Linux for gaming / better than windows?

[Raptor_Fawr]

I ask this because apparently now if you buy any game from steam, no matter if it was intended for linux or not, you can play it (still obscure to me how, but it involves a wine-like software that run within steam) 

 

I have yet to try it but I've read it works marvellously, therefore the question

 

Linus did a review of a chinese console some time ago that run windows, and in the video it states that win10 munch away a lot of ram, something that in gaming consoles doesn't happen and that allows more performance from "less-capable" hardware. 

 

I was wondering if linux distros can do the same, provided that you don't have ubuntu or others that require the same hardware as windows... 

[WereCatf]

1 minute ago, Raptor_Fawr said:

if you buy any game from steam, no matter if it was intended for linux or not, you can play it

Not true. There are still a lot of games that don't work at all.

[Raptor_Fawr]

Just now, WereCatf said:

Not true. There are still a lot of games that don't work at all.

That's unfortunate, but I suppose they are still improving it because afaik Valve is a pro-linux company, they always release their software for that platform

[AlexOak]

1 minute ago, Raptor_Fawr said:

That's unfortunate, but I suppose they are still improving it because afaik Valve is a pro-linux company, they always release their software for that platform

It's up to the game developer if they would allow the game to be run on proton. 

Example:

Destiny 2 (Bungie)

Any other game using anti-cheat system 

 

Although proton is great and all. Its potential can also be cut short like NVIDIA vm service. 

[Radium_Angel]

25 minutes ago, Raptor_Fawr said:

you can play it

As someone who has tested games that I have under Steam for Windows, vs playing those same games under Steam for Linux (both 14.04 LTS and 16.04 LTS) let me in on a little secret.

 

Anytime you run something under any scenario that isn't native to the program, you're gonna take a performance hit. How much of a hit depends on a number of factors, by in my experience I'd lose 10-25% FPS under Ubuntu.

 

Gaming under Linux is improving all the time, but it's never gonna match running the game natively.

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, Raptor_Fawr said:

That's unfortunate, but I suppose they are still improving it because afaik Valve is a pro-linux company, they always release their software for that platform

More than being pro Linux they don't like the control Microsoft has on their market.

1 hour ago, Raptor_Fawr said:

Linus did a review of a chinese console some time ago that run windows, and in the video it states that win10 munch away a lot of ram, something that in gaming consoles doesn't happen and that allows more performance from "less-capable" hardware. 

 

I was wondering if linux distros can do the same

A game built for Linux and optimized correctly could theoretically run better than on Windows if you used a Linux distribution that uses less ram. We're nowhere near that being the case though - most games are still made with Windows in mind and many don't support Linux natively. Proton (the compatibility layer that comes with Steam) works well enough for many games but it still introduces some overhead in most cases. GPU drivers for Linux are also not as good as those on Windows, especially nVidia's drivers.

 

For the time being Linux isn't better or even as good as Windows in the vast, vast majority of games - if you're going to play games on Linux do it because you want to use Linux, not because you think it will be faster than Windows.

[Nayr438]

1 hour ago, Radium_Angel said:

As someone who has tested games that I have under Steam for Windows, vs playing those same games under Steam for Linux (both 14.04 LTS and 16.04 LTS) let me in on a little secret.

 

Anytime you run something under any scenario that isn't native to the program, you're gonna take a performance hit. How much of a hit depends on a number of factors, by in my experience I'd lose 10-25% FPS under Ubuntu.

 

Gaming under Linux is improving all the time, but it's never gonna match running the game natively.

Would depend on which way games in the future go. Most of the performance hit comes from re compiling shaders in games. Wine itself has fairly minimal overhead. If we were to see a push to vulkan rather than directx12, it would be possible for it to run within margin of error. From what I've seen, game developers seem to be stuck in limbo trying to figure out which way to move forward, so it could easily go either way.

 

There are a couple instances as well where some games have outperformed windows under dxvk.  though that list is very small and as far as I'm aware only happend under AMD instances with the aco compiler. It does leave it open to debate whether dxvk and Mesa could actually close the gap more however.

 

I would like to note though that in most instances it is about a 10 - 15% performance hit with some titles only running at 50% and some not working at all. **This is from my experience with Navi and upstream Mesa git running the aco compiler, your results could vary depending on your distros packages and your hardware.**

 

 

I think the next biggest obstacle will be anticheat implementations and how they develop in the future. We already struggle with things like battleye and EAC. Something like vanguard or whatever it's called that runs at the kernel level opens up a whole new world of issues.

