Gaming on Linux

But Linus Sex Tips said linux is bad, bro! I tried Ubuntu one time like 10 years ago and it wasn't Windows, so now I hate Linux bro

him accidentally uninstalling gnome shell in the process of installing steam was so fucking good dude
- Lmfao "yes, do as I say"
- You haven't used Linux until you've accidentally destroyed your install. Reversible damage like uninstalling your shell or breaking your display server counts as partial credit.
LTT has been pretty positive about linux and recommend it a lot. Although that is more thanks to Emily than Linus.
- okay... TIL that Linus Tech Tips is not by Linus Torvalds.
  I'm like why tf would he not promote his own system...
Literally what everyone tells me: I tried it 8 years ago and it sucked (used really weird distro or Ubuntu)
- Is Ubuntu bad?
Linus tech tips, despite having some criticisms, had a rather positive opinion of Linux as far as I can remember
It can't even wun micwodowt owwice :(
- It can't even run [popular proprietary software]! How am I supposed to [action which can be performed with FOSS]?

My Steam Deck plays most everything the system specs can run minus stupid anti cheat.

I'm surprised when games that run like shit on Windows like Descent 3 can run great there. Proton (+ the rest) is black magic.

That has been my experience running SteamOS on the SD and Arch on my main computer.
If it doesn’t have some trash anti cheat or weird DRM from the 2000s, it will run.

What are the names of those? I only recognize Wine ("Wine Is Not an Emulator")

Well there is
Vulkan (graphics API, successor to OpenGL which was used by e.g. Minecraft, CS Go i believe)
DXVK (compatibility layer for games created with the DirectX Framework by MS)
Lutris (game launcher for stuff you bought outside of steam, e.g. GOG, Epic, Uplay, etc.)
Steam and maybe Proton but idk.
the atom thing could be protondb.com, where you can look up if your game will run on linux and what fixes / commands are available
- Thanks! protondb sounds like a very handy website
Proton is a fork of Wine. It was created by Valve and they have done amazing work getting it to support basically everything. It's made the steam deck and amazing machine.
- Proton actually combines Wine and DXVK iirc (plus some extra bits and pieces.)
Vuncan, DXVK, and Proton are other open source projects that either make wine more capable or more user friendly. It's still wine under the hood, though.

"Improved"

Sure if you mean almost caught up in functionality while still having maybe usability issues.

Year of the Linux desktop 👌👍

It's not so much Linux catching up as it is making games compatible (and in most cases run just as well as native Linux games) that weren't made for Linux in the first place. And that's pretty insane. Thank you Valve 🙏😔
Right? All of these comments are like "it's just as easy as gaming on Windows. I just have to make sure I run these specific commands in my terminal or my PC bricks, nothing runs as well as on Windows unless you have 20 years of experience with Linux, and you still need to keep a dual boot of Windows for those pesky games that aren't Linux-friendly (re: 99.9% of games). I'm so much happier on Linux and will never look back!~~please shoot me in the face now and end my pain~~ I'm so happy!"
Like whatever lies you guys need to tell yourselves lol. I'll stick with Windows until it's as easy as hitting play. Also would be nice if the UI didn't look straight out of 1995.
- Get Nobara os if you want a plug-and-play experience. Valve is doing an amazing job pushing Linux gaming
  And I dunno where you're getting the ui thing from; most distros look and feel much better than windows even by default these days lol
- You're in the wrong thready, buddy. Absolutely no one is saying that.
  99% of games run out of the box with no more issues than on Windows.
I daily drive Debian 12 on my desktop. In my massive library of steam games, I’ve yet to come across more than 3 that I haven’t been able to get to work, and the rest run remarkably better than on windows. Controller support has been more seamless than it was on windows, and I’ve gotten older games to work that never worked on windows 10. I’m not sure what experience you’re basing this on, maybe Optimus has some issues for laptops, but every desktop I’ve built in the last ~4 years has worked fine (and with nvidia GPUs, too)

Been gaming on Linux for years, currently I use Play On Linux and Steam.

I remember the days you had to compile your own wine to get something working.

And those wine fixme in the console, it felt like the game was being held together with string.

Linus gaming got simple when steam dropped steamOS as a stand alone operating system. I went from windows 7 to steamOS. First was the steam piston, now I have a steam machine (Alienware / dell) and a steam deck. It's as easy as console gaming but with all the flexibility of PC gaming.

