Gaming on Linux (and other *Nix operating systems) - Because PC Gaming is already not deeply autistic

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I make this thread on Linux gaming, for the Autists who disliked Satan's Bill Gates' silly antics on Windows, for who wanted to play their Video Games on a *Nix based operating system or who are just masochists who want to make their time hard.

Historically, Linux gaming didn't really have any foreseeable market, except for a few handful companies that did make Linux ports/games, the few handful devices that shipped with Linux (remember Steam Machines lul) and the drivers themselves (especially by Nvidia).

However, with the introduction of Linux based hardware like the Steam Deck, a better kernal or driver support, from translation layers such as Wine (and it's folks like Proton (GE)) to dxvk, and other notable tools like Lutris, the experience on Linux has become bearable for playing games that were even designed for Windows. And, on those games, Anti-cheat solutions like EasyAntiCheat or BattlEye have started to support Linux (of course on the wish of the Game Developer).

So I ask fellow farmers, how's your experience on the Loonix? Has it been very well and 'just werks', or has it been shit overall?

 

[RACISM]

Proton won't fucking work for me and it's annoying.
Before it came along, there were far more developers who would make a native Linux build. Now there's a lot less of that as they reckon Proton will do the work.
Ark and Rust both dropped official Linux support which is annoying.

Egosoft still killing it with excellent native support for all their X series space sims though so that's pleasing.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

So I ask fellow farmers, how's your experience on the Loonix? Has it been very well and 'just werks', or has it been shit overall?

WINE works well for the shit I play 90% of the time, and the shit I play is older stuff in the 2000's and 2010's. Anything older I use VMWare with an Win98 and WinXP profile. Also there's DosBox and ScummVM, which work well as intended. Anything newer (like 2020 and beyond and even anything earlier) is a crap-shoot.

 

[Quote Cursor]

Proton won't fucking work for me and it's annoying.
Before it came along, there were far more developers who would make a native Linux build. Now there's a lot less of that as they reckon Proton will do the work.
Ark and Rust both dropped official Linux support which is annoying.

Egosoft still killing it with excellent native support for all their X series space sims though so that's pleasing.

It's one of the things I am concerned about too, dropping Linux native for proton is gonna go well if it's a well made game. There are games that are badly developed on Windows in which it's problems can trickle on Linux too like with Persona 5 Royal. But I guess when you have community of enthusiasts, you can find a way to fix/run the game.

WINE works well for the shit I play 90% of the time, and the shit I play is older stuff in the 2000's and 2010's. Anything older I use VMWare with an Win98 and WinXP profile. Also there's DosBox and ScummVM, which work well as intended. Anything newer (like 2020 and beyond and even anything earlier) is a crap-shoot.

For the newer stuff, I can recommend trying Proton (or the GE variant) which may help playing modern games, but it also depends on the game and the hardware so I am just shooting in the dark.

 

[ThinkThankThunk]

While Proton has gotten very nice to work with I highly recommend Bottles to anyone who dares to play games or applications from services other than Steam (or if you're just a cheap ass with sticky fingers.) The UI is set up like Lutris but it automatically creates little WINE sandboxes for you to install stuff into and manage their compatibility settings independent of each other without needing the brain power to tweak WINE yourself. As a certified brainlet it's saved me a lot of time in getting some of the more finicky games I've played running.

Proton won't fucking work for me and it's annoying.
Before it came along, there were far more developers who would make a native Linux build. Now there's a lot less of that as they reckon Proton will do the work.

I have no doubt there's a few studios that did stop shipping legitimate Linux builds following Proton's adoption out of laziness, but you have to be careful when it comes to stuff that says "Linux Native" on Steam because a ton of it is actually just the game in a preconfigured WINE wrapper. It wasn't until System Shock 2 crashed one day that I clicked into the ProtonDB page and saw mention of it using an old version of WINE and began noticing just how many other games did that instead of having proper native support. The Nightdive release of SS2 was from 2013, so the version it was running with was almost a whole decade out of date by the time I was playing it. Ironically enough dropping Linux support has been an upgrade.

 

[Lone Wandering Courier]

My gaming experience on linux has been pretty good. It has been so good that I've been Windows-free for a couple of months. I kinda miss Destiny 2 though.

 

[Quote Cursor]

My gaming experience on linux has been pretty good. It has been so good that I've been Windows-free for a couple of months. I kinda miss Destiny 2 though.

It's weird that Bungie is fine with supporting Stadia (that afaik had a similar way of running Windows games on Linux) but isn't currently supporting Linux through proton. They might change their minds but we'll see.

 

[batterybee]

ive had constant issues when i try to use wine but steams proton thing has worked very well.
The biggest issue is that anticheat usually blocks linux systems for most online games.

 

[The Backwards Man]

Just dual boot windows and save yourself the time and stress.

 

[CuzinEd]

Just replace mac with Linux.

 

[FiddleAFox]

Proton won't fucking work for me and it's annoying.
Before it came along, there were far more developers who would make a native Linux build. Now there's a lot less of that as they reckon Proton will do the work.

Issue is that the opportunity already occurred with Steam Machines, but they flopped hard since nobody wanted to buy them and Linux spergs weren't paying money for them either. At this point this is the best compromise since the native Linux ports were getting cancelled left and right. Same shit happened with the Ubuntu Edge phone where Linux spergs were also not willing to give money to a full blown Linux phone just because "Canonical evil because they're doing what Linux was built to do to begin with".

 

[Lone Wandering Courier]

Just replace mac with Linux.

View attachment 5138613

Gaming on linux is way more viable than gaming on a mac.

