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Comment by unixhero | Hacker News Reader

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

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?

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).

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.

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.

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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