this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I don't think the issue is performance though. The unspoken part of this comparison is in bold:
"Linux vs Windows tested in 10 games. In the games we could find that work on linux, the performance was 17% faster on average. In all the rest of the games, Windows worked 100% better."
Fortunately majority of games work on linux. The major pain point now is the anticheat used by multiplayer games. Single player games more or less work out of the box
To add on here, you can use the Are We Anti-Cheat Yet? site to track which games are not working due to anti-cheat. In my experience it's extremely rare for "Linux" (aka Wine/DXVK/VKD3D/et al) to not support arbitrary games. If a game is not working on Linux it's almost certainly because of an anti-cheat or some bloated/obscure DRM telling Linux "no you cannot run this".
Sadly anti cheat is much cheaper for devs than fast manual moderation. And a cheater infested game dies off much faster.
And client-side anticheat solutions aren’t great at preventing cheating, anyways. Anticheats are still bypassed by smart software design or by using third-party devices, like the Cronus. COD’s intrusive newer anticheat didn’t stop hacking in ranked play this past year, for instance.
I recommend this video from Serious, who has experience with modded clients and developed a patch to secure BO3 when it was unsafe to play.
I really want to switch to Linux, but I’ve been told this before and then ended up spending hours trying to get everything to work, and usually give up … but it’s been a couple of years since I tried the last time, so is this the right time?
I have zero interest in the technical parts of Linux or setting things up. I want things to work out if the box. I may have to dual boot because of WoW and MS Flight Sim, but if everything else works it may be worth it.
Edit: wow thanks for the answers. You may have convinced me to try again.
Check out protondb to see how your game collection fares on linux. I personally just buy games without checking these days and play on linux but then again I buy older games. Although AAA games also tend to work these days within days of release
And TBF, Far too many AAA games tend to not work well on Windows within the first few days of release either. Even a few like elden ring that worked better on Linux before Windows. Though I still avoid getting games on their release date. You are generally going to have a far better experience on either system by waiting a bit and seeing what others say about it.
It greatly depends on the type of games you play, the vast majority of things I play I just hit play on Steam and that's it. Sure I had to do some setup, i.e. install Proton-GE and set Steam to use it as default for all games, otherwise only some games that Valve tested are available, but all in all it's almost 0 setup.
That being said that's been true for years, so I doubt that if you had a bad experience in 2021 it's going to be much different now. Also you need to realise that not even Windows is out of the box, you had to install drivers and programs, PCs are not consoles and with customisability comes the need to setup. And even though you don't have interest in the technical part of Linux you'll need to learn some of it, just like you did for Windows, and most importantly you'll need to forget the technical parts you know of windows that are different on Linux, that's usually one of the biggest problems I see, people trying to use Linux as if it were Windows and having a bad time.
If you have AMD, for most titles it is as simple as installing a distro and then installing Steam. Then on Steam you will have to enable the compatibility tools, that is it. For Nvidia, setting up the drivers is a bit more finicky, however some distros will preconfigure it for you (such as Nobara, although personally I had a couple issues with this distro, YMMV)
You can search for games status on Linux via ProtonDB. In my experience they just work.
For WoW you might need to look up a YT tutorial to figure out the file paths, but the tldr is you need to install Battle.Net as a Non-Steam game, then launch it through Steam. This is generally a good, easy method for most non-steam titles, just installing it and adding it as a non-steam game.
According to ProtonDB flight sim should work, I habe no personal experience here.
I can't speak for both games you listed, however for WoW - Blizzard games tend to have a good reputation for running on Linux (one of the few good things I like about Blizzard). Sometimes there are a few bugs here and there (OW had a mouse cursor locking problem) but generally they're pretty good.
I have been playing Diablo 3 on Linux for as long as I can remember, even before the massive rise of Linux gaming from the introduction of VKD3D/DXVK/Proton. I know D4 was working in Linux even during the betas, and I've heard StarCraft players who've said the same.
Of course, the system requirements never mention Linux as an officially supported platform, but I can't say I've ever heard of a Blizzard game that doesn't work on Linux (games they develop - games like CoD and originally Destiny 2 where they were only the publisher/launcher host is a different story) so I'd be very surprised if WoW doesn't work.
IIRC Blizzard's anti cheat ("Warden" I believe) is mostly server side which makes things way easier - I mean hell I know a lot of their games even supported Mac OS.
And as the others have linked, for MSFS you can check Proton but I hear the reception is good there too since it's rated as Silver on there.
These days I'm usually just playing the Diablo games from them, and I just use the Bottles app which makes it really easy to play non-Steam games. It even has an option to install the Battle.net client for you, then you login, install the game, and click play - it's super simple.
Thanks for the feedback - I've installed Pop OS tonight and installed bnet, wow, unreal engine, rocket league and steam.
Battle.net had a few problems because of the host file, and Vulkan apparently needed some fiddling - but at apart from that, I must say everything runs smoothly.
I look forward to test a lot of things deeper - but for now it very much seems like an experience I could get used to.
I'd argue that the idea that most games don't work on Linux is a flat-out misconception in 2023.
It's hard to quantify, but Valve's own Steam Deck (=running on Linux) verification stats have 70% of games either Verified or Playable (Playable generally means that it runs but text is small on the Deck screen, or it needs a lot of keyboard input -- nothing that matters on the desktop). Crucially, "Unsupported" doesn't mean it doesn't run -- it means untested, and in my experience at least, many of those just work too.
