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I grew up a die hard gamer. I do al of my software development for the last 13 years on Linux. Long ago I dived deeply into Wine and had a phase of trying to ga

I grew up a die hard gamer. I do al of my software development for the last 13 years on Linux. Long ago I dived deeply into Wine and had a phase of trying to game on Linux but it was a nonstop nightmare of solving ‘uninteresting problems’ and I was solving them when I wanted to be gaming not developing. These days I have an expensive gaming machine running windows and a more expensive laptop running Linux and don’t see myself ever polluting my development environment with gaming packages again. I’m sure there are a lot of people like me so I have doubt about whether Linux gaming will ever move the needle.

anakaine 5y ago
I'm very much in the same boat. I've had more than one attempt at gaming on Linux over the past two decades. The Linux situation is, still, a joke. Its better than what it was, but its still far more hassle than its worth. My free time is limited, and when I want to play a game I'd like to play a game, not play a game of "sort out the next bug / hurdle as to why this game wont run properly". To some degree this is not the fault of our Linux developers, but the fault of hardware vendors who will not release decent working drivers.
- throwaway3699 5y ago
  Hardware developers are too embarrassed to release the source for their drivers I assume. And probably worried about leaking trade secrets also. A shame, because the open source community would probably fix them up happily. But this goes beyond gaming, Nvidia are crushing it with chipsets for ML workloads. A non-negligible portion of Linux compute is now running through these proprietary machines and I find that quite sad.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- techrat 5y ago
  Huh. Cause when we're sticking to the topic... Steam and Linux... I can honestly say that with exception of less than a dozen games that won't run with Proton, everything else has been exactly the same, if not BETTER, than running games within Windows. Fall Guys has EAC which will never run in Linux. So there's no point in even trying. Games like Katamari Reroll have more problems in native Windows than they did on Linux, so I actually end up with a better gaming experience in Linux. As far as Steam goes, it's the same as Windows once you enable Proton. Click "Install." People talk about hassle as if their experience 5 years ago is still the modern use case. Lack of decent working drivers isn't limited to Linux either. I remember nVidia dropping driver support for the 2xx series GeForce cards... and being unable to run games on my GTX 275 in Windows because I'd always end up with out of memory errors. That problem went away when I switched to Linux. The meme of how you have to cut and paste stuff into terminal to get things working hasn't been the Linux reality for some time. Your precious time is mostly safe these days.
  - xtracto 5y ago
    >The meme of how you have to cut and paste stuff into terminal to get things working hasn't been the Linux reality for some time. Your precious time is mostly safe these days This made me chuckle. My main desktop is linux and I also game on it. But just this week I was trying to connect a 2nd monitor in my Linux PC into the integrated graphics hdmi and its deffinitely not "plug and play", not feasible with point and click, and even the instructions floating around Linux forums didn't work for me. This PC I have dual boots to Windows (i use it very rarely) and to test I connected the 2nd monitor on Windows and it worked automatically. (I commented about this here in HN two days ago, so my history shows it). I love working and playing in Linux. But I am honest with people who ask me about it, there are still plenty of rough edges and "paper cuts'. S
lugged 5y ago
I just play Dota, it's all native. I used to keep a seperate windows desktop but that was a long time ago, now I have a new gaming rig (Linux) which is also my workstation, and my old windows desktop is now an htpc running fedora. Laptops are Linux but that's a bit besides the point.
MayeulC 5y ago
> don’t see myself ever polluting my development environment with gaming packages again This is one of the main reasons I use the Steam flatpak!
lgierth 5y ago
I was in the same boat regarding polluting my development environment - nowadays Steam's Wine/Proton stuff is completely containerized and just works ("Steam Runtime").
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  My experience with Ubuntu/Kubuntu is that Steam just works. I can always dual boot into Windows to play other games, but I prefer to stay in Linux. If only more popular games were compatible, and game series like The Witcher or Mass Effect wouldn't get truncated with Windows-only continuations, I would be happier.
johnnycerberus 5y ago
High five, exactly my thoughts just that I'm not using a Linux host anymore, WSL2 is enough for the development I do. Java/Clojure dev in my free time is awesome on Windows with Docker Linux images. In recent years on Ubuntu Desktop, I had encountered many problems with IntelliJ, it is just flawless on Windows. But if your dev involves a lot of low-level native stuff in C, Go, maybe a Linux desktop environment is still the way to go. A little bit offtopic but I wish Playstation would have created a development kit/env accessible to everyone that has a Unity/Unreal instance running. Nowadays a PS5 supports both m&k and controllers, it's like a highly opinionated gaming rig, developing on such a platform should be way more easier and accessible. Modding and indies have always been the fifth wheel, do something Sony!

