Let's talk about the current state of Gaming on Linux! I was watching The Game Awards ceremony last week, when I realised that more than a half of all nomine...

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  • DarkThoughts@kbin.social
    452·
    11 months ago

    Kinda misleading.
    First of all, games do not have to be on Steam & launch through Proton to be able to run on Linux. Wine hs gotten extremely good too, even if it may require a bit more tinkering in comparison.
    It’s also not like this because of the Deck. Proton has been on a good run for several years now, which was very much evident based on the stats on ProtonDB. The Deck helped more with popularity & spread of Linux, rather than actual compatibility.
    And those unsupported titles are almost all competitive multiplayer games. Regular multiplayer titles that are mostly PvE focused work usually fine under Linux.

    • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
      19·
      11 months ago

      I suspect the Steamdeck and Steam machines were the main motivations for Valve to put as much resources behind Proton as they did.

      • firecat@kbin.social
        144·
        11 months ago

        No they did it for the money, steam deck isn’t a good handheld, it can become outdated in a few years, Linux hacks is a real possibility, etc.

        No real reason for Steam deck existence other than money.

        • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
          32·
          11 months ago

          Well, I mean… of course, yeah? They’re a private a corporation, they want to make a profit on anything they do. But the idea is the Steamdeck with Linux on it is worthless if it doesn’t play games, hence why so much money was poured into Proton to make the Steamdeck a desirable and profitable object.

          Saying it’s not a good handheld because it will become outdated is like saying every laptop in existence is bad because it will eventually become outdated. You sacrifice upgradeability for portability.

          • firecat@kbin.social
            135·
            11 months ago

            Technology can be upgraded and Valve chooses to make the deck a worst version of handheld. Just look at other handheld, less problem with holding and more gameplay experience. Proton doesn’t solve the linux gaming issue, companies are more willing to lose the Linux platform for protection of their games.

            Gaming in Linux shouldn’t become this bad, one company controls the entire reason for the Linux platform, there should have been more if not better ways.

            • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
              27·
              11 months ago

              The other handhelds cost more, and usually have worse battery life.

              Proton has absolutely solved the chicken and the egg problem. There’s a big enough audience on Steamdeck that many devs of online games have flipped the switch to allow their anti-cheat to work under proton.

              there should have been more if not better ways.

              Linux gaming was stagnant for over 20 years, what would you have done differently?

              • firecat@kbin.social
                121·
                11 months ago

                The other consoles are built for gaming and offering features that Valve hasn’t even announced for such. Moreover the steam deck being locked in the Steam ecosystem doesn’t help the “solved problems”. One company that is known for greedy developers is in control of Linux Proton.

                It’s clear what should have happened, the steam deck shouldn’t have existed. Valve the billionaire company should’ve offered better alternative or find better hardware. We have computers in the size of a credit card and they decided a brick with unnecessary specs with uneven screen size is the best? They clearly didn’t care anything but cheap hardware and software that is free. The steamOS isn’t open source and you people are letting Valve make their money on free software.

                • deathmetal27@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  15·
                  11 months ago

                  The other consoles are built for gaming and offering features that Valve hasn’t even announced for such.

                  Such as? Also are you implying the Steam Deck wasn’t built for gaming?

                  Moreover the steam deck being locked in the Steam ecosystem doesn’t help the “solved problems”. One company that is known for greedy developers is in control of Linux Proton.

                  You do know that you can install any launcher in the Steam Deck, right? Even Tim Sweeney praised this feature and he bad mouths Valve on almost everything.

                  Also, Proton is open source, anyone can fork and develop it independently of Valve. See “Glorious Eggroll”.

                  It’s clear what should have happened, the steam deck shouldn’t have existed.

                  What should have existed then?

                  Valve the billionaire company should’ve offered better alternative or find better hardware. We have computers in the size of a credit card and they decided a brick with unnecessary specs with uneven screen size is the best?

                  You’re just nitpicking now. The form factor isn’t ideal but it’s appropriate for running a full fledged PC.

                  They clearly didn’t care anything but cheap hardware and software that is free. The steamOS isn’t open source and you people are letting Valve make their money on free software.

                  OK, so what should they have done then. Please enlighten us.

                • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  4·
                  11 months ago

                  you people are letting Valve make their money on free software.

                  Making money on free software is absolutely fine. Even GNU, perhaps the most hardcore free software group, has this to say:

                  You may have paid money to get copies of a free program, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies.

