No.
Considering a majority of people use Nvidia on their desktops, they’ll be forced to jump through hoops with stuff as minor as setting their desktop session to X instead of Wayland (which is absolutely not ready) to installing a custom vaapi package to get hardware accelerated video playback in Firefox. With games and Nvidia say goodbye to a chunk of DX12 performance Then you have the majority of laptop users that have intel HD graphics laptops, ones made in the past 10 years will be fine for low end stuff, but they will take a hit because i915 shits itself with DX12 games and the new xe driver that handles it better is very new and only available on iGPUs made in the last 3 years or so? It is really only good if you have an AMD GPU which has absolutely pitiful market share, with the Steam Deck probably being the most popular AMD PC device people own.
Gamers on Linux have minimal setup overhead.*
*as long as you stick with Steam. Anything else means going to Lutris, Heroic Games Launcher, etc which is far more hit or miss.
Added the missing qualifier to one of the articles bullet points for them.
In my experience running non-steam games through steam with proton is the best way to play those games too. The only time I’ve ever had to use lutris was when I had to install some DLC for a GOG application on the same prefix as the game because it had a separate exe installer for that DLC. I haven’t been able to figure out a way to do that through steam. But once I got that done I just ran the game through steam and it worked perfectly. The heroic games launcher gets suggested a lot too but I literally have never been able to get it to work for a single game.
At this point Linux and Windows are more like Xbox and PlayStation back in the the 2000’s, except Linux has a compatibility layer to allow it to run a lot of Windows games.
This illustration is triggering me
Why is the penguin holding it like that??
because the pinguin is the linux gaming pc handing you the controler
Nice!
Have you tried to play with one without thumbs?
I will test this theory and report back
maybe its ai slop
No.
This is the same horse-shit conversation that’s been going on since like 96.
Want to prove somebody is a tech fraud? Listen to them rec *nix for anything but what it’s good at.
This is specific to gaming, which it does great at. I’ve been running Ubuntu since late 2023 with no issues.
Yes
An article similar to this is posted by itsfoss every week.
What about flipping the question. Making modern games available on more platforms?
Not yet, in order to be ready for mainstream gaming, the gaming experience has to be smooth (As in easy to install, Mod & patch)
It’s smoother than Windows gaming was when I started Windows gaming (win 95).
For reference, to play Warcraft 1 multiplayer you joined a chatroom on Battle.net and the chat channel gave everyone a
terminalMS-DOS command that you had to copy/paste into the terminal. If anybody had any network more complicated than computer -> modem then it would fail. If anyone failed to connect your game would crash. I was gaming like this at around 10 years old.Obviously, comparing 2025 Linux to '90s Windows isn’t exactly fair… but gamers are not incapable of dealing with complexity.
Sure, don’t tell your 8 year old cousin to swap from Windows to Linux. But if you’re a smart high school student then you can learn. Like anything, it’ll take some getting used to and you’ll have to deal with frustrations but knowing how to use Linux and, probably more importantly, how to research and solve problems is well worth the effort.
Oh yeah. I remember watching my older brother try to set up that kind of connection. I was never allowed under threat of capital punishment to touch anything of course. Good times.
Haha, yes. It was trying times.
But, if you’re reading this, you’re probably already more than qualified enough to use Linux for gaming. Obviously you’re going to have to learn things but it is very much worth it. Also, the desktop environments look much better imo.
Great article and also outlines why I’m not switching today. I already have to deal with plenty of shit during my work hours, gaming is a way for me to relax and wind down. I don’t want to think or deal with a sub optimal gaming experience, to then have to bug fix in my spare time.
You can say all the negative stuff you want about Windows, but it does run games well. The moment I can expect to have the same experience on Linux, I will switch, it’s that simple.
Honestly this is already my daily experience with Windows : having to figure out why my controller doesn’t work on a small selection of games when it’s in wireless mode, having to install a third-party patch to run a game in an exotic definition, fix a game not launching on the right monitor even though it’s set as main display, installing a mod just to bring controller support to a game that lacks it, etc etc. and I could go on all day. Personally my Windows gaming experience has been sub-par for years now, looking forward to switching (again) later this year.
That’s fair. I feel like it’s well worth it, but I do get a kick out of bug fixing and tinkering too.
From the article
gaming on Linux has come a long way in the past few years, and I can confidently say that Linux is ready for mainstream gaming in 2025.
So the writer concludes it works
Doesn’t actually matter with the way Windows performs, these days.
Not until they implement 3D Settings page in the Nvidia control panel, and improve upon HDR support. Do those two things, and I will finally stop having to dual boot.
