I feel like this is a question that might have been asked around and maybe there are guides around, but that’s a discussion that I’d like to have with the lot of you.
The context
Using Linux on both my work laptop and the Steam Deck has made me quite interested in a full switch to Linux - my other computer is a gaming desktop, which I use a lot for many things, but mostly for gaming. Getting used to Linux has made me quite more intolerant to all the BS Microsoft is pushing than I used to be, the latest one being forcing the users to switch from the older email client to the new Outlook, which has a big, nice ad banner that looks like an unread email. So I’ve began wondering: after all, why not? Why shouldn’t I embrace the penguin? Well, the answer is that I should not if there are too many hinders and drawbacks in using Linux, which would make me need a dual boot instead of a single OS install.
We all know gaming has long been one of the main limiting factors in switching, but the Deck has changed the whole landscape on that front. We’ve basically switched from “Windows is the only OS suitable for gaming” to “Linux is also viable”, and the Deck has been made that available to the general audience. Therefore, nowadays, how viable is Linux for a gaming computer? What are the limitations users will encounter? Would I be able to play all the games from my Steam, Epic and GOG library with a bit of tinkering, including the new releases?
The drawbacks of using Linux (or those that I can think of)
- Other gaming launchers support on Linux suck: GOG and Epic will work through Heroic Games but Activision/Blizzard, Ubisoft, EA and Rockstar games will all be a pain, or even not work at all. Is is true? Is there any way around that?
- No Microsoft GamePass. Or none that actually matters, as the only solution is to pay for the higher tier and stream the games - so no game actually runs on the desktop. No, thanks.
- Some DRM will prevent games from working, and this is especially true for games with heavy online content.
- NVIDIA support for Linux is far from being on-par with that on Windows, especially the open-source drivers. Is this still true?
- Many devices, especially those for gaming, might not have good (or even working) compatibility drivers for Linux. I know my UWQHD monitor works flawlessly on Windows, but requires quite a bit of tinkering on Ubuntu
- Newer games might not be optimized for Linux in the first place
- Tinkering is inevitable (as with any Linux computer, really)
What can we add?
The advantages (I can think of)
- It’s free
- It’s ad free
- Customization on Linux is awesome, and I might end up spending more time ricing, breaking it all and reinstalling than gaming (see also, previous section’s 7.)
- I will no longer be sending data to Microsoft
What else am I not thinking about?
What distro?
And finally, let’s say I make the switch. What Linux distro should I use? I’ve read a bit about Drauger, Ubuntu GamePack, or even Pop! OS with some manual setup. What do you guys think, and advise?
More drawbacks I can think of
- VR gaming is a much worse experience due to neglected linux drivers and SteamVR linux version
- Discord screen sharing is in a bad state still
- Variable refresh rate realistically requires wayland on a multi-monitor setup which comes with its own caveats
Despite these I think if you get a setup that works for you the experience will be better on Linux.
For distros I’ve always been of the opinion that Arch-based is the best choice for people switching due to the vastness of the AUR; for that I can recommend EndeavourOS.
Your first two points don’t impact me that much, but that third one hurts - I have been unable to make my monitor work in the correct resolution / refresh rate with Wayland and have had to use Xorg instead.
Isn’t Arch a bit much? I’ve only used Ubuntu so far so I could consider easily using an Ubuntu-based distro, and although I tinker a bit with it I feel like Arch is really for more experienced users. Although Endeavour seems to accompany users a little bit already.
I wouldn’t say Arch is any more difficult to maintain and in some areas even much smoother once properly configured and in the long run. That’s because of its simplicity (the OS internals are simple, clean and easy to understand) and great documentation. I find anything Debian-based to be pretty painful experience on desktop in comparison with Arch.
All in all it depends on you. Arch isn’t that big of a deal if you can read and are willing to put a bit of an effort to it and its strenghts justify that for the vast crowd using it.
Btw, ArchISO now comes with guided installer that does most of what you need automatically and provides fairly bare bones, but usable system out of the box.
All in all it depends on you. Arch isn’t that big of a deal if you can read and are willing to put a bit of an effort to it and its strenghts justify that for the vast crowd using it.
I can read doc an put that bit of effort if necessary - the eternal question is, do I really want to project myself to do that on a daily basis?
