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.
Linux doesnt have games that install kernel-level spyware under the guise of anti-cheat. Hopefully never will, but I don’t underestimate gamers who love think spyware is a good idea. Stay away from linux if you want kernel anti cheat please, its ruining computers
What’s hilarious is that is par the course on windows to run Steam as an admin. In fact that fixes a ton of bugs for people, so any executable the steam process spawns, like game executables, has admin rights as well.
On the performance side of things, Elbrus has nothing to write home about based on benchmarks that have largely found it “completely unacceptable” for most tasks.
(in a linked article) The testers cited “Insufficient memory, slow memory, few cores, low frequency. Functional requirements not been met at all” as key reasons for the failure.
Elbrus-8C: 8C/8T, 1.30 GHz, 16MB L3, 70W TDP, quad-channel DDR3-1600 memory, 28nm, 250 FP64 GFLOPS
It can probably run Doom, but likely won’t run Crysis.
The other console, “MTS Fog Play”, is just cloud gaming
Knowing our “sovereign” projects, no. No, it cannot.
Don’t get me wrong, there is some really cool tech stuff we create, but whenever it gets political, it’s just theft of budget money. Nothing actually gets created.
Oh the 16gigs is for devs/games and the 2gb is exclusively for the system. Was wondering how they were able to get by with only 2 gigs of ram and 16gigs of vram originally lmao.
It’s a good input system even better if your mouse has side buttons, the problem is lazy, often japanese devs, ports, I remember Nioh 1.0 having no mouse support at all, you had to use keyboard buttons to rotate the camera, it arrived later with a few updates.
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 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.
First paragraph indicates that it’s pulling from ProtonDB’s list of games:
However, the most recent stats from ProtonDB (via Boiling Steam) highlight that we are edging towards a magnificent milestone. The latest distilled data shows that almost 90% of Windows games now run on Linux.
You completely glossed over the question he was asking.
90% of Windows games…but, from how far back? Are we talking 1988 with Windows 1.0? Are we talking 1995 onwards with Windows 95? Are we talking modern Windows with Windows 10 onwards? Are we strictly talking Windows 11?
There are a lot of logical jumping off points for where you can start measuring, each with a logical arguement with why you start there, but also with multiple logical arguements for why thats a bad idea.
There’s a missing implied knowledge they forgot to mention: ProtonDB tracks games on Steam. So it’s 90% of windows games available on Steam (without a native Linux build)
Strangely, the search page for ProtonDB shows the ‘proton rating’ for games which have a ‘native but abandoned / broken’ native Linux build, whereas the actual page for the game just shows ‘native’ and I can’t see the button to show the rest of the information. I’m sure it used to be there; they’ve started hiding a lot of stuff in favour of making the ‘steam deck’ results more prominent. But in some cases, ‘proton rating even with a native Linux build’ is quite important.
tomshardware.com
Ważne