Nowadays, what are the drawbacks and limitations of using Linux for gaming? What distro would you guys advise?
Nowadays, what are the drawbacks and limitations of using Linux for gaming? What distro would you guys advise?
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2287056
I feel like this is a question that might have been asked around and maybe there are guides around, but that's a discussion that I'd like to have with the lot of you.
The context
Using Linux on both my work laptop and the Steam Deck has made me quite interested in a full switch to Linux - my other computer is a gaming desktop, which I use a lot for many things, but mostly for gaming. Getting used to Linux has made me quite more intolerant to all the BS Microsoft is pushing than I used to be, the latest one being forcing the users to switch from the older email client to the new Outlook, which has a big, nice ad banner that looks like an unread email. So I've began wondering: after all, why not? Why shouldn't I embrace the penguin? Well, the answer is that I should not if there are too many hinders and drawbacks in using Linux, which would make me need a dual boot instead of a single OS install.
We all know gaming has long been one of the main limiting factors in switching, but the Deck has changed the whole landscape on that front. We've basically switched from "Windows is the only OS suitable for gaming" to "Linux is also viable", and the Deck has been made that available to the general audience. Therefore, nowadays, how viable is Linux for a gaming computer? What are the limitations users will encounter? Would I be able to play all the games from my Steam, Epic and GOG library with a bit of tinkering, including the new releases?
The drawbacks of using Linux (or those that I can think of)
- Other gaming launchers support on Linux suck: GOG and Epic will work through Heroic Games but Activision/Blizzard, Ubisoft, EA and Rockstar games will all be a pain, or even not work at all. Is is true? Is there any way around that?
- No Microsoft GamePass. Or none that actually matters, as the only solution is to pay for the higher tier and stream the games - so no game actually runs on the desktop. No, thanks.
- Some DRM will prevent games from working, and this is especially true for games with heavy online content.
- NVIDIA support for Linux is far from being on-par with that on Windows, especially the open-source drivers. Is this still true?
- Many devices, especially those for gaming, might not have good (or even working) compatibility drivers for Linux. I know my UWQHD monitor works flawlessly on Windows, but requires quite a bit of tinkering on Ubuntu
- Newer games might not be optimized for Linux in the first place
- Tinkering is inevitable (as with any Linux computer, really)
What can we add?
The advantages (I can think of)
- It's free
- It's ad free
- Customization on Linux is awesome, and I might end up spending more time ricing, breaking it all and reinstalling than gaming (see also, previous section's 7.)
- I will no longer be sending data to Microsoft
What else am I not thinking about?
What distro?
And finally, let's say I make the switch. What Linux distro should I use? I've read a bit about Drauger, Ubuntu GamePack, or even Pop! OS with some manual setup. What do you guys think, and advise?
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> No Microsoft GamePass. Or none that actually matters, as the only solution is to pay for the higher tier and stream the games - so no game actually runs on the desktop. No, thanks.
Why "no thanks"? I use GamePass with xCloud and it works pretty well on Linux, and it's a perfectly viable option - unless you've got really poor internet, or you're into competitive FPS games or something that requires ultra-low latency.
> NVIDIA support for Linux is far from being on-par with that on Windows, especially the open-source drivers. Is this still true?
Yes. If you're planning to game on Linux, I'd highly recommend getting an AMD card instead, the AMD open-source drivers are excellent and see frequent improvements - both in terms of features and performance.
> Many devices, especially those for gaming, might not have good (or even working) compatibility drivers for Linux. I know my UWQHD monitor works flawlessly on Windows, but requires quite a bit of tinkering on Ubuntu
"Many" -> citation needed. In my experience, depending on the hardware, you may find a better out-of-the-box experience with Linux compared to Windows. For instance, on my ThinkPad Z13, everything worked out-of-the-box on Nobara (Fedora) - including Fn keys, Wi-Fi, accelerated graphics/video drivers... everything. Same with my AMD desktop, didn't have to install any special drivers or anything. But when I tried to install a fresh copy of Windows on my Z13 (dual-boot), there were almost no drivers - I had to manually install the Wi-Fi drivers first, and then grab the rest of the drivers via Windows Update, which was painful - took like 3 reboots to get everything installed, with long reboot times cause of updates. Painful.
In saying that, I'm surprised that your monitor - of all things - needed tinkering, when they're usually mostly dumb devices that need no drivers or anything. But then again, it's Ubuntu so... ¯\(ツ)/¯. FWIW, I have a fairly recent QHD monitor from AOC and it worked just fine on Nobara, no tinkering required.
