Nvidia won, we all lost

Also playing PC video games doesn't even require a Nvidia GPU. It does sorta require Windows. I don't want to use that, so guess I lost the ability to waste tons of time playing boring games, oh no.

Steam's Wine thing works quite well. And yes you need to fiddle and do work arounds including giving up getting some games to work.

Yeah, but it's not worth. Apparently the "gold" list on ProtonDB is games that allegedly work with tweaks. So like, drop in this random DLL and it might fix the game. I'm not gonna spend time on that.

Last one I ever tried was https://www.protondb.com/app/813780 with comments like "works perfectly, except multiplayer is completely broken" and the workaround has changed 3 times so far, also it lags no matter what. Gave up after stealing 4 different DLLs from Windows. It doesn't even have anticheat, it's just cause of some obscure math library.

Yeah Proton covers a lot of titles. It’s mainly games that use the most draconian forms of anticheat that don’t work.

Out of the 11 games I've bought through Steam this year, I've had to refund one (1) because it wouldn't run under Proton, two (2) had minor graphical glitches that didn't meaningfully affect my enjoyment of them, and two (2) had native Linux builds. Proton has gotten good enough that I've switched from spending time researching if I can play a game to just assuming that I can. Presumably ymmv depending on your taste in games of course, but I'm not interested in competitive multiplayer games with invasive anticheat which appears to be the biggest remaining pain point.

My experience with running non-game windows-only programs has been similar over the past ~5 years. It really is finally the Year of the Linux Desktop, only few people seem to have noticed.

The only games in my library at all that don't work on linux are indie games from the early 2000s, and I'm comfortable blaming the games themselves in this case.

I also don't play any games that require a rootkit, so..

> It does sorta require Windows.

The vast majority of my gaming library runs fine on Linux. Older games might run better than on Windows, in fact.

> Yeah, but it's not worth. Apparently the "gold" list on ProtonDB is games that allegedly work with tweaks. So like, drop in this random DLL and it might fix the game. I'm not gonna spend time on that.

I literally never had to do that. Most tweaking I needed to do was switching proton versions here and there (which is trivial to do).

I've been running opensuse+steam and I never had to tweak a dll to get a game running. Albeit that I don't exactly chase the latest AAA, the new releases that I have tried have worked well.

Age of empires 2 used to work well, without needing any babying, so I'm not sure why it didn't for you. I will see about spinning it up.

good move, thats why i treat my windows install as a dumb game box, they can steal whatever data they want from that i dont care. i do my real work on linux, as far away from windows as i can possibly get.

It's Linux, what software doesn't need fiddling to work?

True for single player, but if you're into multiplayer games anti-cheat is an issue.

My hesitation is around high end settings, can Proton run 240hz on 1440p and high settings? I'm switching anyway soon and might just have a separate machine for gaming but I'd rather it be Linux. SteamOS looks promising if they release for PC.

It depends on the games you play and what you are doing. It is a mixed bag IME. If you are installing a game that is several years old it will work wonderfully. Most guides assume you have Arch Linux or are using one of the "gaming" distros like Bazzite. I use Debian (I am running Testing/Trixie RC on my main PC).

I play a lot of HellDivers 2. Despite what a lot of Linux YouTubers say. It doesn't work very well on Linux. The recommendations I got from people was to change distro. I do other stuff on Linux. Game slows down when you need it to be running smoothly doesn't matter what resolution/settings you set.

Anything with anti-cheat probably won't work very well if at all.

I also wanted to play the old Command and Conquer games. Getting the fan made patchers (not the games itself) to run properly that fix a bunch of bugs that EA/Westwood never fixed and mod support is more difficult than I cared to bother with.

Proton has often better performance than gaming under Windows - partly because Linux is faster - so sure it can run those settings.

Same way I treat my windows machine, but also the reason I wont be swapping it to linux any time soon. I use different operating systems for different purposes for a reason. It's great for fompartmentalization.

When I am in front of windows, I know I can permit myself to relax, breath easy and let off some steam. When I am not, I know I am there to learn/earn a living/produce something etc. Most probably do not need this, but my brain does, or I would never switch off.

Proton/Steam/ Linux works damn nearly flawlessly for /most/ games. I've gone through a Nvidia 2060, a 4060, and now an AMD 6700 XT. No issues even for release titles at launch.

Fedora 42, Helldivers 2

Make sure to change your Steam launch options to:

PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=84 gamemoderun %command%

This will use gamemode to run it, give it priority, put the system in performance power mode, and will fix any pulse audio static you may be having. You can do this for any game you launch with steam, any shortcut, etc.

