I don’t think the issue is performance though. The unspoken part of this comparison is in bold:
“Linux vs Windows tested in 10 games. In the games we could find that work on linux, the performance was 17% faster on average. In all the rest of the games, Windows worked 100% better.”
Fortunately majority of games work on linux. The major pain point now is the anticheat used by multiplayer games. Single player games more or less work out of the box
To add on here, you can use the Are We Anti-Cheat Yet? site to track which games are not working due to anti-cheat. In my experience it’s extremely rare for “Linux” (aka Wine/DXVK/VKD3D/et al) to not support arbitrary games. If a game is not working on Linux it’s almost certainly because of an anti-cheat or some bloated/obscure DRM telling Linux “no you cannot run this”.
I really want to switch to Linux, but I’ve been told this before and then ended up spending hours trying to get everything to work, and usually give up … but it’s been a couple of years since I tried the last time, so is this the right time?
I have zero interest in the technical parts of Linux or setting things up. I want things to work out if the box. I may have to dual boot because of WoW and MS Flight Sim, but if everything else works it may be worth it.
Edit: wow thanks for the answers. You may have convinced me to try again.
Check out protondb to see how your game collection fares on linux. I personally just buy games without checking these days and play on linux but then again I buy older games. Although AAA games also tend to work these days within days of release
Although AAA games also tend to work these days within days of release
And TBF, Far too many AAA games tend to not work well on Windows within the first few days of release either. Even a few like elden ring that worked better on Linux before Windows. Though I still avoid getting games on their release date. You are generally going to have a far better experience on either system by waiting a bit and seeing what others say about it.
It greatly depends on the type of games you play, the vast majority of things I play I just hit play on Steam and that’s it. Sure I had to do some setup, i.e. install Proton-GE and set Steam to use it as default for all games, otherwise only some games that Valve tested are available, but all in all it’s almost 0 setup.
That being said that’s been true for years, so I doubt that if you had a bad experience in 2021 it’s going to be much different now. Also you need to realise that not even Windows is out of the box, you had to install drivers and programs, PCs are not consoles and with customisability comes the need to setup. And even though you don’t have interest in the technical part of Linux you’ll need to learn some of it, just like you did for Windows, and most importantly you’ll need to forget the technical parts you know of windows that are different on Linux, that’s usually one of the biggest problems I see, people trying to use Linux as if it were Windows and having a bad time.
You’re right - but I’d say things on newer windows versions are pretty much out of the box. It may ask for driver installs, but that’s often just pressing a confirmation box.
It’s not that I’m afraid of the technical stuff - I am a windows sys admin and software developer. I just have bad memories of hours of getting drivers to work on Linux. I’m sure, that if I make the change and are happy, eventually I’ll take a deeper dive. But it takes a good first time impression to get there.
You’re right - but I’d say things on newer windows versions are pretty much out of the box.
Well the game is purposefully built for windows. It is not a surprise that it is out of the box. What is pleasantly surprising is that this is also true for linux - a platform which most of these games do not support
Maybe i am getting old, but if someone says they used something a couple years ago, then i dont assume its two years ago. more like 10 years or so. Dont have a problem with the rest of your comment
If you have AMD, for most titles it is as simple as installing a distro and then installing Steam. Then on Steam you will have to enable the compatibility tools, that is it. For Nvidia, setting up the drivers is a bit more finicky, however some distros will preconfigure it for you (such as Nobara, although personally I had a couple issues with this distro, YMMV)
You can search for games status on Linux via ProtonDB. In my experience they just work.
For WoW you might need to look up a YT tutorial to figure out the file paths, but the tldr is you need to install Battle.Net as a Non-Steam game, then launch it through Steam. This is generally a good, easy method for most non-steam titles, just installing it and adding it as a non-steam game.
According to ProtonDB flight sim should work, I habe no personal experience here.
If you’re unsure and just want something easy, my recommendation is Pop OS. I think it has replaced Ubuntu as the generally recommended works-out-of-the-box distro.
Pop is Ubuntu based and inherits most of its good qualities. I consider it mostly an improvement, especially for gaming.
That has been my go-to in the past, but I am not sure if it is still, I have enough past linux experience that I just went with arch after trying nobara and couldn’t be happier. For all the memes of it being hard, especially if you go with something like EndeavourOS, it is fairly simple, the package management is superb and I do not have to bother with things like Flatpaks.
It doesn’t really matter which distro you use for gaming, just get one that is popular and well-supported such as Kubuntu or Fedora or Pop!_OS or whatever. Ones like Arch and Gentoo would be pretty complicated so I wouldn’t recommend those until you feel comfortable.
Ubuntu was kind of dethroned in the last several years (Canonical has shit the bed a bit). For a gaming focus, I’d rather suggest Bazzite (SteamOS alternative), or ChimeraOS.
If you want something a bit less gaming focused and traditional: Try Pop! Os
Pop! OS lets you try out a tiling windows manager as well without having to fully comit to it right away. Once I got used to it I loved it, so much easier to set up an efficient usable display layout.
Ubuntu is the best bet for a distro to just work well out of the box.
Granted I have still had a fuck ton of issues, errors, etc, but Ubuntu is the only distro that has worked the best out of the box. Fedora was a broken mess, and Mint was in between.
So if you want anyone to not give up on Linux, direct them towards Ubuntu first. You can always switch distros later, but spending 3 days trying to fix issues on a different distro isn’t fun.
I can’t speak for both games you listed, however for WoW - Blizzard games tend to have a good reputation for running on Linux (one of the few good things I like about Blizzard). Sometimes there are a few bugs here and there (OW had a mouse cursor locking problem) but generally they’re pretty good.
I have been playing Diablo 3 on Linux for as long as I can remember, even before the massive rise of Linux gaming from the introduction of VKD3D/DXVK/Proton. I know D4 was working in Linux even during the betas, and I’ve heard StarCraft players who’ve said the same.
Of course, the system requirements never mention Linux as an officially supported platform, but I can’t say I’ve ever heard of a Blizzard game that doesn’t work on Linux (games they develop - games like CoD and originally Destiny 2 where they were only the publisher/launcher host is a different story) so I’d be very surprised if WoW doesn’t work.
