As someone who will be switching to Mint very soon, I am so thrilled to hear this.
Any solutions to replace something like Virtual Desktop to wirelessly VR a Quest 3, or any word on attempts to get Steam Link VR working on Linux? It’s basically the final ligament holding onto the Windows dual-boot on my non-work PC. I’ve been waiting for the day I can purge Windows since using Warty in elementary school.
I use ALVR with my quest 2 and it works great. It can connect to your headset both wired and wirelessly.
I have used alvr on my quest 1
Bro, I’m so fucking close to removing Microsoft from my life
Do it. You’ll be asking yourself why you haven’t done so a year ago!
Currently backing up, moving to Zorin Core after work!
Do it, just don’t play the games that don’t work on Linux. I switched 15 years ago and didn’t look back. There are so many games at this point why bother with the ones that only work on Windows?
The only game I actively played that didn’t work on Linux was destiny 2, and switching to cachyOS has really helped me kick that toxic game out for good.
I got that game for free and I overpaid.
For some reason it seems to me like toxic games are less likely to run on Linux compared to the average
It comes down to how much the publishers care about their own product. Devs shoveling third party kernel anti-cheat into their product often cause those games to be Linux incompatible. Devs bundling their own unnecessary launcher with the game and requiring it to run the launcher in order to run the game sometimes cause those games to be Linux incompatible. It often isn’t even the devs themselves making this decision, which is why I blame the publisher more than the developers in most cases.
But with how robust Proton has become these days there isn’t a whole lot outside of those two cases that will make a game not run on Linux. It’s pretty intentional at this point.
The whole reason I have a computer is to game on it though! :P
Outside of a handful of multiplayer games pretty much any game will work under proton, new or old. Stalker 2 worked out the box on release day, early awkward 3D games like Gothic runs just fine, and your early point and click games will likely run just fine. Out of my 460 games*, only EA WRC doesn’t work because they introduced kernel level anti cheat after release.
*Edit: Just to clarify i haven’t tested all my games, but I have played a good number of them. Also another game that doesn’t run is Ground Control 2, but that doesn’t work on Windows since about 7 or 10, so it doesn’t count! ^^
This isn’t really true. At least on the steam deck. Of the 156 games I have in my library, 52 of the are “great on deck”. Id say twenty of the other ones work great anyways.
I don’t play multiplayer games, but the one I do have are in the works great category. The vast majority are single player games. (Just checked, i have 15 games that not compatible at all)
Definitely double check your games before making the switch.
“great on deck” is a lot more than Linux support. It also means the text is readable on a small screen and the game has 100% controller support.
Yes
A lot of the “unsupported” or “unknown” games also work fine. Some may require switching to a specific Proton version (check protondb.com), but many work fine.
Yes
I already don’t have time to play all the games I want to play. Narrowing that list somewhat isn’t going to change that for me, so why not Linux?
I easily game +6 hours a day on Linux though. PoE 1-2, D2, modded d2, Cyberpunk, witcher3, ffxiv, Monster hunter world-ride-wilds, HotS (year the blizzard client works and with it all blizzard games without anticheat)… To name a few.
I’m a few months into Linux Mint on my gaming PC and love it; 99% of my games work. The only one that doesn’t so far is FiveM but that’s because the devs appear to be very anti-linux unless you’re hosting a server.
Is there a way to confirm which games in your library will work well on Linux for your specific hardware, gaming is the only thing keeping me on Windows for now, I’d be happy to get rid of windows if I could run most of my games on Linux and the rest maybe I can run on Wine or a virtual desktop
Not for specific hardware but you can sign in to ProtonDB with your steam account and get an overview of your entire steam library. For online games there is areweanticheatyet.com, you will have to check games manually. AMD, Nvidia (9xx and newer) and Intel iGPUs (Skylake and newer) have roughly the same compatibility, performance differs usually favoring Windows on Nvidia.
I just checked my library on protondb, seems like most games in my libraries are platinum rated for compatibility and some are even native, there are a few mostly multiplayer games that are incompatible, but I hardly play multiplayer games so I think this means my next computer upgrade is gonna be Linux. I wonder if it’s possible to use a Linux home server as a personal computer as well
To add, ProtonDB usually has the user’s specs next to their reports, so you can try to find reports with similar specs to your computer.
Do it
From a gaming perspective: Get a new drive (NVMe/whatever your OS is on), drop Nobara on it, be done, have the option to switch back without a hassle if you need it for some special tasks or games.
And after 6 months find out that you never actually did that so delete windows/migrate it into a VM and enjoy the extra game drive you won.
That’s at least what worked for 90% of my friends meanwhile.