 

[sodaboard]

there was a time (early 2000s most recently) when devs still gave a shit about linux and would publish windows and linux binaries for their games (Epic was one of them), now everything outside of smaller indie devs is winblows only, and even indie devs don't care as much about linux as they do windows (and to be fair they don't really have to, since most gaymers still use windows and even Linus says that making binaries for linux is really convuluted since you have to make a package for every distro because static linking is retarded and gay. this is mostly fixed with appimages but i digress).

there's a crack group called johncena141 or jc141 that makes pre-packaged cracks and builds for linux, sometimes through native binaries, mostly through wine. you can find them on 1337x by searching "jc141 [game name]". just install the dependencies, run start.sh and you're gaymin'.

https://1337x.to/search/jc141/1/

 

[Flatline]

The UI is set up like Lutris but it automatically creates little WINE sandboxes for you to install stuff into and manage their compatibility settings independent of each other without needing the brain power to tweak WINE yourself.

Lutris does this, though. Unless, I'm missing something? A user hits the plus button to add a game, searches for the title, selects the item, and Lutris does the rest. The ability to fine-tune Wine, should the need arise, is a good feature.

 

[Pissmaster]

Just replace mac with Linux.

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mac gaming rules

 

[Coolio55]

even Linus says that making binaries for linux is really convuluted since you have to make a package for every distro because static linking is retarded and gay. this is mostly fixed with appimages but i digress).

You can apparently sort-of cheese it and distribute an application with it's shared libs in the same folder using {$ORIGIN} however I've yet to get this to work myself. This is uncommon because according to a bunch of Unix heads, linking libraries in the same folder is a security issue.
As it stands, distros have wildly different (and incompatible) versions of common libs like SDL in their repos and it's a complete clusterfuck.

mac gaming rules

That and there's all the weird 90's Japanese games you can stomach.

 

[Car Won't Crank]

Lutris does this, though. Unless, I'm missing something? A user hits the plus button to add a game, searches for the title, selects the item, and Lutris does the rest. The ability to fine-tune Wine, should the need arise, is a good feature.

Yeah Lutris does this though it takes a couple extra steps. When you run the game installer, you also need to tell it where the wine prefix directory for that game is. The default selection will just be the system's wine prefix. Bottles will do it all in one step. I prefer Lutris as it's more stable from my experience.

 

[CuzinEd]

Gaming on linux is way more viable than gaming on a mac.

I can imagine. But it can't be that much better. Maybe if the Steam Deck doesn't die it will get better. I know some games will work with Linux or an OS based on Linux. But in the mean time Windows is still king for gaming. Considering the kind of shit MS is pulling with Windows 11 and the upcoming Windows 12 it would be nice to have an alternative. But I don't see that happening anytime soon. Windows 11 just looks awful. MS keeps asking me to get a free Windows 11 upgrade and I keep saying no.

mac gaming rules

The only experience I have with Macs is using them in the early 90's when I was in elementary school. I think they were Apple IIe models. Then when I was in high school I used a Power Mac G4 probably around 2003. That's my only experience with Apple computers. The only thing I know about them is they are usually underpowered for what you could get with a regular PC or build yourself. They are overpriced as well especially compared to the performance. It's basically a status symbol for hipster faggots. Look at me I got Mac. They pay a lot for that branding.

The biggest one is that Mac's suck for gaming.

 

[Pissmaster]

The only experience I have with Macs is using them in the early 90's when I was in elementary school. I think they were Apple IIe models. Then when I was in high school I used a Power Mac G4 probably around 2003. That's my only experience with Apple computers. The only thing I know about them is they are usually underpowered for what you could get with a regular PC or build yourself. They are overpriced as well especially compared to the performance. It's basically a status symbol for hipster faggots. Look at me I got Mac. They pay a lot for that branding.

The biggest one is that Mac's suck for gaming.

Yup, you would have used an Apple IIe in the early 90s.

From about the mid-80s through the mid-90s, Macs used Motorola 68k CPUs, and a lot of strange and random games were made for them. Apple had some utilities like HyperCard that made rudimentary game development relatively easy for the time, so there are countless bizarre games floating around out there, many of which have been lost to history. Very few YouTubers ever cover them, because most people didn't grow up with a Mac, because they cost thousands of dollars, used unconventional parts, and would go obsolete within a year or two. And most software wasn't designed for them, of course. So, there's a whole wide world of strange stuff like Barney Carnage that never gets noticed. To make matters worse, there aren't any particularly great emulators for them. BasiliskII covers the 68k line, and SheepShaver covers the PowerPC line. They'll run some stuff, but not even close to everything, and they crash a whole lot. As for real hardware, those computers are hitting 30-40 years old now, and they're failing left and right.

Modern Apple fans don't give a shit about anything older than a couple of years, and the majority of retro Mac fans are boomers who could actually afford them back in the day. So that's a whole league of obscure games that'll probably end up unplayable.

 

[CuzinEd]

I think I remember playing Oregon Trail on the IIe's in school. There was a few games like one that let you build rockets and launch them. It was real basic. Most of them were educational games. I remember liking the game that allowed players to build rockets and launch them. Most of the time I would add crazy parts and see what would launch and what wouldn't. Kerbal Space Program Simple Rockets and Juno: New Originals (Simple Rockets 2).

I think a lot of the capacitors are bursting in the old computers and other electronics. I know it happens to Game Gears.

I think a lot of people didn't own computers back then. I don't remember seeing many. I didn't even get a PC till 2000. The mid to late 90's is when more people started to buy computers. But it wasn't nothing compared to how things kind of exploded in the early 2000's. I was watching videos on YouTube about the commodore. I was thinking about getting one of those C-64 emulator systems they were selling a while back. I think it was a C-64 mini. Just to screw around with it. It looked pretty interesting.