IIRC Blizzard’s anti cheat (“Warden” I believe) is mostly server side which makes things way easier - I mean hell I know a lot of their games even supported Mac OS.
And as the others have linked, for MSFS you can check Proton but I hear the reception is good there too since it’s rated as Silver on there.
These days I’m usually just playing the Diablo games from them, and I just use the Bottles app which makes it really easy to play non-Steam games. It even has an option to install the Battle.net client for you, then you login, install the game, and click play - it’s super simple.
Thanks for the feedback - I’ve installed Pop OS tonight and installed bnet, wow, unreal engine, rocket league and steam.
Battle.net had a few problems because of the host file, and Vulkan apparently needed some fiddling - but at apart from that, I must say everything runs smoothly.
I look forward to test a lot of things deeper - but for now it very much seems like an experience I could get used to.
Apart from wow and flight sim, I play rocket league, satisfactory, old school monkey island (and other point and click games) and FIFA from time to time and I make small game projects in unreal engine.
Can’t speak for the others but rocket league in proton has worked well for me. Sadly epic discontinued multiplayer in the native linux build so you HAVE to use proton, which isn’t obvious from the steam page.
I didn’t even realise there was a native Linux build. Often surprises me when I look for proton settings for one reason and another only to realise it’s not using proton
Often actually change it to force proton and the windows version though as it actually tends to run better
Can’t promise anything, but a few years has made a pretty huge difference here. If the game you want to play is on Steam and doesn’t have weird anticheat, it’ll likely just work. If it’s not on Steam, try Lutris.
If the game you want to play still doesn’t work, post here and say “LINUX BLOWS BECAUSE IT CAN’T PLAY THIS GAME” and then you’ll get a dozen different ways to make it run
What do you mean with out of the box, if you play steam games that is pretty much install and play, For Epic and GOG I use Heroic Game launcher with the same success.
I don’t believe the majority of steam’s offerings are available on Linux, definitely not without wine/proton/etc. as a layer, but I would be excited to be proven wrong on that. I also don’t love the idea of one company, even if they are proven to be magnanimous historically, being the main portal for all of that. Linux games need to be able to work reliably not on Steam as well.
Off the top of my head, I don’t think any of the major Sony PC releases play on Linux. the last of us, god of war, uncharted for sure don’t. Starfield doesn’t as another user said, or any Bethesda game over the last 15 years IIRC. Skyrim doesn’t, Fallout 3 and 4 don’t. Baldur’s Gate 3 can work for some distros but definitely wouldn’t qualify as “out the box” unless you’re on a steam deck.
They do work without steam. Steam has just streamlined the process.
And of course you’d need a compatibility layer (e.g. wine/proton). But those aren’t dependant on Valve. Even though they’ve definetly benefited from their involvement.
Again the sticking point to me is “majority of games.” Where are y’all getting that info? Very happy to be wrong here. I think it’s great to see Linux gaming growing.
Protondb also has some hard numbers. There are some 12000 games that are playable on the steam deck. Also something like 70%+ of the top 1000 steam games are platinum or gold rated which means they work out of the box with zero or minimal effort.
I’ve played Skyrim and Fallout 3 & 4 on Linux, and Uncharted. They worked just fine.
You need to enable Proton for all ‘unsupported’ titles in Steam (literally two clicks). After that…the only games I’ve found that don’t work are down to anti-cheat. I used to occasionally have to change the Proton version for some games, but it’s been a while since I had to do that.
It’s nothing like gaming on Linux was 10 years ago. It’s much more like gaming on Windows, the last time I did it: you occasionally find a game that needs tweaking, but 95% work flawlessly.
When you are in the store, it only puts the little icons right next to the game as a short hand for what it works on. So for instance if you go look up Elden ring you will only see the windows logo. My immediate reaction is “this is not playable on Mac OS or Linux.”
What do you mean? I use Linux on my laptop and on my steam deck, and for 99% of the time, I just hit the launch button and it works. Actually yesterday I had the first time where I needed to change the proton version, which was 2 clicks and then it worked perfectly. But that was literally the first time I had to do anything other than hit launch.
I am happy to discuss this further, but not if you’re going to do that annoying “my brother in Christ“ nonsense from Reddit. I would prefer we talk like adults here. I’m not allergic to being proven incorrect but, like most people I imagine, don’t respond well to performative snark. Definitely not when it ends with “you’re just wrong here’s no explanation or links just trust me.”
Just because the original response seems so ignorant. Like have you actually tried it? Have you looked up the user experiences? Why am I supposed to provide the links when you are making the claim? As another user mentioned most things are seamless to run. Yes they require wine/proton as a compatibility layer, but steam does it seamlessly, it is as easy as enabling the compatibility in steam options and pressing install, then play. And this generally works for non-steam titles as well, you just add the non-steam title and let steam handle the rest.
The OP of the video wrote himself that his process for setting up the games in the video was : install OS, install steam, install game, launch game on both windows and linux.
You can read the rest of my comments to understand the conversation, and where I have landed. You’re incredibly rude and I am done after this.
Either way, I know you’re just going to fight me instead of reading it, so I will just give you the cliff’s notes of what I learned: steam does not put up if a game is compatible with Linux if you have to run proton or something. It specifically only leaves the windows icon for compatibility. I was not aware of this, I feel like it’s pretty reasonable to assume that if Linux is not listed as a compatible platform then the game won’t run on Linux (just like with Mac OS). So go ahead and enjoy your victory lap or whatever.
No, especially AAA releases usually do not, or least not right away. For example according to ProtonDB Starfield (and yes I know, most people here don’t like it - but I do) still doesn’t work reliably, especially not on Nvidia cards. And no amount of indie puzzle games makes up for AAA titles working hassle free and on day one for the vast majority of users.
I don’t mind waiting a week until the relevant things are fixed, why do you need to play something the moment they are released?
BG3 worked for me on the week of release, I did not buy / test it on the day of releas however, but afaik all it needed to work fine was a switch from Vulkan to DX12
Its not a matter of it being AAA or Indie. Yes some games don’t play well or at all. Most games do, and they do it seamlessly.
