26
votes
Let's talk gaming on Linux
Assorted questions. As always, don't feel like you have to treat them like a quiz and answer them one-by-one (though you certainly can), but more like jumping off points for discussing whatever you feel is relevant:
- Who here games on Linux?
- How long have you been doing it?
- What is your setup like? Full-time Linux? Dual booting? GPU Passthrough?
- Which distro do you use, and why? Did gaming-related factors have an influence on that choice at all?
- What are some of the positives about gaming on Linux?
- What are some of the drawbacks/frustrations?
- What are some of your favorite native Linux games?
- What are your thoughts on the main gaming platforms' support or lack thereof for Linux?
- Do you personally feel a friction between open source philosophy and playing closed-source games?
- Do you think that Valve's Proton initiative is a help or hindrance for Linux gaming?
Share anything else you feel is relevant as well. I'm mostly interested in hearing what other people's experiences are.
Also, I debated whether to put this in ~games or ~tech and ultimately decided on the former, but if it's better placed in ~tech I'm fine with that.
I'm a relatively recent Linux convert, and fall far closer to the "clueless user" side of things than is customary.
Shortly after Valve started up its Proton initiative, my Windows laptop died. I'd been growing wary of Windows for a long time, both in terms of its performance on my computer (which was abysmal) and its data collection practices. I am pretty much a low-need computer user, in that I only need my computer to get me online, store my data, and play some games. That's it. Linux easily does the first two, but prior to Proton, when I considered swapping, it was like I would have to give up a huge swath of my gaming library, or set up a frustrating and clumsy dual-boot. Proton enabled me to bring those games with me to Linux, effortlessly. Yes, I know Wine exists, but I'm the kind of low-knowledge user where even setting that up for a game is intimidating. Proton's effortless, frictionless experience is perfect for me.
So, I was on the market for a new gaming laptop and decided to spring for a System76 machine. I fully realize I could have got a computer with similar specs for cheaper and then just installed Linux onto it, but as previously mentioned, a frictionless experience is important to me, and I think it's important to support companies that support Linux. I picked up an Oryx Pro, and am running Pop!_OS on it.
All things considered, gaming on Linux is lovely for me. While Proton isn't perfect, it's continually getting better, and I'm constantly amazed at what runs through it. I've done full playthroughs of several big games that have worked flawlessly (e.g. The Witness, Spyro Reignited Trilogy). While some stuff doesn't work, I don't feel like I'm missing out on a lot (although I also don't play a lot of multiplayer games that require anti-cheat software, which seems to be its biggest lockout at the moment).
I will say that there seems to be a pretty consistent issue with a lot of games, in that they don't like on-screen notifications or alt-tabbing. I don't know if this is specific to my computer, to GNOME, or just a symptom of Proton at large, but a lot of games will fully freeze when I do something like change the volume. They'll hold there for a good five seconds before resolving. It's gotten to the point that I habitually make sure my volume's properly set before going into a game, simply because I don't know how it's going to respond should I try to adjust the volume while it's running.
I realize I've talked a lot about Proton which is mostly Windows-focused, but I want to note that it was the bridge that let me move to Linux full-time. Now that I'm here, I'm definitely more likely to buy a game that has a Linux version, and I appreciate devs who go through the effort to support us, especially because we're such a small part of the userbase.
I do wish GOG would fully support Linux, though I understand why they don't. For a while they were my gaming platform of choice because of their DRM-free stance, but now that Valve has brought Proton onto the scene, I've moved back to buying my games there -- including re-buying some ones I had on GOG.
All told, I couldn't be happier about the state of Linux gaming. I realize I'm new to the scene but my understanding is that, for a long time, there were far fewer options and very little support. It seems now that there is a robust and thriving ecosystem for games on Linux.
Very disappointing to hear that GOG isn't open to that type of support. I find it odd, as there's such an overlap between people who are anti-DRM and people who are pro-open source. There's so much potential for them to cater to that community and leverage that community's strengths into their product. You're a great example of someone who is willing to support them for free, and I'm assuming many others would as well. Kudos to you for your kindness; sorry that it went unappreciated.
