2w ago

Curious about making the switch from Windows

With all that’s going on. I’ve been really considering setting up a dual boot and testing Linux Mint properly. (i hate virtual desktops, but I have Mint running on one now) I know I have to make some changes to my productivity workload, as I’m an Adobe Lightroom user. I’ll keep that on Windows for now.

But my question is regarding gaming.

I play a lot of varying games, from new singleplayer and multiplayer stuff to old games back up to about 1999. I know I have to do a bunch of research setting things up, but right off the bat I have a question.

What games will not be possible to use on Linux?

For example, will something like Escape from Tarkov work? That’s a game I do not want to even install of there’s a chance it will lead to a ban.

And is comparability with older games better or worse than W11?

Edit: I just wanna extend a huge thanks to the community already! There’s some great info here so I’m gonna set up a dual boot soon!

Edit 2: Dual boot is now setup! Even though Mint makes sense from a long time Windows user. There's a bit of a learning curve. But I'll try it as a daily driver for a few days. Right now my disk setup prioritize Windows, obviously. But if I end up loving Mint, I'll make a full switch and keep a small partition for Windows to run whatever Mint can't.

Edit3: Spent hours trying to get anything to work. Games just would not launch and I exhausted everything I found online. Trying a reinstall and Pop Os this time. Learned a bunch of lessons my first try

63 comments

You can look up steam game Linux compatibility on protonDB.
For non-steam games you can look up their compatibility with Linux on Lutris
The main issue with gaming on Linux is large, mostly competitive, multiplayer games. Certain anti cheats will not work.
- For protondb always look at the latest reports for the game. The rating on there is a rolling average type thing i believe, so when the devs break compatibility, the ranking might not list it as "borked" yet even tho it is.
  You can also log in with your steam account on there to get a quick overview of how many and which games are working well on linux.
  
  I find that a number of my games don't say they're Linux compatible, but work just fine. But that's not what everyone says.

The best resource for multiplayer games is https://areweanticheatyet.com/. Every game with nonworking anti cheat will be impossible to get working.
- That’s a great resource, thanks!

It's at the point now where I just assume a game will work and am rarely disappointed.
Often the games that "don't work" still run just fine, but the developers that use anti-cheat will stop you from playing.

What games will not be possible to use on Linux?
Most online games that have anticheat. (yes some work but most don't even if the anticheat could support linux.)
For example, will something like Escape from Tarkov work?
No
And is comparability with older games better or worse than W11?
YMMW. but often linux plays older windows games better than windows.
- Most do work. Anything with EAC or Battleye (the huge majority) work as long as the devs have updated it recently really.
  EfT runs (with some effort last I tried, most of the issues coming from the launcher I needed to run to install the game, not the game itself) but I think multiplayer probably doesn't work. I was trying to play the Single Player Tarkov mod last I played, and it was able to work.
  
  It can work but most of them won't check the box because Linux has a statistical overrepresentation of cheaters.

My experience over the last few years of Linux gaming is: with Proton, it's mostly a matter of It Just Works™.
When it doesn't, switch to Experimental, and then usually it works.
Compatibility with older games is fantastic, too.
The exception to this are games which require kernel-level anti-cheat. This is a security nightmare on Windows as it is, and it simply doesn't work on Linux. Luckily, these games are few -- but they do tend to be big (e.g. Apex Legends).

Others have listed ProtonDB, which is an absolute necessity. Tweaking Proton versions and the like can be tricky but not too bad, especially if you're used to using a PC.
There are also tools like Lutris and Heroic Games Launcher for third-party titles and further Proton support.
Oh, and there are also community-made custom Proton versions, such as ProtonGE, which can help if a game is giving you a lot of trouble.
Nice thing about having a dual boot setup is that you can play most of your games on Linux, and then just boot into Windows to play live service games with kernel anticheat. Best of both worlds!

ProtonDB is a popular site for checking how well a game runs on Linux systems. Users upload reviews that rate the level of support along with their system specs.
I switched to Pop!_OS and I've rarely run into issues with games. Games with anti-cheat typically won't work. It seems like Escape from Tarkov doesn't work. It uses Battleye which requires special configuration to work on Linux and it seems the devs don't care to do that. Other games that use Battleye work fine.
- To be clear, at this point BattleEye requires no effort from the devs to get working on Linux. On the contrary, the EFT devs have gone out of their way to ensure it does not run on Linux, and have deleted forum posts requesting a change in this policy.

The EFT devs have their heads very far up their asses when it comes to Linux. They specifically banned the platform and have deleted forum posts about the topic. Fuck em, there are better games in the genre by this point (Hunt Showdown runs great on Linux for example...)
- EFT and Hunt are two very different games.
  Luckily I rarely play EFT anymore since I don’t have time to grind PvP. PvE is kinda stale anyways. I thought they tried to get their anti cheat to work in Linux a while back. But BSG is BSG I guess 😂
  
  Look into Day-Z or Stalker—they both run on Linux and might scratch that Tarkov itch. There's also a top down pixel art Tarkov lite called Zero Sievert. All of which run on Linux. Good luck!

You have plenty of good information regarding gaming already so as far as Adobe Lightroom goes, try Darktable. It's a FOSS alternative and very nice software
- Tried it but it did didn’t land with me to be honest. It’s been a year since I tried like 10 different programs

I'm no good for compatibility layer help, but for an open source Lightroom alternative, I really like darktable.
- It’s been a while since I tried it. I’ll give it a go.
  I need the catalogue part of LR too, not just the editing.
  
