this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
459 points (96.7% liked)

Linux Gaming

19739 readers
889 users here now

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.

This page can be subscribed to via RSS.

Original /r/linux_gaming pengwing by uoou.

No memes/shitposts/low-effort posts, please.

Resources

WWW:

Discord:

IRC:

Matrix:

Telegram:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Nobara OS, Arch Linux and Pop!_OS beat Windows 11 by a slim margin in fps (delta 8) in Windows native games - Cyberpunk 2077, Forspoken, Starfield and The Talos Principle II. Windows 11 wins in Rachet & Clank.

ComputerBase's testing was done on an all-AMD test rig, featuring a Ryzen 7 5800X (non-3D) and a Radeon RX 6700 XT.

Update: Windows 11 wins in one game.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Carol2852@discuss.tchncs.de 76 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Soooo when did Arch become a gaming focused OS?

[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 87 points 2 years ago (8 children)
[–] BaroqueInMind@kbin.social 9 points 2 years ago

Pretty much this.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 68 points 2 years ago (6 children)

Is arch really gaming focused though?

[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 19 points 2 years ago (1 children)

SteamOS is based on Arch, likely why they picked it.

That's like saying PlayStation 5 and Switch are based on FreeBSD, so you should game on FreeBSD (well, not quite, but hopefully the point is clear). FreeBSD isn't good for gaming, it's just liberally licensed and easy to build on top of, hence why it's used.

Valve has reasons to use an Arch base, and none of them have anything to do with any specific benefit regarding gaming. It's easy to fork and maintain customized build files for since it makes so few assumptions (packages are as vanilla as possible in Arch, so it's easier to maintain a patch set).

Valve likely has patches in SteamOS that haven't made it to upstream Arch, and there's likely a number of packages that are quite outdated vs upstream Arch, so installing upstream Arch will give you quite a different experience vs SteamOS.

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 years ago

shrug, I've been using arch and Manjaro for years and gaming in them. They are what you make them, and AUR is massive and solves a lot of problems I have in other distros so that's why I use it.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] pe1uca@lemmy.pe1uca.dev 33 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I recently switched to ubuntu in a gaming laptop, right now I've been using it just for jellyfin and some other coding tasks, but it definitely runs smoother, more stable, quicker, and cooler than windows did for the same workload.
I was surprised at the difference of even just having the machine idle, on windows it was noticeable warm, now on ubuntu it's almost as if it has been turned off.

[–] thantik@lemmy.world 23 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

Honestly, at this point -- If Valve made a more generalized Linux OS... or even at the very least started making honest proposals at unifying how the OS ran, so that their efforts in getting gaming to work on it could be more widely productive; we could see a radical shift in adoption.

Now now, I'm not saying YEAR OF LINUX ON THE DESKTOP!! - but Valve would be a great mother for fostering an ecosystem that would potentially make Microsoft compete by not making their OS shittier year-by-year.

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Steam deck was definitely a move in this direction. From what I hear people like it. If they like it, I see more traction to it as people understand that it's not windows. Ya never know. 2035: year of the Linux desktop!

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 25 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Assuming this is the usual case where most games are within noise of each other, the ones that don't run under linux are excluded, and nobody acknowledges that the need to precache/predownload shaders provides short term benefits.

Its like people miss the good old days of "This is the year of linux gaming. Everything works and is perfect. Okay, those games don't work. But every game I care about works. Except the ones that don't". Like, we really are in a golden age of gaming parity but pretending there isn't still work to be done serves no benefit.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] DarkThoughts@kbin.social 25 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Computerbase is very solid and well known in Germany and have been covering Linux quite a bit for a while now.
Performance of course can fluctuate heavily between games but the amount of progress that Linux made over the past decade is nothing but astonishing.

[–] wrath_of_grunge@kbin.social 9 points 2 years ago (5 children)

that's kind of my take on it too. Linux has come so far from what it used to be like. it's not quite ready to see mass-adoption, but it's making some amazing strides. so many different parties have been contributing to a massive effort to iron out some of the issues with Linux. once performance improves significantly over Windows, and compatibility gets a little more wide-spread, you'll start to see people willing to put up with the teething problems, in the name of superior performance.

THAT is when Linux will see more mainstream success.

some year, i don't know when, really will be the year of Linux.... maybe.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 21 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Description is false. Windows won in R&C. This was not an across the board win for Linux. Good news doesn't need to be sensationalized.

[–] tun@lemm.ee 8 points 2 years ago

Updated the summary about Windows winning.

[–] iopq@lemmy.world 20 points 2 years ago (3 children)

These tech YouTubers should do Linux comparisons. These are not small differences when comparing, let's say, Nvidia 4060 and the RX 7600. It could make the AMD GPU edge out the more expensive Nvidia offering

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] WhiteHawk@lemmy.world 17 points 2 years ago (16 children)

Ok, but what about Nvidia GPUs? Those are what the the vast majority of gamers use.

