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Comment by bentcorner | Hacker News Reader

Personally, Linux would need to be many times better than Windows for me to use it to replace Windows for gaming. Currently W11 does the job with minimal fuss. I don't need to worry about anticheat, compatibility issues or driver problems.

Windows isn't without fault but at least for gaming I don't really have any complaints. I'm unconvinced that there's any upside to switching to Linux.

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For me it's the opposite experience. Easier to get Linux installed, no driver issues, no messing around, and my games Just Work on Steam/Proton without any tricks. Windows has more hassle with downloading/installing drivers and disabling crapware and forced ads in the OS before I can begin to use it.

My wife is struggling with constant crashes in the new Harry Potter adventure game on the Deck.

That's the only thing I have encountered though.

There's a fix for that. Unfortunately it needs to be reapplied on every reboot:

sudo sh -c "echo 1000000 > /proc/sys/vm/max_map_count"

That's a sysctl config (any path under /proc/sys/ is). See `man sysctl` for how to make it permanent (i.e., auto-apply it on boot). Here's an example:

    echo vm.max_map_count=1000000 | sudo tee /etc/sysctl.d/max_map_count.conf
    sysctl -f /etc/sysctl.d/max_map_count.conf

Besides, there's plenty of ways to automatically execute any command on boot.

Excuse my ignorance, but would this be caused by a memory leak or an application that allocated an amount of memory allowed by Windows but not Linux, or something else?

While we can basically allocate almost infinite memory due to swapfiles storing unused pages when they cannot fit into RAM any more, we still have a limit on how many allocations you can do. The game crashes because it tries to do too many allocations. It still uses a reasonable (ish) amount of memory, it's just way too many tiny chunks of memory that aren't allocated next to eachother

Thank you, but wouldn't this be a problem on Windows then, or is Windows just more forgiving for this type of behaviour?

> disabling crapware and forced ads in the OS

Using the Pro version of Windows seems to have solved most of that. I'm on Win10 Pro, and when people talk about ads, I have no idea what they're talking about.

Same thing. I bought 10 pro, used a local account (that is now harder to do), turned off every switch on the next setup page (no cortana etc), and I had to right click -> banish the dumb tiles on the start menu, one of which was candy crush, and now it just looks like a normal Windows start menu from the bad old days.

None of that should have been forced on me, and I don't like it, but it's not incessant like everyone seems to say.

It already is. You don't seem to have done actual testing.

Proton DB makes that case handily, no personal testing required.

I wish people were a bit more sanguine and a bit less thinking wishfully about the real world performance of Proton. It is absolutely impressive, but "Playable" is not good enough of a rating; it's not even table stakes. There are bugs and manual interventions required on "playable" titles on proton DB that would lead to mass outrage and refunds if they behaved that way on their native platform.

"It can literally be played" is such a low bar.

Let's get some concrete facts out then - how is it better? A (selfish) practical example for myself - I play a lot of Overwatch. It works just fine in windows. I get low load times and usually maintain 177fps at full resolution. I have no complaints but I am open to switching. Am I guaranteed of seeing no issues in Linux?

No. Overwatch is not on Steam. So you would need to mess around with Wine or Proton separately. Maybe it works, but it's not a single click installation.

It's single-click if you use Lutris.

I play Overwatch on Linux. After you compile shaders (takes 2-3 minutes on a good CPU) it runs fine. Almost unnoticeable from a performance standpoint: I was getting ~120-130 frames at 1440p on my GTX 1050ti. On my new 3070ti it's so fast I don't even think about it.

This is an old benchmark, but still shows how good DXVK is for this title: https://youtu.be/voXc1nCD4IA

And yes, it still works with Overwatch 2. Did from Day 1, Blizzard must have had a Steam Deck dev kit or something.

Thanks! Were there any useful resources you used to make sure everything was configured correctly? I'm a relative Linux noob - I've used it here and there but never as my main home desktop, and most certainly never for gaming.

There's a well-maintained Lutris script[0] that's probably your most painless option. It's also possible to run it with Proton/Steam if you put in enough elbow grease, but... you've probably got better things to do. My only other advice would be to put in the work for getting Wayland to run so your framerate is as smooth as your GPU says it is.

I hope my last comment didn't come off as too hostile, it's a great time to experiment with Linux gaming now that the Deck is moving units! :)

[0] https://lutris.net/games/overwatch-2/

I suspect you already know this, but for anyone curious: for many of the big live service games, Linux/Proton is usually no substitute for Windows - anti-cheat renders them unplayable. MW2, Fortnite, Tarkov, Hunt, PUBG, Day Z and Cycle are some examples. By contrast, Apex and Halo work fine.

I do quite a lot of my gaming on the Steam Deck these days, but have to keep a windows box around for this reason.

Sort of relatedly: does anyone know how well the Unreal Engine 5 editor works on Linux?

Hunt, Dayz(as does Arma3 and Reforger), and The Cycle all work on Linux.

Ha, had no idea. You’re right, they’re Silver, Gold and Gold respectively on ProtonDB. Don’t know if that’s a recent development or what, but it’s fantastic.

Gonna install Hunt and Day Z on the Deck today so I can stare at them in the launcher and imagine how much fun I would have if I could find the time to play them.

If you care DayZ was BE enabled back in like October if my memory serves me correctly. The Cycle always supported it through Proton. Hunt recently enabled it like a month ago(finally, HMMMMing on linux is good).

what? protondb shows 44% aggregate game coverage, meaning 56% of games are not verified to be playable on linux systems. In what world is that "better".

my daily driver is PopOS and use proton for my games, i love it, but its not better, and the games do not play better on average in my experience. Nor is it fun having to do tinker steps when all i want to do is jump into the game

The database isn't perfect, for example Kingpin (https://www.protondb.com/app/38430) is listed as "unplayable" but it does work with the latest patch without problems, at least in Wine and presumably with Proton too. I don't know how common this is though – this is just something I encountered last week – but there's a long tail of older and sometimes obscure games, quite a few of which also don't run well on Windows any more without mucking about; I wouldn't necessarily put that much stock in that number.

There's also a native Linux version of Kingpin by the way; the instructions start with "must run as root" so never mind... The 90s were wild.

Something to keep in mind - how many of the games that work have been played to completion? Too often, "working" means the initial areas in the game work.

In my experience if works then it works; I can't recall any specific instance in almost 20 years of wine usage where it works fine for the first hour and then stops working at some specific point, although I'm sure there are instances where this is the case. I don't think it's a significant factor, especially because there are often multiple reports.

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