Linux Gaming

There's never a bad time to switch to Linux! The best time may have already passed, but the second best time is now!

I believe your last Linux experience in 2015 predates DXVK which has been transformative for Linux gaming. Wine used to have to implement its own DirectX replacement which necessarily lagged behind Microsoft's implementation, and IIUC didn't get the same level of hardware acceleration due to missing out on DirectX acceleration built into graphics cards.

Now DXVK acts as a compatibility bridge between DirectX and Vulkan. Vulkan is cross-platform, does generally the same stuff that DirectX does, and graphics cards have hardware acceleration for Vulkan calls the same way they do for DirectX calls. So game performance on Linux typically meets or exceeds performance on Windows, and you can play games using the latest DirectX version without waiting for some poor dev to reimplement it.

If you are using Steam with Proton, Lutris, or really any Wine gaming these days you are using DXVK. It's easy to take for granted. But I remember the night-and-day difference it made.

Once you get it set up, all the anxiety goes away.

Back your shit up, and do it. Games that can't be played on Linux at all are decreasing. A dual boot setup solves that problem entirely.

Yeah, proton can take a bit to get set up and running, but there's plenty of help for it out there with a search. And, again, you'll still have the dual boot option. Linux really does cut down on the bullshit.

Check https://www.protondb.com/ for the games you play. If some doesn't work, ask yourself if you can live without them.

I've been full time Linux for quite a few years now, but I do have a dual boot mainly for VR. Other than that there haven't been many games that I want to play that don't work with Linux.

I switched last year and kind of was in a similar spot to you - I had tried to switch in the past but something didn't work so I went back to windows. But that last attempt has stuck. So I'd just do it. Proton is in an amazing state, old games and even most new singleplayer games will work - some modern multiplayer games with anticheat even work. I'd just check your library on protondb (you can sign in to see your library), see what doesn't work, if you care about it, or if there are workarounds.

What I also did is make a list of stuff that doesn't work and then find alternatives or workarounds. If some games don't work, you can hold off on switching, check protondb occasionally and see if something changes. But if it's all good, I'd just make the jump.

Proton works very well for me. I don't play any games that use anti cheat though.
A lot of games that use anti cheat middleware don't work, but I've heard support is improving.
I use Debian Testing. I recommend using Testing as well if you want to use Debian, or at least a custom kernel like xanmod to get newer drivers.

It's a great time to game on linux. I my personally use arch and everything works fine for the games I play be it with steam and lutris. I also have an nvidia 3080 and it works fine.

I recommend pop! Os for your first distro. It's a very good distro that is newb friendly and it's ready to go from the first boot.

It's a perfect time to get your toes wet and there's plenty of places to get help when your stuck. The popos subreddit is full of people with the knowledge to help and most important here at lemmy.

IMHO it depends on what kind of gaming you do. For me, I play all the big tentpole AAA games on console. My PC gaming is mostly indy stuff and things that suck on console like 4x strategy games. For my uses, gaming on linux has been... surprisingly good.

I would definitely recommend trying it out with dual boot.

Just lower your expectations and dive in. Unless there is a specific game that you REALLY want to play... then search if (your most wanted game) 100% works on linux and then do it.

All in all, its just a matter of not expecting much and be willing to ditch some things here and there. Get used to "do it yourself" and you'll be fine.

It is the year of the linux desktop!

Been running Arch exclusively on my gaming rig for 3 months, now, with no issue. Thanks to Proton, the only blocker is games that use anti-cheat solutions that don't work properly. Everything that's relied on VAC or EAC work fine, though.

This is my third attempt at making this move on my gaming rig. The first try was back in 2016. The second was in 2018. This time, I think I'm here to stay. The Steam Deck's success was the final ingredient.

I would ask myself "What are the games I play and how important is it to be able to play the latest AAA games when they come out?"

Proton is doing a wonderful job with compatibility, but it will likely always be behind by a bit.

If gaming is your primary focus and you play a lot of new games when they first come out, dual booting might be the best option.

On the other hand, if you are more patient and don't have to play things on release day or just like going through the catalogue of older good games, you can probably get away with a full switch.

