[HN Gopher] Out of the top fifty games on Steam, 70% work on Linux
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Out of the top fifty games on Steam, 70% work on Linux
Author : ekianjo
Score : 260 points
Date : 2021-03-13 16:37 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (boilingsteam.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (boilingsteam.com)
| kgwxd wrote:
| I was really annoyed when Rocket League dropped native support
| for Linux, but it turned out it runs much better on my potato
| under Proton. My only concern now is that they'll add anti-cheat
| to it (even though there's there no real need for it) and Linux
| will become flagged. The fact that they moved the game to only be
| available to new players via the Epic client has me worried
| they're moving in that direction.
| ekianjo wrote:
| It's possible, but Rocket League has actually never been as
| popular on Steam as recently, even though you cannot really
| purchase it anymore: https://steamcharts.com/app/252950 (recent
| peak players outperform pre-Epic performance).
| pjettter wrote:
| A lot of them don't work on Catalina. My kids accidentally
| upgraded and now their favorite games won't play. Steam is not a
| VM. And once you pay for something you have no guarantees that it
| will continue to work with an OS upgrade. Well, I guess that's
| industry standard, but I wish it was more obvious what works and
| what doesn't, instead of incredibly obtuse error messages. Not in
| favor of Steam at all.
| smoldesu wrote:
| MacOS != Linux
| pjettter wrote:
| No, not really. Agreed.
|
| But I thought Steam = Steam. My mistake :) I didn't consider
| the computational model until it was too late.
| innocenat wrote:
| Catalina is definitely not Linux.
|
| And I am not sure what you meant by obtuse error messages? My
| steam clearly marks the games that don't run under Catalina
| (which as a few false positive actually -- since .NET game
| still runs despite being mark as not compatible).
| pjettter wrote:
| I didn't screenshot the error messages, but I'm a developer
| and they were at that level: incomprehensible to end users.
| So I figured it out but only because I was savvy. Now my
| girls want PCs. Usch!
| Jyaif wrote:
| If software does not work after an OS upgrade, maybe the OS is
| the problem?
| pjettter wrote:
| The upgrade was an accident. Maybe that was a problem.
|
| I would like if the OS upgrade advised me of all the things
| that I had installed that would stop working.
| fayten wrote:
| This is an artifact of not allowing 32-bit applications on
| Catalina. It seems silly to blame Valve over this. Have you
| considered setting up bootcamp for gaming? Otherwise you can
| pick up fairly cheap refurbished laptops off eBay or amazon.
| Remember proton is for Linux, support has and always will be
| shotty for MacOS.
|
| https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=1055-ISJ...
| pjettter wrote:
| Thanks. Yes. But none of this is obvious after the fact and a
| lot of googling. Apart from that, if you search for games on
| Steam and you want to play one, you don't find out that it's
| incompatible until after you buy it! (Unless you happen to
| find a friendly site that lists catalina incompatible games).
| It maddens me that I can buy something that ca't possibly
| work.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Be mad at Apple, not Valve. Apple made the decision to
| sunset 32 bit applications.
| thrower123 wrote:
| I'm really enjoying this narrative that gaming on Linux is now
| viable because Windows games running through a Win32/DirectX
| compatibility layer works reasonably well.
|
| I appreciate Valve making Wine actually work for a broader set of
| games, but if we're being real, statistically nobody writes
| native games for Linux unless it is their labor of love, and the
| market share doesn't justify the energy.
| smetj wrote:
| too bad Metal Slug seems to be in the 30% which doesn't work :/
| Causality1 wrote:
| But do they work as well on Linux as on Windows? Do they get
| comparable framerates?
| ekianjo wrote:
| Depends on the games. Sometimes very close. Sometimes maybe 20
| percent framerate loss.
| cbanek wrote:
| It's true, I've loved steam for its pretty great linux support. I
| love that games like RimWorld, Kerbal Space Program, Stellaris,
| Civ, and other games are playable on my linux machine!
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| I've been converting my main rig over to Linux full time. In
| doing so I've been researching how to migrate from platforms.
| Using dual-boot, separate partition for steam games, and which
| software I'll need to migrate too. It's been really easy and now
| that I have the Steam library mounted, it was a simple update to
| get the Linux files for games. What I find even cooler is that if
| you own two graphics cards, you can skip the dual boot step, and
| setup a Windows VM inside Your Linux install and use GPU bypass
| to allow the VM to use your graphics card. This allows you to
| play the very few non-proton compatible games without restarting.
| This is the only corner case for me. 90% of anything else is a
| text editor, browser, or chat app (all which are cross
| compatible). Now if only GPU prices would drop...
| unixhero wrote:
| Penguins also like to have fun!
| Kudos wrote:
| The biggest blocker for me is still multiplayer games with
| anticheat that doesn't officially support Linux (try it
| unofficially and expect to get banned).
| ekianjo wrote:
| Yeah, there's always that risk. I wonder how Valve expects to
| tackle that down the road.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's going to be a very long road, but Valve has definitely
| been working on it. Through a combination of Kernel patches
| and WINE magick, they seem to have something cooking up. It's
| anyone's guess as to how effective (or accepted) it will be.
