How much is the speed drop from translation using Proton? Is it so big or just small? Hows the performance of cartoonish Windows only games? And whats your hardware and how much is the price? I’m sorry but I cannot test it myself because I’m still on my mobile. Can you also tell about how many games are compatible with Proton? What about non-popular games?
Go with AMD GPU, be prepared for true happiness.
Some tips for you:
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Check game compatibility using https://www.protondb.com/ this will let you know if the games you want to play run on Linux and how well they do so
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Buy an AMD GPU, support for Linux is great on them, miles ahead of nVidia. If you already had an nVidia card it’s usable, but if you’re starting fresh 100% AMD.
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Don’t fret too much on the distro of choice, not sure how familiar you are with Linux but because of the questions I assume not much. If this machine will also be used as a normal computer prefer a general use distro (my recommendation would be Mint), if you’ll plug it on the TV and use it as a console prefer a gaming distro (I’ve heard good stuff about Bazzite but never used it myself). You can have
/and/homebe different partitions, this means that you can distro hop and maintain your games, saves, and most configs from one distro to the other, or even when reinstalling the system, I strongly recommend people to do that. -
Linux is not windows, things are done differently and that’s okay. A lot of the frustration of new users comes from trying to do things the windows way and failing miserably, e.g. trying to install programs/drivers by navigating to a random web page and downloading a binary.
Good luck, and ask any more questions you might have.
Mint is a good suggestion for a new user. An underrated distro, but solid, simple, and works well for any purpose.
I’d also suggest Mint for getting started. I’ve been using it for several years with minimal hassle.
Isn’t mint the most used distro after like catchyos?
CachyOS
I don’t agree with the sentiment that Linux Mint is underrated either. As you note, it is quite popular and is mentioned a lot in the discourse.
However, I don’t think that CachyOS and Linux Mint are the most popular distros; that undoubtedly goes to Ubuntu. And, if anything, I’d think that Linux Mint is more popular than CachyOS.
Yet, if we’d limit it to the distros used by gamers, then CachyOS probably does take the crown for most used distro (aside from SteamOS). At least, there are metrics that suggest as such.
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I am using Bazzite for my gaming pc and am happy that it simply works
I switched from win11 to cachyOS a few months ago and are never going back. For gaming it just works, my only struggle right now is some audio configuration to get a virtual amplifier for my guitar to work.
But troubleshooting on Linux is so so much better than on windows, because 99,999% there’s a solution in comparison to windows were often it’s just “well, we disabled the solution to the problem, so tough luck”.I’m running 32GB ram, rtx4080 and a 5800x on a dual monitor setup (32" 21:9 and 24" 16:9). Was basically plug and play.
For the most part you would just build the same machine as if it was a Windows gaming machine. That said, there are a few things to know:
- AMD has historically had better video drivers on Linux than nVidia, though nVidia has made some changes that has improved things quite a bit
- You want a basic, well supported common distribution if you’re not extremely familiar with Linux. Don’t go with some weird niche distro because you heard it will get you 1% better frame rates. Things like Steam and Lutris are well supported on the common easy distros. I would suggest Mint as it is Debian based, and basically everything supports Debian derivatives.
- Not every game will work, but a whole lot will. The things that are most unlikely to are competitive online games with anticheat root kits. If those matter to you, then unfortunately you’re better oft in windows.
- Take a look at https://www.protondb.com/ for a list of what is well supported and any information if they need some trick to run.
For a new PC I’d probably recommend fedora, purely due to more modern kernels with better hardware support, though Mint now has the Hardware Enablement Kernels iirc
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Download protonplus to manage proton versions. Try proton GE 10-34 first, 99% of the time it works.
To elaborate on why the GE is relevant. (as comment for OP, i’m sure you know it already)
GE is a special fork of proton that comes with lots of fixes and improvements. Sometimes a games cutscenes won’t work on proton, but they will on proton GE (because of H.264 codec crap).
How much is the speed drop from translation using Proton? Is it so big or just small?
Honestly, in some cases, proton is faster than games directly on winblows. Microslop even said they’re going to try to make windows faster than proton again.
proton is faster than games directly on winblows>
Thats good news, cause Linux is my OS choice.
