8 ms·

In my purely anecdotal experience over the last few years, performance ranking is as follows: 1. Steam on Linux via Proton + Wayland (Niri) 2. Steam on Linux

In my purely anecdotal experience over the last few years, performance ranking is as follows: 1. Steam on Linux via Proton + Wayland (Niri) 2. Steam on Linux via Proton + X11 (Xfce) 3. Steam on Windows 4. Games on Linux launched via other means (it's possible I was missing out on certain flags/optimizations, but this is just about the average experience) The biggest thing I noticed when switching to Linux was an improvement in framerate consistency, i.e. I'd have fewer situations where the framerate would drop momentarily. Games felt more solid and predictable. The biggest thing I noticed when switching from X11/Xfce to Wayland/Niri was just an overall increase in framerate. I'd failed this jump many times over the years, so it was notable when I jumped and stayed there earlier this year. It does feel like games take longer to launch on average, but this makes sense given the fact that it's launching via Proton/Wine.

shmerl 1y ago
Try winewayland + Wayland.
thewebguyd 1y ago
Interestingly enough, I've had games that had both a native Linux port and Windows version, and the Windows version through Proton ran better than the native Linux version. This ended up being true for Civ5, Civ6 and Cities Skylines (1). With those admittedly limited examples though, I don't experience the same ranking in performance, but I attribute that to my non-gaming hardware vs. any problem with Linux or Proton/Wine. I play on a laptop with an Nvidia 3050 laptop GPU, and I get much better performance in Windows still. In Cities Skylines, for example, I'll get ~20 fps on Linux via Proton (but I do experience what you said, it's consistent no major spikes or drops) while on Windows I get between 45-60fps up until about 15k population or so. Other games, despite working, remain unplayable to me due to performance. I can play Diablo 4 on windows no problem on medium settings, but even on low it's just too unresponsive on Linux. Anyway, just my anecdotal experience. Those with dedicated gaming rigs will be more than fine with Linux, but those of us on underpowered hardware still seem better off with Windows, unfortunately.
- nialv7 1y ago
  Linux port if there is one is usually done by a third party porting studio, which is not necessarily at the same quality as the original codebase. Also the devs just don't have the manpower/bandwidth to spare for Linux users given how small this community is. It's better value for money for both the gamers and the devs if the devs just choose to engage with valve and get their game running perfectly under proton.
  - unaindz 1y ago
    To be you should compare the windows version on windows, no proton against the Linux version. DXVK, which proton uses, makes some games run better in windows than "native".
  - egypturnash 1y ago
    But maybe figure out how to start getting those third party Linux porting studios paid to work on Proton...
    - YokoZar 1y ago
      The answer is pretty simple here - hire CodeWeavers to work on supporting your game in Proton/Wine rather than some other porting shop doing an old rewrite-style port.
  - preisschild 1y ago
    > and get their game running perfectly under proton Even better would be to compile for linux, but use DXVK-Native (https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk#dxvk-native https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk#dxvk-native) if you think migrating from DirectX to Vulkan requires too much effort.
  - DanielHB 1y ago
    They probably QA mostly for windows, so they run into bottlenecks and edge-cases of windows APIs during QA. Linux-native APIs probably have different bottlenecks and edge-cases. I think the reimplementations of Windows APIs in Linux, even though alternative to the original, should have similar bottlenecks and edge-cases. So the extra QA on Windows helps the Proton version more.
0x38B 1y ago
Side note, Niri is a fantastic WM. When I saw the Phoronix article on HN talking about the addition of overview mode and more, I finally took the plunge and spent an afternoon converting over from Sway.¹ Anecdotally, I've seen less hangups on Niri around fullscreen games and floating windows, perhaps thanks to X11 running in xwayland-satellite. 1: the hardest part was finding a bar that supported i3status-rs; not a fan of GTK bars that eat up CPU. I settled on i3bar-river.
- haswell 1y ago
  I've been so happy with Niri after many many years bouncing around other WMs. It addresses the main issues I've had with other tiling window managers and has been such a joy to use. The scrollable aspect just feels so natural and intuitive to me.
- rendaw 1y ago
  Steam won't launch for me in xwayland-satellite here... I just assumed steam+wayland = broken. I have a kind of weird setup using sway with xwayland disabled and running xwayland-satellite though.
  - 0x38B 1y ago
    Try running xwayland-satellite in another WM like Niri and see if it works there – for example, Gamescope didn’t work well on Sway, crashing as soon as Steam tried to spawn another window, but it’s working fine in Niri.
- ChocolateGod 1y ago