| pja wrote:
| EAC supports Linux right now, but games publishers have to
| choose to turn on that particular feature.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Googling "EAC supports linux" does not returns anything
| useful on first results. Would you mind to share your
| source?
| ekianjo wrote:
| https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/115053644680733
| 491...
|
| from the mouth of Sauron itself:
|
| > Tim Sweeney @TimSweeneyEpic > Jul 15, 2019 > EAC has
| native Linux binaries in beta, supporting several native
| games in active release. This missing link is native
| Linux anti-cheat integration with Wine/Proton so that
| games running under Wine are protected. This is in the
| works but is a big task.
| Google234 wrote:
| Is it even possible to verify and trust the code running
| in the Linux kernel? If not then it's a hopeless
| endeavor.
| smoldesu wrote:
| When you say "supports Linux", do you mean that it has a
| native version for Linux titles, or are you saying that
| it has an option to not flag Proton/Wine users?
| stryan wrote:
| They do have a Wine-version of their anti-cheat (or at
| least they did in the past). SMITE used to use it, but
| stopped for some reason.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| For EAC to work on Linux you need a native client, I'm
| guessing the next thing valve should work on is some
| proton compatibility layer that could link the Linux
| client with the emulated game.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Actually, they (Codeweavers) are actually working on
| redesigning WINE to make it possible to support Windows-
| EAC.
| Google234 wrote:
| Do people know how EAC works? It's looking inside the
| windows kernel loooking in the areas not well covered by
| patch guard to see if I trusted code is running.
| Providing it false data to look through in Wine defeats
| its purpose.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Valve have a big stick if they want to make companies support
| multiplayer from Proton.
| dEnigma wrote:
| But that stick sure has gotten quite a bit smaller ever
| since the Epic Store launched.
| fayten wrote:
| Maybe, but steam beat its record of most users two months
| in a row. February 8th had 26.4 million concurrent users.
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/esports/steam-twice-
| breaks-...
| Tanath wrote:
| Such bans are rare, and usually get reversed if it was only
| triggered due to Linux.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| The issue isn't as much as bans but that the online
| multiplayer service won't let you log in or that servers will
| auto kick anyone who fail the AC health check when they join.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Great! Now the only things keeping me on Windows are Visual
| Studio (which can be tolerably replaced with JetBrains Rider)
| and... drums... the default mail client.
|
| After using it for a while, switching to Outlook or Thunderbird
| is really hard, as their interface is extremely overloaded. The
| Windows Mail display mode with two panes, left being combined
| inbox with mail grouped by threads and large tiles, right for the
| content and quick actions, that ALSO switches to a single pane
| mode when window is narrow (E.G. when tiling) is just the best
| thing ever. Is there anything like that for Linux?
| away_throw wrote:
| While I don't think there is anything exactly like that, I
| believe Geary and Mailspring come close. I personally use aerc,
| a CLI email client.
| runjake wrote:
| 70% work, with a lot of asterisks.
|
| A lot of those 70% are crashy and/or don't support multiplayer or
| some other important functionality (eg GTA V on the front page
| there).
| [deleted]
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| For some definition of work. And I would wager than no more than
| 2% of playtime is on Linux. And that's being extremely generous.
| innocenat wrote:
| Have you actually tried Proton? It's not "some definition" of
| works. A lot of games just work perfectly.
|
| Furthermore, 19 of those 50 games (38%) support Linux natively.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| > A lot of games just work perfectly. Even games rated
| "platinum" can have a variety of serious issues.
|
| Native Linux support is worth about 1% of a game's
| playerbase. Varies by game of course. But 1% is a very fair
| and reasonable starting point.
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| Gamers use their machines for things besides gaming. There
| are a myriad of reasons to ditch proprietary OSes for Linux
| software and Proton is making it easier. There might
| currently only be 1% of sales, but Proton is good enough
| now where that number is only going to grow.
| [deleted]
| loufe wrote:
| I installed Linux on my primary SSD for a brand new computer I
| built in January. I lasted a week before I had to install windows
| on the secondary for a game a friend wanted to play, I expected
| it to take at least a little longer. That being said I am still
| really happy with the level of support in general for games on
| Linux. Paradox's strategy games all have excellent Native support
| for linux, as does Valheim and a couple others I've been playing.
| I really hope others who game make Linux their main platform to
| help boost the incentives for companies to support it.
| marcodiego wrote:
| This ratio could be much better if people refused to pay for drm.
| moralsupply wrote:
| And still we can't run Among Us on MacOS...
| mherrmann wrote:
| Hasn't it been a running joke every year that "now is the year of
| desktop Linux"? Maybe it was never supposed to be the year, but
| it will be the decade? I've been on Linux for years now after
| decades on Win then a few years on Mac. I never want to go back
| to either of those two.
| midasuni wrote:
| The year of the desktop for me was the year I was happy running
| Linux on my desktop full time.
|
| For me that was 2000.
| dleslie wrote:
| It's been the year of the Linux desktop since I started using
| it as my primary personal device. That'd be around 2000/2001.
| marsrover wrote:
| I'm convinced that a clean Ubuntu install has surpassed by Mac
| and Windows. I feel like the gap is only going to get greater
| as the battle between something created out of profit and
| something created out of passion wages on.
| dw-im-here wrote:
| Amazed to see Todd Howard has neglected to rerelease skyrim for
| linux
| ItJustWorks wrote:
| That's because 'It Just Works.'
