Experience: I have a bit of experience with Linux. I started around 2008, distro-hopped weekly, decided on Debian until around 2011, when I switched to Windows as I started getting interested in gaming. Tried switching back around 2015, this time using Arch Linux for about a month, but had some bad experiences with gaming and switched back to Windows. I have had a Debian and Arch VM in Virtual Box since then for testing different applications and a more coherent environment to work with servers.
Understanding: Which brings me to now, I am really interested in using Linux for gaming, I know there is Proton from Valve and that they have been really pushing Linux gaming forward with it.
Thoughts: I have been contemplating dual booting by installing Debian to an SSD and simply using the UEFI boot menu to choose instead of having to install to the EFI of Windows.
I guess, I should just do it, as it won’t affect my Windows installation, and I could test different games and if all works well, move over. This would also allow me to try different distributions, though my heart is for Debian, I even like Debian Unstable.
Note: I am sorry for the wall of text, I am just kind of anxious I guess.
If you can handle there being a few games that you just can’t play, the time to switch to Linux began a couple of years ago.
I would say yes. I wanted my desktop to run linux in 2015, but the gaming situation was the biggest hurdle. I had been running linux on my laptop since ~2013, but I was constantly trying new games and couldn’t tell friends “sorry, I can’t run that, we have to pick something else”. These days, 99% of everything I want to play runs fine using proton on arch. There are occasional times that I need to try a different build of proton, or suffer a bit of pipeline compilation, but that’s about it. I don’t do a lot of modern competitive games though, so anti-cheat might be a deal breaker for you. I’ve been able to do some EAC games without issue though (ex. Hunt: Showdown runs fine).
@teawrecks @mouse gaming on Linux has come such a long way fr. I can count the games I play regularly that still don’t run on Linux one on finger (ie there is one game I still keep windows for), whereas a few years ago it was a 50/50 if a given game ran
That said getting some of those games to run required me to do some pretty heavy tinkering. Genshin for example requires you to download a third party launcher to disable some of the anti cheat checks. So I unfortunately don’t think it’s time to recommend linux wholeheartedly to the everyperson who isn’t very good with tech.
The hard part is, idk if the anti-cheat front on Linux will ever get better than it is. Most anti-cheat fundamentally relies on the user not having root access to everything happening in their machine so that the OS, game dev, and anti-cheat SW can communicate behind the user’s back to make sure no cheats are happening. Meanwhile, Linux is fundamentally about giving the user full control over any part of the OS they want. The two ideas seem mutually exclusive.
Personally, I think if I played on a dedicated Linux gaming device (ex. Steam Deck) I would be ok with giving anti-cheat root access. At that point it’s no different to me than a gaming console. That might be the only feasible solution here.
I’ve been trying Linux since before Ubuntu existed. I switched this year to Crystal Linux (arch based), to make it short: I’m not going back to Windows ever again.
It all just works. There’s minimal tweaking.
@warmaster Interesting. I’ve been using Manjaro as my primary for a while and I like it a lot but I’ve had some unpleasant interactions asking for help on the forums so I keep an eye out for other options.
Crystal has a Discord server and a bridged Matrix room, support is instantaneous and people are awesome. I’m super happy with it. I also tried Manjaro, I don’t like their GUIs, and their work ethics.
A lot has changed since 2015 thanks to Proton. However, it’s not a magic pill. Some tinkering might be required, with how much and how often depends on what you play. So just give it a try and see it for yourself, dual boot is a viable option. Pick some user-friendly distro that handles Windows detection and offers easy video drivers installation. Are you sure that Debian is that distro given your struggles with Arch Linux? I’m not that familiar with it myself, I thought that Debian comes in a relatively raw state.
Thank you. The issue with Arch Linux was more about the performance and some games at the time just not working, which looking at ProtonDB shows they work fine now. I really enjoyed my time with Arch, all the customization and manually installing applications made it feel more personal and really “mine”. I will probably give a few distros a try before really settling in.
It is the year of the linux desktop!
Every year is the year of linux desktop
Stop trying to make it happen meme.
We are 3% now, until the end of the year we might get 3.2%, how can this not be the year o the gnu/hurd?
Right???
If you dual boot on separate drives it should be fine to use grub or systemd boot (or sth else), most Linux bootloaders can detect Windows installations and boot them. On the same drive it is fine as well, but windows tends to overwrite the bootloader with updates (which would be the same even when not booting Windows from the “Linux” bootloader).
