Hacker News Reader

Comment by kelseydh | Hacker News Reader

Is Linux gaming on Steam actually competitive in performance and availability to what you'll get on Windows? I'm looking into building a gaming computer I'm surprised to hear I could roll with Linux for it.

View on HN

Essentially, the only games that doesn't work nowadays are the ones that intentionally break it by adding Linux-incompatible anti-cheat. This is common among the big AAA-games that are multiplayer (think Fortnite).

Riot games did this on purpose too. League worked perfectly fine on Linux for years until they decided that kernel level spying on users was absolutely necessary to play a moba. For some reason my one friend thinks I'll run windows just for one game.

I'd sooner get a console, personally. The only legitimate use case I have for a console (nintendo notwithstanding) is to sandbox invasive anticheat in multiplayer games. I don't really have a ton of free time or friend group into multiplayer video games, so it's not happening for me. Smart console makers would lean into this.

Yup, I've also gone with a console for all my gaming needs, and keep my computer as just a productivity machine. As a result I don't need nearly as beefy machine and don't need to grind my teeth in bitterness using Windows.

> ones that intentionally break it by adding Linux-incompatible anti-cheat.

That's an interesting way to phrase it. It's like you're implying the company intentionally did not want to run it on anything but Windows (aka software is incompatible with non-Windows OSes) rather than trying to implement an effective anti-cheat (arguable) that works for their customers.

Pre-Wine, would you have argued that a software vendor is intentionally preventing their software from running on any non-Windows OS?

Or was it just that their audience wasn't on said non-Windows OS?

> That's an interesting way to phrase it. It's like you're implying the company intentionally did not want to run it on anything but Windows (aka software is incompatible with non-Windows OSes) rather than trying to implement an effective anti-cheat (arguable) that works for their customers.

Not OP, but this is true depending on the game. For instance, when Rockstar added BattlEye to GTA V Online, they broke Linux support, and blatantly lied about Linux not supporting BattleEye, when that's just not true - they just needed to enable that option, but they just straight up lied saying BattlEye doesn't support Linux.

See: https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/31046...

> BattlEye on Proton integration has reached a point where all a developer needs to do is reach out BattlEye to enable it for their title. No additional work is required by the developer besides that communication.

So all Rockstar had to do was reach out to BattlEye to enable it, but they couldn't be bothered to do so. Their anti-Linux stance here is pretty obvious.

Rockstar aside, there are other studios/publishers that have been openly hostile against Linux, like Epic for instance - Tim Sweeny has made scathing remarks against Linux, so it's clear where he/Epic stands on that front.

Is BattlEye equally as effective on Linux as it is on Windows, i.e. is it a 1:1 drop-in? If not, I could see why they wouldn't want to enable it.

I’m using Bazzite now for about 8 months, and I have a dual boot Windows drive. I haven’t used the Windows drive once. Windows was my daily driver for 3 decades.

Performance wise, there’s no degradation. I can run games at 4k or bonkers FPS just like I did on Windows, no input lag, etc.

Bazzite also has a very active discord for support with issues. I highly recommend.

It's unbelievable just how unclear Bazzite's website is.

They don't spell out clearly what Bazzite is. Is it a distro? A layer on top of Steam? Something else? No idea from the first page.

Still on par with Linux UX, I'm afraid :(

Bazzite -> Community & Docs -> FAQ

https://docs.bazzite.gg/General/FAQ/#what-is-the-difference-...

> Bazzite originally was developed for the Steam Deck targeting users who used their Steam Deck as their primary PC. Bazzite is a collection of custom Fedora Atomic Desktop images built with Universal Blue's tooling (with the power of OCI) as opposed to using an Arch Linux base with A/B updates utilizing RAUC. The main advantages of Bazzite versus SteamOS is receiving system packages in updates at a much faster rate and a choice of an alternative desktop environment.

It is a Linux distribution, that aims to compete with Valve's SteamOS Linux distribution supplied with the Steam Deck (which itself is based on Arch Linux). Like SteamOS, it can be used on a regular desktop PC as well... but they are mainly aiming to run on the Steam Deck:

https://docs.bazzite.gg/General/FAQ/#is-this-another-fringe-...

