Calling it an “All Time High” is a bit silly when the compatibility of games has (more or less) only increased over the years. But yeah it’s nice that number goes up! :)
I have dual boot, Linux is my to go, and I try the best to play the game I want there. Most of the times work. On the few games it doesn’t I can endure windows for a short period of time until I launch the game
But my files, internet browsing, email it’s all on Linux partition.
I think it’s funny that, with reports that Proton games often run better on Linux than Windows, the entire Windows OS is sort of a weird Linux gaming API now…
And you don’t even need to give up on Windows! You can keep it on dual boot until you realize you didn’t touched Windows even once over the last 6 months.
You can keep it on dual boot until you realize you didn’t touched Windows even once over the last 6 months.
I wish. Given how frequently I use my computer for work, there’s a few things that I’ve been unable to find suitable alternatives for. But it’s things like having a specific workflow for PDF editing, where I’m use to a specific piece of software where I’ve set up custom shortcuts and such.
Otoh, for personal use definitely has been a good experience so far (just setup like a week or two ago). Haven’t run into any issues there and certainly prefer the OS. Was super easy to setup (granted, I installed on a second drive rather than a true dual-boot).
How much luck am I going to have with my SIM rig? Moza R12 and CRP pedals.
I know Le Mans ultimate will run mostly fine with a custom proton. But I have no idea where to start with the wheel, and what I can find seems like it might be out dated but could be a right pain(especially on bazzite) to get installed.
The controls should work right out of the box. Forced feedback however does not (at least that’s the case with my setup). I haven’t spent time trying to troubleshoot it, since I’m currently hooked on a non racing game.
Though my experience with using Windows drives was mixed. Steam always wanted to re-download Linux versions of games if available, so everytine I switch in between OSes, my download queue gets full. There’s a workaround for forcing Windows versions on Linux Steam though.
I cannot wait for GamersNexus to agree on a testing framework for Linux and then see how many games will run actually better on Linux than on Windows, either native or through Wine/Proton.
I can’t wait to see their content on the fediverse. They made a video about getting away from big tech but don’t mirror their stuff here. I think it’s a damn shame.
Games which run on Vulkan / OpenGL don’t have any GPU translation overhead, and some run straight-up better via Proton than they do on Windows. Doom 2016 does for me, for instance.
Of course, that game is so well optimised it’s the difference between 140 fps and 200+ fps, which is not terribly obvious, but even so.
Doom ran at 100+ fps at 4k on my 1070ti with graphics maxed out. It’s hard to tell what optimization allows it, but the game runs way better than anything else that looks at least as good.
It’s not one big optimization, it’s a product of Id actually having some of the best UE developers on the planet being able to tweak the engine to run like a beast. Each level is crafted from the ground up to allow for some sweeping optimizations revolving around actor loading and culling, and the game uses proper light baking to allow raytracing to handle marginal calculations instead of explicit path tracing every shadow. It’s a lot of little things that all take impressive amounts of skill and management to pull off effectively, a lot of this stuff is implemented poorly in other games and it show
Edit: Id has their own engine, I always confuse quake/doom and UE. Still though, Id has always built games that were well optimized. Look at some of the systems they managed to port quake to. I was wrong about the engine, but not about the talent in the studio.s.
No, you are correct, I have a bad habit of confusing quake and UE, Carmack and Sweeney tend to come up in the same conversations. My point still stands though, Id has always pushed the envelope on game optimization.
There is a video made in collab with Wendell who suggested a few distros and listed what can go wrong, but as far as I know, no established testing framework yet.
I’d imagine it would also depend on how overpowered the CPU and ram are. If you are running a xx60 card on the latest $2000 CPU and like 128GB of high speed ram, there’s probably be little difference. But with more balanced hardware combos, the overhead of the OS itself could make a significant difference. Granted, I’m assuming the OS’s have a negligible impact on any brand new dGPU.
You would think so, but Windows 11 is so bloated out so badly that I actually got much better performance on Linux for most games I play. I’ve only found 2 games so far that run better on Windows than via Proton on the same hardware.
Windows 11 24h2 update completely screwed all game performance for me so badly I had switch.
Sometimes you even get fewer bugs on Proton.
