this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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Linux Gaming

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I was a long time Windows user, starting with XP. I only tried Linux a few years ago, and while I loved it, at the time I had to dual boot for a couple specific Windows only things (VR and flight/racing sim hardware).

A couple months ago though, I got sick of it. I figured if I really wanted to do those things, I could boot up a VM, or just force myself to be patient and wait for a proper Linux solution. So, I wiped all my drives and installed Arch. Around this time, I also got an AMD RX 7600XT, so that was a nice performance boost, plus it waranted a switch to Wayland.

Let me tell you, I have been so pleasantly surprised by basically everything I've tried. Cyberpunk 2077 through Heroic Launcher, for example, with 15 odd mods. Runs at a solid 80fps at 1440p on high settings, the only graphical issue I noticed was flickering volumetric clouds. This game ate my old card (the venerable GTX 1080) alive even on Windows.

Just last night, I found my joystick, an old VKB Gladiator + Kosmosima grip, plugged it in and it worked perfectly.

What has really, really impressed me though is VR. I have a Quest 2 that I used to use via Steam link to play my PC wirelessly. Obviously that isn't an option on Linux (yet) but that's where ALVR comes in. Sideload the client on the quest, run the streamer on the desktop, start SteamVR, and bam, it works. The first game I tried was Elite Dangerous, one of my all time favourite games and easily my favourite VR epxerience. Now, I won't go ahead and claim it's perfect, hence the 99% in the title. After fiddling with the settings and making sure I had hardware encoding/decoding set up right, I had very good clarity, up to 120hz refresh rate, but occasional blockiness and artifacting, especially in heavier graphical scenes, like during docking. However, out in open space, it felt just like the ED I know and love.

At this point, I'm just going to look at fiddling with some settings and hopefully smoothing out the stream, but the fact that I can play my favourite games, with my favourite hardware, with great performance and in VR, and the amount of setup is really comparable to what it is on Windows is just kind of wrinkling my brain. Plus, only a couple months ago, this wasn't the case. Support for things that were once doomed to be dual boot material for the foreseeable future is coming along rapidly. This is a great time to be a Linux gamer.

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[–] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, a lot of expectations people have around Linux are about a decade old. I think Linux has really improved a lot in the area of gaming over the last few years even.

And as long as Linux keeps being worth supporting I think we'll see more and more games targeted toward linux.

[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

And as long as Linux keeps being worth supporting I think we'll see more and more games targeted toward linux.

Valve has cemented this now, their efforts are what has made gaming on Linux viable for anyone.

[–] bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

I agree. The steam deck has been a godsend for Linux gaming.

[–] imecth@fedia.io 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Gaming on linux is a decades old ongoing effort, there's plenty of praise to go around, vulkan and winehq, dxvk...

[–] 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Only game I know for sure I could install on a toaster and would run at 300fps.

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[–] hperrin@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I switched from Windows to Linux during the whole Vista debacle back in 2008. For basically ten years I was out of the PC gaming scene. I fucking love Proton and what’s its done for Linux as a gaming platform. Now I play (almost) everything on Linux, no sweat. The only things I ever need my Windows partition for anymore are things with those shitty anticheat platforms that just assume you’re a cheater if you use Linux. Cause, you know, Linux scary.

[–] KrokanteBamischijf@feddit.nl 6 points 1 year ago (18 children)

those shitty anticheat platforms that just assume you’re a cheater if you use Linux. Cause, you know, Linux scary.

To be fair, the people at the cutting edge of modern computing are statistically very likely to be Linux users. Therefore it's not entirely unreasonable to have some prejudice against Linux users.

But as a sweeping measure these anti-cheat measures are absolutely unacceptable. The only other explanation is that they just don't want to bother with the market share still being low compared to Windows.

Personally, if a game requires anti-cheat, it's probably not a game I'd enjoy playing. Not a big fan of competitive gameplay. But for those that are, this needs to stop. Especially with all the new bullshit Microsoft has been pulling in Windows lately.

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

To be fair, the people at the cutting edge of modern computing are statistically very likely to be Linux users. Therefore it’s not entirely unreasonable to have some prejudice against Linux users.

Can we drop this "linux is hackerman territory for cheats" stereotype?

Most people cheat on windows. Not cause they are technical or knowledgable.. but because they have a credit card

cause they buy cheats designed for windows.

The overwhelming majority of people out there cheating are cheating using tools they bought and use on windows.

So if anything, its Windows that should be treated as the pariah dog of hackers. Cause its where the credit swiping script kiddies are.

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[–] RayOfSunlight@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Windows XP and 7 got a special place on my heart, but once i get a PC, I'm moving to Linux Mint

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[–] UNY0N@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just FYI, bazzite is amazing. It's made for gaming, and it. Just. Works.

https://bazzite.gg/

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[–] PlasticExistence@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

the fact that I can play my favourite games, with my favourite hardware ... is just kind of wrinkling my brain.

You're finally streets ahead

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[–] cholesterol@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

If AMD wasn't already cheering to Valve, they have to be at this point

[–] PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

All it's missing from me are anti-cheat games and Adobe products.

[–] Zetta@mander.xyz 14 points 1 year ago

I'm so sorry you rely on adobe products, that's horrible

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Anti-cheat: shame, but I don't play them anyways.

Adobe products: I guess it sucks for corporate zombies, but again not giving money to adobe makes me proud.

[–] PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Who said anything about giving money to Adobe? Yarg.

As a graphic designer, you don't really have much of a choice, unless you're independent.

