> if you don't sell your games on Steam or in a way I can run them on Linux I am not buying or playing them.
So much this. People like to moan about "oh game XYZ doesn't run so it's not reasonable for gaming". More games run on GNU / Linux than any gaming console. There are simply too many games that do run to give a second thought about the ones that don't, and it's been that way for years.
The giant bugbear in this conversation is always multiplayer. That's because almost all of the big players in that space currently favor rootkits in the form of overly invasive anti-cheat, which the Linux wrappers (mostly the wine project) refuse to support for security reasons.
If you don't play PvP specifically, the rest of the library is significantly more open to you. Personally I have always favored single player experiences and indie games from smaller studios, and for the most part those run great.
It's unfortunate but at the same time if enough people switch to Linux then they'll be forced to change their ways.
So if you can go without those games or don't play MMOs that is rootkits then switch to force their hand.
Besides, them installing a rootkit on your machine is not an acceptable practice anyways. It's a major security issue. Sometimes we need to make a stand. Everyone has a line, where's yours?
MMOs are actually fine. WoW, FFXIV, RuneScape, all work great on Linux. They’re not really games that rely on hidden information, are not pvp first and need to simulate stuff on the server anyway, so can verify moves are valid there.
It’s the competitive progression shooters and ranked esports games that go in for the restrictive anti-cheat
Even within competitive shooters there’s still plenty that run great on Linux. 90% of my time spent gaming is on Overwatch or CS2, and I’ve found that both ran significantly better on my Debian 13 installation than they ever did on Win11.
And it's worth noting that CS2 is still the most played game on Steam. It has double the players of the second most played game, Dota 2, which also works on Linux. And that has double the player base of the number 3 game, Arc Raiders, which also works great on Linux.
The idea that you'll be missing out is ill founded. Yes, there are some games that won't work. PUBG, Bongo Cat, Rust[0], and EA Sports FC 26 are the ones on the top 10 multiplayer list. But it's also not like you don't have plenty of massively popular games to choose from.
I'll even say don't switch to Linux, just stop playing these abusive games. Honestly, if you're unwilling to change OSes but willing to do this then people that want to jump ship can. We all win from this behavior. Even you as it discourages Windows from shoving in more junk and discourages publishers like EA from shoving in massive security vulnerabilities like rootkits. I mean we've all seen how glitchy many AAA games are, you really think their other software isn't going to be just as unpolished and bug ridden?
This is true in principle but most gamers are just gonna take the path of least resistance. If they can't play fortnite on Linux (I'm using an example, I don't know if it's actually unplayable on Linux) then they will use whatever OS lets them play.
People have been saying "vote with your wallet" every time gaming companies do something anti consumer like day one dlc or buggy releases (don't pre-order!) or $90 games, but gaming companies continue to push the envelope on what gamers will pay for because gamers keep paying for it.
There's another way. Only a small portion of friends need to change to pull the rest of the group. Pull them to a game that runs on Linux.
Don't do it like "let's play this game because it runs on Linux" do it like "let's play this game because it's fun".
If you want to be the one to lead this change you have to do extra work. Dual boot Linux and find a game that's fun that you can do online. Find the other friend or two in your group that will do the same (at least play the game, Linux is optional but encouraged for this subset). Just play together for a bit, give it a trial run. Then when playing the other game with the larger group say "hey, so and so and I have been playing this game, you guys should play with us sometime". They don't have to install Linux, just play a new game that their friends are already playing. That's why they're there, to play games with their friends. Don't try to get them to switch to Linux, just play games with your friends. You might have a holdout but if most people move then everyone will. But if you want to do that move you have to find what works and at least one other friend to give it a trial (who won't need to do as much work as you). That's how you do it. No crazy scheme and honestly not massive amounts of work either. Just the normal process of finding new games to play with one constraint. It just seems complicated because I stated the process explicitly.
I don't play a lot of online games anymore, but when I did, it wasn't just because friends were playing it. It was because it was fun, it was part of the cultural zeitgeist, it's popular, the community is fun, etc. You can't really replace something like that with just "another game," no matter how fun the other game is.
I agree. But I think there are a lot of fun games. Plenty of them on Linux.
> it was part of the cultural zeitgeist
This is the harder part, but we are in an age where there are a lot of games. I think you'll be surprised to see the games that do work on Linux[0]. Looking at the most played multiplayer games on Steam[1] (in order): (1) Counterstrike, (2) Dota 2, (3) Arc Raiders, (5) Terraria, (8) Grand Theft Auto, and (9) Marvel Rivals all have good proton support. What doesn't work in the top 10 are (4) PUBG, (6) Bongo Cat, and (10) EA Sports FC 26. (7) Rust supposedly works, but only on Linux supported servers (smaller user base).
> it's popular,
The point I'm making here is that while you may not get to be part of every cultural zeitgeist, you can still participate in the 3 most popular ones and more than half of the top 10. Frankly, most people won't be able to participate in every zeitgeist for any number of reasons (cost, hardware, restrictions, etc). But I think considering this you don't have to fear being left out.
Maybe you're obsessed with PUBG or Battlefield and then yeah, Linux isn't going to work for you. That's okay! But looking at the numbers, for most people, they can still be a part of all the cultural excitement. It's not going to work for everyone, and that's okay! If it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work for you. But I want to make sure we can distinguish real blockers from ones Microslop and EA want you to believe in.
> the community is fun
I think this is less of a blocker than you might think. Honestly, in my experience smaller communities tend to be more fun. They develop their own close knit culture. You've been on HN a long time and seen it grow. Isn't that a similar reason you come here?
> You can't really replace something like that with just "another game," no matter how fun the other game is.
You're right, but again, I think there are fewer blockers than you think. I can't tell you if those blockers are real or not because what is a blocker comes down to you and your personal interpretations of all those variables. But if you're frustrated with Windows and the system, why not give it a try? You don't even have to switch to Linux to pressure the studios to change. Just spending more time playing games like Counterstrike or Arc Raiders than games like PUBG or Battlefield. And if you play more games like the former you make it easier for others that are thinking about making the jump. But hey, if PUBG or Battlefield is your jam and you don't want to try anything else, then no worries. You do you.
There's one more important thing I want to bring up. I think it is important to ask "where is your line?" How much junk can Winblows shove in before you're willing to make sacrifices? Is EA installing a rootkit enough of a security concern where you won't take it? What is? You don't need to tell me what the answers are to these questions. What's important is that you yourself know where these lines are beforehand. The lines are personal and unique to you. People are going to have other lines than you and that's completely fine. I just ask you think about what conditions would cause you to make sacrifices? That way if they happen you can respond.
> Looking at the most played multiplayer games on Steam
Note that this is skipping over some extremely popular games which aren't on Steam. Notably Fortnite, Roblox, League of Legends, Valorant, and everything else from Riot Games, none of which work on Linux. From the Steam examples there's also some grey areas, GTA5 singleplayer works but multiplayer does not, and Counterstrike works on official servers but not on Faceit servers, where a lot of serious competitive play happens.
