Looking for hope

[frysauce01]

Ok, so I'd consider myself a step above normies, but still have a ton to learn. I have this idealistic idea in my head that it would be great to make a full switch to a linux OS: privacy is a big deal for me, and Microsoft just rubs me the wrong way. Plus, Linux seems so customizable, which is super cool. 

 

I've installed Linux on a chromebook using crouton (fun to dip your toes in for everything EXCEPT games) and I've also done some virtual machines with Kali Linux (I've cracked a password and patched a friend's WPS vulnerability). Basically, I'm familiar enough with it to know I like a lot of aspects about it.

 

The problem? I'm a gamer. Not a super heavy gamer, but I enjoy my StarCraft and Dota.

 

I've tried using WINE and have had troubles, so I abandoned hope for a while until LTT came out with this video about gaming on Linux: https://youtu.be/Co6FePZoNgE

 

I was super excited about what seemed like a super user(noob) friendly OS like PopOS. So I started up a virtual machine and gave it a try. StarCraft 2 is my go to, so installed WINE and lutris first. After multiple tries, I got it to run the speed of slow.

 

"Ok," I thought, "maybe I just suck at this. Let's see that cool Steam for Linux thing and run some Dota 2."

 

The install was WAY easier, but when launching the game, I got lowest settings at what felt like 10 fps.

 

Now, I'm not looking for a bunch of troubleshooting- if I was, I'd give you all a ton more information to my process. I'm a noob, I know that! What I do want to know is this: is there hope? Could my experience be better if I bought an SSD and loaded PopOS on it rather than doing the VM route like I did? Or did I still need to install drivers for my GPU despite PopOS claiming that they're preinstalled?

 

Is gaming on Linux bad? Or am I just bad? XD

 

 

 

 

[flibberdipper]

Normie VM's will have overhead which would probably be part of your shitty framerate situation. Adding on to that the way Proton works, there's gonna be some overhead there too. And if you're doing this on a Chromebook of all things, then it'll be even worse.

[Firewrath9]

Gaming on linux/macOS is just generally bad. Perhaps try using Hyper-V/VirtualBox (hyper-V should offer more performance) and just game on windows lmao. Love macOS for programming (fuck powershell) but for gaming windows reigns supreme.

[kirashi]

1 hour ago, frysauce01 said:

I've installed Linux on a chromebook using crouton (fun to dip your toes in for everything EXCEPT games) and I've also done some virtual machines with Kali Linux (I've cracked a password and patched a friend's WPS vulnerability). Basically, I'm familiar enough with it to know I like a lot of aspects about it.

 

The problem? I'm a gamer. Not a super heavy gamer, but I enjoy my StarCraft and Dota.

 

Is gaming on Linux bad? Or am I just bad? XD

What are the specs of your Chromebook?

[frysauce01]

2 hours ago, flibberdipper said:

Normie VM's will have overhead which would probably be part of your shitty framerate situation. Adding on to that the way Proton works, there's gonna be some overhead there too. And if you're doing this on a Chromebook of all things, then it'll be even worse.

Good to know. Haha no the chromebook was just my first way of trying Linux. The VM gaming attempt was on my own rig.

[frysauce01]

1 hour ago, kirashi said:

What are the specs of your Chromebook?

The chromebook was just a little 4gb i3, not sure of the models, but that wasn't where I tried to game. That was just where I first tried linux in general, and for web browsing and libre office, it worked great! 

 

The VM where I tried to game was my personal rig, which has a ryzen 5 2600, rx 580, 16gb ram. Plenty strong for gaming, but possibly handicapped due to the VM.

[frysauce01]

2 hours ago, flibberdipper said:

Normie VM's will have overhead which would probably be part of your shitty framerate situation. Adding on to that the way Proton works, there's gonna be some overhead there too.

So do you think I could get playable fps with decent settings if I bought another SSD and installed PopOS that way?

[Sauron]

The VM is your problem, you can't expect an emulated gpu to perform anywhere near a real one. Starcraft 2 and Dota 2 work just fine on Linux (with wine for sc2) and you'll get the performance you would expect from your hardware - you just need to install it natively.

[flibberdipper]

8 hours ago, frysauce01 said:

So do you think I could get playable fps with decent settings if I bought another SSD and installed PopOS that way?

Absolutely. VMs will have a good amount of overhead unless it's something like QEMU or UnRaid (like what LTT used for their "Run macOS on any PC" and the x (insert noun) x CPU series respectively). Those are very close to bare metal, but do require extra hardware to make them actually work.

[Talon_3361]

On 7/6/2019 at 9:25 PM, Firewrath9 said:

Gaming on linux/macOS is just generally bad... for gaming windows reigns supreme.

Nice FUD there. Is Windows still the king at PC gaming? For now it holds the crown, but it's far from untouchable in terms of competition in this space goes, especially considering the advancements going on all the time on non Windows systems. The issue is more about how they're trying to do this: VMs will never be as reliable as a bare metal install for gaming. A dualboot would work much better in their case than trying to virtualize it.

[Talon_3361]

22 hours ago, frysauce01 said:

So do you think I could get playable fps with decent settings if I bought another SSD and installed PopOS that way?

Or you can dual boot on your existing drive if you have enough diskspace, but yes, installing PopOS on another drive and trying it that way will be far more successful than trying to virtualize things.

[The King of the Undead]

On 7/6/2019 at 9:25 PM, Firewrath9 said:

Gaming on linux/macOS is just generally bad. Perhaps try using Hyper-V/VirtualBox (hyper-V should offer more performance) and just game on windows lmao. Love macOS for programming (fuck powershell) but for gaming windows reigns supreme.

yah no. I have bean able to play every game I have wanted to on linux with the same or better performance. Except games with easy anti cheat.

[Firewrath9]

3 hours ago, will4623 said:

yah no. I have bean able to play every game I have wanted to on linux with the same or better performance. Except games with easy anti cheat.

I've noticed a 10-15fps drop in csgo, thats the only game I can actually play on linux. 

WINE has a noticable performance decrease, thus, I use windows.