Except in the games that don’t run on Linux. Then Windows is 100% faster.
I’m all for Linux gaming, but it’s still only “almost” ready for the mainstream person who isn’t techno savvy.
DriveFastDoDrugs
I’ll stick to windows, thanks.
[deleted]
[removed]
Benkqqu
This is really cool. Since I’ve played with Steam Deck, I’ve been wanting to install linux on my desktop. I haven’t had a single game on steamos that hasnt played well there. Even battle.net etc works flawlessly.
What linux Distro would you recommend for Gaming? That does not require too much “manual work”
JPPPPPPPP1
I have a steam deck and I really like Linux gaming. Pretty much everything I want to play works and it’s pretty great. yeah there’s tinkering to do sometimes, but I’m ok with that.
Wrong_Bus6250
I have a Linux desktop and a Windows desktop; same steam account being used on both.
When they’re supported they work pretty well, but I run into a lot of games that claim Linux support but when you actually go to play them they either outright don’t boot (this happens a LOT more than I was expecting) or they run a lot worse than they should.
Of course this gets countered by the occasional game that runs way better (Left 4 Dead 2 runs almost terrifyingly well in Linux) or at least runs a lot better than I was expecting (BioShock Infinite).
weezle
Does this include the hundreds of hours of studying and then fucking with linux for more hours to get your games to work reliably?
payne747
Does it take into account the time it takes to install and configure the OS ready to play games cause Windows definitely has the advantage there.
paparoxo
It is amazing how far Linux has come as a gaming platform, I use Linux, and I can tell how lightweight it’s, which help a lot while gaming, and Proton (Wine) is an incredible tool.
Krative_Lifestyle
Steam deck runs linux. Its incredible. Lightweight OS without all the windows bloat running games portably.
I think all gaming PCs should run linux with the proton layer.
Weneeddietbleach
Well that’s cool, I guess. Wanna know what games I played on my PC (Win 10)?
All of them.
Moress
They actually tested a 100 games but Linux didn’t run on 90 of them.
flerchin
17% faster is an entire GPU upgrade. This is probably why my steamdeck works well enough on games that challenge my big box (at admittedly higher resolution and settings)
PancAshAsh
I would wager the effectiveness of this greatly depends on what hardware and what drivers you have. My understanding is that AMD has decent Linux support, I can personally attest that Nvidia’s driver support for cards older than the 2000 series is quite bad.
Swordbreaker925
If Microsoft ever forces me to upgrade to Win11 with those bullshit ads built into the OS and the awful right-click menu, I’m switching to Linux
Demetre19864
Only because Linux isn’t mainstream.
I can guarantee it will be monopolized and computers filled with bloatware as soon as their is money to be made.
notwhoyouknow12
I’m all for and glad that Linux is picking up a little steam, but Linux has just never worked for me no matter the distro things just constantly had random issues. Which will always put me off from truly using it.
SumatranRatMonkey
A lot of misinformed answers in this thread, which seems to be usual in this sub. I am a hardcore gamer and have been playing on linux for almost 20 years, at first it was very limited but today as some people have said, most games run perfectly fine on linux either natively or through Proton. You can choose a distro that will require 0 tinkering or knowledge (ubuntu or mint). Basically only recent AAA games still need to be run on windows, for the rest maybe 75% of my library runs perfectly smoothly without any effort and 20% more with some.
kktyy
Linux *can* be faster
zdemigod
When I have to stop thinking about which games will work or not in Linux is when Ill give a shit about the performance difference.
ttubehtnitahwtahw1
What was the methodology? What was on the windows platform? Was it a fresh install of both? How many passes?
Poodmund
This is cool and all but if studios keep releasing unfinished/un-optimised games then they’ll run like shit on both platforms. XD
wowsux
My setup: archlinux with world of tanks + world of warcraft + dota 2 + diablo 4
You can clearly see this speed at hidden loadings in wow which are faster in linux.
Fares26597
I really hope that a gaming-optimized Linux distro will one day become the defacto platform for PC gaming. I mean when it comes to AAA games (where performance matters most), PC gaming is already still kind of a niche. Most people who choose it get custom-built PCs and have to deal with more debugging and tweaking than the console gamer, so why not go the extra centimetre and adopt Linux, especially if it has the potential to make the developer’s job easier?
SalsaBanditoJr
Maybe I’m dead wrong but aren’t most games incompatible with Linux?
homerotl
“What are those Linux games and are they in the room with us right now?”
