Linux 2024 Challenge: No gaming on Windows

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Not sure that Canada is nearly far enough away for me. Maybe Montréal would work, but then I'd have to learn French...anyway back on topic.

I'll give Tim Cook credit for being one of the few tech CEOs who still sounds sane in a casual conversation. There aren't many like that nowadays.

I mean most still sound sane like the folks at Microsoft, namely Phil Spencer. The only people who seem to be off their rockers are Mark Zuckerburg, Elon Musk, Tim Sweeney, and Jensen Huang, but hey it's Nvidia so what did you expect?

Oh yeah speaking of Nvidia, thank you Linux community for the Linux version of Nvidia driver 535 allowing my RTX 3060 to work for this challenge. I know Nvidia does not make this easy with their drivers being absolutely proprietary

 

[dmr727]

I love the idea of this challenge, but I imagine I'd be like Kramer in my favorite episode of Seinfeld, "The Contest":

Kramer: Count me in on this!
Jerry: You? You'll be out before we get the check.

 

[Huntn]

Alternatively you could install a Linux dualboot onto your rig like what I'm doing.



On Linux you got four options for a VR headset that are actually made to be usable on Linux: An OG Vive or a Valve Index (both of which at this point are far too old to even recommend as the Quest 2 has higher image quality than it) the Pimax 4K, or the new Bigscreen Beyond. Unfortunately all four of these options are a no-go due to high prices, and the requirement for base stations, said base stations having large playspace requirements. There are some streaming options like Guy Godin's app Virtual Desktop or ALVR, but both can have latency issues due to the nature of streaming over wifi.

Valve hurry the hell up on Deckard I need to get away from Mark Zuckerburg's grease!

I'm ignorant regarding Linux. Is the goal to play on Mac or avoid Windows? What restrictions do you face running Linux, and trying to play Windows or Mac games on it? I'll assume the game must be released for Linux? I wonder if Steam has a Linux version? 👀

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

I'm ignorant regarding Linux.

Skill issue 🥴

Jokes aside, I'm still relatively new to full Linux use as mostly all I've used is SteamOS, but really using Linux is nowhere near as difficult as it used to be. We're really spoiled as there's so many GUI apps that do things for you to the point you will most likely never have to use the terminal once.

Give it a try, you might like it. You can install a VM to try out a distro just to get a feel of desktop environments and how things work.

Is the goal to play on Mac or avoid Windows?

Just to avoid Windows, with the endgoal being the Steam Year in Review having it show 0% usage of Windows.

Steam News - Your 2023 Steam Year in Review is here! - Steam News

Look back on your year in Steam gaming with fun facts on what you played most, achievements unlocked, and more

store.steampowered.com

One of the reasons I'm doing this challenge is to see the current state of Linux gaming to see if it's ready to be a viable Windows replacement. We already see this through SteamOS 3. Unfortunately SteamOS 3 is not available for desktops yet (Valve c'mon hurry up you said this would've been ready December 2022) so I'm having to test a different distro.

The distro I chose is Nobara, based off Fedora. Nobara was created by leading Proton and Wine contributor Thomas Crider AKA GloriousEggroll, who personally helped me troubleshoot the installer when I thought I bricked my PC last week https://github.com/GloriousEggroll

He's a great guy and does a lot of amazing work, his distro being by gamers for gamers. https://nobaraproject.org/download-nobara/

What restrictions do you face running Linux, and trying to play Windows or Mac games on it? I'll assume the game must be released for Linux? I wonder if Steam has a Linux version? 👀

Steam has been on Linux since 2013. When Windows 8 dropped and the desktop turned into an app, Microsoft was making a big push for the Windows Store. Valve did not like that and announced they would be bringing Steam to Linux as an insurance policy in case Microsoft tried to monopolize everything and to reduce the dependency on Windows

Why does the Steam Deck run Linux? Blame Windows

The Steam Deck and its Linux-based software are the culmination of a decade-long "hedging strategy" by Valve after the Windows 8 disaster.

www.pcworld.com

There are native Linux ports however a lot of my library uses Proton, which is Valve's compatibility layer. Proton is the reason I'm even able to do this challenge. No longer do I have to learn how Wine works. I just install the game and boom I'm in. It's why the Steam Deck is the blowout success it is now since it just works. Just install a game and go.

