linux gaming is basically there at this point proton can run most games flawlessly unless you wanna play games with hyper aggressive drm or anticheat it mostly “just works”
As a linux noob, I’d say it 90% there. I got a new computer recently, decided to only install linux to see if I could dump windows entirely, expecting to dualboot eventually. The only problems I’ve had so far are Curseforge, MC realms, and One Shot. I’ve got Modded Skyrim and modded Hollow Knight working, I’m incredibly happy with linux gaming.
As Phuntis said, curseforge is easily solved with prism launcher. They have a nice GUI to browse modpacks and set up everything automatically. For mods that don’t allow direct downloads over the API, they give you a browser link you can open and automatically pull the downloaded files from your download folder.
The launcher also has integration into modrinth and a bunch of other useful features. IMO the better launcher compared to the official one, even if you don’t play modded.
yeah I’m also quite a noob with linux I’ve only been using it for about a year and also dual boot my pc for the few games I have to for me it’s actually bethesda games mostly due to no mod managers on linux and I know there’s the workaround for MO2 which is what I use anyway but fomods didn’t work :/ I’m also actually playing through hollow knight on my deck at the moment though vanilla and that’s been working flawlessly as for curseforge dunno what you’re modding but if it’s mc I used prism launcher and that worked flawlessly way better than curseforge on even windows with that being full of bloat
Prism is life, I agree. My friends don’t, so I need a curseforge pack to distribute server updates with. The stupid part is curseforge has a working linux version, but it only does WoW.
The other one is playing on a realm. The desktop solution is supposed to be the Win10 version, but screw that. I’d love to see a mod that lets java join bedrock servers, but they all run the other way. The solution is running the android version with a third-party launcher.
ah haven’t tried vr too expensive for me and not enough space really wanna try it in future though alyx and beat saber look really cool hopefully that’ll improve soon with all the rumours of valves deckard headset and them dedicating so much to linux I mean deckard will probably still be tethered to a pc so it’s not a guarantee since most people will be on windows then but maybe it’ll come with improvements to vr on linux
Man, I just tried for a few weeks and just had no luck on the games I was trying. It maybe is there for most people, but I still ended up in the “google for commands that might resolve these weird crashes / errors” and building random packages from source. However, I tried on a gaming laptop, which have notoriously had worse support than standard discrete cards. I wonder if my experience would have been different with a standard PC. I also recognize that Steam is the answer for a lot of people, but I just don’t have that many Steam games.
I was on Mint and primarily using Lutris, but tried many different WINE runners. I would have tried Ubuntu, which I think is a little closer to upstream updates, but I only had a 4gb USB stick to install from. For games, I tried Horizon: Zero Dawn (which I finally got to open, but it was running 0-3 FPS), Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and Baldur’s Gate II (which seemed to work). I’m not giving up forever, my next gaming tower will likely run linux of some type. I do lots of self-hosting on a Ubuntu PC, so I’m pro-Linux. Just ran out of patience with the laptop!
Interesting. Got Horizon Zero Dawn to work out of the box myself but I’m using Garuda. Any chance you’re using an nVidia GPU? They tend to be a lot more fussy with Linux than AMD
Yep, sure enough nVidia 1650 laptop GPU. I tried the proprietary drivers, forced so many versions of VKD3D and DXVK to try for better performance. Oh well, my next box will have an AMD GPU.
In 2016 you had 2 or 3 AAA games releasing Linux native versions. Now you are lucky if you get a working proton version. Linux has moved backwards. Honestly I think people tried it and hit a lot of problems with it then left. 2016 was the year of the Linux desktop but it failed to capture the market.
One of the biggest problems with Linux is simply additional hard drives. If you fill up your / drive you are basically screwed of you don’t know how to use the command line. Even the easiest Linux distros suffer from this problem. With windows I just reinstall programs to a different drive. With Linux you have to learn about symlinks, create then in the right spot and even then it doesn’t help unless you have a bigger drive. Alternatively you can learn about lvm and combine your drives in to one large monolith but this is even far more work for what’s it’s in Linux literally at worst a 10 minute fix and 0 second if you just install stuff to the right drives.