I would say mainstream should become this: game has client-side kernel level anti-cheat? Goes right into trash bin
Hell, I do not need any kernel-level third-party hacks to literally spend money on the Internet, and some company wants system-level access to my computer when I want to just have fun and do pew-pew? Lol, good luck with that
That’s nvidia’s proprietary software, only nvidia can add stuff to it.
As for anti-cheat, kernel level anti cheat is not going to happen on Linux, nor should it (or continue being used in Windows)
Yes, we know, but it’s still part of “Linux being ready for mainstream gaming”. If the average person (the mainstream) has to worry about stuff like that, then it isn’t ready for the mainstream.
Well I doubt the mainstream actually tweaks 3D settings in nVidia control panel. Anti cheat making some online games not work is a bigger issue but still not worth it.
Ahh, my apologies. I thought you were referring to the Nvidia drivers being proprietary in general, not just the lack of 3D settings in the control panel. I totally agree that those settings are not needed by mainstream users.
And fix issues with anticheat.
Or switch to an AMD GPU.
AMD can’t compete in the high end GPU market, but their CPUs kick ass. I play in 4K 144Hz with Ray Tracing. Find me an AMD GPU that can handle that, and I will glady sell the 4090.
Sorry I’m not a fan of having a company create both the problem and the solution and then forcing the industry to go asking with it.
You are like th 0.01% of gamers dude. 4K ray tracing is borderline luxury category.
In 30+ years of PC gaming, I’ve never had anything beyond a xx70 (midrange) GPU, so when I saw that the 4090 was actually considerably more powerful than the next card down (unlike the xx90tis and GTX Titans of the past), I decided to splurge for once in my life.
I promise you I’m not rich. I just had some extra life insurance money to spend.
Sorry, I did not mean to attack you personally. Te high-end GPU market is clearly NVidia territory and in my opinion so few people are using theses cards with Linux, the issues related with them might not get as much attention as the more mainstream stuff. No suprised AMD not even trying to compete with these cards and want to stay in mid-high range.
Thank you. But yes it gets tiring constantly getting berated for still using Windows. I’m aware that I’m a minority, but it is frustrating that Lemmy users love to attack me for using the OS that has the features I need as my primary platform. Believe me; I’d love to move to Arch full-time, but it’s just not capable enough yet for the high end.
I’ll probably still be using the same hardware 5 years from now, so I have my fingers crossed that Linux will eventually have better support for Nvidia GPUs and HDR displays by then.
the best card of the previous generation was probably the 4080 or the 7900xt. the performance per dollar is just not there for the top end. i bought an xtx for productive work and it benches very close to the 4090 in most things, only losing out in rt and xformers, but it also benches only a few percent better than the cheaper options. i just wanted the ram.
I’ve been gaming on Linux exclusively for 5 years now. I have waited for some games to run better but it’s been generally great for me.
Which ones in particular? I have this issue on windows 10 as well. I’ve still not touched city skylines 2 and stalker 2. I just tried Jedi survivor, and honestly it was a mistake.
Might sound funny it’s usually the older titles. The longest I have waited for was Spellforce Platinum Edition. It always ran sluggish, now it probably runs better than on Windows. Another one was Agarest, it was kinda playable but with too much hassle. Well, I usually play older stuff anyway. Surprisingly I almost never had problems with new games. Maybe only Hell Let Loose but it was an anti-cheat issue.
That’s also my experience: there’s a certain generation of games, around 10 - 20 years old which have more likelihood of problems running in Linux than both older games and newer games.
I suspect it’s partly to do with the kind of DRM used by AAA publishers back then - for example the Steam Windows version of The Sims 3 will simply not work in Linux but a pirated version will work fine with no tweakings needed whilst other AAA games from that era need a lot of tweaking to get to work in Linux.
Meanwhile the most recent stuff just works with no need for tweaking.
I also noticed that these kind of games usually have problems on newer Windows versions as well. Not sure what causes this though, DRM is usual suspect. For me most of the time it’s some Japanese game that uses a weird custom engine. No problems with the ones that use Unreal Engine or Unity.
Same here.
In my transition from Windows to Linux on my main machine, one of the more funny discoveries I made was that for many older Windows games, Linux with Wine has better backwards compatibility than Windows.
Nah I get that, I’m glad that it’s improved so much over the years. I’m excited to build a new PC and never have it touch windows tbh.
Yeah, it’s been great. When Valve release Proton 10 soon, it’ll get even better (Wine 10 is awesome). It’s really cool to owning your system to full extend. With ads and telemetry stuff Windows has, I’m sure they cause your hardware to wear off lot faster. Hell they even require you to buy new hardware just to install their new OS.