anakaine 5y ago

I'm very much in the same boat. I've had more than one attempt at gaming on Linux over the past two decades. The Linux situation is, still, a joke. Its better than what it was, but its still far more hassle than its worth. My free time is limited, and when I want to play a game I'd like to play a game, not play a game of "sort out the next bug / hurdle as to why this game wont run properly". To some degree this is not the fault of our Linux developers, but the fault of hardware vendors who will not release decent working drivers.

throwaway3699 5y ago
Hardware developers are too embarrassed to release the source for their drivers I assume. And probably worried about leaking trade secrets also. A shame, because the open source community would probably fix them up happily. But this goes beyond gaming, Nvidia are crushing it with chipsets for ML workloads. A non-negligible portion of Linux compute is now running through these proprietary machines and I find that quite sad.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
techrat 5y ago
Huh. Cause when we're sticking to the topic... Steam and Linux... I can honestly say that with exception of less than a dozen games that won't run with Proton, everything else has been exactly the same, if not BETTER, than running games within Windows. Fall Guys has EAC which will never run in Linux. So there's no point in even trying. Games like Katamari Reroll have more problems in native Windows than they did on Linux, so I actually end up with a better gaming experience in Linux. As far as Steam goes, it's the same as Windows once you enable Proton. Click "Install." People talk about hassle as if their experience 5 years ago is still the modern use case. Lack of decent working drivers isn't limited to Linux either. I remember nVidia dropping driver support for the 2xx series GeForce cards... and being unable to run games on my GTX 275 in Windows because I'd always end up with out of memory errors. That problem went away when I switched to Linux. The meme of how you have to cut and paste stuff into terminal to get things working hasn't been the Linux reality for some time. Your precious time is mostly safe these days.
- xtracto 5y ago
  >The meme of how you have to cut and paste stuff into terminal to get things working hasn't been the Linux reality for some time. Your precious time is mostly safe these days This made me chuckle. My main desktop is linux and I also game on it. But just this week I was trying to connect a 2nd monitor in my Linux PC into the integrated graphics hdmi and its deffinitely not "plug and play", not feasible with point and click, and even the instructions floating around Linux forums didn't work for me. This PC I have dual boots to Windows (i use it very rarely) and to test I connected the 2nd monitor on Windows and it worked automatically. (I commented about this here in HN two days ago, so my history shows it). I love working and playing in Linux. But I am honest with people who ask me about it, there are still plenty of rough edges and "paper cuts'. S

lugged 5y ago

I just play Dota, it's all native. I used to keep a seperate windows desktop but that was a long time ago, now I have a new gaming rig (Linux) which is also my workstation, and my old windows desktop is now an htpc running fedora. Laptops are Linux but that's a bit besides the point.

MayeulC 5y ago

> don’t see myself ever polluting my development environment with gaming packages again This is one of the main reasons I use the Steam flatpak!

lgierth 5y ago

I was in the same boat regarding polluting my development environment - nowadays Steam's Wine/Proton stuff is completely containerized and just works ("Steam Runtime").

ASalazarMX 5y ago
My experience with Ubuntu/Kubuntu is that Steam just works. I can always dual boot into Windows to play other games, but I prefer to stay in Linux. If only more popular games were compatible, and game series like The Witcher or Mass Effect wouldn't get truncated with Windows-only continuations, I would be happier.

johnnycerberus 5y ago

High five, exactly my thoughts just that I'm not using a Linux host anymore, WSL2 is enough for the development I do. Java/Clojure dev in my free time is awesome on Windows with Docker Linux images. In recent years on Ubuntu Desktop, I had encountered many problems with IntelliJ, it is just flawless on Windows. But if your dev involves a lot of low-level native stuff in C, Go, maybe a Linux desktop environment is still the way to go. A little bit offtopic but I wish Playstation would have created a development kit/env accessible to everyone that has a Unity/Unreal instance running. Nowadays a PS5 supports both m&k and controllers, it's like a highly opinionated gaming rig, developing on such a platform should be way more easier and accessible. Modding and indies have always been the fifth wheel, do something Sony!