraven ,

Except a lot of anti cheat now supports Linux. Destiny 2 doesn’t run on Linux only because Bungie refuses to allow it, their AC supports Linux just fine now

Mwa ,
@Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

there is also other games that dont run on linux

Roblox (sober works which is a workaround),Fortnite (Tim Sweeney hates linux from what i heard),and more

Laborer3652 ,

But the steam deck really disproves the notion that Linux can’t run these games. The companies that make them choose not to support Linux, and in that way its not really Linux’s fault that the games don’t work.

laurelraven ,

Exactly this, the community has proven it will put the effort to make it work, and a lot of things that don’t still are because the companies resist it intentionally

Mwa ,
@Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

true but ngl linux has a low market share but its slowly growing tho

chakrila ,

see also: areweanticheatyet.com

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