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Didn't it all start with Wine and later Vulkan / DXVK? Didn't Valve just put it all together in a nice package or am I missing something?
Yeah it has. I don't even bother looking at the supported operating systems for most games on Steam anymore. I also don't play overhyped microtransaction-laden bullshit like cod or fortnite, either, so no loss there. If I ever wanted to play that kind of game, I have a PS5.
So, my middle aged ass plays the microtransaction-laden bullshit known as Roblox because my 3rd grader and all his friends love it.
It doesn't even have a Linux version but thanks to the project "sober" it plays absolutely fantastically on Linux. I think they claim 2x the performance of the windows version. I just know I have a powerful but old system (8c/8t 9700k cpu and gtx1080 gpu) and I can lock it at 144fps at 1440p and it uses like 20% of my system resources. Not that it's a visually demanding game, lol.
Going all-in on my switch to Linux (my win10 partition for dual booting lasted less than two weeks) has had zero negative impact on my ability to play the games I want. In fact, it has led to me using my PC a lot more and my phone a lot less. Feels good.
I've suffered one loss, I can't play Mechabellum any more. But other than that my experience has been much the same, smooth across all fronts.
I love it! Not only do I use it on the Steam Deck, but also on my Desktop PC running Linux.
I'm getting back into PC gaming after being consult exclusive for a while. I'm assuming anything with kernel anti-cheat is still not trying to work which is a problem because it means I either have to buy a windows licence or mess around with a cracked one which has its own security concerns.
I think my plan is to dual boot and use Windows as little as often.
If you have a particular game in mind you can check protondb.com, which tries to cover both Proton compatibility and Deck compatibility.
Literally this week I learned that you need to install flatpak Nvidia drivers if you use flatpak Steam. Once I found that out, proton works great!
A sidestory to this is that Flatpak and AppImage have been miraculous boosts to Linux OS machines. After I figured out that ya gotta throw the --user flag into your flatpak installs so they don't jam up your / tree, and also throwing flatpak override --user xyz.app onto a few apps that benefit from universal access, things have been fine and dandy.
I continue to be happy with how awesome Linux has gotten just over the past 5 years.
This is why I have used flatpak steam. It's a lot easier to manage drivers in it vs the shitshow that is doing it natively with adding custom driver specific repos and whatnot.
Hoping the new PC I just ordered (with an AMD GPU) will be better with the native app.
I will remark that that sounds like a distro issue - I use Arch and the drivers are just in the official distros, no need to add external ones. Just look up what you need on the wiki and install it.
That said, AMD will still probably be a better experience.
(btw)
So, Valve has indeed done a lot to make Linux more attractive for gamers. It isn't perfect yet, but we are getting there. And yes, kernel-based anti-cheat is one of the reasons why it isn't perfect yet.
I'd argue kernel-based anticheats are one of the areas gaming on Linux excels. Video game developers should not have that level of permissions over consumers' machines, certainly with how little your average gamer understands the potential consequences of these rootkits. So the fact that all of the ones I know of can't be installed under Linux is more than acceptable, it's ideal.
It's pretty cool.
Common GabeN win
Praise be to Gaben!
I really only miss fortnite and the ocassional call of duty warzone but other than those two or some multiplayer games Linux is far more enjoyable. Yeah I know this games and those companies but let someone enjoy something for once. Help me find a work around. Until then I dual boot mint and windows debloated as much as possible for only a few multiplayer games.
It's not that the companies should be boycotted, it's that they chose this themselves, the publishers choose these types of drm and anticheats when they could have included decency, neither the players, developers or elitists need to take any heat it's just a greedfaced choice for a publisher that carefully weighs gold against reputation and outrage, because they're a parasite on Earth, a made up elaborate middle man professional scam that; just like hedge funds provide heavy negative benefit to the human race, actively ruining our chances as a species to survive, a bloated boil about to burst and provide nothing but pox on everything they touch
