Thanks to the likes of Proton, gaming on Linux is a hell of a lot better than it was ~5 years ago. You can actually do it now for the most part without to much fuss in my experience as long as you stick to Steam.
But once you leave Steam or get something brand new made by an EA type and have to lean on third party implementations of Proton or raw Wine to get things working it gets a lot worse.
Agreed, but I think it’s important to note that that isn’t because of a shortcoming of Linux, it’s because those companies are incentivized to support platforms that are more suitable for enabling massive profits, that’s what it seems like to me anyways.
Also, for folks out of the loop, let me explain what this entails. I installed Steam. I clicked install on a game. I clicked play in Steam. That was it. Proton isn’t some sort of thing you need to install or launch separately. It really does “just work”.
I’m able to play Deep Rock Galactic, Helldivers 2, and even Marvel Rivals online just fine. All of these are online multiplayer games, the types that generally seem to have the most trouble on Linux.
that is most definitely not the process. You have to explicitly go into Steam’s settings > Compatibility > “Enable Steam Play for all other titles” (what in the world, it’s called Steam Play, not Proton?) and then additionally select which Proton version you want. If you don’t know this, or don’t google it with the right keywords, you won’t understand why literally 90% of your library isn’t available (in my case it was 99% of my library, I think I only had 3 games available on linux natively). Also if you select the wrong Proton version some games won’t run, so you have to know that and switch it for those games only.
Lutris is also a great option, actively contributing to it. Got a slightly different focus than Heroic, but a lot more features as well. Basically a one-stop shop once you got familiar with it. Really needs more people that can contribute though given the huge amount of platforms and launchers it attempts to cover (literally all of them).
Thanks to the likes of Proton, gaming on Linux is a hell of a lot better than it was ~5 years ago. You can actually do it now for the most part without to much fuss in my experience as long as you stick to Steam.
But once you leave Steam or get something brand new made by an EA type and have to lean on third party implementations of Proton or raw Wine to get things working it gets a lot worse.
Agreed, but I think it’s important to note that that isn’t because of a shortcoming of Linux, it’s because those companies are incentivized to support platforms that are more suitable for enabling massive profits, that’s what it seems like to me anyways.
Also, for folks out of the loop, let me explain what this entails. I installed Steam. I clicked install on a game. I clicked play in Steam. That was it. Proton isn’t some sort of thing you need to install or launch separately. It really does “just work”.
I’m able to play Deep Rock Galactic, Helldivers 2, and even Marvel Rivals online just fine. All of these are online multiplayer games, the types that generally seem to have the most trouble on Linux.
that is most definitely not the process. You have to explicitly go into Steam’s settings > Compatibility > “Enable Steam Play for all other titles” (what in the world, it’s called Steam Play, not Proton?) and then additionally select which Proton version you want. If you don’t know this, or don’t google it with the right keywords, you won’t understand why literally 90% of your library isn’t available (in my case it was 99% of my library, I think I only had 3 games available on linux natively). Also if you select the wrong Proton version some games won’t run, so you have to know that and switch it for those games only.
Heroic Games Launcher is pretty great for games from GOG and Epic. You can run games with Proton just fine.
Lutris is also a great option, actively contributing to it. Got a slightly different focus than Heroic, but a lot more features as well. Basically a one-stop shop once you got familiar with it. Really needs more people that can contribute though given the huge amount of platforms and launchers it attempts to cover (literally all of them).