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Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds

(arstechnica.com)
402 points _JamesA_ | 5 comments | 25 Jun 25 19:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.873s | source
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haswell ◴[25 Jun 25 21:31 UTC] No.44382004[source]▶
In my purely anecdotal experience over the last few years, performance ranking is as follows:

1. Steam on Linux via Proton + Wayland (Niri)

2. Steam on Linux via Proton + X11 (Xfce)

3. Steam on Windows

4. Games on Linux launched via other means (it's possible I was missing out on certain flags/optimizations, but this is just about the average experience)

The biggest thing I noticed when switching to Linux was an improvement in framerate consistency, i.e. I'd have fewer situations where the framerate would drop momentarily. Games felt more solid and predictable.

The biggest thing I noticed when switching from X11/Xfce to Wayland/Niri was just an overall increase in framerate. I'd failed this jump many times over the years, so it was notable when I jumped and stayed there earlier this year.

It does feel like games take longer to launch on average, but this makes sense given the fact that it's launching via Proton/Wine.

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1. 0x38B ◴[26 Jun 25 01:56 UTC] No.44383557[source]▶
Side note, Niri is a fantastic WM. When I saw the Phoronix article on HN talking about the addition of overview mode and more, I finally took the plunge and spent an afternoon converting over from Sway.¹ Anecdotally, I've seen less hangups on Niri around fullscreen games and floating windows, perhaps thanks to X11 running in xwayland-satellite.

1: the hardest part was finding a bar that supported i3status-rs; not a fan of GTK bars that eat up CPU. I settled on i3bar-river.

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2. haswell ◴[26 Jun 25 02:10 UTC] No.44383616[source]▶
I've been so happy with Niri after many many years bouncing around other WMs. It addresses the main issues I've had with other tiling window managers and has been such a joy to use.

The scrollable aspect just feels so natural and intuitive to me.

3. rendaw ◴[26 Jun 25 04:14 UTC] No.44384128[source]▶
Steam won't launch for me in xwayland-satellite here... I just assumed steam+wayland = broken. I have a kind of weird setup using sway with xwayland disabled and running xwayland-satellite though.
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4. 0x38B ◴[26 Jun 25 05:59 UTC] No.44384574[source]▶
Try running xwayland-satellite in another WM like Niri and see if it works there – for example, Gamescope didn’t work well on Sway, crashing as soon as Steam tried to spawn another window, but it’s working fine in Niri.
5. ChocolateGod ◴[26 Jun 25 07:41 UTC] No.44385133[source]▶
> X11 running in xwayland-satellite

I wish more Wayland compositors took this option, seems like a cleaner method of keeping X compatibility and not allowing Xwayland to bring down the entire compositor.