The amount of bullshit there is to make things work is… not that bad. When it comes to games, I just can’t. Having to reboot just to fix common FPS issues is too much. I’ve had a bunch of things that require a config change, which then has caused other issues.
The state of Linux Desktop is the best it has ever been and I’ll be back the moment Wayland works better. I love Linux, but for now, it’s not working out for me… Just needed to vent, thanks for reading.
My personal experience has been that Linux is great for general use, and quite a few verified games. But anything multiplayer with anticheat, games that are regularly updated, etc, it’s a constant struggle. So I have a separate hard drive for windows on my gaming desktop and, in general, mostly use Windows on that machine (with a lot of tweaks like openshell). But all my other devices I run off Linux and it works out fine.
I think it will be a long time of ever I will remove my windows boot. I love gaming on Linux but until games “support” Linux it won’t be my only boot device.
Dedicated gaming machine or dual boot is a way to go.
I played steam on Arch and one update of OS and game stops working.
Despite claims, Windows gets better outcomes. I played a lot of World of Tanks Blitz and the same hardware on Linux was significantly lower graphics quality and FPS compared to Windows.
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It’s funny because I’ve seen a lot of complaints about freezes and lag spikes in Elden Ring, but I’ve never noticed these because they’re apparently not an issue in Linux.
I’m sure there are games that run flawlessly, which is why I added the qualifier “In my personal experience”. Despite trying different versions of Proton and launch options, I’ve had trouble getting a consistent quality of gameplay experience with Guild Wars 2, where after long periods of play the frames drop or the game freezes altogether. Same with competitive games like Overwatch 2. It will run fine for long periods of time, but once in a blue moon it will crash altogether. Obviously not ideal for doing fractals with a guild or grinding ranked where getting disconnected lets my teammates or friends down and negatively affects my ranking process or even catching a temporary cooldown to be able to queue up again
Which distro were you using?
Debian, Arch and Endeavour. Endeavour being the current one, Debian having the least problems until kernel issues without logs. That was more than likely caused by misconfiguration. Arch was too much and Endeavour is pretty much the same. All of them have the same weird small issues when it comes to gaming. Other than that, they all work fine, other than Wayland issues.
Most might suggest to just use X11, but VRR is a must and no matter how I’ve tried to make X11 work, it’s just so much worse than Wayland.
I feel all of that. Debian is painfully slow to bring up-to-date, and all of Arch is neurotic.
You might have a better time with Fedora as they are closest to Wayland, but Fedora is pathologically open source to the point that if there aren’t open source drivers for a thing you’re triple tucked…
Gaming on linux has been, still is, and always will be a struggle. I hope you give it a try again in a year or so. I personally use Debian as my base system, with an Arch VM on CPU and GPU passthrough for work and gaming. You’ll get there eventually! ☺️
I had a lot of the same issues you are stating until I switched over to fedora. I have an nvidia Optimus laptop and it was quite the pain until I installed fedora and used the proprietary drivers from rpm fusion. I use b9ttles and steam to run my games and I can play most of the games I want to. Even Wayland works nice. I am using the Plasma spin of Fedora 40. Hope you can find the solutions to your problems.
Protip, use Rufus to create the windows install stuck and disable all the telemetry if you want to.
Happy computing.
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I’ve been 100% linux for my daily home computing for over a year now… With one exception… To be honest I didn’t even try particularly hard to make gaming work under Linux.
Instead I have a Windows VM - setup with full passthrough access to my GPU and it’s own NVME - just for Windows gaming. To my mind now it’s in the same category as running console emulation.
As soon as I click shutdown in windows, it pops me straight back into my Linux desktop.
Fucking Hackerman. Is there a way to display the VM’s output in a window/fullscreen on Linux today? The last time I tried this, I had to have a separate cable from the passed-thru (secondary) GPU to another input in my monitor.
Looking-glass.io is what most use for that
What’re you using for visualisation? I didn’t realise you could get decent graphics performance with VirtualBox.
They didn’t say virtualbox, KVM is built into Linux.
Direct passthrough of the GPU means it is no longer available to the host OS but works as if directly connected to the VM.
Interesting. I had no idea such capabilities were available out of the box. Thanks!
People have been passing though GPUs to their windows vm for almost a decade.
I do something similar but instead if a VM I just have windows installed on a separate hard drive and just boot up from there when I need it (I don’t play games though)
I meant to do this when I built my old system back in 2018, but I found the handful of games I regularly play worked okay on Linux so I never got around to it, and Linux game compatibility has improved leaps and bounds from there.
If it’s a Steam game, for most of them these days you only have to tick a box in Steam’s settings to tell it to use Proton for all games and the game will just work when you click play.
You might give it a try. Or don’t, I’m not your mother.
