Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.
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Let's not become delusional now. Linux as an overall operating system feels much better to use but only because we care to become tech savvy and to troubleshoot. There are so many headaches that come with Linux which makes it unattractive to most people.
We are probably not most people.
Thank you for being the sane one.
I've recently stumbled upon a lot of people like whoever wrote the article, rampaging all over the place, going "Linux is more user-friendly than Windows", which is just an insane thing to say.
Linux is great, I love my Garuda to bits. But games are still optimised for Windows, we still need to use compatibility layers to get them running, and even though it's gotten MUCH easier these days, there's still a lot of titles that require tweaking/hacking. And some just refuse to run, period.
And then you have all the hardware compatibility issues that come with manufacturers just not supporting stuff. I can't turn my GPU's RGB off without Windows. I had to distro-hop to get the GPU drivers working correctly (it might be a "skill issue", but that just proves the point, I think). Even titles that are marked as Gold on ProtonDB sometimes crash or refuse to run randomly.
do you have nvidia?
i'm going to push back on this a bit. gaming on Linux today is nothing less than a miracle story thanks to Vulkan, Valve and Wine. i can play AAA titles on launch and it just works, and often better than on windows.
gaming on Linux isn't like it was 10 years ago. i'd say for most users, it'd be perfectly fine on an easy to use distro.
some things will not work, because of companies that still oppose Linux, like Epic and Nvidia, making using those products difficult. but that isn't Linux's fault, it's theirs.
I'm not a techy, or a sys admin, or anything.
I never wanted ot think about my OS. I just want to click things and go.
Linux did have headaches when I switched. Some from my lack of knowledge, some from shit in linux just being fuckywucky. but that was many years ago.
I wouldnt say I'm any smarter today, than i was back then.. but I will say Linux is so much better today than it was back then. Its reached the "it just works" stage, even for gaming, in everything I've tried with it. I am back to where I was on windows all those years ago, where I dont even think about my OS. I just click things and go.
I'm not so foolish to say its all sunshine and lollipops, especially with gaming, I'm sure there will always be a problem that crops up that needs a tweak/patch/config change to fix it.. but honestly? Windows had that shit too. which is why I'd say, from a usability aspect, Linux is pretty much at parity with windows at this point.
And thats for gaming and shit.
if you are just a regular PC user where entertainment/email/bills/etc are all done in the webbrowser? Fuck..Linux has been good and ready for that for over a decade. My grandparents PC has run linux for over 15 years now, without nary an issue.
If it is not the best, we will make it the best
They will know our peaceful ways, by force if necessary
Linux is now the best gaming system.
I'll just share how my latest bout with gaming on Linux looked like, compared to Windows.
Install Anno 1800 on Windows:
Install Anno 1800 on Linux:
Next day:
Next day:
As much as I want to like it, this experience makes me feel that Linux is not fully ready for the masses yet.
Ubisoft isn't ready for the masses yet. Linux works just fine
Steam is supposed to handle installing the Ubisoft launcher during the first-time setup, it sounds like for whatever reason it failed to do that. It's very likely that verifying the game files would've fixed the issue easily, as it re-runs the first time setup. If that didn't work, deleting the compatibility files would probably have been the next step. I'd be very surprised if one of these didn't fix it.
The rest of the troubleshooting steps you took until the GPU stuff were unnecessary, as they were basically Windows troubleshooting steps, not Linux ones. It's completely expected to have to relearn how to troubleshoot stuff on a different OS and I'd really recommend asking in a Linux gaming community when you run into issues like that, until you've gotten the troubleshooting steps down.
Install Ubi launcher using method 'add installer as game, set compatibility layer, install and change executable for application executable' ... Install Lutris and install Ubi launcher through that
Wine/Proton games are run in their own individual "prefixes", which are essentially individual Windows instances. Both of these steps just installed Ubisoft launcher in a different instance. This would be a fine fix on Windows, but this is a different OS. The correct fix isn't necessarily harder either, just different.
Install Protontricks through Flatpack instead of system package, as the Flatpack version is slightly newer. Accept that this will result in a much larger installation due to not using system-provided libraries.
"much larger" is relative, software is pretty small in general, especially compared to any modern games. It's really not much space, and the flatpak runtimes will be reused for other flatpaks you install.
As much as I want to like it, this experience makes me feel that Linux is not fully ready for the masses yet.
I don't even entirely disagree, but also don't think the issues you faced completely demonstrate that. The Ubisoft installation issue was most likely a Steam client bug. First-time installations failing is 100% something that has happened on Windows, that's why verifying game files is often the first recommended step when troubleshooting a game. Most distros that get recommended now have features to easily install Nvidia drivers. My personal recommendation for gaming, Bazzite, has an Nvidia ISO, which would've had them set up from the beginning.