Also, I've been very happy with System76. I think Pop!_OS is splendid (though I acknowledge much of that comes from Ubuntu and Debian as well), my computer runs great, and they have great support. They (along with Tildes) helped me diagnose a major hardware issue and ended up replacing my motherboard for free (under warranty). They even sent me the box to use for shipping to keep the laptop safe, and regularly checked in with me all along the process, from my first support ticket until after I got the computer back and had time to make sure it was working. I would enthusiastically recommend them to anyone wanting a Linux laptop, provided they can afford the premium cost.
I loved reading this! Thank you for sharing. I absolutely love the design of the Thelio and would definitely want one if I used a desktop computer.
Any chance you could summarize this a bit for me (or point me to a resource that covers it)? I feel like, as I started eyeing Linux, all I ever heard was hate for GNOME. When I got Pop!_OS I was surprised to find that GNOME is simple, polished, and elegant. I can see why some people might find it a bit limiting as it seems like there's not a lot of customizability, but I'm not sure I really why people are so vehemently anti-GNOME. It makes me think there's a lot more going on behind the scenes, or a lot of history that I'm not aware of. What's the bigger picture here that I'm missing?
It still kinda works with extensions. Though it's wonky, for sure.
I absolutely love GNOME and its extensions. It had a problem of being laggy, but that's getting better with each release. Now I don't notice any UI lag even on my laptop with Intel HD videocard. Something about it just fits naturally to my workflow and I haven't been able to replicate that with other desktop managers.
I haven't used GNOME very much, but I don't understand some of the hate it gets either. I KDE Plasma over GNOME, but that doesn't mean I despise GNOME. It's just a personal preference. I respect the GNOME Foundation a great deal, and there some parts parts of GNOME that I like, enough so that I might install it on maybe a laptop if I get one. Linux is cool like that, you can have on desktop environment and distro on one machine, and two entirely different ones on another, and that's just fine. I've seen some people hate GNOME just to hate it, but I think it's best for the open source community to stick together, instead of having petty rivalries that should stay behind in proprietary spaces.
I made the switch to full time Linux when I rebuilt my PC last May. Have not missed Windows at all.
Ubuntu 18 user here. Chosen distro because a) much more friendly support for gaming / home use (I generally prefer RHEL at work) and b) good support for AMD GPU Compute for work.
Light gamer, so it's never really a huge deal if something isn't on Linux or I have to wait for it (looking at you Outer Wilds). Proton is amazing. So many technically unsupported things work with little to no issue. Every once in awhile I run into weird keymapping or cutscene issues, but overall very positive experience.
Depends when we get ROCm support for 5.4, even more critical since my desktop is now my primary work-station!
I am on 5.3 already though :)
I have been using Linux as my primary OS for almost 15 years now. I was never really a gamer, but with SteamOS becoming more popular, it is nice to have native games I can play on Linux when I fancy.
I primarily use my Desktop which only has Linux as the OS. I do have a Windows VM with GPU passthru setup on this, which I use mainly for Fusion360. I don't bother gaming on the Windows VM at all.
On my laptop I only have Linux.
I have been using Arch Linux for almost 10 years now. It works well for me. Gaming was not a factor in choosing this at all.
It works! :)
Finding a game I really like and finding they do not have a native linux build is always a bummer. Felt this most recently when I found Ymir.
Just commented on games I play here.
My favorite games are Don't Starve, Factorio and Oxygen Not Included!
Not really. I am not sure how sustainable open source game development would be. Most of the games I play are Indie games and I am happy supporting them.
I have personally not used proton. But the fact that it is based on Wine, I think Proton has got a lot of attention to WIne itself and helped improve Wine in the process.
I have been Linux-only since 2010, including for gaming.
The last 5 or so years I have been using a small 'console' (750ti, i5) with steamOS installed on it, and steam controllers. I have recently given that away to someone who games more, so now I game just on my Arch linux thinkpad. I play mostly indie games so performance is not a massive issue.