Protondb shows 80% of its catalog with a Platinum, Gold, or Silver rating -- 70% are Gold. Silver generally corresponds to e.g. switching to Proton Experimental, which is a single-click process.
Anecdotally, after being gaming only on Linux for more than a year, with a catalog of 500+ games, I've had one (1) that gave me any more trouble than that Proton Experimental switch (Assetto Corsa, first one).
So there is no "unspoken part" here. The experience running Windows games on Linux isn't what it was even 2 years ago. It is, for many people, an entirely seamless experience now.
PS: seeing Windows games running better on Linux isn't a new observation either. Elden Ring was a great example where Proton shader precaching eliminated the stutter that plagued that game at launch, so it didn't happen on Linux.
Wait...so, if i understand this correctly yeah...the Deck might upen us all up to a future of Linux as our operating system as gamers?
Seeing how popular it is etc, might that actually be on purpose? Excuse me being dumb, i just play games and that's it basically no real computer tech knowledge.
That was always Gabe's intention with SteamOS when it came out around a decade ago. He has never really liked windows, and definitely never liked the potential for Microsoft to mess with his product. SteamOS was made from the ground up to supplant windows as the primary gamer OS, we are just now witnessing the turning of the tide.
Gabe Newell has been openly critizicing Microsoft for quite some time now and therefore, Valve has been pro Linux for years.
It is not too far fetched that the Steamdeck is their second attempt to make Linux gaming more widespread after the failed "Steamboxes". This and they took the opportunity to make a PC-Switch knock-off when the market was perfectly ready for it.
"Proton shader precaching eliminated the stutter that plagued that game at launch, so it didn't happen on Linux."
I've been meaning to ask, and it probably should be it's own thread, but when launching a game and it says 'Processing Vulkan Shaders', does allowing it to partially process do anything.
Warframe for me will quickly jump to 33%, then do about 1% per 10-20 seconds. I don't want to wait 10+ minutes to reach 100%, but does letting it get to like 40-60%, then hitting skip, at least keep the processed sharers, or does it skip/dump and process on demand? Basically, is Immediate skip vs giving it a minute or two before skipping worth anything?
I can only speak from my own experience on this one, but depending on the game, letting it complete means less stuttering the first time you see some shader effect in-game. My understanding is that it offsets processing that otherwise has to happen during runtime.
I've seen conflicting reports of how worth it that is, and I suppose it probably comes down to a lot of factors, in particular the game itself and the power of the hardware it's running on.
I tend to let it complete always, but for me that's generally less than a minute. Gives me time to get my gaming beverage ready, haha
If you let it run through once, it should cache the compiled shaders so it will recompile only after the game or your gpu drivers are updated
Is anyone else bothered by the 100% better statement?
100% better is twice as good, not infinitely better which is what’s happening here. This is dividing by 0.
It's better 100% of the time, when it's doesn't work on Linux.
Also, I'm sexy 100% of time, when I am sexy (which is 0% percent of the time).
IMO that is a disingenuous way to state that. It makes it sound like they had to work to find games that worked on Linux at all and suggests that most games do not. Which is far from the truth. Most games just work these days and it is only a handful that don't, so only a handful work 100% better. Then it all really depends if you care about those few games or not.
Few games? Man, you and I are definitely having a different experience.
For years now I just buy Steam games without even checking compatibility. They just work. No joke on my partners a Windows machine they’ve bought the same game once or twice and it regularly crashes for them.
There is of course luck in games I choose.
To add my own experience, I play a lot of Japanese visual novels (it's a good 80% of what I play). Very few Japanese visual novels are released on Steam. But if they are on Steam, they're usually DRM-free or work in Proton anyway. However, most of these games are English-only. I play them in Japanese.
So I need to get my games from other places, like digital storefronts such as DLsite and DMM. However, I quickly found out that absolutely no games that DMM sells will work in Wine. This is because they are all encumbered with a form of DRM that isn't compatible with Wine. DMM is the largest digital storefront for VNs. DLsite sells some games with various kinds of DRM. PlayDRM does work in Wine, but the rest doesn't. They also sell DRM-free games. The selection isn't as large, but it's good. We recently got the DRM tagging feature in VNDB, so it should give you a good idea of what games are incompatible.
You can also buy VNs physically. Some games are DRM-encumbered but many are DRM-free. You generally don't know until you buy, though, and it can be an expensive mistake. Hopefully we can change that with the new VNDB DRM tagging system.
Even when they're not DRM-encumbered, though, you have a decent chance of facing issues with media playback. Older games using DirectShow you can probably get working with native DLLs using Winetricks. If it's a newer game that uses Media Foundation, you might not be able to get it to work at all. Worst case, the game crashes on the opening movie. I'm looking for a way to improve that section of the wiki since I know very little about Media Foundation for solving these issues.
There also tend to be a bunch of Windowing issues with older VNs like fullscreen being broken. Gamescope will solve those issues.
So, while you can play a lot of VNs in Wine, you need to be careful about it. Fortunately, only two of the VNs I bought are unplayable and they're both from DMM.
I do love DRM just ruining people's experiences
This seems a little exaggerated. For example, over 10k games are Steam Deck playable/verified. About 75% of the games that were tested were compatible with the Steam Deck, so probably many more will follow. Also, all emulators work on Linux too and sometimes even better than on Windows. The number of games that are available to you on Linux is simply massive.
Things are changing. The SteamDeck is a Linux platform. So if you want that share of the market, you need Linux support
Based on what the 100% better? I Mostly games have only minor issues.