Why would you need that?
Eh… advantages = VERY lightweight, user control does exist, no bloatware.
Drawbacks = some games won’t work and/or require some turbonerd tweaking in order to work
Thats pretty much it.
I think the biggest challenge is anti-cheat. I don’t know if there is any solution instead of waiting for native release (like Dota2 and CSGO). Also, although I don’t like Microsoft GamePass, lacking the support of it means we may need to pay extra to try various games.
I think Wine/Proton works really great nowadays (well I’ve repeated it at different places). As 2023-07-28, ProtonDB shows that in the top 1000 games, 75% are rated gold or better.
When it comes to distro, I think most popular ones are good enough if they meet to conditions (1) packages are not too out-dated (2) Not difficult to install some non-free dependencies (like rpmfusion)
Steam Deck changed the landscape of dev support for anti-cheat significantly. It’s still not perfect, but most games relying on EAC work now with minimal issue. You might have to occasionally revalidate installed files or reinstall EAC for the game after a patch and that’s about it.
Other anti-cheat solutions are still a crap-shoot and likely won’t work. Thankfully, VAC and EAC are the most prevalent.
As far as I know Rockstar’s luncher just works fine in Proton, no issues there.
DRM is not a problem anymore unless you pirate (anti-DRM modifications can break in Wine), but it is anti-cheats systems. Some games like Call of Duty Warzone, FIFa 23 and Destiny 2 don’t work because of it. (The last two only because they are programmed to not work on Linux voluntarely, Destiny 2 will ban every Steam account that connect via Proton)
Most devices work out of the box now, tinkering has reduced by a lot especially with easier distros.
Indeed, I mixed up DRM and anti-cheat. On one hand, it’s really annoying, but on the other hand it’s really not the genre of games I play, so I wouldn’t be bothered with any of this.
I think Diablo IV and maybe even the Battle.NET launcher. for example, won’t work on Linux at all, won’t they?
The new Diablo works perfectly in Wine/Proton. Battle.NET has a chance to need some tinkering, but works. In case, there is an automated script to install multiple 3rd party launchers in Steam via Proton meant for the Steam Deck, but of course there is no reason they won’t work on a desktop Linux.
I don’t own Diablo, but I had to setup Battle.NET to install Heroes of the Storm. Can say there wasn’t much to talk about.
Battle net runs fine on steamos for me
What finally drove me back to windows: some games just will not work all the time:
Especially the riot games (which I mainly play) are not made for Linux. Valorant doestn run at all (correct me if this changed) because of the anti cheat.
League will only run when the chads from the internet have written a working lutris script.
While the anti cheat of valorant needs kernel privileges and this is clearly some fckd up shit on riots side and not at all Linux fault, the result still is the same: it doesn’t work.
Same goes for lutris league. While riot not supporting linux is clearly their fault and the people who provide the lutris whine scripts for free for everyone are the real MVPs, the result is a disadvantage in usabilitiy compared to windows. Sometimes it takes time for the community to come up with solutions to changes in the game, sometimes the installer scripts don’t work at all because of some quirk with your specific distro/ your installed packages/your monitor format/etc.pp. Sure you could configure wine yourself, but you need an computer science degree for that which I don’t have.
Have you considered that not being able to play these coercive gambling slot machines might be a feature of Linux?
Or games with massive kernel level spyware! It’s wild where some of the gaming space is at right now.
Exactly. I rarely want to play MP, and when I do, I’m not picky and can find something decent with good Linux support.
I’m unwilling to have kernel-level anti-cheat (no game is worth that), and I hate microtransactions, so that alone eliminates most of the games that don’t work well on Linux. What’s left is a ton of high quality games that respect my time, my privacy and security, and my wallet.
True, the anti cheat is just dumb.
@Jean_le_Flambeur @andruid It’s dumb, but sorely needed in some games… Cheating is rife in simulated racing games (such as iRacing, F1 2023, Assetto Corsa) and those games are highly competitive. Memory hacks to increase grip or power levels for cars is commonplace. And the only place you can catch those cheats is at the kernel level… As long as people cheat, low level anti-cheat is the only possible solution :(
- Whether Linux is supported has nothing to with Linux. Riot decides if they port or not
- You think the same about cs:go and dota? Surely you are not some hypocrit fanboy who loves games just because the were made by his favcapitalists corporation
Who said anything about supported? I merely stated the fact that it might be good for gambling addicts to not be able to easily play these on Linux.