Do you mind sharing what distro you were using? It sounds like whatever it is has bad instructions for setting up Nvidia drivers, I'd like to avoid recommending it.
Edit: Just read this back and wanted to add that I wasn't trying to be rude or condescending at any point, or blaming you for the issues. I don't think gaming on Linux is difficult, but I think people do need to do a better job preparing new users when they recommend it. It isn't, and never will or even should be, the exact same as Windows. You have to learn the differences to be able to troubleshoot effectively, which just takes some time. Nobody knows how to troubleshoot correctly the first time they use Windows either.
I'm a bit strapped for time, so I won't be able to touch on everything you said. But here goes:
It's very likely that verifying the game files would've fixed the issue easily, as it re-runs the first time setup. If that didn't work, deleting the compatibility files would probably have been the next step. I'd be very surprised if one of these didn't fix it.
Of course I had to condense the experience a bit for readability and I don't remember every step, but validating the game files, doing a reinstall and trying different Proton versions were parts of my troubleshooting steps. They absolutely didn't work. I didn't try removing the compatibility files afaik, but switching versions should basically have had the same result as that did trigger an first-time setup each time. The Ubisoft installer wasn't part of that install for as far as I could see, or failed for each proton version without any visible signs.
The rest of the troubleshooting steps you took until the GPU stuff were unnecessary, as they were basically Windows troubleshooting steps, not Linux ones. It's completely expected to have to relearn how to troubleshoot stuff on a different OS and I'd really recommend asking in a Linux gaming community when you run into issues like that, until you've gotten the troubleshooting steps down.
Linux is far from new to me, but gaming is a whole different beast compared to what I usually do with it. The steps I took were the recommendations from Linux gaming communities I came across. Even though I already suspected that the whole 'install the Ubisoft installer through Steam' wouldn't work, if it is suggested, I'm not one to ignore that.
The problem here is mostly that the information offered on various locations differs and it is a question of trial and error to find out what works and what not, especially if you're still figuring out the gaming ecosystem.
"much larger" is relative, software is pretty small in general, especially compared to any modern games. It's really not much space, and the flatpak runtimes will be reused for other flatpaks you install.
From the top of my head it was 3 GB vs 160 MB. Which is quite the difference, especially if you're working with a relatively small SSD. Flatpack is a mixed blessing in that regard, it's not meant as criticism against Flatpack, it's just a trade-off of having sandboxed applications.
Do you mind sharing what distro you were using? It sounds like whatever it is has bad instructions for setting up Nvidia drivers, I'd like to avoid recommending it.
It was Linux Mint, on an Nvidia Prime-based laptop. Drivers were included by default, no installation required, but couldn't load due to not being signed. Hence the 'turned off Secure Boot'. I could have MOK'ed around and signed them, but at that point I simply couldn't be bothered anymore and just went for the simplest solution. Not sure it were official drivers or Nouveau.
Just read this back and wanted to add that I wasn't trying to be rude or condescending at any point, or blaming you for the issues.
No worries, even though I don't fully agree with you on everything, I appreciate your response and the fact you are trying to help out. I already saw somebody else mentioning Bazzite, so my next attempt will be to try that distribution.
I also noticed some 'Ubisoft is just shit' remarks, which might be true, but telling aspiring Linux gamers "well, you shouldn't play that part of your gaming library anyway" is simply off-putting and unhelpful. So thanks again for being constructive, that's what this community needs.
They absolutely didn't work. I didn't try removing the compatibility files afaik, but switching versions should basically have had the same result as that did trigger an first-time setup each time. The Ubisoft installer wasn't part of that install for as far as I could see, or failed for each proton version without any visible signs.
Understood, my bad for assuming! It sounds like you had some really bad luck, as I couldn't find users with the same issues on ProtonDB.
The problem here is mostly that the information offered on various locations differs and it is a question of trial and error to find out what works and what not, especially if you're still figuring out the gaming ecosystem.
I definitely agree that this is a big issue. ProtonDB is generally the best source, and besides that a lot of the best resources are unfortunately in difficult to search Discords. I would love to see a more organized resource for this kinda stuff. This issue extends beyond gaming on Linux, too. Looking up any Linux issues results in a ton of super outdated or just bad info.
It was Linux Mint, on an Nvidia Prime-based laptop.
Linux Mint is a great distro, but one that I personally recommend against for gaming. People recommending distros that aren't great for some use cases is also a problem with Linux gaming. Mint's stability means using outdated Nvidia drivers, something that I would absolutely try to avoid.
I already saw somebody else mentioning Bazzite, so my next attempt will be to try that distribution.