One of the best examples was the release of FF7 Remake - it had really bad stutter on release on Windows… but not on Proton.
People even used DXVK (which is part of Proton) on Windows in an attempt to fix it.
I know it happens, but it’s rare. Other example is Nier:Automata after valve created super fast shader compiler for AMD cards - game is so unoptimized that saving CPU cycles on shades not only compensates for overhead but also exceeds windows performance.
Really the only factors in software are kernel and compatibility layer. Everything else is not a huge factor in Linux; this is mostly akin to saying “we need to test games with every different windows app running in the background”.
Of course for individual machines there will be external factors that users themselves need to consider (like don’t be doing Blender renders in the background lol) but there should be a huge difference between distros.
Perhaps custom desktop managers should be tested along with KDE and GNOME, but I’m honestly not sure much even those factor in.
From the video it looks like they’ll test on Bazzite, it’s probably more stable than Windows for that, just choose a snapshot and it’ll always be the same
Fortunately those are a minority of games. Most games now are working with Wine/Proton out of the box. Multiplayer games are the only thing I ever look at compatibility lists for.
Unfortunately these minority of games are actually popular games. I think GTA 5 Online no longer works on Linux too. There was more popular games doing that.
I don’t even play Apex Legends and I’m still a bit butthurt to this day that they decided to add anti-cheat that broke Linux compatibility. They say it helped bring the amount of cheaters down though, but who can really tell besides those who collect the numbers - which is them.
The game is Steam Deck verified and the developer even noted that Steam Deck support for the new anti-cheat was tested before release. I played a few hours right after release and it worked fine, so not sure when “initially” is.
No. The most played games on steam are multiplayer games that use some sort of anti cheat. Those anti cheats often break linux compatibility when the game or anticheat itself gets updated. So going by number of games you are mostly right, but going by player counts there are often massive setbacks that either dont get fixed at all or only very slowly. Apex Legends and The Finals are prime examples of this flip flopping between working and broken.
The most played games on steam are multiplayer games that use some sort of anti cheat.
However, lot of the most played Steam games are well supported and never have an issue with anti cheat whatsoever: https://steamdb.info/ such as Counter Strike 2 and Dota 2 (2 most played games). There are also lot of single player games as the most played games. Therefore this is a mixed bag.
Those anti cheats often break linux compatibility when the game or anticheat itself gets updated.
They not break often Linux compatibility when game or anticheat is updated. That’s false statement. There are games, when it happens. But that is not “often”. I play games with Anticheat on Linux and they do not break, such as Marvel Rivals and previously Overwatch and Splitgate too (besides Valves own games, but that is self explanatory). This never happened. So the “often” part is misleading here.
windows does add a bit of value. It is a set of apis that the oss community can’t just decide to deprecate and think it’s fine because “all the code needs is a recompilation!”.
I have not had a single native linux port %hat is out of support and still works 100%. The most reliable option for me so far is to just run the windows version.
Problem is even when they do, they don’t maintain support. Borderlands 2 has a native port but it hasn’t been updated while the windows version had received new content and patches in the years since.
I am getting ready to switch and I play City of Heroes on Homecoming and wonder of anyone here has it running and what destro you are using. I ahve Mint on two laptops and they are running fine will all my other programs
My wife plays it. She’s on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (so I’d expect it to work on Mint too), installed it through Bottles, and it just worked. I’m on Kubuntu 25.10 and I’ve had it running but haven’t actually played it.
As far as I know, Microsoft has no patents related to linux and how it can run Windows games. Everything has been reimplemented from scratch on the linux side, there’s no shared IP or patented techniques being used.
They likely have patents on a number of things implemented in Wine/Proton. Clean-room implementation is also good, buy would cover copyright, not patent.
I don’t have a list. Just considering that MS patents EVERYTHING I have a tough time believing they don’t have patents over DirectX things that Wine has created an implementation for, etc.
WINE doesn’t need to implement anything that DirectX does, it just needs to translate those calls into the equivalent Linux ones. Linux does all the actual work; and if Microsoft had a patent for “drawing pixels on a screen” they’d have shown that hand by now.
Sure, but patents cover methods and implementations. If Wine gets a cleanroom spec that says “when you put in these values, we need these pixels out” then they are free to write their own implementation not covered by the patent.
