Linux Gaming

Eh... advantages = VERY lightweight, user control does exist, no bloatware.

Drawbacks = some games won't work and/or require some turbonerd tweaking in order to work

Thats pretty much it.

More drawbacks I can think of

• VR gaming is a much worse experience due to neglected linux drivers and SteamVR linux version
• Discord screen sharing is in a bad state still
• Variable refresh rate realistically requires wayland on a multi-monitor setup which comes with its own caveats

Despite these I think if you get a setup that works for you the experience will be better on Linux.

For distros I've always been of the opinion that Arch-based is the best choice for people switching due to the vastness of the AUR; for that I can recommend EndeavourOS.

As far as I know Rockstar's luncher just works fine in Proton, no issues there.

DRM is not a problem anymore unless you pirate (anti-DRM modifications can break in Wine), but it is anti-cheats systems. Some games like Call of Duty Warzone, FIFa 23 and Destiny 2 don't work because of it. (The last two only because they are programmed to not work on Linux voluntarely, Destiny 2 will ban every Steam account that connect via Proton)

Most devices work out of the box now, tinkering has reduced by a lot especially with easier distros.

What finally drove me back to windows: some games just will not work all the time:

Especially the riot games (which I mainly play) are not made for Linux. Valorant doestn run at all (correct me if this changed) because of the anti cheat.

League will only run when the chads from the internet have written a working lutris script.

While the anti cheat of valorant needs kernel privileges and this is clearly some fckd up shit on riots side and not at all Linux fault, the result still is the same: it doesn't work.

Same goes for lutris league. While riot not supporting linux is clearly their fault and the people who provide the lutris whine scripts for free for everyone are the real MVPs, the result is a disadvantage in usabilitiy compared to windows. Sometimes it takes time for the community to come up with solutions to changes in the game, sometimes the installer scripts don't work at all because of some quirk with your specific distro/ your installed packages/your monitor format/etc.pp. Sure you could configure wine yourself, but you need an computer science degree for that which I don't have.

Firstly disclaimer, instance url. In my limited experience (on various flavours of Arch, including vanilla), most steam games I've tried have worked with minimal tweaking. FF XIV (running outside of steam) also runs with only minimal hickups (occasionally stays on a black screen and has to be restarted on my system).

I've had no issues so far from nvidia's proprietary drivers, I've yet to try the open source alternative.

At the end of the day, how much of a hassle it is, depends entirely on the games you intend to play. For me, I ended up setting up a windows VM with GPU passthrough for the more stubborn games, though so far I've only needed it for one.

TL;DR: YMMV, but it's far better than even a few years ago.

As others have mentioned, many multiplayer games have anti-cheat, which is more likely not to work in Proton than it is. This area may continue to improve. See http://areweanticheatyet.com

Personally, I play a lot of Japanese visual novels, which usually aren't released on Steam. Games encumbered with PlayDRM from DLsite will work in Wine, but all games from DMM are encumbered with DRM that doesn't work in Wine. Wine is a compatibility layer for Windows games that makes them work on GNU/Linux, in case you weren't aware.

On the other hand, many physical releases of visual novels aren't encumbered with DRM, so they work fine in Wine. AlphaROM can be worked around by inputting your serial key into the SETTEC website. More information here: https://wiki.comfysnug.space/doku.php?id=visualnovel:problems#drm_and_region_restrictions

Newer games might not be optimized for Linux in the first place

This is usually not true. There aren't many native GNU/Linux games today; most of them are played using Proton, Steam's compatibility layer for Windows games. There is no inherent penalty in translating Direct3D calls to Vulkan calls. Vulkan has the potential to be faster than Direct3D, actually. Native games may not be as optimized as the Windows counterpart, but as most of these are small indie games, performance is usually not an issue anyway.

And finally, let’s say I make the switch. What Linux distro should I use?

It's a good idea to use a rolling release distribution. This is mostly to get the latest drivers; Steam and Lutris both ship a runtime with most of the dependencies you need to play games otherwise, though installing Wine on Ubuntu and Debian is harder, for example. Fedora and openSUSE are good choices. openSUSE in particular has robust graphical tools for package management and other activities which other distributions might force you to use the command line for.

I think a rolling release distribution is a good choice for a general desktop anyway. You're running the latest software, which means the latest bug fixes and security fixes.

You can't run certain foreign porn games.

I think the biggest challenge is anti-cheat. I don't know if there is any solution instead of waiting for native release (like Dota2 and CSGO). Also, although I don't like Microsoft GamePass, lacking the support of it means we may need to pay extra to try various games.

I think Wine/Proton works really great nowadays (well I've repeated it at different places). As 2023-07-28, ProtonDB shows that in the top 1000 games, 75% are rated gold or better.

When it comes to distro, I think most popular ones are good enough if they meet to conditions (1) packages are not too out-dated (2) Not difficult to install some non-free dependencies (like rpmfusion)

I'm pretty sure the BattleNet client (Blizzard client) works. I've played Overwatch on Linux before. Not sure about the other launchers but if its a Steam game, generally launchers aren't a big deal? Anti-cheat is usually the problem (e.g. Valorant).