                  There’s absolutely no problem with Valve profiting from free software, the only obligation is that they share their modifications to any free software they use with their users. Here’s their fork of Proton, and here’s an article about the rest of the software stack they have modified (i.e. they’ve made lots of changes to the graphics stack, as well as various other parts that are important to their use-case.

                  So it’s not like they’re taking and not giving, it’s a two-way process where they and the community both benefit from using free software.

                  The other points have been well covered here, I just wanted to point out that making money is not a bad thing.

    • Rentlar@lemmy.caEnglish
      11·
      11 months ago

      What you say is true, but I should credit Valve for making many games “just work” when clicking the play button without involving more steps for the user.

      I know some time ago, I had to set up a bunch of wineprefixes manually whether it was using Steam or Wine to play a game, but Steam’s automatic management puts it a little bit ahead now in my view. Even though Lutris makes managing it much easier as well compared to before, it’s still a few more steps that some users would get confused or frustrated doing.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      11 months ago

      Wine

      Yup, I ran MtG: Arena since public beta on Linux (way before the Steam release) and it was fine. I would have to manually reinstall every update until someone fixed it in the Lutris script, but the installation process was totally fine. I also installed a bunch of games before Steam was even a thing on Linux and they ran just fine in WINE (old PC game Lords of the Realm II, Starcraft & Starcraft 2, and others).

      The Deck helped more with popularity & spread of Linux, rather than actual compatibility.

      While true, it represents a greater investment by Valve into gaming on Linux. Before the Deck, there was a steady improvement, but great strides were pretty rare. After the Deck, there was a ton of fixes that landed, especially during the 6-12 months leading up to the launch and the year following (i.e. as backorders were being fulfilled). So they absolutely invested more resources when the Deck launched.

      And those unsupported titles are almost all competitive multiplayer games. Regular multiplayer titles that are mostly PvE focused work usually fine under Linux.

      It’s still hit and miss, but a lot more hit than miss these days. I still run into older games where the Unsupported flag really does apply, but more often than not, Unsupported just means I may need a small tweak to get it to work.

    • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.comEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      I agree on all points. Maybe I dont see the misleading part but everything else is exactly how i experienced it as well.

    • helenslunch@feddit.nlEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      The Deck helped more with popularity & spread of Linux, rather than actual compatibility.

      The Deck helped make Proton profitable.

  • CraigeryTheKid@lemm.eeEnglish
    14·
    11 months ago

    Anecdotal, but I’m on PopOS and using wine/lutris - and I have yet to have a game not work.

    I couldn’t get the unofficial FF14 launcher to work, but the official ones is fine.

    I did install steam, but so far haven’t used it other than Valheim.

    Edith Finch, Journey, Titanfall2, The Outer Worlds, FF14, WoW, GW2, Sea of Stars, No Man’s Sky. Obviously not an extensive list, but 100% so far.

  • Defaced@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    11 months ago

    If they don’t use AMD then good luck, Nvidia is historically garbage on Linux. I’ve built my rig to be AMD only for the specific use case of gaming on Linux so it has been a fantastic experience for me.

    • Nyanix@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      So far so good gaming-wise on the 3080 ti, not to deny I don’t bump into other random issues thanks to nvidia

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      It’s really not that bad. I used Nvidia for something like 10 years on Linux and only recently switched to AMD. I was able to play games just fine, and I only really had issues when I switched to rolling releases (Arch and then Tumbleweed) because sometimes the driver and kernel would get mismatched and I’d either need to rollback or reinsntall the update. I played tons of games in that time.

      AMD is a better experience on Linux, but mostly for things like Wayland and driver updates. Actual day-to-day usage is fine with Nvidia, just nothing to write home about.

      That said, I have zero experience with laptops, and I’ve heard that can be a royal pain. However, I don’t know if it’s better on AMD, or if graphics switching just sucks in general on Linux.

    • Nine@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      The only reason I’m running an AMD card is because of the pandemic. I’ve run NVIDIA cards for over a decade with Linux and it hasn’t been bad. There were times where it was painful but these days it’s pretty easy.

    • Defaced@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      Yeah there are distros that make the driver install process seamless like pop and Nobara. I’ve used both and have stuck with endeavorOS for now.

    • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.comEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      To be totally honest, I‘ve had to work quite a bit to get my nvidia gpu under control but so far it works. I get weird behavior at times and the proprietary trash of a driver updating is like russian roulette (on ubuntu mind you) but it does perform decent. A lot better than the nouveau driver btw which gave me 10 fps at metro.