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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Original /r/linux_gaming pengwing by uoou.
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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.
Until people can click install and never have to use terminal like they can in windows for 99.9% of their games and drivers windows will stay the king of gaming...again with these bait posts...get back to reality...most teens can't even use command prompt you think they are gonna wanna game on Linux? Hell most teens wanna game on a cell phone as is. Your target market should be the young so they grow and live with your products but Linux target market is the guys who were 20 when hackers came out in 1995.
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.
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.
I agree with your comment....except for the part about a small learning curve. The learning curve is steep and difficult. You've got to be willing to jump in as an enthusiast and not a casual user. This is not the choice for the vast majority of normies (as you rightly conclude). The saving grace for Linux will be pre-installed systems with extremely polished UI's (like the Steam Deck).
I'm highly motivated to stay on Linux, but there's still a list of open issues for me (this is a year and a half after adoption....I'm just living with these limitations now, and there are a couple more I've added to my list of unsolvable problems since).
Agreed. There are tons of random papercuts that a lot of us just ignore or workaround without thinking about it.
I absolutely think Linux is the bees knees, but I always list a bunch of caveats whenever I recommend it. If you go in with modest expectations, you'll be pleasantly surprised, and that's much better than being disappointed.
That's still a five year old stance. Just install bazzite and have a steam deck like experience on any PC without ever touching a terminal. It even does nvidia drivers out of the box for you. The curve is not steep at all. It's still there, but it's getting much easier very fast.
Until you need to install something that isnt on Flatpak. Then the flat learning curve suddenly becomes a vertical cliff :)
At least the climbing gear is FOSS though!
I kid, but I'm guessing Bazzite has something like openSUSE Aeon's distrobox, which let's you install anything you want inside of a container and expose it as an app. If not, they should consider adding it.
They absolutely do, but i'm sure you'd agree it's a bit technical for most people
Edit: By technical i mean obscure, not difficult.
Hah. Nope.
Man, I would look like much less of a hater if people didn't keep making demonstrably incorrect claims.
No, installing Nvidia drivers wasn't a one line affair for me last time I tried (which was just this year, btw), and even after I got things set up it was a toss-up whether features would work, work but perform horribly or not be available at all. That includes HDR, VRR, DLSS, DLSS transformer model, DLSS frame gen and Ray Reconstruction. On Windows some of the newer versions of those can be a hassle to set up in old games and necessitate forcing in dlls using third party applications, but at least official support works reliably.
Some distros do come with Nvidia drivers prepackaged and that's fine, but all the feature issues remain. If you want a gaming-first distro there still isn't semi-decent game mode support for SteamOS or Bazzite.
Intel GPU support is slightly better but a bit short of hassle-free. You probably don't have an Intel GPU anyway, so we can let that one pass.
HDR support in applications is still sub par. That includes gaming and is true regardless of GPU brand, as far as I can tell.
Anticheat support is still poor and it still prevents many very popular games from running. At this point nobody has anything close to a solution to this, even conceptually. Yes, some anticheat providers have some degree of Linux support, but there is nothing close to kernel-level anticheat from Windows. Yes, this is a genuine problem.
Performance is... trading blows, I'd say. In some games you can get much better frame pacing and better overall performance. In others, particularly when using newer functionality it can go the exact opposite way. This is very situational. If you want cutting edge stuff and paid to get the hardware to run it, Linux is probably not for you. Salvaging weaker or aging hardware for older games is a better use case.
Gaming on Linux is much better than it was and it likely will keep getting better. That's good news in itself, getting hyperbolic just triggers flamewars and negativity on something that should be a pretty clean net positive. It really doesn't help.
there is nothing close to kernel-level anticheat from Windows
Long may this continue. Fuck kernel level ~~anticheat~~ malware, and fuck the developers that use it.
I want to move to Linux, I tried a few months ago with a few distros but ran into two issues. One, I'm a content creator so easy access and use of my digital tools is paramount.