And before I get shit for prebuilts, sometimes you just want to play, and shit just works. Also am poor.

am poor
own Alienware PC and Steam deck
Yeah... that's not what being poor is.
- I mean if you want to be pandantic owning a computer for gaming excludes you from being poor. Otherwise, if we're doing cost relative to performance, you can pick up an alienware alpha for cost of the graphics card.
Are they still making new steam machines?
- YOU GUYS TALKING ABOUT TRAINS?
  no?
  ok sorry

Yo does anyone have like a "let's download linux" guide aimed at bimbo girlies like me

Download Nobara OS (Linux distro optimized for gaming by default)
Set up dual boot with both Linux/Nobara and Windows so you can boot into either.
You can just delete windows entirely later if you find yourself not using it. That's what I ended up doing after a few months of dual booting.
- Ty! Haven't looked at the links yet; to save my old shit do I need to get a hard drive or will everything just be normal?

I made the switch to Linux a year ago, and I haven't looked back since. Of course, I still keep a dual boot for those pesky games that use Ring0 anticheat or are simply incompatible with Linux, like Fortnite or PUBG. But honestly, I don't find myself playing them as often anymore. My current actual go-to games include Dota 2, CS:GO, Elden Ring, Sea of Thieves, Diablo 4, Street Fighter 6, Dead Cells, and Isaac.

Hmm I find that the performance gain on games like D4 and Elden Ring are significant enough for me to boot over to my windows disk (much to my chagrin). Do you have any specific tweaks for those games. The performance isn't always terrible for those games on my Linux system but it's enough to affect gameplay occasionally.
- I don't rely on special settings; instead, I ensure that I have the latest Mesa driver installed for my 7900XTX. Additionally, I optimize my gaming experience by using a set of launch settings that work well for most of my games, with minor adjustments made to the RADV_PERFTEST environment variable. These are the launch settings I use :
  VK_ICD_FILENAMES=/usr/share/vulkan/icd.d/radeon_icd.i686.json:/usr/share/vulkan/icd.d/radeon_icd.x86_64.json AMD_VULKAN_ICD=RADV RADV_PERFTEST=sam,rt,gpl,nggc,aco gamemoderun %command%

Compiling Vulkan shaders... (57%)

Its shader compilation that made elden ring at launch a better experience on linux than windows, because the windows build had a broken shader compiler causing microstutters.

about wine/proton, I want to share some advice: if anyone is struggling with installing 3rd party mods and such in Proton, try starting your installation process from ConEmu (ConEmu64.exe) (It's a simple, open-source, portable terminal emulator for Windows) instead of pointing the Non-steam Games wizard at each installation and gaming exe individually.

I originally tried to do this with the explorer.exe built into Wine, but getting that thing to launch is a pain.

for example a lot of Windows programs will have you download an .exe that installs the program, then you need to run a different .exe to actually run the program. Steam's non-steam game wizard in combination with Proton gets confused by this and runs the two .exe's in separate environments, screwing with any attempts to install a mod or install the app itself.

Protontricks also helps here.

I don't think I've found a game that doesn't work with Proton. I only find ones where the property anti cheat doesn't work.

I'm kicking myself because I wanna switch to Linux but I just bought a used Nvidia card

So? I am using linux (arch btw) with a 3090 without problems.
- I am using a 1080 Ti and its meh, I sometimes have screen tearing issues, sleep/hibernate doesn't work anymore and letting it choose the iGPU and GPU based off of the current needs also does not work, so I just run the iGPU most of the time (it doesn't have the screen tearing issue).
  I'm thinking of doing a fresh install, maybe a different distro, as the setup is quite old and bloated by now, but I'm not looking forward to reinstalling everything I actually need/use.
- 3080ti on fedora here and no issues either
I use a GTX 970, I can play most games just fine.
It's not Windows performance, Cyberpunk 2077 for instance was quite more unstable for me on Arch and it took quite a bit of tweaking to be able to launch it (it's a miracle that I can even play Cyberpunk with a 970 in both cases :P). Generally though I've had a pretty good experience, most games play out of the box with good performance, and I get to daily drive Linux finally
- Cyberpunk can run on a 1050 Mobile. We are making the game seem a much larger beast.
I have a Nvidia Tesla K80 and couldn't even set it up on Windows
I use linux with nvidia hardware, and its not that bad. Just remember to click “allow proprietary software” when you install your OS.
Some software can get problematic, such as Hyprland and Sway, but games are fine.
I mean, I’d have a better experience with AMD, but even with nvidia, I’m having a better experience than windows. especially considering I don’t have to use their shitty driver downloader
https://pop.system76.com/
I bought a 3060 ti for my new pc and I am going to install tumbleweed on it, Nvidia is not as hard to configure as people say
- True. There are even distros that do it for you. PopOS or EndeavourOS (has a nvidia boot option when installing). I just did a fresh EndeavourOS install and it's amazing. I have an RTX 3060 btw
  But sure, AMD would be better still. Fuck Nvidia and all that 100%
Why would that be a problem?

