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I was totally blown away by how good Proton is in the post Steam Deck world. I now play Steam games on my Linux laptop almost daily because they “just work” eve
by coffeebeqn 3y ago
I was totally blown away by how good Proton is in the post Steam Deck world. I now play Steam games on my Linux laptop almost daily because they “just work” even when the only listed supported platform is Windows
- gclawes 3y agoThat's awesome. How does proton treat anti-cheat software or DRM?
- jcastro 3y agoWorks if the developer enables it. For example: Halo Infinite works fine, but Destiny and Call of Duty don't.
- jwells89 3y agoYep. DRM’d online stuff and VR mainstays (Beat Saber, primarily) are the two sets of games that are keeping me tethered to Windows at the moment. VR games can be played via a Windows VM with GPU passthrough but for DRM’d online games you don’t really have any other option, at least if you don’t want to get banned.
- Cyph0n 3y agoI also run a Windows VM for gaming. One thing to note is that some games have (robust!) VM detection checks on launch, so you can’t even run them in the first place. Valorant is one example.
- diggan 3y ago> I also run a Windows VM for gaming What do you use for the VM? Last time I checked, I couldn't find any free/FOSS VM tooling that allows me to do GPU pass-through on a Linux Host to Windows Guest.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- SXX 3y agoIt seems like you haven't looked into it much since it's was feasible for last 7-8 years.. Linux hosts had GPU passthrough working well before commercial software had such options. Nowadays it's just work out-of-box with Virt-Manager that just run QEMU under KVM. It's been working for years for 99.9% of games excluding some invasive anti-cheats that ban you for VMs, but there literally only a few games that have issue with virtualization.
- Cyph0n 3y agoI use Proxmox and GPU passthrough works just fine (via QEMU). Note that Nvidia GPUs have less issues with passthrough, at least last I checked. See this guide: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/PCI_Passthrough https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/PCI_Passthrough But if you’re running a standard distro, there are guides for most them. * Arch guide (excellent resource, applicable to all distros): https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF * Ubuntu: https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/gpu-virtualization-with-qemu-kvm https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/gpu-virtualization-with-qemu-... * Gentoo: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GPU_passthrough_with_libvirt_qemu_kvm https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GPU_passthrough_with_libvirt_qe... You can also find countless blog posts and videos on setting up GPU passthrough. One excellent resource for gaming use-cases in particular is this subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/ https://www.reddit.com/r/VFIO/ Last thing to note is that your motherboard can make the process easier if it has good IOMMU support. Basically, you want a MB that puts your PCI slot in a separate IOMMU group. You can find examples by searching for “(MB name) IOMMU groups”.
- Kerbonut 3y agoBeat Saber does work on Linux if you can deal with VR on Linux’s quirks.
- jwells89 3y agoDoing so requires a SteamVR headset, though. I’m using a Quest 2 which only works well with Windows. Up to date compelling SteamVR options are starting to appear however so I might see if I can move over to one of those in the next year or two.
- bravetraveler 3y ago* depending on the anti-cheat or DRM This is true for at least EAC/EasyAntiCheat. This covers a lot, sure, but not everything!
- 0x457 3y agoIt depends on both. Anti-cheat used by Destiny 2 is supported, but Bungie needs to allow it first.
- bravetraveler 3y agoIndeed. I meant to imply both if I managed otherwise. This is just a casual warning - Linux gaming is great [as much as the industry allows] I didn't really want to start itemizing things. Most competitive Counter-Strike anti-cheat isn't supported. I've had some luck with the Windows VM approach instead. One may have to disable quite a lot (ie: Hyper-V enhancements) to truly trick them.
- Deathmax 3y agoBattleye has integrations with Proton as well, but as with EAC, it's opt in by the developer, and not every dev enables it.
- bravetraveler 3y agoSure - leads more to my point of... check the games you care about for support. I didn't really want to start itemizing these things. Most AC used in the competitive Counter-Strike community isn't supported, for example. Only first-party VAC.
- Pannoniae 3y agoThose games with anti-cheats are anti-player garbage anyway. You don't lose much without them.
- infecto 3y agoI wish the Linux/OSS communities were less like this and more welcoming.
- ekianjo 3y agoDRM is not welcoming by default... sounds like you have double standards
- IshKebab 3y agoDRM is not the same as anti-cheat.
- arendtio 3y agoThey are not, but both are symptoms of a consumer-disrespecting mindset. - DRM does not serve the consumer, but the producer. - Anti-cheat only serves the consumer if it is well-designed. However, if someone is able to design a game (technically) well, anti-cheat is unnecessary. And if someone cannot design a game, their anti-cheat is often a disservice to the consumer. I don't like either DRM or anti-cheat solutions, not because I am not willing to pay the producers, but because I have been burned too many times by dysfunctional solutions.
