State of gaming on linux?
State of gaming on linux?
I used linux in the past, both privately and work-related, but the last time was over 10 years ago, so I'm a bit out of touch. I am in need of a new PC, but it'll be a good year before I have the funds, so for now I am making due with an i5 7500 and a gtx 1660. I do have 32 GB so there's that. I finally feel confident enough to make the permanent switch to linux from windows as all of the programs I use are either available on linux or have a good/better equivalent. The only thing I fear will hold me back is games. I know Steam has Proton now which will run most games, but how does it compare? The games I play most are Skyrim (heavily modded) , RDR2, Witcher 3, Transport fever, Civilization, Crusader kings 3 and Cities Skylines (uninstalled atm waiting for 2). I'm on the fence to either wait until I can afford a new PC and dual boot or make the switch now and deal with a few gaming problems. Thing is, what kind of problems may I expect? Anyone able and knowledgeable to give me some advice?
EDIT: Wow, those are a lot of replies; thank you everyone! You really helped me. I will make the switch sooner rather than later.
Check out https://www.protondb.com, to see which games work well on Linux. Games that are platinum should work out of the box, ones that are Gold might need some tinkering. Most games work great, but a lot of multiplayer games aren't supported.
In general gaming on Linux has been a pretty smooth experience lately. Games on Steam usually just work, but IMO running games outside of Steam is pretty hit or miss. They sometimes need following a guide or trying to fix an obscure issue that only like 2 other people have.
The thing about Linux is that you might have some issues outside of gaming. Things you might not expect like Discord not being able to screenshare audio or that one program you need not working on your distro properly. Also you should know games on an NTFS drive don't work well on Linux, so you can't expect your drive full of Windows games to just work if you have them on a 2nd drive. In general I still think you need some patience if you're going to settle on a Linux desktop, it's not entirely a bug free experience yet.
It depends. Do you play stuff with kernel level anticheat? If no, then the current state of Linux gaming is, by and large as good as, and occasionally better than, Windows - even on games that don't run natively.
Proton is astounding, and the state of Wine is amazing compared to 10 years ago (and it wasn't bad then). Get Bottles or Play on Linux going, plus Steam, and there's very little you can't do…
Except kernel level anticheat.
(To be 100% transparent, there are other issues. I have a couple games I can't get to run reliability, but they're all obscure edge cases. But like 90% of stuff without anticheat just works at this point.)
Edit: proofreading
protondb.com will tell you how well each game works. There's also an icon on Steam, if it says it's certified for the Steam Deck that's also good.
I've installed Manjaro in 2020 during covid specifically for gaming and never looked back since.
We're living in the golden age of Linux gaming right now, get yourself a piece of it.
If a game doesn't work on linux, I don't buy/play it until it does. End of story. There is plenty of choice and time is limited, so having an extra filter is just helpful.
The only experience I have is with Steam Deck and it's fantastic! I love it so much that I've decided to build my next PC as a Linux only box. I am a refugee from /r/patientgamers though. I don't play the new hotness unless it's first party Nintendo stuff.
I'm also so fed up with Microsoft's anti-consumer practices and disastrous updates, so it makes it an easier decision.
For me it reached a point where I now expect a new game I'm trying to just work. This was a monumental shift when I first realized that a few months ago.
Your best bet is Steam/Proton, since Valve stands behind it and development on all the Proton components (Wine, DXVK, VKD3D, Gamescope, ...) is very active.
If you get games outside of Steam (I often prefer GoG if that's an option, plus I have some itch.io bundles purchased a while ago), some tinkering may be necessary. For those, I like to go "vanilla" with Wine(-GE-custom usually), plus DXVK or VKD3D on top. There's also Lutris to help with these scenarios. Works great too.
Another topic is native Linux games. There are some gems which work beautifully. I recently finished native Celeste from itch.io and it was flawless. Another great Linux port is Bastion. But some older titles may have compatibility issues - missing or incompatible libraries, broken gamepad support or stuff like that. For those, the Windows version via Proton may actually work better than the native version. Luckily, we can now pick either one.
Its really fucking good. Open and play nowdays
I'm playing Baldur's Gate 3 since day 1. That's really all I need and a lot more than I expected just a few years ago. It's only gonna get better from here.
Have you heard of ProtonDB? It rates the current state of games and recommended fixes.
Gaming on Linux has improved a lot over the years. It's typically only multiplayer games with Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) that you'll run into major issues with. Mod managers frequently require a fair amount of extra work and reading but I think a lot of Bethesda games have easy work arounds and documentation.
