1y ago

Windows 11 scores dead last in gaming performance tests against 3 Linux gaming distros

www.notebookcheck.net Windows 11 scores dead last in gaming performance tests against 3 Linux gaming distros

Recent testing revealed that Arch Linux, Pop!_OS, and even Nobara Linux, which is maintained by a single developer, all outstripped Windows for the performance crown on Windows-native games. The testing was run at the high-end of quality settings, and Valve's Proton was used to run Windows games on ...

Technology @lemmy.world

www.notebookcheck.net /Windows-11-scores-dead-last-in-gaming-performance-tests-against-3-Linux-gaming-distros.778624.0.html

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124 comments

Well this article is pretty disingenuous...
The distribution "managed by a single person" depends on hundreds of people working on different sofware to keep up. It's not "one person doing better than the thousands of Microsoft employees combined" implication they are pushing
Windows 11 beat the linux distros by up to 20% in 1% lows which are argued as much more important by most tech reviewers. It wasn't consistant at all which means that there was a giant margin of error.
I love linux and linux gaming has gotten radically better, but I am tired of tech "journalism" literally just cherrypicking, misleading, clickbait trash.
- Not to mention the major hurdle for Linux gaming is anti cheat software being brought over. Too many games are 100% unplayable because the devs don't allow their anticheat to be installed on Linux systems
  
  As if the anti-cheat even worked.
  
  I really wish valve would make this more clear on steam store pages. It says games are "unsupported" on steam deck due to anticheat when really it should say something like "The developer of this title does not allow players using the steam deck" so that people are more aware it's not linux or valve's fault
  
  Honestly I can't say that I miss installing rootkits with terrifying privileges just to play games. I'd rather limit the privileges games have with Flatpak etc., not give them even more.
  
  This is because most anti cheats for windows are kernel level rootkits that have full access to your entire system, and gamers just trust that known to be ineffective, scammy and profiteering, anti cheat companies software companies would /never/ do anything nefarious.
  How can you trust them?
  You can't! Black boxed code, babyyyyyy.
  Anyway yeah on linux systems basically the designs of all common anti cheat systems would be laughed at as hilariously insecure code that no sane person would allow on their computer because you would have to give it root level access.
  This is basically insane as in the linux paradigm, root level access is reserved only for a bare minimum of system processes, whereas on Windows, well with the new Pluton tech in the latest lines of major CPUs, Windows has the ability to DRM literally anything you install on it and just get rid of your ability to run or install it, as they see fit, with a network enabled sub layer of the CPU that you as a user cannot override from within Windows.
  The only hurdle for linux gaming is for more gamers and game developers to realize the truth of what I just said.
  Its possible to do anti cheat in less invasive ways. But that requires more work from game development studios, and is costly.
  Anyone else remember when servers had like actual human admins that would respond to player complaints, and would work on the backend of a server to come up with their own ways to detect cheating server side?
  
  Anti cheat = rootkit. You should not install it at all.
- Yep. The world is full of trash, that's for sure.
- 1% lows are way more important. I also think frame time is very important.
- Yeah, the only time proton can actually outperform windows is when it spots a fundamental performance error that the app has made, and is able to optimize it out, AND no windows driver does the same. This is comparing Linux+proton at its best vs windows+native at its worst.
  What we really want to see is Linux+native at its best vs windows+native at its best. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of demanding games that natively support Linux.

Wait, isn't a lower frame time better? Why does their screenshot show windows having the lowest and say that it scored last?
Looking at the source article, windows did have generally better 1% lows except for Starfield, so I think this article has it backwards. They also cherry picked 2 results where windows was worse lol.
I'm all for pro-linux stuff but articles like this just reek of making shit up so it looks better.
- I think FPS was actually selected, not frametimes. 1% low frametimes of 89 does not make sense.
  There is an issue with the image in the article, but not the one that you might think it was. The FPS should have been more clearly indicated that it was the selected tab and then it probably would have been fine.
  edit: I went to the base website https://www.computerbase.de/2023-12/welche-linux-distribution-zum-spielen/2/ it's in German, but, it seems like the frametimes and frame rates are nearly the exact same values - which doesn't even seem to make sense to me?
- They probably didn't label their axes properly. FPS is a clearly defined metric, and there, more is better. This indicates that the conclusion (Linux is faster) holds. Since frame times have an entry with value “100” and all other values are lower, I assume that's in percent, i.e. Arch Linux is the fastest and picked as comparison point, and the others are shown with relative performance to Arch.
  