You're right to bring up the limits, but I think you're missing what I'm saying. I'm not trying to say that everyone can and should switch. But I am saying that the costs are probably less than one might think.
The costs of switching can only be answered at the individual level. No one can answer for you. But people can state their experiences and help you understand the costs and benefits.
Let's make sure we can accurately understand the costs and benefits and differentiate from imaginary ones.
I also said that you can take a stand without switching to Linux. Maybe the costs are too high for you right now. But maybe the costs of meeting up with your friends to play Dota rather than League is easy. At the end of the day the costs are due to the network effects. You can reduce those costs slowly and make it easier for others to jump ship without you needing to, which makes it easier for you to jump ship in the future if things change. The same is true for social media. Maybe you can't break from Instagram as you have too many contacts where that's your only way to communicate with them. But you can still encourage others to text you, Signal message you, or whatever. This still reduces the power of that network.
Here's the thing: the less sticky platforms are the better it is for everyone. I'm not going to tell you that you aren't going to have to put in more effort, but I will criticize you if you think that effort is insurmountable. I will also say that this is also part of our social duty. If something like using Signal instead of Instagram to communicate with your friend because they want to is "too hard" for you, then I envy the life you have where such trivial actions are your biggest concerns. If trying new games with friends who want to try new games is "too much" for you, then I think you should question if you're an addict.
I'm not saying you have to switch. I'm not saying you have to play certain games and not others. But you do have to be open to changing things and recognize that if you don't then you're creating a doomed self-fulfilling prophecy. If you're unwilling to have the slightest inconveniences then the enshitification and dystopia is on you. If you are unwilling to have the slightest inconveniences then you have no right to complain as you are the one preventing that change. But also, if you don't have any of those concerns of enshitification and tech dystopia then you have every right to stand your ground and not be inconvenienced. But I want to make the conditions clear. We live in a society. The society has a duty to you and you have a duty to the society. You don't just get to take and give nothing back.
First off, a hell of a lot more of those top 50 are unplayable. But more importantly the thing that you are ignoring is that every single one works on Windows. By choosing to use Linux you are choosing to not be able to play these games and an unknown number of future games for... what? If you only have a PC to play games with your friends, what could possibly be more important to you than the ability to play games with your friends?
This isn't about me though. I game on Linux. I love it. My original reply was to this in your comment
> It's unfortunate but at the same time if enough people switch to Linux then they'll be forced to change their ways.
The whole point of this subthread is that companies are not going to make Linux compatible games as long as there are customers OK with installing root kits on their companies to play their games. And most gamers are ok with that line being crossed. It sucks for the rest of us, but capitalism gonna capitalism.
I apologize for misunderstanding your comment, but I hope mine still stands to help others recognize the issues you brought up aren't as large as some may actually believe. I agree with you, companies that abuse us, the users, want to amplify that fear. It empowers them. It's why I am encouraging anyone who reads my comment to ask themselves where that line is. Personally I'm with you, the line has already been crossed. I've made the move and don't regret it for a second. Nothing changes for the better when no one is willing to take the first step.
The market for multiplayer games, shooters especially, is already a mess, because people don't want to play a game that doesn't have an infinite pool of players to matchmake into, or a game that doesn't have all their cosmetics, or... etc. etc.
So this ends up being easier said than done. I've had success, but that's my friend group out of however many.
Try to find a shooter with a playerbase that doesn't use EAC/etc. - it's a crapshoot, unfortunately. You've got Valve's stuff and one or two outliers, but if those don't meet your group's genre needs, you're whomped.
> Don't do it like "let's play this game because it runs on Linux" do it like "let's play this game because it's fun".
Indeed! i have some online and irl buddies who aren't on linux that i've got playing games like veloren with me, simply because they are good games. i've got loads of hours in games like veloren, luanti, xonotic, pokeMMO, and osu! for example lol and encourage everyone to check those games out if they're up their alley. :)
You assume I have friends. Or at least, friends that care about video games.
Besides, more likely is that I leave to do my own thing, 0-1 peers joins me for a bit, then we all kinda drift away. Friendships in this era are much more ephemeral.
I want to step away from the conversation about Linux
Honestly, I'm disheartened to hear this. Frankly, those don't sound like friends, or at least close friends. If a friendship can evaporate by the simple act of wanting to try another game, then it barely seems like a friendship and it seems like those will evaporate as soon as the next popular game comes about. I don't want to tell you to abandon your existing friends but I would encourage you to find friends you can have stronger bonds with. To have closer relationships. Hard truth is you need to put in work to make this happen. It doesn't matter what games you play or on what platform: everyone deserves to have deep human relationships. I really do hope you can find some friends. I hope the friendships you do have are stronger than you have conveyed because frankly, as humans, we all need close friends.
That's most how most of my life has been in a nutshell; it isn't limited to games. Schools,college, old coworkers. A lot of the glue comes undone the moment you need to move on. I'm a late Millenial, but the advent of social media among Gen Z gave us the ability to connect more intimately than ever over the most niche topics. But at the cost of losing the deep bonds you'd normally form then bundled with a community based on proximity.
I've had long conversations with some former guild mates yet can't point you to a name or face. I know quite a few never even lived in my country. But things loosen up once the game shuts down or one of us needs to move on. It's neat in some ways, hollow in others.
On the larger scale, it's why local community is also weaker than ever. No one really puts and effort to come down to community events, or they may come once or twice and never again. Those gatherings are also less frequent than ever, often once a month. You can't really form a deep bond meeting once a month. So meetups end up frustrating in their own way (at least, the tech meetup. Maybe a run club would be different).
I've even heard notions that it's easier to find a mate than a close friend these days. I can completely believe it.
I'm also in my 30s so I get it. The only real advice I can give is that it just takes more work to maintain friends as we get older. I had to be the one reaching out rather than waiting for others to reach out to me.
The other thing is recognize where friendships came from. Most of it was just being physically near people. Sitting in the same classrooms day to day. If work doesn't create that space (or isn't good enough or you want to distance from work) you need something else that does the same thing. Join a club. Set up weekly beers with your friends. Or literally anything that puts you in the same physical space with the same people, routinely. A friend of mine gets together with his gamer friends once a year and they socialize off the game too.
The convenience of social media is also its weakness. The ease of connecting makes it just as easy to disconnect.
Real friendships require work. That's true of any relationship. I'll tell you my friends can be annoying and exhausting, but I love them and I'll gladly put up with their shit to keep them around. After all, who else is going to put up with my bullshit? lol
>Real friendships require work. That's true of any relationship.
indeed. Perhaps that is part of my frustration. Friendships can also be a 2 way street, and it can feel like I'm putting in a lot more effort than the other party when it comes to trying to form them. I don't expect 50/50 effort, but when it's 95/5, are they a friend or simply a familiar guest?
Maybe I need to accept that the tech circles here aren't going to have that deep bond and expand. But I'll admit that the job hunt also slowed down my efforts to break out of my comfort zone.
