this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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Linux Gaming

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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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[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (4 children)

the year of the Linux desktop is now

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Year of the Steam Deck. Linux still not ready for mainstream desktop usage :(

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

My computer illiterate mother in law that has been using Linux for years strongly disagrees.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Sorry, Linux is ready for basic usage such as web browsing and creating a document.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

It's ready for a lot more than that, can you tell me something that Linux can't do without mentioning a third party company that refuses to support Linux?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Only a couple more decades, we’re almost there!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Linux still not ready for mainstream desktop usage

Lul

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I don't get why people find that funny, he's absolutely right. It's gotten better but Linux is still requiring a lot more tinkering compared to Windows, and mainstream doesn't do tinkering. Let me give some examples as well.

I have windows and fedora dual booted. I also have 4 physical drives in the PC, 1 for windows, 1 for Linux and then 2 separate drives to keep windows data and Linux data. If I do a clean install of windows and want to play steam games all I need to do is let windows update run, install steam, direct steam to access the downloaded games on my secondary drive and the rest is "Steam magic". If I do a clean install of Fedora and I want to play Steam I have to do system update, then manually install graphics drivers, then install steam, then mount the secondary drive then direct to steam to the secondary drive and the rest is "Steam magic". If I don't want to do the last two steps again, because Fedora doesn't automount secondary drives, I need to also set up automounting by messing with the terminal and confog files. Honestly, you lost the mainstream gamer the moment they had to manually install graphics card drivers (because you need to do it through a terminal).

Another less important example, but one I still found funny, is when I wanted to make a new distro installer. I've used balena etcher to flash my stick on Windows, but I didn't want to reboot into It Windows so I installed it on Fedora, downloaded the image I wanted to flash, started balena and added the file. I get some header error. I didn't feel like troubleshooting so I reboot into Windows, download the exact same image, started balena and added the file. No errors and I could flash without any issues. Same file and (in theory) same software but it works on Windows and doesn't work on Linux.

And of course there's the Nvidia cards sucking thing, which is not at all suitable for mainstream considering almost 80% of steam users are using Nvidia cards. I get that's almost entirely Nvidias fault but it's still an issue with Linux. When your entire system black screens as KDE plasma is booting up even an above average user is not going to know how to troubleshoot that.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Linux is still requiring a lot more tinkering compared to Windows

As a long time windows user who's just got a side install of Mint for funnies until.a faster drive I can dedicate to it arrives: lol, no. That's why people are laughing at them.

I use fedora and have to...

Pick a less annoying distro then, babe. I installed Steam in one click (during OS setup actually) and then logged in, enabled proton, and started using it with the games on an external drive. Literally easier than windows cuz Mint installed it with the OS and I didn't have to go to Steams website.

nVidia cards sucking thing

My 2080TI has worked flawlessly on Mint without any tinkering. Used the Nvidia driver manager thing and boom, running games. They even run at a bigger fps on average (about 10%).

Sounds like you used a specific distro and think those problems exist with every version of Linux. They do not, and there's a reason why Mint is most often the recommended distro for those unwilling to tinker

And I'm not even gonna pretend that Mint is perfect, it's not! For example my sound card just doesn't work in it despite the OS being aware of literally every aspect of it. But the issues I've had daily driving it have been LESS than daily driving windows 10 even after said win 10 install has already had years of customization and tweaking done to it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

You do realize that just kicks the ball down to a different problem that prevents from mainstream use, picking the wrong distro?

That said I'll give mint a go.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

And all it cost was having a store sell DRM software.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

They also sell non-DRM software. And most importantly they invest the money they make from selling those games into developing Linux so it's better for everyone, I'll take a corporation that uses my money to make things better for myself than one that sells "only" DRM free" games (when it's convenient, because GoG also sells DRMd games in case you didn't knew)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

To be fair, as far as DRM is concerned Steam is pretty mild and game developers gotta eat.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It's still coming, I have tried to switch using my desktop but still have. Needed to swap back to windows for stability.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

For stability? A missing feature or software you need I get, but stability? Which distro/DE are you using?

Damn. Stability to me was one of the biggest reasons to use Linux - it does exactly what I expect it to do, never breaks, updates never break shit.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

I'm was talking about game stability. This is a gaming related topic right? Linux is stable but games had some issues.

Truthfully nothing major that stopped me from playing but I had to mess with proton in steam from time to time. Most recently the Last of Us crashes on start, not sure why it was fine previously. Also, there were some games anti cheat did not work and I needed to play in Windows.

Also, I have consistently had issues streaming to my steam Deck. Windows isn't perfect either but it's more likely to work the with windows. Sure maybe it's my Nvidia GPU, but saying switch to amd does make my setup more stable.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

LOL never beaks. Most Linux distros are chock full of bugs that the end user has to work around

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

I haven't seen that on Fedora, in the years that I've been using it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I've not had a single breakage in the past ~4 years I've been on Fedora Workstation, despite me often moving to the beta channel. Pretty nice for an up-to-date distro.

I cannot say the same for Windows.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

There's a lot of reasons to stay on windows, never heard of stability being one haha. It's bsod city over there lol

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

That's a very ironic sentence :)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Yeah emphasis on desktop... Laptop can be tricky

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

No idea why you're being downvoted. I wish I could daily-drive Linux on my laptop, but that would come at the cost of slashed battery life, permanently on keyboard backlight, no more fingerprint sensor, issues with speakers and so on. Even after years of honourable enthusiasts trying to reverse-engineer the Windows drivers, it's just still not there. Laptops will take a while to follow suite, but Linux really does need to take a larger portion of the market before manufacturers start being interested in Linux support.

And before I also get downvoted, yes you can get a 10 year old ThinkPad and happily install Linux on it, but please realize that not all people want to limit themselves in their choice of hardware and it's the software that should adapt to the hardware, not the other way around.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

Yes. Just yes ahah

I switched to linux on my laptop i had to do 4 reinstall to get my nvidia gpu to work and as of late my speaker arent recognised anymore, despite reinstaling pulse and alsa. One of my informatitian friend that has a linux laptop had gpu issue too, the laptop at work need frequent overseeing by the it to work properly etc etc...

I love linux and I truly think we NEED to get our hands back on our tech, and understand better the technology we use, but yeah... If you really need your laptop to be fully operational quickly and you're not tech savvy well think twice...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

I agree, I haven’t experienced the stereotypical “WiFi doesn’t work” (except for a college network), but I have had issues with screen brightness not working (though seems to be fixed in newer versions), and issues with the Nvidia graphics card that I can’t just swap out with an AMD because it’s a laptop and I don’t want to buy a whole new one.