The only person I know who routinely uses windows is myself- and I only do so,because I need certain MS Office stuff that I need for work. (And no,libre or Softmaker,etc. are sadly not a replacement for that. )
And after 6 months find out that you never actually did that so delete windows/migrate it into a VM and enjoy the extra game drive you won.
This is where I am at. As of last week I banned Windows to the deeps of a vm and went all in on Linux (Mint, in this case). Dual bootet for a couple of months but since I never used Windows outside of a vm anyway…
Havnt had a single issue with games so far, besides some very minor hick ups that were resolved easily. Than again, im lucky that the game so play have been supported so far.
Wine was originally made specifically for running MS Office on Linux. Does that not work for you either?
No,sadly not, but I have a very special use case - user Information based access to files of external customers. They basically require a shitload of Azure,etc. Already takes a lot of work on Win, it is simply impossible with Wine. But again: A very special use case that even most Enterprise users won’t need.
I see, fair enough then.
Yeah. This and CAD software sadly are the last things windows is really needed for me,sadly.
After my experience with nobara blowing up after a major update I’d probably go for bazzite instead
Bazzite is amazing, best distro I’ve used. It works perfectly as a gaming focused distro. I’ve been rocking it for a year now without issue.
Best thing I ever did. I got tired of being told how I could use my computer and the spying or course.
i mostly quit videogames in order to do this. it’s nice to think that maybe I’ll get some more of them back
I was ready to do that back when I switched, but still found games to play. Back then, Steam hadn’t yet come to Linux (I didn’t even have an account), so it was mostly random indies (back when Humble Bundle was baller) and some FOSS games. I played a bunch of Minecraft and Factorio as well. Then Steam came and brought a few more games, then Proton came and I’ve been back buying a ton of games.
Switching to Linux is so much easier these days with the incredible game support.
If not for work I’d already be there
I did it a few months ago, honestly after the initial learning it has been a great experience. That’s including me having to fuck around with stuff because I chose to run extremely new graphics hardware, and that’s kinda on me.
The title is a bit click-baity.
Steam had a setting where it would only run Proton on games on which it had been verified to work. Some people would inadvertently flip this setting off. Now the setting is gone, so they can’t accidentally do this.
That setting defaults to off. Changing the default to on means new users won’t have to figure out it exists, and shows confidence in proton
Yes, exactly. I wonder how many new, non-technical users tried Proton for the first time with the setting off and decided it was crap because nothing worked. I’m glad Valve decided to do this now.
I have seen the other way around, a friend had Steam installed on their Linux PC but Proton was off and she didn’t know what it was.
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Yeah honestly this was super dumb. I’ve seen so many people make the mistake of not turning this on (myself included). Even watched a dude make a whole video about Linux gaming with it disabled. It’s so stupid to have it off by default.
It was the other way around. The default was to run proton-enabled games, but not random titles, unless you enabled proton for everything via the toggle (“enable for all titles”) which was off by default.
Now it’s on by default and the switch is gone, so it’s can’t inadvertently be switched off.
Do you mean the setting called “Enable Steam Play for all titles” that was usually unchecked, that you’d have to go in and check, which some folks wouldn’t do (because they might not have known they were supposed to?)
Yeah i had heard Linux gaming was good but when installed steam i found only like 10% of my games were showing as playable for Linux. Next day i realized i needed to turn on the proton option or whatever
Pretty sure this was me the last time I tried Linux gaming before buying the Steam Deck. One more problem solved before I upgrade Windows 10.
So if I turn on the global setting, does it mean it will run native linux games with proton as well? I’m mostly playing rimworld and project zomboid, which have native Linux builds.
No. To use the Windows build you need to specifically request it in the game’s properties
Yup, just tested it with rimworld. Thanks!
Probably so, there are a few native Linux builds on Steam that don’t have feature parity or segregate multiplayer for silly reasons. (Total War: Warhammer III for example uses an entirely different method to generate random numbers in the native Linux build so you need to use proton to play with ‘friends’ on Windows)
Oh weird. I had an issue where I couldn’t play Dawn of War II with my brother on windows from my Mac. I solved it by using windows through boot camp, but that’s so lame.
I wonder if it’s the same issue.
Why are people downvoting? You gave an edge case and an example of it in action… what is there to disagree with?
Probably because that’s not the case, native Linux builds don’t run the Windows version through proton, unless specifically told to. (As I discovered after asking the initial question)
They didn’t claim the windows version was run through proton by default. They said that some linux versions do not play well with cross-OS multiplayer, and thus the windows version must be run for said functionality.
It doesn’t, as far as I could tell. I enabled the global option, and now I can just install and run windows only games without having to manually force the compatibility layer. Meanwhile, the Linux native games work just as intended.