I have also by and large stopped using steam, going for DRM free options instead. Both steam and non-steam setups have a lot of games available to play, I've always been happy with the amount of choice I have.
Games I love are Stardew Valley, FTL, Fez, Dirt Rally (been a while). Used to play a lot of Rocket League (RIP).
Currently playing one called 'The Longing'. It takes 400 days in real time to complete, a great lockdown game.
W/r to open source vs closed source games, I see games as art and use them as such. It's not a great argument I know...
I think Proton is great if it gets people off Windows.
I have been a linux user for a long time but never gamed a lot. Last december I built a desktop for gaming and officially became a linux gamer.
I use pop_os because I wanted an easy experience out of the box and was not disappointed.
Using only linux thanks to proton. Haven't came across any frustrations that I can remember.
I play mostly strategy games like rimworld, prison architect, surviving mars, stardew valley, bloons td6, into the breach, polybridge, etc. Also enjoyed the witcher 3 and gta V. Don't know for sure which ones are native because proton makes it that easy.
I prefer to keep only foss applications on my main pc that's why I have built a separate desktop.
I think proton has been very helpful for linux gaming because most of the complaints I see about linux is the lack of microsoft office and games support. Most people don't care about foss, but care about a hassle free experience. Many people don't like windows 10 and proton made the switch to linux easy.
So I just started getting into gaming during the stay-at-home order here in Colorado. The only thing I've really tried so far is Counter Strike which I have enjoyed but a lot of you have provided awesome suggestions and I'm going to give City Skylines and Factorio a shot. My wife downloaded Stardew Valley and has logged a lot of hours in it which is nice as well.
I've been full-time Linux for a few years now. Started with Ubuntu then shifted to Mint and am now on Pop_OS! which I enjoy a lot. Gaming didn't really factor into my distro choice as much as I was just looking for something that ran well on my older laptop.
I used to mainly game on linux. My home laptop was a lenovo yoga which I installed archlinux on and it ran most steam games I cared about (some required a fair bit of tweaking Divinity: Original Sin for instance), like Xcom. Now I'm gaming mainly on my worklaptop (windows for now) and I don't want to switch back and forth so I just leave it running windows. I was surprised that I had issues with using controllers (PS3 ones) on windows. When I needed that I ended up installing dual booting into Ubuntu linux and it just worked out of the box! Proton also makes most things just work with much less fiddling than Wine used to require. I will go back to running a pure linux machine once my work switches over to running our code base in .net core. That will make me a happy camper :D
Now I'm heading back into Dwarf Fortress (which also runs smootly on linux as well)!
I use Solus on my laptop and play some games with it, usually through Steam and proton. I'd really like to try GPU passthrough on my desktop at one point.
Shoutout to OpenRCT2, it's so much fun, especially with multiplayer. Devs are quite helpful as well.
How do you like Solus? I haven't come across many people who use it.
I like it quite a lot. It's fast, stable yet still has frequent (curated) updates. I have been on the same install of Solus for more than 2 years now and I haven't looked further.
Lately CrossCode is the native Linux game getting my attention. 16-bit JRPG-artstyle action RPG with plenty of puzzles. It's long, supposedly 50+ hours, so I'll be working on that for quite a while; I might be halfway through now. (On GOG and Steam)
Visual novels generally work great with Proton, but often are missing intro and ending videos.
Nvidia GTX 1060 should be enough for almost all games on Windows, but Wine/Proton takes about a 40% performance hit IIRC, so unfortunately need to dual boot for the higher end games, or otherwise turn down graphics very low.
Websites I use, probably known to most here:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/ - I look at this daily via RSS for Linux gaming news
https://www.protondb.com/ - Look up and contribute info about how well games work through Proton, and workarounds for issues
As for software, Steam Play and Proton do most of the heavy lifting these days. Lutris still has its place for managing non-Steam games.
Same here. If I'm in gaming mood, I probably don't want to start by having to tinker or tweak or do anything beyond click a button a couple of times and start playing.