According to ProtonDB Starfield works, with less FPS and some (rare crashes). I would bet my left nut that the main reason is that bethesda released a buggy incomplete mess and left it to the modders to complete for free. And if bethesda hadn’t put out spaghetti it would probably just work with proton.
I usually don’t, I’d like to but I generally don’t have the time for it. But many people do play on launch day, as you can see looking at the player charts on Steam. You can’t say “gaming on Linux works, you don’t need Windows” and then have all these little caveats. For the vast majority of people something either works when they click “Play” or it doesn’t work at all. This is an enthusiast community, but most people just aren’t that.
And I’ll admit that I didn’t recheck Starfield before commenting. Nice to see, it was a no-go on Nvidia initially.
For example according to ProtonDB Starfield (and yes I know, most people here don’t like it - but I do) still doesn’t work reliably, especially not on Nvidia cards
This is an nvidia driver issue more than a proton/wine issue. When amd releases terrible game drivers on windows, amd is blamed so why is linux blamed when it is nvidia’s fault¿?
TBH, not all games works on windows out of the box either. It usually is better than Linux, but I always need to do some adjustments when playing on desktop; to really work with minimal effort, it needs to be a console.
I’d argue that the idea that most games don’t work on Linux is a flat-out misconception in 2023.
It’s hard to quantify, but Valve’s own Steam Deck (=running on Linux) verification stats have 70% of games either Verified or Playable (Playable generally means that it runs but text is small on the Deck screen, or it needs a lot of keyboard input – nothing that matters on the desktop). Crucially, “Unsupported” doesn’t mean it doesn’t run – it means untested, and in my experience at least, many of those just work too.
Protondb shows 80% of its catalog with a Platinum, Gold, or Silver rating – 70% are Gold. Silver generally corresponds to e.g. switching to Proton Experimental, which is a single-click process.
Anecdotally, after being gaming only on Linux for more than a year, with a catalog of 500+ games, I’ve had one (1) that gave me any more trouble than that Proton Experimental switch (Assetto Corsa, first one).
So there is no “unspoken part” here. The experience running Windows games on Linux isn’t what it was even 2 years ago. It is, for many people, an entirely seamless experience now.
PS: seeing Windows games running better on Linux isn’t a new observation either. Elden Ring was a great example where Proton shader precaching eliminated the stutter that plagued that game at launch, so it didn’t happen on Linux.
“Proton shader precaching eliminated the stutter that plagued that game at launch, so it didn’t happen on Linux.”
I’ve been meaning to ask, and it probably should be it’s own thread, but when launching a game and it says ‘Processing Vulkan Shaders’, does allowing it to partially process do anything.
Warframe for me will quickly jump to 33%, then do about 1% per 10-20 seconds. I don’t want to wait 10+ minutes to reach 100%, but does letting it get to like 40-60%, then hitting skip, at least keep the processed sharers, or does it skip/dump and process on demand? Basically, is Immediate skip vs giving it a minute or two before skipping worth anything?
I can only speak from my own experience on this one, but depending on the game, letting it complete means less stuttering the first time you see some shader effect in-game. My understanding is that it offsets processing that otherwise has to happen during runtime.
I’ve seen conflicting reports of how worth it that is, and I suppose it probably comes down to a lot of factors, in particular the game itself and the power of the hardware it’s running on.
I tend to let it complete always, but for me that’s generally less than a minute. Gives me time to get my gaming beverage ready, haha
The instructions for getting it to run are all over Protondb (needs winetricks), and even then, it looks like a minority of hardware configs that have issues – perhaps even AMD specifically.
Edit: also it looks like it may work OOTB now if you start it using Glorious Eggroll’s Proton 7.2 or higher
IMO that is a disingenuous way to state that. It makes it sound like they had to work to find games that worked on Linux at all and suggests that most games do not. Which is far from the truth. Most games just work these days and it is only a handful that don’t, so only a handful work 100% better. Then it all really depends if you care about those few games or not.
For years now I just buy Steam games without even checking compatibility. They just work. No joke on my partners a Windows machine they’ve bought the same game once or twice and it regularly crashes for them.
My guess is that some genres are going to be more problematic due to more extensive use of anti cheat. What are some of the games you’re having trouble with?
My issue(I think) is a combination of games utilizing anticheat(I’ve not gotten a single one to work yet) and also trying to play non-new games that were not designed during the Steam push for compatibility. I can’t use linux to play the games I like to play so I use a Win host for gaming and to run my linux install in a VM on the second screen.
Most games just work these days and it is only a handful that don’t,
To add my own experience, I play a lot of Japanese visual novels (it’s a good 80% of what I play). Very few Japanese visual novels are released on Steam. But if they are on Steam, they’re usually DRM-free or work in Proton anyway. However, most of these games are English-only. I play them in Japanese.
So I need to get my games from other places, like digital storefronts such as DLsite and DMM. However, I quickly found out that absolutely no games that DMM sells will work in Wine. This is because they are all encumbered with a form of DRM that isn’t compatible with Wine. DMM is the largest digital storefront for VNs. DLsite sells some games with various kinds of DRM. PlayDRM does work in Wine, but the rest doesn’t. They also sell DRM-free games. The selection isn’t as large, but it’s good. We recently got the DRM tagging feature in VNDB, so it should give you a good idea of what games are incompatible.
You can also buy VNs physically. Some games are DRM-encumbered but many are DRM-free. You generally don’t know until you buy, though, and it can be an expensive mistake. Hopefully we can change that with the new VNDB DRM tagging system.
Even when they’re not DRM-encumbered, though, you have a decent chance of facing issues with media playback. Older games using DirectShow you can probably get working with native DLLs using Winetricks. If it’s a newer game that uses Media Foundation, you might not be able to get it to work at all. Worst case, the game crashes on the opening movie. I’m looking for a way to improve that section of the wiki since I know very little about Media Foundation for solving these issues.
There also tend to be a bunch of Windowing issues with older VNs like fullscreen being broken. Gamescope will solve those issues.
So, while you can play a lot of VNs in Wine, you need to be careful about it. Fortunately, only two of the VNs I bought are unplayable and they’re both from DMM.