And yes, no big difference with cs:go and dota indeed. The general problem is F2P games that prey on so called “whales” to finance themselves.
So you don’t think your answer is polemical?
You just stating facts for a rational debate?
Yes, I want to draw attention to the exploitative means these companies are using to make a shit ton of money, and Riot is one of the worst offenders. They are basically the Marlboro of the games industry.
sry, but if you think this is a rational discussion, i am not willing to have one with you as we have widley diffrent expectations on discussion culture.
But yes, catching whales and gambling mec hanics are obviously bad.
@Jean_le_Flambeur @hydroel I’m right there with you. If I had more of an interest in gaming, it would be valorant driving me to dual boot or something.
Valorant is Steam Deck verified so I’d assume it’ll work on any machine through Steam. But yeah, I’d go home and rethink my gaming preferences, if i were you. And no, you don’t want to sell me death sticks.
You may be thinking of Apex or some other MP game. Valorant for sure doesn’t work on Linux due to the invasive anti cheat.
I know riot is a controversial company to say it friendly, but since the games are free to play and not pay to win, I can morally live with playing them, since they are a lot of fun for me (also a lot of frustration but I guess that comes with every PvP team game).
I don’t think valorant is verified on steamdeck, since riot never worked with steam and valorant isn’t available on steam. Quick search on steam still doesn’t find it. I think you got something wrong here.
And frankly I think passively aggressively telling someone he plays the wrong games, because they don’t work on steam is a bad argument.
I really didn’t mean to try to tell you what to play, sorry if it came across like that. Play whatever makes you happy. But Valorant is definitely available for the Steam Deck, I saw it in the store many times.
okay, maybe I interpreted “go home and rethink your gaming preferences” wrong. For the part where Valronant is on Steam: can you give me a link?
As others have mentioned, many multiplayer games have anti-cheat, which is more likely not to work in Proton than it is. This area may continue to improve. See http://areweanticheatyet.com
Personally, I play a lot of Japanese visual novels, which usually aren’t released on Steam. Games encumbered with PlayDRM from DLsite will work in Wine, but all games from DMM are encumbered with DRM that doesn’t work in Wine. Wine is a compatibility layer for Windows games that makes them work on GNU/Linux, in case you weren’t aware.
On the other hand, many physical releases of visual novels aren’t encumbered with DRM, so they work fine in Wine. AlphaROM can be worked around by inputting your serial key into the SETTEC website. More information here: https://wiki.comfysnug.space/doku.php?id=visualnovel:problems#drm_and_region_restrictions
Newer games might not be optimized for Linux in the first place
This is usually not true. There aren’t many native GNU/Linux games today; most of them are played using Proton, Steam’s compatibility layer for Windows games. There is no inherent penalty in translating Direct3D calls to Vulkan calls. Vulkan has the potential to be faster than Direct3D, actually. Native games may not be as optimized as the Windows counterpart, but as most of these are small indie games, performance is usually not an issue anyway.
And finally, let’s say I make the switch. What Linux distro should I use?
It’s a good idea to use a rolling release distribution. This is mostly to get the latest drivers; Steam and Lutris both ship a runtime with most of the dependencies you need to play games otherwise, though installing Wine on Ubuntu and Debian is harder, for example. Fedora and openSUSE are good choices. openSUSE in particular has robust graphical tools for package management and other activities which other distributions might force you to use the command line for.
I think a rolling release distribution is a good choice for a general desktop anyway. You’re running the latest software, which means the latest bug fixes and security fixes.
Newer games might not be optimized for Linux in the first place
Thanks to the success of the SD, I believe many developers have started testing and optimizing their games for Proton, which I also account for when I’m talking about “optimized for Linux”.
Noted for the rolling releases! Don’t rolling releases necessarily bring the risk of unstabilities as well? There’s often a balance which might be hard to find between features and stability.