It's missing probably 15fps on this card between windows and Linux, and since it's above 100fps I really don't even notice.

It does seem to run a bit better under gnome with Variable Refresh Rate than KDE.

I will be honest, I just gave up. I couldn't get consistent performance on HellDivers 2. Many of the things you have mentioned I've tried and found they don't make much of a difference or made things worse.

I did get it running nice for about a day and then an update was pushed and it ran like rubbish again. The game runs smoothly when initially running the map and then massive dip in frames for several seconds. This is usually when one of the bugs is jumping at you.

This game may work better on Fedora/Bazzite or <some other distro> but I find Debian to be super reliable and don't want to switch distro. I also don't like Fedora generally as I've found it unreliable in the past. I had a look at Bazzite and I honestly just wasn't interested. This is due to it having a bunch of technologies that I have no interest in using.

There are other issues that are tangential but related issues.

e.g.

I normally play on Super HellDive with other players in a Discord VC. Discord / Pipewire seems to reset my sound for no particular reason and my Plantronics Headset Mic (good headset, not some gamer nonsense) will be not found. This requires a restart of pipewire/wireplumber and Discord (in that order). This happens often enough I have a shell script alias called "fix_discord".

I have weird audio problems on HDMI (AMD card) thanks to a regression in the kernel (Kernel 6.1 with Debian worked fine).

I could mess about with this for ages and maybe get it working or just reboot into Windows which takes me all of a minute.

It is just easier to use Windows for Gaming. Then use Linux for work stuff.

If a game requires invasive anticheat, it is probably something I won't enjoy playing. Most likely the game will be full of cheaters anyway.

And yes, I rarely play anything online multiplayer.

I used Debian for about 15 years.

Honestly? Fedora is really the premier Linux distro these days. It's where the most the development is happening, by far.

All of my hardware, some old, some brand new (AMD card), worked flawlessly out of the box.

There was a point when you couldn't get me to use an rpm-based distro if my life depended on it. That time is long gone.

I don't want to use Fedora. Other than I've found it unreliable I switched to Debian because I was fed up of all the Window-isms/Corporate stuff in the distro that was enabled by default that I was trying to get away from.

It the same reason I don't want to use Bazzite. It misses the point of using a Linux/Unix system altogether.

I also learned a long time ago Distro Hopping doesn't actually fix your issues. You just end up either with the same issues or different ones. If I switched from Debian to Fedora, I suspect I would have many of the same issues.

e.g. If a issue is in the Linux kernel itself such as HDMI Audio on AMD cards having random noise, I fail to see how changing from one distro to another would help. Fedora might have a custom patch to fix this, however I could also take this patch and make my own kernel image (which I've done in the past btw).

The reality is that most people doing development for various project / packages that make the Linux desktop don't have the setup I have and some of the peculiarities I am running into. If I had a more standard setup, I wouldn't have an issue.

Moreover, I would be using FreeBSD/OpenBSD or some other more traditional Unix system and ditch Linux if I didn't require some Linux specific applications. I am considering moving to something like Artix / Devuan in the future if I did decide to switch.

What works for me is having different Activities/Workspaces in KDE - they have different wallpapers, pinned programs in the taskbar, the programs themselves launch only in a specific Activity. I hear others also use completely different user accounts.

Other than maybe iOS what OSes in general don't need fiddling these days to be usable?

You're not supposed to "steal DLLs".

You're supposed to find a proton fork like "glorious eggroll" that has patches specifically for your game.

Interesting, thanks.

multiplayer games with anti cheat are the minority and of those about 40% do work

areweanticheatyet.com

:) To give a source, https://www.computerbase.de/artikel/betriebssysteme/welche-l... is one. There was a more recent article the search is not showing me now.

What version of Linux do you run for that? I've had issues getting Fedora or Ubuntu or Mint to work with my Xbox controller + Bluetooth card combo, somehow Bazzite doesn't have these issues even though its based on Fedora and I don't know what I did wrong with the other distros.

This is a perfect example of the "small" tweaks people fail to mention when saying games work fine in Linux.

Hey, were you using KDE/Plasma, by chance?

I just switched over to it last night and my audio in Helldivers 2 in particular is awful and I'm having framerate dives.

If I got back to Gnome3, it's much more stable in fps and my audio problems go away.

This is with VRR on/off in both.

Mac. And Windows evidently, even though MS treats you like dirt.

So you have a specifically Linux-friendly game library

It's the kind of problem where you think it's fixed, until it's not. Someone gave an expert insight last time I brought this up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44042049