I feel your pain, as someone in their mid-30s, and also a new dad. It's trite to say that it's hard to make friends in your 30s but it really is true. Between career, family, and just day-to-day life, it's really hard to form connections that are any more than just superficial.
What works for me is finding communities. I participate in Toastmasters, which meets every week (one meets twice a month), and it's a good way to make connections with people and get to know them better. It's also fun because there's people of many walks of life. Retirees, college students, business owners, executives, everyone in between. It's a great way to meet people I probably wouldn't have otherwise met in tech circles.
i like a few multiplayer shooters, fortnite being one of them. i also exclusively use gnu/linux on my machines, so i got around this issue of games like fortnite/battlefield/etc issue a long time ago by simply doing what i've always done for years, playing these on xbox. i even 'stream' these games to my linux machine from my xbox if i want to play them from the computer with the xbox controller, and can join and create xbox live parties through the xbox web interface.
i only do this for those couple of games i play with friends that won't support linux because of the aforementioned rootkit it wants to run on windows machines. console for those games, and all my other games run happily either through steam+proton or natively on linux, and there are a fair few FOSS games with amazing multiplayer. i love luanti, xonotic, openarena, veloren, etc, and play them frequently with some friends. :)
1. The audience is mostly kids. They can't buy any premium games easily (and is the lens for the rest of my points)
2. Network effects. Works as well on them as any of us. Especially in a world that makes it more and more hostile to have them meet IRL.
3. It's a generation raised on "forever games". They are used to games they pick up and will continually play for years. Games that will always provide new stuff for them. They fundamentally have different habits from Millenials.
4. Mobile support. So many kids play on mobile. So they are even more isolated from the consple market.
I empathize with the question. But you are essentially asking *why do people want to use instagram and not any other one of millions social media app?*
Even this framing is silly, if you have a PC to game there are not enough pros to choose Linux. You are giving up the ability to play some popular games and increasing the amount of effort required to play another chunk of them in exchange for what? A snappier file browser? Fewer anti-consumer dark patterns? It's not about "path of least resistance" it just flat out isn't worth it.
This is a gross reduction of why people choose Linux. People don't choose it just for a snappier file browser and fewer anti-consumer dark patterns.
1. games that install what amounts to be rootkits on my computer are not ok
2. windows potentially spying on my data without my consent is not ok
If you wanna label these as dark patterns, that's fine, but let's not pretend that this behavior is ok.
I like playing games. But I like privacy and security more than playing games, which is why I have a linux gaming machine and a PS5. Some people would rather just play games and not worry about the other stuff, which is understandable for the reasons you mentioned.
This is overestimating the amount of effort involved to game on Linux, imo. It is true that there are a couple games using kernel-level anticheat which preclude their working on linux, but for the most part the effort required to play games on Linux now is zero if it's a Steam game and almost zero elsewhere.
Delta Force used to work but also doesn't anymore (still marked Bronze), people are tinkering with config files but nothing seems to work https://www.protondb.com/app/2507950
GTA V public lobbies don't work, requires you to tweak launch options, disable battleeye anticheat, seems to just not work for some people. https://www.protondb.com/app/271590
It goes on and on these were just from the first few games sorted by player count. Much of the tweaking seems to be different person to person, sometimes it just works sometimes it's Nvidia's fault, sometimes it's something totally different. There's a "recommended for tinkerers" option for reviews. To be clear, every single one of these works right out of the box first time on Windows.
PROTON_DISABLE_D3D12: Disables DirectX12
There are also D3D11, D3D10, D3D9 options too
PROTON_HIDE_NVIDIA_GPU=1: Tells the game you have an AMD GPU instead of Nvidia
The default setting is that Proton hides the GPU, so this option here is superfluous.
-force-d3d11: forces usage of DirectX11
This is already going to happen because you disabled DirectX12
People are copy pasting settings and sharing but not actually looking at any docs. Disabling DirectX12 is going to give you a pretty good success rate of making a game work if it doesn't work out of the box.
Also, let's be clear about what those rankings mean on ProtonDB
Native: Just works
i.e. Devs are cool
Platinum: Just works (but is using Proton)
i.e. Valve has got this shit handled
Gold: Works but you either need to use proton experimental or change an option that someone has already figured out.
i.e. Community has figured it out, Valve is tweaking.
Note that many people are on Proton Experimental by default so possibly that's why it "just works" for them.
Silver: Very likely to work with a setting someone has listed.
i.e. Community and Valve working on it
Bronze: People are figuring it out, leave it to your friends that know Linux
i.e. Sorry, you're probably out of luck. Leave it to the tinkerers
Borked: Publisher is actively working against the community.
i.e. EA hates you
I'm not trying to say everything works on Linux. It doesn't. But let's also not pretend that it is worse than it is. That's the same error in the other direction. Linux is not the right choice for everyone, but it is a good choice for many people.
You're implying that 'clicking the cog icon > properties > and then copy pasting some text into a text box' is overly burdensome. To be frank, if you believe that then not only is Linux not for you, but neither are computers, and I really really am curious why you're on a website called "Hacker News".
I did this and was happily Windows-less for quite a few years. I ended up building a PC with a big GPU and so I switched back to PC gaming with a Windows installation alongside Linux, but I still think the console route is a great option.
> which the Linux wrappers (mostly the wine project) refuse to support for security reasons.
It's more that there's no sensible way they could do it even if they wanted to. Emulating the Windows kernel internals is well beyond the scope of what WINE is trying to do, and even if they did do it, there would be no way for the anticheat vendors to tell the difference between the AC module being sandboxed for compatibility versus sandboxed as a bypass technique. Trying to subvert the AC in any way is just begging to get banned, even if it's for beingn reasons.
As a competitive old school arena FPS guy, I have also had a very hard time getting the same smoothness and low latency (input, output, whatever it is) on Linux. The games I play are very fast and twitchy, and milliseconds matter.
There seems to be too many layers and variables to ever get to the bottom of it. Is it the distro itself? Is it a Wayland vs. X11 thing? Is it the driver? The Proton version? Some G-SYNC thing? Some specific tweak that games based on this game engine needs?
I've had better luck since the switch to Wayland. I don't play many FPS games but mouse input & overall smoothness for strategy games has been great. Check your mouse settings, you might need to set a higher USB sample rate. Piper is a frontend for adjusting them.
Yes, most likely. Without a compositor I get lots of stuttering on x11, whereas KDE and GNOME's wayland sessions are both buttery smooth out of the box.
Might be my Nvidia GPU, but I've never gotten x11 to work flawlessly for gaming.
> Without a compositor I get lots of stuttering on x11... Might be my Nvidia GPU, but I've never gotten x11 to work flawlessly for gaming.
Weird. I don't use KDE's compositor, and -AFAIK- WindowMaker doesn't have one. When in either KDE or in WindowMaker I don't have stuttering with either fullscreen, borderless "fullscreen", or windowed games... everything is as smooth as it is in Windows. Having said that, I do know that -when using KDE- some fullscreen games get jittery as all shit if a notification pops up and remain that way until the notification disappears. I expect that that performance problem would go away if I was using the compositor... but I don't want to spend the VRAM on it.
