That's cool games thar require anti cheat measures or have sports are generally speaking games I'm not interested in as a rule.
"We need kernel access to prevent cheaters from ruining our game" is the dating equivalent to a guy asking for your phone password on the first date.
It's not even that. I have zero interest in multilayer games even less so "seasonal" games. Basically all the stuff AAA says is dead I like and all the stuff they say I should like I dislike
The season nomenclature is fucking stupid and I hate it. If a game makes its DLC or quarterly updates and calls them "Seasons" I am revolted.
I will say that in general I also agree, but there are games where I have been completely okay with it, like DRG. But those updates are always free and really just define (formerly) time period in which a long-term event is contained within. I do love that the latest season is really more of a chapter than a season since you can pick and choose whenever you want to jump into whichever season you want to play and progress through. Only seasonal events have time constraints now.
This is particularly nice since my DRG group has moved to playing Grounded instead, with the occasional DRG night and don't want to feel tethered to a release schedule.
Aren't most seasonal content updates in other games free? The way I tend to see it is, they put out new gameplay content to attract attention, then entice people to pick up related cosmetic/extra items during the event.
More like asking for access to your email and keys and phone pin code, or (if people have it) their password wallet, to make sure you aren't hooking up with other guys on the side.
Just as crazy
I love my Steamdeck so much. Been like 2 years now? still rocking every game I want to play.
Playing through ZenlessZoneZero rn which isn't even officially supported in any extent and runs flawlessly! Also it's a real computer that you can do real work on.
My Steam Deck has been awesome, money very well spent.
And Valve has made a good chunk of money off me since buying it too lol. I keep getting games specifically for the Deck.
I bought like 200 games since I had mine though mostly indie and actually played a lot of them! I spend quite a bit of time traveling and it's awesome to play some strategy with the trackpad - the trip just flies by!
I upgraded my PC and now I barely touch my steam deck. The money spent on it is still VERY worth it. Even if I never touched it again, I use it when traveling, I would still be unbelievably satisfied with my purchase.
In a similar boat. However I now have games strictly for the Deck and games strictly for the Desktop.
I’d use a Steamdeck mini if was available. The current size for my needs makes me classify it as a non-portable. Hope the next version they have a smaller variant along with the larger one.
Have you been able to make any tweaks to the settings or something that makes the transition from gaming mode to desktop mode more reliable? I particularly have issues when I go from docked to undocked. The resolution gets borked randomly and other silliness like that
Resolution scale, not resolution. On my monitor I run a 4k resolution with a 125% resolution scale. When I undock the resolution scale stays at 125% so everything looks too large on the decks display.
Same. I was very impressed by the games that work despite being unsupported. Heck, I’ve got Rainbow Six: Vegas working on it with gamepad support. I couldn’t even do that in Windows.
Linux is amazing for games thar don't have anti-cheat and I don't play those games. Saying that Linux gaming isn't ready is just stupid at this point. And for emulation it might be better than Windows.
wine's backwards compatibility is argued to be better than windows
but yeah. valve sells a linux console ffs
Personally haven't encountered a game that wouldn't run, so as far as I'm concerned it runs anything. I'm not going to shed any tears over Fortnite.
Weirdly enough, the only game I tried to play that didn't run was this random Indy game. Didn't even have fancy graphics, it was one step up from macromedia flash games
The AAA games I've played are fine on Linux. Baulders Gate, No Mans Sky, Fallout 76, Cyberpunk 2077, Crusader Kings III.
Fun fact, the Steam Deck discord has subcommunities designed for indie developers to group with Deck-owning volunteers; since not all indie devs own a Steam Deck, they can take a look at preview builds and inform the devs about any particular issues.
It's just too bad that Riot seems so inherently against supporting Linux. I still enjoy playing ARAMs for watching YouTube on the side and the occasional Val session. Obviously for Val I can just boot over but I do play league about daily.
Inb4 "just don't play league, it's bad anyway" yeah thanks, solid solution
The good thing about Valorant is you can just play (the better) Counter Strike instead and it doesn't try to install a rootkit. I guess for LoL you could play one of the alternatives too, but I don't know if any if them are good. They aren't my thing.