I do love Bazzite, it is easily the distro I recommend most to users trying Linux for gaming. The only warning I have is that if you use hardware that needs kernel drivers that aren't upstream, and they aren't packaged by Bazzite, you will probably run into trouble. I wanted to use a steering wheel that needed a custom driver and just had to give up on getting it working. The only solutions seemed to require a ton of knowledge about ublue and all the containerization technology they use. It's not my main distro, so I really didn't feel like dedicating the time to learning all that.
However, that's the only issue I've ever run into with Bazzite, and otherwise it is super user-friendly and Just Works™.
Huh... I just installed and played Anno 1800 on my Bazzite PC a month or two ago with no issue whatsoever. Played great.
Yeah, the secret here is Bazzite honestly. If a game will run on Linux, then it'll run with minimal setup on Bazzite.
I'm not just willing to never play another ubisoft game, I'm eager to. The games that don't work are typically exploitative investment vehicles moreso than games.
lmao I thought that i was the only sisyphus here
On the one hand, there absolutely are some places where Linux has so dramatically improved it's insane. Apps like Lutris have really blown me away, it's incredible how some popular multiplayer titles like World of Warcraft which used to take me hours to get running back in high school can now practically run out of the box.
On the other hand, one of the major gpu manufacturer's still has terrible driver support. Systems like Proton are imperfect, and seem to be depressing interest in making native Linux clients. Even though some things work out of the box, you can just as easily spend months failing to get a modern title running. To argue it's the best gaming system is just laughable. In some respects, it hasn't progressed at all in the last decade. When it gets to a point where users can run literally any game out of the box without any additional hassle, then it will be the best gaming system. Until then, this is a gross exaggeration at best.
But it's not like Windows is necessarily better! I've spent far longer trying to get some games to work on there than I do on Linux. I've spent more time on random driver issues in Windows than I do on Linux. I'm quite technical, and Windows has been far more frustrating in the bad cases - especially when talking about older games.
When it gets to a point where users can run literally any game out of the box without any additional hassle, then it will be the best gaming system. Until then, this is a gross exaggeration at best.
No, that's ridiculous. It will be the best gaming system when it can run more games out of the box without any additional hassle than Windows can. I'm not sure we've reached that point, but we're damn close - since I switched to Linux full-time, there's been a handful of games that I've had trouble getting to work, but all of them were niche (or modded) games. All the big titles have worked flawlessly, and better than on Windows (since all the additional crap like launchers, background services etc. are contained to when the game is running).
I've spent more time on random driver issues in Windows than I do on Linux.
I'd honestly be interesting to hear why this is, because it's the exact opposite for me. I can count on my hands the number of times I've experienced driver issues on Windows. Now, I typically only use stable updates, so I generally avoid the dreaded "new update breaking driver compatibility" or "new driver incompatible with old version" issues, but compared to working with Nvidia drivers on Linux? literal night and day difference. even trying to stick to the stable 535 drivers on Ubuntu 22.04 has been a huge nightmare, and many of my favorite titles are still unplayable after weeks of tinkering.
On my rog ally X no man's sky runs far better on bazzite than windows. On windows, it's unplayable
It's quite easy. Just don't buy NVIDIA...Consoles aren't using NVIDIA either and with the tariffs they make even less sense
My experience with Linux is that a lot of games tend to run better than windows these days
Not everyone wants to play AAA stuff
The main game I'm having problems with is an indie online title whose recent update peaked at less that 150k players. I don't care for AAA either, indie games also break on Linux.
You can definitely say "Oh just don't support Nvidia," but I bought my card nearly 10 years ago, and at the time it was the best I could afford. Upgrading to an AMD card would be great, but absolutely not happening any time soon in the current economic climate. If your response to that is "oh well get fucked ig," pretty hard to argue Linux as a universal gaming solution.
On top of all of this, it seems like everyone in this thread who's had success with gaming on Linux is saying run Bazzite, an OS I'd never heard of prior to reading responses here. That's cool if there's a distro that's actually solved a lot of gaming issues, but if I haven't heard of it, the average user is never going to find it. Maybe the title of this article should have been "Bazzite is now the best system for gaming."
I second your feelings on bazzite. Last year when I switched to Linux I spent a while researching the best distro for gaming and what I could find pointed to PopOS or Mint. Never even heard of bazzite.
Depends on what types of games you want to play. If you play a lot of competitive multiplayer games you're gonna have a bad time.
More people need to say that if you're going to want ring 0, I'm not going to give you my money.
...which is a completely valid point if you don't mind not playing those games. But if you do want to play them (for example because back when you got to love them, they didn't have this), you have yourself a dilemma.
Unless you want to play against a shitload of cheaters every day (ruining the fun whenever you have 30 minutes to wind down), your game should have a decent enough AC to detect when someone loads a cheat, including the lowest level. And guess who doesn't have a problem with 3rd party programs accessing ring 0.
