I tried Solus back in 2018 with Wine. The only game that didn’t work properly was Mass Effect Andromeda (if memory serves correctly); it kept crashing to the desktop anywhere between a few minutes in to 2 hours.
I didn’t want to have to do debugging both at work and outside of work, so I switched back to Windows, and it worked fine after that.
I would be willing to try again maybe, if I can find the will and time over the weekend to setup a hybrid Linux and Windows implementation on my PC - does anyone have any good recommendations?
Eh I’ve already played it on Windows - it was some time back.
I don’t think I can fully abandon Windows as I have some work software that is only meant to run in Windows, so either I dual boot or get a separate machine for work things.
I made the switch almost a year ago when they started announcing all the spyware coming to win11. The distro you choose matters a LOT. After several that were buggy and frustrating I landed on Garuda dragonized. Setup was easy with their assistant finding the drivers I needed and I have yet to have any system breaking updates. Better track record than windows TBH. Performance is great, and steam integrates so well with proton that my experience is honestly just as good as windows native. I should probably go make a donation to the Garuda project, now that I’m thinking about it.
Most accessories are plug and play these days, so Nvidia may have actually been the only one. Not all distros can detect the best Nvidia drivers automatically, and finding and installing the right one can be a pain. Which makes it borderline impossible for a low tech person looking to make the jump to Linux.
Notably, it’s also entirely possible that the issues I dealt with were more to do with poor Wayland implementations than drivers. Either way, Garuda has worked beautifully and easily.
And how many run on linux via a well documented way?
I’ve been playing around with bazzite a bit, and for sure, i can run a lot of games on it, but you often end up googling which launcher to use, which settings to use, … And then even if you find something, it doesn’t always work.
Linux is making good progress in this regard, but this title feels a bit over optimistic (or at least, users who take it at face value will quickly be disappointed when they can’t get 90% of their games to work).
Please let me know if you find good documentation. I want to make the jump off of windows, but honestly I’m scared it will just cause a ton of frustration
Most games will just launch, no problems. But then you’ll get one title like the above poster has, that just refuses to launch no matter what you do.
Most of the times there’s a work around on ProtonDB that will get you running in a few minutes. But sometimes it feels like, or is the case, where the developers actively prevent the game from launching on Linux.
Honestly, check www.protondb.com and look for the games you want to play, it will let you know how well they work out of the box by just installing them on steam and hitting play. The reality is that it very much depends on what games you want to play, if you like CoD and other competitive multiplayer you’re unfortunately in the missing 10%, but for most cases you should be fairly well covered.
thing is, not even protondb is reliable. There’s been many times I’ve tried running a game, and encountered an error not posted anywhere, nor protondb, reddit or steam forums. All the comments on protondb will say, “works great out of the box!”, and I’m just left digging through random forums at that point.
Why the fuck is that breaking games… Reminds me of when i was playing around with linux 15 years ago, and i saw how poor multimonitor support was compared to windows back then. And they’re still managing to have stupid issues like this in 2025…
This is why the linux desktop keeps failing “i want to play a game but it doesn’t work because i have 2 monitors”… Who wants to use that as an OS??
I previously played with just Steam and there’s basically one setting to enable - allowing the install of non-native games - and then (for supported games) it’s pretty much the same as Windows. In some cases you need to select the Proton version but generally using “latest” does the trick. There are games that require Proton-GE to work. These were essentially ones where Valve’s Proton version doesn’t have workarounds for various DRM etc (likely because doing so would get them in trouble). On Steam Deck this is done by pretty much going into the local Appstore in “desktop mode” to install. Other distros may vary.
For non-Steam games it’s a bit more of a pain, and can vary widely by game. I’ve installed a ton either just by running the Windows installer from Wine or scripts provided by Lutris.
Honestly if you’ve got the cash and want to try things, grab a Deck and give that a shot. If it works for you, take the leap to Linux on PC. Alternatively on PC, add/resize a disk and go dual-boot. The guided installers on Ubuntu variants generally make this pretty easy.
My comment isn’t meant to scare away people, but to keep our feet on the ground. Linux gaming has made amazing progress. If you play recent, mainstream games, it’ll be very well documented, and most things will work, unless they’re explicitly made to not work (such as certain anti cheat systems).