  > X11 running in xwayland-satellite I wish more Wayland compositors took this option, seems like a cleaner method of keeping X compatibility and not allowing Xwayland to bring down the entire compositor.
chillfox 1y ago
Been a Linux gamer for years now and I think you are correct on your frame rate observations in general. If you use ZFS (single nvme) then you can beat windows load times by a fairly large margin. My husband and I have identical hardware for our gaming computers (he uses Windows and I run Linux), it's not uncommon for my computer to load games 10 seconds faster than his.
- jcgl 1y ago
  Why do you think ZFS helps? I’m guessing you have compression turned on? IME, ZFS is rarely better in terms of raw performance, compared to e.g. XFS.
  - 4oo4 1y ago
    From experience having an L2ARC SSD, especially if it's nvme, can really help with zfs performance. I'm curious if they have that in their setup.
    - chillfox 1y ago
      nope, but I use LZ4 compression and have plenty of ram.
  - chillfox 1y ago
    Yep, compression is on and I think that's what does it considering how large games are these days. I stay away from XFS, every time I have used it in the past my entire drive have ended up scrambled within a few months. It's by far the worst file system I have ever used, not even FAT32 was that unstable for me.
    - p_ing 1y ago
      Most large games are already compressed in cabinet files or similar so OS/file system level compression wouldn't gain you anything. While there are games that ship with loose files, like the Elder Scrolls series, other games like Diablo IV or CoD use archives.
badsectoracula 1y ago
> The biggest thing I noticed when switching from X11/Xfce to Wayland/Niri was just an overall increase in framerate. Was it with any specific game? I just tried the GOG version of The Witcher 3 "Complete Edition" (which is the remastered one) with the Direct3D 12 renderer under both Xorg/Window Maker and Wayland/KDE using umu-run (essentially proton without Steam) and it had identical performance in both cases (i also tried to use Niri but it would launch in 60Hz mode and for some reason wouldn't allow the game to run at a higher framerate with vsync disabled regardless of any option i chose) in either low or high settings (which is basically what i expected since the window system shouldn't be a bottleneck unless something is either broken or you are running at something like 20000fps :-P).
- haswell 1y ago
  Some of the games I play often that saw improvements: The Finals, Overwatch, Rocket League, Helldivers. > (i also tried to use Niri but it would launch in 60Hz mode and for some reason wouldn't allow the game to run at a higher framerate with vsync disabled regardless of any option i chose) I had some issues early on related to refresh rate, and it turned out I didn't have an output defined for the correct display. The steps I took: 1. Run `niri msg outputs` to identify the Display ID and available modes. In my case: "DP-3" and "2560x1440@143.964" 2. Set up an output in niri's confid.kdl as follows: output "DP-3" { mode "2560x1440@143.964" variable-refresh-rate }
  - badsectoracula 1y ago
    Hm, i tried it and i could set up the higher refresh rate but Niri was forcing vsync on the game that capped the framerate to my monitor's refresh rate (165Hz) even though in the game i have vsync disabled. This seems to be an issue with Niri as KDE Plasma Wayland disabling vsync works fine. At "ultra" settings i got around 115fps which is ~5 fps lower than 117-120fps i got from Xorg/Window Maker and KDE/Wayland, though i'm pretty sure that was just the forced vsync, so in practice it seems that the window system doesn't matter much. Did you use XFCE's desktop compositor? AFAIK XFCE's compositor isn't particularly great, some years ago when i was working on a custom game engine i had to add an explicit option to use the X11 "override redirect" flag instead of the window hint for fullscreen windows because XFCE's compositor wouldn't disable itself otherwise and the game would feel a bit laggy/inconsistent. Not sure if this has been fixed nowadays but in general it gave me a bad impression for XFCE's compositor as other compositors didn't seem to have the same issue.
andy12_ 1y ago
Is there a way of making wayland actually usable with Nvidia GPUs? I never manage to make it work, and it makes the whole system feel slow and sluggish compared to X11
- ChocolateGod 1y ago
  Try avoiding the open source kernel modules, I had a similar issues.
diggan 1y ago
> It does feel like games take longer to launch on average, but this makes sense given the fact that it's launching via Proton/Wine. Also anecdotal, but I feel like Steam games on Linux compile shaders on the CPU, and maybe not super optimized, compared to Windows where they either ship with precompiled shaders, or it might use the GPU? Still, the very same games runs better on Wayland+Linux too for me, than on Windows, way less stutters in particular as you mention. But I'm not sure if it's because of OS differences, or that it's so much easier to end up bloating a Windows install. I can't say I treat them the same, as one is mostly a work environment and the other one purely entertainment and creative usage.

