Hello there! Today I want to talk to you about my experience of switching completely to Linux and how it affected my gaming habits. I will also leave a collection of helpful resources at the end of the post.
The inciting incident
I have had resentment growing relating to Windows 10 and how much of a resource and storage hog it was becoming for a while before making the switch. My breaking point was having full-screen ads to upgrade to Windows 11 (which I was avoiding like the plague and still am) almost every time I switched my PC on, which I think is absolutely scummy. By this point, I also owned a Steam Deck, mostly for gaming on the move, and the experience with that weighed heavily in favour of taking the jump.
What finally sealed the deal was the insistence of a friend, who is kind of a Linux fanboy. He has been offering for some time to come over and do the whole Linux setup himself, so in July of 2024, I became a proud user of Endeavour OS, an Arch Linux-based distro and later I switched to Garuda Linux (same dude helped me, because my Endeavour decided to die on me), another Arch-based distro.
The good
Gaming on Linux is not as daunting as it was a few years ago, mostly due to Valve's almost constant push towards it. This push was done through creating and maintaining software like Proton (bolstered heavily by custom versions of it made by the community) and Gamescope (a tool created for the Steam Deck mainly to spoof screen resolution, force games into windowed mode, upscaling, limit framerates, among others), but also through hardware, because the Steam Deck was an absolute revolution in how PC gaming and Linux are perceived, and now games are specifically optimized for it due to how widespread it is. Valve has also released Steam OS to the public, so their push hasn't lost any steam (hehe) yet.
There are also relatively easy ways to get non-Steam games working, like the Heroic Game Launcher, which lets you access your GOG and Epic libraries after a simple sign-in for each account. For Ubisoft Connect and EA App, I just stuck with the more janky solution of installing them through Steam by running them as non-Steam apps using Proton and then just downloading the games through the aforementioned launchers.
The growing pains
The switch came with some instant caveats, which I will detail shortly. Firstly, I had to give up on a bunch of games with kernel-level anti-cheat, because most of them are not compatible, not due to some technical reason, but because the publishers of said games just didn't bother to talk to the companies administering their anti-cheat software and request the services be enabled for Linux users. No biggie, I can live on without those, I'm mostly a singleplayer dude. Still, it is good to check in advance what games work, so I linked Are We Anti-Cheat Yet? at the bottom.
Secondly, I did have to go into more depth with tinkering with games to make them work. A good resource to even start is ProtonDB (provided at the end). This tinkering may consist of choosing the Proton version for your game, installing third-party Vulkan wrappers through the console when official GPU drivers are lacking, using Gamescope and the parameters required for it if you do, and setting up various launch options. This may sound daunting, and it sometimes is, but almost always there is a list of instructions on ProtonDB from someone who already tinkered with the game to make it run on your specific distro or at least a related one (I do also have the aforementioned Linux fanboy to help me with fixing stubborn games, so your mileage may vary). Usually, though, there isn't much to fret about, most newer games run almost out of the box, at most requiring only selecting a particular Proton version. I generally had success with using GEProton. Adding a custom proton version to Steam is pretty plug-and-play: you just download ProtonUp-Qt, you select what version you want to add, and you're done.
Conclusion
Although hard at first glance, getting into gaming on Linux is much easier than expected, but it is not as plug-and-play as you are probably used to, but the advantage of not being hassled by Microsoft was really worth the price of admission in my case.
Useful resources
- ProtonDB (a crowd-sourced game compatibility database)
- Are We Anti-Cheat Yet? (a crowd-sourced database relating to anti-cheat compatibility)
- Heroic Game Launcher (a launcher used for downloading and playing GOG and Epic games)
- ProtonUp-Qt (a tool for downloading custom Proton versions and adding them to Steam)
GamingHD Discord: https://discord.gg/CZSXJwy
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One of the reasons I left linux was that I still can't play old games online. In this case tibia, ragnarok and dofus. Strangely enough, compatibility with Wine or even PlayLinux (direct distro for games) doesn't work as well as it should.
Yeah, some online stuff and also some older stuff will indeed have issues. Looking through ProtonDB though, it seems people have gotten Dofus to run reliably, so at least there's that.
Good to see that gaming on Linux is growing even at a slow pace. Hats off to users like you who make the switch from Windows to Linux while still knowing there will be issues here and there. I would have a tough time. (Everyone deserves a Linux fanboy like your friend lol)
Loved Valve's involvement in the last few years, they are doing an amazing job in this regard.
Nice
Even if it's not perfect and there are still things that are a bit rustic or problematic, like what you mention about having to give up certain games. It's still amazing that some games run so well on Linux, in fact, I remember reading that there were certain games that ran better on Linux than on Windows because of the support Valve did haha.
The performance boost is also deeply related to how much more lightweight Linux is compared to Windows. There's no bloat like ad services and telemetry to hog resources.
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I want a steam deck! Hopefully I can pick one up soon… 🤞🏾
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