Linux and Steam games

[hidaway52]

Most all my games are from Steam. Do they get along with Linux?

[PopinFRESH]

If you install one of the more popular distributions for gaming then you'll have most of what you need for a relatively smooth experience with Steam, as well as most of the other major digital distribution stores.

As noted ^ protondb is the resource for checking game compatibility along with potential workarounds for minor issues.

Beyond that, install the following for improving proton compatibility

• ProtonUp-Qt[davidotek.github.io]
  
• Proton-GE[github.com]
  
• Latest version of the stock Proton (currently version 9.0-4)

ProtonUp-Qt is a GUI based proton manager so you can install and keep version versions of proton up to date. It really helps with installing multiple version of proton as different games may work better/worse with different proton versions.

Proton-GE (Made/maintained by GloriusEggroll) is a community supported version of proton that often has additional patches and improvements before Valve has added them into the main Proton version.

[DevaVictrix]

Originally posted by hidaway52:

Most all my games are from Steam. Do they get along with Linux?

I haven’t found one that doesn’t work yet. Including ones on epic and ea clients. Apparently gta5 online is now a no go though because of anti-cheat stuff.

[Electric Cupcake]

Originally posted by PopinFRESH:

If you install one of the more popular distributions for gaming then you'll have most of what you need for a relatively smooth experience with Steam, as well as most of the other major digital distribution stores.

As noted ^ protondb is the resource for checking game compatibility along with potential workarounds for minor issues.

Beyond that, install the following for improving proton compatibility

• ProtonUp-Qt[davidotek.github.io]
  
• Proton-GE[github.com]
  
• Latest version of the stock Proton (currently version 9.0-4)

ProtonUp-Qt is a GUI based proton manager so you can install and keep version versions of proton up to date. It really helps with installing multiple version of proton as different games may work better/worse with different proton versions.

Proton-GE (Made/maintained by GloriusEggroll) is a community supported version of proton that often has additional patches and improvements before Valve has added them into the main Proton version.

Also, Protontricks and Lutris or Heroic Launcher.

And Bottles is helpful.

And Flatseal, if you use the flatpack version of Steam.

[PopinFRESH]

Yeah I meant to mention Lutris and Heroic for handling the other major stores.

For the OP's question though, for the majority of things ProtonUp-Qt and installing Proton-GE and the latest version of Proton should get them sorted for the majority of Steam games. But Protontricks is also useful.

[98766545656432]

you can even use steam to install non steam games and use proton

i do this with my gog games so i can just have them all here

[Chaosolous]

Using Proton, I haven't had a game in my library not yet work.

Sometimes you need to add a launch option line or change Compatibility Layers, but so far everything has worked.

protondb.com is very helpful.

[hidaway52]

Thanks. I'll keep this in mind. Only thinking on changing if Win 10 goes sideways when Microscam stops supporting it. If it keeps working, I probably won't switch. The checks I've run indicate that this PC isn't Win 11 compatible anyways.

[Chaosolous]

Originally posted by hidaway52:

Thanks. I'll keep this in mind. Only thinking on changing if Win 10 goes sideways when Microscam stops supporting it. If it keeps working, I probably won't switch. The checks I've run indicate that this PC isn't Win 11 compatible anyways.

If you do swap to Linux and you're coming from Windows while being unfamiliar with Linux, I recommend Mint. It's what I swapped to a few months ago and it's been an easy transition.

A hiccup here and there but nothing crazy.

Mint Cinnamon is pretty Windows-like in the way the GUI works.

[Electric Cupcake]

Originally posted by Chaosolous:

Originally posted by hidaway52:

Thanks. I'll keep this in mind. Only thinking on changing if Win 10 goes sideways when Microscam stops supporting it. If it keeps working, I probably won't switch. The checks I've run indicate that this PC isn't Win 11 compatible anyways.

If you do swap to Linux and you're coming from Windows while being unfamiliar with Linux, I recommend Mint. It's what I swapped to a few months ago and it's been an easy transition.

A hiccup here and there but nothing crazy.

Mint Cinnamon is pretty Windows-like in the way the GUI works.

The Debian edition is better. Canonical are fools.