As you said, just do it and try it out. In my experience basically any game runs on Linux these days, with some exceptions, most of them caused by anti cheat (like Fortnite, valorant and some others)
That makes sense, thanks for the advice. I don’t play any competitive games, so anti-cheat is a bit less of a problem.
Astrologically speaking? Probably not, no. I’d consider waiting until the time is better.
My astrology sign is a Ford Taurus, is it a good time for me?
You’re looking better than you’ve looked in years. All signs point to yes. Unfortunately, you’re still a Ford Taurus.
Learn to Speak Chinese: Where is the nearest library? Wēnróu de cāo wǒ de pìyǎn
Your Lucky Numbers: 69
Once you get it set up, all the anxiety goes away.
Back your shit up, and do it. Games that can’t be played on Linux at all are decreasing. A dual boot setup solves that problem entirely.
Yeah, proton can take a bit to get set up and running, but there’s plenty of help for it out there with a search. And, again, you’ll still have the dual boot option. Linux really does cut down on the bullshit.
How much % would you say of the games can be played on Linux?
Since that’s going to depend a lot on your own personal Steam library, you can check what works well on Proton with this site. https://www.protondb.com/
You can even enter your Steam Profile link in there and it will show you the ratings of the games you own. Of the 155 I own, 86% had a gold, platinum or native rating.
O, I expected more %, but that’s okay.
I had very few that actually failed to run, most of the rest is silver with a few bronze.
Native means the game was built to run on Linux without Proton.
Platinum works perfectly with no tweaks.
Gold works great, but may require some tweaks to work best.
Silver runs with minor issues but is playable.
Bronze runs but may crash or have issues preventing comfortable play.
Borked is unplayable.I drew the line between silver and gold. If I moved it down one spot to between bronze and silver, almost everything I own would run. I think this is fantastic. This is literally running games that weren’t designed to run on Linux at all, and almost all of them run perfectly.
But is it easier than before? A few years ago I had to set up every game in playonlinux first. Not that big of a deal, but I just want every game to work out of the box like Windows, not set up every game first.
Yeah. You just install them with Steam and play. The Steam client comes with Proton which runs Windows games on Linux.
For the games that require tweaks, someone on ProtonDB will have said what tweaks is needed to play it. It’s generally just adding one small command to the game properties in Steam.
Sounds fantastic to me! Thank you! I’ll try this out…
If the game is on steam it is pretty easy. I just install the newest custom proton from glorious eggroll. And before i start a game for the first time is select this instead of the default proton. Then it just works generally. I don’t check protondb anymore, only in case of problems. I can’t even recall a game that doesn’t work currently. Granted, i don’t play AAA, only indie games.
Got any recommendations?
Basically anything that isn’t Siege, Valorant…anything without an abusive anti-cheat
Ok nice! Thanks!
On steam it’s basically just a toggle. Maybe setting the proton version in the game’s properties. For non steam games, launchers like heroic can even detect and use the proton versions you installed through steam, so you don’t ever need to really do any setup yourself.
Thanks, this makes me feel much better about it.
@mouse @Zaphodquixote I dual boot with Windows 11 and very rarely find myself not using Linux… It plays every game I’ve thrown at it in the last 6 months. The only time I end up using Windows is because I want to use a specific peripheral, like my steering wheel for racing games, rather than because Linux won’t run the game! Lutris is great for non-steam games. Runs Overwatch 2, Diablo IV, Guildwars 2, and League of Legends perfectly for me. GloriousEggroll is worth looking at too 🙂
@mouse
Im using manjaro for 2 years now.
Didn’t do any special to it.
Just steam, libre office and some smaller apps.
No problems so far.I switched last year and kind of was in a similar spot to you - I had tried to switch in the past but something didn’t work so I went back to windows. But that last attempt has stuck. So I’d just do it. Proton is in an amazing state, old games and even most new singleplayer games will work - some modern multiplayer games with anticheat even work. I’d just check your library on protondb (you can sign in to see your library), see what doesn’t work, if you care about it, or if there are workarounds.
What I also did is make a list of stuff that doesn’t work and then find alternatives or workarounds. If some games don’t work, you can hold off on switching, check protondb occasionally and see if something changes. But if it’s all good, I’d just make the jump.