I use Arch Linux, and there are occasional breakages. However, that’s the sort of thing you expect with Arch. openSUSE and Fedora, from my understanding, are far more rigorous about quality-checking and ensuring a good experience for users. Fedora is not a “true” rolling release distribution as it still has major versions, but openSUSE Tumbleweed is.
I personally don’t think the kind of stability these operating systems are offering makes sense for a desktop. For a server distribution, you absolutely want that kind of stability—mostly because it’s difficult to keep on top of upgrades while balancing downtime and your services requiring certain versions of dependencies. You can bridge the gap between newer releases of software with Flatpak and Snap on stable distributions, for the most part.
Fedora is probably a good compromise between completely rolling and stable. It’s particularly attractive to me for all of the security configurations they’ve made out of the box. One of these days, I’ll switch to Fedora or openSUSE…
I believe many developers have started testing and optimizing their games for Proton
I’ve always been curious as to what this process looks like. If they encounter a crash, unless they have a Wine developer on staff, it isn’t as if they can send a patch for Proton. And then there’s the period of time between Valve commissioning the fix and releasing a new version of Proton. All they can really do is open an issue with Valve, as far as I know. They can certainly make changes for the Steam Deck experience, though.
I’ve heard good things about Nobara, a Fedora distribution focused on gaming. I use EndeavorOS which is basically Arch and haven’t encountered any major issues.
I tend to stick to mainline distributions (with the exception of Ubuntu), but I’m glad you’re having a good experience!
You can’t run certain foreign porn games.
The distro I use to play is Nobara. It’s noob friendly and is ready to game as soon as you install it.
I say use the best tool for the job and that tool sadly is usually Windows for most games if you demand top performance and minimal fuss especially when your free time is limited.
Linux has come leaps and bounds from a time where just getting a AAA game running was a feat. But it’s not quite there yet for myself at least.
Dosent most windows games run better on linux then windows? :/
No.
@Simplesyrup
@Kushia
Some games do run better some don’t, I wouldn’t call it most but it’s not an insignificant amount eitherKinda like the sandboxes of proton with easy anti cheat, wait does easy anti cheat installs itself into linux kernal??
EAC runs in userspace on Linux. It’s not as secure as on Windows, but who cares. There’re cheats on Windows who trick EAC anyway…
@Simplesyrup @Kushia Star Conflict and Elite Dangerous are playable on linux in 4K whereas on the same machine on Win10, not so much (lower fps). So, for these two, I say yes, they are.
Games with intrusive (or what doyou call it) anticheat, e.g. Valorant, don’t work (yet?).Valorent is stupid
@Simplesyrup Do you mean by that the anti-cheat method the developers made, or do you mean you really don’t like that game?
That’s something way too many Linux fanboy’s repeat again and again, which does not make it any more true than it is.
The fact of the matter is that games designed for Windows run better on Windows in almost all cases. There are some games that work better on Linux and these examples are then repeated endlessly (“Look, my Linux is better than your OS!!1!1!!!1”). Iirc some of these games only worked better with a particular GPU vendor, so even some of those examples weren’t universally true (DOOM 2016?).
Especially the 1%/0,1% lows are often worse on Linux than Windows. But I don’t want to discourage anyone from using Linux for gaming! I’m exclusively on Linux and I’ve played countless hours of GTA, BattleBit and Overwatch and many more.
A german news outlet did some benchmarks on recent titles on Windows and Linux. Not on identical hardware but close enough to show that there’s still some aspects lacking, especially those 1% lows.
Original: https://www.computerbase.de/2023-07/star-wars-jedi-survivor-linux-test/
Google Translate: https://www-computerbase-de.translate.goog/2023-07/star-wars-jedi-survivor-linux-test/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Original: https://www.computerbase.de/2023-06/diablo-iv-linux-benchmarks/
Google Translate: https://www-computerbase-de.translate.goog/2023-06/diablo-iv-linux-benchmarks/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Idk just seems like my steam libery runs more officently then compared to windows, but I was using win 11 and probably my cpu was getting used to harvest my data and spy on me instead of doing its job :v
Firstly disclaimer, instance url. In my limited experience (on various flavours of Arch, including vanilla), most steam games I’ve tried have worked with minimal tweaking. FF XIV (running outside of steam) also runs with only minimal hickups (occasionally stays on a black screen and has to be restarted on my system).
