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It IS a perfectly usable OS for a gaming rig. Try a Steam Deck if you haven't. Most games work, granted if you love some multiplayer game with kernel level anti

It IS a perfectly usable OS for a gaming rig. Try a Steam Deck if you haven't. Most games work, granted if you love some multiplayer game with kernel level anti-cheat it won't work. But at this point it feels like 90-95% compatible. I've run into I think one game I've tried out of probably 50-100 that I couldn't get to work just by launching or either bumping the Proton/Wine version.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
> It IS a perfectly usable OS for a gaming rig. Try a Steam Deck if you haven't. I remember when Loki was porting a small handful of games to Linux and clueless Linux Desktop evangelists back then claimed the same thing: "look, it is a perfectly useable gaming platform!". Look, Linux has made a ton of progress as a viable gaming platform lately, largely due to the Wine and Proton projects[0], but there are still large holes in what it has reasonable support for. For me personally, VR is a shitshow on Linux, even with Valve's own offerings. [0] Because the actual Linux Desktop community could never get their shit together enough to actually be a platform, we ended up just porting Windows's own platform.
- account42 4y ago
  Its a matter of perspective and what kinds of games you are interested in. Even with the relatively few games from Loki / Id / etc. you still had more than enough games to fill your time. So in that sense it was a perfectly viable gaming platform. Of course if you want to play whatever is popular then the story is different - but even there, Proton does improve things quite a bit.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    Everything is a matter of perspective though so this is a pretty meaningless statement. And telling someone who stays with Windows because of gaming that 5 games is "more than enough games to fill your time" is one of the big problems with the Linux Desktop community: You seek to change the user's use case rather than make the OS better at the one they actually have.
alkonaut 4y ago
I think this is mostly the same argument as "It's perfectly usable on the desktop" of previous decades. It's basically "yeah you will need some tweaking, but it's worth it for the benefit of being free/libre/open/hackable/..." The opposite is basically "Yeah you pay for an OS that shows ads in your face and that you hate, but on the other hand you don't need to occasionally google error messages for that latest game you bought or worry that the anticheat doesn't work" Sadly you can't have both. But my point is if you absolutely must play all AAA online PC multiplayer games perfectly, then you must also use windows. I guess the contentious part is, is that the definition of "usable" to me it is, but clearly not to everyone.
- goosedragons 4y ago
  No it's very very different. 15 years ago when I first tried gaming on Linux it was crap. A literal handful of titles worked. Most would not launch or they would be a slideshow after considerable futzing with Wine. 10 years ago things improved a bit when Valve started bringing Linux ports to Steam but still most games didn't work and needed effort in Wine to launch. Now you literally click one check box in Steam and install the game and it just works most of the time. If it doesn't work you can often use ProtonUp Qt to get the latest Proton build and that often solves it. It's about as much effort as updating a GPU driver on Windows. For non-Steam games Lutris and Heroic are pretty similar. I'm not just talking indie games either, big AAA stuff like Marvel's Spider-man work well. Online kernel anti-cheat games are really a pretty tiny list. Obviously there's some popular, high profile stuff on there but a lot of good recent stuff that does work.
  - alkonaut 4y ago
    I think it's a matter of perspective, which mostly depends on your attitude to AAA online multiplayer. Those represent a huge % of copies sold and hours played for PC gaming (They are certainly the majority of titles on the most sold lists). Many of those titles also have windows-only anti-cheats (Valve obviously being a driving force for Linux here). So if you look at "N titles of M work well" then the Linux glass is half full. If you look at "X hours of Y of the total played hours of recent popular AAA games are played on games or modes that work poorly on linux" then it's still half empty.
PeterisP 4y ago
I'd strongly argue that for most people "90-95% compatible" means "not compatible" if it doesn't run the one AAA game they care about, and "could get it to work by messing with versions of other software" is incompatible with the words "perfectly usable". If it doesn't work out of the box and requires fiddling, then it's at most "barely usable", it doesn't even meet the standard for "decently usable" much less "perfectly usable".
SirMaster 4y ago
90-95% sounds like a good stat, but I just checked and it doesn't support at all the main game I play for most of my gaming time. So it's very incompatible from my point of view. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1938090/Call_of_Duty_Modern_Warfare_II/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1938090/Call_of_Duty_Mode... Looking back over the previous call of duty titles, it doesn't seem to support any of them. Missing giant and popular gaming franchises like this is why I would not even be comfortable calling it 90-95% compatible. I also checked BF 2042 which I play probably 2nd most often, same, not compatible. And 3rd most played for me, Rainbow Sig Siege, also not compatible. These are not exactly small games or small gaming franchises and so basically steam deck or Linux doesn't support basically any of the games I play. Just wanted to give my perspective.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago

> It IS a perfectly usable OS for a gaming rig. Try a Steam Deck if you haven't. I remember when Loki was porting a small handful of games to Linux and clueless Linux Desktop evangelists back then claimed the same thing: "look, it is a perfectly useable gaming platform!". Look, Linux has made a ton of progress as a viable gaming platform lately, largely due to the Wine and Proton projects[0], but there are still large holes in what it has reasonable support for. For me personally, VR is a shitshow on Linux, even with Valve's own offerings. [0] Because the actual Linux Desktop community could never get their shit together enough to actually be a platform, we ended up just porting Windows's own platform.

account42 4y ago
Its a matter of perspective and what kinds of games you are interested in. Even with the relatively few games from Loki / Id / etc. you still had more than enough games to fill your time. So in that sense it was a perfectly viable gaming platform. Of course if you want to play whatever is popular then the story is different - but even there, Proton does improve things quite a bit.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  Everything is a matter of perspective though so this is a pretty meaningless statement. And telling someone who stays with Windows because of gaming that 5 games is "more than enough games to fill your time" is one of the big problems with the Linux Desktop community: You seek to change the user's use case rather than make the OS better at the one they actually have.

alkonaut 4y ago

I think this is mostly the same argument as "It's perfectly usable on the desktop" of previous decades. It's basically "yeah you will need some tweaking, but it's worth it for the benefit of being free/libre/open/hackable/..." The opposite is basically "Yeah you pay for an OS that shows ads in your face and that you hate, but on the other hand you don't need to occasionally google error messages for that latest game you bought or worry that the anticheat doesn't work" Sadly you can't have both. But my point is if you absolutely must play all AAA online PC multiplayer games perfectly, then you must also use windows. I guess the contentious part is, is that the definition of "usable" to me it is, but clearly not to everyone.

goosedragons 4y ago
No it's very very different. 15 years ago when I first tried gaming on Linux it was crap. A literal handful of titles worked. Most would not launch or they would be a slideshow after considerable futzing with Wine. 10 years ago things improved a bit when Valve started bringing Linux ports to Steam but still most games didn't work and needed effort in Wine to launch. Now you literally click one check box in Steam and install the game and it just works most of the time. If it doesn't work you can often use ProtonUp Qt to get the latest Proton build and that often solves it. It's about as much effort as updating a GPU driver on Windows. For non-Steam games Lutris and Heroic are pretty similar. I'm not just talking indie games either, big AAA stuff like Marvel's Spider-man work well. Online kernel anti-cheat games are really a pretty tiny list. Obviously there's some popular, high profile stuff on there but a lot of good recent stuff that does work.
- alkonaut 4y ago
  I think it's a matter of perspective, which mostly depends on your attitude to AAA online multiplayer. Those represent a huge % of copies sold and hours played for PC gaming (They are certainly the majority of titles on the most sold lists). Many of those titles also have windows-only anti-cheats (Valve obviously being a driving force for Linux here). So if you look at "N titles of M work well" then the Linux glass is half full. If you look at "X hours of Y of the total played hours of recent popular AAA games are played on games or modes that work poorly on linux" then it's still half empty.

PeterisP 4y ago

I'd strongly argue that for most people "90-95% compatible" means "not compatible" if it doesn't run the one AAA game they care about, and "could get it to work by messing with versions of other software" is incompatible with the words "perfectly usable". If it doesn't work out of the box and requires fiddling, then it's at most "barely usable", it doesn't even meet the standard for "decently usable" much less "perfectly usable".

SirMaster 4y ago

90-95% sounds like a good stat, but I just checked and it doesn't support at all the main game I play for most of my gaming time. So it's very incompatible from my point of view. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1938090/Call_of_Duty_Modern_Warfare_II/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1938090/Call_of_Duty_Mode... Looking back over the previous call of duty titles, it doesn't seem to support any of them. Missing giant and popular gaming franchises like this is why I would not even be comfortable calling it 90-95% compatible. I also checked BF 2042 which I play probably 2nd most often, same, not compatible. And 3rd most played for me, Rainbow Sig Siege, also not compatible. These are not exactly small games or small gaming franchises and so basically steam deck or Linux doesn't support basically any of the games I play. Just wanted to give my perspective.