I use AMD graphics cards, so it might be an Nvidia thing that you're seeing. It also might be a "Your Linux distro simply stopped shipping good xorg installs" thing. I'm running Gentoo Linux which continues to ship updated versions of xorg and supporting software. [0]
[0] I've heard people running Debian and Debian-derived distros report X11 behavior that absolutely does not match what I've been seeing for years... so some percentage of the "X11 can't do $THING" when it really, really can must be coming from distros that ship either dramatically out-of-date or severely crippled xorg installs.
Odd. Every few months, I see a new xorg-server version in my distro's package manager.
> That means regressions are entirely ignored.
Should I ever actually have a problem, and it's something that I can't (or CBA to) fix, and my distro's maintainers don't want to try to fix (and then tell me that upstream will never fix), then I'll look more closely at XLibre. XLibre may or may not be a dumpster fire at that point, who knows? If it is a dumpster fire, then I'll look around for other alternatives.
> It's shocking that people still install X11 as a default in [TYOOL]
Nah. It works fine for what I'm doing. I don't do anything that depends on Wayland. The shocking thing would be if I were to waste a ton of time chasing the new shiny... especially when those responsible for the new shiny have been lying for the past 10+ years about how it's ready for everyone's general use. [0]
[0] Perhaps it's ready now, after nearly eighteen years in development. I can't rely on the statements of those responsible for the project to tell me, and I CBA to go searching for (and evaluating the trustworthiness of) information on the topic.
> Odd. Every few months, I see a new xorg-server version in my distro's package manager.
Yea these are security updates but the eco system requires a lot of desktop manager scaffolding in user space. That has basically stopped. It's baffling why you would run X11 today. The X11 emulation layer for Wayland works great too by the way.
Just as one example when you screen share from discord or zoom or Google meets there's now a pop-up that asks you to select the screen or window you wish to latch on to for streaming. This provides some security. With X11 anything can just take a screenshot at any time. Sure that's convenient but so many apps don't even support X11 anymore. As someone that made the switch three years ago I get how you might think the old system is better but in reality you haven't tried the new one so you don't really have a way to compare. I noticed so many quality of life fixes that I can't even imagine running X11 anymore.
It works fine for what I'm doing. I don't do anything that depends on Wayland.
> Sure that's convenient but so many apps don't even support X11 anymore.
Really? If true, I don't seem to run any of them. I've certainly not noticed anything I've been running over the past couple of decades suddenly stop working on X11. Given that QT, GTK, FTLK, and other cross-platform GUI toolkits support X11, these must be particularly special programs.
> Just as one example[, screensharing...]
Sure, it is a bit nicer to be able to control which windows which other programs can see. I've been watching the slow-moving, many-years-long shitstorm that has been "actually get screensharing that works the way ordinary people need it to". It's been quite a show.
Thing is, I do know that the X Access Control Extension was standardized in ~2006 and updated through 2009 with the aim to make additional fine-grained access control modules [0] easy. I don't know how long it would have taken to use what existed (or even write something new) and update the major Desktop Environments with tooling to manage it... but I suspect it would have taken far less than seventeen years.
> I noticed so many quality of life fixes...
I'm sure that were I 16, I'd believe that I cared very much about that. Now, -mumble decades later- the fanciest things I want are OpenGL and Vulkan support with performance at least on par with what you get from Windows, a window manager that lets me Alt+mouse-button to move or resize a window, functioning global hotkeys that I can command to run arbitrary programs (and that I can permit any arbitrary program to hook into... permanently), and functioning screen-sharing (that can I can permit any arbitrary program to hook into... permanently). And it's so, so silly for me to feel the need to mention anything other than Alt+mouse-button. You'd think that the rest would be "table stakes", but the Wayland development process has demonstrated that many folks disagree.
[0] Ones that could -for instance- prevent undesired keyloggers and screenshot tools
The problem is as soon as you run something new and it doesn't scale properly in X11 you're gonna be making a bug report instead of using what everyone else is using. Currently just with the screen sharing thing it's not even just graphical. There's also updates for Pipewire so you can select the audio output you wish to stream with your video feed. That dialog simply doesn't exist at all in X11. You probably don't even know it exists. It's been feature complete now for YEARS. There's a reason that Valve is using Wayland on SteamOS. It's cause it's feature complete now and they are working on stuff like HDR which won't work at all on X11. I'm guessing that X11 support will start to be dropped in the next few years by major code bases. It's hard for me to even explain some of the bugs I saw with X that disappeared overnight when I switched to Wayland. You talk about OpenGL and Vulkan support but hilariously that's what I'm trying to explain to you has *better* performance now than even Windows.
Just basic stuff wayland has that X11 will never have:
- No screen tearing by default
- Proper vsync
- Lower latency for input → display
- Per-monitor refresh rates (144Hz + 60Hz works correctly)
- Fractional scaling is actually correct (no blurry hacks)
> The problem is as soon as you run something new and it doesn't scale properly in X11...
QT, GTK, FLTK, and friends handle scaling correctly. Perhaps in the future there will be a Wayland-only GUI library, but I'm not sure why anyone would bother when there exist Wayland backends for the major existing ones.
> Pipewire
I don't use it. I use JACK2 with a PulseAudio fallback for Steam games and other programs that don't know how to hook into JACK.
> - No screen tearing by default
If you're using an AMD graphics card, the TearFree option gives you this. If your distro hasn't enabled it by default, then it's two minutes work, and work that I did years ago.
> - Per-monitor refresh rates
$ xrandr | grep -A2 DisplayPort
DisplayPort-0 connected primary 3840x2160+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 698mm x 393mm
3840x2160 60.00 + 60.00 50.00 59.94 30.00*
2560x1600 59.94
--
DisplayPort-1 connected 1200x1920+3840+0 left (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 546mm x 352mm
1920x1200 59.95*+
1920x1080 60.00 50.00 59.94 59.99
--
DisplayPort-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-A-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
The rest of your concluding list is just as poorly-informed.
I know what you mean, though I have a device running SteamOS though and it runs extremely smoothly, the latency is no different than my windows PC (on titles where it can achieve the same framerate).
I'm sure that it must be possible to replicate whatever optimisations SteamOS has on other distros, but unfortunately I am not sure what those are exactly.
Ah. Yeah, I play games very much like that (but not those specific ones). I also play rhythm games, which require precise timing.
Like this guy mentions [0], for all but one of the games I've tried, [1] I see comparable or superior performance to Windows.
I'm running AMD hardware, and I'm using KDE without a compositor on Xorg (that is, not on Wayland). I strongly expect that I've successfully disabled KDE's compositor because I seem to get the same performance when I use WindowMaker, which has never had a compositor.
> That's because almost all of the big players in that space
To the OP's point-- there are soooo many games nowadays, that if you and your friend group can skip some of those "big players," there are still hundreds of multiplayer games to play.
> ...which the Linux wrappers (mostly the wine project) refuse to support for security reasons.