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

As a graphic designer, you don’t really have much of a choice

I'm sorry for your suffering.

[–] Kory@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

Many games with anti-cheat work, a comprehensive list can be found here: https://areweanticheatyet.com/

Anyway, I wouldn't install a rootkit "anti-cheat" on a Windows machine under any circumstances, but that's just me.

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[–] xyguy@startrek.website 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I finally have Windows banished to a VM, only to be awoken for the 3 times a year I need a desktop version of PowerPoint.

I'm with you. 99% of the way there.

[–] Rustmilian@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Have you considered any of the PowerPoint alternatives?

[–] jimmy90@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

i only switched over quite recently (a few years ago)

i swear there has been significant improvements in wifi, bluetooth, gpu support, gaming over the last 10 years that made me think it was now good enough

also there was areas where linux was outdoing windows for quite some time; system wide audio equalizer, customization generally, home services and self hosting, development tools

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[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I was a long time Windows user, starting with XP.

Kind of the same here, except it ended with XP, I never switched to Vista. I started using Windows already with Windows 3.0 in 1991. I've been using Linux since 2005, because Ubuntu lifted the Linux experience enough to become my main OS.

Back then games were a huge problem, I'm glad to hear it works so well for you. 👍 😀

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[–] russjr08@bitforged.space 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hey OP, could you give a brief rundown on what settings you're using for ALVR? I was gifted a Quest 2 and would love to get it running on Linux. I got the ALVR app sideloaded on the Quest, but the performance seems to be atrocious. I also haven't been able to get the audio routed to the headset properly, not sure if that's something you got working either - if so I'd love to know the secret sauce for that one too!

[–] bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

I left most things default. When I first set it up I played with all the settings and made everything worse lol.

I can tell you that I set the resolution to the highest setting, the refresh rate to 120hz and the bitrate to the quality settings. Everything else, I left default. I found that this resulted in the best clarity while not really making the artifacting/lag any worse. I'm still playing with it though.

If you have the option in SteamVR's game specific settings to enable "Legacy motion smoothing", apparently that improves things noticably. For some reason motion smoothing is completely unavailable to me though so I can't personally attest.

I've heard audio was an issue, but in my case (Arch plus KDE6), it was as simple as picking my audio output in the system tray dropdown. I could stream it to my headset or send it out of my headphones I have plugged in.

Edit: I'm gonna link this becaust I found it while looking into why motion smoothing was unavailable. Apparently disabling async reprojection via a config file can give a noticable performance boost. I've yet to try it but I'll add another edit when I'm back at my rig long enough to test it out.

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[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Interesting that ALVR works on Wayland. Because regular SteamVR seems to be borked on Wayland ever since the SteamVR 2.0 update :(

[–] Rustmilian@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Valve did say that they'd be improving SteamVR on Linux quite a while ago, it's just going to take awhile because it not their main priority atm.

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[–] wax@feddit.nu 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Many hardware manufacturers unfortunately require windows for firmware updates. Fwupd isn't nearly used enough unfortunately

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Most (all?) motherboard vendors have a separate download you can put on a USB to load directly. Other hardware may have something similar.

[–] wax@feddit.nu 2 points 1 year ago

Indeed, motherboards are usually ok. I've had to switch to windows for SSDs a few times, as well as a monitor and various peripherals

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[–] toucheatout@aleph.land 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@bigmclargehuge it's pretty impressive how far along Linux has come. I also feel things mostly just working these days. I am facing some issue with a fingerprint reader on my laptop not being supported, but there are definitely fully compatible fp readers out there, even from the same manufacturer. And there's general stability, at least as good as on windows and I do say that while tinkering quite a bit.

And for many things AI related, like running models locally, this is almost a Linux first experience. Just the recently was I impressed how easy it was to get local llms to run using ollama, even on my laptop with an Nvidia GPU. Impressive.

[–] Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi 2 points 1 year ago

I tried LM Studio since AMD advertised it for their GPUs. Once ROCm was installed my GPU was detected and I could use LLMs on that rather than on the CPU. I struggled to get it to work on Windows even when LM Studio was trying to do everything to get it to work.

[–] Talaraine@fedia.io 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I just wish someone could have a walkthrough guide on how to get the games (and launchers) to work for me like they do for you. Every time something jams up and I have to reinstall until I shrug and put windows back on.

[–] bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Trial and error, lots of reading ProtonDB, wikis, etc. I only just recently got a decent handle on how to properly use wine prefixes to get mods and things working.

In general, use Steam when you can, then use Heroic for non Steam games. Lutris is very powerful and super useful for games that aren't installed from a larger distributor, ie from a CD or direct from the devs, but I find the UI can be a bit spartan. Steam and Heroic have fewer features but are way more user friendly.

Good luck. It can definitely be frustrating but remember that you have access to tons of resources and an excellent community if you encounter issues.

[–] Mesophar@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

ProtonDB usually has pretty good information on launcher settings for games. I've found several good walkthroughs on game forums, as well, like on Steam community forums or the game's own website.

What games are giving you trouble and where are you looking for walkthroughs? And what are you looking for in the walkthrough?

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[–] Secret300@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Glad ALVR worked for you on Wayland. It never did for me but it's been a while. All Linux needs next is support from Adobe and AutoCAD and it'll be 100% for most people

[–] spicystraw@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am in a similar situation, I use quest 2 a lot to drive in assetto corsa. I have a Thrustmaster TS 300 PC, I don't think there are any Linux drivers for that base.

[–] bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Oversteer should be what you need. Just take note that you need an extra driver module for the T300RS.

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