Val was one of the reasons I still dual boot Win10 (plus VR gaming), but now that it released on PS5, I'd rather just relearn the game for controller.
I've been experimenting recently and while most games run fine and VRR & HDR & Multimonitor somewhat work after some experimenting & tweaks I still have problems with a few games.
Some recent examples would be Noita stuttering and running in slow motion. Getting anything from Ubisoft running (when it does run it runs great though). And modding is very hit & miss.
If Dual Boot with windows (especially if running Bitlocker) wasn't such a PITA I would likely use Linux as my main OS.
The "quit having fun" meme is ironically becoming as cringey as the thing it is originally complaining about.
You will help the community more by telling non-Linux people why Linux gaming is better, and this meme is doing the exact opposite of it -- "oh Linux can't play some games, yada yada. But we are still better! Switch over!" -- like what's the logic of it?
What's the purpose of this meme other than circlejerking?
Disclamer: I am a Linux user myself, started with Debian and is now using Arch Linux.
I will share some advantages I experienced in Linux gaming:
Alt-tabbing old fullscreened games won't mess with my monitor.
The compatibility of Wine when it comes to some older games is wild. SimCity 4 actually crashed less when I played it on Linux.
Better performance across the board. Granted it's just a mere 5% difference but I will take it, why not.
Linux's main selling point has become "It's not Windows". That was a boring line five years ago, but Microsoft has eagerly been trying to invent new ways to make their flagship OS worse and worse.
I have absolutely no problem gaming on Linux. I do have a problem with Rusty's Retirement not letting me use my desktop while the game runs though. Nothing I can do about that one.
This meme is a cringe within cringe. The original situation is unbearable and the meme itself too. Quit laughing.
i think it's a joke about how much Linux users talk about Linux to people who don't care but reversed.
I've met enough Gamers(tm) at lan parties back in the day that I know this sort of unsolicited "advice" is realistic.
edit: People are acting like this isn't realistic. I use to get comments like this because I was a Mac first gamer on my duel boot Mac Pro. Gamers are incredibility tribalistic. Just look at the "console wars" bs.
Except a lot of anti cheat now supports Linux. Destiny 2 doesn't run on Linux only because Bungie refuses to allow it, their AC supports Linux just fine now
there is also other games that dont run on linux
Roblox (sober works which is a workaround),Fortnite (Tim Sweeney hates linux from what i heard),and more
But the steam deck really disproves the notion that Linux can't run these games. The companies that make them choose not to support Linux, and in that way its not really Linux's fault that the games don't work.
Exactly this, the community has proven it will put the effort to make it work, and a lot of things that don't still are because the companies resist it intentionally
Yeah and thats a good argument for not supporting Linux. It doesn't make sense to support a platform that you don't have any players on.
I'm hopeful that Valve will keep improving the Linux gaming experience, and then we will hit critical mass and a lot of gamers will be demanding Linux support.
Probably not, but one can hope :)
Are there people telling linux folks to stop enjoying linux gaming...? I say ask as a linux person
I doubt that literally is a significant concern.
When I can't join others is when I hear confusion as to why I use GNU+Linux, and disappointment when I refuse to use Windows to play a certain game.
disappointment when I refuse to use Windows to play a certain game.
Been there. They coolly suggested "why don't you dual boot?".
Windows literally cannot be run on my CPU architecture.
What CPU architecture are you running? Windows supports x86 and ARM.
RISC-V surely can’t run any games?
https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Games_Compatibility
But lately just a mix of DS emulation, Arx Libertatis and Minetest. Boring maybe, but it's what brings me joy.
I have a buddy who kept asking me to install windows in order to play one of those rootkit games. Had to disappoint him every time. No fucking way am I doing that. Fuck that.
I'm trying to cut back on proprietary software until I'm only using free software but I make a small exception for some games (usually bought by friends, or to play with them).
Nah. It's just projection. Even though I use Linux myself, it's nearly always the other way around with the lecturer trying to tell Windows users to switch to Linux while the average gamers are just happily gaming away on what works for them.
Hell, you could take many of the comments in this post and turn them into things the guy on the left is saying while Windows gamers are having fun.
Maybe I'm vain, but I posted a post a couple days ago celebrating my success with Linux gaming. So many games are like here.