Fairstrife_Deception
Number of game I play that support Linux. Zero
Artistic_Soft4625
Well you gotta ask youself
Do you want better performance or convenient software support
jiggyjiggycmone
I am a graphics developer with over 20 years of experience programming. I still can’t get my Linux gaming laptop to not freeze up when it resumes from sleep. I do all my gaming on PS5 these days. I just don’t have the damn patience anymore.
KCDinc
Yes. And a Nascar racer can go a lot faster than my Nissan.
But I kind of want all the things inside my Nissan.
PixMacfy
Having made the switch to full time Linux for over six months (because I was done with Windows for way too many reasons), here’s my experience : * Being on an AMD GPU will save you from a lot of headaches * Emulation works great * Thanks to Steam a lot of games are covered, even those who are not officially supported usually work fine or require small fixes * Inconveniences *will* happen, and sometimes there are simply no workarounds (example : Vermintide 2 requires me to be the host, otherwise I’m kicked out of games) * Big AAA/multiplayers games *will* cause problems and need you to research fixes * Quacked games found on the high seas usually work fine, but require some time to set up
Basically you need to ask yourself the following questions : * Are you at least a little bit tech literate ? * Do you accept that you will need to do some troubleshooting/to set up edge cases from time to time ? * Does Linux cover enough of your gaming needs ? * Does Linux pros overweight its cons for you ?
It’s good for me, I’m happy to have ditched Windows, but it doesn’t mean it’s for everyone.
Also for the love of god, being on Linux doesn’t give you bragging rights, it’s beyond moronic.
RougePatron
Windows is better.
brainsapper
I long for a day when I’m no longer bound to Windows for PC gaming.
edubkn
* Tested in all 10 games that have native Linux support
lillieblair
i’m so glad the steam deck has brought linux gaming to the masses
enraged768
I’m a massive Linux fan. I love it to death. With that said I don’t game on it at all. I have tried and some games do work but honestly I’m getting older and have less time to game. So I just forgo even trying to install a game on Linux when I’m fairly confident it’ll work the first time on windows.
Kabopu
Run Linux on my personal Desktop since February. Steam’s Proton works really great as long as it isn’t a multiplayer game with a hard anti-cheat system.
Wouldn’t say that Linux is for everyone but it works for me. In my case it helps that a lot of my preferred 3D tools also had a Linux version or are working with the Windows translation layer.
But I will always recommend interested people to use a Virtual Machine (like VMWare Player or Virtualbox) to try out a Linux Distro before they actually try to install it along their Windows partition.
scrolly_2
But can only run 60% of games
TehGutch
ya but your gaming mouse drivers won’t work
Less_Party
Plot twist: these are the only 10 games that actually run on Linux
40 Comments
Except in the games that don’t run on Linux. Then Windows is 100% faster.
I’m all for Linux gaming, but it’s still only “almost” ready for the mainstream person who isn’t techno savvy.
I’ll stick to windows, thanks.
[removed]
This is really cool. Since I’ve played with Steam Deck, I’ve been wanting to install linux on my desktop. I haven’t had a single game on steamos that hasnt played well there. Even battle.net etc works flawlessly.
What linux Distro would you recommend for Gaming? That does not require too much “manual work”
I have a steam deck and I really like Linux gaming. Pretty much everything I want to play works and it’s pretty great. yeah there’s tinkering to do sometimes, but I’m ok with that.
I have a Linux desktop and a Windows desktop; same steam account being used on both.
When they’re supported they work pretty well, but I run into a lot of games that claim Linux support but when you actually go to play them they either outright don’t boot (this happens a LOT more than I was expecting) or they run a lot worse than they should.
Of course this gets countered by the occasional game that runs way better (Left 4 Dead 2 runs almost terrifyingly well in Linux) or at least runs a lot better than I was expecting (BioShock Infinite).
Does this include the hundreds of hours of studying and then fucking with linux for more hours to get your games to work reliably?
Does it take into account the time it takes to install and configure the OS ready to play games cause Windows definitely has the advantage there.
It is amazing how far Linux has come as a gaming platform, I use Linux, and I can tell how lightweight it’s, which help a lot while gaming, and Proton (Wine) is an incredible tool.
Steam deck runs linux. Its incredible. Lightweight OS without all the windows bloat running games portably.
I think all gaming PCs should run linux with the proton layer.
Well that’s cool, I guess. Wanna know what games I played on my PC (Win 10)?
All of them.
They actually tested a 100 games but Linux didn’t run on 90 of them.