Proton is only for running Win32 binaries
Nope, win64 works as well
I know, I was asking about which version will Steam decide for when I have the global setting on.
I didn’t even know this setting existed lol. I always right clicked into the specific game’s properties and selected the version of proton for that game.
And I did it for each game.
This is a welcome change haha. At least I know there was actually a setting for the rest of the library.
Yes it’s very good they now changed this, because if you manually select a proton version you also override the default. Steam actually knows which proton to use for almost every game if the global setting is just on.
Is there a good resource that lists all games known to require a specific version rather than being fine with the latest? I don’t really have the patience to check each game these days, so a list to skim would be nice.
Ah, Good Guy Valve helping us prepare for October eh?
I guess I’m out of the loop - what’s in October?
Windows 10 is no longer getting updates. Forcing users to switch to 11 or run on an unsecured platform which could be vulnerable to future security flaws.
Oh DUH. I’m over here wondering if I missed some Valve release announcement lmao. I switched to Linux a few months back and just completely forgot about that ig.
Gaming on Linux gets worse and worse every article he writes
And now Valve needs to figure out how to tell users which game works and which game doesn’t work. Maybe some kind of badge for Proton?
Integrating ProtonDB into the steam client would be a nice.
On steam deck there’s a decky add-on to do that
We need decky for desktop steam.
Can you not install it? There’s really not much difference between a Steam Deck and a Linux desktop.
You can, I’ve done it myself, but most plugins are geared to run in the Big Picture mode instead of the Desktop UI.
For example, the SteamGridDB plugin only runs in Big Picture, and despite showing its menu option the desktop, clicking it gives you a broken window.
Meanwhile, the CSS Loader plugin runs on both, and there some themes specifically geared to modify the desktop UI, like the lovely Metro for Steam skin recreation by RoseIn practice, there aren’t really any differences. However I suspect that it’s designed around the Deck interface and that there would be no easy way to invoke it.
Although it’s probably open source, or you might be able to bind whatever the Deck button sends to some key combination… I guess I’ll have to look into it.
I tend to do my Steam shopping in the browser and I use the ProtonDB-Peek userscript. This gives a ProtonDB status badge in the right column under the review links.
Apparently, this is a browser extension (well, a script for a browser extension), so it works when you browse the Steam catalog through your web browser, but not through their client. Or did I miss anything?
Correct, that’s what I meant to imply in the first part of my comment. When I research new games I do that from a web browser and that’s when I care about Proton status the most so this works great for that. It does not help when using the Steam client.
Thanks. You even did specify you used it from a browser, I wasn’t paying attention, sorry.
That’s exactly what they said:
I tend to do my Steam shopping in the browser
Right, so they did. Silly me. Thanks.
Steam deck compatibility is close enough to the same thing.
A lot of games that that don’t work on steamdeck because they need more performance still work perfectly well with proton on a decent gaming rig
Yeah, when I made the switch, I checked a bunch of the games I played the most for steam deck compatibility and thought I had to give up on some of them, only to find that they were still fine because my desktop is much more powerful than the steam deck. Plus it has a keyboard; if a game requires a keyboard, it hurts the steam deck compatability score (how much depends on if it’s required for playing the game at all or just needed every now and then to enter some text).
So treat “steam deck supported” as “works on linux” and “steam deck unsupported” as “maybe works on linux”.
I think the better indicator of not supported at all on Linux is the “3rd party kernel anticheat” marker in the store, though I tend to avoid games with that anyways, so I can’t really say for sure.
I usually just check protondb. It‘ll tell you everything you need to know
They’ve already expanded it into a non-deck-speciphic thing for the other compatible handhelds.
https://github.com/OMGDuke/protondb-decky
You mean like this?
Like that, but default on Steam client and store game page.
Makes sense
Unfortunately this doesn’t work on the store pages.
As someone who hasn’t yet migrated their gaming PC to linux, does this mean that third-party games imported into steam should work automatically? No flags or config adjustments?
If so, will it choose specific Proton versions for known games or pick a default (latest, I presume) version for all of them?
You can just add them and start them. If it doesnt work immediately, you can look at protondb which solution works best.
Just in time for my new nvme drive so I can fully segregate windows and Linux after that mf broke my install again
Install Windows on a separate SATA drive so you can remove it later without repartitioning. Also it is easier to boot, just change boot drive on startup.
Yeah I currently have Linux and windows sharing my only nvme drive because I wanted to use the fastest drive for the OS but clearly it’s causing issues. So I just bought a cheaper one that I will dedicate to windows, along with a sata SSD.
Do you think I can get away with just wiping the partitioned drive and reinstalling both OS, keeping their data drives as is, since they are already each entirely dedicated to one OS ? Or should I do a full clean ?
Finally
Hot like FIRE!