Idk man a ton of distros don’t even work with steam for starters, which is a problem. And you say only a handful but I don’t think a single Bethesda release works on Linux. No PlayStation ports do either iirc. That’s fallout, elder scrolls, god of war, uncharted. No major racing games like Forza or Gran Turismo IIRC too. No fromsoft, so that’s no dark souls, no Elden ring, no armored core. Jedi Survivor doesn’t. Spider-Man doesn’t. Sekiro doesn’t. Lies of P doesn’t.
I mean besides BG3 (with some caveats) what major AAA releases the last few years really work on Linux? Most don’t.
Edit: ah, i believe you hadn’t enabled Proton. Yeah, i can see why you’d have the misconception that Linux sucks for gaming (well, if you ONLY play certain multiplayer games and don’t branch out to others, yeah you might have a rough time).
A lotta distros don’t even work with Steam
Having been a chronic distrohopper since I joined Linux a couple of years ago, this is wrong. I’ve had some hiccups with Steam, yeah, but that was more the version of Steam I installed (Flatpak. Learned right quick to just install what was on the repos) and it didn’t not outright work on any of the distros I used: be they Fedora, Ubuntu-based, Arch-based, or OpenSUSE. Steam’s always worked
I don’t think a single Bethesda Release works on Linux
They do. I regularly play and mod Oblivion, Fallout New Vegas, and Skyrim and can play as well as one does on Windows. It’s not limited to those either: Doom, Evil Within, Ghostwire, Rage…all those work with very little configuration (which honestly is just personal prefrences on my part. They’ll still work by enabling Proton in the Steam settings, and in the game properties if you wanna be extra sure or are using a GE version of Proton). Starfield also works. So it’s not just oldies either.
No Fromsoftware…Lies of P doesn’t.
Except I play Souls and Souls-likes all the time, and I’m currently playing Lies of P with no problems on Linux. If anything I had more problems with when i tried playing a Soulsborn on Windows. Elden Ring stuttered like crazy on Windows, but i had next to zero problem playing on my Arch install, even playing Multiplayer.
The other games you mentioned are also playable on Linux. Don’t know who told you they don’t but 90% of Steam works on Limux and Steam Deck. Just go to account settings and in compatibility, check “Enable Steam Play for all titles” and restart Steam. Otherwise, you get ONLY games with a native Linux version (which are…hit or miss at times). The only games you’d actually have trouble running on Linux would be ones that were given a hard “we’re not supporting Linux” like Fortnite and those with heavy Anti-Cheats like Rainbow 6 Seige, Black Desert, or Valorant (and even those are getting Linux compatability: Dead By Daylight works now, Master Cheif collection apparantly works now, but I haven’t played it in a while to check, Apex has worked for a while, etc)
Elden Ring, Uncharted, and God of War absolutely work because on Linux is the only way I’ve played any of them. Starfield has been the only game recently that did not (still doesn’t) work on Linux via Steam without issue. And Starfield is a Nvidia issue not really a Linux issue.
Did you enable Proton in your account settings? If not, you’re only going to be able to play native Steam games (which are both meh, and are at the mercy of how much the devs maintained it, or are incomplete like the Binding of Isaac one not having an Afterbirth DLC linux version so without Proton, you wouldn’t be able to access it).
If you haven’t and are still on Linux, go to your account, find the compatability tab, and check “Enable Steam Play for all titles”. Steam will ask to restart, and after a restart, you’ll be good
Damn you really don’t know what you are talking about, yet you speak so confidentially.
For future reference just bc a game doesn’t have a native Linux version doesn’t mean it won’t run on Linux and that logo you are looking at specifically talks about what OS the game is specifically made for.
out of my current library of ~250ish games about 30 have native Linux ports and out of my 20 recently played games only Terraria has a native Linux ports (I still use the windows version anyways) hell I am currently playing Control with ray tracing
What? Dude I am literally sitting here saying “clearly I was wrong because I thought not having the Linux logo meant it did not run on Linux.“ Why are you being an ass about this?
All good! I don’t know why valve does that. I consider myself a pretty informed consumer, and I was under the impression (I believe rightfully so!) that if the Linux logo is not featured, then the game can’t play on any Linux distro more or less.
I don’t know why valve does that. I consider myself a pretty informed consumer, and I was under the impression (I believe rightfully so!) that if the Linux logo is not featured, then the game can’t play on any Linux distro more or less.
Could be some legality issue where a game they cannot Mark a game which is not linux native with the linux logo
Idk man a ton of distros don’t even work with steam
Name one. I don’t know of any.
I don’t think a single Bethesda release works on Linux
Personally I’ve never had one not work, and that includes Starfield on launch day.
No PlayStation ports do either iirc
Elder Scrolls on Linux didn’t have the stutter it had on Windows at launch. It was literally a better experience and it continues to run great. God of War runs great on Linux. Returnal runs great on Linux.
Seriously, the number one issue for Linux gaming right now is people in comments telling other people it doesn’t work.
This seems a little exaggerated. For example, over 10k games are Steam Deck playable/verified. About 75% of the games that were tested were compatible with the Steam Deck, so probably many more will follow. Also, all emulators work on Linux too and sometimes even better than on Windows. The number of games that are available to you on Linux is simply massive.
I don’t think the issue is performance though. The unspoken part of this comparison is in bold:
“Linux vs Windows tested in 10 games. In the games we could find that work on linux, the performance was 17% faster on average. In all the rest of the games, Windows worked 100% better.”
Fortunately majority of games work on linux. The major pain point now is the anticheat used by multiplayer games. Single player games more or less work out of the box
To add on here, you can use the Are We Anti-Cheat Yet? site to track which games are not working due to anti-cheat. In my experience it’s extremely rare for “Linux” (aka Wine/DXVK/VKD3D/et al) to not support arbitrary games. If a game is not working on Linux it’s almost certainly because of an anti-cheat or some bloated/obscure DRM telling Linux “no you cannot run this”.
Sadly anti cheat is much cheaper for devs than fast manual moderation. And a cheater infested game dies off much faster.
I really want to switch to Linux, but I’ve been told this before and then ended up spending hours trying to get everything to work, and usually give up … but it’s been a couple of years since I tried the last time, so is this the right time?