You know it's not ready for VR yet. yeah I played VR for about a month 4 years ago and that was enough.
You can't play games with anti cheat personally I don't play many of those, but obviously if you do that will play into your decision
Anyway, people are always negative about everything, especially against things other people like
The SteamDeck subreddit is full of Windows shilling.
The Finals subreddit during beta was full of complaints about SteamDeck users asking for them to allow Proton.
There's def a vocal minority out there that will die on the Windows horse, infected with rootkits and all.
The SteamDeck subreddit is full of Windows shilling.
No. I visit there frequently, 1 in maybe 50 posts are about Steam Deck running windows.
I know this won't work for everyone, but I just quit playing games that don't work or even from publishers that do shitty things and there's still plenty of games out there. There's a lot of shovelware out there, but there's also a lot of good stuff out there.
I think it's worth advocating for quitting shitty games, though.
Out of many friends I've had who (used to) frequent games like PUBG, Dota 2, League of Legends, Valorant, Overwatch, etc., most were just having a bad time, all the time. Granted, some of these work on Linux, but the point is, those of my friends that still play Overwatch ("2", lol) just seem to be happier and more functional when they have to quit for some period of time.
I've been having a much better time with my life once I went for the good old enjoyment rather than chasing rank or wins or skill, finally making time to play amazing single-player titles again or just screwing around in online games.
And curiously enough, the online games I actually want to play and have fun doing so are the ones that work on Linux, while the rest thankfully refuses!
The pervasive idea that games must necessarily be about conflict, competition and overcoming enemies.
It took me too long to realize that I basically just want a Star trek holodeck experience.
Well, conflict is, pretty much, the backbone of any story, narrative, or motive. Has been for long.
Still, I'm not sure it's all that relevant and necessary for a video game, I agree. Some of them just let me do things I can't in real life, like building my stupid base on different planets and moons, or transforming the landscape for the sake of it.
This is the way. If we don't stop buying those games the publishers will never recognize how shittu they are.
Agreed, tried linux 6 months back, decided it wasn't worth my time, will try another distro in another 6 months.
And this is from someone who installed and used mint through junior high.
Average Linux user > average windows user.
Plus Linux doesn't track you (depending on distro, I suppose.)
But I kid. People should use whatever the fuck they want.
Linux is great, everyone should use it! No, not you, we don’t have the software you want to use like windows. Why doesn’t everyone use Linux? It’s great!
If everyone used Linux it would be the exact same user base as windows.
I've been gaming on Linux exclusively since 2016.
DXVK was an amazing improvement. Steam play makes everything so much easier. And the Steamdeck was a revelation.
I don't like to play games with other people anyways so Anti-Cheat is no issue for me.
Anti-cheat is just a sign that this game is designed to be ruined for you by other players.
That's one of the weirder ways I've seen to say "I don't enjoy competitive games and everyone who does is stupid."
If that's how you prefer to think of it I'll let you have it.
I am legitimately not interested in playing PvP games against strangers on the internet because inevitably someone somewhere will have taken the game way too fucking seriously and is basically just griefing people. They use aim bots when they can get away with it. A game that comes with anti-cheat is basically an admission that this game has that glaring flaw and that someone somewhere is getting off on ruining pubs or casual for everyone else.
I've switched for over a month now and did had problems with 2 games out of the 6 I tried so far (all of which were both games installed via Lutris and I found solutions to fix them both).
Funnily enough one of the games I got via Steam which did not work before in Windows now works in Linux. Further, I was running Windows 7 (yeah, I know it was a bad idea security wise), so there are AAA games whose minimum Windows version is 10 which I now can play in Linux that I couldn't before in the Windows I was using.
All in all it has been great and I have no intention whatsoever to go back to Windows.
Even if there are games that won't work in Linux, there are so many good games out there that can entertain me for hundreds of hours that I won't miss the handful I cannot get to run in Linux.
I have a couple games that were Windows 98 and Windows XP games that don’t work on Windows 10/11, but work just fine on Linux. It’s funny that Linux is sometimes better at running Windows games than Windows is.
Wine and Proton manage to be better at both forward and backward compatibility with Windows than actual Windows.