I’m not sure if they really have standing for that.
But even if they did, Microsoft don’t have the guts because cracking down it would be akin to a direct attack on Valve and Steam. And at this point I think we can all agree that Microsoft needs Steam more than Valve needs Windows.
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It’s essentially monotonic, so of course it’s an all-time high.
Calling it an “All Time High” is a bit silly when the compatibility of games has (more or less) only increased over the years. But yeah it’s nice that number goes up! :)
I have dual boot, Linux is my to go, and I try the best to play the game I want there. Most of the times work. On the few games it doesn’t I can endure windows for a short period of time until I launch the game
But my files, internet browsing, email it’s all on Linux partition.
My age is also at an all time high
I think it’s funny that, with reports that Proton games often run better on Linux than Windows, the entire Windows OS is sort of a weird Linux gaming API now…
LiNuX HaS nO gAmEs!
LInUx iS fReE iF yOu’rE(sic) tImE iS wOrThLeEsS!
LiNuX hAz No DrIvErZz!
To Windows people wondering:
JUST DO THE JUMP. Installing Bazzite only needs a 16GB flash drive and 15 minutes of time, and you’ll be SHOCKED how smooth everything goes compared to Windows bloat.
And you don’t even need to give up on Windows! You can keep it on dual boot until you realize you didn’t touched Windows even once over the last 6 months.
I wish. Given how frequently I use my computer for work, there’s a few things that I’ve been unable to find suitable alternatives for. But it’s things like having a specific workflow for PDF editing, where I’m use to a specific piece of software where I’ve set up custom shortcuts and such.
Otoh, for personal use definitely has been a good experience so far (just setup like a week or two ago). Haven’t run into any issues there and certainly prefer the OS. Was super easy to setup (granted, I installed on a second drive rather than a true dual-boot).
How much luck am I going to have with my SIM rig? Moza R12 and CRP pedals.
I know Le Mans ultimate will run mostly fine with a custom proton. But I have no idea where to start with the wheel, and what I can find seems like it might be out dated but could be a right pain(especially on bazzite) to get installed.
The controls should work right out of the box. Forced feedback however does not (at least that’s the case with my setup). I haven’t spent time trying to troubleshoot it, since I’m currently hooked on a non racing game.
Yup. Or CachyOS. Or EndeavourOS.
I’m currently happily replaying Skyrim on my EndeavourOS installation.
how well does modding work?
some instructions I’ve seen seemed overly complicated and are probably outdated so i played it on my old windows machine when the urge came
Last time I tried it worked totally fine. Most mods just hook into the base game, which is running the same as on Windows.
I think I need this soon. Can I have it boot straight into Big Picture mode without login? (I don’t use a keyboard until I really need to)
Also, might it be possible to keep the existing partitions so I don’t have to redownload all the games?
Yes and yes and yes.
Though my experience with using Windows drives was mixed. Steam always wanted to re-download Linux versions of games if available, so everytine I switch in between OSes, my download queue gets full. There’s a workaround for forcing Windows versions on Linux Steam though.
Hey, not fair, I still need to migrate some of the old photos of my windows partition and it’s only been 2 years…
I’ve been using Linux for a really long time, but the thumbdrive idea might inspire me to get it up and running on my wife’s laptop!
I cannot wait for GamersNexus to agree on a testing framework for Linux and then see how many games will run actually better on Linux than on Windows, either native or through Wine/Proton.
I can’t wait to see their content on the fediverse. They made a video about getting away from big tech but don’t mirror their stuff here. I think it’s a damn shame.
They could even host their own instances.
They post on Rumble, I think that’s what they meant.
That would be nice!
Games which run on Vulkan / OpenGL don’t have any GPU translation overhead, and some run straight-up better via Proton than they do on Windows. Doom 2016 does for me, for instance.
Of course, that game is so well optimised it’s the difference between 140 fps and 200+ fps, which is not terribly obvious, but even so.
Doom ran at 100+ fps at 4k on my 1070ti with graphics maxed out. It’s hard to tell what optimization allows it, but the game runs way better than anything else that looks at least as good.
