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Comment by Rohansi | Hacker News Reader

Say that to the 95% of people using Windows to play PC games.

Many or most of those 95% who are just using Windows for PC games and using a web browser would be well served by either trying out or having a tech-savvy neighbor help them try out a Linux distro like Bazzite.

I used to boot into Windows regularly to play video games. I haven't booted into Windows in ages. Proton is really good, and the major web browsers work the same on -at minimum- Windows, OSX, and Linux.

Plus, it's been my experience that drivers for AMD's graphics cards just work better on Linux... especially for older games. It helps that the folks writing them aren't working for "AI"-crazy companies that have probably massively slashed the resources they're giving the driver programmers for their consumer-grade cards. (After all, why spend any money on software for video games when you can spend that money on software for "AI" stuff and get a much larger ROI?)

From what I can tell, gaming with an nvidia card on Linux is still rough. Is that incorrect?

It depends on your card I think. I can say that with a 3080 Ti and now a 5090 I have no issue playing almost all the games on steam on Fedora 44, event a lot of games not explicitly compatible. I’ve been using Linux only for probably a year now and I don’t see a good reason to go back to Windows for gaming myself.

Somewhat. There's still a ~20% ish performance impact for DX12 titles on Nvidia, but on any newer/recent card it basically just brute forces it and ends up being fine unless you are an FPS chaser and have an issue with getting, say, 140 FPS instead of 168 FPS. That'll matter if you play competitive PvP games, but otherwise you probably won't notice (depending on the game)

Last time I tried out linux (Earlier this year) I had to give up on it because my system would occasionally freeze to the point I needed to do a hard reset.

I thought it was a hardware issue, but it ended up being a linux amd driver issue. I haven’t had a problem since switching back to windows.

> Many or most of those 95% who are just using Windows for PC games and using a web browser would be well served by either trying out or having a tech-savvy neighbor help them try out a Linux distro like Bazzite.

This is true until you consider what that exact casual market looks like. Mainstream casual PC gamers are overwhelmingly concentrated in live service multiplayer AAA games with kernel level anticheat. Fortnite, League of Legends, Valorant, Call of Duty, Apex Legends, etc.

So it's kind of a hard spot where yes, 95% of casual windows gamers would in theory be much better off on Linux but the Catch-22 is the games that market is mostly concentrated on is the single category that still does not work on Linux.

It's not like Windows is an OS they love, it's just a mandatory anti-cheat wall, but its a wall Linux can't breach yet.

So, to be clear, and to really drive this point home. Gaming on Linux is absolutely viable and practical it's just the efforts are sunken by bad developers who refuse to enable compatibility or figure out a better solution.

"games that market is mostly concentrated on is the single category that still does not work on Linux."

All of the games you described have and will work on Linux perfectly fine under proton, it is the developers CHOICE for these games not to work.

> it is the developers CHOICE for these games not to work.

Can you blame them if the choices they have are a) support Linux but with weak anti-cheat, or b) exclude ~3% of PC gamers?

It is my opinion that a large chunk of the legwork in anti-cheating is solved by protecting your game with adequate server-side checks and heuristics/data. Valve does a pretty poor job of this but there are plenty of games with a thriving competitive environment that does not require the use of kernel anti-cheat.

Do you have any examples? Competitive shooters are one of the worst cases because your server-side checks need to allow tolerances to make up for latency, and cannot be so thorough where they would tank performance. Data analysis can work but there's a wide range of cheating styles to catch and you wont be able to catch them before they ruin the fun for a lot of people.

Any time I am playing a game of CS I can head over to someone's steam profile and replace .com with .rip and the website will show me a breakdown of a person's stats, based on a few statistics over a few games will instantly show me if this person has red flags-based time to damage, how often they win a clutch and how good their aim/recoil control is. That already narrows down about 50% of cheaters very easily based on the past 20/30 games of data

There was also a huge regression from CSGO->CS2. There used to be a feature that would not network players if you could not see them, this was completely scrapped and now cheaters can see where you are at all times meaning that if you are closet cheating, you can always have your best player follow the bomb.

Pretty much any service with a strong client-side anti cheat then relies on manual bans for people who slip through the cracks which is the most effective system for dealing with that.

CSGO had the overwatch system but that was pretty useless for all but the most blatant cheaters

> "games that market is mostly concentrated on is the single category that still does not work on Linux."

Yeah. That single category is "games that the devs have done the extra work needed to make them not run in Proton". There's no consistent game genre, age, or intended audience... it's just whether or not the dev decided that running on the Steam Deck, SteamOS, and the various Linux distros was something that they were actively going to block. [0]

[0] An illustrative case is Apex Legends. It waffled back and forth between "permitted to run under Proton" and "not permitted", and eventually landed in the "not permitted" bucket. And no, "'competitive' shooters" is not the category that this fits in because shooters like Hunt: Showdown and Counterstrike work just fine with Proton.

The service where Counter-Strike actually gets played competitively, FaceIT, does not work on Linux.

It's not terribly surprising to me that a third-party mod that requires the use of a special kernelspace program only works on Windows.

FWIW, Valve doesn't require use of that system for tournament play and is of the opinion that VAC is sufficient to run a Counterstrike tournament. [0][1]

[0] <https://github.com/ValveSoftware/counter-strike_rules_and_re...>

[1] See section 3.4 of the license you have to agree to to run an official tournament <https://store.steampowered.com/tourney/limited_license>

The problem is most people "who are just using Windows for PC games and using a web browser" are not a good fit for Linux. They don't install their OS themselves so cannot install a Linux distro. They don't do their own regular maintenance so forced updates are necessary. They expect software like Office to be available - not alternatives that work a bit differently and have buttons in unfamiliar places. Computer literacy is going down so this is only getting worse. Hardware that ships with SteamOS is the best chance to get PC gamers onto Linux. It's already being used by nearly 1% of Steam users and Steam has a lot of users.

> Plus, it's been my experience that drivers for AMD's graphics cards just work better on Linux

That's why Valve went with AMD for the Steam Deck and Machine. But it's also another blocker because 72% of Steam users have an Nvidia GPU.

> The problem is most people...

From the first sentence in my reply:

  Many or most of those 95% ...would be well served by either trying out or having a tech-savvy neighbor help them try out...

> But it's also another blocker because 72% of Steam users have an Nvidia GPU.

My buddy games on Linux and has an nVidia graphics card. It works well enough when you use nVidia's proprietary drivers. Distros like Bazzite install those out of the box. See also this comment [0] posted two hours before yours.

[0] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49099323>

> Many or most of those 95% ...would be well served by either trying out or having a tech-savvy neighbor help them try out...

I ignored this bit because it wouldn't make an impact. Curiosity and patience is limited for most people so they don't bother exploring options - they just want to game. Having a friend/family/neighbor who can help would be great if there were enough of us, but they still need to take the first step and ask.

Valve is apparently working with Nvidia for proper support with SteamOS. I have my doubts though, I expect AMD will continue to be the best choice, but official support in SteamOS would be significant.

> I ignored this bit because it wouldn't make an impact.

You, from earlier:

  The problem is most people ... don't install their OS themselves so cannot install a Linux distro.

Me, from the comment you replied to:

  Many or most of those 95% ... would be well served by either trying out or having a tech-savvy neighbor help them try out...

I preempted your objection, but you were quite committed to getting your copypasta out. Why is it copypasta? Because you said -among other things-

> They expect software like Office to be available - not alternatives...

in reply to my setup

  Many or most of those 95% who are just using Windows for PC games and using a web browser...

Well millions of people are still smoking cigarettes doesn't mean that shit is good

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