I haven't had any problems running my Steam library under Linux Mint. Older games, like Deus Ex and Giants: Citizen Kabuto I can run directly in Wine.
If I could get Vortex Mod Manager working properly under Linux, I wouldn't need Windows at all.
Nexus is running Linux tests for their new mod manager RIGHT NOW. I believe its still limited to Stardew Valley for now while in alpha, but they're making strides here! https://nexus-mods.github.io/NexusMods.App/users/GettingStarted/
You can!
Add Steamtinkerlaunch to your steam proton list with protonup‐qt Then, select it under the force compatibility menu. From there, just click the run vortex mod manager button.
You can also run steamtinkerlaunch standalone, which is what I did for cyberpunk2077, but I feel like I did more manual file moving than I had to.
Edit: can't spell today
I dunno. I'll probably get hate for this, but it's not ready. It's better. But Linux isn't a good replacement for Windows yet. I love Linux. Love the customization, the *NIX filesystem makes sense, and it's beautiful. Also no ads in my start menu!
I want to use Linux regularly, and I tried last week. It failed. Kind of miserably.
I need to pick a distro. Mint and Pop_OS were consensus recommendations.
Try mint: Installing dual boot alongside windows was beautiful. But no internet connection, says cable is unplugged (it's not). Realize I downloaded an earlier version (20). Get the most recent version, and problem resolved. It's kind of odd to me that even a pretty recent version wouldn't support my adapter, but whatever. I tried to update and install Nvidia drivers: update fails because dependencies were not installed. Okay.... Why not prompt me to install them? Why make me apt-get all the dependencies by hand? I don't expect handholding, but some things should be. If I NEED something as a pre-req for what I'm trying to do, queue it up!
Fuck it. Let me try Pop_OS, instead - that has some gaming chops, right? Dual boot was more challenging to stand up, but it all worked. Nice. Fire up game: get ~20 fps drop compared to windows (108 from 130) with the same settings. I don't want to troubleshoot the performance hit. It should just work. I want a tool not a project.
Never mind if you want HDR support. That seems to vary by distro. Variable refresh rate also seemed to be spotty from what I read in gaming distro recommendations. ALSO, do you need UEFI support? RIP. Enjoy toggling that on and off when you have to jump back and forth between Windows and Linux. Nvidia driver support I chalk up to those arseholes only now starting to open source some things.
And I don't care that you were able to run everything fine. You had a flawless experience: great. Love that for you. I didn't. I'm not a computer novice - I know to Google shit and how to implement it. I remember trying to fuck around with Ubuntu back in 2002.
I'm gonna continue trying to stand up Linux for everyday use because I love Linux and I want to use it, but it's pretty clear that even as someone that wants to use Linux. I've been trying to switch to Linux every few years for decades. It's still far short of being ready for average users.
Hey! Sorry you had these bad experiences.
My setup is on Debian testing
and is documented on this blog post: https://blog.c10l.cc/09122023-debian-gaming
I don’t have an Nvidia card but other than that, this should give you a head start, including virtual surround on headphones if that’s your thing!
I promise it’s not a lot of work and I tried to make it all easy to follow (feedback welcome though!).
If you decide to give it a go, let me know how it went!
This comment is tough because in its wrongness, it reveals a greater problem with Linux gaming. I think you’re right that it’s probably not ready outside of SteamOS. But it’s not correct to say it’s not ready in general. They are several distros that have all the latest features for modern gaming, the issue is you weren’t recommended even one of them. Pop_OS is currently outdated since they are working on their new desktop and mint is on the Ubuntu LTS version meaning they are both significantly behind. The community needs to take that into account when recommending things. That’s the reason I only recommend Bazzite. Cause it’s the closest to a SteamOS experience.
I will check out Bazzite over the weekend. Someone told me about Pop OS but this seems less of a tinkering hassle
Wrong? Is this about me using the word wrongness? In retrospect it was poor word choice but I did not mean to offend. I just meant that the situation is more complicated than what OP may have initially thought. You know what this explains the downvotes.
I appreciate your comment! I'll take a look at Bazzite. How does it do with everyday tasks? Any other distros you'd recommend?