I also get a much better frame rate under Windows than under Linux or macOS. I've tried the same games on the same hardware and I regularly get 20-30 fps higher under Windows.
That said, I have been playing with an old Pi and SteamLink which works okay. Not sure I'll keep using it, but the setup and run of things was so dead-simple I have to give Valve huge props.
Hello! I use Debian Buster on a desktop computer, I used to use Ubuntu and before that I used Window$. Debian may not be the best choice in terms of gaming because it isn't really up to date, but I have backported the (unfortunately proprietary) NVIDIA driver and I can get the latest version of WINE through lutris so it doesn't really bother me. Flatpak for anything else that needs to be up to date.
My favourite native Linux (well... GNU/Linux technically) games include Team Fortress 2, Katawa Shoujo and Portal 1&2.
As for support, I can understand why a developer would not support Linux as it is a tiny market share, it likely isn't worth it for them. But when they actively try to block Linux users from playing as has happened from time to time, then it becomes unacceptable.
I'm not sure if I see a friction between the open source philosophy and closed-source games because that's not really my philosophy. But I do see friction between the Free software philosophy and non-free games. In fact, if it wasn't for games, I would likely be able to survive with only Free software. The only proprietary programs on my computer are games, game launchers, NVIDIA drivers, the Intel
BackdoorManagement Engine and a proprietary BIOS. If I didn't play games then I would likely be able to get a computer with a Free BIOS, no Intel ME and be able to use free graphics drivers as I would not need the performance.As for developing games, I can see that developing game as Free software is difficult. It would be hard to make money on a Free software game, yes it could be sold but I suspect most would not pay. I understand why games are usually proprietary, but it would be pretty cool to see them Free.
Valve's proton (or WINE in general) are a double edged sword for Linux gaming. On the one hand, they enable Linux gamers to play games that otherwise would be inaccessible, especially older games that are unlikely to be re-released for Linux years after publication. On the other hand, it may persuade some developers from supporting Linux natively, as they see Proton or WINE as good enough for Linux gamers. Why put the extra effort into a Linux version if it runs under WINE? It'll probably still get roughly the same amount of sales from Linux users.
Me! I was gaming long before I went to Linux, which I did a little over two years ago.
I am dual booted. I do pretty much everything on Linux that's not gaming, and there's a few games that I just haven't put in the time to get working properly in WINE or otherwise, most notable the Mass Effect OT which I purchased on Origin.
I am on Linux Mint 19.3, which I picked for some gaming reasons. I love the Cinnamon DE, and I haven't found another one that has a similar method for managing virtual desktops. I love that I can hit Ctrl+Super+Up and view all of the applications on all of my virtual desktops. I wanted something Ubuntu based with Cinnamon, and that means that Mint is the obvious choice.
That said, I have been thinking of switching to an Arch based distribution, probably Manjaro. I've recently been tinkering a lot to get the newly released Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord working, including trying to compile a version of Proton and successfully compiling a patched kernel. There are nice, easy to use tools that exist to do both of the things I wanted... for Arch based distros. I think it would also be nice to have more up to date software for gaming, and to not have to worry about rebasing every few years when a new Ubuntu comes out.
Really the positive for me is that it works! My more relaxed computing activities can be done on any OS, but I like to do programming and things like that in my free time and those activities are much easier on Linux (or Mac if you want to pay for it). Like, I've seen guides where the Windows instructions are "Spin up a VM or container, or install WSL." So being able to switch to play a game without rebooting is amazing! Plus, I have a laptop (with nVidia) and a small desktop, so GPU passthrough is not an option for me.
My biggest frustration is what I would call the bell curve of how much help you can get on compatibility and how well you can expect certain things to work. Very new games, like Mount & Blade that I mentioned earlier, can require a bit of tweaking. I installed a new kernel just to get the game to save in a reasonable amount of time and not crash frequently. In my case I compiled it since I needed a 5.6 kernel for other reasons, but luckily there are PPAs available for that sort of thing. Meanwhile, older games, like the original Mass Effect, aren't played that often anymore, so finding help is hard. The game is 11 years old, not old enough for the amazing compatibility of DosBox, but far too old to have recent tests on WineHQ. But, on the whole, getting help is possible and it's getting easier all the time.
