5 ms·

A lot of this is only true if you only have the most basic setup or you are playing the most played games. Outside of the top 100 or so games or unity games (un

A lot of this is only true if you only have the most basic setup or you are playing the most played games. Outside of the top 100 or so games or unity games (unity games seem to just work as unity is cross platform anyway) it is extremely variable and there are all sorts of odd issues. While many games work there are hundreds of annoyances, crashes and quirks that don't exist on Windows at all. * alt-tabbing out of a game will often crash a lot of games, so you can't really use discord or similar team chat software properly without risking crashing out of the game. * If you have a multi-monitor system the game will frequently start on the wrong screen. Thanks to how mondern video drivers identify the monitors even switch the cables round might not work! * A lot of games will work fine at 1080p. At 4K you will see performance problems, also streaming to other people can be terrible. * Single player games that require high refresh rates and stable framerates like Doom Eternal will have variable performance for no reason what-so-ever and are rock solid on Windows (I had two game crashes in the past year and I play a lot of Doom Eternal). * Loads of older games that use the build engine or the KeX engine like Blood does not work properly with Proton. * Lots of indie games do not work at all. * Game streaming on discord will tank framerate on a lot of games in Linux, but it works flawlessly in Windows. * Some graphics setttings just don't take at all, it doesn't seem to error. Everytime one of these articles get posted there are comments such as this where people say that it is flawless and it simply isn't true. Having a dual screen setup isn't a strange setup these days at all and using Discord is the choice of most PC gamers these days. I stream games to friends (some are disabled and can't play the games, others might want just to watch me play the game as I am good at these games). I am quite proficient with Linux (I've been using it since 2002) and I cannot recommend it. Maybe it is good enough for you but you and many the people on this thread are giving a false impression of the solution. I have about 450 games in my steam library (I've had a steam account since Half life 2 was released) and about 50 in my GoG account and I've tried a fair few, everything from modern triple A titles to older games, so I have a good sample size for anyone claiming that is merely ancedotal.