> The purpose of Bazzite is to be Fedora Linux, but provide a great gaming experience out of the box while also being an alternative operating system for the Steam Deck and other handheld devices.

Effectively they have taken Fedora Linux, and added to it the same sort of setup and programs that you get out-of-the-box with SteamOS as well.

For the most part, it is not the people offering Bazzite that are doing the hard job of providing security updates, etc., they are hoping that being based on Fedora will provide that assurance. They merely supply and configure some extras on top (e.g. the Steam client software)

What I meant is not "I can't find what it is", but that the landing page of Bazzite says this: "The next generation of Linux gaming - Bazzite makes gaming and everyday use smoother and simpler across desktop PCs, handhelds, tablets, and home theater PCs.

Play your favorite games - Bazzite is designed for Linux newcomers and enthusiasts alike with Steam pre-installed, HDR & VRR support, improved CPU schedulers for responsive gameplay, and numerous community-developed tools and tweaks to streamline your gaming and streaming experience."

In the first 5 words after the 1st title there should be mentioned "Linux distribution". It's not even in the 2nd paragraph, now.

If this is the clarity of the landing page, I suspect documentation is equally user-hostile/inaccessible, which is why 2025 is still not the year of the Linux desktop... in the Linux world there's still an abundance of great developers, and a terrible lack of HCI/UX expertise.

I agree with you that it's vague text... but I don't think this website is alone in having nothing but sizzle on its landing page.

Not only is it competitive, it's actually superior in many instances.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/06/games-run-faster-on-s...

Basically the only games that don't work are those which include anticheat which intentionally borks Linux. Check https://www.protondb.com/ for any game you're interested in to see if it'll run or not.

Yes. Nearly every game is compatible. Checkout protondb.com and check the games you play.

Anything that has a kernel level anti check (Valorant) will always be a resounding No. But besides from that, everything is pretty damn nice.

>Anything that has a kernel level anti check (Valorant) will always be a resounding No.

Please stop repeating this long outdated information. The two most widely used kernel anti cheat provider easyanticheat and battle eye support linux with a user space component which needs to be enabled by the developer and has been in many games.

https://areweanticheatyet.com/breakdown

That is... a bit of an oversimplifciation.

Tools like Battle eye and EAC are not just one tool that gives a binary answer, they are tools that detect a huge range of heuristics about the device and how easy it is to interfere with the memory.

While they have been ported to Linux, an awful lot of those bits of telemetry simply don't give the desired answer, or even any answer at all, because that is very hard to so when there aren't proprietary drivers signed down to the hardware root of trust by a third party (and certainly the average Linux user on HN wouldn't want there to be!).

It's really not a matter of "enabled by the developer", it's entirely dependent on what your threat model is.

None of this is relevant to the original point of "kernel anti cheats don't work" when yes the two most widely used ACs do work despite being kernel level.

>It's really not a matter of "enabled by the developer", it's entirely dependent on what your threat model is.

Again irrelevant to the original point

Pretty much none of the kernel level features work.

Irrelevant. They work so you can play a game and it's supported by the devs despite it using kernel level anti cheat.

Yes, it works great, actually. But you have to have specific hardware, for example AMD gpu instead of Nvidia.

Also, nearly anything with anti-cheat (many online games, esp shooters) won't work.

Nvidia works great, and has since this summer. So long as you’re on a recent release you shouldn’t have issues.

Nvidia on a machine with an AMD iGPU requires you to blacklist the amdgpu module.

Nobody tell my machine that. I have a 5080 paired with an 9800X3D, no blacklisting of kernel modules necessary (for me at least).

I should have added “sometimes”. It worked fine that way with most games (I have the same CPU), but Cyberpunk 2099 in particular really doesn’t like that configuration.

Depends on what you like to play. Some games are heavily encumbered with either copy protection like denuvo or anti-cheat and those either don't support linux or flat out try to sniff out linux and refuse to run on anything but windows. Otherwise its great, you can check protondb and winehq for reports of compatibilty.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com