Long past time for Linux to be set aside. Shit on windows too. We desperately need a return to early DOS and CP/M days. With the TRS-80 OS ecosystem, OSes were simple and command line, and any hacking was extremely easy and fast to detect. The power of the command line let you wipe out any hackers super super fast. Enough of this Windows GUI and hiding things from users shit. GUI is only for losers. Return the power to the devs.
Wow! Lol I hope this was satire because as satire it’s actually kinda funny. If serious… whoa! Check that foil hat.
Do you have a dual gpu setup for this or is there a virtualization feature I don’t know about yet
Single GPU with scripts that run before and after the VM is active to unload the GPU driver modules from the kernel.
I think this was my starting point and I had to do just a few small tweaks to get it right for my setup - i.e. unload and reload the precise set of kernel modules that block GPU passthrough on my machine.
https://gitlab.com/Karuri/vfio
At this point from a user experience p.o.v it’s not much different to dual booting, just with a different boot sequence. The main advantage though is that I can have the Windows OS on a small virtual harddrive for ease of backup/clone/restore and have game installs on a dedicated NVME that doesn’t need backing up
Search for “vfio single gpu”, It’s possible, but it has drawbacks. Iirc you have to run everything as root or something like that.
Another recommended way is to run a headless linux as host, and passthrough the gpu to a linux guest next to a windows guest, than you just switch between the guests
No shame in having to switch back after giving it a try and running into a lot of issues. Having to reboot a lot is definitely unusual, there’s probably something wrong with your setup, but who knows where the issue is or how long it would take you to fix. Hopefully you can give it another try in a few years and those issues have been resolved.
There are too many issues to list, some caused by a different distro and some by misconfiguration that is just too much to undo. The FPS lag I have no idea what the cause is and it really only happens in newer games. Almost everything is “mild”, the games are just less enjoyable.
A few years might be a bit too many, the next round is on W10 death at the least. Before trying Desktop Linux out half a year ago, I knew Linux CLI which made most things easy. It’s just that I don’t have time to debug things I have no clue about.
For me I want to know how much frame latency there is since I’m suspicious and I want to try things to see the effect and I just don’t know how to get that information in an OSD like I can with msi afterburner.
If someone knows what can do this in Linux, please reply!
Instead I just stopped all competitive and cooperative gaming. Which is a bit of a shame. Sometimes I’ll load up windows to join friends but usually by the time I’ve updated whatever game I’ve gotten over it.
Don’t get me wrong, hiccups aside I’m very happy which is why I’m in Linux most of the time. But it’s not always a wonderful world.
MangoHud is the Linux equivalent of MSI Afterburner. Another tool called Goverlay is a GUI for configuring MangoHud. To make the overlay actually show up on screen, after you’ve installed MangoHud you need to add some parameters to the game launch code in Steam, like
command mangohudor some shit—I’m not at my computer so I can’t give you the exact parameter, but you should be able to find it with a quick search. Good luck.mangohud %command%
Some of it to me, is just hardware selection. My laptop and egpu run windows fine. Linux gaming is rough as hell.
That said, i bought a steam deck, and it will run the same games my laptop struggles with in linux, just fine.
Sorry for the super late ping, but if they run under linux at all then it might be a distro issue. You should try out Bazzite. Hell, you should install it on your deck too. It’s designed to basically be SteamOS++ and has deck/handheld, as well as Desktop images. I run it on my Lenovo Legion Go and everything just works, as if it were a deck honestly. I have it on my desktop with an Nvidia GPU too, and it games great, at least anything that will play on Linux. It’s atomic, similar to an immutable distro, so it’s also never broken to the point of unplayable. If something isn’t working after an update, you can reboot and choose the older, working image instead.
Hm. I’ll give it a shot. I was trying it under pop!
Do “your games” run on steam? Did you check protondb for fixes?
Windows is better for gaming than Linux.
With Linux you have to be ready to play only what works.
Windows doesn’t play dos games. With Windows you have to be ready to play only what works
Which is a lot, to be sure, but it’s not everything.
This is why I have a single dedicated Windows machine for gaming, kitted out with the beefiest GPU and hooked up to the home theatre.
Aside from some notable examples, I’ve had great luck with gaming on Linux. Wayland’s still rough (thanks Nvidia) but it’s not that big of an issue; general usage is fine and development is fantastic.
There is only one issue when it comes to games…
I have a VR setup…To use Linux properly, you’ve got to “unlearn” everything you know about computers and go back from the ground-up. And breaking yourself free from bad habits (that only Windows gives you) such as relying on installers to do the job for you – i.e “double-clicking your cares away”. Which can be a fun experience when compiling (The “turbo nerd way” to install things on linux) becomes “second nature”, giving you the ability to taste “true freedom” of making (pretty much) anything work the way as you may seem fit.