  It says "Prozent" in the bottom left of the screenshot. You are correct. They use percent to compare them. So more is actually better here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eKSQT5mV-c
Important: Nobara is way less Secure than Fedora.
no Secureboot
monthly updates instead of often daily
purposefully removed SELinux (because the Dev doesnt know how to use it)
still no Fedora39!
If you want to game, stick to regular Fedora. A project that is actually secure is ublue with dedicated NVIDIA images that should just work and never break, and they even have Bazzite, an Image specifically for the Steamdeck but also for Desktop.
These images are only ½ day behind upstream, apply minimal additions and patches (like drivers, codecs, packages, udev rules for controllers) and Nick from the video above found out that the Nobara patches with their weird less supported Kernel arent really worth the hassle.
- Secure Boot is an utter piece of bullshit from the depths of hell.
  
  Proprietary UEFI BIOS is, but for a secure system with local manipulation prevention it can be needed. Also secureboot is a security measurement against malware so no, its simply the best we have.
  Look at Coreboot if you want a secure modern system
  novacustom
  3mdeb
  starlabs
  system76
- I 100% agree, its best to just stick to upstream Fedora imo. Glad you made this comment. The security issues of Nobara always put me off, especially since basically everything it does can just be applied to regular Fedora. I think Nobara would much better serve as a script or toolkit, similar to Brace, or something along those lines instead of an entire separate OS with the security issues it brings.
- Your ublue-link got messed up, did you mean https://universal-blue.org/ ?
  
  No its their shortlink and I am lazy. But replaced it.
- As a non-power user, I don't want daily updates. Monthly is perfectly fine for me.
  
  Linux desktop updates are handled totally differently than Windows. I don't even see them, as my distro just has a timer that checks for updates once a day, then updates the whole system in the background. If anything, this behavior is intended for non-power users.
  
  Then disable the updates lol. This is done in the background and includes all the security patches so you dont even see any of it, not a single popup.
  We are not talking about backported security fixes, but literally no updates for an entire month.

I’ll need to give Linux gaming another chance at some point.
All I know is that people were saying games run great on Linux a couple of years ago as well, but when I actually tried it for myself the performance was unusable.
Maybe that was my fault for over complicating my setup, but even when I tried a basic setup it still felt very janky.
Not sure if anyone’s able to advise, but does RTX and variable refresh rate work on Linux?
Those are absolute requirements for me.
- All three major GPU manufacturers support ray tracing and variable refresh rate on Linux. When playing windows games, ray tracing has to be handled through VKD3D, which AFAIK supports most but not all DXR features. I haven't had any problems with it though.
  The one thing that can still completely make or break your (Windows games on Linux) gaming experience is anti-cheat software, since it's up to the game developers to enable it for wine. The major anti cheat providers offer solutions for this, but not all game studios are interested in their games running on platforms other than windows. Games like valorant will probably never work. Good riddance though.
  
  Valorant is a fucking awful game with über ban techniques when you force quit a game for some reason, like needing to go to the bathroom in middle of game play.
  I can't understand anyone can accept such a thing.
  
  Thanks, I’ll definitely need to give Linux gaming another shot then.
  The last bit that might hold me back is getting my Hue Sync stuff working. It sounds silly, but it really makes games feel so much more immersive that I don’t want to be without it.
  
  What about hdr. I saw it mentioned for the Steam Deck update, so wondered if that is finally working on Linux. I do like taking advantage of HDR on the TV.
- nvidia is always hit of miss
- Same, I could not get a single game to run normally on Fedora Kinoite, AMD GPU, Wayland. Idk maybe amdgpu pro and x11? But xwayland should also work normally...
  
  Steam from Flathub just works.
- I'm sure there's lots of solutions, but Steam with Proton for any windows only games has generally worked great for me.
  Where I encounter issues, the Lutris flatpak install has worked well for me.
  Both I believe use wine, but it is probably easier use downstream solutions like the above when getting started, instead of learning wine. Not that there aren't benefits to learning it, just in a immediate issues -> lets go back to windows VS it just kind of works pretty good comparison.
  Steam having a fair number of games that are directly Linux compatible now days is nice too.

A typical Linux distro, especially lightweight and simpler ones like Arch, will of course be better than a bloated OS, like Pop or Windows. The only problem with Linux distros might be the choice of tools - X and AMD will work much better overall than Wayland and Nvidia.
Just that many people may have an Nvidia GPU before deciding to use Linux, and some people just prefer to use Wayland over X for literally everything else.
My PC with Wayland + Nvidia has so many problems with gaming, especially flickering and performance, while my Laptop with Wayland + integrated Intel graphics has no problems at all - even in games, that I wonder if Nvidia + Wayland still really sucks ass or if my GPU is just broken. Currently there's a bug where frames are 'switched' somehow, so it's not Frame 1, Frame 2, ... Frame n, but Frame 1, Frame 3, Frame 2, Frame 5, Frame 6, Frame 4 etc.
I expect it to be fixed by an update of nvidia in the future, but there are always such bugs.
- That frame issue is because of the fact that Nvidia uses "explicit sync" and AMD/Intel use "implicit sync" - XWayland is built to only support implicit syncing for now (Nvidia is trying to get it changed), and since most games right now run under XWayland... Along with a ton of apps of course.
  Until then, that issue won't be resolved sadly. It's what finally pushed me to get an AMD card since the issue has been open for over a year with a ton of back and forth.
- especially flickering and performance
  If my experience is any indicator, your GPU is fine :(. Any chance you're using mixed display scalings? I've got an RTX 3050 eGPU for my Plasma/Wayland laptop, and for the most part it actually works fairly smoothly (albeit more slowly compared to windows), but if I try to run a game at a higher resolution than my monitor (used by Plasma for mixed scaling) I get constant flashing/frame shifting, but when I drop it down to the native 1080p it starts working again
  As a side note, X and eGPUs do not play well together, but Wayland is literally plug and play after installing the drivers--I can even hot plug/unplug as long as nothing's using the GPU!
  