I use NVIDIA on Linux and it's really not bad at all. I have zero issues with it and I'm likely to stick with NVIDIA for production reasons (sorry AMD).

Some new games worked surprisingly well on Linux like Elden Ring after they fixed the anticheat issue. I heard it ran better than on Windows because of DXVK or something.

I'm going to suggest Linux Mint as a beginner distro. Maybe Arch/EndeavourOS but only because I think the AUR makes life so much easier.

A lot of the game launchers you mentioned work really well through an app called bottles (you can get this on flathub or the aur) this works really well as they have one click deployments of battle.net etc. You can also add your own executables if you have a game that doesn’t use a launcher or you’ve got a drm free game from GOG for example.

Arch Linux and its derivatives (EndeavourOS, Garuda etc) will have the latest drivers which will help boost performance. These tend to be harder to use than most though as there’s less online guides for them compared to Ubuntu and its derivatives and they require more time in the terminal.

PopOS (ignoring the bug that ltt came across) is a really user friendly distro that a lot of people use and they have an nvidia iso you can download so you don’t have to download drivers yourself.

Another distro worth mentioning is nobara linux. This is made by gloriousEggRoll and is based on Fedora. This has had a lot of gaming related patches applied to it and will have the GE versions of proton installed by default.

Speaking of protonup-qt is a really good app for managing the GE versions of proton that tend to work better than the official steam versions. This can be installed through flathub or is available on most distros

There will still be some games that straight up don’t work due to drm like rainbow six siege (as far as i know). ProtonDB has a really extensive list of games that do and don’t work on linux from the steam store. And for non-steam games lutris has a rating of how well games work.

Also for games made for windows performance will always be worse on linux than windows. Especially when running through wine/proton. The performance isn't a massive difference but if you're someone who's really into maximising framerates you might suffer a bit.

Another caveat is that although raytracing does work on linux native games like doom eternal, currently raytracing does not work on windows games running through proton/wine.

A big one for me and the main reason I haven't started using Linux full time, and I'm sure it's in your points but not called out directly but anti cheat support is terrible on Linux. I own a steam deck and I used to play Fortnite with my wife and her brothers and it can technically run it (it worked on windows and install), and even if you use proton to run the windows version, I've heard their anticheat can straight up ban you because "Linux isn't a supported os at this time". It's not that their anticheat doesn't work on Linux or is missing a proton extension, but solely epic doesn't want to so they aren't supporting it. This is fairly common with big multiplayer games, like Fortnite, halo, call of duty, battlefield, and alot of others. It's a pain since proton is built as a "use at your own risk, may not work 100% but it works atleast" and some companies actively refuse to allow that. The only way I've been able to play any of those games is by either cloud gaming or in home streaming which isn't available sometimes. So until Linux doesn't have that limitation in gaming, where alot of major triple A titles actively refuse to work solely cause it's Linux, I can't switch my personal PC to Linux as I already got my steam deck for Linux gaming, and my windows desktop as a backup.

@hydroel Two biggest drawbacks are certain games with anti-cheat not running (however some do), and peripheral support (my Thrustmaster racing wheel doesn't get force feedback).

Some games (Like Factorio) have a better native Linux version than the Native Windows version.

I use Arch Linux, but wouldn't recommend it to a novice. If you're only gaming ChimeraOS is a good place to start. If you're really new to Linux and scared to break things, an immutable OS like Vanilla may be better suited.

I know you dissed cloud gaming, but Xbox cloud gaming has actually worked fairly well for me personally on my steam deck, and for the most part (after some config), runs nearly as good as inhome streaming, which 99% of the time I can't even tell isn't running on device. I've also messed with Nvidia gforcenow and Amazon luma and those could fill a pretty big Linux compatibility gap if I solely gamed on Linux (probably using a controller or steam deck due to xcloud gaming not supporting mouse or keyboard input yet but it's progress). I even figured some interesting things you can do with steam regarding that, in addition to Microsoft's instructions on adding xcloud gaming to steam deck, like setting up different launch options to handle different users under different Microsoft accounts, directly linking a game (having a non steam game called Fortnite with a custom icon that launches xcloud gaming 's url for that game and boots right into it) and some others to make it more enjoyable but just like everything on Linux you gotta tinker with it. The "no native gamepass" is a big deal to me lately, it's actually a pretty nice service and I remember seeing posts a few years ago talking about windows store format version of proton which would allow gamepass to run natively on Linux but I think we're still awhile form that happening.

EA Launcher, Ubisoft and Battlenet work fine with Lutris.

I wouldn't install a kernel level "anti-cheat" crap on a Windows machine anyway, no loss here.

Also having zero issues using NVIDIA, works great. Distro wise it comes down to personal preferences and tastes. I second Mint for easy use, but I'm hearing that other distros like Nobara and PopOS also work great for gaming.

Some of the cooler stuff is seen in the steam deck with stuff like global fsr (as compared to game built-in support) and gamescope to let you mess with resolutions for games that might not normally support those resolution changes.

The distro I use to play is Nobara. It's noob friendly and is ready to game as soon as you install it.