As a former RUST addict, I can tell you that Facepunch didn’t really know what they were doing initially with the game on Linux (although they gave an honest try).
Later, they basically said, “Look, we don’t really have the knowledge to support this, so you can ask for a refund if you exclusively bought the game to play on Linux, and if you are using Proton/Wine/etc, you can play on non-EAC community servers” (since official servers use Linux incompatible EAC). They aren’t hostile to the Linux community, but Gary and the team feel like they aren’t up to the task, so they don’t officially support things anymore.
I think the lack of EAC support is a red flag for some users that there may be more cheaters compared to windows (and more bugs). At least that was my perspective when I was reading the Reddit posts and forum posts at the time.
That loops back to the “Facepunch doesn’t believe they have the technical expertise/manhours available to support Linux users so therefore simply provides refunds to prior Linux customers and a ‘no support but not antagonistic approach’ to Proton/Wine users” problem that they’ve found themselves in. I would imagine internally, if they flipped that hypothetical switch, it would be seen as them committing to provide Linux support again (which they’ve admitted they aren’t prepared to do).
From their perspective, it’s better to just allow Proton users to play but not allow them to join “official servers” or community servers with the existing EAC so they aren’t accused by the community (I know, we suck sometimes) of “allowing Linux cheaters to fly under the radar”.
Seems about 40% working, I personally only have one game that doesn’t jive with Linux. If the game you’re playing doesn’t work that’s the fault of the specific anti-cheat developers because it’s obviously possible to do it right.
Sure, but from the end user perspective, it doesn’t matter whose fault it is - the result is you can’t play a game you otherwise just can in Windows. We know it’s their fault.
If you never play any games with anticheat that’s fine, but all it takes is one game, and then later another, and then later another, to make Linux a dealbreaker for many gamers. These are not unpopular games.
It can be the whole difference between someone sticking with Windows but itching to make the switch, and someone actually making the switch.
What good is 90% of games working if you have 3 games that you really want to play that don’t work?
I 100% get what you are saying. But I’m also 100% fine with voting with my wallet by not supporting game developers that demand kernel-level access to my machine.
Think about the EA stuff. You install one of their games, and now Saudi Arabia and Jared Kushner* have kernel-level access to your machine. Why, why the hell is that worth it for just a game?
I used to be huge into Battlefield. Even on Linux, I played the shit out of BF4. But I will never be sad about avoiding kernel level anticheat. I don’t even feel like I’m missing out, quite the opposite really, especially after Saudi Arabia bought out EA. Why would I ever want kernel level anything from them? They’d have to pay me.
I guess that’s all to say that I just don’t play those games, and I’m better off for it. I think we should be educating other gamers on what they’re sacrificing to play these games for little reduction in cheaters (BF6 has them, I’ve seen videos of it). Is it really worth it to have a Saudi rootkit on your computer to play that game? Are they willing to sacrifice their security, privacy, and digital freedoms so they can play a game for a couple of hours a day or week? If so, that’s fine, but games that use kernel level anticheat tend to try to mask the risks of running them, which is fucked.
Probably a somewhat popular opinion in the Linux crowd already, but I think we should be pressing companies to find better ways to manage anti-cheats than kernel-level anti-cheat anyway. I’m glad I don’t play games like that because I don’t like how it works at all.
Absolutely. It’s completely possible too by using server side verification and not giving the client info they shouldn’t have, but that costs them slightly more in server costs (which aren’t significant).
It would also require designing the games code to account for this from the start, so not insignificant but definitely all reasonably possible, as in if there were magically legislation tommorow forcing all new multiplayer games to stop doing invasive anti cheat in a year, it’d be done in 6 months.
The implicit implication of your comment is that sever side verification etc inherently means unacceptable latency and I see no reason to believe it; only gut feelings
No, but it is a far more complex problem than what the other comment made it sound like. That it is only because they cheap out on server hardware and it could be perfect if they just wasn’t cheap.
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.
While this is awesome we still need to have the same performance on Windows. Yes, some games run better through proton for some reason, but that’s the minority. Hopefully, proton will not be needed for new games in the future and we get native builds like CS2.
