this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

It's been a hot minute since I've used a linux distro for personal use, but I've got a laptop that probably needs to move over. That being said, I would still LIKE to play some windows exclusive games on that machine. Is wine still the go to for fudging compatibility? How good is it? Will I be able to download windows only steam games with relatively low effort for such uses?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Proton / wine is modern day magic

Most Windows only steam games work out of the box (you do have to enable it in the right click menu > Compatibility options, per game)

Games that use Anti-cheat aren't likely to work (it depends on the Anti-cheat used and how it's configured)

ProtonDB is a good resource for checking if/which games work, or fixes and workarounds


You can use proton or wine on non steam games, but that requires additional setup that I'm not familiar with

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My personal experience gaming solely on Linux for about two years is a 100% success rate running Windows games. Mind you I don't play anything that has anti-cheat. And maybe 85%-90% without needing to fiddle with anything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

Depends entirely on your games list.

If you only play indies and singleplayer, it will probably work out.

If you play AAA and competitive multiplayer, not so much.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

I moved from windows to ubuntu a few months ago. My entire steam library works when I do this. The only games I've heard don't work are LoL and CoD. Maybe a few more?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Okay dank I had no awareness of proton, this is very encouraging! Thanks!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago

Linux gamer here. Can confirm: both Proton and ProtonDB are wonderful.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago

There's also Lutris, https://lutris.net/, which uses wine and other software underneath, but with a nice GUI and a lot of scripts to further make playing your games on Linux easier.