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| By the way, is there a list of Linux-native games I can buy and
| download DRM-free?
| Shadonototro wrote:
| And yet linux usage keep dropping
|
| https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
|
| Valve strategy is the wrong one
|
| Here is how i would have done it:
|
| - 30% steam tax if you only target 1 OS
|
| - 25% steam tax if you target 2 OS
|
| - 20% steam tax if you target 3 OS
|
| That way developers would be more likely to offer NATIVE build of
| them game! (let's not forget you can easily target linux with
| Unity engine, which is, i'm pretty use, the most used engine on
| steam)
|
| Proton perfectly showcase what is wrong with linux, hacks on
| hacks on hacks on workarounds, as a gamer I DONT WANT TO DEAL
| WITH THAT SH!T
|
| And as a dev I DON'T WANT TO DEAL WITH RANDOM LINUX WINE SUPPORT
| TICKETS
|
| For "Linux" to attract gamers, also need a better Desktop
| Environment, and better software ecosystem, it's not there yet..
| sadly, and linux people can come at me whenever they want, it's
| the reality, and it's the reason why i'm using macOS
|
| -- still a pain to take screenshot
|
| -- still a pain to play games in fullscreen mode
|
| -- still a pain to have a correct mouse movement behavior
|
| -- still a pain to install software
|
| -- still a pain to install my hardware driver
|
| -- where all the donations go?
| dmos62 wrote:
| Your non-game-related Linux observations make me feel like
| we're living in different worlds. I haven't really tried
| playing games on Linux (I like games that require a Windows
| anti-cheat, so I'm dualbooting Win10), except Factorio and that
| was awesome. I'm also a power-user, I guess.
|
| Software, hardware driver installation is so comfortable on
| Linux. Everything is a few commands away. Screenshots? I've
| never had trouble there.
|
| You wrote Desktop Environment (capitalized). Linux isn't a
| Prepackaged End Product. You can get something like that from
| the popular distributions. I find Ubuntu plug and play, for
| example. That said, I usually assemble my own desktop
| environment, which is great for me, though I realise not
| everyone wants to put in the effort.
| Shadonototro wrote:
| after all it's only just a personal experience, and it may
| vary, but still, i believe "defaults" is what push me away..
|
| and it is even more sad because valve is basically alone on
| the PC market, they could do way more, and they should do way
| more because... :
|
| it is even more more sad because if that job started many
| years ago, we'd have way more native linux game, and an
| overwall better eco system for linux
|
| and what is EVEN MORE sad is now they'll need to rely on
| Microsoft if they ever want to do cloud gaming, because
| they'll need to pay for a shit ton of Microsoft server
| licences
|
| if it was vulkan + linux, things would have been way easier
| for valve, wich is, i'm pretty sure, the reason why we still
| haven't heard of an official "steam cloud gaming solution"
| yet.. very very sad indeed
|
| i am all in for Linux, but efforts shouldn't be all in into
| windows emulation layers, problem is elsewhere!
| hojjat12000 wrote:
| Maybe this person saw the recent post on HN about Flameshot
| (and supporting Wayland) and thought "Oh... you can't even
| take a screenshot on Linux".
|
| I think the best distro for gaming is Pop_OS!. They have a
| pretty reliable set of software and they also have an NVIDIA
| version of the distro which is great for newbies. It also
| comes with Flathub (instead of Snap) by default so latest
| version of most of the softwares that newbies will use are
| available (such as Spotify, Slack... and everything else
| Electron).
| TechSupportJosh wrote:
| I can imagine if they implemented something like this, you'd
| end up with a lot of games shipping untested Linux builds just
| to get reduced tax.
|
| It'd be awesome if Valve could reward those who develop for
| Linux and properly support it, but it seems unlikely. At least
| Proton is improving regularly and is making it better in one
| way at least.
| Shadonototro wrote:
| Good point, but still i want to believe in developers, after
| all if things doesn't work, they can be sanctioned, just like
| they get sanctioned already if they release buggy games (they
| get removed from the store)
| alphabettsy wrote:
| One of the reasons I use Steam for purchases is the ability to
| play the same title cross-platform without another purchase.
| ekianjo wrote:
| There are a few exceptions to this general rule. For example,
| when there was a Linux port of Operation Flashpoint (if I
| remember correctly), you had to purchase it separately from the
| Windows version. It's extremely rare, however.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Hats off to Valve for Proton. No dual boot nonsense with Windows
| needed any more.
| remram wrote:
| If you can get decent drivers, that is...
| bitcharmer wrote:
| I have NVidia RTX 2080 and can play almost all AAA games just
| like AMD GPUs owners. Which drivers are you referring to?
| moistbar wrote:
| AMD's drivers are built into mainline Linux, and Nvidia's
| drivers are basically just the Windows ones with a different
| kernel module. I've honestly had a better experience with AMD
| cards on Linux than I have on Windows.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Except for exotic or recently released devices, isn't the
| driver situation on linux better than in any other OS?