I mean, several of the major anticheats can be configured to work just fine on Linux. [0] It's up to the game dev whether or not it's permitted. So, yeah, unless the game is one where its dev makes huge blog posts about how "advanced" its anti-cheat is (like Valorant or the very latest CoD/Battlefield games) it's quite likely that multiplayer games will work just fine on Linux.
And if they don't, and the faulty game is a new purchase on Steam, then ask for a refund and tell them that the game doesn't work with your OS. Easy, peasy.
[0] I have 100% solid, personal knowledge that Easy Anti Cheat can work on Linux. On Linux, I play THE FINALS, Elden Ring, and a couple of other EAC-"protected" games without any troubles. I have perhaps-unreliable memories that at least one of the games I play uses Denuvo, which is only sometimes used as anti-cheat but does use many of the same techniques as kernel-mode anticheat.
> I have 100% solid, personal knowledge that Easy Anti Cheat can work on Linux.
That's no secret, but the catch is that the Linux version is much, much easier to bypass. That's why some developers choose not to enable it, or in the case of Apex Legends, enabled it but later backtracked and disabled it again.
> That's why some developers choose not to enable it
That's an excuse. It's mostly incompetence or more often than not the company doesn't think it's worth the effort. With more Linux users, the balance will eventually shift from "fuck them" to "we have to figure out a way".
Now if you do care about quality, having a committed, technical audience giving quality big reports is a godsend. But that's not where we are this decade rife with layoffs and rampant outsourcing in the industry.
You’re posting an argument from 6 years ago. Not including Steam OS, the Linux market share has almost quadrupled since then (to ~3.2%); including Steam OS, it’s up to ~24%. And continues to trend upwards.
You also don’t need to arbitrarily support Linux. It’s not difficult to say “this has only been tested on Fedora, Ubuntu, POP, and SteamOS; other distributions are unsupported officially”.
Most game studios pay someone else to make the anti-cheats and many already have Linux versions that the studios choose to not enable.
Besides, if your anti-cheat only ever looks at the system level, it'll easily be bypassed by hardware cheats. At some point I think anti-cheats will have to "know" the game to be able to detect anomalies. It's the only way to effectively stop many categories of cheats.
Those Linux versions are generally not kernel-level. Do you know of any that are?
And yes, of course it's not fool-proof. It's not supposed to be. It's about probabilities: for a given online game, what is the chance that I end up in a match with someone who is obviously cheating and using that to ruin the game for everyone else? The harder you make cheating, the lower that is.
Oh, it absolutely is; if your product doesn't update its EAC bits regularly then it may as well not use EAC at all. Even still, there are known ways around it.
Even PVP is starting to “just work” via Proton. Arc Raiders runs just fine on Linux and is a strictly PvP game. Over time I think this will be less and less of a problem.
Still has an anti-cheat, they just bothered to allow Linux support.
Companies don't do this out of laziness/incompetence, but even some large anti-cheats work on Linux and some games simply choose to not enable it (cough, Tarkov, cough). Their problem, I'm no longer gonna play games that don't work on Linux.
Funnily enough the best FPS game ever (Counter-Strike) runs absolutely fine on Linux. Thanks Valve!
As far as I know, all the anti-cheat options for Linux are not kernel-level, which means that they are drastically less effective at their intended purpose. That's why so many competitive multiplayer games choose to not enable it.
Its not that they refuse to support the anti-cheat rootkits, its that its really difficult to emulate or abstract kernel level code. If you are using kernel level anti-cheat, you are just asking for trouble all-around.
> oh game XYZ doesn't run so it's not reasonable for gaming
People tend to generalize, but what they probably mean is "it's not reasonable for gaming for the games I play.
I haven't fully switched over yet because the games the combo of the hardware I have + the games I play regularly, still give me issues vs. Windows. Getting them to run isn't the problem, but I haven't been able to solve miscellaneous crashes, lag, lower frame rates, etc.
My next PC upgrade will probably be getting rid of my Nvidia 1660 super and getting something AMD for less headaches.
> People tend to generalize, but what they probably mean is "it's not reasonable for gaming for the games I play.
This. The corollary is also that people take the such quips way too literally.
I, personally, don't play that many games, and those that I do play tend to run faster on Linux (with an AMD GPU, which I bought specifically to avoid nvidia headaches).
But I still game on Windows. Why? Because I still have a Windows box, "because Linux is not reasonable for photo editing". I actually daily drive Linux, but I can't be assed to move from Lightroom and photoshop, so I still keep a windows pc under my desk. I just play games on it because it's much beefier than my 5 yo ryzen U laptop, and since I don't interact with that box all that much, I didn't feel like partitioning my smallish drive for no tangible benefit. My laptop is more than enough for all my other needs.
Ok, if you want to be stubborn about it then leave Windows on a partition and only start it when you want to play that one game. Problem solved.
In many ways, moving to Linux is like starting to live on your own. Your mommy might be a better cook than you, but is that a good enough reason to keep living in your parents' basement?
Win insists on bootlocker/secure boot, meanwhile most of the Linux doesn’t boot with it or you have to go though hell and back to install unsigned drivers (nvidia, gentle-yall).
I’d all say that Linux is like living in a car with 0 euros and saving up for a house. Simple user can scrape by, but mowing dev work life to Linux is much harder than to Mac. VPNs, inconsistent distro support for weird work stuff and such will make you spend days to weeks of unpaid overtime to get comfortable
Linux can handle BitLocker & Secure Boot just fine. The problem with dual booting in that configuration is rather that every time Linux updates the boot loader, Windows will freak out and stop booting until you enter the recovery key for BitLocker. This can be prevented by first booting into Windows to disable BitLocker until the next reboot and then installing the Linux updates, but in practice I find that I forget about it all the time with my dual-boot laptop (which spends most of its time booted into Linux).
This is a solvable problem and there's even pacman hooks around to do it for you
But also don't blame Linux. Even your comment says the problem is Microsoft. We need to be collectively mad at the right entity if we're going to get them to change. Otherwise they'll keep bullying people and they've found that they can bully people so much it gives them Stockholm Syndrome, where they feel they can't leave.
For quite a while I've found that the much easier answer is to have a physical drive per OS and make sure it's the only drive connected during install, or at least one for anything that doesn't play entirely nicely with multi-boot. Obviously there's downsides to that, buying another drive or you might be using something like a laptop which is less friendly to extra drives, dis/reconnecting M.2 drives isn't as trivial as SATA either.
Secure boot mainly gets annoying if you have an Nvidia card, since the akmod needs to be self-signed. It's not insurmountable but you have to load your keys into the UEFI before it'll work.
Bazzite builds the Nvidia driver into its kernel, so you don't need to do anything special. Post installation it prompts you to do key enrollment, so all the user needs to do is select "Enroll MOK" and type "universalblue".
I’m sorry but are you being intentionally obtuse? You can’t think of a single downside to running two systems on your machine instead of one? If you lack imagination to that level I can’t help you dude
Of course running one system is better. Use Linux and stop being miserable ;)
Still, you haven't said what are these extremely horrible cons that two systems have. For me they're so small it's not even comparable to having to submit yourself to a shit Windows system only to avoid the "hassle" of having two systems.
