"I would like to switch to Linux, but it's just not good for gaming"

This has been my concern too. It's great that we're seeing some specific cases where Linux benchmarks faster than Windows, but that doesn't mean a damn thing if the one thing I'm trying to play just full on won't work.

Telling me that I can just also run Windows is counterproductive. If Windows will do everything I want, and Linux will do only some of what I want, now you're trying to sell me on increased complexity and difficulties and learning a whole new system, without actually getting rid of the problems that come with running Windows in the first place.

way back the issue most certainly was that though. There was a time when trying to run games with wine was a frustrating exercise that only resulted in a success in small minority of cases... which meant the answer was almost certainly negative when accounting for the additional restriction of trying to run the games you actually wished to be playing. Not everyone may remember this of course.

@neatchee @linux_gaming

Exactly. If even one of my games doesn't run, it's already a pain in the ass. Might as well stay on windows so I don't have to deal with the headache. They all run on windows. I'll switch when they all run on Linux.

well, thanks to Gaben, new games working fine

"Linux is great for gaming. You only need to follow these 25 kernel configuration steps to combine three 3rd party applications and it runs just fine!"

The issue is they want to run rootkits and malware instead of games.

Not sorry. Siege, Fortnite, Valorant, all of these games require kernel level access to Windows to run, and the publishers refuse to support Windows.

The only reason I'd ever play games like this in the past is due to peer pressure from friends to play these shitty games together with a bunch of sweats, cheaters and an overall generally toxic community. Especially Siege.

Social peer pressure goes both ways. And I've basically peaced out on any of these games in my friends group. That was enough to end that game for game nights, and as those games fade from our memory. I make sure what little memory of it remains is the true tainted and awful form from which they originated.

If you need a kernel level anti-cheat for your game, and nothing else will protect it. Your game is shit, your development cycle is shit, your company is shit, your community is shit, and why would I ever want to play a shit game with shit people from a shit company that forces devs to work under a shit development cycle?

If only one could have two OS on one machine and somehow boot into the one you want to play a game on.

Mine is not an argument asserting that people think games can't run on Linux, mine is a mockery of the people who do so (I know several).

I find you insufferable too, don't worry

That's the attitude that we all need to have. Same here, if anything doesn't work on Linux, I ain't buying it.

Same been Linux only for several years now. If it won't run I won't buy it.

Same, since 2013.

I've found that often the game is listed as not linux, but runs fine with proton anyway. So I often buy, and refund if needed.

That’s how I’ve been for a few years now. Windows has serious bugs that I encounter all the time that I never encounter with Linux.

Just this week alone… screenshots stopped working, usb microphones were stuck on mute, and the taskbar crashed preventing me from using any touchpad gestures or even accessing the start menu to restart.

The task bar was fixed with a restart but the other two issues required a reinstall of the os. I troubleshot those for like an hour without any solution.

Because more people playing on Linux means more games get published for Linux, which is an outcome we want.

I just want more games to work on Linux, and more marketshare gets devs interested. I don't care what specific people use, just that enough use Linux to grow marketshare.

Use what you want, but I'll encourage anyone who is interested to give it a try.

Huh. Yes, that's exactly what it is.
Good shout.

It's like when you discuss music with a metalhead, it's not that you just don't feel anything when you listen to metal, and you don't consider complex polyrhythms to just be objectively "better" because they're harder to play. It's that your music sucks ass and if it's not the right kind of metal it also sucks ass.

Linux can play most games, but if you like playing games that Linux doesn't play then those games suck and you shouldn't want to play them. That's their perspective.

Why do you want to play Fortnite or CoD warzone? Don't you know kernel level anticheat is a rOoTkiT?!? (As if they could even define such a thing without resorting to just pointing at shit they don't like and twisting the definition like a Baptist preacher trying to create theology.)

You can't win with these types of people, Linux can play games! And if it can't it's YOUR FAULT FOR NOT EXCLUSIVELY PLAYING GAMES THAT LINUX CAN PLAY.

And racing sims. I was talking to someone on Bluesky and they said the lack of racing sim gear support is holding them back.