[HotCheeseNachozAndBurritoz]

Regarding good performance out of limited hardware, Linux shines. A i3-gaps set up takes very little memory. In general Linux full-featured DEs like KDE Plasma and Gnome 3 will probably be lighter than the bloatware which comes with Windows. We must keep in mind that Ubuntu uses an older Linux kernel. With Proton GE and a few tweaks like Game mode with Lutris, we can achieve absolute killer performance in Linux. However, the FPS drop being mentioned depends on the game in question. I used to be running GTA V in 50ish FPS. Using game mode and proton GE, my FPS is 60ish or sometimes in the 70s depending on the scene. The performance in many games is completely comparable or sometimes might even be higher than Windows https://itsfoss.com/linux-games-performance-boost-amd-gpu/ . Also the Linux game mode project can be very effective for some titles. Linux is getting there but it is not there yet. You cannot run all titles with minimum performance drop. Sure there are many that run comparable to Windows but some will not even work. As for the console, if it is rocking 1 GB of RAM, the bloatware and garbage in Windows might be troublesome but again, you are not going to see that great performance in Linux either unless RAM really is the bottleneck. 

[Ashleyyyy]

some games work but it's a very small minority. i'd stick with Windows. 

[Hogosha]

There are some rare instances where a game will run better in Linux but those are few and far between. If you want to know what games are you going to be able to access check out www.protondb.com. You can link it to your Steam account and it will rate how well your games run in Linux.

[Koeshi]

On 5/13/2020 at 6:47 PM, AlexOak said:

Any other game using anti-cheat system 

Really depends on which anti-cheat system is in use.  VAC for example works just fine, EAC on the other hand is a disaster zone.

On 5/13/2020 at 8:04 PM, Sauron said:

GPU drivers for Linux are also not as good as those on Windows, especially nVidia's drivers.

Shouldn't that be just nVidia, by all accounts that I have heard AMD's navi drivers stabilised on Linux before they did on Windows.  In general the AMD GPU drivers seem to be very well regarded, I assume because they have to make it past the kernel maintainers.

[Sauron]

9 minutes ago, Koeshi said:

Shouldn't that be just nVidia, by all accounts that I have heard AMD's navi drivers stabilised on Linux before they did on Windows.

Hmm that wasn't my experience last time I tried it but maybe it got better since then.

[Snowarch]

using nvidia, and ubuntu. i can confirm the drivers are pretty good, but there are limitations.

 

overclocking and fancurve change are broken. 

some games only work on cirtain driver versions with the ppa.

 

and like others said, some games will be broken for you where they are not for others, and anti cheat systems will hit you hard in some cases. borderlands 3 for example got gold rating in proton db extremely bricked for me. yes the steam version. proton/wine isn't nessesarly faster.

[Nayr438]

18 hours ago, Sauron said:

Hmm that wasn't my experience last time I tried it but maybe it got better since then.

Navi Reached stable drivers on Linux long before Windows using AMDGPU and mesa. This was true for upstream mesa and kernel builds. It would have taken quite awhile for it to trickle down to something like Ubuntu or Debian however, which I believe is still missing quite a few improvements. I personally still run upstream mesa-git and upstream kernel builds on a Arch based distro, so I can't speak for other distributions or package builds. With Navi, the closer you get to upstream drivers, the better your experience will be. Seems they have been busy with Navi.

[Sauron]

1 minute ago, Nayr438 said:

With Navi, the closer you get to upstream drivers, the better your experience will be. Seems they have been busy with Navi.

Good to know for my next GPU upgrade

[Koeshi]

1 hour ago, Nayr438 said:

It would have taken quite awhile for it to trickle down to something like Ubuntu or Debian however,

Ah yeah, I probably should have mentioned that I am on rolling so it won't be the same for everyone.

[Raptor_Fawr]

On 5/15/2020 at 11:07 PM, Koeshi said:

Really depends on which anti-cheat system is in use.  VAC for example works just fine, EAC on the other hand is a disaster zone.

There are several games that have their own anti cheat system, if I recall correctly Bandai titles have different anti-cheat for each game. 

 

My most played online game for instance is Dark Souls 3 and the anti-cheat is so poorly designed that hackers use cheats to flag other people as cheaters, thus banning them from online play in that game. 

[Donut417]

On 5/13/2020 at 1:34 PM, Raptor_Fawr said:

I ask this because apparently now if you buy any game from steam, no matter if it was intended for linux or not, you can play it (still obscure to me how, but it involves a wine-like software that run within steam)

Your talking about Proton. Not all games work, not all games work well (as in they run like hot garbage). So its game to game on how well it works.