Genuinely no idea how Linux gaming could be better. I’ve been playing on desktop and Steam Deck for years, both “flat” games and VR games and it just works. Sure I don’t try literally everything but with ProtonDB I’m confident it will work, or not, and decide accordingly. Obviously not all games work on Linux but definitely more quality games that I have time for. For me it just works, I spend at least 99% of my time gaming on Linux actually gaming, in fact I can’t even remember when is the last time I tinkered. I don’t even have problems with GPU drivers despite tinkering with containers with machine learning. I’m not trying to say nobody has problems or dismiss problems people do have, just sharing my experience.
I think this is overselling it a little. I still run into issues with Proton from time to time that require sigkilling it and its children, and some games (especially EA titles) are finnicky and can take a few tries to launch properly.
As for VR, SteamVR on Linux outright sucks. It virtually never works the first time I launch it and requires some combination of reconnecting hardware and restarting software and the computer, and it’s plagued with bugs (most recently the UI rendering upside down in the new beta).
Don’t get me wrong, Linux has been my primary platform for some 5 years and my only one for the last few and I’d never dream of going back to Windows, and gaming on Linux has progressed unbelievably in the time I’ve been daily-driving it. But it still isn’t totally painless and there’s definitely more room for improvement in the coming years.
Well, Elden Ring had a bug in it that killed performance, Proton was able to fix it without touching the game itself and resulted in Linux performance being markedly better.
Then with Starfield it performs about 30% faster than windows consistently.
I can force AMD FSR on any game (and I have an Nvidia card) to get a significant performance boost with no visually detectable loss in quality.
It’s 12,000 and those are rated as “playable”. The majority of games on Steam would be playable out of the box, but Valve is being cautious with their verified program.
ProtonDB has over 18,000 user submissions for playable games.
There are many games in my library that aren’t listed as Steam Deck verified or even on ProtonDB and they just work.
Windows put a full page ad for windows 11 before my computer started, I’m never upgrading. Hope to God Linux gaming gets better by 2025
linux gaming is basically there at this point proton can run most games flawlessly unless you wanna play games with hyper aggressive drm or anticheat it mostly “just works”
As a linux noob, I’d say it 90% there. I got a new computer recently, decided to only install linux to see if I could dump windows entirely, expecting to dualboot eventually. The only problems I’ve had so far are Curseforge, MC realms, and One Shot. I’ve got Modded Skyrim and modded Hollow Knight working, I’m incredibly happy with linux gaming.
As Phuntis said, curseforge is easily solved with prism launcher. They have a nice GUI to browse modpacks and set up everything automatically. For mods that don’t allow direct downloads over the API, they give you a browser link you can open and automatically pull the downloaded files from your download folder.
The launcher also has integration into modrinth and a bunch of other useful features. IMO the better launcher compared to the official one, even if you don’t play modded.
yeah I’m also quite a noob with linux I’ve only been using it for about a year and also dual boot my pc for the few games I have to for me it’s actually bethesda games mostly due to no mod managers on linux and I know there’s the workaround for MO2 which is what I use anyway but fomods didn’t work :/ I’m also actually playing through hollow knight on my deck at the moment though vanilla and that’s been working flawlessly as for curseforge dunno what you’re modding but if it’s mc I used prism launcher and that worked flawlessly way better than curseforge on even windows with that being full of bloat
Prism is life, I agree. My friends don’t, so I need a curseforge pack to distribute server updates with. The stupid part is curseforge has a working linux version, but it only does WoW.
The other one is playing on a realm. The desktop solution is supposed to be the Win10 version, but screw that. I’d love to see a mod that lets java join bedrock servers, but they all run the other way. The solution is running the android version with a third-party launcher.
I still have many issues regarding VR games. Mostly related to the view being delayed from what I am actually doing, making me nauseous.
For me, that’s one of the biggest issues holding me back from switching. I don’t want to bother to dual-boot OSes just for a few VR.
ah haven’t tried vr too expensive for me and not enough space really wanna try it in future though alyx and beat saber look really cool hopefully that’ll improve soon with all the rumours of valves deckard headset and them dedicating so much to linux I mean deckard will probably still be tethered to a pc so it’s not a guarantee since most people will be on windows then but maybe it’ll come with improvements to vr on linux
Man, I just tried for a few weeks and just had no luck on the games I was trying. It maybe is there for most people, but I still ended up in the “google for commands that might resolve these weird crashes / errors” and building random packages from source. However, I tried on a gaming laptop, which have notoriously had worse support than standard discrete cards. I wonder if my experience would have been different with a standard PC. I also recognize that Steam is the answer for a lot of people, but I just don’t have that many Steam games.