I've played most of those on Linux and they work just fine. Some notes:
- I've never modded anything on Linux, so I don't know what the experience is like; I imagine there are decent guides though
- own but haven't played Witcher 3, Transport Fever, or Crusader Kings 3 - CK3 is native Linux, so it should work
- I've played Civ 3-5 on Linux, haven't tried 6
I've played exclusively on Linux for the last decade, and I've played tons of popular games that all work well. There are only a handful of games that don't work well, and they are either super old (e.g. almost DOS days), multiplayer (mostly anti-cheat), or less popular.
RDR2 runs fantastically on my 6650XT @ 1440p, and I'm guessing it would run acceptably well on your 1660.
So yeah, try it out! Most of my games just work, and the rest only required very minor tweaks (e.g. launch options in Steam or a specific Proton version).
Seems pretty okay. I managed to get League of legends/TFT running perfectly fine (though the launcher is a bit stuttery)
CSGO I noticed runs WAY smoother on Linux. Maybe becausw it uses Vulkan which is a lot more modern than dx9. But the aim just feels.. smoother despite the same FPS?
edit: on Nobara and a AMD GPU
Most games work perfectly, it really is just the 'live-service' games that simply don't work in Linux thanks to kernel-level shenanigans. If you plan to play games like Valorant/LoL/Genshin, it will be a nightmare and i don't even recommend trying to make them work.
But then again, you can always have a separate SSD with Windows installed just to play those games. I'd honestly recommend you having Windows just to play games and Linux for everything else.
I started using Linux maybe 5 years ago, just before DXVK and proton became a thing. The difference between now and then for gaming is night and day.
If it's on steam, there is a pretty good chance it'll work. If it's not on steam, it still might work through lutris.
There are some holdouts like Riot games, but I haven't owned windows in almost two years.
Can be pain free but it can also be painful. Some things straight up won't work because of anti cheat and unsupportive developers. I'd say give it a try. Gotta bump up the market share so Linux support actually matters in developer business cases.
Better than it's ever been, but it still has room to improve.
protondb.com and winehq.org are your best friends
It's good now: https://www.protondb.com/
Go with an AMD graphics card, they work right out of the box in Linux so it's just that much easier.
Sorry if there's a lot of technical terms.
My anecdotal experience is that Skyrim modding under Linux worked surprisingly well. Despite that I think I would still say "YMMV". I have it running under Lutris-GE-Proton8-13.
I used the GOG release because having local access to the installer is a major win. Note that even if you don't install the AE upgrade it's the same version number, 1.6.659 so bear this in mind when installing SKSE64 and mods. I think there's a specific release of SKSE64 for GOG. Many mods label that version as AE only, which isn't true of the GOG release.
I chose to install in Lutris because of how easy it is to manipulate prefixes. I had issues with the automated scripts, which I expected. So I did it myself.
I downloaded Skyrim from GOG and installed Skyrim using the "Install a Windows game from media" option, then run once from the launcher to ensure everything was initialised before modding.
Inside this prefix I installed MO2 using "Run EXE inside WINE prefix".
I chose that mod manager because I used it on Windows and it worked just fine. I don't know a lot about Vortex. There's a DLL to add support for Epic and GOG installs of Skyrim. I duplicated the Skyrim SE runner and changed the target to ModOrganizer dot exe. There's a UI bug that makes reordering mods act weird, just click another mod entry if it gets stuck.
The Nemesis issue I had, which appears to be a Linux/WINE problem - the solution given (Extract it to the Data folder then run the executable from MO2 with VFS) worked for me.
TBH my modlist is pretty tame compared to most that I've come across so I didn't expect many problems. LOOT worked as expected so I just let LOOT handle my load order.
There's probably more to it but this is what I remember. Happy modding!
I'm using Pop OS for gaming and work and it works flawlessly. Looking at the game you listed, I think they will work without problems. Give a look at protondb so you can have an idea. However I would suggest you to try it yourself and see how it goes, gaming on Linux is a very different matter compared to ten years ago!
Everyone here is saying it's fantastic and much better compared to 10 years ago, which is completely true.
However, the state of VR gaming is still pretty dire. You can get it working on some hardware setups, but not others, and it's nontrivial to find out what's going wrong. I've lost a couple of days trying to diagnose problems on multiple distros and it just doesn't seem to work for me. It may work for you, but the chances are a lot lower than if you were to just play normal games.
If all you want to do is to play retrogames and the occasional AAA+ single-player game? It's perfect and there is no reason to use Windows ever again.
But if you want to play competitive games that require anticheating in order to work...? Then you will gonna have some problems.
Anyone able and knowledgeable to give me some advice?
Duckduckgo "lutris wine dependencies", install lutris, download the latest lutris wine version via lutris launcher, use said wine ver. in any game you want or fallback to your system one. Thats it.