One I've played a bit of recently is American Truck Simulator. It scaled well down to my laptop, and now that I have my desktop it looks great.
It's frustrating. Linux is a first class platform in so many other arenas, in some cases Linux is the first class platform, but for this it's left out. I understand why the market is this way, especially with consoles driving gaming. I wonder if a Linux based OS for a big console player would help move the industry over.
Not particularly. I like open source software, but I would argue that some types of software are amenable to open source development and others are not as amenable. Developing AAA games especially is hugely expensive and has to happen on a certain time frame, neither of which is a strong point of open source development. Open source indie titles are great, though.
I think it's a huge help. I've played several "Windows" titles through Proton lately, including Mirror's Edge, Project Cars, and Skyrim. Skyrim especially has some idiosyncrasies, but otherwise it is a fairly painless experience. Anything that makes the experience painless is a boon to gaming on Linux.
I do!
I feel like it's been 4-5 months maybe?
I have a 1 TB SSD that I have my Linux install on, and I have 120 GB HDD with Windows 10 on it, along with another 2 TB HDD that's being used by Windows 10 to store some games. I'll probably end up using that drive for Linux though, because I barely have any games installed on Windows 10 anymore (Deep Rock Galactic and Doom Eternal mostly).
I use ArchLinux, mostly because it's fun to configure my own system, and it has the latest and greatest packages (I don't like being behind on updates). I was using Debian before, and I really liked it, but then I realized I wouldn't be getting the latest version of KDE Plasma for quite a while, so I switched to Arch, because I remember hearing about who cool it was. That was correct. so I've stuck with it since then. Haven't really had any issues.
Gaming-related factors didn't really have anything to do with it, although I guess having the latest drivers helps a bit.
Mainly the fact that I get to use Linux while I'm doing it! Linux is just a very fun operating system to use. I hate having to use Windows for anything, so being a click away from my Linux desktop is great.
There's also tons of open source software in the Linux gaming ecosystem, like Lutris and Proton. If I can use open source software, I do, and there's much more of it here than there is on Windows. The reason I like open source so much is because I believe in the age-old mantra of "sharing is caring".
I think my main drawback is when games just refuse to work through Proton. That's always extremely frustrating, especially when it's a game that I'm extremely excited for, like Doom Eternal. For the first couple days (or was it weeks) after launch, Doom Eternal just refused to launch without a ton of tinkering, and even then it was at a poor framerate. Fortunately, it's in a much better place now, but I've still been getting hard crashes from it pretty consistently, so I'll have to fix that later.
For the other Windows exclusive ones, I couldn't care less. EA and Ubisoft make pretty garbage games for the most part. There are exceptions though, like the Assassin's Creed games up to Black Flag, and the Far Cry games up to 4 for Ubisoft, and Titanfall 2 and Battlefield 1 for EA. I can boot into Windows if I really want to play those though, and I'm pretty sure I could get AC and Far Cry to work on Linux if I tried.
For Epic Games, I wouldn't touch anything from them with a ten mile pole. I absolutely despise Tim Sweeney and his stance on Linux, and I can't deal with their egregious lack of care for their customers. I wouldn't play their games even if they we're on Linux.
I definitely feel a friction. I'm able to set my principles aside for most games though. If there's an open source game that's like or a clone of a proprietary game, I will definitely applaud them, and try and play their game instead of the proprietary one. A recent example of me doing this is Minetest. I'm also totally fine with a game if only the engine is open source (like with older id games), because at least that means the assets can be switched out for free ones. I have no ethical qualms with playing classic Doom and Quake.
I think it helps a great deal. I wasn't here for the times before Proton, but I heard they were dark. I'm very appreciative of being able to play pretty much all my Windows games on Linux.
Great discussion, by the way! I'm very passionate about this topic.