TL;DR; tried gaming on Linux again after not having done so for ~10 years and am absolutely blown away by how much improved it is

Today I decided to get some use out of an older/leftover PC that I had laying around after upgrading. My plan was to plug it into the TV in our lounge room so that my 5 year old can play some of the less demanding games she enjoys from my steam library (stuff like Slime Rancher 2).

Originally my plan was to install Windows on it only to discover I couldn’t do this due to TPM / secureboot requirements that the older hardware couldn’t handle, this was infuriating and felt like I couldn’t use my own machine which used to run Windows fine.

To understand where I’m coming from; I’ve been a Linux user on and off for more than a decade and in the past had been able to play some games using Wine but it was often fiddly or simply wouldn’t run the game well enough which is why I generally just dual boot Windows for gaming.

I decided to give Linux a try as I’d heard steam has made gaming on Linux much more approachable than it once was using a proton compatibility layer (which under the hood uses Wine but making it a bit easier to use).

After installing Ubuntu 23, Steam and then enabling the proton compatibility in Steam settings I am absolutely amazed at how easy it was to get most games working!. My daughter has been playing Slime Rancher 2 and it works really well and I’ve also tested a few other games such as Cult of the Lamb and Dredge and they also worked well. This is such a leap forward to how I remember the state of things back ~10 years ago when I last played games on Linux.

From recent developments it seems like gaming on Linux is really beginning to pick up momentum and I look forward to the day game publishers place great import on releasing native Linux ports but until then am super grateful for the work the good people at Wine have been doing as well as Proton and Steam for making it easier to use.

  • Dave
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    131 year ago

    It’s crazy. I’ve tried 100s of games on my Steamdeck, and I can’t think of a single example where one straight up failed to run. The most I’ve had to do is change the Proton version after a bit of Googling. Best of all, it doesn’t feel compromised - it feels like you’re running natively.

    (I should say, I don’t do much online gaming, so I haven’t been thwarted by anti-cheat)

    I realised the other day how ubiquitous Linux has become in my life. I have a Steamdeck, I run Mint on my laptop. I have numerous Pis around the house doing various things. For emulation I have a MiSTerFPGA and a Miyoo Mini Plus. My arcade cab runs RetroPie. It all just kind of sneaked up on me…

    • @Heels
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      51 year ago

      I’ve only had issues with EA’s launcher, every time it updates and sometimes just because it feels like it, it doesn’t load the game. I squarely put that blame on EA though and not proton. Besides that it’s pure witchcraft.

      • @[email protected]
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        41 year ago

        Yeah the whole EA App thing is so frustrating. When it was still Origin I had issues here and there but nowadays if I don’t play Battlefield 4 for a while it just won’t launch until I reinstall the EA App smh