Gaming On Linux - It's Been A While
So I recently mentioned that I was wanting to disconnect from Microsoft products and that getting away from Windows in particular seemed like too big an ask - not because I don't like or can't use Linux but because I rely on Windows too heavily for gaming.
But I've been thinking about it some more, doing a bit of searching around and scouting the ecosystem, and decided to give it a go - I have an SSD that I could easily clear out and use as a test-bed, do a dual-boot like it's 2005 again, and test the waters myself now that I have a vague understanding of the situation.
The main things to understand for this transition are:
- Linux, and the preponderance of distributions.
- Proton, the translation layer (that I believe just sits on top of WINE) which enables Steam-native running of Windows-only games.
- The general ecosystem of highly-opinionated software branches that seem to drive both.
Linux isn't a concern to me - I dabbled with dual-booting 20 years ago, and have used half a dozen distros since in education or professional contexts. I'm far from a power-user, but I'm not afraid to use a terminal to solve problems. If the best solution was some Arch fork, I would manage fine with a bit of support from documentation.
Proton was much more of a mystery to me, and seems to have 2 main branches - the Valve operated one, and protonge which is maintained by a patreon-supported developer. Thankfully, I soon learned that switching between them is really easy with helpful software tools like Steam, Lutris, and ProtonUp-qt.
So really at this point the only mystery was which team was I gonna choose? Which distro was I going to install, then gaslight myself into believing was the best lest I spend the rest of my life jumping from ship to ship?
I pretty quickly settled on Bazzite, for a few reasons.
- It has a pretty professional overall presentation. A lot of modern distros have this, but it was a good start - while I'm capable enough with Linux to not need something too polished, there's no reason to make extra work for myself.
- It was designed for Steam Deck, which means it's both Steam-focused (where all of my performance-intensive gaming is based), and relatively lightweight.
- It's built on an "immutable" Fedora branch called Atomic which essentially means that I can't just fuck up the OS with the simplest error. A gaming system is so sensitive to minor OS problems that having one I won't break by making a typo holds a lot of appeal. It also speaks to a level of confidence the developers have that there's no need to go hunting around in the CLI to change minor things - if you want it, they need to have a way to provide it.
Finding this gave me the confidence to try it out, and I've been tinkering with it for the last 6 hours or so. So far? I'm impressed.
As far as a desktop experience, it does all the desktop things. It uses Firefox by default, which I'll probably switch out eventually, but it works for now while I also wean myself off Chrome. The software manager is pretty comprehensive and the preinstalled bits are fairly intuitive. I went with the KDE version (having been a gnome kid 20 years ago) and I'm really impressed by how far it's come in this time. Multimedia stuff just works, most standard apps are available as flatpaks, and I haven't run into a problem yet that I can't at least hack a solution to.
For gaming? I haven't done much stress-testing yet. I understand that nVidia cards generally are a bit worse on Linux, and that it's normal to see around 20-30% worse performance depending on the game. My system is an AMD 5800X, NV RX3070, and 32GB of memory and I play at 1440p.
On my system I was getting 90fps with my preferred settings in Baldur's Gate 3 in Windows, down to about 50fps in Bazzite which seems like a worst-case scenario and one I'm going to investigate further.
Rocket League is my comfort-game of choice and it runs super smoothly on proton. I've been complaining about uneven frame-pacing for the last several months on Windows, and I thought it had mostly gone away but I think I'd just got used to it - as soon as I booted it on Bazzite it was like playing at 120Hz for the first time all over again. Buttery. Delightful.
I've heard this is a common upside to gaming on Linux - your FPS will be lower, but the pacing will be significantly better. With a gsync monitor (is that supported? Shit, I should check... quick google ...seems supported) it feels really decent. Honestly this is the best Rocket League has felt for me in at least 6 months, possibly longer.
So a first day conclusion? Really liking this so far. Much more positive experience than I expected.
I've got a lot more tinkering and testing to do, but I'm happy enough with this to use it as my daily driver for the near future and really learn the friction points.
I don't think I'll be able to fully remove Windows just yet, not until I can figure out what's going on with BG3, and I may just leave a vestigial Windows partition for really heavy games until I can afford a 9700XT.
I'm genuinely quite excited for the future now, and what might be possible.