There is like a good chunk of an entire decade’s worth of games that can’t be played on PC legitimately due to either expired licenses for music (e.g. EA Trax) or lack of support for older, disc-based DRM (SecuROM etc.).
That’s before factoring older titles that no longer work due to arbitrary changes to DirectX and the Windows kernel, which break backwards compatibility.
It wasn’t on proton but there’s a very old entry on wine. Looks like my boy Jeff’s last entry was quite recent in 2023, he rated it a silver. There’s a known bug from some graphical glitch during certain events like the protagonist meeting himself back in time and others which may prevent completion. I wonder how it works now, tempted to test it out.
I tried to make sure it got quoted but my app doesn’t do well with copying the user so I did it this way so people would know it certainly wasn’t me who saw the flaw.
If it helps UFD tech on YouTube also reported off the Tom’s Guide article, spouting the same flawed data as the headline.
Not really surprising. Windows hasn’t had significant investment from Microsoft in a while, unless it’s cramming bullshit AI and telemetry “features” in.
I seriously can’t remember the last time a windows update added an actually useful feature for me. Its like they are actively avoiding making it any better at all.
Not sure if this is the same thing, but KDE (on a linux system) presents me with options to login with smartkey/fingerprint, so it might, I’m guessing? I dunno if thay’s what passkeys are referring to, but if yes, then I think it does.
My understanding is that window’s passkey support differs from something like what is offered by linux distros in that, instead of storing your passwords in a strongly encrypted, audited, and trustworthy store like 1pw or similar, windows instead stores them in the OS.
Which personally I consider a con, I don’t trust windows to store pictures without fucking it up, why on earth would I give them passkeys?
They might add features, but none of them are a joy to work with or use. They are usually slow and buggy and annoying.
Powershell is disgusting (my opinion).
Explorer tabs are SO ANNOYING. Coming from using dolphin at home, then windows explorer at work MAKES ME CRY. I might actually use dolphin on windows, but the builds dont seem to be properly supported (i dont think?) or at least in alpha/beta or something and I don’t wanna have a buggy file explorer thats not made specifically for an os. But come on dolphin can do it right and fast, why can’t a billion dollar company?!?!?!!?!
Powershell has some nasty little quirks, and the command naming is user-hostile, but god damn is it great to pass objects around instead of parsing and reparsing text.
I was exited for the explorer tabs and virtual desktop, but OMG they are sooo bad ! In case of the virtual desktop, they even made it worse with Win11, now the animation is so slow and can’t be configured.nyou can have either slow ass animation or no animation at all which makes it very confusing to use.
Microsoft long ago migrated Windows away from home and recreational computer users to business machines that have non-business uses. Any optimization was ignored in favor of soaking up more value from users.
According to the article the only significant FPS gains are in the Performance mode. In Silent mode Bazzite has two FPS more in KCD2, and… one less in Hogwarts.
In Turbo mode, the difference is 5 FPS.
And even in Performance it’s not like you’re running at 13 FPS by default - it’s 47 in KCD2 and 50 in HL.
They even provide a nice summary themselves - on average, Bazzite gains 6.6 FPS.
What do you get in return?
Not stability:
I have 512gb model and am running on low with FSR2 on balanced. The game keeps crashing during every play sessions
it has a xbox service that installs from the windows store, it is hella finnicky, ive had to do a full pc restore in the past to get it to work, no other option online helped
the main thing you get back is a better cpu governor to manage power consumption on 2d games. Reviews like the Phawks points out that microsoft kinda handed it off to the handheld makers to optimize for battery life. So in the instances such as getting 8hours of battery life running dead cells because the system doesnt really need to push that much to run the game, the Windows handheld is stuck on a higher performance clock and has a significantly shorter battery life time.
This would be extremely visible if more lighter games are tested, which typically aren’t for reviews like this because its not really fun to show a bunch of games all hitting 60 if you cap framerate.
the main thing you get back is a better cpu governor to manage power consumption on 2d games
Power consumption is handled by the power mode on the device. You get three modes - Silent (13W), Performance (17W), and Turbo (35W). You can switch between them at will, it’s not controlled by the game.
but a game may not necessarily need 13W, thats the point. youre using up more power than what is necessary because the CPU governor doesn’t know if its necessary or not to actually use all 13W.
