Nvidia still has its pains, but it’s certainly daily drivable now.
Is there any way of telling which ones will and won’t run on Linux?
It’s very easy, if a game doesn’t have invasive data thieving anticheat, then it will run on Linux, otherwise it won’t. Sometimes it takes some fiddling, but pretty much anything at least a month old without anti will run.
So I’d need to check that site for every game I want to play? Presumably if there isn’t a user report for whatever distro I’m using (how do you go about choosing one? Guessing from your comment that some work better with certain components than others) the only option is to buy the game in the hope of it working whilst preparing for X hours of faffing about to get it to work?
Protondb also looks to be focused on Steam, I’m guessing it’s like MacOS where if it’s a game not on Steam then you’re shit out of luck if there isn’t a Linux specific version?
it’s like MacOS where if it’s a game not on Steam then you’re shit out of luck if there isn’t a Linux specific version?
No it’s not. I don’t even have Steam installed & play games just fine. You can use Bottles or Lutris to run the games, I recommend Bottles.
The downside is that you’ll have to learn how to use these tools. For example you’ll not only need to fiddle with settings, but also with dependency dll files. Chatgpt can sometimes help & tell you which dlls are needed by which game. (at least when I asked it about Oblivion Remaster & Horizon Zero Dawn it knew)
Lutris has the advantage of community installers where you don’t have to figure things out, but it’s annoying that they’ll force you to log into Gog Galaxy and such for your downloaded installers & Lutris may not have a force offline sandboxed mode if you don’t want the software you run to report home.
If you decide to go with Bottles, one common rookie mistake is not giving permission to Bottles to the folders you install from and install to. You need to use Flatseal to do this nice and easy.
Heroic Games Launcher is another option, but it’s less reliable than bottles, but it has a more noob friendly GUI & you can just directly log into an EPIC account & install away without having to use the epic launcher, which can be quite great if you have a big Epic library.
Presumably if there isn’t a user report for whatever distro I’m using
Distro is unlikely to matter, as long as you don’t pick a really obscure one. And even then, flatpaks will probably work fine.
Protondb also looks to be focused on Steam, I’m guessing it’s like MacOS where if it’s a game not on Steam then you’re shit out of luck if there isn’t a Linux specific version?
Steam is the easiest to work with and most well-supported. But there are other managers like Heroic Launcher and Lutris that can cover non-steam. Knowing whether a game can run on proton/wine outside of Steam does likely require a google search, though. Most things can be made to work as long as the game doesn’t require kernel-level anticheat (e.g. Destiny and BF6).
Is there any way of telling which ones will and won’t run on Linux? How does running them on Linux differ from Windows?
Well, I’m fucked if that’s the case as both my machines have Nvidia GPUs.
Nvidia still has its pains, but it’s certainly daily drivable now.
It’s very easy, if a game doesn’t have invasive data thieving anticheat, then it will run on Linux, otherwise it won’t. Sometimes it takes some fiddling, but pretty much anything at least a month old without anti will run.
Can you be clearer about this? The majority of games I play on PC are online multiplayer.
Protondb.com.
And no, nvidia runs pretty smooth on modern linux. I run ZorinOS with intel + nvidia and have no problem
So I’d need to check that site for every game I want to play? Presumably if there isn’t a user report for whatever distro I’m using (how do you go about choosing one? Guessing from your comment that some work better with certain components than others) the only option is to buy the game in the hope of it working whilst preparing for X hours of faffing about to get it to work?
Protondb also looks to be focused on Steam, I’m guessing it’s like MacOS where if it’s a game not on Steam then you’re shit out of luck if there isn’t a Linux specific version?
No it’s not. I don’t even have Steam installed & play games just fine. You can use Bottles or Lutris to run the games, I recommend Bottles. The downside is that you’ll have to learn how to use these tools. For example you’ll not only need to fiddle with settings, but also with dependency dll files. Chatgpt can sometimes help & tell you which dlls are needed by which game. (at least when I asked it about Oblivion Remaster & Horizon Zero Dawn it knew)
Lutris has the advantage of community installers where you don’t have to figure things out, but it’s annoying that they’ll force you to log into Gog Galaxy and such for your downloaded installers & Lutris may not have a force offline sandboxed mode if you don’t want the software you run to report home.
If you decide to go with Bottles, one common rookie mistake is not giving permission to Bottles to the folders you install from and install to. You need to use Flatseal to do this nice and easy.
Heroic Games Launcher is another option, but it’s less reliable than bottles, but it has a more noob friendly GUI & you can just directly log into an EPIC account & install away without having to use the epic launcher, which can be quite great if you have a big Epic library.
In addition to the options hamsterkill said, I run a lot of non-Steam games through Steam without issue. I’ve even run non-game software through it.
Distro is unlikely to matter, as long as you don’t pick a really obscure one. And even then, flatpaks will probably work fine.
Steam is the easiest to work with and most well-supported. But there are other managers like Heroic Launcher and Lutris that can cover non-steam. Knowing whether a game can run on proton/wine outside of Steam does likely require a google search, though. Most things can be made to work as long as the game doesn’t require kernel-level anticheat (e.g. Destiny and BF6).