TL;DR; tried gaming on Linux again after not having done so for ~10 years and am absolutely blown away by how much improved it is
Today I decided to get some use out of an older/leftover PC that I had laying around after upgrading. My plan was to plug it into the TV in our lounge room so that my 5 year old can play some of the less demanding games she enjoys from my steam library (stuff like Slime Rancher 2).
Originally my plan was to install Windows on it only to discover I couldn’t do this due to TPM / secureboot requirements that the older hardware couldn’t handle, this was infuriating and felt like I couldn’t use my own machine which used to run Windows fine.
To understand where I’m coming from; I’ve been a Linux user on and off for more than a decade and in the past had been able to play some games using Wine but it was often fiddly or simply wouldn’t run the game well enough which is why I generally just dual boot Windows for gaming.
I decided to give Linux a try as I’d heard steam has made gaming on Linux much more approachable than it once was using a proton compatibility layer (which under the hood uses Wine but making it a bit easier to use).
After installing Ubuntu 23, Steam and then enabling the proton compatibility in Steam settings I am absolutely amazed at how easy it was to get most games working!. My daughter has been playing Slime Rancher 2 and it works really well and I’ve also tested a few other games such as Cult of the Lamb and Dredge and they also worked well. This is such a leap forward to how I remember the state of things back ~10 years ago when I last played games on Linux.
From recent developments it seems like gaming on Linux is really beginning to pick up momentum and I look forward to the day game publishers place great import on releasing native Linux ports but until then am super grateful for the work the good people at Wine have been doing as well as Proton and Steam for making it easier to use.
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Anti cheats one of the more stubborn hurdles left
It’s honestly gotten to a point where I don’t even check ProtonDB anymore unless it’s a brand new game. Generally things just work.
Yeah - I’d narrow that down to brand new AAA game (likely to have Denuvo) or multiplayer, as some anticheats don’t work. Basically everything else now? Perfect.
I took the day off work to play Elden Ring when it first came out, and was gutted when it didn’t start on Linux. Glorious Eggroll had the fix up about three hours later, after which it’s been absolutely perfect.
With the success of Steam Deck it will only get better and better.
Many games even run better on linux with proton than on windows, due to package bundling and stuff. Though the games I play the most already have native linux support.
I keep hearing this, but I personally have yet to see it. Definitely most of my games run just as well on linux, but otherwise some of them are still glitchy.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll never go back to Windows, I love Linux, but what are these games that run better on Linux?
As I understand, it’s not common, but when it does happen it’s really because vulkan is just that much better than the original directx implementation, even with DXVK working to translate all the system calls.
For real, the world of Linux gaming owes a lot to Valve and to Proton’s contributors. The last five years have taken gaming on Linux from a fiddly nightmare to, in many cases, performance as good as native. There has never been a better time to run Linux as your primary operating system.
