Linux Gaming
Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.
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For protondb always look at the latest reports for the game. The rating on there is a rolling average type thing i believe, so when the devs break compatibility, the ranking might not list it as "borked" yet even tho it is.
You can also log in with your steam account on there to get a quick overview of how many and which games are working well on linux.
I find that a number of my games don't say they're Linux compatible, but work just fine. But that's not what everyone says.
Pretty sure neither mint nor PopOS supports VRR natively, if that is important to you. HDR only works well on Bazzite in gaming mode in my experience. Bazzite is great. I highly recommend it.
The best resource for multiplayer games is https://areweanticheatyet.com/. Every game with nonworking anti cheat will be impossible to get working.
That’s a great resource, thanks!
It's at the point now where I just assume a game will work and am rarely disappointed.
Often the games that "don't work" still run just fine, but the developers that use anti-cheat will stop you from playing.
Older games are hit or miss. If we're talking Steam games prototondb.com is the single best resource. If we're talking GOG or games installed from CD-ROM or something it may be a bit harder to get working perfectly. Often GOG's remasters will work great minus controller support. I still can't get LEGO Island working :( Feel free to DM if you have questions. I'll try to help best I can.
What games will not be possible to use on Linux?
Most online games that have anticheat. (yes some work but most don't even if the anticheat could support linux.)
For example, will something like Escape from Tarkov work?
No
And is comparability with older games better or worse than W11?
YMMW. but often linux plays older windows games better than windows.
Most do work. Anything with EAC or Battleye (the huge majority) work as long as the devs have updated it recently really.
EfT runs (with some effort last I tried, most of the issues coming from the launcher I needed to run to install the game, not the game itself) but I think multiplayer probably doesn't work. I was trying to play the Single Player Tarkov mod last I played, and it was able to work.
My experience over the last few years of Linux gaming is: with Proton, it's mostly a matter of It Just Works™.
When it doesn't, switch to Experimental, and then usually it works.
Compatibility with older games is fantastic, too.
The exception to this are games which require kernel-level anti-cheat. This is a security nightmare on Windows as it is, and it simply doesn't work on Linux. Luckily, these games are few -- but they do tend to be big (e.g. Apex Legends).
Proton makes things super easy for the most part. I mostly only game on my PC and ended up distro hopping to bazzite. It's mostly setup for gaming out of the box and is atomic, updating similarly to a console. I've found it relatively hard to break and easy to reset.
As most have said here, it mostly boils down to anti cheat
The EFT devs have their heads very far up their asses when it comes to Linux. They specifically banned the platform and have deleted forum posts about the topic. Fuck em, there are better games in the genre by this point (Hunt Showdown runs great on Linux for example...)
EFT and Hunt are two very different games.
Luckily I rarely play EFT anymore since I don’t have time to grind PvP. PvE is kinda stale anyways. I thought they tried to get their anti cheat to work in Linux a while back. But BSG is BSG I guess 😂
Look into Day-Z or Stalker—they both run on Linux and might scratch that Tarkov itch. There's also a top down pixel art Tarkov lite called Zero Sievert. All of which run on Linux. Good luck!
Others have listed ProtonDB, which is an absolute necessity. Tweaking Proton versions and the like can be tricky but not too bad, especially if you're used to using a PC.
There are also tools like Lutris and Heroic Games Launcher for third-party titles and further Proton support.
Oh, and there are also community-made custom Proton versions, such as ProtonGE, which can help if a game is giving you a lot of trouble.
Nice thing about having a dual boot setup is that you can play most of your games on Linux, and then just boot into Windows to play live service games with kernel anticheat. Best of both worlds!
ProtonDB is a popular site for checking how well a game runs on Linux systems. Users upload reviews that rate the level of support along with their system specs.
I switched to Pop!_OS and I've rarely run into issues with games. Games with anti-cheat typically won't work. It seems like Escape from Tarkov doesn't work. It uses Battleye which requires special configuration to work on Linux and it seems the devs don't care to do that. Other games that use Battleye work fine.
To be clear, at this point BattleEye requires no effort from the devs to get working on Linux. On the contrary, the EFT devs have gone out of their way to ensure it does not run on Linux, and have deleted forum posts requesting a change in this policy.
I'm no good for compatibility layer help, but for an open source Lightroom alternative, I really like darktable.
It’s been a while since I tried it. I’ll give it a go.
I need the catalogue part of LR too, not just the editing.
You have plenty of good information regarding gaming already so as far as Adobe Lightroom goes, try Darktable. It's a FOSS alternative and very nice software
Tried it but it did didn’t land with me to be honest. It’s been a year since I tried like 10 different programs
I mostly play single player indie games, but still. The amount of games that I can't play on Linux can be counted on one hand (sadly on of them EFT). Older games generally work great, very old games can be a bit cranky. I would roughly compare the compatability to windows 7 regarding old games.
In my opinion linux runs old windows games better than windows itself. When I was on XP I used to play games like Starcraft and Lemmings Revolution which absolutely refused to work on Windows 10 after I switched, even in compatability mode. Later when I switched to linux, they worked great with Lutris with very few issues. Linux is great for older games. For newer games, Steam has most bases covered and worked ootb.
Yep... Every now and then I'll come across a really old game in my library that Steam says is "unsupported" and I'll take it as a challenge to see how long it takes for me to get it running.
Usually takes like 5 minutes lol. Proton is legit incredible.
Old games are significantly easier to run.
I look up old games I want to play and see just complaints about how hard it is to run it, links to defunct forums where someone has once posted a modded .exe to improve stability in post-NT systems, etc.
Often when I run those using wine the game just starts up.
I very recently made a shift similar to yours, though I don't play anything MMO. I've been playing Minecraft (finally moved to Java) and Starfield, and both work perfectly well on Bazzite Desktop. I keep Windows for my CAD app and some other little garbage apps.
Between Steam and Heroic, most Windows games seem to install fine, though I haven't dived into many of them really. Because of Valve funding Proton development, gaming has gone from a huge liability for Linux to a significant strength.
Performance Is about on par with windows for everything dx9 to dx12. Dx8 and earlier I think are not supported by wine.
In general you will be able to play almost all games, as long as they don't require kernel level anti cheat, but some online games do block Linux users. In the case of tarkov I can't help, you should read online.
Older games should be fine, personally I played Max Payne 1 an 2 a couple month ago, and the original Hitman series runs better than on windows.
Expect to do some tinkering on some more advanced games. E.g.: Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Alan Wake 2 require the experimental version of proton, God of War Ragnarok requires to enable SteamDeckMode on a config file to disable PlayStationSDK, usually you will find suggestions on protondb.
Some Nvidia proprietary things will not work in games on wine, e.g.: GPU accelerated physix will not work, also on some games dlss will require editing wine's registry.