I have zero interest in the technical parts of Linux or setting things up. I want things to work out if the box. I may have to dual boot because of WoW and MS Flight Sim, but if everything else works it may be worth it.
Edit: wow thanks for the answers. You may have convinced me to try again.
Check out protondb to see how your game collection fares on linux. I personally just buy games without checking these days and play on linux but then again I buy older games. Although AAA games also tend to work these days within days of release
And TBF, Far too many AAA games tend to not work well on Windows within the first few days of release either. Even a few like elden ring that worked better on Linux before Windows. Though I still avoid getting games on their release date. You are generally going to have a far better experience on either system by waiting a bit and seeing what others say about it.
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It greatly depends on the type of games you play, the vast majority of things I play I just hit play on Steam and that’s it. Sure I had to do some setup, i.e. install Proton-GE and set Steam to use it as default for all games, otherwise only some games that Valve tested are available, but all in all it’s almost 0 setup.
That being said that’s been true for years, so I doubt that if you had a bad experience in 2021 it’s going to be much different now. Also you need to realise that not even Windows is out of the box, you had to install drivers and programs, PCs are not consoles and with customisability comes the need to setup. And even though you don’t have interest in the technical part of Linux you’ll need to learn some of it, just like you did for Windows, and most importantly you’ll need to forget the technical parts you know of windows that are different on Linux, that’s usually one of the biggest problems I see, people trying to use Linux as if it were Windows and having a bad time.
You’re right - but I’d say things on newer windows versions are pretty much out of the box. It may ask for driver installs, but that’s often just pressing a confirmation box.
It’s not that I’m afraid of the technical stuff - I am a windows sys admin and software developer. I just have bad memories of hours of getting drivers to work on Linux. I’m sure, that if I make the change and are happy, eventually I’ll take a deeper dive. But it takes a good first time impression to get there.
Well the game is purposefully built for windows. It is not a surprise that it is out of the box. What is pleasantly surprising is that this is also true for linux - a platform which most of these games do not support
Maybe i am getting old, but if someone says they used something a couple years ago, then i dont assume its two years ago. more like 10 years or so. Dont have a problem with the rest of your comment
If you have AMD, for most titles it is as simple as installing a distro and then installing Steam. Then on Steam you will have to enable the compatibility tools, that is it. For Nvidia, setting up the drivers is a bit more finicky, however some distros will preconfigure it for you (such as Nobara, although personally I had a couple issues with this distro, YMMV)
You can search for games status on Linux via ProtonDB. In my experience they just work.
For WoW you might need to look up a YT tutorial to figure out the file paths, but the tldr is you need to install Battle.Net as a Non-Steam game, then launch it through Steam. This is generally a good, easy method for most non-steam titles, just installing it and adding it as a non-steam game.
According to ProtonDB flight sim should work, I habe no personal experience here.
Thanks for the answer - I’ve usually just gone with Ubuntu. Would that still be the recommended distro for gaming?
If you’re unsure and just want something easy, my recommendation is Pop OS. I think it has replaced Ubuntu as the generally recommended works-out-of-the-box distro.
Pop is Ubuntu based and inherits most of its good qualities. I consider it mostly an improvement, especially for gaming.
That has been my go-to in the past, but I am not sure if it is still, I have enough past linux experience that I just went with arch after trying nobara and couldn’t be happier. For all the memes of it being hard, especially if you go with something like EndeavourOS, it is fairly simple, the package management is superb and I do not have to bother with things like Flatpaks.
It doesn’t really matter which distro you use for gaming, just get one that is popular and well-supported such as Kubuntu or Fedora or Pop!_OS or whatever. Ones like Arch and Gentoo would be pretty complicated so I wouldn’t recommend those until you feel comfortable.
Ubuntu was kind of dethroned in the last several years (Canonical has shit the bed a bit). For a gaming focus, I’d rather suggest Bazzite (SteamOS alternative), or ChimeraOS.
If you want something a bit less gaming focused and traditional: Try Pop! Os
Pop! OS lets you try out a tiling windows manager as well without having to fully comit to it right away. Once I got used to it I loved it, so much easier to set up an efficient usable display layout.
Ubuntu is the best bet for a distro to just work well out of the box.
Granted I have still had a fuck ton of issues, errors, etc, but Ubuntu is the only distro that has worked the best out of the box. Fedora was a broken mess, and Mint was in between.
So if you want anyone to not give up on Linux, direct them towards Ubuntu first. You can always switch distros later, but spending 3 days trying to fix issues on a different distro isn’t fun.
That’s not accurate anymore. Canonical has dropped the ball lately (one word: snaps). Pop OS is way more sensible for gaming.
I can’t speak for both games you listed, however for WoW - Blizzard games tend to have a good reputation for running on Linux (one of the few good things I like about Blizzard). Sometimes there are a few bugs here and there (OW had a mouse cursor locking problem) but generally they’re pretty good.
I have been playing Diablo 3 on Linux for as long as I can remember, even before the massive rise of Linux gaming from the introduction of VKD3D/DXVK/Proton. I know D4 was working in Linux even during the betas, and I’ve heard StarCraft players who’ve said the same.
Of course, the system requirements never mention Linux as an officially supported platform, but I can’t say I’ve ever heard of a Blizzard game that doesn’t work on Linux (games they develop - games like CoD and originally Destiny 2 where they were only the publisher/launcher host is a different story) so I’d be very surprised if WoW doesn’t work.
IIRC Blizzard’s anti cheat (“Warden” I believe) is mostly server side which makes things way easier - I mean hell I know a lot of their games even supported Mac OS.
And as the others have linked, for MSFS you can check Proton but I hear the reception is good there too since it’s rated as Silver on there.
These days I’m usually just playing the Diablo games from them, and I just use the Bottles app which makes it really easy to play non-Steam games. It even has an option to install the Battle.net client for you, then you login, install the game, and click play - it’s super simple.
Thanks for the feedback - I’ve installed Pop OS tonight and installed bnet, wow, unreal engine, rocket league and steam.
Battle.net had a few problems because of the host file, and Vulkan apparently needed some fiddling - but at apart from that, I must say everything runs smoothly.
I look forward to test a lot of things deeper - but for now it very much seems like an experience I could get used to.
