Linux vs Windows tested in 10 games - Linux 17% faster on Average

Windows has so much garbage overhead via telemetry, etc. Glad to see someone quantifying how detrimental it is.

AVs on windows also do impact disk latency a lot.
- Not to also mention the outdated filesytem
Windows telemetry CPU usage is almost nothing. This is mostly proton/dxvk doing it's magic.

Steam Deck and Proton have done wonders for Linux compatibility efforts.

However looking at NEW releases I actually want to play, many launch barely working on windows let a lone via proton / emulation. My back catalog has great support but we need more titles launching with official support.

The worst thing has to be all of the "launchers / game stores" JUST GIVE US GAMES!

Even "good" companies like BG3 makers. Are making it harder to play without signing into their launcher.

There's an extra screen now, which is extremely unintuitive to get to, to skip their launcher sign in :(
- Just add this to your launch parameters:
  
  --skip-launcher

Limited to amd though, yea? Nvidia still holding back their drivers?

Nvidia is their own worst enemy as regards Linux. When everyone realizes games work better under Linux and AMD, nVidia will be crying outside the gate. We're 5 years into Proton, in another 5 years there won't be a game that doesn't run better on Linux.
- When everyone realizes games work better under Linux and AMD, nVidia will be crying outside the gate.
  
  So you think Microsoft spends 8 billion dollars acquiring Bethesda Game Studios, Arkane Studios, id Software, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, ZeniMax Online Studios in 2020 and then proceeds to spend 68 billion dollars on acquiring Activision Blizzard...
  
  ... just to stand on the sidelines watching everyone drop Windows as a gaming platform?
- nVidia will be crying outside the gate
  
  Yeeeeaaah I really doubt it sorry
- Linux performance with proton has increased so drastically in recent years, your statement can be taken as wishful thinking at first, but there is a definite trend and I agree that Linux will probably be the powerhouse of gaming in coming years.
- Lol I swear lemmy users are the most delusional bunch
- We’re 5 years into Proton, in another 5 years there won’t be a game that doesn’t run better on Linux.
  
  Insh'allah :D (* I'm an atheist, but the phrase is kind of fitting)
Fully usable with NVidia. I can play all the games I want at the same graphical settings as Windows. (Nvidia 1080)
- That's because you're using fairly old hardware, anything in the 2000-series and up doesn't work very well.
I have a 1660 and every game ive played on linux does run better and getting the nvidia drivers wasnt that hard

Man, I am really looking forward to fully ditching Windows.

There's no time better than the present 😀 Windows free since April!
- Nice! What distro did you go with? I've been really enjoying Zorin.
I finally pulled the trigger (again, hopefully for good this time) after a nonconsensual Windows update corrupted my disk and my bitlocker recovery key was not accepted.

That was a couple months ago now and I'm happy to report that not only is game compatibility on Linux loads better than last time I tried this but I can corroborate that many of my games also perform better on Linux than they did on the same system in Windows
Been dual-booting for about 4 years. It might be time to remove the Windows partition and use a VM though because I only use Windows a few times a year (just once this year for installing it).
- Same, except I have two OS drives I swap between. Photoshop and Launchbox are all that's really keeping me anymore.

My next gaming PC is gonna be Linux. There, I said it.

Virtually any computer that isn't Apple Silicon can install Linux on it and it'll run smoother and faster than Win or Mac.

People who are anti-Linux either don't understand computers or are traumatized from the early 2000s
- Apple Silicon
  
  I thought asahi was pretty mature now?
- Can't Apple Silicon run some program called Parallel Desktops or something? Is there a Linux distro that has an ARM version?
- Even Apple silicone has a version of Fedora that works pretty well. Give it 10 years and I bet old Apple silicone machines will be faster on linux just like a lot of the older x86 macbooks are now.
Why not your current one?
- Because it's not meant for gaming anyway
You know it's super easy to change your operating system right? Lol
- It's not.
Liar
- We'll see
I just dual boot
- I would do that, at least until I get accustomed to Linux
It's not gonna. Game support is bad.
- Another illiterate lemming, tsk tsk

It must be very hard to exactly compare games between Windows and Linux because it's possible that emulation in Proton, WINE or the driver means some settings or extensions might not be enabled even if they appear to be. DirectX emulation is also bound to slow things down so a game probably has to be use OpenGL or Vulkan directly.

So while I can well believe that Linux can keep up and possibly exceed Windows, it needs a careful technical eye to ensure a true comparison is happening.

Wine is not an emulator
- Wine is an emulator. It might not have started as such when it was winelib but it is now, especially when running binaries. If in doubt read their own FAQ where they take pains to describe it depends what you're doing and what is meant by emulation.
- but the E literally stands for emulator
  
  (I'm kidding)
It's getting hard to do just between AMD and Nvidia on Windows.