I’ve had no issues so far from nvidia’s proprietary drivers, I’ve yet to try the open source alternative.
At the end of the day, how much of a hassle it is, depends entirely on the games you intend to play. For me, I ended up setting up a windows VM with GPU passthrough for the more stubborn games, though so far I’ve only needed it for one.
TL;DR: YMMV, but it’s far better than even a few years ago.
I almost exclusively play solo games, with exceptions here and there for solo campaigns - I’m currently playing MH:World, which is officially supported on the Deck so I guess compatibility will not be an issue. So anti-cheat systems will not impact me (or barely), and I don’t know what games will be a hinder.
Any games that haven’t worked at all for you? And what kinds of hiccups have you encountered? I haven’t seen any actually incompatible game so far on the Deck - the main blockers I’ve seen were controller issues, or sometimes performance issues here and there on bad ports like FFXIII, FFXIII-2 and FFXIII: Lightning Returns. I guess modding can be quite a problem too, especially when all external tools are built for Windows.
Regarding NVIDIA drivers, what GPU do you have if I may ask? I recently upgraded to a 4070, I must say I’d hate to have upgraded to hinder performance because of the OS.
Yes, it is so much better than even 2 years ago - I would have never even considered Linux for my desktop, until very recently when I saw how everything pretty much works on the SD.
A lot of the game launchers you mentioned work really well through an app called bottles (you can get this on flathub or the aur) this works really well as they have one click deployments of battle.net etc. You can also add your own executables if you have a game that doesn’t use a launcher or you’ve got a drm free game from GOG for example.
Arch Linux and its derivatives (EndeavourOS, Garuda etc) will have the latest drivers which will help boost performance. These tend to be harder to use than most though as there’s less online guides for them compared to Ubuntu and its derivatives and they require more time in the terminal.
PopOS (ignoring the bug that ltt came across) is a really user friendly distro that a lot of people use and they have an nvidia iso you can download so you don’t have to download drivers yourself.
Another distro worth mentioning is nobara linux. This is made by gloriousEggRoll and is based on Fedora. This has had a lot of gaming related patches applied to it and will have the GE versions of proton installed by default.
Speaking of protonup-qt is a really good app for managing the GE versions of proton that tend to work better than the official steam versions. This can be installed through flathub or is available on most distros
There will still be some games that straight up don’t work due to drm like rainbow six siege (as far as i know). ProtonDB has a really extensive list of games that do and don’t work on linux from the steam store. And for non-steam games lutris has a rating of how well games work.
Also for games made for windows performance will always be worse on linux than windows. Especially when running through wine/proton. The performance isn’t a massive difference but if you’re someone who’s really into maximising framerates you might suffer a bit.
Another caveat is that although raytracing does work on linux native games like doom eternal, currently raytracing does not work on windows games running through proton/wine.
For the drawbacks:
- I’ve never used those other launchers (I just buy from Steam), but I know at least Ubisoft works through Steam, so it should work reasonably well through WINE
- This is essentially the same as 3, Gamepass is a huge pile of DRM
- True, though more work than most expect
- NVIDIA support is fine if you use the proprietary drivers, which are usually packaged on most distros; I used NVIDIA for gaming for ~10 years on Linux without issues, though I’m now on AMD for Wayland support
- I haven’t had any issues for the last 10 years out so, at least not any more than on Windows; that said, I make sure to only buy Intel network cards (eliminates most headaches) and tend to avoid bleeding edge tech (too expensive and buggy, even on Windows)
- True, though look at Ratchet & Clank on Steam Deck, it’s essentially Day 1 support; that has been the case more often than not lately, Valve is killing it
- Not really; I don’t tinker much because I just don’t have the time for it anymore; I have three kids, a full-time job, and I only get a few hours each week to play games; if a game requires tinkering to work, I bail and tag it with “Technical Issues” in Steam; I think I have 5 games there, and at least one has moved out just by trying again a year or so later
To be fair, I’m coming at this from the perspective of a patient gamer. I generally play older SP games (rarely play MP), wait to upgrade hardware (recently bought a 5600 and 6650XT to upgrade my 1700 and 960GTX), and am pretty technically inclined (I’m a SW dev by day, and have used Linux exclusively for ~15 years).