I have played modded skyrim on my Linux system, and it worked fine. It was somewhat of a headache to make Vortex work, but once I figured out the quirks, it worked fine (used steamtinkerlaunch as compatibility tool). Civilization too - 5 (with and without EUI) and 6 worked pretty much out of the box via proton. A friend of mine plays RDR2 and also has no issues, doing coop stuff and singleplayer or whatever.
I'd say in terms of your choice of games, you should be fine. Proton runs most games just like windows nowadays, and you get the added benefit of less system load. There might be some games that require a bit of tinkering to get working flawlessly, but chances are some user on protondb has a solution.
If you need a distro, a rolling release one might be your best bet, as having up-to-date packages does help with gaming.
On a very rare occasion do I ever run into a game that doesn't work on Linux, have completely ditched windows about a month ago and haven't looked back
I even get significantly better performance in most games, used to just about manage 60-70fps in overwatch on max settings under windows, now it smashed 170 no problem
Skyrim with proton GE will work just fine. Modding will be trickier. Vortex can be setup, with lutris. But I've ran into issues when it comes to external programs like resaver, loot, nemesis/fnis.
You could slap in a cheap second drive and see what happens. Compared to 10 years ago, it's so much better.
Cyberpunk, Baldurs Gate 3, Sims 4, Minecraft (not a shocker, just need Java for modded), it's been great.
I've been having a great experience. I am on an all AMD system, which generally has better support than Nvidia, so ymmv. The only thing I occasionally miss is Xbox game pass, but I didn't use it a ton to be honest so I guess Linux just saved me 15 bucks a month.
Most games I've played have been a literal cakewalk, just install and play. Stuff that uses the ea launcher acts a little strange on launch but has worked fine so far - just have to not panic when you see a blank ea window sit there for like 10-15 seconds and have faith it will move passed it, lol.
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So I swapped to linux again about a month ago and I'm frankly shocked at how much better it is now, especially for gaming. While I don't have first hand experience with the games you listed (in linux), based on the games I have played, I have no doubt those games will all work just fine.
Honestly, I don't see myself going back to Windows at all at this point.
(For the record, I'm on Pop!_OS.)
The native steam package in most repos seems more than functional(esp with using proton when necessary)
(Archlinux, EndeavourOS, Pop!_OS are ones I've tried with success with a GTX 1080(fuck nvidia))just tried to use the flatpak version of steam and it seems to have issues with linking external libraries(disks/partitions) and flatpak steam won't let you install any Windows games(as of Aug 8, 2023)
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Xevil still works.
I can only speak for Witcher 3 of the games you've listed and it plays really great!
You can just check on protondb if any game you want to play works with Proton or doesn't at all. But generally almost anything that doesn't require an anticheat will work.
Modded Skyrim isn't a problem, but mod organizer 2's ui is very glitchy. Most every game I play works fine mods and all. Just don't expect everything with anti cheat to work.
I'd say about 95 percent of my steam collection works with little to no tweaking required these days. Skyrim works, throw any mods you want at it. Witcher 3 runs great. RDR2 and any civ 1-6 all run perfectly. Baulders Gate 3 runs smooth as butter.
There's the odd game here and there that doesn't work well or at all but most things just work. I think the main thing that doesn't work is anticheat enabled online games. I don't play those though so I can't really comment on their state of play outside of that.
I switched to linux before the steam deck came out, and things were already pretty good then, but it's even better now that more folks are invested in it. Since then, I haven't come across any steam games I have major issues with - however, I still have issues getting my controller running (I don't use it often though, so I haven't really looked into that much) and on certain games I have issues if I switch windows while it's running. Generally for me, if it runs, it runs well, aside from occasional issues from needing more ram. It looks like we have similar cpu's, and you have a better graphics card and more ram than me. I can't speak for everything on your list, but I did play some civ fairly recently without any problems. Check protondb for the games you play most before making the switch - and if you're worried, check lower rated games on there for examples of issues and fixes. I suspect it would be fine for you to switch.
Outside the few games like valorant and destiny 2, literally everything else I've tried runs just fine on Linux. Wine/Proton has gotten really good these past 2 years. Even on Wayland, which has historically been bad for gaming things just work nowadays.
Have you considered something like a Steam Deck. It's a full a Linux instance, optimized for gaming but you can also hook up a keyboard+monitor and run traditional apps in desktop mode. I think most of the games mentioned are listed as playable on Deck (though large Skylines games might have issues with 16GB memory).
One of the great things about Linux is picking your distro. However, I'd suggest sticking with the latest version of Ubuntu desktop if you want to game.
Way more users means problems get solved there first (after Steam Deck, of course). File system support is good, and while I don't use NTFS partitions anymore, they worked fine for me. The user count also means larger communities of support.
If down the road you want to branch out, go for it! But play it safe for now. If you're used to Windows, install WinTile and Dash-to-Panel extensions in GNOME to make things familiar.