| ekianjo wrote:
| In terms of user experience, it clearly is. No need to
| install anything (mesa is baked in the distribution for
| Intel/AMD, and for most distro installing Nvidia drivers is
| done automatically by the installer these days).
| baby wrote:
| The only reason I'm buying a PC with windows is to game these
| days. I don't care how many games run on linux or mac, I want the
| platform the game was developed on to get the best experience.
| And it's not just about the best, without that it's really hit or
| miss. It's like playing doom on the nintendo switch.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I don't blame you, but the "I want the platform the game was
| developed on" is a pretty terrible line of logic. Persona 5 was
| developed for the PS3, but the PS3 is the worst way to play it.
| Same goes for a number of Sony games that have since been
| ported to Windows and a massive stockpile of Xbox games that
| are being upgraded and enhanced for more capable hardware. In
| many ways, Proton is running the platform the game was
| developed on: you're still installing DirectX and .NET, but on
| a different operating system with different system calls. I
| won't hate on a Windows user who's exclusively there for
| gaming, but you may soon find that your hostility is misplaced.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| one minor nitpick i've got-and i only came on to comment on this-
| is the title. It looks like a classic example of playing the
| numbers game. It would be more informative to say out of top 50
| etc. 35 work on linux. Since the sample number is quite small,
| presenting the data in percentages seems a bit disingenous. I'm
| surprised no one else has mentioned it. Even if you say it was
| written in the context of the article; i will say that maybe the
| article over presented itself.
| kdmytro wrote:
| I only purchase games that claim Linux support. I don't need to
| play every new game as they come out because I simply don't have
| too much time. There's enough Linux games to fill my time.
| smoldesu wrote:
| In terms of single-player games, the figure is more like 85%. You
| can probably get an additional 5% to work with various levels of
| tweaking, but compatibility is remarkably good these days. Many
| games perform better on Linux than they do on Windows
| (Borderlands, Overwatch), while others give you a chance to have
| a flawless experience with games that are pretty busted on modern
| Windows (Diablo 2, Fallout: New Vegas). As another commenter
| mentioned, the big issue is with anti-cheat: any game
| implementing EAC will outright not work, full stop. That makes it
| about a 50/50 chance that multiplayer titles will work on Linux,
| with some unfortunate casualties like Rainbow Six Siege and Halo
| MCC's online multiplayer.
|
| With that being said, I truly and honestly believe Linux is the
| way to go if you're not into multiplayer. Valve's commitment to
| Linux is nothing short of herculean, and it's heartwarming to see
| them give back to the open source community in such a remarkable
| way. If it weren't for Proton (and DXVK), I'd still be using
| Windows on my main computer, which made development hell. Now, I
| feel comfortable moving to a system where I can enjoy Overwatch,
| Titanfall and Team Fortress on a regular basis without dual-
| booting.
| pacificat0r wrote:
| Wait, overwatch works on linux? This is fantastic, i remember
| trying it a while back with pretty bad perf results
| ekianjo wrote:
| it works very nicely nowadays:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voXc1nCD4IA
| smoldesu wrote:
| Use the Lutris installer [1] and it will work great. It feels
| about as native as it gets, and it manages to hit 120 fps on
| my 1440p monitor with my meek 1050ti. Unbelievable
| performance, if you ask me. There's currently an issue where
| it will regenerate the shader cache with every launch, but it
| should only take 1-2 minutes with a decent CPU, which I
| normally spend in the training grounds. Once the cache is
| ready, performance is blistering fast.
|
| [1] https://lutris.net/games/overwatch/
| Zhyl wrote:
| Valve's commitment to Linux is outstanding. I am genuinely
| surprised that other vendors (GOG, Epic) haven't joined Valve
| in making Linux based hedges. Epic have given grants to Godot,
| Blender and other projects that commoditise their complement,
| but they still don't want to (or don't want to be seen) doing
| the same for their platform.
| frankohn wrote:
| I agree, I love the attention they have given to linux and
| their technical competence without any bullshit. I am glad to
| purchase games on Steam.
|
| They are also doing a great work supporting the SDL2 library.
| AFAIK they are employing its original author and developer
| Sam Lantinga.
| smoldesu wrote:
| There's an open-source Epic launcher frontend called
| Legendary[1] that can automagically manage your Wine/DXVK
| files with minimal user intervention. It's not even close to
| how easy Valve makes it, but it's certainly an option if you
| want to get Epic games working on Linux with minimal hassle.
|
| [1] https://github.com/derrod/legendary
|
| EDIT: i actually meant to reference the Heroic games
| launcher, which is the frontend for Legendary. you can find
| it here:
|
| https://github.com/flavioislima/HeroicGamesLauncher
| Zhyl wrote:
| I was thinking more from a point of view of Epic, the
| company, wanting to secure its future. In Epic's case
| they're actually currently suing (and running a propaganda
| campaign) against Apple and Google because the latter are
| charging 30% of all revenue including in-game purchases.