I'm old enough to remember the days when reviewers showed macro shots of the wires in half life 2 to test AA between different cards.

Does anyone even test that enabling "Ultra" settings results in the same configuration across vendors/generations? I'm pretty sure LTT Labs found cases where it wasn't.
- ltt labs, good one

This is impressive and interesting, but what about hardware ray tracing support? Proton has been very impressive but I thought that RT on DX12 was basically non-existent on Linux.

Hardware raytracing works even on newer Radeon cards. I played Control recently with raytracing on Linux and it works pretty well, though the average frame rate drops to around 40 FPS. I had to use FSR to get higher framerates.
Raytracing is basically non-existing anywhere, it isn't a priority.

That’s great and all, but can I still pirate games on Linux? (Don’t judge me)

Yeah just add the game as a non steam game to steam and click play.
It's better I fact. There's a lot less worry about installing a virus.
- (Not so) fun fact, a lot of Windows viruses work under Wine on Linux. If you have ransomware bundled with your pirated media, it will likely also encrypt your Linux files.
  
  Use Bottles as a Flatpak, isolate all your applications from each other and from your host system.
- Actually, no. Windows viruses can work well in wine. You still have to be careful in that regard.
93A1A71EABD6B6CD658458CC1F4
Yes, much the same once you learn the hoops.

GN came to a weaker conclusion when they were looking at one of the handhelds (I want to say the asus ROG?), although they just attributed that to the device rather than claim it was the OS.

But most of this reminds me of how Elden Ring was significantly more performant "on steam deck" at launch. And that was mostly because all shaders had to be precached which had implications on how From were streaming content. Which is likely why stuff like mortal kombat 1 apparently forces players to wait for shaders before they can play.

It's also like saying that bloating an OS with spyware and useles eyecandy it makes it use hardware resources ineficiently. But of course that's not the case with Micro$oft.

I remember when I used to run games via Wine over 15 years ago and they performed better than on similar hardware running Windows.

I don’t really think that’s a fair comparison when you’re emulating things and not running them natively.
- Wine is not an emulator. It's a full implementation of the Windows API, which is why it's possible to get really good performance out of it in a way that pure software emulation can't match.

Not only in games, I switched from Windows 10 to LXQT and I can finally open more than 3 programs at the same time without the pc hanging for 10 seconds every time I switched between programs

I'll switch to Linux when I can play any game I choose to without any stuffing around, or when/if M$ start charging BS subscription.

The first point is 90%v available already with proton
- The fact you have to mention Proton is his point.
Good note.
I mean they basically do charge you since your data is being sold as the product.

AMD only and not Nvidia? That’s what I was seeing based on a quick search. Unfortunately, I don’t have an AMD GPU.

I’ve got an RTX 2060 mobile that I’ve been linux-gaming on for a few years now, it’s been great. I was getting consistent blue screen crashes with windows, even after multiple reinstalls. Ubuntu had some minor issues out of the box, like I had to find a program to control screen brightness, but PopOS has been literally flawless.

I’ve been saying for years now that gaming on linux feels faster. Most games get better framerates than they did natively on windows, but I’ve never known if that was unique to my setup. Really neat to have more data!

why aren't game producers releasing versions of the game compiled for debian ubuntu and other lInux distros?

Too much effort for too little market share. But since the Steam Deck is popular, it's harder to ignore Linux.
- Yeah, 1.63% is really not a lot at all (according to the Steam Hardware & Software Survey: September 2023). Tbh from a pure business point of view I'm surprised any of the bigger developers bother at all.
Microsoft created directx and its been an integral part of game dev since, not the only reason as I'm sure if Linux had a large market share we'd see devs jumping over

Not really surprised.

Doesn't really surprise me, I've had a Steam deck since launch and the performance on Windows titles has always been impressive, even considering its relatively low-end hardware.

The only thing preventing me from dual-booting my desktop is lack of software RAID support in most distributions (by this I mean RAID configured in the BIOS but not using a dedicated hardware controller).

To be fair, that bios-managed RAID is still using a hardware controller. It's embedded in the motherboard.

Anyway, hardware RAID is discouraged in home/workstation environments as you don't have control over how the controller implements it. So if the board breaks, it's harder to retrieve your data.

Linux has support for real software RAID, for example using LVM or filesystems that have that feature. It's easier to setup than it may sound. Most distributions can enable that during installation of the OS.

Okay, so say I did switch to Linux. I would have to transfer all of my files that I have saved from Windows and try to make them compatible with being on Linux. It's also very excruciating and mentally painful that I would just have to start from scratch. I like all the various things I have saved on my PC i would not want to lose them

I mean transferring files isn't so difficult. Linux supports NTFS so it's as easy as opening the files in the file browser and moving them to your linux partition.