When I got Nobara fully installed I picked a game that would be pretty demanding as a benchmark. The game I chose was PlayStation's roguelike third person shooter Returnal, a game that has big system requirements and supports raytracing. The result? It worked right out of the box. 60FPS, low raytracing on (since it's a 3060 lmao) at high settings.

Of course there are sometimes hiccups. I encountered one yesterday as I tried to get Call of Duty Black Ops 3 running on the Nobara PC, however it would not launch at all. I tried multiple settings suggested in ProtonDB, and none worked. Weirdly though the game boots no problem on my Steam Deck. To be fair, Black Ops 3 is scuffed even on Windows, as a Steam client update from a few months ago broke some stuff, so very likely my issues are stemming from that, issues my Deck doesn't experience since it's running in Gaming Mode.

The other restriction would be the fact I have an Nvidia graphics card. As Linus Torvalds gave Nvidia the bird earlier in the thread, there's a reason for that. Nvidia's GPUs are:

Nvidia occasionally released driver updates for Linux, but prior to the GTX 10 series launch, Nvidia just...stopped. If you were using an Nvidia graphics card on Linux, you were stuck with a really outdated driver so your performance was severely bottlenecked. However recently Nvidia dropped an open source framework for their drivers...while keeping the drivers closed source so the Linux community is essentially having to take an already nightmarish proprietary driver and figure out how to port it to Linux, like how Asahi Lina is having to build M Series GPU drivers for Linux from scratch since Apple isn't providing documentation or help with that. Currently the most recent driver we have is Driver 535. Driver 545 will be dropping soon but it's currently buggy. I actually watched GloriousEggroll roll the driver update back and out of the repo live in his Discord. It was pretty funny, but man poor guy should not have to be doing that when he should've been celebrating New Years. Thanks Nvidia.

So tldr if you're gonna become a Linux gamer, go Team Red. AMD's CPUs and GPUs talk perfectly with open source software. It's just Nvidia that's the problem child. Unfortunately Nvidia is the most popular graphics card by a landslide, and they're on the verge of spawning an anticompetitive monopoly so...Mr. Torvalds if you could please?

 

[Plutonius]

NO PLAYING ON WINDOWS AT ALL

I just got Parallels and a subscription to Crossover for my new M2 studio so I'm sitting this challenge out .

All my old 32 bit MacOS Steam games I can play in Windows in Parallels while ARK (survivor evolved), Fallout 4, and Skyrim work well under Crossover. During the Steam sale, I picked up Cyberpunk 2077 and Hogwarts Legacy and they also seem to run well under Crossover.

I ended up purchasing the standard (no subscription) version of Parallels and was surprised how well it worked for my older games.

Parallels (Windows) is on my internal drive while all the Steam games are on external USB drives.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

I just got Parallels and a subscription to Crossover for my new M2 studio so I'm sitting this challenge out .

All my old 32 bit MacOS Steam games I can play in Windows in Parallels while ARK (survivor evolved), Fallout 4, and Skyrim work well under Crossover. During the Steam sale, I picked up Cyberpunk 2077 and Hogwarts Legacy and they also seem to run well under Crossover.

I ended up purchasing the standard (no subscription) version of Parallels and was surprised how well it worked for my older games.

Parallels (Windows) is on my internal drive while all the Steam games are on external USB drives.

You just reminded me I need to get back to Cyberpunk.

During the Steam Sale I picked up the Dead Space Remake which I'll start playing tonight. I also picked up Six Days in Fallujah.

For my Nobara dualboot I have it installed on a secondary internal SSD so I don't screw with the Windows partition.

 

[salamanderjuice]

I think I've done this challenge a few times...

My W11 system doesn't give much away by design, nor has any OS update broken apps to date with over 2TB installed. Yet to try a wrapper such as Wine etc for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Could be a lot of work to get it right when the game already runs on a known solid OS.

I've used Wine in the past with good results, just don't have the need these days as have both Mac & PC on hand. I just use what works and take precautions to ensure privacy & security, no need to punish myself for others deeds which is effectively what your doing. Far easier to take control of the OS and get the best out of it...

Q-6

It's way easier these days. For a lot of titles it's as simple as clicking a checkmark in Steam to use Proton for all titles. Stalker games are platinum/gold on Protondb, so they probably work with no trouble. Then you have other tools like Lutris and Heroic that make it easier for non-Steam games. I really like Lutris because you can combine all the stupid PC launchers into one place.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Day 2.