|
| Rather than funding the development of the similar
| initiatives on PC (i.e. Linux) to prevent Microsoft from
| doing the same thing, instead Tim Sweeney tweets about how
| switching to Linux is like moving to Canada and is
| generally rude and unpleasant about it.
|
| The fact that someone else had to make a launcher for Epic
| is further proof that Epic is not interested in even
| supporting Linux, let alone invest in it.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Sure, but that's always the case. Valve didn't offer
| native Linux support when Steam came out. With that being
| said, Tim Sweeney can be as unpleasant about it as he
| likes, I'm not begging for native Fortnite support
| anytime soon.
| Zhyl wrote:
| They didn't offer native Linux support, but from its
| inception Valve has been working to remove dependencies
| and combat existential threats. It used the quake engine
| for half life, then developed their own engine. They were
| dependent on bricks and mortar retail who were losing
| interest in PC, so they made Steam. Windows 8 made it
| look like Microsoft was making a land grab for a desktop
| store, so Valve made Steam OS and Steam machines (and
| latterly Proton).
|
| Epic is almost taking the opposite approach. Denying or
| not addressing a problem until it's already established
| to the point is a market norm. If Epic had caused the
| amount of fuss they are now in 2011, maybe it wouldn't
| have needed a hundred thousand dollar YouTube campaign
| and a multi-million dollar lawsuit to resolve.
|
| I dunno, it's true that's it's not Epic's MO, but it's
| not _smart_.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Epic promised the linux community lots of love, and then
| something changed (or they were lying from the start). I am
| thankful for their contributions to Godot, but Tim S is
| openly anti-linux, so dont expect anything but massive market
| pressure to change that.
| jorvi wrote:
| I mean, if you go way way back to the days of Unreal
| Tournament 2004 and before (when Epic was still Epic
| Megagames) they were actually one of the few developers
| that supported Windows, Linux and macOS for most of their
| games.
| dleslie wrote:
| Tim once referred to Win32 as a free and open standard. I
| don't think he _understands_ what it means to be a truly
| free and open standard.
|
| Which is a little troubling, considering all the other
| concerns with the EGS.
| bitwize wrote:
| > Tim once referred to Win32 as a free and open standard.
| I don't think he _understands_ what it means to be a
| truly free and open standard.
|
| Sun tried to get the Windows API to be an open standard
| by submitting it to ISO, so that they could claim their
| alternate implementation (Wabi) was standards compliant.
|
| Microsoft told the standards committee "you can't do
| that! That API is our IP!"
|
| And so the Public Windows Initiative came to an end.
| Funny, now Microsoft is arguing against APIs as IP as an
| amicus in _Oracle v. Google_.
| MegaDeKay wrote:
| "We love Linux!" said Epic back in 2014. Not so much,
| actually. It is really unfortunately that they didn't
| follow Valve's lead or Linux gaming would be that much
| further along.
|
| https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/41-update-preview
| ecf wrote:
| Tim S is openly anti-anything that he can't insert himself
| as a rent seeking middleman in.
| lrem wrote:
| GOG deals mostly with games that no longer can be ported
| reasonably.
| anoncake wrote:
| Those games can often be ported by bundling them with (a
| tested version of) WINE.
| [deleted]
| fuzxi wrote:
| Despite shipping native Linux versions of quite a few
| titles, the GOG Galaxy client is still not supported on
| Linux (and both the client and API are closed, so no
| community port any time soon). That means no achievements,
| multiplayer matchmaking, cloud saves, update rollbacks, or
| game update notifications for Linux users (although the
| last one is do-able with the Lutris runner or Minigalaxy).
| zelon88 wrote:
| I agree on most of your points.
|
| To expand a bit on some of the "tweaks" that must be
| endured....
|
| To play War Thunder you must use the launcher to set it in a
| window at native screen resolution then start the game. Then
| you move the game to your desired monitor and Layer>Always on
| top, and Undecorate the window.
|
| Boom. War Thunder works.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Iirc a gotcha with borderlands is that windows and linux
| players cannot multiplayer together, with very confusing error
| messages.
| yial wrote:
| I don't know if this is helpful for cross platform, but for
| many games with problematic multiplayer you can use
| https://www.zerotier.com/
|
| (works great for original Warcraft III)
|
| and they have a linux version.
| [deleted]
| mjevans wrote:
| I wonder if Proton as a PoW (Proton on Windows) wrapper would
| enable long term compatibility for games on Windows as well.
| While I use and prefer Linux personally I recognize there's
| many will continue to use Windows for years to come.
| 5d749d7da7d5 wrote:
| > can probably get an additional 5% to work with various levels
| of tweaking
|
| My big complaint is the number of titles that receive a
| Platinum rating on ProtonDB, in spite of technical issues. I
| have purchased more than one title with a Platinum rating that
| had significant issues running on my machine.
|
| This is compounded that Steam/ProtonDB user reports typically
| have an abysmal level of detail to replicate a working
| configuration. Someone got it to run flawlessly, but there is
| so much wine configuration jargon that each time I need to dig
| into the issues, I waste time on something that otherwise would
| work on Windows. I would love if there was a 'share my Proton
| configuration' per game that could be made available to the
| community.