If you play lesser known indie games, really old games, or more specific things (not sure how good VR support is?), you’ll quickly encounter issues that may or may not be well documented. Also, in another reply thread to my post, someone commented a game not working because he has multiple monitors on linux. Stuff like that is also still happening.
So it can be really decent, but know that you might encounter issues. Give it a try and see if it works for the games that are the most important for you :).
Games still crash on windows for multiple monitors, or launching in full screen for the first time, and more. Often without an error message without digging into event viewer or game logs.
And TBH, once you learn how to troubleshoot on Linux, it’s actually quite informative. For instance, I resolved a cryptic error message being returned by steam on game launch by launching steam from the CLI and then used the steam gui to launch the game and was given live event stream logging.
Once there’s better GUI tooling and and more passionate techs with a design/UX passion join the community, I can only imagine how seamless things will get.
I am genuinely interested in helping here, can you list a few titles here?
Also the whole compatibility statistic is a misnomer, not accounting for windows games and applications that are now only supported with Wine and Proton. Windows 11 doesn’t have 100% windows compatibility either.
It’s just my experience when playing around with bazzite on my legion go.
But look at the other replies, there are people mentioning issues they encounter (like one guy replying a game not working because he’s using multiple monitors. If that’s breaking games on linux… that’s a far better description of the current state than the title of this thread).
And some of the other replies here are “launch steam, press play”…
why are we all running to steam when we’re using linux to have freedom of software? I’d expect more GOG love in a thread like this.
steam is indeed nice, but we also have lutris, and heroic, and i’m probably missing some other launchers here.
And i’ll give you a quick example of what i encountered: i thought of giving visual pinball a go on my legion go. It’s a free project, not on steam. Checked lutris, it was on there, but an ancient version, not kept up to date. But since the latest version, they have an actual linux build, gave that one a go, and had to manually tinker with it expecting a symlink for a certain dll to exist, but bazzite is fedora based, and uses a different convention for that dll than other distros, so had to manually make a symlink so the game could find it.
I’m a programmer, the above is an hour of frustration until i have solved it, i can manage. But that’s an example of what i encounter. I’ve got some older games in my steam library that have warnings that there are controller issues with them, …
And that is just the linux experience. Wrong distro? it might not work. Multiple screens? It might not work. The latest hardware? You’ll never guess it, but it might not work. It’s tuesday? It might not work… I’m amazed with proton etc… how much progress linux gaming has made, but we have to keep our feet on the ground, and be honest with ourselves. If we act as if we’re already there, while we’re not. How will we actually get where we need to get if everyone acts as if it’s good enough already?
A lot of people have mentioned ProtonDB already, but I’ll throw in Lutris as well. It’s a multi-platform game launcher that supports Steam, GOG, Humble Games, Epic Games, EA, etc. but its website also lets you search for a game title, and most should have a user-created method to launch.
Gaming on Linux is like gaming on Windows 20 years ago when you spent more time just trying to get the fucking game to run than actually playing the game.
I got an error trying to launch a BF2 expansion that told me to contact the nearest rendering developer.
I’ve been playing around with bazzite a bit, and for sure, i can run a lot of games on it, but you often end up googling which launcher to use, which settings to use, … And then even if you find something, it doesn’t always work.
You think you’re describing a problem with Linux, but you’re just describing a problem with the game. If it’s not on steam it would be the same way on Windows. It will most likely be in a different, less popular and barely supported launcher. By then it is the publisher who is screwing you up, not Linux.
I was simply offering a case where steam isn’t the simple solution to gaming on Linux, as described by the post above.
I never said I was describing a ‘problem with Linux’ or a ‘problem with the game’.
Not all games are available on Steam or will work with steams proton/wine/whatever.
Game publishers have the right to choose how and where they publish their games. If I can’t install and play them on my machine I simply won’t. AS there is already an endless list of great games I haven’t played.
One of the biggest traps for new linux users since forever has been to jump straight into the deep end- tweaking any and every tunable- then when that inevitably all breaks, blaming Linux and moving back.
For anyone reading- You don’t need Arch as your first distro, you don’t want to on the bleeding edge unless you’re prepared to bleed. You don’t need things like Golden Eggroll Proton or any external launchers.
Just keep it simple to start- Something like Mint, SuSE or plain Fedora with Steam using the built-in Proton.
