The majority of problems Linux has with gaming are intentional decisions on the part of the studios at this point.
I keep what I think is a pretty healthy gaming diet, which tends to steer me away from the megacorporate shit and into smaller studios and indies, and games just tend to run.
Even AAA games are fine, as long as they don’t have intrusive anticheat. If you’re after SP, non-VR gaming, Linux is ready today. If you want VR, you need to be more flexible with headsets. If you want MP, you need to be really flexible since devs intentionally block Linux for whatever reason.
I can install and play pretty much any single player game I want, even new releases, and I am confident I will be able to play it with no significant/noticable issue… and on the offchance there is one, it will most assuredly be fixed within a couple days with a proton update… and honestly its been like 2 years since that last happened to me.
The only time I even have to think about installing a game, and thus have to check protondb, is when I want to install an MMO or Multiplayer game…and a shocking amount of those work, too. Just not all of them, because of invasive anticheat.
I don’t think you need to be super flexible with Multiplayer as long as they aren’t competitive games. Here’s some multiplayer games I’ve played flawlessly in the last 12 months: Baldur’s Gate III, Webfishing, Deep Rock Galactic, Atlyss and Stardew Valley. It really depends on the genre I think.
I’d say the peripheral situation could be better too, such as sim racing gear. Logitech support is solid and looks decent with Fanatec at least, but there’s a lot of options out there that are unlikely to have good Linux support.
I tested out Monado recently with the Reverb G2 and it’s coming along nicely. It’s definitely not ready yet, but hopefully it will be within a few years.
I’ve been gaming soley on linux since 2020 or 2021.
Yeah, its definitely ready now, most straggler games are basically massively overproduced and massively MTX exploitative team based shooters using kernel level anti cheat that are designed for children with mom’s credit card.
So what you are saying is “no, linux doesn’t let you play the games you want to play, especially the extremely popular ones”.
You can play most of the games you want to play, with the main caveats being VR and anti-cheat. If it’s SP and on a regular screen, it’ll probably work.
I have no problem playing games on Linux. Currently playing Baldur’s Gate 3. Only thing I had to was turn on compatibility in the steam settings.
Ugh, that’s too much work. I’m going back to Winblows
I’m playing Hogwarts Legacy and needed to tune one system setting to fix occasional crashes. That’s it, and that’s the most trouble I’ve had in a few years.
Do you mind me asking you which distro you use? I’ve tried running BG3 on Linux Mint and I can’t seem to get the game to ever load into the world. I get all the way to the in-game menu and into the loading screen after that and then it hangs and crashes. Every time. I’ve tried using a couple different versions of Proton, tried out a few different versions of Nvidia graphics drivers… No luck yet.
It runs fine on Linux Mint Debian under proton for me.
I’ve been gaming on Linux exclusively for 5 years now. I have waited for some games to run better but it’s been generally great for me.
Which ones in particular? I have this issue on windows 10 as well. I’ve still not touched city skylines 2 and stalker 2. I just tried Jedi survivor, and honestly it was a mistake.
Might sound funny it’s usually the older titles. The longest I have waited for was Spellforce Platinum Edition. It always ran sluggish, now it probably runs better than on Windows. Another one was Agarest, it was kinda playable but with too much hassle. Well, I usually play older stuff anyway. Surprisingly I almost never had problems with new games. Maybe only Hell Let Loose but it was an anti-cheat issue.
Nah I get that, I’m glad that it’s improved so much over the years. I’m excited to build a new PC and never have it touch windows tbh.
Yeah, it’s been great. When Valve release Proton 10 soon, it’ll get even better (Wine 10 is awesome). It’s really cool to owning your system to full extend. With ads and telemetry stuff Windows has, I’m sure they cause your hardware to wear off lot faster. Hell they even require you to buy new hardware just to install their new OS.
What about flipping the question. Making modern games available on more platforms?
Why is the penguin holding it like that??