Figured out why Black Ops 3 didn't load. It wasn't because of an older update, it was because I installed it onto a NTFS drive. Just like with macOS I'm now learning how much non-Windows OSs do not like NTFS. However this became an easy fix as Valve has instructions for drives used in dualboots. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Using-a-NTFS-disk-with-Linux-and-Windows

While I waited for downloads to complete, I pulled out the trusty Steam Deck and played PC Building Simulator. Couldn't play much today due to a power outage. A storm blew over and a lightning bolt conveniently hit the transformer my neighborhood was in, so power was out for 90 minutes until it got fixed. Dead Space will have to be saved for tomorrow.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

I think I've done this challenge a few times...


It's way easier these days. For a lot of titles it's as simple as clicking a checkmark in Steam to use Proton for all titles. Stalker games are platinum/gold on Protondb, so they probably work with no trouble. Then you have other tools like Lutris and Heroic that make it easier for non-Steam games. I really like Lutris because you can combine all the stupid PC launchers into one place.

I'm shocked at how easy it is to get stuff working now. I got C&C Generals in the EA App working with just one button press. That was it. Just installing the EA App through Lutris and it all worked out of the box without anything extra to do. It was easy...a little too easy

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Day 3

An issue popped up where a ghost monitor would appear in settings that would cause everything to lag. An update was pushed today to fix that, which it did.

Started the Dead Space remake. Looked great, the remake really refined the original as it's even more terrified than I originally remembered. Currently playing the game using my Dualsense as my mouse is dying so I'm having to wait for my delivery of a new one. Though one thing I was curious about was bluetooth, specifically my AirPods Max. So I put my Maxes in pairing mode, and to my surprise they were visible on Nobara and connected with no issues. Audio input also easily switched between my AirPods Max and the main speakers just from putting the AirPods on. Of course I quickly turned them off, because I was still playing Dead Space and the game was scary enough as it was.

 

[Queen6]

OG Dead Space

@Spaceboi Scaphandre Firm favorite, always will be Have you played Alien Isolation? Utterly terrifying being the definitive Alien experience...

Q-6

 

[BanjoDudeAhoy]

OG Dead Space
View attachment 2332623
@Spaceboi Scaphandre Firm favorite, always will be Have you played Alien Isolation? Utterly terrifying being the definitive Alien experience...

Q-6

Dead Space was fantastic. Except for one mission where you had to shoot asteroids, if memory serves. That stood out like a sore thumb to me.

I never managed to finish Alien Isolation 😂
And the androids I found almost more terrifying than the Alien itself.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Dead Space was fantastic. Except for one mission where you had to shoot asteroids, if memory serves. That stood out like a sore thumb to me.

I never managed to finish Alien Isolation 😂
And the androids I found almost more terrifying than the Alien itself.

OG Dead Space
View attachment 2332623
@Spaceboi Scaphandre Firm favorite, always will be Have you played Alien Isolation? Utterly terrifying being the definitive Alien experience...

Q-6

Yeah I already beat Alien Isolation last year. Did it on my Mac just to boost macOS playtime

The remake gave Isaac a voice, and having him talk like he does in the sequel really changes the entire game as now he has a role in conversations, and whenever attacked his mood and actions change depending on what is happening.

For example, three necromorphs were running right at me, so I was just unloading from the Plasma Cutter. One of them grabbed me and I pushed it off. Another crawling on the ground so I spammed the stomp button until it died. Afterwards Isaac was heavily panting from all the stomping and muttering profanity. His dialogue in conversations even changes depending on his health state.

If you're out of ammo Isaac even swears, like blaming the manufacturer (God it's like looking at a mirror since that's what I do with Apple and HP)

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Well it's a good thing I got a Steam Deck, as I'm going to be having foot correction surgery very soon to fix a problem I've had since birth, so I got a library on standby. I've setup Call of Duty Black Ops 3 with just Zombies only, testing it with a round of Shadows of Evil, one of my all time favorite maps.

A group of four sinners during the prohibition era in the Chicago like Morg City. Four people who committed very bad deeds

Jessica Rose (played by Heather Graham), a dancer from the Black Lace Burlesque who wants to become a Hollywood actress, so to get closer to that dream has a relationship with a film producer. However a press photographer caught her and threatened to blackmail her with the photos, so she invites him over to make up...and he won't be releasing those photos...or any photos anymore... (fun fact, the guy she kills is named Richard Rodriguez. Before BO3 came out Treyarch held a contest where one lucky winner would be invited on a tour of the studio, and actually digitized and become a zombie model in the game. Richard won but plans changed and making him a zombie didn't work out. Instead Treyarch digitized him, and made him the photographer Jessica tricks and kills. His name is also on a street sign on a later DLC map Gorod Krovi.)