…
No, really. You’ll have a heck of a nerdgasm when you compile something that is not “normally supported” on an obscure pc/distro. You will feel like a demigod.
t. That is how I felt the first time I compiled a half-life openBSD port… on Linux. I did it “by following my gut” and everything “werked”.
I like clicking my problems away.
Relying on easy, simple stuff does not (always) mean a good thing let alone being good for you and your mental health. Even less so allowing proprietary, capitalism-driven developers to do whatever they want with your PC (which makes me wonder what you are even doing in this community in first place if you just “don’t care”), but hey… you do you.
What is it with people on Lemmy and being absolute cunts? You start out okay, but with each sentence you just go lower and lower until finally you’re resorting to personal insults.
You must be a very unliked person.
I’m gonna make my life extra hard just to make a point against capitalism…
Pretty sure you don’t have to unlearn everything to use Kubuntu or Linux mint
I have a fun issue. I want to be on Linux but for whatever reason there is no audio support (and I’m not able to add code to the kernel to fix it) for my Lenovo Legion 7.
Seems to only be affecting a certain chipset but no audio is a problem. Bluetooth at least works but that isn’t good enough unfortunately.
I get it. I’m a year in and was pulling my hair out dealing w/ frustrating issues for the first few weeks/months. Smooth sailing now, but I don’t deny the learning curves that are possible.
This is one of the reasons I’m glad I don’t have a strong desire to play most games. I’m able to run a couple from Steam and I’ve got an Xbox that I rarely play (unless I find a great game and play a bunch for a while). It’s not like I’m running Linux on my daily driver cause I’m a Mac guy, but it’s one less avenue for MS to pollute my life.
Linux is great if you don’t play competitive games. Anything with any amount of anti-cheat will not work.
Everything else works great. I game on Linux all the time and it’s solid.
This is false info. Counter Strike works, Hunt: Showdown works. To fix your comment it would look like this:
Linux is great if you don’t play competitive games, which have disastrous “anti cheat functionality”. Anything with any amount of sane anti-cheat will work.
What games?
I second this. What games?
Some games I had issues with are Asseto Corsa, Beam.NG and ETS2 external mods (base ETS2 runs superb). I have seen that competitive racing is a genre which has a slight intolerance towards Linux. Many racing games also require hardware mods which may need some hacking to get it working. I understand it’s a niche hobby but it is a problem.
I’ll be back the moment Wayland works better.
Why don’t you just use X11 instead?
This, I tried some newer distros with Wayland and ended up going back to Debian Stable and X11 for gaming. Got Sunshine (for Moonlight handheld client streaming) working for in about a minute.
And some people hate X11 and like Fedora’s and RHEL’s decisions to purge it lol
Are you volunteering to maintain it? It requires man hours to keep it working. Also it is a security nightmare.
But some people need it. Dropping it is just a moral question.
All the talk I’ve seen about Wayland to date has been that it’s great if/when it works perfectly but that’s rare because it’s just not ready. Shame really.
So you’re gaming on Wayland, which is a bad idea, but instead of just using X11 you’re heading back to Windows?
I mean, you do you, but it kinda seems like you’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater here…
Wayland is getting better every day. Check back in a year, and it’ll probably be ready for you. :)
it’s Wayland, multiply any number times 10 at least. I’ve been waiting 2 years so far for them to decide on the word “must” vs “may” in a part of the protocol
That’s what everyone said about Linux in 2005
lol even in 2005 Linux was excellent for most situations. Problem was in a business environment it was usually harder to find someone who has the expertise in Linux but also gaming - the lowest-common-denominator sector of development - usually just prioritizes Windows. This is NOT because it’s “better,” but because it gives them more freedom and they can get shit “done” faster. On the user-side, meanwhile, Windows wasn’t really doing the user any more favors than just working pretty nicely.
But today? Omfg Linux has come insanely far while Windows is what, pretty much you handing over master control to M$ while borrowing some CPU time on your own computer so gracious of them.
Oh but if it lets you play a game then all is forgiven. Lol. Priorities.
I switched in 2008, so not that far off.
Even back in the late ‘90s I was experimenting both personally and professionally with alternative OSes. By early to mid 2000s I had some systems off the big money players and as of today I have 20 or so systems on Linux and ONE left with primary Windows only because I hardly use it as a desktop and it’s mostly providing services internally. So don’t fix what ain’t broken. Even then I’m planning to test a dual boot soon just to whet the computer’s appetite. And when it lets me know it’s ready, I’ll be 100% Microshaft free instead of 99%. Those sleazebags dug their own graves and they know it.
I was one of those people, still stand by it. Linux was already better than the alternatives in 2005, and had only gotten better since.