Yeah it has improved massively in the last year’s, what games do you usually play?
Apart from wow and flight sim, I play rocket league, satisfactory, old school monkey island (and other point and click games) and FIFA from time to time and I make small game projects in unreal engine.
Can’t speak for the others but rocket league in proton has worked well for me. Sadly epic discontinued multiplayer in the native linux build so you HAVE to use proton, which isn’t obvious from the steam page.
I didn’t even realise there was a native Linux build. Often surprises me when I look for proton settings for one reason and another only to realise it’s not using proton
Often actually change it to force proton and the windows version though as it actually tends to run better
Can’t promise anything, but a few years has made a pretty huge difference here. If the game you want to play is on Steam and doesn’t have weird anticheat, it’ll likely just work. If it’s not on Steam, try Lutris.
If the game you want to play still doesn’t work, post here and say “LINUX BLOWS BECAUSE IT CAN’T PLAY THIS GAME” and then you’ll get a dozen different ways to make it run
Cunningham’s Law to the rescue!
Lots of good games are still not working properly (e.g. Nioh), also modding support is very lacking and cumbersome.
Not out the box they don’t. Pretty huge caveat IMO when discussing broader adoption.
Edit: TIL steam doesn’t list that a game that can run on Linux if you have to enable proton.
What do you mean with out of the box, if you play steam games that is pretty much install and play, For Epic and GOG I use Heroic Game launcher with the same success.
I don’t believe the majority of steam’s offerings are available on Linux, definitely not without wine/proton/etc. as a layer, but I would be excited to be proven wrong on that. I also don’t love the idea of one company, even if they are proven to be magnanimous historically, being the main portal for all of that. Linux games need to be able to work reliably not on Steam as well.
Off the top of my head, I don’t think any of the major Sony PC releases play on Linux. the last of us, god of war, uncharted for sure don’t. Starfield doesn’t as another user said, or any Bethesda game over the last 15 years IIRC. Skyrim doesn’t, Fallout 3 and 4 don’t. Baldur’s Gate 3 can work for some distros but definitely wouldn’t qualify as “out the box” unless you’re on a steam deck.
They do work without steam. Steam has just streamlined the process.
And of course you’d need a compatibility layer (e.g. wine/proton). But those aren’t dependant on Valve. Even though they’ve definetly benefited from their involvement.
Again the sticking point to me is “majority of games.” Where are y’all getting that info? Very happy to be wrong here. I think it’s great to see Linux gaming growing.
You can check community reports on http://protondb.com
It’s an estimation since proton has made such giant leaps. When a new game releases, you can assume that it runs on linux.
Protondb also has some hard numbers. There are some 12000 games that are playable on the steam deck. Also something like 70%+ of the top 1000 steam games are platinum or gold rated which means they work out of the box with zero or minimal effort.
I’ve played Skyrim and Fallout 3 & 4 on Linux, and Uncharted. They worked just fine.
You need to enable Proton for all ‘unsupported’ titles in Steam (literally two clicks). After that…the only games I’ve found that don’t work are down to anti-cheat. I used to occasionally have to change the Proton version for some games, but it’s been a while since I had to do that.
It’s nothing like gaming on Linux was 10 years ago. It’s much more like gaming on Windows, the last time I did it: you occasionally find a game that needs tweaking, but 95% work flawlessly.
Huh interesting. Steam doesn’t show Linux as supported for them. TIL
It shows SteamOS/Steam Deck compatibility usually. Which boils down to any Linux with Proton.
When you are in the store, it only puts the little icons right next to the game as a short hand for what it works on. So for instance if you go look up Elden ring you will only see the windows logo. My immediate reaction is “this is not playable on Mac OS or Linux.”
I’ve played Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 on Linux and both work fine.
What do you mean? I use Linux on my laptop and on my steam deck, and for 99% of the time, I just hit the launch button and it works. Actually yesterday I had the first time where I needed to change the proton version, which was 2 clicks and then it worked perfectly. But that was literally the first time I had to do anything other than hit launch.
My brother in christ, yes they do, for the most part they just do.
I am happy to discuss this further, but not if you’re going to do that annoying “my brother in Christ“ nonsense from Reddit. I would prefer we talk like adults here. I’m not allergic to being proven incorrect but, like most people I imagine, don’t respond well to performative snark. Definitely not when it ends with “you’re just wrong here’s no explanation or links just trust me.”
Just because the original response seems so ignorant. Like have you actually tried it? Have you looked up the user experiences? Why am I supposed to provide the links when you are making the claim? As another user mentioned most things are seamless to run. Yes they require wine/proton as a compatibility layer, but steam does it seamlessly, it is as easy as enabling the compatibility in steam options and pressing install, then play. And this generally works for non-steam titles as well, you just add the non-steam title and let steam handle the rest.
The OP of the video wrote himself that his process for setting up the games in the video was : install OS, install steam, install game, launch game on both windows and linux.
You can read the rest of my comments to understand the conversation, and where I have landed. You’re incredibly rude and I am done after this.
Either way, I know you’re just going to fight me instead of reading it, so I will just give you the cliff’s notes of what I learned: steam does not put up if a game is compatible with Linux if you have to run proton or something. It specifically only leaves the windows icon for compatibility. I was not aware of this, I feel like it’s pretty reasonable to assume that if Linux is not listed as a compatible platform then the game won’t run on Linux (just like with Mac OS). So go ahead and enjoy your victory lap or whatever.
No, especially AAA releases usually do not, or least not right away. For example according to ProtonDB Starfield (and yes I know, most people here don’t like it - but I do) still doesn’t work reliably, especially not on Nvidia cards. And no amount of indie puzzle games makes up for AAA titles working hassle free and on day one for the vast majority of users.
I don’t mind waiting a week until the relevant things are fixed, why do you need to play something the moment they are released?
BG3 worked for me on the week of release, I did not buy / test it on the day of releas however, but afaik all it needed to work fine was a switch from Vulkan to DX12
Its not a matter of it being AAA or Indie. Yes some games don’t play well or at all. Most games do, and they do it seamlessly.