- eropple 3y ago> Anti-cheat only serves the consumer if it is well-designed. However, if someone is able to design a game (technically) well, anti-cheat is unnecessary. That silly "speed of light" thing? Just design better.
- 3y ago
- tyfon 3y agoEAC has a proton build now so for new games it should work at least.
- charcircuit 3y agoEAC has had a wine build for a long time (over a decade?). That doesn't mean games enable it.
- deadbunny 3y agoOnly if the developer enables it. Most don't.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nhkcode 3y agoIt varies by game. https://areweanticheatyet.com/ https://areweanticheatyet.com/ is an interesting resource for that because they also track announcements by developers about whether or not linux support is eventually planned.
- jorvi 3y agoI’ll dissent. After hearing people be ecstatic, I thought I’d go full-in on Linux gaming. I have a pretty bog-standard gaming PC that is very Linux-compatible (Intel i5 + Radeon 6800XT) and on there Apex Legends has horrid frame pacing issues, Mirror’s Edge doesn’t work with wireless Xbox controllers. You lose out on a lot of GPU suite features that Windows has. Gnome doesn’t support VRR. Etc etc. There’s so many small issues it’s held me back from deleting my Windows partition. Maybe in a year or two? That said, these things work flawlessly on the Deck.
- COGlory 3y agoFYI Valve is primarily deploying KDE, which does support VRR. They can't really control what dumb decisions the GNOME folks make. For Mirror's Edge, were you using Steam Input?
- jorvi 3y agoYeah, except I prefer the cleanliness of Gnome over how scattershot and buggy KDE feels, so I’m SoL. I’ve even looked into launching games into their own little Gamescope instance, but if you don’t run Gamescope as your main window manager, you lose most of its benefits. > For Mirror's Edge, were you using Steam Input? Yes. The problem lies in the fact that only the Xone driver properly supports the Xbox wireless adapter, but it doesn’t play nice with Mirror’s Edge. Xpad and XpadNeo do work, but those require USB or Bluetooth. And me having to tweak a million things tells why gaming on Linux still sucks, aside from Deck’s blessed config. I don’t want to deal with a thousand papercuts, I want to boot my system and play. Windows is still closer to that experience than Linux.
- OJFord 3y ago> Yeah, except I prefer the cleanliness of Gnome over how scattershot and buggy KDE feels But if it's the difference between gaming working or not for you, wouldn't you rather use it? Surely you barely interact with it anyway while gaming, only to get into Steam? If this is a machine you use for something else too, you could just have a gaming user that logs in to KDE and your normal user that uses Gnome?
- blizzard_dev_17 3y agoI'm doing the same. Playing games I bought 10 years ago for the first time.
- psyclobe 3y agoBottles is the end game for wine style containers and windows games.
- pjmlp 3y agoPity that it solidifies Windows as the top PC gaming OS, that all studios should care about. Let Valve do the needful for running them under GNU/Linux, if at all.
- nindalf 3y agoYou’re missing the bigger picture. Yes, developers really appreciate that their games work seamlessly on the Steam Deck and Linux with no effort on their part. But there are a couple of knock on effects. One is that developers now a specific hardware + software combo to test their games with. Even if it’s the same build they’re sending out, they’re still testing their game on the Deck and fixing issues, leading to a better (but not perfect) experience for Linux gamers. Here’s a video of Swen Vincke, CEO of Larian studios playing a game released by his studio on the Steam Deck - https://youtu.be/kzfEkSGa45k https://youtu.be/kzfEkSGa45k. He’s very pleased and promises to test future games released by his studio on the Deck. And he stuck to that promise - Larian released several fixes specifically for the Steam Deck to make Baldur’s Gate III run better. Linux gamers benefit from that. Second, this increases the % of gamers using Linux. After the Deck’s success in the last couple of years Linux is at 1.91% of the respondents of the Steam Hardware Survey for Nov 2023. Linux was at 1.15% 18 months ago. Doesn’t sound impressive, but if that growth continues and it reaches 3-4%, at that point developers will find shipping native Linux builds more attractive.
- pjmlp 3y agoValve adocates are the ones failing to learn from OS/2 history, "it does Windows better than Windows". Studios don't care about native GNU/Linux, despite the games being shipped with Android/NDK, PlayStation POSIX environment, and the available APIs on Switch OS. All of them much easier than porting from Windows/XBox, almost straight ports if coming from Android/NDK.
- brnt 3y agoHaving a desktop OS was a big thing 30 years ago, but now nobody cares anymore. Who interacts with their OS other than launching browsers or apps based on browsers? Not even most coders these days. OSes are irrelevant these days and having basically libwindows.so these days only underlines that.