[–] limitedduck@awful.systems 11 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Nvidia has been kind of a mess for me on Wayland, especially the lastest 545 drivers. I just switched to AMD and literally all my issues disappeared, including one I thought was a KDE plasma bug

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Cycloprolene@lemm.ee 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

93A1A71EABD6B6CD658458CC1F4

[–] c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's anecdotal but I saw a significant improvement in multiple games on an Nvidia 1050 running Nobara. Had no issues installing drivers and getting things set up.

[–] ekky@sopuli.xyz 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Nvidia 1070 here. Haven't run into problems using Mint or Endevour. Had to choose propriety drivers on Mint, but that was it.

Might buy an AMD card next, but that's more to see if there are any features I'm missing out on. I'm also excited to see whether AMD has grown better hardware, as it was a constant hassle when I last used one 10+ years ago.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (13 replies)
[–] LoremIpsumGenerator@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] 7u5k3n@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That's when we know it's:

The year of the Linux desktop

When we all can finally run crysis.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] icdl@lemm.ee 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I've been using arch and manjaro for the past 3 years with awesomewm and gnome (can't get awesomewm to behave with second monitor while gaming so I switch to gnome when using the second monitor, using laptop) and this has pretty much been my experience. Windows is bloated and it never"just works".

[–] Lmaydev@programming.dev 25 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (12 children)

Windows almost always just works.

This seems crazy to say when talking about Linux. Especially when saying you have to switch to use dual monitors.

[–] Neomega@lemmy.world 16 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I have to agree. I love Linux but Windows really does just work. Especially when it comes to gaming. I applaud anyone that enjoys Linux gaming but don't act like it's anywhere near as simple as on windows.

[–] Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

For me it has been that simple, but to get to that simplicity took a lot of work. I've tried Windows 11 and it just sucked for gaming. Stuttered like mad on Cyberpunk and Bluetooth had major latency problems, and neither occurred on Linux.

[–] Lmaydev@programming.dev 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Exactly. It doesn't "just work" but if you can get it going it's great.

All that work is what makes it not simple though.

[–] Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Pretty much. If you want the simplest, "just works" Linux setup, your best bet right now is buying a Steam Deck.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] nitefox@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah. In all the time I’ve been using windows I never had a problem that people constantly report; even BSOD happened quite rarely. I never got my pc to randomly shut down and update either…

Like, I switched to Linux cause i saw it as cool, wanted to try it out and liked how customisable it was and mostly to spite the megacorp

[–] TwanHE@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago

Honestly since windows 10 the only blue screens I've gotten are due to my own doing.

[–] SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Nearly always something random breaks for me on windows, and it's a huge pain to fix it. I hate dealing with windows, Linux is easier, because it isn't a black box.

[–] Lmaydev@programming.dev 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

A stupid amount of non tech users manage to use it absolutely fine, so I'm not sure what you're doing wrong tbh.

Linux is 100% not easier and not advertised as such.

[–] Shareni@programming.dev 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

A stupid amount of non tech users manage to use it

Meanwhile, most of those users are running systems that are so deteriorated that it takes them a minute+ to open a browser.

On a machine that they only use to browse internet.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] LemmeeUser1@lemm.ee 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Sounds like skill issue when even grandmas can use Windows

Yeah we love Linux but don't need the exaggerations

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (9 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] sailingbythelee@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm not familiar with the games mentioned in the article, but Linux is great for gaming. I run Manjaro on my T540p laptop and have never had problems with Angband or Nethack. I can even run DF with tilesets if I'm feeling spunky. Mind you, I do have 8 gbs of RAM and a pretty sweet Intel integrated graphics setup, so that may be why it's so smooth.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] RecallMadness@lemmy.nz 7 points 2 years ago

Hasn’t this been happening for years?

Intel’s clear Linux had similar articles published about it years ago.

[–] snownyte@kbin.social 6 points 2 years ago (5 children)

slim margin isn't significant enough.

I want bigger margins.

[–] jonne@infosec.pub 11 points 2 years ago

Still very impressive considering this is all run by translating the same Windows API calls into Linux ones, and then running them. There's definitely some overhead in doing this, and yet they still beat Windows native.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] LemmyIsFantastic@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago (16 children)

Doesn't matter. Easy of use + compatibility trumps all.

[–] tun@lemm.ee 23 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Some people already using Linux as daily driver and booting to windows is not ease for them.

People doesn't need every games to be compatible. They only need the games they want to play compatible.

For me, I no longer need to boot into windows to play game.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (15 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›