Linux gaming, when developers won't cross platform.

[Icey!]

Previously, I made a post about Oswamp's Voyage with how well it ran with wine. But it seems like no one was interested so I made this instead.

Recently, I got into the Linux world with vanilla fedora as my distro of choice. While I don't dislike Windows, I just wanted to try something new.

However, since it's an entirely different platform, Windows programs won't run. Unless, you use a compatibility layer like wine. But even then, it's not like they will run 100% of the time. In fact, it is up to luck to see if it runs at all. Which means that some programs may have some glitches, some programs may run better than windows, and others like I said, won't run at all.

There is also Valve's proton. A modified version of Wine that is pacifically for gaming. While this has the same issues as regular wine that we talked about earlier, it has the potential of supporting more games.

This leads us to Community launchers and patches, basically, wine is the base, the game is the house, and the community patches up the holes. While they aren't required to play on Linux, they are helpful.

Finally there is native versions designed for Linux, these don't require wine or proton and are less interesting.

[Melooon]

Sometimes my guilty pleasure is watching LinusTechTips on YouTube A few months ago they did a whole thing where they tried to use Linux as their main gaming computers for a month and.. it did not go very well..

As a Mac gamer the situation is even worse There is wine for Mac but its not good, you can also get a paid version of wine called CrossOver, but its only really good for games that are 10+ years old.

For many years I used to Bootcamp (Install Windows on a partition on Mac) but it wasted so much harddrive space and was annoying to use. More recently I used Parallels to run Windows in a VM to play games, but again it only really worked for games that were a few years old.

Recently I got an Xbox series S and oh my gosh its so much better! Its cheaper than a graphics card, gamepass is a great deal for games, and everything just runs perfectly with no effort! You can even stop playing a game on xbox, then stream it on a laptop and pick up exactly where you left off, its amazing!

Ok ok I don't wanna write an xbox ad, and as an indie developer who cannot publish games to xbox (yet) its not good; but if all you wanna do is play games it really is incredible.

We might be entering a phase where consoles are the top dog in games again, until Linux and cross platform PC gaming really catches up

[Kutan]

I never saw the point of Xbox until recently-- I was like, "why not just get a PC when it can do more?" But when my partner moved in and brought his Xbox with him, I was really impressed. Everything is so clean and streamlined! Game Pass is great, of course, and the backwards compatibility is also excellent. So is the streaming, both from games you haven't yet installed, and from streaming from console to remote device. And I love the new initiative to do away with console generations: where going forward, all games will work on all systems branded "XBox". So it doesn't matter what "series" you buy, it'll run (though it'll be up to the developers to optimize, obviously).

But yeah, I wish it was easier to publish your apps on there. XBox Creators Program still exists kinda, which lets you publish apps without any kind of approval process, but as of 2020 they're basically invisible if published this way and you need to have a direct link to them. And there's still id@xbox, which is fine, but it's really made for indie studios and not weekend coders; you have to pitch your project and get approval.

I'm figuring they'll come up with a new program for getting your apps on Xbox soon, in the same way they phased out the 360's "Xbox Live Indie Games" program when the XB1 came out. We're just in that weird transitional period where both generations are being supported, and it makes stuff like that messy.

[Icey!]

Sometimes my guilty pleasure is watching LinusTechTips on YouTube A few months ago they did a whole thing where they tried to use Linux as their main gaming computers for a month and.. it did not go very well..

I have been meaning to watch that video for a while, so I had to watch it before making this.

While watching: Ok, BEFORE YOU INSTALL YOUR OS! Please check your hardware with the live environment before installing. It is clear to me that Linus... Isn't very Experienced with Linux. Fortunately, since I had plenty of experience with Linux from my time at free geek, I am safe to assume that my experience has been pretty smooth so far (Except for Video playback randomly lagging). Also note that while Linus does say "NVIDIA drivers are hard to install" it's actually pretty simple. It's just you need to use the terminal (Which can be tricky for a newbie I suppose).

Now that we got that our of the way, let's respond!

As a Mac gamer the situation is even worse There is wine for Mac but its not good, you can also get a paid version of wine called CrossOver, but its only really good for games that are 10+ years old.

It has occurred to me that Apple, is kinda a jerk to it's developers. They depleted OpenGL and don't support Vulkan which both are critical for proper wine support. You are better off with using duel boot or a VM.

Recently I got an Xbox series S and oh my gosh its so much better! Its cheaper than a graphics card, gamepass is a great deal for games, and everything just runs perfectly with no effort! You can even stop playing a game on xbox, then stream it on a laptop and pick up exactly where you left off, its amazing!

Ok ok I don't wanna write an xbox ad, and as an indie developer who cannot publish games to xbox (yet) its not good; but if all you wanna do is play games it really is incredible.

