Gaming on Linux!

Technology Gaming
#1

Does anyone here game on Linux? With the recent release of Steam Play, the work on DXVK, and Wine and such, it has become oh my god so much better than it was.

I am currently in the experimental phase of exploring gaming on Linux, because I upgraded my computer and broke Windows 10 due to changing out the motherboard, and… I exemplify ADHD here… But I don’t want to take the time to repair it so I just installed Linux Mint on the new NVMe M.2 drive I got as part of the upgrade.

So far my only problems have been with anti-cheat services and with some stuttering and freezing when first starting to play a particular game. Of course my M.2 SSD is only so big, so I’ve not tried terribly many games yet, but it has done well enough.

I am currently playing F1 2017 off and on, which has had no problems with Linux whatsoever, but that is probably because Codemasters explicitly support Ubuntu 16.04 or some version like that. Other games I’ve played on Linux so far include War Thunder, Spec Ops: The Line, Rainbow Six 3 to see about legacy games, and a bit of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, because that one does not support Linux natively, whereas Mankind Divided does I believe.

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Need Advice on Linux
#2

I probably don’t really belong here, BUT… I sort of game on Linux? I have a Chromebook, and I dual boot into Linux to play games through Steam. :slight_smile: Mostly low-impact stuff like Stardew Valley, or recently Graveyard Keeper. My little Chromebook isn’t built to handle actual gaming, so even these games have some stuttering/problems occasionally. I’d like to buy a gaming computer again one day, but I’m not sure when I’ll be able to afford a good one.

I haven’t messed around with it since Steam Play, tbh.

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#3

You totally belong here… No matter how people end up using Linux, it is a great thing for the world! Also yea, you have a complete install of Linux if you’re dual booting so, you are not ‘sort of’ gaming on linux lol. You are full and proper, gaming on Linux. I’ve been wanting to take a look at Stardew Valley for sometime now, maybe I should finally lol.

I hear you about not being sure when you’ll be able to afford a good computer. It is a really tough time to be a PC gamer right now, with RAM prices being like four times what they were two years ago, and graphics cards still being above MSRP, its kind of brutal to build a system, or buy a decent prebuilt system for gaming these days. At least without having a fair amount of money you can afford to not spend on things like food and shelter lol.

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#4

image https://media1.tenor.com/images/6a207337ff44e92f8dd167f2d99bca6b/tenor.gif?itemid=4881098

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#5

I was just talking to someone else about installing Linux on my PC. I haven’t run it in years, other than the FreePBX distro on a server until about 4 years ago. A long time ago, I mostly used FreeBSD. I recently picked up a really cheap 6TB drive and it sits empty because I haven’t decided how I want to use it. I prefer to partition an empty drive vs. when there’s already data on it.

What’s the issue with Windows? I swapped motherboards on a WIn10 PC (from a Core2-Duo to 2nd gen i3!) last year and it all went smoothly.

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#6

I’ve always been interested in Linux… But hesitant because of compatibility with the software and games I want to run.

So Steam had good integration now? How about other software? I know there is a bunch of stuff that runs on it now, but haven’t really looked at Linux in years…

Windows has been irking me for decades, and Apple… Well… Good, but closed architecture has very defined limits.

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#7

Windows basically decided I had taken my old drive and installed it in a new computer. And I mean, I suppose I should have expected that, because I got a new motherboard, a new CPU, new RAM, and a new SSD. Which is basically a new computer lol.

@smoj Yea, theres a fairly substantial library of Steam games listed as compatible now, though most of them are from before Steam Play, but Steam Play has allowed people to install games that never had any sort of built in compatability and for the most part play them without issue. There’s a small list of games that work well without problem, that is growing by the day. Well by the day may be a slight exaggeration but it is growing quickly. The nice thing about Steam Play though is they are contributing changes they make to the upstream projects they are using so it is improving Linux compatability with games even outside of Steam.

There are substantial caveats though, such as many multiplayer games not having compatible anti-cheat services despite working more or less in single player.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9439-QHKN-1308

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#8

I changed motherboard/CPU/RAM and Windows deactivated. When I requested it to reactivate it did so happily. This was a key that I bought for Windows 7 and upgraded to 10 previously.

If I do become a regular user of Linux again, I imagine I’ll just boot Windows for games. Windows 10 boots are quite painless with an SSD.

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#9

Ah interesting. Mine completely decided to blue screen everytime I boot up. So now I have to run the repair process and then maybe reactivate. Its the same for me though, I upgraded from Windows 7 also. That said I do have a Windows 10 Ultimate, or Pro or whatever, key from school to use if I want to upgrade from Home… Hmm. But yea its tough finding the time to spend on it and not procrastinating it away doing something else. Heck, I would rather pay bills than repair Windows right this moment lol.

