Even gamers nexus’ Steve today said that they’re about to start doing Linux games performance testing soon. It’s happening, y’all, the year of the Linux desktop is upon us. ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ
Edit: just wanted to clarify that Steve from GN didn’t precisely say they’re starting to test soon, he said they will start WHEN the steam OS releases and is adopted. Sorry about that.
To anyone reading this thinking “once SteamOS comes out, I’ll switch”, you should know:
Gaming on Linux is already here. Pick a distro and game. You can take advantage of Proton right now. You don’t need to wait for one specific distro.
I’ve personally been gaming on Linux exclusively for about 3 years. Windows games, not Linux games.
Edit: based on other commenters’ suggestions, I’ll give you some.
I have gamed for those three years on PopOS. It is a distro based on Debian, ultimately, which means it’s also related to Ubuntu and Mint. Realistically, you can pick any of those 4 and you should have a nice experience.
Arch is popular with the übergeeks, and I do use it on my laptop, BTW, but you shouldn’t use it as a first distro.
The concept of “distro” doesn’t really exist for Windows, because you pretty much get one monolithic product. But basically, it is a specific mix of software that works together and relies on the Linux kernel. Imagine it as a “version” of Windows with specific goals, some of which are overlapping (e.g. Mint and Ubuntu tend to cater to the same audience).
If you get far enough into it, the freedom that Linux allows means that you can turn any distro into any other distro.
“Pick a distro” is why they’re waiting for steamos, presumably.
I think that is perfectly valid and I’ll happily recommend steamos to newcomers. I’m only a little worried about it being locked to flatpaks by default though. Hopefully that will change, but for most users it will be a good start.
locked to flatpaks by default makes sense long-term, I think.
Might be a little difficult in the beginning though.
Locked to flatpaks? aren’t they worried about the disk space?
The marginal extra disk spaces used by flatpak really isn’t a concern for most users, much less valve. If you do everything in flatpak and your apps only use current runtime versions, the additional space used by flatpak is in the megabytes, since libraries like libc are going to be on your host no matter what.
One flatpak uses a lot of extra disk space, but for each additional flatpak you add to a system the disk space difference is much smaller because they share dependencies. When it’s system-wide for all user-installed packages, the difference is quite small.
I was under the impression the didn’t shared dependencies thus eating space.
They don’t share dependencies with the base system, but they do share dependencies with each other, so long as those dependencies are at the same version, which most of them are because flatpaks generally stay quite up to date.
I wouldn’t say SteamOS for new folks, tbh. Flatpaks are very different from the typical Linux flow.
The typical linux flow is not important to learn for most and flatpak is easier for the vast majority of people to understand and deal with
furthermore flatpak is rapidly becoming the typical linux flow
This is fair. I should have given my own suggestions.
Mint is probably the choice at the moment for new folks. Also, this will be controversial, but feel free with Ubuntu. It will get you started, and that’s great.
Edit: I added some (open-ended) suggestions to my original comment.
I actually think mint is a terrible choice for beginners because it’s not kde, which is by far the best for windows people, and it isn’t immutable, which is a gamechanger for not having to maintain your system
I see the point about KDE, though I don’t think the learning curve on Cinnamon is hefty. I also think that KDE being so configurable can seem overwhelming to new folks.
As someone who gives kde to new folks all the time, most of them never configure anything and this isn’t a real problem any of them face. I mostly give this to the elderly and tech illiterate.
It’s actually surprising how easy it is to use.
My wife was playing Baldur’s Gate 3 on her windows laptop (GOG version, DRM free) and I just wanted to see if I can run it on my Linux laptop.
Just copied the game folder from her laptop to my external SSD, plugged it into my laptop, ran through proton. Everything works without any issues. Simple as that.
I was pleasantly surprised. We could even join via LAN and had some co-op fun. After trying it out I think I’m buying the game.
Exactly this. Many people have a lot of apprehension until they actually try it.
See, this is after where most gaming folks hop off.
In all fairness, if you just run Lutris (pre-installed on Bazzite), log into GOG from there and install and run the game through their wizard, it also “just works”.
That might be easier for most.
What you just said is so much more difficult than running games through proton isn’t it??
For me, yes. But this is all using hands-holding Windows-like UIs, please realise that the recent-ish influx of Linux gamers understand this much, much better than terminals.
Although, I’m not sure how to install Proton as a CLI package on Mint, for instance.
aptdoesn’t list it, but Steam and Lutris do install it internally…You just go to steam settings > compat > enable for all games and then it just works for all games on steam
I’m not sure if you’re reading my messages but I’m saying I’m not sure how to do Proton outside of Lutris and Steam. And that CLI outside of a launcher sounds more convenient, but gave Lutris instructions for someone running a game not from Steam.
okay, that is different, sorry.
for that
step 1. install wine-tkg
step 2. right click a .exe > properties, set wine-tkg as the default
left click on .exe’s to open
done
I know Wine, even better Wine-GE, but they’re not Proton qua performance.
Probably true, it depends. There are Steam folks and then there are GOG folks.
I prefer GOG tbh because it’s DRM free, but for some games I still need Steam, unfortunately.
Tbh the vast majority of people who say “ill switch to (insert Linux distro here) when (insert accomplishment here)” will most likley never switch
Fair enough. I tend to agree, but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, because, you know, FOSS and freedom.
For all the not super technically inclined people out there, I would recommend Linux mint with cinnamon, you’ll feel right at home and won’t face any real issues so long as you don’t want to play LoL, a few other big multiplayer games have anti cheat systems that don’t like Linux.
Some game developers (AGS) won’t turn on EAC for their games (Lost Ark).
I’m hoping that steamos will make Linux much more popular so that devs take notice. Whilst wine/proton are amazing anticheat still exists. If enough people move to steamos they will have to make sure they’re not excluded