I used Windows only for gaming and Linux for everything else. Now I'm fed up with games that choose to block Linux out, so I no longer need the two systems and couldn't be happier.
I’m not miserable in the slightest, just endlessly bewildered that people in the Linux community continue to have attitudes like yours, despite that being literally the main reason people are put off of Linux. It’s self defeating.
Over the last year or so, nVidia support for the 3+ series of hardware has gotten pretty stable.
With that said, I'm probably going to grab and AMD or Intel card once my 3060 becomes too much of a pain to continue using. It's a little ridiculous that the 5060 gives very little reason for my to update my 5 year old video card.
I only update my rig ever 8-10 years. Saves money though I tend to then play the older games, which is OK for me. I've had a 3080 for 3 years and it still feels like a new card.
FWIW my 4070 Ti Super has had zero headaches in Linux. It’s only older Nvidia cards I’ve had issues with. Seems like there was a major driver change starting with the RTX 20xx series.
Up until last week I was running a 960 on mint and had absolutely no problems, nor did I even have to think about drivers. I also have a server running Tesla M10s and they're great too, little more fiddly getting the right driver, but that's moreso on the cards being weird.
Post last week I put in an Arc B580 and I had some issues at the start, but that's more to do with the fact that my workstation has a Haswell Xeon v3... Otherwise it was just turning CSM off.
Linux probably became first-class for them because a lot of ML workflows rely on NVidia in the cloud, and I don't think anyone really uses Windows for that.
Again, all these games are available on console (mostly) so the excuse to not support Linux is conscious. Those ARE Linux machines. Essentially. (Yeah yeah, they have their own tool chain and rendering) but if they are using Vulkan, DX12, DX11, and a window - it can run on Linux.
Of course, and it's mostly DRM and/or anti-cheat. The studios want full control over the device running their IP, and they can't achieve that with desktop Linux, but they also don't want to leave the PC gaming market behind entirely to launch exclusively on consoles. Hence why the Windows versions of these games install rootkits on your PC, they aren't cooperating with the PC ecosystem, they are forcibly turning your computer into a locked-down console.
and for a good reason, you want an infested cheater to be more a problem than currently bad problem that is happening????
giving a user freedom cause it to make multiplayer game to be more unbearable since its human nature to compete and come out of others ???? who would guess
Technically PS5 and I think Switch 2 is based on the BSD kernel probably because of the license. Xbox is not exactly Windows but it's using an NT kernel.
Playstation is FreeBSD, yeah, but the Switch runs a completely bespoke microkernel. Nintendo did borrow the BSD networking stack, which led some to infer from the license disclosure that it runs a BSD, but it's been extensively reverse engineered now and it doesn't even vaguely resemble Unix.
The fun thing about it being a true microkernel is that although there's zero official public information about it, it was small enough to fully reverse engineer and more or less reconstitute the original source code. You can see it here, it's tiny:https://github.com/Atmosphere-NX/Atmosphere/tree/master/meso...
I’ve been trying to train a model to do this kind of work. Take a black box and try to reverse engineer its functions back into something usable (not necessarily identical). Obviously on things that are out of copyright or copyleft.
There have certainly been issues (I've been on Linux with mostly nvidia GPUs since 2004) but it's
almost always been caused by the module being outside the kernel, and a kernel update breaking compatibility sometimes, understandably. This has always been fixed quickly on nvidias end though. And early Wayland issues and the current DX12 -> Vulkan translation performance issues in more recent times.
But overall I've also had a mostly stable experience during that time. New hardware is supported mostly at release. Not always supporting all the latest features straight away mind you, but still. Meanwhile I seem to hear about issues with support for Intel and AMD cards at release frequently in comparison.
AMD drivers are now open and in the mainline kernel. They dropped their proprietary driver and now use the upstream MESA stack. Nvidia also still suffers from a 20-30% performance drop on DX12 games on Linux, while AMD does not.
It used to be the reverse as you stated, but that hasn't been true since about 2015.
Okay, but AMD isn't accelerated. It's godawful slow for anything to do with video, and really you just need an NVidia card if you're doing anything to do with video editing or motion graphics.
The built-in amdgpu drivers are awful, constantly crashy and with very poor hardware support of anything more than a couple of years old.
It doesn't have CUDA beacuse that's NVidia-only and it doesn't have OpenCL unless you use the binary-only drivers, which only work on a handful of very new cards.
I actually switched from a 7900 XTX to a 4090 BITD because I wanted CUDA, so I get that angle, but that doesn't mean I go around telling people "AMD isn't accelerated," because it's not true and it's a silly thing to try to claim.
NVIDIA is currently improving as well! Of course AMD is still the safer bet, but I think things look bright for NVIDIA in the future. The kernel driver was open sourced, and they are currently working on the DX12 performance issues.
I run both operating systems. But I have to say it either runs the game you want to play or it doesn't. This is especially true if you play games with friends.
That's not what I am saying, sorry if it was confusing. The parent was implying that if it doesn't run a game just pick a different game. But I was pointing out that isn't always an option, and some times you just want to play a specific game.
I used Linux Mint for 2 full months, 99% of my personal computing. Really like it. BUT... not all games my gaming group plays work on it, and social gaming is very important to me.
That doesn't mean I'm sour on Linux PC gaming. I think it's great, and will work for a lot of people, and it's so close for me. And I might switch, since my gaming tastes are shifting.
I do understand the premise but … people want to play the games they want to play.
For example I am a good customer for streaming services because I don’t care about specific titles - I will watch a series or a movie because it is available. I will most likely not go through a hassle to watch some specific show if it is not on streaming I already have.
Gaming doesn’t really work like that for me. I usually want to play specific titles - not just some game.
But I fully understand someone has the same approach to games as I have for movies/series.
I'd quote your own example from Anno -> "multiplayer never worked". Thats the "doesn't run" part. I always play Anno 1800 with friends. It has been my experience with linux gaming for a while - anything that involves multiplayer usually doesn't work, either because its just broken (less likely) or because its specifically stopped by the developer (anticheat, etc..). Reality is though, that most mainstream games (as in, biggest player counts and as such, the games most people are playing) do not support linux. If my Valorant or League of Legends or Counter Strike or Rust or ARC Raiders or Marvel Rivals don't allow me to play on linux then the state still is "linux can't really run games yet".
How do you fix this? I dont know - most of these are the developers refusing support because of anticheat or just support overload, but it's insane to suggest that linux works for gaming when the most played games in the world straight up do not work. I'd love if linux was more viable though, can't wait to ditch the slowness from windows.
It's like this. You eventually got Starcraft2 to work. That means Linux can run Starcraft2, it's in the "Runs" category. Games like League of Legends, which have kernel level anti cheat, are in the "Won't Run" category.
But you don't want to sacrifice comfort or other things. The game should work just right on Linux.
