4 ms·

Big fan of WSL, get power of Windows and the full power of Linux combined. Can easily switch between gaming and development.

tsar9x 6y ago
One caveat is that WSL2 needs Hyper-V, and many anti-cheats won't work with it (many CS:GO anticheats, I think it will be true for many multiplayer shooters).
- XzAeRosho 6y ago
  Really? I've been playing for years now with Hyper-V enabled and hasn't been an issue. I think you can't play inside a VM (like Hyper-V), which is a different story.
- jrockway 6y ago
  There have been games whose anti-cheat software incorrectly flagged Hyper-V hosts as being Hyper-V guests and would refuse to launch the game, but I believe they are all fixed. All my Blizzard games seem perfectly happy to run on a machine that has Hyper-V.
eqvinox 6y ago
I've been using Steam on (Debian) Linux for quite a while and haven't really run into issues. I mostly play Dota 2 and Stellaris, which come Linux native, but also a bunch of other stuff including quite a few Windows native / Proton-"translated" games. All this on AMD graphics with standard open source drivers btw, did not install either proprietary drivers or "special" open source versions. (Card is this in case anyone cares:) 0c:00.0 VGA … [AMD/ATI] Baffin [Radeon RX 550 640SP / RX 560/560X] (rev cf) OpenGL renderer string: Radeon RX 560 Series (POLARIS11, DRM 3.36.0, 5.6.2+, LLVM 9.0.1) OpenGL core profile version string: 4.6 (Core Profile) Mesa 20.0.2 Then again for lack of a Windows installation I wouldn't know if I'm losing performance. It is however what I expect of the card's age and price segment (mediocre in both I'd say.)
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  For several years, I too have used just Linux + Steam for gaming. But lately I have some misgivings. Recently I've noticed that some games running under Proton don't reliably save: "X-Com 2" and "Strike Suit Zero". And I can't rule out that happening with other games running under Proton. The frustration of lost saves makes gaming less enjoyable for me. So now I'm considering running Windows 10 in a guest VM. (I'm not interested in Win10 + WSL, because I'm not open to Win10's unavoidable-updates and forced-telemetry.)
- bcrosby95 6y ago
  I think I tried Imperator: Rome on Fedora and it didn't work. But I don't recall. Everything else from Steam has worked for me. With Lutris I've been able to get every other game working that I've wanted to play - including Blizzard games, other MMOs like FFXIV, and Path of Exile. But there definitely are some quirks and other things you might need to deal with. Like to play FFXIV, the first play worked. The second didn't - it failed with some network error. Eventually I figured out that if I deleted a folder the first run created (some web cache/settings folder) it would usually work. That included settings for storing my login information, so I wasn't able to have the game remember that. This workaround also didn't always work. So sometimes I would have to delete the folder, start the application. Close it down, delete the folder, restart the application. It usually worked the first try. Another annoyance I eventually found out: the error I was getting was the same as what you would get when their servers were down.
fulafel 6y ago
You can also do this by running a Windows VM on Linux if you have 2 GPUs.

tsar9x 6y ago

One caveat is that WSL2 needs Hyper-V, and many anti-cheats won't work with it (many CS:GO anticheats, I think it will be true for many multiplayer shooters).

XzAeRosho 6y ago
Really? I've been playing for years now with Hyper-V enabled and hasn't been an issue. I think you can't play inside a VM (like Hyper-V), which is a different story.
jrockway 6y ago
There have been games whose anti-cheat software incorrectly flagged Hyper-V hosts as being Hyper-V guests and would refuse to launch the game, but I believe they are all fixed. All my Blizzard games seem perfectly happy to run on a machine that has Hyper-V.

eqvinox 6y ago

I've been using Steam on (Debian) Linux for quite a while and haven't really run into issues. I mostly play Dota 2 and Stellaris, which come Linux native, but also a bunch of other stuff including quite a few Windows native / Proton-"translated" games. All this on AMD graphics with standard open source drivers btw, did not install either proprietary drivers or "special" open source versions. (Card is this in case anyone cares:) 0c:00.0 VGA … [AMD/ATI] Baffin [Radeon RX 550 640SP / RX 560/560X] (rev cf) OpenGL renderer string: Radeon RX 560 Series (POLARIS11, DRM 3.36.0, 5.6.2+, LLVM 9.0.1) OpenGL core profile version string: 4.6 (Core Profile) Mesa 20.0.2 Then again for lack of a Windows installation I wouldn't know if I'm losing performance. It is however what I expect of the card's age and price segment (mediocre in both I'd say.)

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
For several years, I too have used just Linux + Steam for gaming. But lately I have some misgivings. Recently I've noticed that some games running under Proton don't reliably save: "X-Com 2" and "Strike Suit Zero". And I can't rule out that happening with other games running under Proton. The frustration of lost saves makes gaming less enjoyable for me. So now I'm considering running Windows 10 in a guest VM. (I'm not interested in Win10 + WSL, because I'm not open to Win10's unavoidable-updates and forced-telemetry.)
bcrosby95 6y ago
I think I tried Imperator: Rome on Fedora and it didn't work. But I don't recall. Everything else from Steam has worked for me. With Lutris I've been able to get every other game working that I've wanted to play - including Blizzard games, other MMOs like FFXIV, and Path of Exile. But there definitely are some quirks and other things you might need to deal with. Like to play FFXIV, the first play worked. The second didn't - it failed with some network error. Eventually I figured out that if I deleted a folder the first run created (some web cache/settings folder) it would usually work. That included settings for storing my login information, so I wasn't able to have the game remember that. This workaround also didn't always work. So sometimes I would have to delete the folder, start the application. Close it down, delete the folder, restart the application. It usually worked the first try. Another annoyance I eventually found out: the error I was getting was the same as what you would get when their servers were down.

fulafel 6y ago

You can also do this by running a Windows VM on Linux if you have 2 GPUs.