| xaduha wrote:
| > Many games perform better on Linux than they do on Windows
| (Borderlands, Overwatch)
|
| Do you have anything to back that up? In my personal experience
| Overwatch absolutely doesn't perform better on Linux. Haven't
| tried Borderlands, but in any case two games don't count as
| 'many'. Unless you mean all Borderlands games.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Someone posted a pretty good comparison video of Overwatch
| performance on Windows vs Linux:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voXc1nCD4IA Windows runs
| hotter and tends to have a slightly lower average framerate
| with a much lower 1% low. In the case of Borderlands, 1 and 2
| have much better performance than what I saw on Windows, and
| TPS pretty much identical to Windows performance. Borderlands
| 3 is about a little slower on Linux, but I'm guessing that
| has to do with DXVK's incomplete DX12 support. Overall, the
| Borderlands franchise is completely playable on Linux, and
| oftentimes a better experience.
|
| Also, I refrained from listing more games out of respect for
| your time. Out of the games I've tried, I've noticed better
| performance in the following: Team Fortress 2, MGSV The
| Phantom Pain, Valheim, Fallout 4, CS:GO, Insurgency, Mirror's
| Edge, Payday 2, Warframe, Prey, Kerbal Space Program, DOOM
| (2016), and Terraria.
|
| If I had a larger library, I'd probably try more games.
| xaduha wrote:
| I'd say there's something wrong with your Windows
| installation then, in my opinion if you tune your Linux
| distro for gaming, then maybe (depending on your hardware)
| you can get on par results with Windows. But more
| benchmarks are always nice, so let's leave it at that,
| everyone can decide for themselves
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/FlightlessMango/videos
|
| https://www.youtube.com/user/beronori/videos
| linux_user_83 wrote:
| A lot of this is only true if you only have the most basic
| setup or you are playing the most played games. Outside of the
| top 100 or so games or unity games (unity games seem to just
| work as unity is cross platform anyway) it is _extremely
| variable_ and there are all sorts of odd issues.
|
| While many games work there are hundreds of annoyances, crashes
| and quirks that don't exist on Windows at all.
|
| * alt-tabbing out of a game will often crash a lot of games, so
| you can't really use discord or similar team chat software
| properly without risking crashing out of the game. * If you
| have a multi-monitor system the game will frequently start on
| the wrong screen. Thanks to how mondern video drivers identify
| the monitors even switch the cables round might not work! * A
| lot of games will work fine at 1080p. At 4K you will see
| performance problems, also streaming to other people can be
| terrible. * Single player games that require high refresh rates
| and stable framerates like Doom Eternal will have variable
| performance for no reason what-so-ever and are rock solid on
| Windows (I had two game crashes in the past year and I play a
| lot of Doom Eternal). * Loads of older games that use the build
| engine or the KeX engine like Blood does not work properly with
| Proton. * Lots of indie games do not work at all. * Game
| streaming on discord will tank framerate on a lot of games in
| Linux, but it works flawlessly in Windows. * Some graphics
| setttings just don't take at all, it doesn't seem to error.
|
| Everytime one of these articles get posted there are comments
| such as this where people say that it is flawless and it simply
| isn't true. Having a dual screen setup isn't a strange setup
| these days at all and using Discord is the choice of most PC
| gamers these days. I stream games to friends (some are disabled
| and can't play the games, others might want just to watch me
| play the game as I am good at these games).
|
| I am quite proficient with Linux (I've been using it since
| 2002) and I cannot recommend it. Maybe it is good enough for
| you but you and many the people on this thread are giving a
| false impression of the solution. I have about 450 games in my
| steam library (I've had a steam account since Half life 2 was
| released) and about 50 in my GoG account and I've tried a fair
| few, everything from modern triple A titles to older games, so
| I have a good sample size for anyone claiming that is merely
| ancedotal.
| dleslie wrote:
| Basically all your points are valid for Windows, as well.
|
| PC Gaming has long been a brittle experience due to moving OS
| and hardware targets.
| linux_user_83 wrote:
| No they are not valid for Windows. I almost have none of
| these problems on Windows. I do have them constantly on
| Linux.
| smoldesu wrote:
| At risk of turning this discussion into a "my anecdata vs
| yours" discussion, I honestly have no idea where you're
| coming from on this. Many of those issues are very much
| present on Windows, if not exacerbated by the overhead
| Windows has.
| linux_user_83 wrote:
| No they are not. People claim they have them. I simple
| don't believe them.
|
| People usually have problems when they have bad hardware,
| gunked driver installs. As for the overhead of Windows.
| Linux and Windows benchmarks on games (from many many
| sites, even places like phoronix) show that framerates on
| games that have native versions of each are about the
| same.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Again, it sounds like you've come full circle here. You
| aren't making much of a case if your argument is "it
| works fine if you know what you're doing", because that
| is also the status quo on Linux. We could continue to
| argue about how we've both misconfigured our respective
| systems, but that's missing the forest for the trees.
| Your point is moot.
