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?
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.
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?
That’s mostly preference, once you get things all set up and installed. You can’t avoid updating forever because you’ll eventually need to install something new from the repos, and it’s good to have some kind of update cadence for security’s sake, but daily is a bit much. Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That.
I save that effort for a Saturday once every couple of months, and it usually goes smoothly without incident. I could go longer if I wanted, 2 months feels right to me.
I play VR games on Linux and I would not say that it is “much worse”. It’s more buggy and needs at times some tinkering to work, but once it does work, there is no difference to Windows. And most games do work fine… same success rate as with non-VR games via Proton I would say.
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
Good to know, thank you!
won’t be doing business with them anymore.
Agreed, just stick around for the free games!
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.
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?
Lutris is the best when the community is there for sure. Blizzard games are the same way, it’ll work awesome forever and then update that breaks the lutris script comes out and ruins it until some awesome community member comes out with the patch.
@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.
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.
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.
You can’t run certain foreign porn games.
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!
@hydroel @Spectacle8011 I’ve not necessarily seen anything truly world-ending when it comes to bugs in any Linux distro I’ve run. There’ll always be quirks and such somewhere, but I run Fedora and Gentoo on my boxes at home, and neither one has issues running games (other than the Fedora machine being a tablet, and not really being my main gaming machine).
My spouse who runs Windows has about the same number of games crashing out as I do, FWIW
The Steam and Lutris Runtimes do a good job of ensuring a good experience on most distributions. The only things that can really screw you up are graphics drivers and really low-level dependencies, like glibc. You’re more likely to have issues with Wine, DXVK, and those components than the distribution’s packages.
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Battle.net works as well, OW2 plays fine on Linux.
I thought SD users had to dual boot to play Diablo IV quite recently, I thought it was because of a Batlle.NET compatibility issue but I might have been mistaken.
As for a distro, I’d aim for something Arch based. Simply because you’ll get the latest drivers and mesa versions all the time, which is proven to increase FPS a ton over say, Ubuntu.
That’s a very good point I hadn’t thought of! Any specific recommendations?
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EndeavourOS is my favourite distro, so I’d recommend that.
Garuda Linux is also Arch based, and comes with Zen kernel, which has optimizations for gaming, as well as a slew of other gaming-related software that you can choose from upon install.
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.
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.
A big one for me and the main reason I haven’t started using Linux full time, and I’m sure it’s in your points but not called out directly but anti cheat support is terrible on Linux. I own a steam deck and I used to play Fortnite with my wife and her brothers and it can technically run it (it worked on windows and install), and even if you use proton to run the windows version, I’ve heard their anticheat can straight up ban you because “Linux isn’t a supported os at this time”. It’s not that their anticheat doesn’t work on Linux or is missing a proton extension, but solely epic doesn’t want to so they aren’t supporting it. This is fairly common with big multiplayer games, like Fortnite, halo, call of duty, battlefield, and alot of others. It’s a pain since proton is built as a “use at your own risk, may not work 100% but it works atleast” and some companies actively refuse to allow that. The only way I’ve been able to play any of those games is by either cloud gaming or in home streaming which isn’t available sometimes. So until Linux doesn’t have that limitation in gaming, where alot of major triple A titles actively refuse to work solely cause it’s Linux, I can’t switch my personal PC to Linux as I already got my steam deck for Linux gaming, and my windows desktop as a backup.
That’s exactly the kind of feedback I wanted to have, thank you! I don’t think I play any game in your list, or any game that use of anti-cheat (most of the games I play are solo games anyway), which tends to suggest that I might be the kind of gamer that would be able to switch without too much to look back to.
Do you know how comparable is the performance between Linux and Windows?
@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.
@hydroel @solarisfire
Ubuntu is an excellent introduction to Linux I think. Also used a lot by experienced users that no longer want to spend much time keeping their desktop running.Ubuntu has been (mostly) great so far! And there are some Ubuntu-based distros that seem to be tailored for gaming, so I was curious to see if any users around here had used them - I’ve mentioned Draugr and Ubuntu Game Pack, but if I was to use a base distro and tune it myself I might pick Pop! OS which seems really nice.
@jannem @hydroel It’s a good starting point… I’ve never been a huge fan of the Ubuntu Desktop environment. Snaps can behave a little weirdly at times (I had issues getting a VR Headset working with the snap version of Steam). I’m not sure what their GPU driver situation is these days, I know they were providing older drivers in their repositories a few years ago. POP_OS! is a nice ubuntu based option too…
I agree about Snap: it should be great, in theory, it just doesn’t work as well as it ought to.
I’ve been considering Pop! OS, which seems very nice indeed.
@hydroel @solarisfire pop is one of the very best Debian based systems.
It seems to be, at least! I’ve been meaning to switch from Ubuntu to Pop! OS on my work laptop but I can’t justify to take that time at the moment.
I know you dissed cloud gaming, but Xbox cloud gaming has actually worked fairly well for me personally on my steam deck, and for the most part (after some config), runs nearly as good as inhome streaming, which 99% of the time I can’t even tell isn’t running on device. I’ve also messed with Nvidia gforcenow and Amazon luma and those could fill a pretty big Linux compatibility gap if I solely gamed on Linux (probably using a controller or steam deck due to xcloud gaming not supporting mouse or keyboard input yet but it’s progress). I even figured some interesting things you can do with steam regarding that, in addition to Microsoft’s instructions on adding xcloud gaming to steam deck, like setting up different launch options to handle different users under different Microsoft accounts, directly linking a game (having a non steam game called Fortnite with a custom icon that launches xcloud gaming 's url for that game and boots right into it) and some others to make it more enjoyable but just like everything on Linux you gotta tinker with it. The “no native gamepass” is a big deal to me lately, it’s actually a pretty nice service and I remember seeing posts a few years ago talking about windows store format version of proton which would allow gamepass to run natively on Linux but I think we’re still awhile form that happening.
I understand cloud gaming works well, and I agree that it might be a very good alternative for the Steam Deck. However, it’s not a viable first option with a powerful enough desktop - I’ve bought such a machine to be able to play on it, not to stream to it. Besides, my backlog of games is already large enough that I shouldn’t require an unlimited library of new games!
Some of the cooler stuff is seen in the steam deck with stuff like global fsr (as compared to game built-in support) and gamescope to let you mess with resolutions for games that might not normally support those resolution changes.