tines 6y ago
Not all these issues are specific to Linux though; I can't even alt-tab out of Skyrim on Windows 10 without it crashing.
- mdoms 6y ago
  Skyrim is a ten year old game. Almost all modern games can be Alt Tabbed in Windows flawlessly.
- linux_user_83 6y ago
  I can. I do it literally all the time.
  - smoldesu 6y ago
    The official user guide for Skyrim explicitly states that alt-tabbing can cause crashing. Maybe you're using some form of wiccan magic to avoid this issue, but Bethesda themselves acknowledge it's an issue. Perhaps you're referring to Skyrim Special Edition?
    - galangalalgol 6y ago
      Always hit esc before alt-tabbimg out, otherwise I always get two cursors with differing sensitivity. And only one is actually the cursor. It doesn't crash until you re-enter and I can usually fix that by selecting it from the task bar, and when I get a blank screen I then alt-tab through all the open applications and back to skyrim. Wiccan magic indeed.
    - linux_user_83 6y ago
      Can being the operative word there. This is just dishonest. I've got about 200 hours in Skyrim (back in what 2011 or 2012) sometimes you've gotta double-alt tab back out sometimes so the game looks like it has crashed. Loads of games work with that trick btw (e.g Rome Total War, Medieval 2). But it is rarely an issue with new-ish games (in Windows). But is a big issue in Linux with proton with a lot of games I've tried. Rome Total War 2 (which was at the time infamous for it bugs) could be minimised and left running for hours without issue and that is quite an old game now.
  - NullPrefix 6y ago
    You mind if we come over to play on your computer?
dleslie 6y ago
Basically all your points are valid for Windows, as well. PC Gaming has long been a brittle experience due to moving OS and hardware targets.
- linux_user_83 6y ago
  No they are not valid for Windows. I almost have none of these problems on Windows. I do have them constantly on Linux.
  - smoldesu 6y ago
    At risk of turning this discussion into a "my anecdata vs yours" discussion, I honestly have no idea where you're coming from on this. Many of those issues are very much present on Windows, if not exacerbated by the overhead Windows has.
    - linux_user_83 6y ago
      No they are not. People claim they have them. I simple don't believe them. People usually have problems when they have bad hardware, gunked driver installs. As for the overhead of Windows. Linux and Windows benchmarks on games (from many many sites, even places like phoronix) show that framerates on games that have native versions of each are about the same.
      - dleslie 6y ago
        Go pull out the game disks for any DX3 or DirectPlay games. I guarantee you're likely to have a bad time. The same follows for a great many games released on Steam that targeted WinXPSP2.
      - smoldesu 6y ago
        Again, it sounds like you've come full circle here. You aren't making much of a case if your argument is "it works fine if you know what you're doing", because that is also the status quo on Linux. We could continue to argue about how we've both misconfigured our respective systems, but that's missing the forest for the trees. Your point is moot.
ekianjo 6y ago
Fair comments and mostly true. I would however add that the point is the direction of where things are going. It was impossible to play more than 10 percent of steam games just a few years ago. Now the range has massively improved and support is progressively better. In another 2 years you can expect less odd cases and better monitor support.
smoldesu 6y ago
It's certainly not flawless, but I haven't seen some of these issues you're mentioning. I'm running a dual-monitor setup off my 1050ti, with my primary display being a 1440p 144hz display. I only have windowing issues on games that already had windowing issues natively (the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games are a particularly large sore thumb), and I have never seen a game spawn on the wrong display. I haven't played Doom Eternal, but Doom (2016) ran at a locked 60hz for me. I could push it higher, but at 1440p I'm already stretching the capabilities of this card. Game streaming, while partially broken (eg. you can't stream an individual display), never had that considerable of a performance impact for me. I streamed Valheim over Discord the other day, and only lost ~3 or 4 FPS overall. Besides that, I understand where you're coming from. The experience isn't flawless, but neither is gaming on Windows. It's ultimately up to you to pick and choose your battles, but the majority of the games I play work relatively well, even compared to Windows.
- linux_user_83 6y ago
  > It's certainly not flawless, but I haven't seen some of these issues you're mentioning. You previously said for single player it was. I experience them all the time and I tried different distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro) it has been quite consistent issues over at least the last two years. I find it very hard to believe you haven't seen any of these issues (especially alt-tabbing). I actually sometimes think people are just straight up lying but I have no hard evidence. > I'm running a dual-monitor setup off my 1050ti, with my primary display being a 1440p 144hz display. I only have windowing issues on games that already had windowing issues natively (the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games are a particularly large sore thumb), and I have never seen a game spawn on the wrong display. I haven't played Doom Eternal, but Doom (2016) ran at a locked 60hz for me. I could push it higher, but at 1440p I'm already stretching the capabilities of this card. Game streaming, while partially broken (eg. you can't stream an individual display), never had that considerable of a performance impact for me. I streamed Valheim over Discord the other day, and only lost ~3 or 4 FPS overall. Discord streaming literally halves my framerate and I have a 1080Ti with a Ryzen 3700X. So I just don't believe you. You won't see performance problems with Doom 2016 as even a medicore card back in 2012 can play that game decently (my old 660GTX played the game fine at medium on a i7 from 2014ish). > Besides that, I understand where you're coming from. The experience isn't flawless, but neither is gaming on Windows. It's ultimately up to you to pick and choose your battles, but the majority of the games I play work relatively well, even compared to Windows. It isn't flawless on Windows but it doesn't have any of the problems I've mentioned, it is generally very stable and it has worked consistently for year. I have no idea about the so called issues you have. I have a sizable library and I will fire up old games every so often and they work without issue. However I know how to look after a Windows installation (a lot of people don't and that includes so called tech savvy users). I've played all sorts of games on Windows 10 fine. Games going back to 2002. The main problem I have is the resolution of my screen is soo high the fonts and sprites are tiny.
smoldesu 6y ago
For a Linux user of nearly 2 decades, you sure have an awfully new HN account...
- ManyOfUs 6y ago
  Many of us dang-strokers are making one account per comment. It's pretty retarded to 'keep an account' in here, or anywhere else on the internet. Yeah except having a stable email. But there too we choose to throw away as much as possible. I bet your mind is blown. Imagine having 'I had a curated groomed HN account' as your epitaph. Sounds pretty retarded doesn't it. So we use one account per comment. It's pretty easy.
  - smoldesu 6y ago
    I'm sure your epitaph of "made alternate accounts to call people retarded" will look great on a tombstone too. It's pretty silly to be concerned with other people's optics when your glass house looks as brittle as it is.
swebs 6y ago
Did you honestly create a new account just to spread FUD about gaming on Linux?
JeremyNT 6y ago
Peripheral support is an issue too. I managed to fiddle around and get my g27 wheel working in most games, more or less, but my TrackIR was basically worthless (it could kind of emulate a mouse, but that just gives you the xy position, not proper head tracking).