Floyd Campbell (played by Ron Periman) an up and coming boxer who hasn't fought in 18 months, called up last minute to fight the reigning champion with only two weeks to train. But the outcome wouldn't be in any doubt, as Floyd snuck brass knuckles under his gloves, winning decisively and leaving the champ fatally injured

Jackie *#@%ing Vincent (played by Neal McDonough) a dirty cop with dealings with the mob and other criminals. Unfortunately the mayor of Morg City has launched an investigation on police bribery, leaving Jack to tie up loose ends before the paper trail leads to him

And finally my favorite Nero Blackstone (played by the legend himself Jeff Goldblum) who was once one of the greatest magicians in the world now a washed up hasbeen. Unfortunately his wife was very demanding and loved spending money, prompting Nero to kill her while making it look like an accident to collect her life insurance.

Unknown to our four "heroes" they've been watched by a mysterious figure known only as The Shadowman, and wake up to find themselves in a twisted version of their city, the entire town turned into zombies, as well as other lovecraftian monsters hunting them, and must now fight to survive, while unknowingly being pawns in the Shadowman's scheme.

Also the music...oh the music...

 

[BanjoDudeAhoy]

Well it's a good thing I got a Steam Deck, as I'm going to be having foot correction surgery very soon to fix a problem I've had since birth, so I got a library on standby.

Good luck with the surgery - and a speedy recovery afterwards!

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Good luck with the surgery - and a speedy recovery afterwards!

The surgery will be easy, since it's my neighbor doing it! My neighbor is my podiatrist. Small world huh?

It's the recovery that's gonna suck. Two weeks in home care followed by two months on a walker to not put weight on it. That's why I'm doing it this month so I got the whole winter to recover. But it was a long time coming. The short of it is, my right foot has no tendon. None. Absolutely nothing where muscle is supposed to be. So my ligament has always been tearing this entire time. That's why I've never been active and why I can't run, because of this damn foot. The left one is completely fine, it's just the right one that isn't. So they're gonna reconstruct my foot, inserting metal to serve as my tendon I was born without, followed by straightening out to be how a foot is supposed to be. It'll be tough but better in the long run, as if I did this when I was 40 things would've been much worse.

Man it is a really damn good thing I got a Steam Deck then, since reaching my main PC during those two weeks will be pretty difficult, especially given all the Linux troubleshooting I'm suddenly having to do. No wonder the guys on the "Major gaming news at WWDC: Metal and New games" thread call my Deck a crutch. (Ironic considering the fact they're all adamantly against the idea of compatibility layers like Proton. Maybe they're just afraid at admitting I'm right that compatibility layers are the answer to make Mac gaming a thing. 😁)

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Day 4

Well just encountered an interesting problem. Recently Fedora encountered an issue with Nvidia GPUs and the desktop graphics. The entire desktop was black, but I could still open the Terminal. The login screen was all white.

GloriousEggroll's investigating it further but they found a short term workaround where it's the themes that are having problems loading and to switch away from the default theme. So I searched for a theme when the desktop properly loaded, and I found the perfect theme that fixed it all, a theme that may look familiar...

IT EVEN HAS MISSION CONTROL AND HOT CORNERS! I have my Magic Keyboard plugged in and pressing F3 actually opens up the mission control like layout. This is why I love Linux. The full freedom to customize the OS however you want. If you don't like the way the desktop handles windows, you can just change it with a different one with a single button press.

For games I continued Dead Space completing Chapter 2. I hope to finish the game over the weekend. I tested Starfield, however it would not launch, basically being in a state of launching forever. Looking online I learned the game is scuffed for Nvidia users, which I unfortunately am. Ever since taking on this challenge I am learning so much how horrible Nvidia is with their software that using their overpriced cards on with a Linux OS is an absolute nightmare. Next PC I am going full Team Red. In the meantime I guess I'll just have to wait until the game gets more optimizations.

