Not quite, running 75% of games requires turning on Proton, and while it’s incredible they can run at all, many have minor issues and/or require setup to work well. Plus dealing with graphics card drivers that are extremely laggy by default unless you find and install the correct version of the proprietary ones.
That’s exclusively an NVidia problem. Because their cards are locked down.
If you have an AMD or Intel card, or even use a distro that deals with the NVidia drivers, you’ll have no issues.
While some games have minor issues, most aren’t deal breaking and some even work better than Windows. Especially impressive because they’re Windows executables running on a foreign OS through a compatibility layer.
You’re right, my laptop does have a Nvidia card, but I thought one of the main benefits of Linux was being able to run on any hardware, or that’s at least what people have been saying since Windows 11 had certain requirements. I bought my laptop because it was only $250 (in 2017) but still had a 1080p screen and a graphics card, and I was a broke college student who couldn’t afford to be picky. If I could, why not pay a little extra for Windows as well?
Proton’s amazing and it’s made gaming on Linux significantly more feasible, but I struggled on the same laptop getting it to work, and needed to copy in flags and use old versions. It often works without a hitch but it’s still another thing to go wrong. Thankfully there are a lot more native Linux games due to Unity though.
Edit: Mint did give me an easy option to switch to proprietary drivers, but they were the wrong version and crashed when I tried to game. I ended up having to find them and download them manually.
It is absolutely that easy to use Steam for most games on GNU/Linux now.
In fact, even easier, because you can use the software center to get Steam, skipping the whole going to their website part.
Not quite, running 75% of games requires turning on Proton, and while it’s incredible they can run at all, many have minor issues and/or require setup to work well. Plus dealing with graphics card drivers that are extremely laggy by default unless you find and install the correct version of the proprietary ones.
That’s exclusively an NVidia problem. Because their cards are locked down.
If you have an AMD or Intel card, or even use a distro that deals with the NVidia drivers, you’ll have no issues.
While some games have minor issues, most aren’t deal breaking and some even work better than Windows. Especially impressive because they’re Windows executables running on a foreign OS through a compatibility layer.
You’re right, my laptop does have a Nvidia card, but I thought one of the main benefits of Linux was being able to run on any hardware, or that’s at least what people have been saying since Windows 11 had certain requirements. I bought my laptop because it was only $250 (in 2017) but still had a 1080p screen and a graphics card, and I was a broke college student who couldn’t afford to be picky. If I could, why not pay a little extra for Windows as well?
Proton’s amazing and it’s made gaming on Linux significantly more feasible, but I struggled on the same laptop getting it to work, and needed to copy in flags and use old versions. It often works without a hitch but it’s still another thing to go wrong. Thankfully there are a lot more native Linux games due to Unity though.
Edit: Mint did give me an easy option to switch to proprietary drivers, but they were the wrong version and crashed when I tried to game. I ended up having to find them and download them manually.
Even if it’s an NVIDIA problem, it’s still just a “Linux” problem for a non-experienced user
Some distros actually ship Steam pre-installed.