Yeah, I'd love to get a VR headset, but there just aren't even games to play on Linux, and the headsets with good Linux support are either expensive or hard to find.

Hopefully that improves, I imagine it's stopping people from switching to Linux.

Mine's similar (macOS is my work computer):

And last year Linux and Steam Deck were flipped:

It's also heavily skewed in my case due to online hours being the only hours counted, while I use my steamdeck away from internet most of the time.

You should report the bugs to the proton devs, not the game dev.

I have a WMR headset, am still on a dual-boot of Pop!_OS and Windows 10 with my gaming pc. I have an Nvidia RTX 3080 and don't want to worry about compatibility with kernel so Pop!_OS fixes that for me. I also love window tiling, which it does pretty well (not as good as Sway and Hyprland but close enough).

At this point, I can do everything on Linux except for 1 thing: Use my HP Reverb VR headset. It's a Windows (WMR) headset and doesn't work on Linux. But it is essential for my gaming, as about 80% of my gaming time is spent flying aircraft and helicopters in DCS: World in VR. I got a whole simpit setup with crazy good stick, pedals and throttle and everything.

I am really hoping to switch the headset out for a SteamVR-native headset and ditch Windows before Windows 10 support ends in 2025. First step is to install DCS on Linux and start flying it outside VR to help find bugs and assess when it is good enough to switch VR headsets.

And yes, I did consider upgrading to an AMD card for the improved Linux performance but the RX 7900 XT didn't do DCS in VR (on Windows) well, even after the big driver update this Summer that was supposed to fix the stutters.

if you are having weird bugs when playing via Proton, report the issue on the Proton GitHub page. If it's a graphical glitch you can also report it to proton-vkd3d or DXVK depending on which one is being used by the game. If unsure just report it only to Proton.

The Proton developers and the developers of associated projects (DXVK, vkd3d, etc) will often add workarounds into the various parts of the Proton platform to get a game to work correctly, even if the problem you are seeing is a game bug or driver bug.

One of us! One of us!

Windows is an abomination.

There's a bunch of other things, like HDR; I don't have a HDR monitor so I can't say what people are missing, but I tried to mess with it in my pet-project game engine and vkSetHdrMetadataEXT just does not exist at all, and I don't know what library or Vulkan layer could provide it.

It matches with what I've heard around, although apparently KDE supports it now?

If your quote was the title of this post then the "randos" wouldn't show up. But it's not. 🤷

As a fellow Linux user I entirely agree. I stay off the forums as much as possible. My latest crime was uploading a tutorial on how to update the bios on certain laptop models. Got fucking roasted, even on lemmy.

For some reason Linux forums are like stack exchange; an extremely toxic neckbeard pissing match.

Eh, you'll get the worse of any userbase if you go to a community specifically for that OS. Go to PC Master race or whatever to see the opposite problem.

I've been on Linux exclusively for something like 15 years, but I almost never bring it up. In fact, I don't even mention my distro of choice unless it's directly relevant, and if asked I recommend something different (I recommend Mint Debian edition because I've heard it's very user friendly).

I also find many people in communities like this insufferable as well, so I spend my time trying to tone them down a bit with comments like "Linux isn't for everyone, but it'll always be there if you decide to give it another try." I use Linux because it works better for me than Windows, yet many here make it a religion or something. It's kinda weird.

I'm the opposite, my computer is in the basement and my Steam Deck is next to my bed, so ~75% of my playtime is on the Deck.

It's a cool device, but it's not for everyone.

Note did I, so I assumed that was the case as well. I only have my Linux desktop with Steam.

I think it's interesting most of your play time is on the Steam Deck, but you play a bunch of games on Linux. Are you just testing settings then?

Even if it had full comparability, you won't have switched to linux. You don't need reasons to do it, except your own wish

Eh, works fine for me. I have a lot of games to choose from, so I'm really not lacking on selection.

That said, I totally get it if it doesn't work for the things you need. Use what works. Linux works better for me than Windows, so it's what I use.