 

[Irishman]

So 2023 is over, and for 2024 I got a New Years Challenge planned. Not a resolution, a challenge. New Years Resolutions are outdated and cringe, and most of the time no one actually does them. They just say they will do them like losing weight but after a week give up. They need to be gameified, there needs to be stakes.

So now, for no reason, I have a little New Years Challenge. Windows 11 has been really miss and for a lot of people objectively worse than Windows 10. Mac gaming has been on the rise thanks to D3DMetal and Apple opening their wallet for ports, and Linux gaming has absolutely exploded thanks to the Steam Deck. So I have a little challenge: For 2024: NO PLAYING ON WINDOWS AT ALL

You can play on Mac, play on Linux, and even on console, but Windows is completely off the table even in a virtual machine. What's happens if you lose? NOTHING! Nothing is at stake and there's nothing to lose...except:

I have spent this week preparing for this challenge by installing a dualboot of the Linux distribution Nobara onto my main PC.

View attachment 2331244 View attachment 2331245
For macOS, I have a 14 inch Macbook Pro with an M1 Pro chip at the ready

View attachment 2331246

And as a failsafe I also have my trusty LCD Steam Deck I've had for almost two years now

I encourage others to try the challenge themselves and see if they can go the entire year without using Windows for gaming at all. I will report my progress on the challenge here and would love to see others share their experiences. When we return to this thread on 12/31/24, I hope that my Steam Year in Review will show a net playtime of zero for Windows, with only macOS and Linux.

No RT on Linux means none of it is grounded in the future of premium gaming visuals, so I'll give you 6 months, tops.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

No RT on Linux means none of it is grounded in the future of premium gaming visuals, so I'll give you 6 months, tops.

Uhhh...I have raytracing on Linux. The first game I tested was Returnal and I ran the benchmark with raytracing on.

What made you think Linux had no raytracing?

 

[BanjoDudeAhoy]

No RT on Linux means none of it is grounded in the future of premium gaming visuals, so I'll give you 6 months, tops.

I'm not sure I'd consider ray tracing such a major feature of modern gaming that this challenge would be doomed to fail if ray tracing wasn't available

I played a bunch of games with raytracing at this point and yeah, it looks nice and all (if utilized properly) - but I can't say that just because I opted to play certain games without it - even after seeing them with it - that I played a different game.

Then again, I always subscribed to the notion of "gameplay lasts, graphics don't".

 

[salamanderjuice]

No RT on Linux means none of it is grounded in the future of premium gaming visuals, so I'll give you 6 months, tops.

You can use Ray Tracing on the Steam Deck even...

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

You can use Ray Tracing on the Steam Deck even...

Yep

https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-just-...steam-deck-and-it-actually-looks-pretty-wild/

Once again: We do not deserve GloriousEggroll. There's a reason I went with his distro for this challenge.

 

[JordanNZ]

Looks like League of Legends is going to be dead on Linux within the next couple of weeks.
macOS will continue to function as normal.

youtube.com/watch?...

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Looks like League of Legends is going to be dead on Linux within the next couple of weeks.
macOS will continue to function as normal.

youtube.com/watch?...

You make that sound like a bad thing. None of Riot Games’ toxic unfun cesspits are on Linux? SIGN ME UP!

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Day 5

An update for KDE Plasma and SDDM dropped that fixed the desktop rendering issues Nvidia users had, so my login screen and desktop render properly now. Loading is still a little jank but not like you'd be seeing the loading bar much anyhow

Played around with the macOS themes customizing my desktop, and I settled with a Sonoma dark mode theme someone made. It even has the Control Center!

Didn't play much as I was exhausted from work that day, but I did test The Last of Us Part 1. There was audio crackling but that was because shaders were compiling. Once shaders compiled it worked normally, but man it took so long for shaders to compile that I was just tired from work so I just went to bed. This is the problem I've had with The Last of Us is how long it takes to build shaders is absolutely insane, even after all the patches to fix the dog$#@% port. Dead Space only took less than five minutes to build shaders.

Well over the weekend I will beat Dead Space, and I wanna see if I can get Splinter Cell Conviction working, since Ubisoft games are a nightmare to get working due to their god awful UPlay and Connect services that everyone hates. Aside from that I was grinding Hearthstone on my Macbook Pro. I'm now at Platinum and hope I can get to Diamond quickly. If anyone wants to fight me in Hearthstone my Battle Tag is DrScaphandre#1132. I must warn you I main Death Knight