While I do puffer using a PC over a console, looking in the eyes of a mac user, it's not a bad choice. A console is very easy to set up and run without going threw installing steam, wine, patches, or setting up drivers. The only con is the lack of control.

We might be entering a phase where consoles are the top dog in games again, until Linux and cross platform PC gaming really catches up

While I get the popularity of consoles, I don't think consoles are top dog. PC gaming has more support, freedom and customization than consoles because it's easier to enter, while consoles have exclusives, cheaper, and have better advertising. So it's safe to say that neither are top dogs or low dogs.

[Karius]

I use Linux (EndeavourOS, in case you're curious) as my primary OS, and Linux gaming has come a long way.

For starters, Valve's Proton is pretty good- you might want to check out ProtonDB, in case you're curious as to what games perform best. And you can just use a virtual machine if you need to use Windows.

Steam Deck actually runs Linux, so I think games will be become even more compatible with it as time goes by!

[Kutan]

Ooh, I didn't know about ProtonDB! I'm kinda watching and waiting to see if the Steam Deck is worth it after the dust settles, and while I've heard Valve's "deck verified" isn't worth much, I'm super happy to see there's a community effort to make a compatibility catalog! That'll definitely influence my buying decision down the line 👀

[Karius]

Ooh, I didn't know about ProtonDB! I'm kinda watching and waiting to see if the Steam Deck is worth it after the dust settles, and while I've heard Valve's "deck verified" isn't worth much, I'm super happy to see there's a community effort to make a compatibility catalog! That'll definitely influence my buying decision down the line 👀

Oh, hey! Glad I could help :omg:k:

[myry]

As somebody who's been using solely Linux for the past couple of years, I'd say that you can absolutely be a gamer and use it as your main OS. I play a lot of games - mostly from Steam, itch.io and using emulators - and it's a pretty flawless experience most of the time. The biggest downside is that many multiplayer games have anti-cheat plugins that automatically ban Linux players, so many of the more popular games like PUBG, Dead by Daylight, Rainbow Siege etc. don't work; for me it wasn't a problem because I don't play any of those games anyways, but I know it's a big deal to many people.

As mentioned previously, ProtonDB is a *must* for checking out how well different Steam games perform, and then there's Lutris, which I absolutely recommend. It's basically this software that's streamlined to just help you play games from different launchers, but also using wine and stuff; you don't have to do anything in the terminal and the software does basically everything for you. I've used it to setup Windows games like Guild Wars 2, and play Blizzard games like Overwatch and Starcraft II. There's good tutorials on YouTube about it, it's really popular amongst Linux gamers. And when you get more comfortable with it, you can use it pretty easily to setup ANY Windows game your heart desires

I'd also like to add that I was a total noob at Linux when I started; there's a lot of good guides if you just look up "how to game on Linux" or "how to play X game on Linux"!

[Memory]

I've been using GNU/Linux exclusively for the past years and I have not once found a game that wouldn't run, and for the vast majority I needed zero tweaking.

I even got a few situations where it was much easier to run games on Linux than on Windows, especially old games; like The Sims 2, which needs an ungodly amount of fixes from shady websites to even run at a proper resolution and all, which is literally a one click install via Lutris on Linux. And it runs better, too.

LinusTechTips was just... really incompetent. Not in a "how dare he not read two manuals before installing Linux" way, but in a genuinely idiotic way. He was presented with big bold letters saying something like "YOU WILL DESTROY YOUR SYSTEM IF YOU DO THIS, SO PLEASE ENTER 'YES I GOT THIS I SWEAR' IF YOU STILL WANT TO CONTINUE" and he literally did not read it and just typed it in and then laughed at it when it predictably broke. And he insisted on doing everything the Windows way (even when it was worse ) and refused to learn literally anything Like, if you want to switch from a book to an eBook, maybe not declare eBooks a complete failure when you try to turn a page and instead turn the entire device around and complain about not seeing any words.

[Memory]

I used to be into Linux gaming back when I had Ubuntu on my laptop. I relied heavily on Humble Bundle because back then the games were all guaranteed to work natively on Linux. I played a lot of Cave Story, World of Goo and Revenge of the Titans, but Machinarium was definitely my favourite.

I'd love to use Ubuntu again, but every device I tried to install it on after that laptop had major driver issues and now all my devices are Surface branded so I don't expect to have any better luck.

[Memory]

I'd love to use Ubuntu again, but every device I tried to install it on after that laptop had major driver issues and now all my devices are Surface branded so I don't expect to have any better luck.

I'd try another distribution if I were you with the same desktop environment.
Ubuntu packages older packages for stability reasons, and especially the LTS versions can become out of date as time goes on, but you absolutely won't have that problem on a distribution that releases more often or is even rolling release.
If you are comfortable with the command line, I'd recommend Endeavour OS, if you want a more Ubuntu-like experience, maybe Fedora or something.