tines 6y ago

Not all these issues are specific to Linux though; I can't even alt-tab out of Skyrim on Windows 10 without it crashing.

mdoms 6y ago
Skyrim is a ten year old game. Almost all modern games can be Alt Tabbed in Windows flawlessly.
linux_user_83 6y ago
I can. I do it literally all the time.
- smoldesu 6y ago
  The official user guide for Skyrim explicitly states that alt-tabbing can cause crashing. Maybe you're using some form of wiccan magic to avoid this issue, but Bethesda themselves acknowledge it's an issue. Perhaps you're referring to Skyrim Special Edition?
  - galangalalgol 6y ago
    Always hit esc before alt-tabbimg out, otherwise I always get two cursors with differing sensitivity. And only one is actually the cursor. It doesn't crash until you re-enter and I can usually fix that by selecting it from the task bar, and when I get a blank screen I then alt-tab through all the open applications and back to skyrim. Wiccan magic indeed.
  - linux_user_83 6y ago
    Can being the operative word there. This is just dishonest. I've got about 200 hours in Skyrim (back in what 2011 or 2012) sometimes you've gotta double-alt tab back out sometimes so the game looks like it has crashed. Loads of games work with that trick btw (e.g Rome Total War, Medieval 2). But it is rarely an issue with new-ish games (in Windows). But is a big issue in Linux with proton with a lot of games I've tried. Rome Total War 2 (which was at the time infamous for it bugs) could be minimised and left running for hours without issue and that is quite an old game now.
- NullPrefix 6y ago
  You mind if we come over to play on your computer?

dleslie 6y ago

Basically all your points are valid for Windows, as well. PC Gaming has long been a brittle experience due to moving OS and hardware targets.

linux_user_83 6y ago
No they are not valid for Windows. I almost have none of these problems on Windows. I do have them constantly on Linux.
- smoldesu 6y ago
  At risk of turning this discussion into a "my anecdata vs yours" discussion, I honestly have no idea where you're coming from on this. Many of those issues are very much present on Windows, if not exacerbated by the overhead Windows has.
  - linux_user_83 6y ago
    No they are not. People claim they have them. I simple don't believe them. People usually have problems when they have bad hardware, gunked driver installs. As for the overhead of Windows. Linux and Windows benchmarks on games (from many many sites, even places like phoronix) show that framerates on games that have native versions of each are about the same.
    - dleslie 6y ago
      Go pull out the game disks for any DX3 or DirectPlay games. I guarantee you're likely to have a bad time. The same follows for a great many games released on Steam that targeted WinXPSP2.
    - smoldesu 6y ago
      Again, it sounds like you've come full circle here. You aren't making much of a case if your argument is "it works fine if you know what you're doing", because that is also the status quo on Linux. We could continue to argue about how we've both misconfigured our respective systems, but that's missing the forest for the trees. Your point is moot.