What games/distro?
I was on Mint and primarily using Lutris, but tried many different WINE runners. I would have tried Ubuntu, which I think is a little closer to upstream updates, but I only had a 4gb USB stick to install from. For games, I tried Horizon: Zero Dawn (which I finally got to open, but it was running 0-3 FPS), Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and Baldur’s Gate II (which seemed to work). I’m not giving up forever, my next gaming tower will likely run linux of some type. I do lots of self-hosting on a Ubuntu PC, so I’m pro-Linux. Just ran out of patience with the laptop!
Interesting. Got Horizon Zero Dawn to work out of the box myself but I’m using Garuda. Any chance you’re using an nVidia GPU? They tend to be a lot more fussy with Linux than AMD
Yep, sure enough nVidia 1650 laptop GPU. I tried the proprietary drivers, forced so many versions of VKD3D and DXVK to try for better performance. Oh well, my next box will have an AMD GPU.
It needs a larger user base before companies will make the native version for it
By not switching you play in to a self fulfilling prophecy
In 2016 you had 2 or 3 AAA games releasing Linux native versions. Now you are lucky if you get a working proton version. Linux has moved backwards. Honestly I think people tried it and hit a lot of problems with it then left. 2016 was the year of the Linux desktop but it failed to capture the market.
One of the biggest problems with Linux is simply additional hard drives. If you fill up your / drive you are basically screwed of you don’t know how to use the command line. Even the easiest Linux distros suffer from this problem. With windows I just reinstall programs to a different drive. With Linux you have to learn about symlinks, create then in the right spot and even then it doesn’t help unless you have a bigger drive. Alternatively you can learn about lvm and combine your drives in to one large monolith but this is even far more work for what’s it’s in Linux literally at worst a 10 minute fix and 0 second if you just install stuff to the right drives.
Genuinely no idea how Linux gaming could be better. I’ve been playing on desktop and Steam Deck for years, both “flat” games and VR games and it just works. Sure I don’t try literally everything but with ProtonDB I’m confident it will work, or not, and decide accordingly. Obviously not all games work on Linux but definitely more quality games that I have time for. For me it just works, I spend at least 99% of my time gaming on Linux actually gaming, in fact I can’t even remember when is the last time I tinkered. I don’t even have problems with GPU drivers despite tinkering with containers with machine learning. I’m not trying to say nobody has problems or dismiss problems people do have, just sharing my experience.
I think this is overselling it a little. I still run into issues with Proton from time to time that require sigkilling it and its children, and some games (especially EA titles) are finnicky and can take a few tries to launch properly.
As for VR, SteamVR on Linux outright sucks. It virtually never works the first time I launch it and requires some combination of reconnecting hardware and restarting software and the computer, and it’s plagued with bugs (most recently the UI rendering upside down in the new beta).
Don’t get me wrong, Linux has been my primary platform for some 5 years and my only one for the last few and I’d never dream of going back to Windows, and gaming on Linux has progressed unbelievably in the time I’ve been daily-driving it. But it still isn’t totally painless and there’s definitely more room for improvement in the coming years.
I switched back in 2019. It was pretty good then and it’s almost seamless now. Hell EAC works now and I can play Squad without any hiccups
I am glad squad works, haha
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Linux gaming is even better than Windows in many ways now
How so?
Well, Elden Ring had a bug in it that killed performance, Proton was able to fix it without touching the game itself and resulted in Linux performance being markedly better.
Then with Starfield it performs about 30% faster than windows consistently.
I can force AMD FSR on any game (and I have an Nvidia card) to get a significant performance boost with no visually detectable loss in quality.
The list goes on.
My game still does not support proton. Fuck that game.
Linux is still only compatible with 10000 games on Steams 70000 games store.
Windows is compatible with all of em.
It’s 12,000 and those are rated as “playable”. The majority of games on Steam would be playable out of the box, but Valve is being cautious with their verified program.
ProtonDB has over 18,000 user submissions for playable games.
There are many games in my library that aren’t listed as Steam Deck verified or even on ProtonDB and they just work.
I hope gaming on GNU/Linux were bad, so I wouldn’t have wasted hours of my life :')