Comment on Nearly 90% of Windows Games now run on Linux, latest data shows — as Windows 10 dies, gaming on Linux is more viable than ever

• Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Honestly, check www.protondb.com and look for the games you want to play, it will let you know how well they work out of the box by just installing them on steam and hitting play. The reality is that it very much depends on what games you want to play, if you like CoD and other competitive multiplayer you’re unfortunately in the missing 10%, but for most cases you should be fairly well covered.

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  • yardratianSoma@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    thing is, not even protondb is reliable. There’s been many times I’ve tried running a game, and encountered an error not posted anywhere, nor protondb, reddit or steam forums. All the comments on protondb will say, “works great out of the box!”, and I’m just left digging through random forums at that point.

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    • spicehoarder@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      The ONLY issue I’ve had like this was related to me having a dual monitor setup.

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      • racemaniac@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        As if that’s an acceptable explanation.

        Why the fuck is that breaking games… Reminds me of when i was playing around with linux 15 years ago, and i saw how poor multimonitor support was compared to windows back then. And they’re still managing to have stupid issues like this in 2025…

        This is why the linux desktop keeps failing “i want to play a game but it doesn’t work because i have 2 monitors”… Who wants to use that as an OS??

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      • yardratianSoma@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        well, I have a dual monitor setup, and can concur, have had many issues related to it, but I blame that more on linux/wayland than proton/wine.

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• racemaniac@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I think you’ve gotten some good replies here.

  My comment isn’t meant to scare away people, but to keep our feet on the ground. Linux gaming has made amazing progress. If you play recent, mainstream games, it’ll be very well documented, and most things will work, unless they’re explicitly made to not work (such as certain anti cheat systems).

  If you play lesser known indie games, really old games, or more specific things (not sure how good VR support is?), you’ll quickly encounter issues that may or may not be well documented. Also, in another reply thread to my post, someone commented a game not working because he has multiple monitors on linux. Stuff like that is also still happening.

  So it can be really decent, but know that you might encounter issues. Give it a try and see if it works for the games that are the most important for you :).

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  • odelik@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Games still crash on windows for multiple monitors, or launching in full screen for the first time, and more. Often without an error message without digging into event viewer or game logs.

    And TBH, once you learn how to troubleshoot on Linux, it’s actually quite informative. For instance, I resolved a cryptic error message being returned by steam on launch by launching steam from the CLI and then used the steam gui to launch the game and was given live event stream logging.

    Once there’s better GUI tooling and and more passionate techs with a design/UX passion join the community, I can only imagine how seamless things will get.

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• Zron@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  It’s very strange.

  Most games will just launch, no problems. But then you’ll get one title like the above poster has, that just refuses to launch no matter what you do.

  Most of the times there’s a work around on ProtonDB that will get you running in a few minutes. But sometimes it feels like, or is the case, where the developers actively prevent the game from launching on Linux.

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  • spicehoarder@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Yeah but the same happens on windows, often times with no way at all to play the title without a VM

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    • Thadrax@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      In my experience that has been extremely rare in recent years (or more like decades now).

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• phx@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I previously played with just Steam and there’s basically one setting to enable - allowing the install of non-native games - and then (for supported games) it’s pretty much the same as Windows. In some cases you need to select the Proton version but generally using “latest” does the trick. There are games that require Proton-GE to work. These were essentially ones where Valve’s Proton version doesn’t have workarounds for various DRM etc (likely because doing so would get them in trouble). On Steam Deck this is done by pretty much going into the local Appstore in “desktop mode” to install. Other distros may vary.

  For non-Steam games it’s a bit more of a pain, and can vary widely by game. I’ve installed a ton either just by running the Windows installer from Wine or scripts provided by Lutris.

  Honestly if you’ve got the cash and want to try things, grab a Deck and give that a shot. If it works for you, take the leap to Linux on PC. Alternatively on PC, add/resize a disk and go dual-boot. The guided installers on Ubuntu variants generally make this pretty easy.

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• underscores@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  protondb

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