It’s not one big optimization, it’s a product of Id actually having some of the best UE developers on the planet being able to tweak the engine to run like a beast. Each level is crafted from the ground up to allow for some sweeping optimizations revolving around actor loading and culling, and the game uses proper light baking to allow raytracing to handle marginal calculations instead of explicit path tracing every shadow. It’s a lot of little things that all take impressive amounts of skill and management to pull off effectively, a lot of this stuff is implemented poorly in other games and it showEdit: Id has their own engine, I always confuse quake/doom and UE. Still though, Id has always built games that were well optimized. Look at some of the systems they managed to port quake to. I was wrong about the engine, but not about the talent in the studio.s.
UE = Unreal Engine?
Doom 2016 ran on id tech 6. Is there crossover?
No, you are correct, I have a bad habit of confusing quake and UE, Carmack and Sweeney tend to come up in the same conversations. My point still stands though, Id has always pushed the envelope on game optimization.
Didn’t they just announce this? Or are they still deciding on the “how” and not the “if”?
There is a video made in collab with Wendell who suggested a few distros and listed what can go wrong, but as far as I know, no established testing framework yet.
They’ve announced their testing methodology and are testing games IIRC. They’re using Bazzite as the base.
Not many because there’s still translation overhead - unless you have very good CPU, the results will be slightly worse.
I’d imagine it would also depend on how overpowered the CPU and ram are. If you are running a xx60 card on the latest $2000 CPU and like 128GB of high speed ram, there’s probably be little difference. But with more balanced hardware combos, the overhead of the OS itself could make a significant difference. Granted, I’m assuming the OS’s have a negligible impact on any brand new dGPU.
You would think so, but Windows 11 is so bloated out so badly that I actually got much better performance on Linux for most games I play. I’ve only found 2 games so far that run better on Windows than via Proton on the same hardware.
Windows 11 24h2 update completely screwed all game performance for me so badly I had switch.
It actually happens more than you’d expect.
Sometimes you even get fewer bugs on Proton.
One of the best examples was the release of FF7 Remake - it had really bad stutter on release on Windows… but not on Proton.
People even used DXVK (which is part of Proton) on Windows in an attempt to fix it.
I know it happens, but it’s rare. Other example is Nier:Automata after valve created super fast shader compiler for AMD cards - game is so unoptimized that saving CPU cycles on shades not only compensates for overhead but also exceeds windows performance.
Again it’s rare and relates to poorly coded games
Im not sure how they even would make a testing framework. Its not like windows, where you have the os as standard and then just swap parts to see.
Its so fragmented the amount of combinations is mind-boggling. I guess they choose the 3 most popular and just run a limited series of hardware tests?
Really the only factors in software are kernel and compatibility layer. Everything else is not a huge factor in Linux; this is mostly akin to saying “we need to test games with every different windows app running in the background”.
Of course for individual machines there will be external factors that users themselves need to consider (like don’t be doing Blender renders in the background lol) but there should be a huge difference between distros.
Perhaps custom desktop managers should be tested along with KDE and GNOME, but I’m honestly not sure much even those factor in.
From the video it looks like they’ll test on Bazzite, it’s probably more stable than Windows for that, just choose a snapshot and it’ll always be the same
Sharing a common kernel is probably why support is so vast, and then people are using the same Vulkan tools or Proton etc.
Strange headline. Isn’t it always at an all-time high since once you get something to run, that’s it?
Some games get patched to break compatibility, usually with anti-cheat. Apex Legends and Battlefield 1 are examples of that.
Oh, I see. I don’t play anything like that, so I was oblivious to the issue. Thanks!
Fortunately those are a minority of games. Most games now are working with Wine/Proton out of the box. Multiplayer games are the only thing I ever look at compatibility lists for.
Unfortunately these minority of games are actually popular games. I think GTA 5 Online no longer works on Linux too. There was more popular games doing that.
I don’t even play Apex Legends and I’m still a bit butthurt to this day that they decided to add anti-cheat that broke Linux compatibility. They say it helped bring the amount of cheaters down though, but who can really tell besides those who collect the numbers - which is them.
Outlast trials is the latest game (to my knowledge) that added eac (due to a pretty useless pvp mode) and broke Linux compatibility
Not true; works fine on linux.