| dleslie wrote:
| Go pull out the game disks for any DX3 or DirectPlay
| games. I guarantee you're likely to have a bad time. The
| same follows for a great many games released on Steam
| that targeted WinXPSP2.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Fair comments and mostly true. I would however add that the
| point is the direction of where things are going. It was
| impossible to play more than 10 percent of steam games just a
| few years ago. Now the range has massively improved and
| support is progressively better. In another 2 years you can
| expect less odd cases and better monitor support.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's certainly not flawless, but I haven't seen some of these
| issues you're mentioning. I'm running a dual-monitor setup
| off my 1050ti, with my primary display being a 1440p 144hz
| display. I only have windowing issues on games that already
| had windowing issues natively (the Fallout and Elder Scrolls
| games are a particularly large sore thumb), and I have never
| seen a game spawn on the wrong display. I haven't played Doom
| Eternal, but Doom (2016) ran at a locked 60hz for me. I could
| push it higher, but at 1440p I'm already stretching the
| capabilities of this card. Game streaming, while partially
| broken (eg. you can't stream an individual display), never
| had that considerable of a performance impact for me. I
| streamed Valheim over Discord the other day, and only lost ~3
| or 4 FPS overall.
|
| Besides that, I understand where you're coming from. The
| experience isn't flawless, but neither is gaming on Windows.
| It's ultimately up to you to pick and choose your battles,
| but the majority of the games I play work relatively well,
| even compared to Windows.
| linux_user_83 wrote:
| > It's certainly not flawless, but I haven't seen some of
| these issues you're mentioning.
|
| You previously said for single player it was.
|
| I experience them all the time and I tried different
| distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro) it has been quite
| consistent issues over at least the last two years.
|
| I find it very hard to believe you haven't seen any of
| these issues (especially alt-tabbing). I actually sometimes
| think people are just straight up lying but I have no hard
| evidence.
|
| > I'm running a dual-monitor setup off my 1050ti, with my
| primary display being a 1440p 144hz display. I only have
| windowing issues on games that already had windowing issues
| natively (the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games are a
| particularly large sore thumb), and I have never seen a
| game spawn on the wrong display. I haven't played Doom
| Eternal, but Doom (2016) ran at a locked 60hz for me. I
| could push it higher, but at 1440p I'm already stretching
| the capabilities of this card. Game streaming, while
| partially broken (eg. you can't stream an individual
| display), never had that considerable of a performance
| impact for me. I streamed Valheim over Discord the other
| day, and only lost ~3 or 4 FPS overall.
|
| Discord streaming literally halves my framerate and I have
| a 1080Ti with a Ryzen 3700X. So I just don't believe you.
| You won't see performance problems with Doom 2016 as even a
| medicore card back in 2012 can play that game decently (my
| old 660GTX played the game fine at medium on a i7 from
| 2014ish).
|
| > Besides that, I understand where you're coming from. The
| experience isn't flawless, but neither is gaming on
| Windows. It's ultimately up to you to pick and choose your
| battles, but the majority of the games I play work
| relatively well, even compared to Windows.
|
| It isn't flawless on Windows but it doesn't have any of the
| problems I've mentioned, it is generally very stable and it
| has worked consistently for year. I have no idea about the
| so called issues you have. I have a sizable library and I
| will fire up old games every so often and they work without
| issue.
|
| However I know how to look after a Windows installation (a
| lot of people don't and that includes so called tech savvy
| users). I've played all sorts of games on Windows 10 fine.
| Games going back to 2002. The main problem I have is the
| resolution of my screen is soo high the fonts and sprites
| are tiny.
| fuzxi wrote:
| I have only had issues with changing workspaces ("alt-
| tabbing" in other WMs) with games running through WINE.
| I've never experienced that with Proton.
| jcastro wrote:
| > I find it very hard to believe you haven't seen any of
| these issues (especially alt-tabbing). I actually
| sometimes think people are just straight up lying but I
| have no hard evidence.
|
| I've got thousands of hours gaming on linux and I've
| never had an alt-tab problem. Kind of weird to go right
| to claiming people are outright lying, maybe there's
| another issue you're running into?
| smoldesu wrote:
| >You previously said for single player it was.
|
| No, I had originally said
|
| >...others give you a chance to have a flawless
| experience...
|
| I'm sorry that Discord streaming doesn't work for you. It
| sounds like an isolated issue judging from the reactions
| of other commenters here, perhaps you should contact
| Discord? And as for Windows, I honestly don't know what
| you're going for here. Yes, games run "fine" on Windows,
| we are in agreement here. Many games also run "fine" on
| Linux, and that has been my argument from the start. If
| your concession is "it runs fine if you aren't tech
| savvy", then it sounds like this whole point is moot and
| we're back to square one.
| kodachi wrote:
| It would be more fruitful if you both mentioned your
| concrete specs/drivers/proton-version to compare
| experiences. Remember to check your game in protondb.com
| and contribute if you want.
| swebs wrote:
| Did you honestly create a new account just to spread FUD
| about gaming on Linux?
| smoldesu wrote:
| For a Linux user of nearly 2 decades, you sure have an
| awfully new HN account...