shmerl 1y ago

Try winewayland + Wayland.

thewebguyd 1y ago

Interestingly enough, I've had games that had both a native Linux port and Windows version, and the Windows version through Proton ran better than the native Linux version. This ended up being true for Civ5, Civ6 and Cities Skylines (1). With those admittedly limited examples though, I don't experience the same ranking in performance, but I attribute that to my non-gaming hardware vs. any problem with Linux or Proton/Wine. I play on a laptop with an Nvidia 3050 laptop GPU, and I get much better performance in Windows still. In Cities Skylines, for example, I'll get ~20 fps on Linux via Proton (but I do experience what you said, it's consistent no major spikes or drops) while on Windows I get between 45-60fps up until about 15k population or so. Other games, despite working, remain unplayable to me due to performance. I can play Diablo 4 on windows no problem on medium settings, but even on low it's just too unresponsive on Linux. Anyway, just my anecdotal experience. Those with dedicated gaming rigs will be more than fine with Linux, but those of us on underpowered hardware still seem better off with Windows, unfortunately.

nialv7 1y ago
Linux port if there is one is usually done by a third party porting studio, which is not necessarily at the same quality as the original codebase. Also the devs just don't have the manpower/bandwidth to spare for Linux users given how small this community is. It's better value for money for both the gamers and the devs if the devs just choose to engage with valve and get their game running perfectly under proton.
- unaindz 1y ago
  To be you should compare the windows version on windows, no proton against the Linux version. DXVK, which proton uses, makes some games run better in windows than "native".
- egypturnash 1y ago
  But maybe figure out how to start getting those third party Linux porting studios paid to work on Proton...
  - YokoZar 1y ago
    The answer is pretty simple here - hire CodeWeavers to work on supporting your game in Proton/Wine rather than some other porting shop doing an old rewrite-style port.
- preisschild 1y ago
  > and get their game running perfectly under proton Even better would be to compile for linux, but use DXVK-Native (https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk#dxvk-native https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk#dxvk-native) if you think migrating from DirectX to Vulkan requires too much effort.
- DanielHB 1y ago
  They probably QA mostly for windows, so they run into bottlenecks and edge-cases of windows APIs during QA. Linux-native APIs probably have different bottlenecks and edge-cases. I think the reimplementations of Windows APIs in Linux, even though alternative to the original, should have similar bottlenecks and edge-cases. So the extra QA on Windows helps the Proton version more.

0x38B 1y ago

Side note, Niri is a fantastic WM. When I saw the Phoronix article on HN talking about the addition of overview mode and more, I finally took the plunge and spent an afternoon converting over from Sway.¹ Anecdotally, I've seen less hangups on Niri around fullscreen games and floating windows, perhaps thanks to X11 running in xwayland-satellite. 1: the hardest part was finding a bar that supported i3status-rs; not a fan of GTK bars that eat up CPU. I settled on i3bar-river.

haswell 1y ago
I've been so happy with Niri after many many years bouncing around other WMs. It addresses the main issues I've had with other tiling window managers and has been such a joy to use. The scrollable aspect just feels so natural and intuitive to me.
rendaw 1y ago
Steam won't launch for me in xwayland-satellite here... I just assumed steam+wayland = broken. I have a kind of weird setup using sway with xwayland disabled and running xwayland-satellite though.
- 0x38B 1y ago
  Try running xwayland-satellite in another WM like Niri and see if it works there – for example, Gamescope didn’t work well on Sway, crashing as soon as Steam tried to spawn another window, but it’s working fine in Niri.
ChocolateGod 1y ago
> X11 running in xwayland-satellite I wish more Wayland compositors took this option, seems like a cleaner method of keeping X compatibility and not allowing Xwayland to bring down the entire compositor.