Bazzite gets… let say ‘advertised’ a lot and it’s got a lot of good ideas - but if you’re coming from Windows I think it’s just too much - it’s an immutable system* with containers for everything. That’s an ocean away from Windows unless you were comfortable with Sandboxie beforehand (if you were, dive right in)
*\the system is read only, you cannot change anything in the default image, ie. imagine if you were never allowed to add files to c:\windows
If you only play new popular games, and buy them on steam (and not GOG which is a platform that’s far more aligned with the linux way of thinking), sure. But i’ve got plenty of old steam games that have issues, or require me to muck around with custom control stuff, have warnings that they might not be fully supported, …
I love that we’re all moving to linux to be free, and then be using steam iso GOG XD.
Block the game from the Internet so it can’t collect data on you or go offline for a while and it may or may not still work.
#4 is the main reason I’m hesitant to install games from Steam instead of alternative versions of the game that don’t have this limitation. But then installing games on Linux often becomes a time-consuming feat of trial and error.
if i cant run something at linux i’ll just do without it. Might try virtual machine if its something really crucial but might not care to even bother. Fortunately any games i know that will not run are kind of games that i wouldnt want to touch anyway.
I’m installing Mint for the first time at this very moment. So far, it’s easier than I anticipated. Fuck You Microsoft.
Edit: bro, firstly, what the fuck and where did all this performance come from?!?! I vastly underestimated how many resources windows was hogging. I downloaded Steam (easy-peasy) and then Project Zomboid just as a test. This game runs like butter now. I was having major problems with it before. To the point I basically stopped playing. I know its just one example but I haven’t had my machine run this well in several years, I feel. Also, got Spotify running. Super easy. I need to figure out how to get my VPN set up (ProtonVPN) but so far, I’m kind of in shock. I can’t wait to actually dig in and see what I can do with this new setup.
Windows 10 did that to us. My work workstation and my wife’s laptop suffered with W10, so I searched alternate OS and found Linux. Luckily our CAD software had a Linux version and I got productivity back.
My wife’s 2010 laptop on w10 was not usable. Its super fast with Linux. Faster than my work issued brand-new Lenovo laptop with W11. The only performance problem would be rendering video or other hardcore tasks.
This is just how I felt when I first switched, also to Mint. I’ve experienced it a couple other times too when switching from some proprietary application to the FOSS option.
I like to describe it as feeling the different priorities of the teams working on each project. When one is made by passionate users who care about it being good software for its purpose, and the other is designed by a committee to hit as many different corporate metrics as possible, it shows.
Well yeah their business isn’t to “serve users.” It’s to “farm consumers.”
That’s why I’m glad I do embedded systems in a niche industry. I’m not trying to drive engagement across the globe. I’m just making a device that serves the needs of a user who has other important work to worry about.
It’s honestly surprising how bloated Windows has become, and for no clear reason either. Even with all of the obvious bloat disabled and resource-intensive features turned off there’s still a significant overhead, it’s just so constant that you don’t notice it. Then you load up Linux on the same hardware and realize what you’ve been missing.
As long as you run the proprietary nvidia drivers, performance is more or less noise for a given driver version. There IS some annoyance with slower releases for drivers to Linux but… nvidia has had much bigger problems with new driver releases over the past year.
The big issue is if you run the open source community drivers. And… if you are spending leather jacket money and then using low performance drivers… you are an idiot. Because Mistah J already has the metrics and money he wants and doesn’t care if you actually use your card after buying it.
I have a 3090ti. Made the switch to Linux last year after reading that most games work. Never had a problem with the card, it works flawlessly out of the box (using the proprietary Nvidia drivers).
It still was a bit of a learning curve for me though… Using steam they work without a hitch. If they are not on steam, I found that the easiest (for me) is to install them using lutris, and then adding them to steam as non-steam games and using Proton to run them.
been running an nvidia gpu since 2019, literally switched from windows right as cyberpunk 2077 was being launched, and trust me, it was possible back then, and it’s even more performant now.
I have a 3090. As long as you have the correct drivers and a quality emulator (I think I use glorious eggroll’s experimental proton branch) quality is quite comparable.
I have a 3090. As long as you have the correct drivers and a quality emulator (I think I use glorious eggroll’s experimental proton branch) quality is quite comparable.
