With all that’s going on. I’ve been really considering setting up a dual boot and testing Linux Mint properly. (i hate virtual desktops, but I have Mint running on one now) I know I have to make some changes to my productivity workload, as I’m an Adobe Lightroom user. I’ll keep that on Windows for now.
But my question is regarding gaming.
I play a lot of varying games, from new singleplayer and multiplayer stuff to old games back up to about 1999. I know I have to do a bunch of research setting things up, but right off the bat I have a question.
What games will not be possible to use on Linux?
For example, will something like Escape from Tarkov work? That’s a game I do not want to even install of there’s a chance it will lead to a ban.
And is comparability with older games better or worse than W11?
Edit: I just wanna extend a huge thanks to the community already! There’s some great info here so I’m gonna set up a dual boot soon!
Edit 2: Dual boot is now setup! Even though Mint makes sense from a long time Windows user. There’s a bit of a learning curve. But I’ll try it as a daily driver for a few days. Right now my disk setup prioritize Windows, obviously. But if I end up loving Mint, I’ll make a full switch and keep a small partition for Windows to run whatever Mint can’t.
Edit3: Spent hours trying to get anything to work. Games just would not launch and I exhausted everything I found online. Trying a reinstall and Pop Os this time. Learned a bunch of lessons my first try
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It’s at the point now where I just assume a game will work and am rarely disappointed.
Often the games that “don’t work” still run just fine, but the developers that use anti-cheat will stop you from playing.
Older games are hit or miss. If we’re talking Steam games prototondb.com is the single best resource. If we’re talking GOG or games installed from CD-ROM or something it may be a bit harder to get working perfectly. Often GOG’s remasters will work great minus controller support. I still can’t get LEGO Island working :( Feel free to DM if you have questions. I’ll try to help best I can.
Proton makes things super easy for the most part. I mostly only game on my PC and ended up distro hopping to bazzite. It’s mostly setup for gaming out of the box and is atomic, updating similarly to a console. I’ve found it relatively hard to break and easy to reset.
As most have said here, it mostly boils down to anti cheat
My experience over the last few years of Linux gaming is: with Proton, it’s mostly a matter of It Just Works™.
When it doesn’t, switch to Experimental, and then usually it works.
Compatibility with older games is fantastic, too.
The exception to this are games which require kernel-level anti-cheat. This is a security nightmare on Windows as it is, and it simply doesn’t work on Linux. Luckily, these games are few – but they do tend to be big (e.g. Apex Legends).
In my opinion linux runs old windows games better than windows itself. When I was on XP I used to play games like Starcraft and Lemmings Revolution which absolutely refused to work on Windows 10 after I switched, even in compatability mode. Later when I switched to linux, they worked great with Lutris with very few issues. Linux is great for older games. For newer games, Steam has most bases covered and worked ootb.
Yep… Every now and then I’ll come across a really old game in my library that Steam says is “unsupported” and I’ll take it as a challenge to see how long it takes for me to get it running.
Usually takes like 5 minutes lol. Proton is legit incredible.
