Even gamers nexus’ Steve today said that they’re about to start doing Linux games performance testing soon. It’s happening, y’all, the year of the Linux desktop is upon us. ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ
Edit: just wanted to clarify that Steve from GN didn’t precisely say they’re starting to test soon, he said they will start WHEN the steam OS releases and is adopted. Sorry about that.
To anyone reading this thinking “once SteamOS comes out, I’ll switch”, you should know:
Gaming on Linux is already here. Pick a distro and game. You can take advantage of Proton right now. You don’t need to wait for one specific distro.
I’ve personally been gaming on Linux exclusively for about 3 years. Windows games, not Linux games.
Edit: based on other commenters’ suggestions, I’ll give you some.
I have gamed for those three years on PopOS. It is a distro based on Debian, ultimately, which means it’s also related to Ubuntu and Mint. Realistically, you can pick any of those 4 and you should have a nice experience.
Arch is popular with the übergeeks, and I do use it on my laptop, BTW, but you shouldn’t use it as a first distro.
The concept of “distro” doesn’t really exist for Windows, because you pretty much get one monolithic product. But basically, it is a specific mix of software that works together and relies on the Linux kernel. Imagine it as a “version” of Windows with specific goals, some of which are overlapping (e.g. Mint and Ubuntu tend to cater to the same audience).
If you get far enough into it, the freedom that Linux allows means that you can turn any distro into any other distro.
“Pick a distro” is why they’re waiting for steamos, presumably.
the biggest wall imo is still getting companies with anticheat games on board.
IMO, no one should be playing games with kernel level anticheat. There is no way I would let any big gaming company have that level of control over my PC. It’s a security nightmare.
The only bastion left is anticheat. Everything else are just (bad) old habits fueled by marketing.
…and VR. VR is already finicky on its own, gaming on Linux can be finicky in different ways, and the issues multiply if you have two things like that.
Tends to depend on the headset you own, some work perfectly. Also, Valve is very likely releasing a headset based on SteamOS, which should help.
Sure, the Index should work fine, but I’m not so sure about accessories, my Slimes, etc. Also on an nvidia GPU…
Really hope Valve does indeed release the new headset, because my Index is getting very dated.
Completely depends on the accessories, and an nvidia GPU is unlikely to have a major impact, I’ve used one for VR before. What are slimes?
Slimes as in SlimeVR, open source trackers.
I think it all should work, but I’m afraid of just having to solve issues in general with stuff I don’t have to solve any issues with now.
I assumed it was that. I saw explicit Linux support on their site, so wanted to confirm.
Nothing wrong with having that fear, just not super fair to assume it won’t work in that case. Both the devices you’ve mentioned have good Linux support, and would likely work pretty well out of the box.
