Of the 17 games I’ve played over the past 9~ months since installing mint Linux and steam proton, only 2 base games have had issues and 2 games I’ve had trouble modding. I think it’s a discussion worth having so let me go through the few issues I’ve had in regards to games on Mint Linux (Ubuntu based). 2 problems were resolved without issue, 1 was a qualified success, and one I gave up on trying to mod.
To be clear this is all on an intel Intel 7700HQ CPU and nvidia GTX1060 GPU. It’s not the newest or top of the line anymore but it’s still plenty capable.
Foxhole: there was a week about a 2 months ago where I had to launch it through lutris because proton was having an issue with loading in to the map. As far as I could gather, the devs had updated shaders or some libraries to fix a glitch with small trains hovering at max map height, and this caused issue with proton being unable to load shaders. Using lutris (which I think uses wine?) fixed the issue and the devs fixed the issue with proton about a week later.
Helldivers 2: extremely bad frame rates and straight up locking up the computer part way through the intro or tutorial. I think it was an issue with the graphics card memory just getting filled up and not clearing. I don’t remember exactly what I did to fix it, but it involved caping the FPS at 60 FPS. It works now but only with low settings and I still get a bad frame rates when the map gets crowded.
Then there was modding games that had some issue. Both of them were older games that relied on patchers.
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines: Worked great as the base game. The patcher for the unofficial fan patch was a .exe though, so I added it to steam and ran it with proton, it couldn’t find the game files and I had to manually direct it to the files in proton’s mock windows file structure, but after that it patched and worked fine from there.
Fallout: New Vegas: The base game ran flawlessly (well as flawlessly as base game New Vegas can run), same procedure as above, opened patcher and mod manger by adding to steam and opening with proton, directed them to the weirdly placed files, but this time they didn’t recognize the game files and refused to patch. I fiddled with it for a bit, but gave up because I didn’t care that much.
Again I want to emphasize that these are 4 out of 17 games, only one of which had persistent issues, and one that I gave up on trying to mod. None straight up wouldn’t run and none were unplayable after a bit of tinkering. This is about the same rate of tinkering I was doing back in windows to get things running the way I wanted with games.
There is a lot of work left to do here, but playing games on Linux is absolutely doable even if you’re not particularly tech savvy. if you don’t have the patience to trouble shoot, you will be fine 9 times out of 10. I’m more tech savvy than the average bear, but I don’t work in tech nor do I have a formal education.
Linux and nvidia have a strained relationship. There are a couple nvidia specific distros that might do you better. I am on Pop_OS and so far have had zero issues. The only game we have in common is Helldivers 2, and it runs perfect. Granted I have a 2080, so that might have something to do with it, but the gap is mostly ray tracing. Bazzite also has an nvidia specific version, but I have not used it. I have heard it is great, though.
Yah, I had to manually install the driver in mint for the nvidia card, and had to change a setting in the bios to get the system to even see the card. But it works fine other than that. I’m considering going with an AMD card next time I get a computer, largely because I hear they work a lot better with Linux.
You don’t need to add the exe of whatever mod tool to Steam, use Steam Tinker Launch. It lets you add an exe to run instead of the game, concurrent with the game, or injected after the game is up, and it will run in the same prefix that Proton uses for that game. It also has tools for installing and using several mod managers, and generally a ton of good features for tinkering with the game.
The main issue I haven’t solved is getting something like the Nexus mods “open in manager” to work. My guess is I might have to install, run, and configure a web browser inside the prefix, but that sounds really annoying so I haven’t tried it.
I’ll second that STL will make FNV work on Mint, I’ve made many comments extolling how much better it runs that way than it ever did on windows
that being said RED ALERT:
You need a version of YAD not from the stone age (so not the distro software manager version) to install STL. The instructions for making your own YAD from the GitHub assume you’ve done it before and can understand what phrases like “do the usual” mean. It’s not hard but it took me 45 fucking minutes to find a comment 5 months ago on Reddit that said “do this exact command” and made it all go smooth. If you’re familiar with GitHub and the make command: you’re good homie.
If you have any issues with FNV you can PM me as I finished my playthrough recently and did everything you can do in modding to it, LoD and all, no issues. Ok, that’s a lie, but the issues were my fault, not the system.
I mean, base game FNV ran fine for me. Which is kind of funny because my friend who was playing it for the first time was having a bunch of issues with it constantly crashing while playing on windows 10 and I had to walk them through getting fan patches and the like running.
Windows also does not have 100% compatibility. Try playing something like age of wonders 1 on current windows. I could run in out of the box on steam deck but not on my pc that at the time had windows 10. I think Windows no longer has compatibility with win 98 and lower but i might be misremembering.
I completed the Steam 100% achievements for Dark Souls 2 and 3 so decided it was time to try Dark Souls Remastered. So far I think I’m spoiled by the other two games because DSR feels so tedious without bonfire warp. I’m trying to keep my first playthrough mostly blind, but this game does not really seem designed to make that possible. Luckily spoiled the part about going to Tomb of Giants too early and having to backtrack, but I did wander far into Catacombs right after the Gargoyles fight. It’s becoming more enjoyable as I level up and have switched main weapon to Great Scythe, though. Hoping I warm up to it more like I did with DS2 after the initial difficulty.
I’ve also been playing Fae Tactics. It’s surprisingly unique and satisfying with some combo mechanics and customizability. Definitely worth checking out if you like tactics style games.
Destiny 2 is not supported for play on the Steam Deck or on any system utilizing Steam Play’s Proton unless Windows is installed and running. Players who attempt to launch Destiny 2 on the Steam Deck through SteamOS or Proton will be unable to enter the game and will be returned to their game library after a short time. Players who are not accessing Destiny 2 through Windows and attempt to bypass the SteamOS/Proton incompatibility will be met with a game ban.
A few games listed as gold for me ran fine on the Deck, but I was unable to play them because of unreadable font sizes. Some of these could be tweaked and there is always the magnifying glass tool, but I prefer them on the PC, which is still Windows.
Unfortunately games are only one part of the problem. I just tried getting some Windows software up and running on my Steam Deck and it was a hours of hassle only to end up not even working anyway.
Is Serato DJ worth investing time into? No, probably not really. Would it have been nice for it to have worked? Yes, that’s sort of the point of computers ability, to be used.
I’m glad so many games are working, so I hope more software support comes along!
Thank you! I’ll check this out, I did “come across” it but I couldn’t tell if it was just for Linux DJs or if it was like the fully fledged software to use regardless of gear.
I’ll see if it works with Hercules Starlight! Thank you for the suggestion!
Oh I didn’t even realize it was that old. All the subsequent posts have links to the past discussions. All the posts seem to have interesting games so I was looking through them all for ideas. Thanks for the discussion!
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