Anti-Cheat was one of the major things that pushed me back to Windows for gaming. They often aren’t compatible, invalidating the newly proton-compatible game
Yeah that’s big area that’s shaky with proton. Fortunately a few games have been adding support (halo MCC recently did). And for me, I typically only play singleplayer games - the most modern multiplayer game I play is titanfall 2 which works great on Linux.
But for someone who does play those games, I can see how the lack of them can be a huge obstacle.
I like your idea of making a list. If all goes well I might just move over, and keep Windows on a small disk for any outliers.
Yeah keeping windows on a separate disk is a good idea. I was going to do too that but I fucked up a dd command and somehow broke the original installation… So I just said fuck it and went full Linux.
I believe Protondb has the option to sign in with your Steam account, and show you the status of everything in your library.
To answer the title of this post… Yes, yes it is.
I have heard this is the year of Linux, so I’d say yes /s
deleted by creator
It’s the year of the Linux desktop
In other news half life 3 might be coming out soon
As you didn’t include “/s”
I’ll trust you with my heart.
IMHO it depends on what kind of gaming you do. For me, I play all the big tentpole AAA games on console. My PC gaming is mostly indy stuff and things that suck on console like 4x strategy games. For my uses, gaming on linux has been… surprisingly good.
I would definitely recommend trying it out with dual boot.
I’m a month or so into switching from Windows 10 to Ubuntu. I’ve never lasted this long in prior attempts to switch over.
Gaming has been quite good. Steam just works for 99% of the games I’ve tried, with the 1% being one or two minor bugs in games that otherwise worked fine. Lutris, on the other hand, did not work at all. 0% success rate installing or running games.
Linux does still seem brittle and/or unnecessarily complicated, though. For example, I have a super common nvidia card, and my first post-install experience was having to boot into safe mode to fix the drivers. Then Ubuntu updated the drivers and my screens didn’t come back up. I had to hard-reset to get them back. And I have yet to get NUT installed and configured correctly so I can have the PC power down gracefully when the UPS runs low, something which is trivial in Windows.
Is all the frustration worth it to have an OS that isn’t selling me ads and trying to move me to a cloud account? Probably.
Nvidia is the worst graphics card brand for linux. It’s not a surprise you’re struggling with it. If you have any money to buy a new graphics card, get yourself AMD. You can then sigh a breath of relief that you’re not supporting a quasi monopolist and finally have good linux support.
@FishInABarrel @mouse I struggled with Nvidia’s drivers for a decade or so before switching to AMD (which used to have even worse Linux driver support than Nvidia but now basically Just Works).
I know “just buy a different graphics card” is not useful advice, so that’s not what I’m saying. But if you intend to use Linux in the long term, I’d definitely recommend switching to AMD next time you’re in the market for a new card.
To provide a different perspective to everyone else, I would say that it’s not the right time if you want everything to “just work”.
I tried out Ubuntu 22.04 just a couple of months ago, and only one game of the several I tried “just worked”. Everything else either didn’t work at all, or required hours of searching and troubleshooting and problem solving, with mixed success. And I’m not a technophobe, I’m a software developer with experience in system support.
People keep saying there’s lots of guides out there for most things, and that’s true. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the guide will work for you. I tried multiple “guides” to get my games working and most of them didn’t help. Either they were too old, or there was a step that I couldn’t complete, or I completed the guide and there was an error that isn’t mentioned in the guide. Or any number of other problems.
Regardless of what people say, it may not be as simple as “switch to Proton and install Lutris”. In the end I just got frustrated with having to work so hard to get my own computer to do the things I wanted it to do, and so I reverted back to Windows and had all my software working as expected within a couple of hours.
@Anomandaris @mouse Interesting. For me it just was “enable proton for all titles”, “enable proton for the game”, “launch” and “play”. That’s it. But I don’t know what you had tried to play🎮🫤
Thank you for the experience that you had. That’s why I will use my spare drive to test it, this will allow me to experiment with it and see how it performs.
If you keep your game library on an NTFS drive, both OSes can access it. The Linux version of Steam just downloads additional Proton files for your games.
@Anomandaris @mouse My experience has largely been that games Just Work if you stick with Steam, but that running games from other sources is a lot more hit-or-miss. Lutris and Heroic are great but can be really fiddly.
Dual booting is a great way to start. I did it for years. Linux gaming eventually got good enough that I don’t need to dual boot anymore, but YMMV; your use case may be different.
(I still keep a Windows machine around for TurboTax and Comic Collector Pro, but not for games.)