Secondly I make extensive use of VR and the support for VR graphics drivers was not good. I heard many duct tape and bubble gum solutions to run virtual desktops but I can't mess around with my operating system every day when I need my machine to run and do what I need it to do without lots of little roadblocks.
I want to move to Linux but I do not think it's where it needs to be yet to take me off of Windows :(
Advocate for more Linux support with VR vendors. Remember that most of the time, what halts Linux development is not technical impossibility, but lack of political will. Companies refusing to spend money on development of compatibility for their hardware or intentionally blocking open source efforts is what halts the ecosystem. It's the same exact computer, if it works on Windows but not on Linux is because someone in a suit angrily said "no".
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.
SSD speed only affects boot time. Which on any reasonable SSD isn’t bad.
Linux distros can use a good bit less ram than windows, but the gap isn’t that big. Unless you’re borderline on windows Linux won’t make much of a difference. Especially the more noob friendly distros since they tend to be more bloated.
And they only talk about games built for windows through proton/whatever because native games suck balls. Proton emulating windows made Linux gaming good. Native Linux gaming is still typically worse than native windows.
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.
Yeah, I've still got a win11 install, but every game that did not run on linux did not run on win11 either. I do not play multiplayer games though and those games had pretty obscure engines. Compatibility with older games is great though.
I rarely use windows these days, and I hate that updates can take up to half an hour and you can't do anything with your system.
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.
This has been tested to death and, barring some exceptions, and barring Nvidia hardware, performance is more or less the same.
It is not, ext4 does circles around piece of junk ntfs and I've got the load times from my own old world of warships install to prove it.
Windows gg ez'd its way out of making a better filesystem with the advent of SSDs which doesn't have performance hits from fragmenting like a spinning disk does.
I still remember running defraggler every few months just so I could play Batman Arkham Knight on Windows, otherwise the game would freeze lag and run at a ridiculous 10 FPS.
Windows also eats 2GB RAM at idle for no reason compared to usually 1.3-1.4 for KDE and 1.0 flat for XFCE. Zswap/Zram also helps a lot when you don't have an SSD.
And to top it off, Compiz, Wayfire, KWin, etc all outperform Windows's desktop compositor by miles in terms of performance and visual snappiness. Windows lags heavily on anything mobile like a light laptop or tablet, yet you can run a full transparent 3D compiz cube no problem with basically no hit to hardware usage due to its use of OpenGL.
Then whomever tested it "to death" wasn't particularly comprehensive. I speak from more than a little personal experience.
Of course it won't help in every case, nor did I claim it would. That's not the point, and your contrarianism doesn't help anyone. Good day.
Helps everyone who might make the mistake of thinking your information is accurate.
Linux can feel faster in a number of cases because its scheduler is better IMO, but that doesn't help when running something like a game. A desktop feeling snappier won't increase your benchmark scores or framerates.
It'll certainly breathe new life into that crappy old laptop, but it's not magic.
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.
Hit the nail on the head.
Linux has come so far, but windows is brain-dead easy. Linux also a non option if you play league, FC, fortnite, destiny, battlefield and more with anti cheat
a system that can't play up to 20% of game titles is better
That's not how those ratings work.
Yeah like, as a keen advocate for Linux desktop use, this is a wildly dishonest take / headline to run with.
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.
Haven't played Fahrenheit in forever (not since it was Indigo Prophecy on the US Steam release), but never had issues. Is it having problems with more modern Windows versions now?
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.
Anti-cheat is allowed. There are a handful of anti-cheat systems that can't work on Linux, but IIRC, they are in the minority.
They are the minority, but have large player bases. Eliminating that barrier would mean that Linux devices (not just desktops) would be a one-shot win for most consumers.
personally, I'm really glad they are not writing kernel level rootkits disguised as games for Linux yet
Which is why it won’t ever happen (anti cheat allowed). Microsoft makes sure of that with $$$ to those devs that refuse to support Linux.
Yep im waiting for windows kernel emulation or some other techniques to fool it to think it's on windows. Honestly I want to break client side cheating to the point they have no choice but to go back to server side cheat detection.