If what I said was so wrong, I feel even more like there's a fragmentation issue with Linux (or something). This is especially true if some of the most well known distros have issues with gaming. It only fuels my urge to make a table of features for each distro and then evaluate pros and cons of what distro has what. But distro choice shouldn't matter outside of UI, pre-installed programs, and maybe package management.
I was just super bummed that I didn't have one of the perfect experiences that I had seen so many people talking about lately.
Honestly Bazzite does great with pretty much everything I've had it do. Some things were difficult in the beginning (I've been on it since nearly the beginnimg), but these days everything just works. It's really matured. I'd also like to make an honorable mention for VanillaOS which would be my second pick for general stuff and my number one for development and sysadmin.
Distro choice really shouldn't matter but unfortunately not all systems are created equal. There's tradeoffs to everything. What you get by having the latest features you sacrifice in compatibility with older hardware. The stability benefits you get from waiting update packages may cause you to miss out on needed performances improvements or bug fixes. Tradeoffs to everything. Immutable distros handle most of those problems fairly elegantly, but lose out somewhat when it comes to ease of package installation.
I hope in the future you get to have a perfect experience friend.
Shouldn't Arch be the recommended gaming distro? Not because any focus on gaming but because it is the distro SteeamOS is based on?
Maybe, but as someone who spent a summer school breaks worth of time in 2002 getting drivers for a Nvidia GeForce 2 card to run under Mandrake (oh the kernel panics...) to play counter-strike 1.X on wine... It's come a long fucking way.
I use Debian for everyday work and on my private machine nowadays and struggle with the shitty experience of windows when helping someone out now and then. Granted, I don't have much time for games these days, and often fire up the PS for that, but I feel experience can vary as long as you know what you want and manage expectations.
To be fair there still is a lot of tinkering involved to get gaming on Linux working properly (unless you're on the steamdeck, but even them you'll have to tinker for anything that's not verified). Switching proton runners, changing launch options, fighting updates. It's definitely more than most people are willing to deal with. For me personally, I've had to stop updating my video drivers because Nvidia 555 causes all Proton games to crash for me.
I enjoy the experience of tinkering and troubleshooting, so I'm okay with all that, but I completely understand why most people wouldn't want to use Linux for gaming.
I honestly cant remember the last time I bought a game and it didnt just work with no tinkering on proton. Though I am on AMD not Nvidia which makes things a lot easier.
Mostly that for me on Nvidia (proprietary drivers), although 555 broke my 2nd DVI-D monitor (which is admittedly old, but I don't have any reasons to replace the little guy).
Nevertheless, I'm very set on getting an AMD GPU whenever I have to replace my GTX 1080 from 2017.
Speed. Unfortunately (at least the last time I looked into it) NVENC still beats the socks off of VAAPI in render times and I'm sure Nvidia likes it that way.
I guess this could also be based on the distro you use as well as your graphics card. For me, I use EndeavourOS, which is very close to base arch, so I had to do some extra setup to get proton working on it. For some reason, Proton refused to work on the Arch repo's Steam package, so I had to use the flatpak version instead
Pure Arch here, no issues with Proton whatsoever.
Any chance this could have been related to EndeavourOS in any way? Like with something pre-installed?
I'm just being curious and throwing ideas here.
The only thing really preinstalled is basic stuff like desktop environments and a few tools to help with updates and manage the system (eos-update, etc). Even almost all the package repositories are the ones maintained by arch.
I'm on EndeavourOS with an Nvidia gpu. I've not had to do anything extra for the the version of proton that comes with steam to work besides install the os with the Nvidia proprietary drivers. And then running eos-update --aur --nvidia
I did notice that I got a lot of screen tearing if using Wayland and that more recent versions of proton didn't work if either Force Composition Pipeline
or Force Full Composition Pipeline
were enabled; which should have fixed the screentearing so I just use x11 for now.
There are some things I did to make my experience better however. Like installing an proton-ge. Here is a list of what I installed.
nvidia-dkms
nvidia-settings
libva-nvidia-driver # required by vlc to play mkv files with nvidia gpu
nvidia-tweaks # https://github.com/ventureoo/nvidia-tweaks
lib32-nvidia-utils
gamemode
proton-ge-custom-bin
lib32-libudev0-shim # fixes Steam runtime's super old 32 bit version of libnm
lib32-libnm # required if using systemd 253.5-2 or newer
I would also install nvidia-dracut-hook
if you are using both Nvidia and dracut. Dracut is the default on recent versions on endeavorOS.