According to ProtonDB Starfield works, with less FPS and some (rare crashes). I would bet my left nut that the main reason is that bethesda released a buggy incomplete mess and left it to the modders to complete for free. And if bethesda hadn’t put out spaghetti it would probably just work with proton.
I usually don’t, I’d like to but I generally don’t have the time for it. But many people do play on launch day, as you can see looking at the player charts on Steam. You can’t say “gaming on Linux works, you don’t need Windows” and then have all these little caveats. For the vast majority of people something either works when they click “Play” or it doesn’t work at all. This is an enthusiast community, but most people just aren’t that.
And I’ll admit that I didn’t recheck Starfield before commenting. Nice to see, it was a no-go on Nvidia initially.
This is an nvidia driver issue more than a proton/wine issue. When amd releases terrible game drivers on windows, amd is blamed so why is linux blamed when it is nvidia’s fault¿?
TBH, not all games works on windows out of the box either. It usually is better than Linux, but I always need to do some adjustments when playing on desktop; to really work with minimal effort, it needs to be a console.
Outside of invasive anticheat, everything I’ve wanted to play has worked, and often better than it did in windows.
I’d argue that the idea that most games don’t work on Linux is a flat-out misconception in 2023.
It’s hard to quantify, but Valve’s own Steam Deck (=running on Linux) verification stats have 70% of games either Verified or Playable (Playable generally means that it runs but text is small on the Deck screen, or it needs a lot of keyboard input – nothing that matters on the desktop). Crucially, “Unsupported” doesn’t mean it doesn’t run – it means untested, and in my experience at least, many of those just work too.
Protondb shows 80% of its catalog with a Platinum, Gold, or Silver rating – 70% are Gold. Silver generally corresponds to e.g. switching to Proton Experimental, which is a single-click process.
Anecdotally, after being gaming only on Linux for more than a year, with a catalog of 500+ games, I’ve had one (1) that gave me any more trouble than that Proton Experimental switch (Assetto Corsa, first one).
So there is no “unspoken part” here. The experience running Windows games on Linux isn’t what it was even 2 years ago. It is, for many people, an entirely seamless experience now.
PS: seeing Windows games running better on Linux isn’t a new observation either. Elden Ring was a great example where Proton shader precaching eliminated the stutter that plagued that game at launch, so it didn’t happen on Linux.
“Proton shader precaching eliminated the stutter that plagued that game at launch, so it didn’t happen on Linux.”
I’ve been meaning to ask, and it probably should be it’s own thread, but when launching a game and it says ‘Processing Vulkan Shaders’, does allowing it to partially process do anything.
Warframe for me will quickly jump to 33%, then do about 1% per 10-20 seconds. I don’t want to wait 10+ minutes to reach 100%, but does letting it get to like 40-60%, then hitting skip, at least keep the processed sharers, or does it skip/dump and process on demand? Basically, is Immediate skip vs giving it a minute or two before skipping worth anything?
I can only speak from my own experience on this one, but depending on the game, letting it complete means less stuttering the first time you see some shader effect in-game. My understanding is that it offsets processing that otherwise has to happen during runtime.
I’ve seen conflicting reports of how worth it that is, and I suppose it probably comes down to a lot of factors, in particular the game itself and the power of the hardware it’s running on.
I tend to let it complete always, but for me that’s generally less than a minute. Gives me time to get my gaming beverage ready, haha
If you let it run through once, it should cache the compiled shaders so it will recompile only after the game or your gpu drivers are updated
“gave me any more trouble than that Proton Experimental switch (Assetto Corsa, first one).”
Oh great, the only game I have any interest in playing…
The instructions for getting it to run are all over Protondb (needs winetricks), and even then, it looks like a minority of hardware configs that have issues – perhaps even AMD specifically.
Edit: also it looks like it may work OOTB now if you start it using Glorious Eggroll’s Proton 7.2 or higher
Is anyone else bothered by the 100% better statement?
100% better is twice as good, not infinitely better which is what’s happening here. This is dividing by 0.
It’s better 100% of the time, when it’s doesn’t work on Linux.
Also, I’m sexy 100% of time, when I am sexy (which is 0% percent of the time).
IMO that is a disingenuous way to state that. It makes it sound like they had to work to find games that worked on Linux at all and suggests that most games do not. Which is far from the truth. Most games just work these days and it is only a handful that don’t, so only a handful work 100% better. Then it all really depends if you care about those few games or not.
Few games? Man, you and I are definitely having a different experience.
For years now I just buy Steam games without even checking compatibility. They just work. No joke on my partners a Windows machine they’ve bought the same game once or twice and it regularly crashes for them.
There is of course luck in games I choose.
My guess is that some genres are going to be more problematic due to more extensive use of anti cheat. What are some of the games you’re having trouble with?
My issue(I think) is a combination of games utilizing anticheat(I’ve not gotten a single one to work yet) and also trying to play non-new games that were not designed during the Steam push for compatibility. I can’t use linux to play the games I like to play so I use a Win host for gaming and to run my linux install in a VM on the second screen.
To add my own experience, I play a lot of Japanese visual novels (it’s a good 80% of what I play). Very few Japanese visual novels are released on Steam. But if they are on Steam, they’re usually DRM-free or work in Proton anyway. However, most of these games are English-only. I play them in Japanese.
So I need to get my games from other places, like digital storefronts such as DLsite and DMM. However, I quickly found out that absolutely no games that DMM sells will work in Wine. This is because they are all encumbered with a form of DRM that isn’t compatible with Wine. DMM is the largest digital storefront for VNs. DLsite sells some games with various kinds of DRM. PlayDRM does work in Wine, but the rest doesn’t. They also sell DRM-free games. The selection isn’t as large, but it’s good. We recently got the DRM tagging feature in VNDB, so it should give you a good idea of what games are incompatible.
You can also buy VNs physically. Some games are DRM-encumbered but many are DRM-free. You generally don’t know until you buy, though, and it can be an expensive mistake. Hopefully we can change that with the new VNDB DRM tagging system.
Even when they’re not DRM-encumbered, though, you have a decent chance of facing issues with media playback. Older games using DirectShow you can probably get working with native DLLs using Winetricks. If it’s a newer game that uses Media Foundation, you might not be able to get it to work at all. Worst case, the game crashes on the opening movie. I’m looking for a way to improve that section of the wiki since I know very little about Media Foundation for solving these issues.