Which games? I don't think I've ever encountered a game that didn't run with Proton out of the box.

Some game updates just break proton compatibility.

first, file a report. so devs are aware of your problem.

second, i feel you. i'm in the same situation. if i switch to linux right now, my stream deck will lose features and i probably on't be able to use my steering wheel anymore. plus i really struggled to install fusion360.

Most adobe things should work in Wine, no? At least they did a few years ago

Nor do you want them. Windows 10 was pretty amazing when it was released, but now it's essentially just adware and spyware. They've added no new features for the benefit of the consumer, and have added thousands of changes for their snooping and ad-serving.

Removing Windows frees up tons of space!

2024 - your year of the Linux desktop

Eh, it worked well for me, but I'm easy to impress. I switched to Linux before Steam on Linux was a thing, and I made a Steam account when it came to Linux back in 2013. It was a bit unstable the first couple years, but by 2016 it was quite stable. I think my first Steam purchase was in 2015 (Rocket League I think? I don't recall), and almost everything before that was Humble Bundle keys.

When Proton was released in 2018-ish, I suddenly had a ton more options, and I started to purchase way more games.

Things are way better now, but I was ecstatic to finally have a gaming platform care about my OS.

Foundry the virtual tabletop? If so you can run it via docker fairly easily

Arch really has like Apple level of hype and marketing.

It might not show up if you only play on one device.

I wonder if that's why I like FreeBSD so much. I grew up with Windows, but someone in high school (old guy at the local community college I attended at the time) encouraged me to try FreeBSD and I really liked how different it was. I basically only use Linux now, but I still judge Linux by FreeBSD standards and I'd use FreeBSD if it had decent gaming support.

Or maybe it's because FreeBSD rocks.

Not the OP but I have a similar graphics on steam. Using X11 with KDE I was using a GTX 1660 super until november last year, this year I'm using a 6700xt both worked perfectly without any tinkering. KDE Wayland tho has a lot of issues with Nvidia (devs say that is the opposite, the Nvidia driver is shit). But apparently gnome implemented workarounds for Nvidia and their Wayland support is better.

Radeon RX 580, or rather two of them: a "default" one, then one I use when running vfio-powered virtual machines or miscellaneous Vulkan projects I play with occasionally.

It doesn't have all the newest features, but I run most games just fine.

Gamemode should take care of that. I think it's enabled by default when you run games via lutris.

https://github.com/FeralInteractive/gamemode

KDE? You tried "Systemsettings > Power Management > Energy Saving > Dim Screen" maybe already? I don't have what you're describing either und Arch nor Endeavor.

It's from Steam's 2023 Year in Review. It shows up at the top of the store page when you open their app.

Steam has a year in review thing, just log into the steam store and you should see it.

Most likely a missing package or something, so software. If also depends on which version of Mint you got (Ubuntu or Debian based).

Make a post here when you get time. If you can get a crash dump (e.g. run it on the terminal and copy the output), that'll help a ton in figuring out what went wrong.

Compatibility with old games on linux is great, much better than it is for newer games. Those 2010 and earlier (all the way back to windows 95 or so) games that have trouble on Windows 10 generally work better on Linux than on Windows 10.

For dos games you'd use dosbox on both Windows and Linux so the experience is mostly identical.

You also get quality of life stuff such as: if a game starts at 640x480 on your 4k monitor, it doesn't change your desktop resolution to 640x480, it just gets scaled up to the full screen.

Specifically check out the Lutris software: it has integrations to install and run your old games from GOG or the original discs onto Linux.

don't use linux myself, but i've heard wine has great backward compatibility with older games.

but you probably tried installing them yourself, so...

Same here, I only had to run BG3 on Windows (in a VM) for very specific reasons tied to my setup.

90% Steam Deck over here, and 10% Linux.

SDL_VIDEO_MINIMIZE_ON_FOCUS_LOSS=0 my brother.

Use what you want.

I use Linux because I like it, games are just a bonus. I've been Linux only before Steam came to Linux, and I'll be here if it ever leaves. It works well for me.