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#10

I despise repairing Windows, but not as much as I do reinstalling Windows. Most people seem to reinstall Windows when the slightest problem arises. I’ve repaired it about 95% of the time things go wrong. I’d say running an automated repair from the install media has a slightly higher chance of succeeding than not in your case.

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#11

Lol yea. Everyone, at least in techie or enthusiast circles, seems to think reformatting and reinstalling will cure their performance issues, most of which are due to various compounding misconfigurations over time. I will get to the repair eventually, especially once I need Visual Studio again, but I’m perfectly fine using Linux right now and can still access all of my data anyways.

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#12

I installed Visual Studio and some other tools on a VM earlier this year. I kind of like keeping my ‘main’ Windows install (the host OS) free of dev tools (especially services). In the past, I’d discover that RAM was low because SQL Server was still running (when not coding). I don’t do too much coding at home these days - not as much as I should at least.

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#13

I tried running linux on my laptop but had all sorts of issues woth making test readable on my high resolution small screen laptop, not being able to fix steam was actually my breaking point lol

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#15

Definitely, it has quite an extensive list of compatible games, just look for the steam os symbol or a penguin. I can’t remember exactly what the icon is right now lol.

GOG.com also has a lot of cross platform games available without DRM, and a lot of classic games too. I think it atands for Good Old Games, though its not all old games lol.

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#17

i am indeed a gamer on linux steam has come a long way with linux, and at the moment i am using Arch Linux and have had no problems loading some rather heavy games, i also have minecraft running smooth, there to me is no difference between linux and windows short of not using as many resources and no need to have antivirus running and bogging down my system ram

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#18

Me me me!!! I dual boot Ubuntu and Win10. I will usually game on the Linux side when working on projects. I’ve only ran into a few issues mainly with Nvidia graphics drivers, but the support seems much much better now.

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#19

And for playing on Linux…
Yes, game developers are not as proactive on Linux as they are on commercial distributions.
But there are ways!!! And some games may, or may not work out.
There is a lot of passionate Linux gamer communities, tutorials, blogs, and dedicated YouTubers out there! (plenty to find a solution to your specific needs).
STEAM on Linux:
https://youtu.be/Vtroqq5J-sQ
https://youtu.be/W6iRjTsozCU
Other ways:
https://youtu.be/IWJUphbYnpg
https://youtu.be/Co6FePZoNgE
https://youtu.be/-3igQO50yXI
https://youtu.be/examWzM2W2s
Native Linux Games:
https://youtu.be/TjucFMRxCOo
… And way more youtube Videos, Blogs, Forums… on the subject await you online.

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#20

I’ve been using linux systems since graduation (like 20 years already), mostly debian (my current pc is on debian 10 atm) but I messed a lot with distributions over the years, I totally dished windows out of windows for at least 5 years and have been a happy gamer ever after with steam and native support. The only big deal with linux atm is the ati cheat thing so you can’t really play on official servers (for me it’s not a big deal as I’m more of a solo player anyway, but for people who do want to play online on official server it can be off putting), also a cool thing you can do is install windows as a virtual machine on linux so you don’t really need to dual boot things (it’s a bit more complex and can have some performance issues depending on what you want to do on windows, but can make it up for the few things you do may need to use windows for). The anti cheat thing will eventually be fixed or they will come with something because I think steam and valve are putting that much effort in making things work with linux because they don’t wan’t to really get stuck to windows as well, probably so they can to push the steam OS thing over it.

As for steam play compatibility most of the games just work out of the box, some requires some config tweaking but usually you just need to google the issue or check protonDB (the steam version of wine) to see how to fix the thing, I manage to play all the games I bought in steam up to this day and am pretty happy with how things are at the moment.

Also if anyone needs helps with getting linux or something working on it, just give me a shout and I can see if I can help with the problem! :smile:

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#21

I got 3 machines, all with similar Debian setups and yes I play some games on them.
Although mainly modded Minecraft 1.7.10, and on the main PC
The others are laptops

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#22

My PC is on debian 10, I used to run gentoo on a netbook, I really like it but takes so long to compile some stuff that it’s only worth it if you really want to squeeze more performance out of your setup…

I managed to play everything in my steam library either natively or with proton (besides the aforementioned problem with the anti cheat not working on linux, but I read somewhere that there is progress in making wine/proton work with easy anticheat, they managed to make a couple games workable already as far as the article I read said, but I guess nothing concrete will come until at least next year and even them the company that owns eac can complain and somehow block it from going live) and I don’t have a super uber gaming pc at all.

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