I have an Nvidia card and use mostly Ubuntu (mate), also for gaming. It's even a problem now, because I would benefit from a hard divide between the gaming and working\studying system (I have a gaming user in backlog).
On Linux it's mostly KSP, Factorio, but sometimes DeepRockGalactic, Valheim, Euro Truck Sim or Warhammer: Total War1\2\3. These games work flawlessly or with <10%fps hit.
There are games that kind of work - Ancestors: Humankind Odyssey, Cyberpunk, Hunt: Showdown. But you lose comfort and I'd rather just play them on Windows, than suffer decreased functionality on Linux. I know that some of it (definitely Cyberpunk) is only because of NVIDIA.
When buying games I usually don't buy Windows only games unless there is a very good reason. And I quit League of Legends and WRC rally because of anti cheat scam. I feel scammed after putting lot of money in a game and suddenly losing the ability to play it.
This shifting of goalposts just to cater to linux just explains it all.
Comeon. If a customer bought a game that says it runs on linux, they should be able to play it on linux well, not just launch it and quit within 5 mins.
I get you have the ideology up in your head, but don't lie and embellish linux to this degree. The attitude just turns people off.
> If a customer bought a game that says it runs on linux, they should be able to play it on linux well
None of those games say they run on Linux.
- Starcraft 2 is available for windows/mac: https://starcraft2.blizzard.com/en-us/
- Anno 1800 is available for windows: https://store.steampowered.com/app/916440/Anno_1800/
- Hogwarts Legacy is available for windows: https://www.hogwartslegacy.com/en-us/pc-specs
The fact that you can play most games on Linux these days is due to the Wine developers, Valve, and CodeWeavers. But those efforts are completely unrelated to the developers of those three games. Buying Starcraft 2 is not, in any way, purchasing a Linux game or transferring money to anyone working on Linux support.
Every game I've purchased that actually says it runs on Linux, has worked beautifully on Linux (stellaris and factorio come to mind). Most windows games work beautifully on Linux too, but Blizzard isn't lifting any fingers to make it that way.
Yeah I hope I'm clear in that I'm not "against Linux" or "against people choosing to use Linux." I think Linux is awesome.
And I choose to use Windows for most of my personal computing, due to my gaming preferences, some needs (concussions + poor eyesight means things like scaling and brightness controls and refresh rate matter a lot to me), and my preference for DxO PhotoLab (which isn't Linux compatible.)
"Linux" is really a family of operating systems, so people need to be more specific. It might run perfectly out of the box on consumer/gamer focused operating systems like Bazzite or SteamOS while perhaps requiring more work on something like Red Hat or NixOS. Those different operating systems all have wildly different approaches to how the OS actually works despite generally being able to run a largely overlapping set of programs.
It's like saying something works on "laptop" without specifying whether it's a Thinkpad or a Chromebook or a Macbook.
I can't comment generally but I use NixOS and have had no issues playing games on Steam. The setup was laughably simple, just `programs.steam.enable = true;` and Steam handles compatibility so well that I buy games without thinking "will this run".
Actually there was one thing I couldn't do but this isn't unique to NixOS. I tried to install a GTAV mod that allows you to ride your smart bike trainer in game: GTBikeV. The mod can be installed, but the Bluetooth doesn't work. This is a WINE limitation.
Fwiw I've been playing Hogwarts Legacy lately, though single player. Only problem I ever face is sometimes in a cave if I'm facing a certain direction I'll get blinding light as if I have ray tracing enabled and it's badly implemented. Though considering it's a AAA game and other things I've seen, I don't think that's exactly a Linux problem. Much like Starfield...
I ran Starcraft 2 through Lutrus and it was a piece of cake. No lag that I could discern. There was a little mini launcher and everything. The multiplayer also worked just fine, although the matchmaking system seemed to think I was an expert level player for some reason and kept matching me with dudes who were way better at the game than I was.
To me, this is the one thorn in Linux (and the Linux online community) that gives me pause.
For the people that it just works for, well it just works for.
For anyone else, apparently they are the problem? Not Linux?
Well sorry no. I did get StarCraft 2 working with Lutris... once. Then I couldn't get it to start again. Eventually I switched to running Battle.Net from Steam and for some reason that did work. But it wasn't a "just works" or "piece of cake." It was a puzzle.
Maybe the difference is that I am running Ubuntu? Personally I think it's a common mistake for new users to jump on some obscure distro because they read something online where someone says it's the best. Even if that's true there is value in being on a popular distro in that bugs tend to be discovered and fixed quicker and there's almost always someone who has had the same problem you did and often figured out the solution just a web search away.
I think Canonical and the Gnome foundation have made some really bone headed decisions over the years, but I stick with Ubuntu because the mass of users on it means I never get left high and dry. Or at least I'm not alone when I run into a problem.
Yeah, I was using Linux Mint at the time. Which is based on Ubuntu... So that's often where I'd look for help.
Though any kind of documentation is like Linux, scattered and inconsistent. And I'm "OK" with that, as in I think the way that Linux came to be and is maintained, and provides user choice is also the reason why it's not "user-friendly" in every scenario. You can choose your distribution, and a lot of other things. And then look in a wide variety of places for bug reports, user questions, etc. You'll get a variety of answers from "it just works for me" to "change your distribution that you chose" to "even though some guides say to use Lutris, it's easier to just put it in Steam's external program launcher and choose Proton version x.yz."
Even then, not everything will work because it wasn't written to work (for Linux). It was written to work for Windows, and then some smart people rolled up their sleeves and found ways to make a great many things work for Linux, and it's all amazing. And I find using Linux (mostly) quite pleasant. But when things don't work... there's going to be friction. It will take user effort to find a solution, or a solution might not be found.
And for me personally, being someone who really likes to poke and customize and do things my way, Linux is a blessing and a curse, because I can guarantee I'll hit "weird edge cases" like trying to use the online multiplayer part of a game instead of just single player, or try to use my laptop's brightness controls, but they don't work, or I'll want fractional scaling to work, but it won't. And maybe there's a fix out there, or maybe not. Fixes like "it works for me" or "change your distribution", though, are non-fixes. They just frustrate people. If changing my distribution fixes an issue, how many new issues does it create for me?
Not saying you didn’t experience this, but I’ve definitely run StarCraft 2 in the past, and I play Anno 1800 regularly fine (thanks to the mods I’ve been playing it’s even got 50% more sessions than the base game)
Did multiplayer LAN work in Anno 1800 for you out of the box, or did you make adjustments? I couldn't figure out how to get it to work.
StarCraft 2 worked, oddly enough, run from Steam as an external program. (Lots of search results tried to get me to use Lutris/bottles, but I couldn't get it to work consistently under Lutris.)
Ah yes that's what I meant. But yes unfortunately I could not figure out how to get multiplayer to connect. No idea why or how to troubleshoot and fix.
They don't mean all games thru all times, they mean "the latest $70 release" that still can have problem if it is multiplayer DRM/anticheat ridden one.
I haven't booted windows in months but there is definitely some caveats for gamers
On the other hand, those who find contemporary game development trends distasteful might find much to like about the fruits of the Debian Games Team's work on game-data-packager.