The steam deck is controlled the same way(has wattage targets), but it understands when its being underused, to use even less resources to maximize battery life.
If you have a car that has gears, where gear 1 is 25, gear 2 is 50 (old cars), it doesn’t mean there aren’t usecases where you want to go 5/10. its unnecessary to always have to hit said target.
The article said the frame rates are more stable under bazzite with windows fluctuating a lot more even at low power settings
I think that, as long as the framerate doesn’t dip below 30, a regular human won’t notice fluctuating FPS. It’s something you’ll see in benchmarks, but not in real life. For example: a friend of mine was playing Elden Ring and and Halo on the ROG Ally X and didn’t notice any issues with stability or framerate. And he’s pretty anal about this kind of stuff.
I read through that thread you linked and I didn’t see bazzite mentioned anywhere.
True, it was about Steam Deck performance. But I had similar experiences on Garuda Linux on my PC with Hogwarts. Every now and again it would just crash and burn. Got better after a Proton patch or two, but that’s the problem with Linux gaming - you never really know what you’ll get. With Windows, you don’t have that issue at all.
You can complain about click bait all day, that’s fine, but you came in here misinterpreting the article and then posted a non-relevant link to support your argument, followed by another back-pedaling comment to say “frame rates don’t matter as long as it’s over 30fps” LMAO.
I think you’re arguing just to argue, seems a little more childish than anything I said honestly.
You definetly do notice the fluctuating fps if it’s more than 10 fps at these frame rates. It feels like it’s speeding up then slowing down over and over. That’s why you should just lock your fps to something the device can maintain.
You will notice “average” 30 FPS plenty when it fluctuates. If it STAYS above 30FPS the whole time then sure but if 30 is the average that shit is struggling and you’ll be getting like 20-40 FPS
They did, yeah. Stupid move, especially just before the Ally release, but shareholders must be appeased.
But, other than the price, it’s been pretty great while I used it. Lots of day one releases, lots of less known titles I would never have tried if not for GP.
Games don’t crash on Windows >because of Windows<. Games do crash on Linux >because of Linux<.
As in: games are inherently compatible with Windows, while on Linux you need Wine/Proton, which is just an extra layer of complication that can cause problems.
I think that, as long as the framerate doesn’t dip below 30, a regular human won’t notice fluctuating FPS.
This is complete bullshit, 30 fps is playable for most games, and I have in the past bumper graphics until fps dip to 30/45 because depending on the game 30 fps on high is a better experience than 60 on low for me. But to say that a regular human won’t notice it is bullshit. There’s a game I play on my deck, for some reason it’s very sensitive to disk usage, so if I’m downloading stuff it dips to 30, and I always have to go and stop the download, because if you’ve been playing at 60, 30 feels very sluggish.
Perhaps you should read what I wrote again, you clearly stated a regular human won’t notice fluctuating FPS as long as it doesn’t dip below 30, and I’m saying that is bullshit, I (and everyone else I know) can definitely see a deep to 30 fps even if it doesn’t go below it.
First of all, read again, no one is talking about below 30. Secondly, yes, you can definitely notice dips even if for a moment, it makes the game feel choppy, or more precisely like a weirdly encoded video that goes slow momentarily and then catches up.
it’s weird, and refreshing, to find someone who actually reads the article and don’t base his comments only on the header, and also provides some additional info.
my opinion isn’t based strictly on the header. because to argue that the default is silent mode, when its very reasonable to assume that the middle tier performance mode is the default usecase, because it has a 80W/h battery when compared to typical other handhelds. Steam deck for example uses a 40W/h battery. 17W, which is seeing the chunk of the performance gain, is a very reasonable target for a 80W/h battery. Because it would roughly be equivalent to a steam deck at 10W on its 40W/h battery.
Your source is from a game from two years ago when it was new; not only does Proton get big updates all the time, but it’s far more mature in general now than it was two years ago. You lose access to Windows store, but Amazon, Epic, and GOG work through Heroic. Maybe EA and Ubisoft are a problem for some people, but those also might work through Lutris. I haven’t shopped with either in over a decade, so I’m not the best candidate to check.