Yes
At this point Linux and Windows are more like Xbox and PlayStation back in the the 2000’s, except Linux has a compatibility layer to allow it to run a lot of Windows games.
Gamers on Linux have minimal setup overhead.*
*as long as you stick with Steam. Anything else means going to Lutris, Heroic Games Launcher, etc which is far more hit or miss.
Added the missing qualifier to one of the articles bullet points for them.
In my experience running non-steam games through steam with proton is the best way to play those games too. The only time I’ve ever had to use lutris was when I had to install some DLC for a GOG application on the same prefix as the game because it had a separate exe installer for that DLC. I haven’t been able to figure out a way to do that through steam. But once I got that done I just ran the game through steam and it worked perfectly. The heroic games launcher gets suggested a lot too but I literally have never been able to get it to work for a single game.
With Heroic for what its worth, I have had some luck on difficult games going into the settings for the troublesome game, going to the “other” tab and ticking the box for “Use Steam Runtime”.
Doesn’t actually matter with the way Windows performs, these days.
An article similar to this is posted by itsfoss every week.
Not yet, in order to be ready for mainstream gaming, the gaming experience has to be smooth (As in easy to install, Mod & patch)
Not until they implement 3D Settings page in the Nvidia control panel, and improve upon HDR support. Do those two things, and I will finally stop having to dual boot.
Edit: And yes anticheat needs to be sorted as well, as others have pointed out.
That’s nvidia’s proprietary software, only nvidia can add stuff to it.
As for anti-cheat, kernel level anti cheat is not going to happen on Linux, nor should it (or continue being used in Windows)
Yes, we know, but it’s still part of “Linux being ready for mainstream gaming”. If the average person (the mainstream) has to worry about stuff like that, then it isn’t ready for the mainstream.
Well I doubt the mainstream actually tweaks 3D settings in nVidia control panel. Anti cheat making some online games not work is a bigger issue but still not worth it.
Ahh, my apologies. I thought you were referring to the Nvidia drivers being proprietary in general, not just the lack of 3D settings in the control panel. I totally agree that those settings are not needed by mainstream users.
Or switch to an AMD GPU.
AMD can’t compete in the high end GPU market, but their CPUs kick ass. I play in 4K 144Hz with Ray Tracing. Find me an AMD GPU that can handle that, and I will glady sell the 4090.
You are like th 0.01% of gamers dude. 4K ray tracing is borderline luxury category.
In 30+ years of PC gaming, I’ve never had anything beyond a xx70 (midrange) GPU, so when I saw that the 4090 was actually considerably more powerful than the next card down (unlike the xx90tis and GTX Titans of the past), I decided to splurge for once in my life.
I promise you I’m not rich. I just had some extra life insurance money to spend.
Sorry, I did not mean to attack you personally. Te high-end GPU market is clearly NVidia territory and in my opinion so few people are using theses cards with Linux, the issues related with them might not get as much attention as the more mainstream stuff. No suprised AMD not even trying to compete with these cards and want to stay in mid-high range.
Thank you. But yes it gets tiring constantly getting berated for still using Windows. I’m aware that I’m a minority, but it is frustrating that Lemmy users love to attack me for using the OS that has the features I need as my primary platform. Believe me; I’d love to move to Arch full-time, but it’s just not capable enough yet for the high end.
I’ll probably still be using the same hardware 5 years from now, so I have my fingers crossed that Linux will eventually have better support for Nvidia GPUs and HDR displays by then.
Sorry I’m not a fan of having a company create both the problem and the solution and then forcing the industry to go asking with it.
And fix issues with anticheat.
I would say mainstream should become this: game has client-side kernel level anti-cheat? Goes right into trash bin
Hell, I do not need any kernel-level third-party hacks to literally spend money on the Internet, and some company wants system-level access to my computer when I want to just have fun and do pew-pew? Lol, good luck with that
I was having some issues when I updated to Nobara 41 as Hell Divers 2 failed to load in the textures. So it still has hiccups.
What will itsfoss.com say? I’m on the edge of my seat
