I’ve had people tell me that they experience better performance running games on Linux through Proton compared to running them natively on Windows. A while back, I decided to try Windows for the first time since 2002 on actual hardware. With TF2, I encountered significantly more crashes & lag compared to running it on my Arch install…
This seems to be the Windows/Linux yinyang in gaming.
If you go through the effort (or non-effort. It really seems to be luck-based) of getting a gaming rig working in linux, 99% of the time it is simply better at everything, crashes less, etc. The 1% can require hours or more of troubleshooting.
Windows runs slower and worse than linux, and arguably less stable. But you boot up, click play, and (largely) it just plays.
That’s also my recent experience with Ubuntu on a gaming laptop. Every single step of the way gives me trouble, but when I manage to run something in the linux side, boy does it run well. So I’ve got this nice “todo” since I already blew my only free day on it last weekend.
A friend of a friend tried daily driving Ubuntu recently & had a few problems (some of which were gaming related). They eventually switched to Linux Mint and pretty much most of their problems seemed to disappear…
Interesting. I wish I could bring myself to like mint. I’ve typecast myself as an ubuntu-head ever since I went full “Elder Price” with the CDs back at my first dev gig.
I’ve never used mint myself, but I’ve heard good things about it. Last time I used Ubuntu on actual hardware was around 2008 I think. For the most part I’ve been using either Arch, Debian or Fedora…
See I only got lag & crashes on windows, when on my Arch install I had/have no problems whatsoever. I haven’t used windows since 2002 & don’t really plan on doing so any time soon, the install was just to quickly see what windows 10 was like compared to Linux…
Having problems with games sometimes is better than having less problems with games at the cost of your system being bloated, slow and designed in such a way that when it breaks you can’t do anything about it besides sfc /scannow and when that doesn’t work as usual, a complete os reinstall. Linux saves me time but that’s only because it’s possible to have the skill to fix all the random issues you run into, unlike with Windows.
Just takes a little patience and research, mostly to find out if the type of games you generally play use invasive anticheat/drm or not, since those are the most likely to not run.
but I wont say protons perfect. I’ve had a few games with issues, some big, some small… All usually get fixed with time, though, and now those games run great.
But in the interest of laying it all bare, I will say the 1 enduring issue I have is how janky it is to get Vortex to work for modding games, specifically Skyrim and Fallout 4… but thats less a proton/linux issue, as it is a Vortex issue. Big strides would be made with a linux version, but Vortex is just jank in general, even on windows.
And To be clear, I say its jank. Not impossible. I modded the shit out of my Fallout 4 install just last night. but to do it I have to launch the game with STL, use that to launch vortex, the use vortex to launch F4SE.
edit
I just discovered Mo2 linux installer, and oh my god its so much easier…can even download direct from nexus with the vortex download button.
Impossible, I’ve had Linux users swear to me that gaming on Linux is now perfect and even better than on Windows!
I’ve had people tell me that they experience better performance running games on Linux through Proton compared to running them natively on Windows. A while back, I decided to try Windows for the first time since 2002 on actual hardware. With TF2, I encountered significantly more crashes & lag compared to running it on my Arch install…
I can echo this. My games do have better performance running on pop_os rather than Windows.
This seems to be the Windows/Linux yinyang in gaming.
If you go through the effort (or non-effort. It really seems to be luck-based) of getting a gaming rig working in linux, 99% of the time it is simply better at everything, crashes less, etc. The 1% can require hours or more of troubleshooting.
Windows runs slower and worse than linux, and arguably less stable. But you boot up, click play, and (largely) it just plays.
That’s also my recent experience with Ubuntu on a gaming laptop. Every single step of the way gives me trouble, but when I manage to run something in the linux side, boy does it run well. So I’ve got this nice “todo” since I already blew my only free day on it last weekend.
A friend of a friend tried daily driving Ubuntu recently & had a few problems (some of which were gaming related). They eventually switched to Linux Mint and pretty much most of their problems seemed to disappear…
Interesting. I wish I could bring myself to like mint. I’ve typecast myself as an ubuntu-head ever since I went full “Elder Price” with the CDs back at my first dev gig.
I’ve never used mint myself, but I’ve heard good things about it. Last time I used Ubuntu on actual hardware was around 2008 I think. For the most part I’ve been using either Arch, Debian or Fedora…
It usually goes like this:
If you’re getting crashes and lag on TF2, that’s your pc. Do you have to hand crank it or something?
I have to wait for the vacuum tubes to warm up when i turn it on
See I only got lag & crashes on windows, when on my Arch install I had/have no problems whatsoever. I haven’t used windows since 2002 & don’t really plan on doing so any time soon, the install was just to quickly see what windows 10 was like compared to Linux…
I have actually only had one singular issue with gaming in the last year (time frame. Not 2024) and that is fixed by restarting the game
Having problems with games sometimes is better than having less problems with games at the cost of your system being bloated, slow and designed in such a way that when it breaks you can’t do anything about it besides sfc /scannow and when that doesn’t work as usual, a complete os reinstall. Linux saves me time but that’s only because it’s possible to have the skill to fix all the random issues you run into, unlike with Windows.
Its not perfect, but its really damn good.
Just takes a little patience and research, mostly to find out if the type of games you generally play use invasive anticheat/drm or not, since those are the most likely to not run.
but I wont say protons perfect. I’ve had a few games with issues, some big, some small… All usually get fixed with time, though, and now those games run great.
But in the interest of laying it all bare, I will say the 1 enduring issue I have is how janky it is to get Vortex to work for modding games, specifically Skyrim and Fallout 4… but thats less a proton/linux issue, as it is a Vortex issue. Big strides would be made with a linux version, but Vortex is just jank in general, even on windows.
And To be clear, I say its jank. Not impossible. I modded the shit out of my Fallout 4 install just last night. but to do it I have to launch the game with STL, use that to launch vortex, the use vortex to launch F4SE.
edit I just discovered Mo2 linux installer, and oh my god its so much easier…can even download direct from nexus with the vortex download button.