So there you have it, you either stop playing all multiplayer games (not even just competitive ones!) entirely, or stick with Windows and all the awful things that come with it. I've been wanting to switch to Linux for the past 20 years, have been playing various multiplayer games over the past 2 decades, and it was always either the AC or just the sheer incompatibility (especially in the earlier years). There was even a time when people could happily cheat on Linux and get away with it in Counter-Strike: Source, because VAC simply didn't work on Linux.
So there you have it, you either stop playing all multiplayer games (not even just competitive ones!) entirely
There's plenty of multiplayer games that run just fine on linux. Including FPS games with perfectly functional anti cheat, it's just a select few which are unfortunately very popular that actively block linux. This is the part where you put your money where your mouth is and support the games that support the system you want to game on.
Drivers
Linux has no problem with them. Unlike only one manufacturer, that breaks all drivers without holy blessing since late Maxwell era.
I just installed bazzite on a spare drive this week, trying to get off win11.
So far generally pretty impressed but hardware support is eh for some lesser known devices. For example my headset (Lucidsound LS50) detects the dongle but can't find drivers for the dedicated wireless channel and Bluetooth is patchy at best.
It's friction points like that that make migration from a lifetime of windows challenging.
Hopefully I'll figure out a solution that doesn't involve replacing the headset!
If the pain is not enough to replace a headphone with a new one , you most likely aren't ready to change for linux right now. There will be more you need to learn, more which feels different and more which won't work first try or even requiere you to rethink or replace things.
Man if only Linux was open source and manufacturers could easily create drivers for it at any time...
Sure but being able to and having a manufacturer actually do it are very different!
Not sure. Usually having BlueZ(Linux bluetooth audio stack) and glue in audio server or bluez-alsa should be enough.
As a happy and satisfied Linux gamer I disagree.
Linux is the best OS overall, at least for me, but not the best for gaming for most people. Not yet.
Emulators Xenia (xbox 360 emulator) was not mentioned, because it is Windows only. There is no Xbox 360 emulator for Linux.
Game compatibility 80% are platinum or gold on ProtonDB https://www.protondb.com/
This is impressive, but you can't claim that a system that can't play up to 20% of game titles is better. Not to mention that some of the other titles might need some tinkering as well.
Conclusion Linux gaming is now a great and viable option for most people. But it still isn't better than Windows if you don't care about bloatware, security or privacy, and just use your machine exclusively for gaming.
Bonus: Linux is free, so you could maybe also get slightly better hardware by selecting it over Windows.
Well, there are games you can't play on current Windows. Like I couldn't get Fahrenheit work on it at all. On Linux it worked first try no modifications.
Probably not as many as 20% of games, though.
The author lost me when they showed the terminal command to install Nvidia drivers on Debian. Yes, it's one sentence. That's still extremely daunting to the vast majority of computer users. It undermines the author's own thesis.
Linux is a better gaming OS for some (myself included) but there is still a small learning curve. It's nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be, but it's not nothing.
I'd have softened the title and focused on the ways Linux shines as a gaming OS: compatibility with older games (1990-2010 in my experience) that dont work on modern Windows, the ability to get more performace out of older hardware, consistent behavior, and a much more pleasant desktop experience.
Windows is a better choice for many people, but Linux is just as good for many and a better choice for some.
Lots of people comment on this subject pointing out that some games don't run on Linux, and conclude that Linux is still behind Windows. This fails to recognize a distinct advantage that Linux has: More efficient use of hardware.
If your system doesn't have an especially fast SSD or lots of RAM, you might find that Linux gives a better gaming experience. It can often do more with less.
Edit to add: When I consider the fact that we're mostly talking about games designed and built just for Windows, I find this really damn impressive. And it just keeps getting better.
The counter argument is that some games don't run on Windows anymore either. All the software, all the time is the classic disingenuous argument that is always levied against Linux. It has to do something that not even windows does anymore. Then people ignore the fact that Linux sometimes offer greater compatibility with old games than windows itself.
Not really. Linux is all about openness and choice, but going with Linux as the only OS will significantly limit what you can play. As a modder, I'm against EAC and and the like as much as the next person here, but ideally I want to be able to play anything that looks appealing, not have to skip games for no reason other than their anti-cheat solutions not being compatible with Linux. I agree that we shouldn't support those practices, but it's one thing to willingly boycott something and another is to not have that agency at all.
Some anticheat work perfectly fine in some games
I believe it’s largely to do with devs that want to limit themselves to a sole demographic
Well...it has the opportunity to be. More native integration and/or wine fixes for certain issues, and anti-cheat being allowed would definitely put it on track to be there.