There also tend to be a bunch of Windowing issues with older VNs like fullscreen being broken. Gamescope will solve those issues.
So, while you can play a lot of VNs in Wine, you need to be careful about it. Fortunately, only two of the VNs I bought are unplayable and they’re both from DMM.
I do love DRM just ruining people’s experiences
Idk man a ton of distros don’t even work with steam for starters, which is a problem. And you say only a handful but I don’t think a single Bethesda release works on Linux. No PlayStation ports do either iirc. That’s fallout, elder scrolls, god of war, uncharted. No major racing games like Forza or Gran Turismo IIRC too. No fromsoft, so that’s no dark souls, no Elden ring, no armored core. Jedi Survivor doesn’t. Spider-Man doesn’t. Sekiro doesn’t. Lies of P doesn’t.
I mean besides BG3 (with some caveats) what major AAA releases the last few years really work on Linux? Most don’t.
Edit: ah, i believe you hadn’t enabled Proton. Yeah, i can see why you’d have the misconception that Linux sucks for gaming (well, if you ONLY play certain multiplayer games and don’t branch out to others, yeah you might have a rough time).
Having been a chronic distrohopper since I joined Linux a couple of years ago, this is wrong. I’ve had some hiccups with Steam, yeah, but that was more the version of Steam I installed (Flatpak. Learned right quick to just install what was on the repos) and it didn’t not outright work on any of the distros I used: be they Fedora, Ubuntu-based, Arch-based, or OpenSUSE. Steam’s always worked
They do. I regularly play and mod Oblivion, Fallout New Vegas, and Skyrim and can play as well as one does on Windows. It’s not limited to those either: Doom, Evil Within, Ghostwire, Rage…all those work with very little configuration (which honestly is just personal prefrences on my part. They’ll still work by enabling Proton in the Steam settings, and in the game properties if you wanna be extra sure or are using a GE version of Proton). Starfield also works. So it’s not just oldies either.
Except I play Souls and Souls-likes all the time, and I’m currently playing Lies of P with no problems on Linux. If anything I had more problems with when i tried playing a Soulsborn on Windows. Elden Ring stuttered like crazy on Windows, but i had next to zero problem playing on my Arch install, even playing Multiplayer.
The other games you mentioned are also playable on Linux. Don’t know who told you they don’t but 90% of Steam works on Limux and Steam Deck. Just go to account settings and in compatibility, check “Enable Steam Play for all titles” and restart Steam. Otherwise, you get ONLY games with a native Linux version (which are…hit or miss at times). The only games you’d actually have trouble running on Linux would be ones that were given a hard “we’re not supporting Linux” like Fortnite and those with heavy Anti-Cheats like Rainbow 6 Seige, Black Desert, or Valorant (and even those are getting Linux compatability: Dead By Daylight works now, Master Cheif collection apparantly works now, but I haven’t played it in a while to check, Apex has worked for a while, etc)
Elden Ring, Uncharted, and God of War absolutely work because on Linux is the only way I’ve played any of them. Starfield has been the only game recently that did not (still doesn’t) work on Linux via Steam without issue. And Starfield is a Nvidia issue not really a Linux issue.
Weird steam is only showing the windows logo by all of those. Guess I read it wrong
Did you enable Proton in your account settings? If not, you’re only going to be able to play native Steam games (which are both meh, and are at the mercy of how much the devs maintained it, or are incomplete like the Binding of Isaac one not having an Afterbirth DLC linux version so without Proton, you wouldn’t be able to access it).
If you haven’t and are still on Linux, go to your account, find the compatability tab, and check “Enable Steam Play for all titles”. Steam will ask to restart, and after a restart, you’ll be good
Well, that explains binding of Isaac for me. Been so frustrated trying to get it to work on my steam deck and was wondering what the issue was.
Yeah, before I knew that it’s better to just use Proton over the Native Linux game, it threw me for a loop too NGL
Damn you really don’t know what you are talking about, yet you speak so confidentially.
For future reference just bc a game doesn’t have a native Linux version doesn’t mean it won’t run on Linux and that logo you are looking at specifically talks about what OS the game is specifically made for.
out of my current library of ~250ish games about 30 have native Linux ports and out of my 20 recently played games only Terraria has a native Linux ports (I still use the windows version anyways) hell I am currently playing Control with ray tracing
What? Dude I am literally sitting here saying “clearly I was wrong because I thought not having the Linux logo meant it did not run on Linux.“ Why are you being an ass about this?
Edit: Oh sorry, I missed the other reply thread.
EA games and such sound plausible, but
I have probably played their whole steam catalogue on linux. They work fine.
Same for TES and Fallout.
Just to make sure, you did enable proton for “unsupported” games, right?
All good! I don’t know why valve does that. I consider myself a pretty informed consumer, and I was under the impression (I believe rightfully so!) that if the Linux logo is not featured, then the game can’t play on any Linux distro more or less.
Could be some legality issue where a game they cannot Mark a game which is not linux native with the linux logo
I can’t imagine there isn’t some way to be a little clearer about this though
It’s probably just to not falsely advertise support when some of the untested games don’t work.
Totally but my point is it’s reasonable for consumers to see the icons, see their machine isn’t supported, and move on.
Name one. I don’t know of any.
Personally I’ve never had one not work, and that includes Starfield on launch day.
Elder Scrolls on Linux didn’t have the stutter it had on Windows at launch. It was literally a better experience and it continues to run great. God of War runs great on Linux. Returnal runs great on Linux.
Seriously, the number one issue for Linux gaming right now is people in comments telling other people it doesn’t work.
Please read my other comments. The conversation has changed drastically.
This seems a little exaggerated. For example, over 10k games are Steam Deck playable/verified. About 75% of the games that were tested were compatible with the Steam Deck, so probably many more will follow. Also, all emulators work on Linux too and sometimes even better than on Windows. The number of games that are available to you on Linux is simply massive.
Things are changing. The SteamDeck is a Linux platform. So if you want that share of the market, you need Linux support
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Based on what the 100% better? I Mostly games have only minor issues.