  Ah yeah, got it. That's important!

Older games are hit or miss. If we're talking Steam games prototondb.com is the single best resource. If we're talking GOG or games installed from CD-ROM or something it may be a bit harder to get working perfectly. Often GOG's remasters will work great minus controller support. I still can't get LEGO Island working :( Feel free to DM if you have questions. I'll try to help best I can.

I mostly play single player indie games, but still. The amount of games that I can't play on Linux can be counted on one hand (sadly on of them EFT). Older games generally work great, very old games can be a bit cranky. I would roughly compare the compatability to windows 7 regarding old games.

Proton makes things super easy for the most part. I mostly only game on my PC and ended up distro hopping to bazzite. It's mostly setup for gaming out of the box and is atomic, updating similarly to a console. I've found it relatively hard to break and easy to reset.
As most have said here, it mostly boils down to anti cheat

I very recently made a shift similar to yours, though I don't play anything MMO. I've been playing Minecraft (finally moved to Java) and Starfield, and both work perfectly well on Bazzite Desktop. I keep Windows for my CAD app and some other little garbage apps.
Between Steam and Heroic, most Windows games seem to install fine, though I haven't dived into many of them really. Because of Valve funding Proton development, gaming has gone from a huge liability for Linux to a significant strength.

In my opinion linux runs old windows games better than windows itself. When I was on XP I used to play games like Starcraft and Lemmings Revolution which absolutely refused to work on Windows 10 after I switched, even in compatability mode. Later when I switched to linux, they worked great with Lutris with very few issues. Linux is great for older games. For newer games, Steam has most bases covered and worked ootb.
- Yep... Every now and then I'll come across a really old game in my library that Steam says is "unsupported" and I'll take it as a challenge to see how long it takes for me to get it running.
  Usually takes like 5 minutes lol. Proton is legit incredible.

Old games are significantly easier to run.
I look up old games I want to play and see just complaints about how hard it is to run it, links to defunct forums where someone has once posted a modded .exe to improve stability in post-NT systems, etc.
Often when I run those using wine the game just starts up.
- It's true they're easier in a way, but there will be bugs. For example i thought lego racer would be easy. Indeo codes crashed the game instantly. Had to search for a fix. Now intro video loads but very choppy, and the menu only has sound and the screen goes black. All amd hardware too, on mint. Unless you like to tinker a lot, just dual boot for now.
  
  I just opened Bottles and clicked to run the executable. Not quite, I manually set the launch options to disable video and set 1024x768.
  But aside from that, clicked run executable and I’m in and playing:
  https://i.postimg.cc/jdByG0Jm/IMG-3852.jpg
  EDIT: without disabling the videos, they play but you can’t skip them and then the game crashes afterwards. But from what I heard that also occurs on windows? It was a windows user saying it needs to launch with no video.
  For posterity, the launch options for LEGO racers under wine: -novideo -horzres 1024 -vertres 768

Performance Is about on par with windows for everything dx9 to dx12. Dx8 and earlier I think are not supported by wine.
In general you will be able to play almost all games, as long as they don't require kernel level anti cheat, but some online games do block Linux users. In the case of tarkov I can't help, you should read online.
Older games should be fine, personally I played Max Payne 1 an 2 a couple month ago, and the original Hitman series runs better than on windows.
Expect to do some tinkering on some more advanced games. E.g.: Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Alan Wake 2 require the experimental version of proton, God of War Ragnarok requires to enable SteamDeckMode on a config file to disable PlayStationSDK, usually you will find suggestions on protondb.
Some Nvidia proprietary things will not work in games on wine, e.g.: GPU accelerated physix will not work, also on some games dlss will require editing wine's registry.
- Actually DXVK now supports dx8 since July (version 2.4).
- In addition to this, non-competative online games generally are safer. Look into the individual games you're interested in, but something like WoW or FFXIV should still work fine, Last Epoch or PoE2 work.
  Stuff like Lethal Company (Platinum) or Rust (Bronze) are more case by case, depending on the anticheat they use, and even then it's often a matter of whether the developers include support or not.
  Space Marine 2 uses an anticheat, but they have support enabled for Linux (though they removed it in one of the patches, before reimplementing it).
  (Also a slight pet peeve to OP, it's "right off the bat")
  
  (Just a typo, fixed it now ☺️)

Be ready for shit to just not work for you

Pretty sure neither mint nor PopOS supports VRR natively, if that is important to you. HDR only works well on Bazzite in gaming mode in my experience. Bazzite is great. I highly recommend it.

Do the dual boot and test it. For now, it's mint when I want to tinker and be happy 1 game out of 300 works, and windows when I want to actually play any games.
- For me, it's 1 game out of 300 that doesn't work. Not sure when last you have tried. Reliable Linux gaming via Proton has grown by leaps and bounds since the Steam Deck.
  Haven't needed Windows for 3+ years. Gaming every day.
  
  I must play different games than most on linux, because so far I've had issues with
  -Assetto corsa -iRacing -Automobilista 2 -Lego racers -(Obviously pubg and gtav are a no go, as well as lethal company) -Diabolical
  More than I'm forgetting. Agreed proton helps but it's still way too glitchy to be daily used by me. Its fine to tinker but trying to get any games working while your friends wait on you is just a pain. Especially in any game with mods.
  I wish it was as easy as people say! It is fun once something gets working though, feels like a huge accomplishment on linux if a game even starts up for me. I'd love to leave windows behind but I don't see it happening soon.

63 comments