chillfox 1y ago

Been a Linux gamer for years now and I think you are correct on your frame rate observations in general. If you use ZFS (single nvme) then you can beat windows load times by a fairly large margin. My husband and I have identical hardware for our gaming computers (he uses Windows and I run Linux), it's not uncommon for my computer to load games 10 seconds faster than his.

jcgl 1y ago
Why do you think ZFS helps? I’m guessing you have compression turned on? IME, ZFS is rarely better in terms of raw performance, compared to e.g. XFS.
- 4oo4 1y ago
  From experience having an L2ARC SSD, especially if it's nvme, can really help with zfs performance. I'm curious if they have that in their setup.
  - chillfox 1y ago
    nope, but I use LZ4 compression and have plenty of ram.
- chillfox 1y ago
  Yep, compression is on and I think that's what does it considering how large games are these days. I stay away from XFS, every time I have used it in the past my entire drive have ended up scrambled within a few months. It's by far the worst file system I have ever used, not even FAT32 was that unstable for me.
  - p_ing 1y ago
    Most large games are already compressed in cabinet files or similar so OS/file system level compression wouldn't gain you anything. While there are games that ship with loose files, like the Elder Scrolls series, other games like Diablo IV or CoD use archives.

badsectoracula 1y ago

> The biggest thing I noticed when switching from X11/Xfce to Wayland/Niri was just an overall increase in framerate. Was it with any specific game? I just tried the GOG version of The Witcher 3 "Complete Edition" (which is the remastered one) with the Direct3D 12 renderer under both Xorg/Window Maker and Wayland/KDE using umu-run (essentially proton without Steam) and it had identical performance in both cases (i also tried to use Niri but it would launch in 60Hz mode and for some reason wouldn't allow the game to run at a higher framerate with vsync disabled regardless of any option i chose) in either low or high settings (which is basically what i expected since the window system shouldn't be a bottleneck unless something is either broken or you are running at something like 20000fps :-P).

haswell 1y ago
Some of the games I play often that saw improvements: The Finals, Overwatch, Rocket League, Helldivers. > (i also tried to use Niri but it would launch in 60Hz mode and for some reason wouldn't allow the game to run at a higher framerate with vsync disabled regardless of any option i chose) I had some issues early on related to refresh rate, and it turned out I didn't have an output defined for the correct display. The steps I took: 1. Run `niri msg outputs` to identify the Display ID and available modes. In my case: "DP-3" and "2560x1440@143.964" 2. Set up an output in niri's confid.kdl as follows: output "DP-3" { mode "2560x1440@143.964" variable-refresh-rate }
- badsectoracula 1y ago
  Hm, i tried it and i could set up the higher refresh rate but Niri was forcing vsync on the game that capped the framerate to my monitor's refresh rate (165Hz) even though in the game i have vsync disabled. This seems to be an issue with Niri as KDE Plasma Wayland disabling vsync works fine. At "ultra" settings i got around 115fps which is ~5 fps lower than 117-120fps i got from Xorg/Window Maker and KDE/Wayland, though i'm pretty sure that was just the forced vsync, so in practice it seems that the window system doesn't matter much. Did you use XFCE's desktop compositor? AFAIK XFCE's compositor isn't particularly great, some years ago when i was working on a custom game engine i had to add an explicit option to use the X11 "override redirect" flag instead of the window hint for fullscreen windows because XFCE's compositor wouldn't disable itself otherwise and the game would feel a bit laggy/inconsistent. Not sure if this has been fixed nowadays but in general it gave me a bad impression for XFCE's compositor as other compositors didn't seem to have the same issue.

andy12_ 1y ago

Is there a way of making wayland actually usable with Nvidia GPUs? I never manage to make it work, and it makes the whole system feel slow and sluggish compared to X11

ChocolateGod 1y ago
Try avoiding the open source kernel modules, I had a similar issues.

diggan 1y ago

> It does feel like games take longer to launch on average, but this makes sense given the fact that it's launching via Proton/Wine. Also anecdotal, but I feel like Steam games on Linux compile shaders on the CPU, and maybe not super optimized, compared to Windows where they either ship with precompiled shaders, or it might use the GPU? Still, the very same games runs better on Wayland+Linux too for me, than on Windows, way less stutters in particular as you mention. But I'm not sure if it's because of OS differences, or that it's so much easier to end up bloating a Windows install. I can't say I treat them the same, as one is mostly a work environment and the other one purely entertainment and creative usage.