For me, Windows is unacceptable, and macOS is too limiting for hardware choices (and I just don’t like it; I’ve used macOS at work for 2 years and still dislike it).
So instead of discussing native advantages of Linux, I’ll list things I’m glad I don’t have to deal with on Windows:
- I control my updates, and can update my OS while using it
- the OS doesn’t need a ton of disk space
- no licensing nonsense, so I can keep my same install going even if I drastically change hardware (I upgraded my CPU and mobo, and I didn’t need to do anything but bring my old drive along)
- most software can be installed using the package manager or FlatPak, on Windows and macOS, there’s very little consistency
- pretty much no viruses; Linux isn’t a big target, so it’s just not something I worry about; and installing through the package manager eliminates most threats
- no spying/telemetry in the OS, and no privacy settings I feel I need to tweak
- no bloatware, if a distro has stuff I don’t like, I can pick one that doesn’t
- full disk encryption is a thing, including the boot partition; on Windows, the boot partition isn’t encrypted even with “full disk” encryption with bitlocker
- command line is really useful, but you don’t need it for gaming
- lots of game servers run on Linux, so you can learn to self-host or run something for a local LAN if you want; not sure if that’s a thing on Windows
For me, Linux solves my non-gaming problems much better than Windows, and I fundamentally disagree with how Windows works so I refuse to use it for gaming. But even for people who aren’t like me, Linux is a pretty good option with few downsides, provided you don’t need something specific to run (e.g. that one MP game you play all the time). If you can be a little flexible, Linux offers a ton of choice and even more freedom.
Edit: As for distro, just try stuff. I think Mint is decent, so I tend to recommend it, but I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed myself (also recommended). There’s not a ton of difference when it comes to running games for most distros, so pick one that seems to have decent community support and have fun! You can always change later, I’ve used several (Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, OpenSUSE Leap, Debian, probably others).
I’m pretty sure the BattleNet client (Blizzard client) works. I’ve played Overwatch on Linux before. Not sure about the other launchers but if its a Steam game, generally launchers aren’t a big deal? Anti-cheat is usually the problem (e.g. Valorant).
I use NVIDIA on Linux and it’s really not bad at all. I have zero issues with it and I’m likely to stick with NVIDIA for production reasons (sorry AMD).
Some new games worked surprisingly well on Linux like Elden Ring after they fixed the anticheat issue. I heard it ran better than on Windows because of DXVK or something.
I’m going to suggest Linux Mint as a beginner distro. Maybe Arch/EndeavourOS but only because I think the AUR makes life so much easier.
@hydroel Two biggest drawbacks are certain games with anti-cheat not running (however some do), and peripheral support (my Thrustmaster racing wheel doesn’t get force feedback).
Some games (Like Factorio) have a better native Linux version than the Native Windows version.
I use Arch Linux, but wouldn’t recommend it to a novice. If you’re only gaming ChimeraOS is a good place to start. If you’re really new to Linux and scared to break things, an immutable OS like Vanilla may be better suited.
I’m a little used to Linux - a lot less than I am to Windows - and the idea would be to dive deeper into it. So I’m not ready for Arch yet, but Vanilla is too restrictive. And Chimera seems to be a “couch” OS, made to be used with a controller on a TV, so I don’t think it’s the best option either?
If you have two separate physical drives to work with, dual-booting is a great “training wheels” approach to the problem. Then you can take your time with the learning process and hop back into Windows quickly whenever you need a break or the ability to do something quickly that the Linux hasn’t been set up for, yet.
That’s another option, but my current build doesn’t have room for another drive, M2 or otherwise. So I could buy a new, larger M2 and partition it but I don’t really want to have to setup both systems again already.
And I wouldn’t advocate for installation of a daily driver OS on anything less than an m.2, these days. Fair enough. A consideration for the future, then.
For me the biggest issue is always FMV playback.
This is especially true for less popular, older games, though even recent games use stupid codecs/libraries. It would be really nice if the video game industry standardized a bit more like the movie industry has. Once I solve DRM issues, I haven’t had any issues with actual media playback on streaming services, probably because everything is expected to work on a browser.
Yeah, I mainly play JRPGs and visual novels, so I’m very familiar with this issue.