ekianjo 6y ago

Fair comments and mostly true. I would however add that the point is the direction of where things are going. It was impossible to play more than 10 percent of steam games just a few years ago. Now the range has massively improved and support is progressively better. In another 2 years you can expect less odd cases and better monitor support.

smoldesu 6y ago

It's certainly not flawless, but I haven't seen some of these issues you're mentioning. I'm running a dual-monitor setup off my 1050ti, with my primary display being a 1440p 144hz display. I only have windowing issues on games that already had windowing issues natively (the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games are a particularly large sore thumb), and I have never seen a game spawn on the wrong display. I haven't played Doom Eternal, but Doom (2016) ran at a locked 60hz for me. I could push it higher, but at 1440p I'm already stretching the capabilities of this card. Game streaming, while partially broken (eg. you can't stream an individual display), never had that considerable of a performance impact for me. I streamed Valheim over Discord the other day, and only lost ~3 or 4 FPS overall. Besides that, I understand where you're coming from. The experience isn't flawless, but neither is gaming on Windows. It's ultimately up to you to pick and choose your battles, but the majority of the games I play work relatively well, even compared to Windows.

linux_user_83 6y ago
> It's certainly not flawless, but I haven't seen some of these issues you're mentioning. You previously said for single player it was. I experience them all the time and I tried different distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro) it has been quite consistent issues over at least the last two years. I find it very hard to believe you haven't seen any of these issues (especially alt-tabbing). I actually sometimes think people are just straight up lying but I have no hard evidence. > I'm running a dual-monitor setup off my 1050ti, with my primary display being a 1440p 144hz display. I only have windowing issues on games that already had windowing issues natively (the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games are a particularly large sore thumb), and I have never seen a game spawn on the wrong display. I haven't played Doom Eternal, but Doom (2016) ran at a locked 60hz for me. I could push it higher, but at 1440p I'm already stretching the capabilities of this card. Game streaming, while partially broken (eg. you can't stream an individual display), never had that considerable of a performance impact for me. I streamed Valheim over Discord the other day, and only lost ~3 or 4 FPS overall. Discord streaming literally halves my framerate and I have a 1080Ti with a Ryzen 3700X. So I just don't believe you. You won't see performance problems with Doom 2016 as even a medicore card back in 2012 can play that game decently (my old 660GTX played the game fine at medium on a i7 from 2014ish). > Besides that, I understand where you're coming from. The experience isn't flawless, but neither is gaming on Windows. It's ultimately up to you to pick and choose your battles, but the majority of the games I play work relatively well, even compared to Windows. It isn't flawless on Windows but it doesn't have any of the problems I've mentioned, it is generally very stable and it has worked consistently for year. I have no idea about the so called issues you have. I have a sizable library and I will fire up old games every so often and they work without issue. However I know how to look after a Windows installation (a lot of people don't and that includes so called tech savvy users). I've played all sorts of games on Windows 10 fine. Games going back to 2002. The main problem I have is the resolution of my screen is soo high the fonts and sprites are tiny.

smoldesu 6y ago

For a Linux user of nearly 2 decades, you sure have an awfully new HN account...

ManyOfUs 6y ago
Many of us dang-strokers are making one account per comment. It's pretty retarded to 'keep an account' in here, or anywhere else on the internet. Yeah except having a stable email. But there too we choose to throw away as much as possible. I bet your mind is blown. Imagine having 'I had a curated groomed HN account' as your epitaph. Sounds pretty retarded doesn't it. So we use one account per comment. It's pretty easy.
- smoldesu 6y ago
  I'm sure your epitaph of "made alternate accounts to call people retarded" will look great on a tombstone too. It's pretty silly to be concerned with other people's optics when your glass house looks as brittle as it is.

swebs 6y ago

Did you honestly create a new account just to spread FUD about gaming on Linux?

JeremyNT 6y ago

Peripheral support is an issue too. I managed to fiddle around and get my g27 wheel working in most games, more or less, but my TrackIR was basically worthless (it could kind of emulate a mouse, but that just gives you the xy position, not proper head tracking).