It is more or less the same. There are countless comparisons and Linux usually wins by a small margin but not always.
I don’t get the hate against Nvidia GPUs… i have been using Linux for 3-4 years on PC and Laptop with RTX 3000 and 4000 series and it just works. Even with Cuda. Apt or pacman just give you the right driver (havent tried other package managers…) I understand there were problems, but is it really deserved nowadays? Just go with whatever gives you the best price/performance?
That has been my experience too, having run Linux on different diy PCs from gtx970 to rtx3090. Everything has just worked.
So an acquaintance’s son asked for upgrade advice and I told him to get a rtx5060 because that would give him the most performance on his limited budget, without also requiring a PSU upgrade… And it turned out to be a nightmare to get it up and running. I spent hours to get it to boot and then to actually use the GPU, and the computer still freezes on shutdown so he has to hold the power button to turn it off.
It could be the combination of rtx50xx, gigabyte motherboard and Bazzite, i.e. not necessarily only Nvidia’s fault but the computer worked fine while he had a gtx1080
Well that’s the thing, ampere gpus (rtx 3000+) with the open kernel nvidia module is super solid on wayland now. Anything under rtx 3000 sucks.
I use a 1660 on fedora and have never had issues with GPU drivers, so like ximtor, I’m not understanding to problems people have. Maybe I lucked out, maybe I started using linux/fedora at the right time, who knows?
Isn’t 1660 technically the same gpu as 3060? Or am I mistaken completely
Games that run on Linux are about as fast on Linux as on Windows. In fact they tend to run a little faster on Linux.
Use AMD CPU and AMD GPU for the smoothest experience.
AMD CPU is more reliable, and Radeon graphics have the best support for Linux.It is estimated that around 12000 Games work on Linux, or about 90%. For specific game compatibility you can always check protondb. Notice though that some games that have native Linux versions are also on ProtonDB, so you should check on the steam client first if there is a native Linux version.
PS ProtonDB state the number of games that are verified to work as almost 9,900, and playable as almost 30,000 😎
But Platinum or Gold rated games are only 60%.Personally I generally check ProtonDB before buying a game, but it’s been quite a while since there was something that didn’t work.
Most games I just click play and they run.
Ryzen 9 x3D, XFX Radeon 9700 XT, 32 GBs RAM, with some flavor of MSI mobo I am too lazy to get the box out to look at.
It took me like a year to build as I was saving for all the parts (and the everything crisis began, at the time called the RAMpocalypse). I think it was around 3K to build then including the 2TB M.2
I’m never going back.
It took me like a year to build as I was saving for all the parts
Just want to add that this is generally not a good idea. Because by the time you finish, your earliest parts are already a year old, and chances are you could have purchased something with a better value if you just waited.
Oh believe me, it happened lmao
I wasn’t suggesting it didn’t.
Wow cool rig.👍😎
That’s basically double up overall compared to mine. 😋
I have Ryzen 7, Radeon 6600 XT, 16 GB Ram, 1 TB SSD.PS:
Didn’t AMD change the naming scheme on the Radeon 9000 series so it’s 9070? AFAIK a 9700 is technically a board dating back to 2003.R9700 is a workstation card.
https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/VGASAP39701/Sapphire-AMD-Radeon-AI-PRO-R9700-32GB-GDDR6-Graphi
EDIT: They said XT, so you’re right they probably mean 9070.
I have no idea I didnt look anything up and I’m kinda baked. Those numbers are getting so meaningless to me I’m too old.
I’m never going back>
To Linux or Windows? But why?
To windows. Linux is just a far better user experience at this point.
I get better performance on Linux than Windows.
The significantly lower system overhead more than makes up for the translation layer.
I mostly game on Steam, occasionally Lutris. The only thing that just plain wouldn’t work was Control from Gog - I probably could have gotten it to work if I played with the configuration. But I didn’t really care that much.
Not sure if you’ve chosen a distro, but I can vouch for CachyOS being pretty decent. There are more stable (i.e. non-rolling) gaming distros, but CachyOS doesn’t take a huge amount of tinkering, and most things truly just work (I’ve actually had some games be less buggy on Proton than native Windows).