The games on that list have native ports that can be integrated into the Debian environment just by installing packages, and the game data packages can be automatically generated from each game's official install media.
I just dont understand how anyone can go "yeah okay lets install these guys rootkit complete with keylogger and who knows what, totally legit!", and for what? to play a game
I personally wouldn't install any kernel anticheat on a computer that I intend to use for anything important, so I would personally refuse to install the incompatible games even if I was using windows.
Take ProtonDB with a grain of salt, Apex Legends still has a Silver rating ("Runs with minor issues") despite being 100% unplayable on Linux for over a year now.
"Just trust us, bro! Our security is better than the banks, governments, and major services and we would never let anyone exploit or abuse the gaping hole we're deliberately installing in your security profile! It's just our perfectly secure rootkit that won't ever be used for anything bad!"
It's so weird to me that people just allow this, or even defend it. Game companies should be legally obligated to scale human moderation and curation of multiplayer games, and if you're paying for service that gets moderated and curated, there should be some legal expectation of process - a requirement that the service provider lay out a specific "due process" framework, even if it ends up mediated, that gives a customer legal recourse. Instead, they try to automate everything, which has notoriously indiscriminate collateral damage with no recourse.
If you pour significant chunk of your private time and money into a game, you should be entitled to not arbitrarily lose an account or gameplay progress because some poorly configured naive Bayes classifier decided you did something wrong, without corresponding evidence or recourse to undo bad bans.
For some reason companies are entitled to infinitely expand their reach without concurrently expanding their responsibilities in providing service to individuals. Must be nice.
Most of the games I play would work fine, but it’s the damn anti cheat and multiplayer games that forces Windows down my throat, and I’m not happy about it.
I only use my gaming rig for gaming so I have no other requirements, which kind of makes it even worse.
Initially I hated that Linux was so niche in 2005 or so.
Meanwhile now, I don't have time for games anyway. I still think gaming should be better on Linux, but I don't miss Windows anymore either (though I have it as secondary operating system on another computer; I just don't really care about it, it could die tomorrow and I would not miss it one iota).
Games are more and more consolidating towards services, so it really only takes one game for the lions share of gamers. You can bet GTA V is a big draw away from Linux and that GTA VI will eventually be the same when it hits PC.
As for me, I'm still stuck for professional reasons. I do intend to develop natively on Linux when time comes to make my own game.
The only pain point I've found is VR. I've bounced off trying to get it working multiple times with the best results getting about 10% functional (video working on one or two games, input broken on all).
That said, I haven't tried getting the same kit working on windows so I can't say if it's any better.
VR is rough at the moment, but one would hope that Valve is prepping an overhaul for SteamVR on Linux since they're launching a standalone VR headset which runs Linux soon.
I ran into the issue where I didn't know that you can tell Steam to always prefer NATIVE LINUX programs over everything over Proton. This was causing a ton of issues with VR, I havent gone back to try it yet though, havent found the time.
It was very broken for a long time. Since fairly recently you have WiVRn (specifically wivrn-dashboard on Arch) for Oculus (more supported though) and I would daresay it works better then SteamVR used to do for me on Windows
Hardware for flight sim games is also in a similar boat. It's hard to configure most of the newer hardware, but a lot of the old low quality joysticks work alright out of the box.
That's great to hear as a fellow Reverb G2 user. Starting with Windows 11 24h2 they dropped all Windows MR support. It looks like there's also a driver called "Oasis" now which restores functionality on Windows.
I have owned the index for a few years, running it on ubuntu/mint. It is a pain. But VR is a pain generally. I go months without using the thing. Then when i do use it some bit of software has been updated and i inevitably have to spend an hour getting it to work correctly again. Honestly, VR on linux feels like using windows again.
VR is bad because nobody cares much about it. The hardware is clunky, the market tiny, and costs great. As the hardware improves it will get more attention from the FOSS community and so too will the overall experiance.
Does a game "run on Linux" when it has 100% feature parity? 90%? 80%? What are you willing to cut? Some performance? A few graphical effects? Multiplayer?
When you look at the details, Linux gaming is not as good as it might seem.
What you sacrifice in feature parity, you gain in user freedom and principle. To me, that is a worthwhile tradeoff. Especially since it's really not that much different at this point. You're not sacrificing much in most cases now. It's really quite remarkable.
I can't remember the last time a game did anything other than run (this is with only trying games that have been documented to work). I think the worst I've had is audio not working in cut scenes in some game, but I don't remember what game it was.
Many of us play with friends and don't dictate every game in the rotation. My time with my friends is more important to me than operating system purity.
You and most of the other people in this thread clearly do not understand what's going on here. I and everyone else you're griping about do not give a shit about Slop Spoogers 7 from 1998 running great on Linux, we care about the games that we play with our friends being playable.
This is what matters, on Windows every single one of these is Native. Switching to Linux will be painful at best until every single one is at least Gold if not Platinum or Native.
There it is, the classic “just change what you enjoy then!!”. Linux will take off when the community stops trying to force new users to conform to the Linux way of life and instead respect that other people have other needs and wants that are valid, and not a moment before.
While I agree it's unreasonable, it's also kind of a chicken and an egg thing. These things won't change until Linux becomes big enough to ignore. I'm not sure what the solution is though, as I don't think it's realistic to make people give up what they enjoy to get there. That's not gonna happen. But Valve has at least made a dent with the Steamdeck and Proton in general, and maybe more with the upcoming Steam Machine. Devs actively target the Steamdeck nowadays for games where it makes sense, so it is taken into consideration at a whole new level compared to years past.
Getting the community to respect that people have those needs would go a long way to stopping people from feeling alienated, even if the solutions aren’t there yet.
Not much else to do. You either convert people, convert the companies to support Linux, or convert the government into cracking down on whatever makes it difficult for Linux to be supported. The latter is highly unlikely, and the 2nd only cares if people shift their habits.
I mean, the community could be less hostile to newcomers, and some of the bigger distorts could focus more on the user experience of inexperienced users. Those things can be done without any of those.
How so? My impression is that Ubuntu is the biggest distro and it's philosophy is pretty much trying to replicate the Mac experience. I don't think the base UX can get easier to use at that rate.
Things that don't work out of the box tend to be proprietary stuff, like GPU drivers. That falls back to converting companies.
Ubuntu has done a decent job for normal installs but take it from me, if you want to dual boot it, it still doesn’t make it easy. It’s too easy to mess up your whole system if you don’t know what you’re doing, not to mention bootloaders are all still stuck in the 90’s, and are even worse to configure nicely than they are to use.
Dual booting is one of the best ways to introduce someone to Linux in theory as they’ll feel safe trying that without having to delete their whole old system… except it’s also the scariest and most difficult way to install it and no installer makes it easy. It’s a real foot gun.
So much this. People like to moan about "oh game XYZ doesn't run so it's not reasonable for gaming". More games run on GNU / Linux than any gaming console. There are simply too many games that do run to give a second thought about the ones that don't, and it's been that way for years.