| ManyOfUs wrote:
| Many of us dang-strokers are making one account per
| comment. It's pretty retarded to 'keep an account' in here,
| or anywhere else on the internet. Yeah except having a
| stable email. But there too we choose to throw away as much
| as possible. I bet your mind is blown. Imagine having 'I
| had a curated groomed HN account' as your epitaph. Sounds
| pretty retarded doesn't it. So we use one account per
| comment. It's pretty easy.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I'm sure your epitaph of "made alternate accounts to call
| people retarded" will look great on a tombstone too. It's
| pretty silly to be concerned with other people's optics
| when your glass house looks as brittle as it is.
| tines wrote:
| Not all these issues are specific to Linux though; I can't
| even alt-tab out of Skyrim on Windows 10 without it crashing.
| linux_user_83 wrote:
| I can. I do it literally all the time.
| smoldesu wrote:
| The official user guide for Skyrim explicitly states that
| alt-tabbing can cause crashing. Maybe you're using some
| form of wiccan magic to avoid this issue, but Bethesda
| themselves acknowledge it's an issue. Perhaps you're
| referring to Skyrim Special Edition?
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Always hit esc before alt-tabbimg out, otherwise I always
| get two cursors with differing sensitivity. And only one
| is actually the cursor. It doesn't crash until you re-
| enter and I can usually fix that by selecting it from the
| task bar, and when I get a blank screen I then alt-tab
| through all the open applications and back to skyrim.
| Wiccan magic indeed.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| You mind if we come over to play on your computer?
| mdoms wrote:
| Skyrim is a ten year old game. Almost all modern games can
| be Alt Tabbed in Windows flawlessly.
| swebs wrote:
| >Among the 11 games that are considered borked: Most of them do
| not work because of EAC (7)
|
| God, I hate Tim Sweeney
| SmellTheGlove wrote:
| I know it's not the topic here so apologies for the digression,
| but the Mac compatibility on this list is somewhat misleading.
| Games like TF2 don't actually work on the Mac any longer unless
| you stay on or downgrade to Mojave. And even then, the
| performance and bugginess leaves much to be desired.
|
| If you're using this article at all to make decisions around a
| Mac for gaming, dive a little deeper to make sure the game you
| want to play works on Catalina+ (generally requires a full 64 bit
| port).
|
| Back to the actual topic: I had no idea Proton got this good.
| That's quite an achievement for Linux gaming. What's the state of
| modern GPU support?
| smoldesu wrote:
| As for Mac support, my understanding is that Apple's reluctance
| to support third-party graphics APIs has made development
| incredibly difficult, especially on modern versions of MacOS
| where they're moving away from technologies like OpenGL and
| dragging their feet in the sand with Vulkan. From what I've
| seen on Github, a lot of Proton developers aren't keen on
| picking up Mac support, and the last time it was (officially)
| supported by Proton was nearly 2 years ago (where you had to
| compile from source to get it working). Given Apple's recent
| hostility towards Valve, I doubt they have much interest in
| working with their platform.
|
| As for GPU support, it's fine. I use an older GeForce card that
| works perfectly fine on Manjaro, and I haven't seen any driver
| issues so far (though I don't use Wayland, so ymmv). I've even
| been surprised by their control panel, which lets you easily
| enable G-sync on supported monitors, force compositing,
| micromanage your displays, adjust color calibration and more.
| I've heard the situation is much better on AMD cards, but I
| have yet to run into any issues with Nvidia.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > What's the state of modern GPU support?
|
| Pretty good on AMD, still somewhat behind for Nvidia
| (Raytracing is being worked on, and DLSS is to come at some
| point). AMD is the preferred way to go for VR as well as they
| support reprojection on Linux, but Nvidia does not yet.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Even if the game is compatible more often than not it won't be
| playable on all but the lowest settings. My 2017 MBP struggles
| with KSP and Cities Skylines. This is an older system but those
| games are even older.
| dleslie wrote:
| As a game developer: I whole-heartedly recommend against gaming
| on a Mac. Just don't, you will be disappointed.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| I think the best solution to game on Mac is cloud gaming
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Single player games do work! Multiplayer games require invasive
| kernel modules these days.
| marcodiego wrote:
| So, multiplayer games are essentially kernel-level potential
| backdoors?
| [deleted]
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yes.
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/23/capcom_street_fighter.
| ..
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/TheWack0lian/status/7793978407622.
| ..
|
| I barely trust the proprietary video game code. There's no
| way I'll trust anti-cheating modules explicitly designed to
| own my machine.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| What should they do instead to combat hacks?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Server-side measures such as network analysis.
| Statistical models of player performance. Trust-based
| online gaming models where people play only with their
| trusted friends instead of random people.
|
| Alternatively, nothing. From a computing freedom point of
| view, cheating is a form of playful hacking. The game is
| running on our computers, we should be able to alter it
| if we want.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Out of the top of my head:
|
| - Blockchain to validate ownership of items.
|
| - Distributed processing of events among player instances
| to eliminate cheating. This may add latency, but will be
| small if used for validation only.
|
| - Automatically grouping players by skill, so that
| skilled bots will not fight less skilled humans.
| Filligree wrote:
| Run on consoles only. Keep PCs for productive work and
| single-player games.
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