But yes in my experience it does take a few months to transition and in that time I did move back to Windows a few times, but eventually I stuck with Linux since it had a lot more features and benefits over Windows
Can you be more specific?

I may be reading this wrong, but it sounds like you think Linux requires all your files to be converted to some other format before you can use them. There is no such thing as a Windows-JPEG and a Linux-JPEG, it's just a JPEG. All your files will still work. It's the software that opens the files that might need to change (e.g. MS Word or Photoshop).

Unless you're talking about filesystems like NTFS and ext4, in which case there is no argument to be made as Linux supports NTFS already. In my experience, it "just works".
What kind of files are you talking about? The vast majority of files will just work once you install an application to handle them. Images, video, audio, etc should all work out of the box on most distro.

"Try to make them compatible" isn't something you should ever have to worry about for files. Files are files, and you don't have to convert them to some other format in order to use them. Rather, you'll just need to install the relevant apps from your distribution's package manager. GIMP handles Photoshop files no problem for instance. No conversion or such, just... Open them like you would on Windows by double clicking.
I like all the various things I have saved on my PC i would not want to lose them

Then make sure you’re taking backups and follow the 3-2-1 backup strategy at minimum. Backblaze is a great option for Windows users to help with that, since it can back up your whole PC for a fixed cost each month.

There’s no reason to rush to start using Linux. If you’re interested, you can always dip your toes in with something like the Steam Deck or booting from a USB drive
As long as you have your files backed up properly it shouldn't be too difficult. If you don't, I'd be more worried about what happens if one of your drives failed and how you'd retrieve that data.
I can understand. Don't need to switch. It's normal to enjoy what you're used to.

I've not run windows for years, but I straight up refuse to believe there's a seventeen percent performance uplift. Magic does not exist. Linux must be skipping some rendering.

They’re a bunch of cherry-picked games that have a decent amount of Linux work run on pretty solid Linux hardware that performs well. The tests are legit. They just don’t generalize.
Or maybe Windows 11 is just as heavy as shit.
You'll be surprised to learn how much overhead Windows has and how much system resources they take up to keep all their trackers and bloat running in the background. It really makes a startling difference when you switch to a Linux OS. It can even make your hardware feel more powerful, because it only needs to deal with the game's performance, and not also running a shitton of unneeded services in the background all the time.

But what about Fortnite and Valorant?

Let's hope these tik-tok games remain on Windows.

Not to sound sarcastic, but only 17% faster than the operating system known for being an appallingly bloated stack of adware garbage that most people cant get away from because of compatibility? Thats surprisingly low, honestly.

But Windows is usally the system the games are optimized for. Its impressiv how well proton/wine work these days :)
- Usually yes, but i thought we were talking about linux gaming, as in games made for both platforms
I don’t think you understand. This is windows games running on Linux through proton. If the games were built and optimized for Linux they’d perform even better
- I absolutely understand that, and nothing in my comment suggests otherwise?

Nice for the 3 games that run on linux

lol what are you, from 2005?
That rock you've been living under must be getting heavy by now.

Considering for most games it’s 100% slower, I’m not cheering just yet.

The issue is support not performance.

Every game I’ve bought this year has ran perfectly in Linux. And I don’t check the Linux status before I buy them. Yolo has paid off
- Same here, the only games that don’t work are the ones that’s ship with anti cheats the behave like root kits (a really nasty type of malware).
- In my experience, most games either don't work at all (very rare), or work 99% as well as on Windows. For instance, I'm playing Hitman WoA right now, and opening the Steam overlay makes the game run in slow motion until I restart it, and it goes in the single-digit FPS if my laptop is charging. Very rarely does a game run better on Linux than Windows. Alt- tabbing in particular is broken in a lot of games, some of them outright crashing.
- Same. I think 80% of my pre existing library already worked and then every game ive bought since the switch runs perfect. I used to check protondb first, now I just yolo and add my report later.
Uuuh, the compatibility percentage is way past 50%, can't use the word "most" anymore.

I can count the number of games I had to give up from my several hundred game library when I switched, on one hand.
Exactly. I don’t care much for Windows bloat, but if 100% of games run on Windows and even 99% of games run on Linux, I’m sticking with Windows for gaming. It’s just that simple. If that ever reverses, then I’ll switch to Linux for gaming.
- I just don't buy games that don't run on Linux.
  
  There are already too many games I want to play for the time I have so the very few games that don't run on Linux are not worth my time.
- I'm ok with not having access to the 1% of games out there that want to act like rootkits
Probably not most anymore but still plenty of them.