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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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.”
That’s probably because there’s no native linux client. Elden Ring runs great on Steam Deck (Valve even precompiled the shaders for the Steam Deck, because the PC port constantly compiles them on the fly, leading to stuttering)
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.
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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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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.”
That’s probably because there’s no native linux client. Elden Ring runs great on Steam Deck (Valve even precompiled the shaders for the Steam Deck, because the PC port constantly compiles them on the fly, leading to stuttering)
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.