For proton ge, I also added myself to the games group with
sudo usermod $USER -a -G games
I also like to prepend the following to my games launch options in steam
gamemoderun PROTON\_CONFIG=dxr11,dxr PROTON\_ENABLE\_NVAPI=1 PROTON\_HIDE\_NVIDIA\_GPU=0 VK\_ICD\_FILENAMES=/usr/share/vulkan/icd.d/nvidia\_icd.json VKD3D\_CONFIG=dxr11,dxr VKD3D\_DISABLE\_EXTENSIONS=VK\_KHR\_present\_id,VK\_KHR\_present\_wait VKD3D\_FEATURE\_LEVEL=12\_1 VKD3D\_SHADER\_MODEL=6\_6
And I set proton-ge as my default proton version on the steam options.
Ive had a handfull of games that work on steam deck but had to tinker on my laptop. Cyberpunk would crash on the first splash screen and stormworks would only run on my igpu and not dedicated. But also im also using nvidia.
I made the same statement you did a while ago about having to tweak stuff to get it to work. I just don't have the time and patience to do it, and I got voted down for saying Linux isn't for me. I work tech, the last thing I want to do when I get home is mess with more settings and drivers etc.
The Linux and steamdeck forums EVERYWHERE constantly make apologies and excuses for having to tweak things to get gaming to work.
I just want Linux to be an out of the box great gaming experience, and I would sing to the rafters it's praise. It just isn't, and unless developers make their stuff work for 3-5% of an install base, I just don't see it happening. I want it to, I really do, but it's just not for the masses.
Linux isn't for the masses because it was never meant to be and still isn't made to be. You have to install it rather then it being installed by default and most Linux software targets power users who were disappointed by Windows.
Yup. I know exactly what you mean. I bought Nobody Wants to Die, which is rated platinum on protondb, and it just crashes within 1 second of startup for me. 3h of fucking around with proton versions, launch arguments, even tried lutris, nothing. The only error I could see took me to a stackoverflow thread about vga to dvi adapter issues and the fix was not relevant. My protontricks is apparently also broken which I have no idea why or when it broke.
I got it refunded, it is what it is. I'll look into fixing my protontricks when I have more time...
Funnily enough, I've had almost this exact same thing happen... On Windows. More than once. Spending days getting it to run hardly at all and weeks trying to figure out how to make it run well. On modern hardware, with both old and new games alike.
I've not had that much trouble yet with Linux gaming, with only a few exceptions where I needed to tweak a couple things stuff has pretty much just worked.
I'm on Mint with a nvidia card, I haven't really had to do any tweaks since I stopped trying to install games on an NTFS-formatted drive and nearly every game works perfectly out of the box. There's a lot of very loud voices complaining about nvidia/tinkering but it's definitely not universal; you won't necessarily need to put in a lot of effort to get games to work on Linux.
deep rock galactic, stardew valley, and minecraft work on linux.
what more could you possibly need?
Its not ready for VR. Thats why my vr headset is collecting dust.
The tech is cool but evidently not worth it to find motivation to go back to win.
If you have a headset that works on Linux, everything works just fine. A lot of headsets are just missing the drivers.
Maybe if you used VR Chat all the time, but there's vfio
for those cases, if needed. I just learned about it from another user, and so there's really no need to keep Windows as your primary boot partition or even have a dual boot setup.
My Quest 2 has been running VR fine. ALVR's latest update made me finally nuke my Windows partition I kept for VR.
Other than Angry Birds VR needing to have the recenter button hit after it's first launched, so far it's been fine for HL: Alyx, Beat Saber, Budget Cuts, and a few others I've tried. Literally the only workaround quirk I've found so far.
Great! I tend to avoid DRM'd games by buying from GOG. Don't use their launcher, lutris tends to have auto install scripts for games.
Checks ProtonDB
So I'm missing out on Destiny, PUBG, CoD, Siege, Battlefield, and Lost Ark... Yeah I'm totally okay with that personally. There are thousands of other games I'd rather be playing and they all work great.