How is device support? Direct drive steering wheels, gamepad, VR, status LED or info displays (ie. Making your keyboard glow red on low health) and bunch of other things like my Sound Blaster G6
Hit and miss since those tend to not have actual standards and generally do their own thing. If it’s popular, there’s a decent chance someone has reverse engineered it and there’s at least partial support (mostly applies to simpler things like steering wheels), but there will be concessions to make until device manufacturers officially support Linux.
If you’re willing to replace equipment, there’s something that works for most of those categories, if not all.
Which one? Support varies wildly depending on manufacturer.
gamepad
I have never seen a gamepad that doesn’t work on Linux. You may not be able to update their firmware if they only provide a Windows tool but they work perfectly fine.
VR
Valve Index and HTC Vive work out of the box. SteamVR is pretty rough in Linux and plagued by issues but it works.
For any other headset you will have to depend on community support. Some work, some don’t.
Which ones? They usually use completely proprietary protocols.
Sound Blaster G6
It will work like any other bog-standard sound card has for years. You will lose any features that are custom to the sound card (dialogue mode, virtual surround, equalizer, …) but those are rarely necessary because there is lots of other software that achieves this for every sound card.
I recommend you boot Linux from USB and take a look. No need to install anything, just boot from USB and take a look if your hardware works.
I’m not going to throw doubt on the 90% number. Statistics are made up and generally don’t mean anything. “90% of games” … In what context? Games on steam? Games ever made? I don’t think I’m going to be playing sierra titles from the 90s… What about Flash based games that used to run in a browser? Do they count?
I don’t know and it doesn’t matter.
The only thing I want to say is that the “10%” that don’t work are usually pretty popular.
I’d like to see this metric based on average player counts. What percentage of gamers, playing games right now, could play on Linux.
IMO, that would give a much more relevant indication of how viable it is for most gamers to switch to Linux.
I’m still using Windows 10 and no, I didn’t buy their extended bullshit. I don’t even run the latest version of Windows 10. I also have an update server setup so I don’t usually get updates often because I need to go approve them. But I also work in IT and I’ve seen every social engineering attack type that’s been used since the 90s and I know when to not click on something. I haven’t needed an anti virus on my personal system in 20 years.
To say I’m not worried about it is an understatement.
The only thing I want to say is that the “10%” that don’t work are usually pretty popular.
Yeah, like I’m glad Linux support is increasing among games, but my main daily driver game (Genshin) still doesn’t support it 🤷 And I don’t think Hoyoverse will be spending work on Linux support when they are raking in so much cash from their millions of players. From what I can see Linux usage hovers around 0.3% in China, and that’s Hoyo’s main market.
In my personal experience, the only games that don’t work are those that explicitly choose not to :
Fortnite
PUBG
Roblox
Valorant
I’m not much into competitive games myself, so the only one that’s inconvenient in this list to me is Roblox. There are a few really fun games on their platform that I wish I could play on Steam Deck, as used to be possible.
You know about protondb already? Gives a good list of potential fixes if you come across issues, it’s been a godsend on the rare occasions something doesn’t work first try
Have you changed which version of proton it uses? It’s in the compatibility options for the game, sometimes going to an older version solves some issues.
That’s because of the awful spaghetti code that is the basis of Space Engineers. I gave up on that game years ago, because those devs were vibe coding before it was cool, and it shows.
You can play Roblox through Sober. It runs the Android version directly so it’s pretty similar to what an official port would be, in terms of performance
Not too surprisingly, you can add League of Legends (another Riot games title) to the list. While I’m not a fan of kernel level anticheat, I do love most of these games, and it’s really frustrating how I don’t see any change in the future. After more than a year of struggling, I finally managed to get my Mint working (turns out my old mobo was faulty), but it looks like I will still have to keep Windows for basically all multiplayer titles I play.
I’ve been following this GitHub issue waiting for this change to make it into the next nvidia driver release but still suspect this won’t address HDR. Obviously first world problems for high end hardware but it’s one of the last pieces holding me back from trying Linux on my desktop
Appreciate the info! I had been trying out the new Cosmic DE that ships with pop os and I’m guessing that’s still lacking HDR but did feel very performant. I’ll have to see if switching is worth the trade off once they nvidia driver update gets released
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