A lot of games I want to play with mods, the authors only release Windows installers. A great example is Battletech, the HBS remake. There’s a “BTA advanced” mod I like to run and it takes a lot of screwing around to get it to work properly in Linux, but it’s a few clicks on Windows. I will agree Proton has come a LONG way and some titles are perfect, but I get so little gaming time that when I sit down, I don’t want to fucking around with swapping various Glorious Eggroll versions of Wine, or wondering which version of .net I need to get the game to run under Linux. On Windows it “just works”.
I do have a few titles I play on Linux, but I keep that laptop around just for gaming because I don’t want to mess around.
Anecdotally I would say 90% of my games work absolutely perfectly with Proton and it’s mostly mods that screw up the experience.
Yup 100% on point with that. I’d say for me its 95% of my games work absolutely fine through proton. But I have a 500gb windows partition for the 5% that don’t.
It’s so freaking annoying that these anti cheats don’t ever work with Linux… I wonder if steam did their own anti cheat that worked for Linux they could get those games to run on it, but it’s a pipedream, it’s too complex and it’s much better to keep the Linux portion of the market growing through making it more accessible to normal users and then getting the anti cheat companies interested in making a version for Linux instead
Thankfully one of the larger anti cheats (EasyAntiCheat) now has native support for the Linux kernel and enabling it is literally just a button for developers. But the problem still lies with kernel level anticheats… in an ideal world we just wouldn’t use anticheats that have to embed themselves in the system so deeply.
I don’t know why people put up with BS just to play some game.
I guess the neurons that activate in their brains are the same that activate in the brains of smokers that are aware that smoking causes cancer, yet they do it anyway.
One of my frustrations is, if I want to try some dozen games on Itch.io, they all come down as EXEs and it’s not clear how I could quickly set them up for Proton. I understand the 20-clicks method of setting up one game off of Steam, and Lutris helps with well-known launchers like Ubi Connect. But for independent authors, needing to do setup for every EXE is a heavy dealbreaker.
The “should” in that sentence is why I keep Windows 11 laptop around. Approximately 100% of the EXEs on there work vs with Photon where it starts up, but I get a bug and then I wonder if that’s a problem with the game, or if I have some setting right.
Now when I want to game, I just game. No more fiddling. The Windows 11 laptop sits quietly in a bag until I want to play a game, I use it for that, and then put it back away until I want to have fun. My workflow has 0% dependency on Windows and that’s how I like it now.
When I review itch games I always advocate for native Linux support. If the devs see it, they will do it. The ones I talk to who haven’t don’t want to put in the effort to learn how to compile it for Linux if barely anyone would use the port.
I only played very few games via itch so far, however using Lutris for them seems to be most straight-forward. Once you connect your account anything you have in your collections should show up and be installable straight through the Lutris client. At least for “Manic Miners” it figured everything out on its own, worked like a charm.
VR is still 99% windows right now, and if people dont appreciate the value of an affordable in-home holodeck after all this time i dont know what to say anymore
It was pita to setup, gave me headaches (from wearing the kit), and “the best” game (Half Life Alyx) had complicated dynamics… so I already forgot what I was supposed to do (after Windows Updates, VR updates, approx. 2 reboots needed… Not to mention Windows updates fkd up my Linux multiboot few times…)
Just out of curiosity, what games do you need a windows machine to play that proton can’t make work on Linux?
A lot of games I want to play with mods, the authors only release Windows installers. A great example is Battletech, the HBS remake. There’s a “BTA advanced” mod I like to run and it takes a lot of screwing around to get it to work properly in Linux, but it’s a few clicks on Windows. I will agree Proton has come a LONG way and some titles are perfect, but I get so little gaming time that when I sit down, I don’t want to fucking around with swapping various Glorious Eggroll versions of Wine, or wondering which version of .net I need to get the game to run under Linux. On Windows it “just works”.
I do have a few titles I play on Linux, but I keep that laptop around just for gaming because I don’t want to mess around. Anecdotally I would say 90% of my games work absolutely perfectly with Proton and it’s mostly mods that screw up the experience.
Yup 100% on point with that. I’d say for me its 95% of my games work absolutely fine through proton. But I have a 500gb windows partition for the 5% that don’t.
For me, its Battlefield. Most of them no longer work on Linux due to EA Anticheat
It’s so freaking annoying that these anti cheats don’t ever work with Linux… I wonder if steam did their own anti cheat that worked for Linux they could get those games to run on it, but it’s a pipedream, it’s too complex and it’s much better to keep the Linux portion of the market growing through making it more accessible to normal users and then getting the anti cheat companies interested in making a version for Linux instead
Thankfully one of the larger anti cheats (EasyAntiCheat) now has native support for the Linux kernel and enabling it is literally just a button for developers. But the problem still lies with kernel level anticheats… in an ideal world we just wouldn’t use anticheats that have to embed themselves in the system so deeply.
In an ideal world the anticheat would be 99% server-side and connections would be done through multicast.
I don’t know why people put up with BS just to play some game.
I guess the neurons that activate in their brains are the same that activate in the brains of smokers that are aware that smoking causes cancer, yet they do it anyway.
One of my frustrations is, if I want to try some dozen games on Itch.io, they all come down as EXEs and it’s not clear how I could quickly set them up for Proton. I understand the 20-clicks method of setting up one game off of Steam, and Lutris helps with well-known launchers like Ubi Connect. But for independent authors, needing to do setup for every EXE is a heavy dealbreaker.
Have you tried using Bottles? Has a default Bottle for “games”. Run the .exe file in the Bottle and it should work.
I was just going to suggest this. Most small indy games from places like itch.io I play using Bottles and it works very well.
The “should” in that sentence is why I keep Windows 11 laptop around. Approximately 100% of the EXEs on there work vs with Photon where it starts up, but I get a bug and then I wonder if that’s a problem with the game, or if I have some setting right.
Now when I want to game, I just game. No more fiddling. The Windows 11 laptop sits quietly in a bag until I want to play a game, I use it for that, and then put it back away until I want to have fun. My workflow has 0% dependency on Windows and that’s how I like it now.
When I review itch games I always advocate for native Linux support. If the devs see it, they will do it. The ones I talk to who haven’t don’t want to put in the effort to learn how to compile it for Linux if barely anyone would use the port.
I only played very few games via itch so far, however using Lutris for them seems to be most straight-forward. Once you connect your account anything you have in your collections should show up and be installable straight through the Lutris client. At least for “Manic Miners” it figured everything out on its own, worked like a charm.
VR is still 99% windows right now, and if people dont appreciate the value of an affordable in-home holodeck after all this time i dont know what to say anymore
Meh, I found VR a gimmic…
It was pita to setup, gave me headaches (from wearing the kit), and “the best” game (Half Life Alyx) had complicated dynamics… so I already forgot what I was supposed to do (after Windows Updates, VR updates, approx. 2 reboots needed… Not to mention Windows updates fkd up my Linux multiboot few times…)
Not hating on VR but it’s still a far cry from a holodeck.
I’m not wearing shit on my face to game.