17% faster is an entire GPU upgrade. This is probably why my steamdeck works well enough on games that challenge my big box (at admittedly higher resolution and settings)
I would wager the effectiveness of this greatly depends on what hardware and what drivers you have. My understanding is that AMD has decent Linux support, I can personally attest that Nvidia’s driver support for cards older than the 2000 series is quite bad.
If Microsoft ever forces me to upgrade to Win11 with those bullshit ads built into the OS and the awful right-click menu, I’m switching to Linux
Only because Linux isn’t mainstream.
I can guarantee it will be monopolized and computers filled with bloatware as soon as their is money to be made.
I’m all for and glad that Linux is picking up a little steam, but Linux has just never worked for me no matter the distro things just constantly had random issues. Which will always put me off from truly using it.
A lot of misinformed answers in this thread, which seems to be usual in this sub. I am a hardcore gamer and have been playing on linux for almost 20 years, at first it was very limited but today as some people have said, most games run perfectly fine on linux either natively or through Proton. You can choose a distro that will require 0 tinkering or knowledge (ubuntu or mint). Basically only recent AAA games still need to be run on windows, for the rest maybe 75% of my library runs perfectly smoothly without any effort and 20% more with some.
Linux *can* be faster
When I have to stop thinking about which games will work or not in Linux is when Ill give a shit about the performance difference.
What was the methodology? What was on the windows platform? Was it a fresh install of both? How many passes?
This is cool and all but if studios keep releasing unfinished/un-optimised games then they’ll run like shit on both platforms. XD
My setup: archlinux with world of tanks + world of warcraft + dota 2 + diablo 4
You can clearly see this speed at hidden loadings in wow which are faster in linux.
I really hope that a gaming-optimized Linux distro will one day become the defacto platform for PC gaming. I mean when it comes to AAA games (where performance matters most), PC gaming is already still kind of a niche. Most people who choose it get custom-built PCs and have to deal with more debugging and tweaking than the console gamer, so why not go the extra centimetre and adopt Linux, especially if it has the potential to make the developer’s job easier?
Maybe I’m dead wrong but aren’t most games incompatible with Linux?
“What are those Linux games and are they in the room with us right now?”
Number of game I play that support Linux.
Zero
Well you gotta ask youself
Do you want better performance or convenient software support
I am a graphics developer with over 20 years of experience programming. I still can’t get my Linux gaming laptop to not freeze up when it resumes from sleep. I do all my gaming on PS5 these days. I just don’t have the damn patience anymore.
Yes. And a Nascar racer can go a lot faster than my Nissan.
But I kind of want all the things inside my Nissan.
Having made the switch to full time Linux for over six months (because I was done with Windows for way too many reasons), here’s my experience :
* Being on an AMD GPU will save you from a lot of headaches
* Emulation works great
* Thanks to Steam a lot of games are covered, even those who are not officially supported usually work fine or require small fixes
* Inconveniences *will* happen, and sometimes there are simply no workarounds (example : Vermintide 2 requires me to be the host, otherwise I’m kicked out of games)
* Big AAA/multiplayers games *will* cause problems and need you to research fixes
* Quacked games found on the high seas usually work fine, but require some time to set up
Basically you need to ask yourself the following questions :
* Are you at least a little bit tech literate ?
* Do you accept that you will need to do some troubleshooting/to set up edge cases from time to time ?
* Does Linux cover enough of your gaming needs ?
* Does Linux pros overweight its cons for you ?
It’s good for me, I’m happy to have ditched Windows, but it doesn’t mean it’s for everyone.
Also for the love of god, being on Linux doesn’t give you bragging rights, it’s beyond moronic.
Windows is better.
I long for a day when I’m no longer bound to Windows for PC gaming.
* Tested in all 10 games that have native Linux support
i’m so glad the steam deck has brought linux gaming to the masses
I’m a massive Linux fan. I love it to death. With that said I don’t game on it at all. I have tried and some games do work but honestly I’m getting older and have less time to game. So I just forgo even trying to install a game on Linux when I’m fairly confident it’ll work the first time on windows.
Run Linux on my personal Desktop since February. Steam’s Proton works really great as long as it isn’t a multiplayer game with a hard anti-cheat system.
Wouldn’t say that Linux is for everyone but it works for me. In my case it helps that a lot of my preferred 3D tools also had a Linux version or are working with the Windows translation layer.
But I will always recommend interested people to use a Virtual Machine (like VMWare Player or Virtualbox) to try out a Linux Distro before they actually try to install it along their Windows partition.
But can only run 60% of games
ya but your gaming mouse drivers won’t work
Plot twist: these are the only 10 games that actually run on Linux