Personally, I'm in a more privileged scenario. I have a laptop with Linux and a desktop with Windows for gaming. I do most of my gaming on the steam deck, PS5, or switch but any first person or games that benefit from good reaction time with a mouse get played on my desktop. Some of my games just won't work on proton because they are too intensive to run through emulation or just in too early a state to consider trying.

With all of that, if I could only have one machine it would likely be running Windows in some capacity.

I recommend you evaluate that question for yourself and go look at ProtonDB to figure out what state you'll be in.

iv moved to linux for over a year now when proton started getting rlly good and iv enjoyed it so much i started a small youtube channel lmao. software has gotten rlly good aswell in the foss universe with package managers like flatpak and some amazing gtk4 apps

gaming on linux is a breeze and with valve making more deals to get companies to support proton for linux/steamdeck

its going to continue to get better and better until windows will not be required anymore

A lot has changed since 2015 thanks to Proton. However, it's not a magic pill. Some tinkering might be required, with how much and how often depends on what you play. So just give it a try and see it for yourself, dual boot is a viable option. Pick some user-friendly distro that handles Windows detection and offers easy video drivers installation. Are you sure that Debian is that distro given your struggles with Arch Linux? I'm not that familiar with it myself, I thought that Debian comes in a relatively raw state.

@mouse
Im using manjaro for 2 years now.
Didn't do any special to it.
Just steam, libre office and some smaller apps.
No problems so far.

Might as well. I'm a linux guy, running various distros on a few machines, depending on the machines function. My gaming laptop runs Linux Mint, and I find that to be a pretty good choice. Almost everything works out of the box (I just had to install a newer kernel to make the newest nvidia driver work, as my GPU is pretty new as well).

I have a Win10 install, but I haven't used it in ages. Everything I play plays just fine in Linux.

If you dual boot on separate drives it should be fine to use grub or systemd boot (or sth else), most Linux bootloaders can detect Windows installations and boot them. On the same drive it is fine as well, but windows tends to overwrite the bootloader with updates (which would be the same even when not booting Windows from the "Linux" bootloader).

As you said, just do it and try it out. In my experience basically any game runs on Linux these days, with some exceptions, most of them caused by anti cheat (like Fortnite, valorant and some others)

I would say yes. I wanted my desktop to run linux in 2015, but the gaming situation was the biggest hurdle. I had been running linux on my laptop since ~2013, but I was constantly trying new games and couldn't tell friends "sorry, I can't run that, we have to pick something else". These days, 99% of everything I want to play runs fine using proton on arch. There are occasional times that I need to try a different build of proton, or suffer a bit of pipeline compilation, but that's about it. I don't do a lot of modern competitive games though, so anti-cheat might be a deal breaker for you. I've been able to do some EAC games without issue though (ex. Hunt: Showdown runs fine).

Heck yeah man get in there and get linuxin. I been in the Ubuntu for a year now and it’s great stuff.

To answer the title of this post... Yes, yes it is.

I've been trying Linux since before Ubuntu existed. I switched this year to Crystal Linux (arch based), to make it short: I'm not going back to Windows ever again.

It all just works. There's minimal tweaking.

To provide a different perspective to everyone else, I would say that it's not the right time if you want everything to "just work".

I tried out Ubuntu 22.04 just a couple of months ago, and only one game of the several I tried "just worked". Everything else either didn't work at all, or required hours of searching and troubleshooting and problem solving, with mixed success. And I'm not a technophobe, I'm a software developer with experience in system support.

People keep saying there's lots of guides out there for most things, and that's true. But that doesn't necessarily mean the guide will work for you. I tried multiple "guides" to get my games working and most of them didn't help. Either they were too old, or there was a step that I couldn't complete, or I completed the guide and there was an error that isn't mentioned in the guide. Or any number of other problems.

Regardless of what people say, it may not be as simple as "switch to Proton and install Lutris". In the end I just got frustrated with having to work so hard to get my own computer to do the things I wanted it to do, and so I reverted back to Windows and had all my software working as expected within a couple of hours.