Yeah, I was able to play through most of AC: Odyssey on my deck, thanks to Lutris. I also use Heroic just because I’ve never wanted to install Epic’s launcher.
My source is just an example of gaming experience on Linux.
I run Garuda (Arch-based) which is a distro “for gamers”. The experience is great, I love it. Everything works fine… most of the time.
But, until Proton got a couple of updates, I was just unable to run Mafia. Until Proton got a couple of updates, Hogwart’s would crash randomly. Right now Cyberpunk runs fine… until it crashes during loading sometimes.
That’s the gaming experience of Linux.
All that for a +6.6 FPS average, and no GamePass.
You lose access to Windows store
Windows Store is irrelevant, you lose the XBox (App)-installed GamePass games, which means that you lose access to a tonne of XBox games.
New games pushing technology features will always lag slightly before they make it to Proton. It’s the nature of reverse engineering. On Kubuntu, on AMD, the only crashes I can name are for The Alters, which I knew from Proton DB ahead of time to expect some chop.
The gaming experience on Windows is to get interrupted by updates constantly, less gracefully handle sleep and resume, and sometimes lose control over the game window when popups come up such that you need to be rescued by a keyboard or the touch screen. Those aren’t just my experiences but also captured in the reviews for this very device. What you gain is compatibility with live service games with invasive anti-cheat and Game Pass. For some people that will be enough, but this isn’t even the first handheld gaming device to show a performance delta in Linux’s favor when tested. I don’t think many people are experiencing this stability problem you are, as it doesn’t reflect in many reviews, and a two year old forum post for a game running on technology that moves this fast doesn’t mean that it’s still happening.
The gaming experience on Windows is to get interrupted by updates constantly
gets updates literally on the same day every month with 14 days time before a forced update
complains about getting interrupted by constant updates
Sigh… I’m not even going to comment on this. Can’t fix fundamentalism.
but this isn’t even the first handheld gaming device to show a performance delta in Linux’s favor when tested
Because, overall, Windows 11 is badly optimised and MS already fired all the competent developers, so, yeah, it’s going to happen. But what Windows gives you, is the guarantee that if you have the hardware to handle a game, it will run. Any issues will be on the side of the game, not the OS.
I don’t think many people are experiencing this stability problem you are, as it doesn’t reflect in many reviews
That’s also part of the “Linux gaming experience” - with all the distros flying around, almost nobody will have the same exact experience. Sure, if everyone installs Bazzite on the Ally, it should be a relatively uniform experience, but - again - I fail to see the point in going through all this, losing the (apparently) excellent touch UI and a unified gaming library, just to get… 6 FPS extra. In one power mode.
Your source for stability issues in Hogwarts Legacy is a single user in the Steam community with other users in the same thread not having issues at all. Seeing that Hogwarts Legacy is one of the most played games on Deck (ranked 11th at time of writing ), I think many more people would report issues if crashes were common.
Furthermore, your TONNE of optional game stores is one. I can‘t really think of a game store, besides Microsoft’s, that doesn‘t work on Steam Deck.
These early performance comparisons definitely have limited value for comparing Windows/Linux performance on the device. But I’m sorry to say that your arguments have even less.
I think we should be careful touting linux as more preformant in games than windows because when people switch they wi find that isnt always the case. There are two situations where linux beats windows. CPU intensive games and on systems where the CPU is really bad and sometimes really bad dx12 games.
In every other case the preformance comes down to the gpu drivers which are undeniably better and more tuned on windows.
But this is not bad. I think its still very convincing to be able to say you can get away from windows and switch to linux barely losing any preformance and even in some cases gain it.
Pretty hilarious if after years of being the scourge of Linux and FOSS advocates, complaining how they could never leave Windows because they need it to play, gamers become our greatest allies, switching in droves to get more out of their hardware and games.
Really, this isn’t entirely new, I remember some games were known to run better on Wine than Windows years ago already (Soldier of Fortune comes to mind).
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