> The advantages: What else am I not thinking about?
5. Performance. Thanks to no bloatware like unnecessary background services/Defender/telemetry/Cortana/Bing etc, Linux in general would perform better, at least in theory. YMMV of course, depending on the game/hardware/distro. The good thing is if you use the right distro, or are willing to go the extra mile with tweaking, you can eke out way more performance, such as by using custom gaming-optimised kernels, fstab mount option tweaks and more. Using a gaming-optimised distro means most of these tweaks are built-in, saving you some time.
6. Arguably, a better gaming-focused experience, when you go for a gaming-focused distro like Nobara, or if you want to go the full mile and make an exclusive gaming box, you could install something like ChimeraOS, which is basically a community Steam OS. Imagine your PC booting straight to Steam, in the fastest possible time, with no distractions like Windows Update, Defender or other nonsense. Basically a console experience, with the power and flexibility of PCs and Linux.
> What distro?
Nobara. It's based on Fedora but optimised for gaming, made by the same guy who makes Proton-GE and Wine-GE (GloriousEggroll), so you know it's the good stuff. Obviously comes with ProtonGE/Steam/Lutris etc out-of-the-box, custom kernel, patched Discord, codecs, nVidia drivers and more. Definitely give it a go if you're considering Linux for gaming.
I don't understand why, but I don't see your message on the post, only in my notifications. Anyway, thanks for the feedback!
> Why “no thanks”?
Because I have a powerful enough desktop to run games that I would be streaming then. It takes away some of the rights I have regarding my collection of games and creates a need that I did not have. I also just bought an NVIDIA GPU, I won't buy a new one to be able to switch to Linux.
> “Many” -> citation needed.
On two different computers running Ubuntu, my DELL monitor was not correctly recognized. I had to switch from Wayland to Xorg and define the actual monitor resolution through xrandr - not impossible, just quite annoying. Similarly, my Logitech G403's buttons to change the sensitivity never have never worked correctly on Ubuntu, and there is no official Logitech software to make them work. Those buttons are just not seen by an Ubuntu computer.
> 5. Performance.
That's one I didn't think of! Although I don't think backgrounds services impact that much performance nowadays on a higher end PC, it leaves that much more headroom to be used on the game instead. On the other hand, isn't performance on a non-native software already impacted negatively? So all in all, which would have the greater impact?
> Nobara
Thanks for the recommendation! I know have examples of Ubuntu, Fedora and Arch based distros optimized for gaming. As for which to choose, I will probably get as many answers as persons I ask. And ChimeraOS seems to be a nice project, it just doesn't fit my needs.
I used Nobara for the past year or so and liked it for the most part but it had too many issues. Most annoying is every update broke my controller it was something to do with their Xbox configs. Then there were a few games that wouldn't work despite working on my steam deck. Most notably it was uncharted. Finally I'm just done with RH and needed to move away. I switched most of my machines to Debian but the TV gaming rig is on Solus now that they finally updated their image. It boots way faster than nobara and uncharted and controller work flawlessly. So far I've been happy with it.
Good to know! Which version of Solus are you using? Although it doesn't seem to really matter as I don't think any of them are really dedicated to gaming.
4.4 budgie it was just released. Not a gaming distro but they do have a custom steam runtime app that used to work wonders but I find breaks things more than helps now that proton is a thing. So make sure to turn that off if you go that route. I like it for the TV PC as I don't want to do as little maintenance on I as possible. Just launch steam or some light web browsing but i didn't want to go the steam os route.
For your screen, try a live ISO of another distro that's not based on Debian. I struggled for years with my 1440p monitor on Wayland when plugged in to my laptop. Turns out, there's something wrong with the way Debian's kernel decodes my monitor's EDID. On Fedora, it worked out of the box.
About Nobara, I'm not sure it's better than vanilla Fedora for a beginner. Sure, there are a lot of nice things baked in and rpmfusion enabled by default, but the dual system update thing is... not great. I'm still running my gaming rig on Nobara tho. YMMV.
About nVidia and their drivers... yeah, they suck. And they will continue to suck for the foreseeable future. That's why I built my system around an AMD GPU from the start. People like to complain about Wayland and that it's not ready for prime time and that Wayland sucks. Well, nVidia drivers are to blame. I've been running Wayland almost exclusively for the past 4 years on Intel iGPUs and AMD GPUs, it's always been nice and reliable.