I guess they enabled Linux support then in eac because it didn’t work initially
The game is Steam Deck verified and the developer even noted that Steam Deck support for the new anti-cheat was tested before release. I played a few hours right after release and it worked fine, so not sure when “initially” is.
They mean by percentage, for one thing. And new games come out all the time.
No. The most played games on steam are multiplayer games that use some sort of anti cheat. Those anti cheats often break linux compatibility when the game or anticheat itself gets updated. So going by number of games you are mostly right, but going by player counts there are often massive setbacks that either dont get fixed at all or only very slowly. Apex Legends and The Finals are prime examples of this flip flopping between working and broken.
However, lot of the most played Steam games are well supported and never have an issue with anti cheat whatsoever: https://steamdb.info/ such as Counter Strike 2 and Dota 2 (2 most played games). There are also lot of single player games as the most played games. Therefore this is a mixed bag.
They not break often Linux compatibility when game or anticheat is updated. That’s false statement. There are games, when it happens. But that is not “often”. I play games with Anticheat on Linux and they do not break, such as Marvel Rivals and previously Overwatch and Splitgate too (besides Valves own games, but that is self explanatory). This never happened. So the “often” part is misleading here.
Developers should still try to optimize Linux performance with native Linux ports.
windows does add a bit of value. It is a set of apis that the oss community can’t just decide to deprecate and think it’s fine because “all the code needs is a recompilation!”.
I have not had a single native linux port %hat is out of support and still works 100%. The most reliable option for me so far is to just run the windows version.
Problem is even when they do, they don’t maintain support. Borderlands 2 has a native port but it hasn’t been updated while the windows version had received new content and patches in the years since.
It’s still happening in some cases. Like Balder’s Gate 3 getting a recent Linux port, for example.
just did mine. bazzite loaded on my gaming rig, and still deciding on my server PC on what I wanna load on there but I’m in no rush really.
While it might not feel like the % of games working on Linux this is just the natural result of more games being added to ProtonDB
I am getting ready to switch and I play City of Heroes on Homecoming and wonder of anyone here has it running and what destro you are using. I ahve Mint on two laptops and they are running fine will all my other programs
My wife plays it. She’s on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (so I’d expect it to work on Mint too), installed it through Bottles, and it just worked. I’m on Kubuntu 25.10 and I’ve had it running but haven’t actually played it.
I was looking into this, it’s weird that it isn’t on ProtonDB
Future Linux Converts:
If you wonder “Will the game that I play work on Linux?”, there’s a website for that:
https://www.protondb.com/
Yes! I just installed the game through Lutris!
deleted by creator
That’s alright nutsack. It’s better to have posted and lost, than to never have posted at all. Or wait, is that about love?
i don’t remember what the post was but maybe it wasn’t funny after i read it twice
At what point does Microsoft start suing over patents?
As far as I know, Microsoft has no patents related to linux and how it can run Windows games. Everything has been reimplemented from scratch on the linux side, there’s no shared IP or patented techniques being used.
They likely have patents on a number of things implemented in Wine/Proton. Clean-room implementation is also good, buy would cover copyright, not patent.
WINE stands for “WINE Is Not an Emulator”; they’re not reimplementing Microsoft libraries. No patents to violate.
That’s not how it works, but ok
2003
What patents?
I don’t have a list. Just considering that MS patents EVERYTHING I have a tough time believing they don’t have patents over DirectX things that Wine has created an implementation for, etc.
WINE doesn’t need to implement anything that DirectX does, it just needs to translate those calls into the equivalent Linux ones. Linux does all the actual work; and if Microsoft had a patent for “drawing pixels on a screen” they’d have shown that hand by now.
Sure, but patents cover methods and implementations. If Wine gets a cleanroom spec that says “when you put in these values, we need these pixels out” then they are free to write their own implementation not covered by the patent.
I’m not sure if they really have standing for that.
But even if they did, Microsoft don’t have the guts because cracking down it would be akin to a direct attack on Valve and Steam. And at this point I think we can all agree that Microsoft needs Steam more than Valve needs Windows.
Right, they clearly don’t believe it has been worth the effort in the past. At a certain point I’ve always worried that they might.