Bazzite is far more user-friendly for new users.
I second cachyOS. I distro hopped a bit and came back.
I went to pure Arch because
I’m a computer masochistI prefer it’s minimality. Now, I’ve migrated to Artix, and I’m considering NetBSD.I am speedrunning Unix-like OSes.
I’m very weary of recommending Arch distros to new users, Arch expects you to read the news and breaks stuff. 99% of the time for experienced users it’s fine, but new users tend to touch random configs when exploring which prevents pacman from upgrading them, and they won’t read the news to know about possible issues.
And before someone says Cachy is not Arch, it is, for this purpose it is, it suffers from the same thing by reason of being a rolling release that uses the same package manager. Just because YOU haven’t experienced a problem doesn’t mean it’s not there, I also have never experienced a similar problem with over a decade of Arch as my main distro, but it happens and you have to be blind to say otherwise.
The cool thing about default CachyOS is it has preconfigured snapper built-in. So in case something breaks during update, it’s couple minutes to restore to previously working state. I use openSUSE and this is a godsend for rolling distros IMO. And having it working out of the box is a win for newbies.
That’s good, didn’t knew that but that’s a very smart move from them. Even so, that’s IF they know about that, also it only fixes the immediate issue of broken system, not the fact that you need to know what to do to not break it.
Cachy works great, it’s essentially a preconfigured Arch, but Arch issues for new users was never the installation process.
I agree wholeheartedly. I only recommended it because it’s the only gaming-centric disto that I’ve used, and I wasn’t sure what OP’s technical skills were like.
Can you afford CachyOS? I’ve heard you must be always up to date with Arch, its base distro, so it’s like Windows 11.
CachyOS is free, so unless there is another meaning for afford that you meant, anyone can afford it.
CachyOS is Arch based, but is its own OS. So you don’t have to do anything with arch. You just need to run updates the same as you would any OS. It is not really anything like Windows 11, so not really sure what you mean by that.
I also run CachyOS and it has been fantastic. No issues at all, and they have easy to follow instructions for installation and how to add their gaming package which includes Steam.
You will have a better time with an all amd system (amd cpu’s are just currently better, and amd gpu’s are more linux friendly)
Every game that I played on windows, I can also play on linux
Build your pc with at least 2 drives, with 1 drive ideally just for the operating system. Not the end of the world if you cannot afford that, but it does make things easier long term, the same applies to windows installs.
Ignore anyone who tells you to use mint as your distro, they are either trolling you, or trolling themselves, it’s trash.
Don’t expect to find the distro that suits you straight away.
Don’t judge all of linux based on the choices you initially make.
Don’t listen to trashtubers like linus
If you are coming from windows, the desktop environment ‘kde plasma’ should be your first choice (as opposed to gnome, xfce, cinnamon etc etc)
Go back in time a few years when it was affordable.
Others have commented on performance, so I don’t have anything to add. The parts/cost is really large and varied topic depending on what you’re trying to do and what your budget is. And pretty much every part of my rig has gone up in cost since I got it, so no idea what it would cost to build at this point, but more than I’d be willing to spend.
So I’ll just cover a few things you may run into issues with when trying to game on Linux.
Anti-cheat: Some anti-cheat software is not compatible with Linux or the developers didn’t properly set them up for Linux. There isn’t anything you can do to work around that. Just the way it is.
Some launchers/DRM: Ubisoft and EA seem to be big ones for launchers that are broken regularly. There may be others as well, but those are the ones that come to mind. You can sometimes get them to work by switching to different versions of Proton, but it can be hit or miss.
Niche gaming hardware: Some niche hardware like steering wheels, shifters, pedals, flight sticks may have some issues. Some work right out of the box, some work but can’t have software/drivers updated, some can’t be customized because of proprietary software that is windows exclusive. This hobbies have some pretty dedicated fans, and more of them are making the transition to Linux. So you might be able to find assistance here on Lemmy or on various forums if this is something you’re trying to get working.
You may run into other minor issues but there are a ton of resources out there to get games working. Most will rum pretty much like they are native. I think Linux is a fantastic platform for gaming, and it will likely continue to be better as more people adopt it.
