With all that’s going on. I’ve been really considering setting up a dual boot and testing Linux Mint properly. (i hate virtual desktops, but I have Mint running on one now) I know I have to make some changes to my productivity workload, as I’m an Adobe Lightroom user. I’ll keep that on Windows for now.
But my question is regarding gaming.
I play a lot of varying games, from new singleplayer and multiplayer stuff to old games back up to about 1999. I know I have to do a bunch of research setting things up, but right off the bat I have a question.
What games will not be possible to use on Linux?
For example, will something like Escape from Tarkov work? That’s a game I do not want to even install of there’s a chance it will lead to a ban.
And is comparability with older games better or worse than W11?
Edit: I just wanna extend a huge thanks to the community already! There’s some great info here so I’m gonna set up a dual boot soon!
Edit 2: Dual boot is now setup! Even though Mint makes sense from a long time Windows user. There's a bit of a learning curve. But I'll try it as a daily driver for a few days.
Right now my disk setup prioritize Windows, obviously. But if I end up loving Mint, I'll make a full switch and keep a small partition for Windows to run whatever Mint can't.
Edit3: Spent hours trying to get anything to work. Games just would not launch and I exhausted everything I found online. Trying a reinstall and Pop Os this time. Learned a bunch of lessons my first try
Performance Is about on par with windows for everything dx9 to dx12. Dx8 and earlier I think are not supported by wine.
In general you will be able to play almost all games, as long as they don't require kernel level anti cheat, but some online games do block Linux users. In the case of tarkov I can't help, you should read online.
Older games should be fine, personally I played Max Payne 1 an 2 a couple month ago, and the original Hitman series runs better than on windows.
Expect to do some tinkering on some more advanced games. E.g.: Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Alan Wake 2 require the experimental version of proton, God of War Ragnarok requires to enable SteamDeckMode on a config file to disable PlayStationSDK, usually you will find suggestions on protondb.
Some Nvidia proprietary things will not work in games on wine, e.g.: GPU accelerated physix will not work, also on some games dlss will require editing wine's registry.
In addition to this, non-competative online games generally are safer. Look into the individual games you're interested in, but something like WoW or FFXIV should still work fine, Last Epoch or PoE2 work.
Stuff like Lethal Company (Platinum) or Rust (Bronze) are more case by case, depending on the anticheat they use, and even then it's often a matter of whether the developers include support or not.
Space Marine 2 uses an anticheat, but they have support enabled for Linux (though they removed it in one of the patches, before reimplementing it).
(Also a slight pet peeve to OP, it's "right off the bat")
(Just a typo, fixed it now ☺️)