Hacker News Reader

Comment by geerlingguy | Hacker News Reader

Eh... the problem is even with Proton it's extra work and sometimes not pleasant try to keep games running natively in Linux. I had a nice Kubuntu Focus 2 laptop with a fast Nvidia RTX mobile chip, and all the bells and whistles, and I could only get 2 of my 5 favorite Steam games to run through Proton, and one of those required some janky tweaks to make it run correctly.

When they did run they ran great (testament to the hardware and the decent driver support), but that's what I mean when it's 'tough'. Not impossible but it's not like Windows, where you just click buy, wait for the game to download, and start playing.

View on HN

With 1 out of 5 you were extremely unlucky. For the most part proton works exactly like described: You click on play and the game does run. In the other cases where there are fixes to be applied that's most of the time just setting a simple start parameter directly in Steam.

You also should consider that on Windows in practice there are many issues, ranging from drivers and OS updates critically breaking performance (happened just now again), middleware stopping to work, and many older games that run perfectly fine on Linux not running at all on Windows anymore. It always depends on your game selection of course, but I for example also removed my dual boot Windows installation to exclusively game on Linux a few years ago now because it got way too annoying dealing with all the breakage and incompatibility on that platform.

It's actually interesting in that tech written to help games run on Linux can also help older games run on Windows! As an example, the best way to run The Sims 2 on Windows 10 with a modern GPU is to force the game to render via DXVK :)

Right, that is interesting. Goes in the same direction as that the compatibility I praise above is from a certain perspective somewhat of an accident - Wine was supposed to run cutting edge software. It does, but it also still runs the old software, giving it a capability modern Windows is missing.

I tried for ProtonDB for the 5 most games I play since a few months now: Cyberpunk 2077, PUBG, Doom: Eternal, Disco Elysium, Apex Legends with friends.

On those 5 games, 3 do not work at all, and Doom: Eternal keeps crashing every 15 minutes with the two latest builds.

I am sorry but the "You click on play and the game does run." is definitely not true, except if you are playing famous old games (mainly supported by Valve) like Portal, CS, ...

I'm curious if you use Nvidia or AMD because for me (a rx 390 owner), Doom Eternal not only runs flawlessly on Linux, it's performance is out of the box better than on Windows. As for stuff like PUBG and Apex Legends, that's a crapshoot thanks to anti-cheat software frequently being hostile to Linux.

Thankfully, there is work being done and at least the situation with Battle Eye has improved in recent years.

Not at all, I had issues running CSGO when you can't set stretched resolution or play 4:3. The performance was way worse comparing to Windows.

I think the game itself was broken for couple of days for GNOME because of some library and if you want to play you have to switch to KDE.

Even if you want to game on linux, you have to install a ton of libraries, hope in wouldn't brick your system and then jump through the hoops all day and in case if something breaks you have to spent time debugging / reinstalling system instead of playing.

> Eh... the problem is even with Proton it's extra work and sometimes not pleasant try to keep games running natively in Linux.

I flipped one switch in settings and restarted Steam. I install Windows-only games in Linux just like I do in Windows within Steam.

How is that extra work?

The vast majority of the games now work in Proton without any significant performance differences. I actually have an inverse anecdote to yours: Two games I recently tried to run in Windows 10 wouldn't run, but ran flawlessly in Proton/Steam/Linux despite being newer Windows only games.

So your daily driver is Windows pc already?

For development + video editing + gaming, are you gonna make a Windows vs Mac comparison video soon?

Linking some comments from your pi vs mac thread over here

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23503762

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23503481

That's the nature of all desktop computing on Linux. Either way, Linux is very much capable of AAA gaming, though the setup can be a little rougher on the Linux side of things. That being said, Steam's Proton has made it so that 90% of my games just run out of the box.

The problem with Proton is that some things cannot be bypassed. I recently downloaded a multiplayer game that uses Xigncode (anti cheat software) and it simply doesn't work with proton. I know the game works flawlessly because I played a version of it from a different publisher that didn't use anti cheat software (it's not a competitive game).

Anticheat will never work on anything other than the official OS for which it is designed. A cornerstone of anticheat is to prevent the user from running non-approved software in the same space as the game. Any attempt to emulate an OS or fiddle wit memory will be attacked as possible cheating.

On a higher level, anticheat is about locking down user behavior, confining it to acceptable corners of the machine. It is there to enforce the content creator's wish. It is just the latest incarnation of DRM. I expect that many in control of linux are quietly happy to hear that it doesn't work properly on linux systems.

I can give you a counterexample, Battlefield 3, which uses Punkbuster Anti-Cheat, works fully and I played it a lot with friends in multiplayer.

Right. And random drug-testing is infringing on the athlete's right to bodily autonomy. Why would anyone care about the competitive integrity of a video game?

Can you name the games?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com