Nobody left server side cheat detection. Client side is a complement to it.
Server side detection simply won't do the job by itself to the degree the bigger games need (which is effectively replicating a locked down console environment). The only real alternative is running the entire game server side. If you're ok with cloud gaming (or at least with running nothing but the renderer and the controller input client-side) then maybe it can be done, although it probably would require some type of subscription service to compensate for the skyrocketing server costs. Otherwise I don't think so.
Yup. It's a cat and mouse game until server side can become enconomial enough to broadly deploy (computational & network constraints).
Yeah but still cheating doesn't give game companies the right to Rootkit my computer and have ring 0 access.
I'm aligned on this. Server side ought to be the way.
Also fuck cheaters.
While I agree, the article mostly explains how Linux is almost caught up to Windows for gaming. For me, Linux > Windows, so if Linux can play enough games to keep me occupied, it's a better "gaming" system. This was true for me before Steam even came to Linux.
That said, this article completely ignores the fact that many of the most popular games rely on anti-cheat w/o Linux compatibility, so that right there kills Linux as a contender regardless of its many other merits.
I guess my point here is to please don't oversell Linux. You want someone's first impression to be positive, and if they run into game compatibility issues at the start, the experience will be far from positive. I would much rather see a section right at the top about how to check game compatibility, since that's what most people would want to check before looking at the various other things that are awesome about Linux.
Epic Games
...
We also don’t have to worry about download speeds, as they’re even better compared to the Windows client.
Is this true? If so, it's very surprising.
By the way, I always encountered risk control and couldn’t enter the game when playing Rogue Company on Windows. I don’t understand why the anti-cheat component considers me a threat, but after switching to Linux, I no longer faced this issue; it has been much smoother than on Windows.
Anecdotal. I doubt this is a Linux vs Windows thing, but more that they saw different OSes being used by the same account and flagged based on that.
Some of these emulators also have versions for Windows or macOS, but on Linux, we can directly download and install them from the store, without the need to worry about dependencies or version issues, making it a lot easier compared to Windows and macOS.
Good point. Package management is really nice on Linux. However, if you don't know what you're looking for, you're in a similar camp as on Windows.
Games on the Android platform can also run on Linux. In addition to virtualization ways like Windows and macOS, Linux can run without virtualization by using namespaces. If you’re interested, you can check out my previous article on Android Application on Linux without Virtualization.
Huh, neat!
Besides Steam, we can also use cross-platform tools like Flathub: Parsec to control Windows hosts directly on Linux. This means that even games that can’t be run through the aforementioned ways can still be played on Linux, completing the last piece of the puzzle.
So you'd need a second PC? That hardly seems convenient.
Actually, I also wanna introduce some advantages of the Linux graphical interface over Windows in terms of gaming experience. For example, GNOME’s Do Not Disturb botton allows me to toggle all notification alerts with a single click.
Yeah, this is certainly neat. I'm actually surprised Windows doesn't have something similar, but maybe each app handles notifications itself there?
Additionally, I have never encountered the issue on Linux where I can’t temporarily return to the desktop during fullscreen gaming, which is something I often face on Windows, where the taskbar pops up but returning to the desktop is impossible. On Linux, regardless of which game I’m playing, whether in fullscreen mode or borderless window mode, I can freely switch between windows.
On the flipside, I've had a lot of really odd problems switching applications on Linux. I don't know if it happens on Windows too since I haven't used Windows in a decade or so, but I'm guessing the Linux experience here is worse.
I also sometimes have games completely lock up Linux, which I'm guessing is probably the Wayland compositor crashing. That used to happen to me on Windows, but again, this is from >10 years ago, so I'm not sure if it applies today.
Agree with your Anti-cheat point. I soooo want to move over to Linux but mainly Valorant is keeping me from switching (and I probably have other games like PUBG that might not work on Linux either?, while writing this checked and yep: https://www.protondb.com/app/578080)