Linux Scores A Surprising Gaming Victory Against Windows 11
Linux Scores A Surprising Gaming Victory Against Windows 11
The conversation around gaming on Linux sure has changed in the last few years. And these benchmark results prove it.
I recently spent some time with the Framework 13 laptop, evaluating it with the new Intel Core Ultra 7 processor and the AMD Ryzen 7 7480U. It felt like the perfect opportunity to test how a handful of games ran on Windows 11 and Fedora 40. I was genuinely surprised by the results!
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The Framework 13 is perfectly capable of gaming even with its integrated graphics, provided you’re willing to compromise by lowering the resolution and quality presets for more demanding games. (It’s also a testament to how far AMD’s APUs have come in the past decade.)
Summary of results:
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Linux wins
- Total War: Warhammer III: Windows wins
- Cyberpunk 2077: Linux wins
- Forza Horizon 5: Windows wins
These results are an interesting slice of the Linux vs Windows gaming picture, but certainly not representative of the entire landscape. A few shorts years ago, however, I never would have dreamed I’d be writing an article where even two games on Linux are outperforming their Windows counterparts.
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I'm gonna get specific here, but show me WoW on Linux or GTFO. It's the only game I really play (wz2100 and zero-k too but no more shooters), and while I'm just a casual scrub the old folks and the kids get together for some chatter and splatter and it's really great.
I don't want my account blocked for false-positive on the cheat detector or something, so that's really my blocker for going fedora on the desktop.
WoW has been running well on Linux since before Proton existed. Here's the WineHQ application page for it: https://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iAppId=1922
Yeah, blizzard games have pretty much always worked for me on Linux, they were among the first games to "just work" on Linux without a lot of hassle for me.
I remember Overwatch was one of the first DirectX 11 games to run really well when DXVK was new too.
Like everyone else is saying, WoW ran just fine for me on linux. So I guess you're a fedora user now.
WoW works fine for me with Lutris. CurseForge works too.
I've been running wow on linux via lutris since BFA.
Okay, challenge accepted.
I removed Windows from my machine and have been playing WoW on Garuda Linux since April. I installed via Lutris and use GE-proton with umu-launcher (simply using GE-Proton within latest Lutris uses umu) and it works every time without fail.
First, for WoW there is no separate cheat detector that somehow figures out “oh they’re on Linux, we must ban them”.
Second, WoW plays considerably better on Linux for me (based on the framerates I’m seeing in various locations in Azeroth). Granted, I decided to dump NVIDIA so I didn’t have to deal with their closed platform garbage.
Lastly, yes, anti-cheat is an issue, but not because of you running Linux — it’s because of game companies fundamentally misunderstanding operating systems. There is no easier method of cheating on Linux than there is on Windows especially if the game company properly supports Linux. So if a company were to ban you, either you are doing something ban-worthy (and running Linux objectively is not), or the company is garbage because they don’t understand what they’re doing.
I have seen no evidence to support Blizzard banning people for playing WoW on Linux. Show me a preponderance of evidence of this that isn’t possibly some other ban-worthy issue, and I will happily change my mind.