Linux, Wine, and Proton

[HardwareRabbit]

How's gaming on Linux? Is Wine and Proton good? I am considering switching to Linux but I have heard it's not the best for gaming...

[Omega]

Linux is perfectly fine for gaming, unless you play Windows-only multiplayer games with intrusive DRM and anti cheat. Valve says they are working on fixing this issue, and hopefully we will have their fixes for popular anti cheat programs such as EAC before the end of this year.

In terms of performance it is usually about the same, sometimes better and sometimes worse. One thing you probably will notice is faster loading times since Microsoft's horrible NTFS filesystem will no longer be holding you back.

I highly recommend using alternative software before trying to run Windows applications under WINE.

[Si]

I switched a few months back after one poor quality, barely tested windows update too many. Here are my conclusions;

If like me you mostly play single player games or some story co-op games, Linux is a perfectly suitable replacement for Windows.

If you like to play a lot of online competitive games that use anti-cheat, unfortunately Proton isn’t there yet. If that’s the case stick with Windows and keep an eye out for what happens going forwards as Valve is trying to improve this.

Proton honestly feels like magic. It’s so good and unbelievable how many games for me are running just fine out of the box. The general rule of thumb for compatibility seems to be:

- If it runs fine on Windows it will run fine on Linux

- Games that don’t work mostly involve some kind of anti-cheat

- If the game requires tinkering to work on windows it will likely require tinkering to work on Linux.

Steam and Proton will be all you need 99% of the time.

Wine comes in handy when using Lutris with Gog as an example. For me this experience has been great too with games working no problem.

Unfortunately other launchers and services don’t seem to play as nice, Uplay for example or EGS. I only owned a handful of games across those services though so it’s not a huge deal for me.

So to sum it up:

If you play single player, co-op games or multiplayer games that don’t rely on anti cheat, or at least have a native linux version and you own most of your games on Steam, or at least partially with Gog, it’s a solid alternative to windows.

If however you mostly play competitive games with anti-cheat and no native linux version like Call of Duty or Rainbow Six, or you’re heavily invested in services like Uplay, EGS or Origin, then stay on Windows.