  I played around with scaling a bit, but removed the commands in my sway config afterwards. I do have different screen resolutions tho.
- How your performance with X11?
  
  the proprietary drivers work pretty great on X11 for me

In windows defence they don’t really have the resources to compete
- As pointed out, in Windows defence, it's actually faster where it matters. And none of it is going to matter in adoption until every thing is supported 1-1.
  
  The only reason we're behind on adoption vs Windows as this point is that people who write software for Windows, don't do it for GNU/Linux, or even publish specs in the case of drivers.
  It's not the OSes problem. It hasn't been for a long time. It's stubborn developers (mainly corporations like Broadcom, Nvidia and Epic). We shouldn't need to write compatibility layers for completely foreign software to run, or write drivers to drive a megacorporation's hardware, and those are both a monumental task, but the community continues to achieve it anyways.
  A lot has been done and continues to be done by the community, and that's great, but the real problem is the corporations who refuse to invest a little bit of their time in GNU/Linux support (and those who have an irrational vendetta against it).

Real question- I have a steam deck and am incredibly pleased with the playability. I also have a desktop with a newer nvidia card. Does Linux have support for DLSS yet? It make a huge difference in oerformance and honestly it’s the only thing holding me back
- That depends which DLSS. In my testing DLSS 1 and 2 work fine in games that I tried, with recent Proton enabling it as well as ray tracing shouldnt require extra steps anymore (it was experimental and opt-in using environment variables). DLSS 3 with frame generation is known as no go yet and it’s unfortunately on NVIDIA to provide support for it as it’s very much locked down guarded proprietary stuff.
- It should support DLSS unless you have an older video card, which the drivers don't work well with. I heard the newer Nvidia cards work better though. Of course, is all up to you whether you like it or not, so just try out Linux and see. If you don't like it just reinstall Windows. Make a recovery Windows USB beforehand though, makes it easier to reinstall.
- Linux and Nvidia don't mix well, at least not until Nvidia's official open source kernel module has been upstreamed to the Linux kernel which will take years.
  Breakages, workarounds for breakages, etc. are common occurrences, especially when you want to use a modern desktop using Wayland.
  
  Other than being completely unable to run Wayland, secure boot, and being forced to use a propietary driver what kind of things are specifically wrong with Nvidia on Linux? Maybe it's because I switched to Linux fairly recently but I haven't noticed many Nvidia specific issues yet.

Well since it’s slower that just means it’s being more careful and not prone to making mistakes
- Open your source and prove that or else we know you're lying.

Did they test against windows using DXVK? Because I know when Elden Ring launched that was the only way to get stable frames on Windows

For whatever reason, Windows 11 is worse at Cyberpunk 2077 than Arch for me. Constant stuttering. It might be that Arch has much less going on than Windows, but it's enough for me to use Linux as my main gaming OS now.

Cool what about games with anti-cheat
- If you're not just being facetious, https://areweanticheatyet.com/ is a good source.
  According to them ~58% of anti-cheat games work. There's been a large uptick of anti-cheat support since the Steam Deck.
  According to ProtonDB, 86% of the top 1000 games on Steam function (Silver+ rating). It's a pretty safe bet that the most of the missing 14% is probably due to anti-cheat.
  
  Yeah mostly just talking shit. I love my steam deck.
  
  Thanks for this. The one multiplayer game I've been consistently playing apparently got Linux anti cheat support enabled 2 months ago.
  I think installing Linux on my gaming/work PC will be a winter holiday project for me 😀.
  Now to pick a distro.
- Cool what about malware? /s (no really anticheat is malware)
  
  Anticheat isn't malware. Malware has adverse effects on your system.
  AC uses some techniques that some forms of malware also use (but far from all)
- I've been playing games that use EasyAntiCheat (Hunt Showdown and Chivalry 2) and they seem to work fine.

Notebook check isn't reliable
- Explain?
  
  Do I need too? If you look at some of their benchmarks you will start to see what I mean. There data is all over the place.
- While true, they are reporting findings from somewhere else
  according to testing by German outlet ComputerBase

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