Honestly, by now Gaming on Linux and macOS works without problems. Most games are published natively, and if not, it generally works fine with Wine or Proton.

TF u guys mean i just play 25 y/o games

Morrowind goes brr

Fucking love this meme. But I think the SteamDeck is missing.

Steam deck is GOATed when they release a new one inevitably I will be buying it right away.

I'm super interested in running Linux, do you think it's okay to just dump windows at once and go full Linux, or it's better to dual boot for a while? I've read that dual-booting can be a bit finicky, but it's been a while since I looked into it

Dual booting isnt that finnicky. Just dual boot until youre certain that there's nothing you need in your life that you cant get running under Linux. I dont understand why everyone wants you to switch so quickly when there is no harm in going at your own pace.
When I switched to linux I originally intended to dualboot but I messed up the partitioning and completely obliterated windows. Decided to just go with it and I never looked back.
- for me it was the opposite, I did a fresh install and -against all advice- installed linux before windows.
  When a few months later a windows update dexided to fuck with and destroy grub again (and reinstall edge) I saw that as a sign to kick out windows.
- I did that more than once hahaha. Hell, you guys are convincing me to jump the boat!
You're going to hear a lot of recommendations, but I strongly suggest going with Fedora for your first distro. It's the least pain to get up and running with a modern, performant, up to date distro.
Ubuntu these days is its own little corner of design choices, Arch is designed to need configuration, Debian is a (purposefully) a bit slow to keep up. A lot of people say good things about Linux Mint, haven't used it myself but have used Fedora for years (including at work) and it's rock solid without much faffing.
- Mint is like if Ubuntu wasn't so... Ubuntuey.
- I've tried Ubuntu before but never stuck with it, maybe Fedora will grab my interest! Is it easy to customize? I'm mostly focused in art, web development and gaming, do you think it's a good fit?
- I recommend Debian specifically because it's slow to keep up, and most people just don't need the latest features anyway. Especially if you're new to Linux, stability is important.
SSDs got so cheap, I just added another one for Linux.
You should dump windows as soon as possible, the list of reasons to keep using it are getting shorter and shorter as this meme implies.
I recommend using POP!_OS from System76 as they package the latest LTS kernel (6.2 as of writing) and graphics drivers. Obtaining applications (even proprietary clients like Steam) is made trivial through flatpaks and system76's own software repos which are all accessible through the POP! Shop.
- POP!_OS seems promising! It seems to be very easy to setup! Is it customizable enough? I'd like to try things out a bit, without worrying about screwing the entire system. Thanks for the recs! 💜
Just partition off and install steamOS. Its Linux gaming but super easy to use.
I use dualboot because I still have to use Windows for some shit, and it works like a charm
If you're going to be playing games I use Nobara, which is a fork of Fedora meant for gaming.
I use Arch (btw) and I can't recommend this enough. But it might seem intimidating at first, so I recommend Manjaro, it's like Arch but a bit friendlier to beginners

🫱 gaming is for losers

I agree, fellow gamer 🤝
- ? i am not a gamer. 🙏

Whats the electron looking thing?

That would be Proton, I guess

Well there is

Vulkan (graphics API, successor to OpenGL which is used by e.g. Minecraft, CS Go i believe)
DXVK (compatibility layer for games created with the DirectX Framework by MS)
Lutris (game launcher for stuff you bought outside of steam, e.g. GOG, Epic, Uplay, etc.)
Steam and maybe Proton but idk.
i don't know what that Atom sign thingy is

ProtonDB
- Yes thats it, thx

This one is pretty simple, if you want an explanation for it. Just pointing out all the wonderful under the hood improvements that valve, AMD and others have made to the state of Linux gaming, in meme form.
Maybe just give it a try? It's pretty fun to test on an older machine and it is pretty easy to learn the basics of Linux. And if you are interested, it is a great rabbit-hole to get drawn into ;)