I think Windows games will be slower on Linux?

CPU limited games tend to be faster on Linux even with proton/ wine.

I've not tested any GPU limited games.

If you’re not trolling and actually expecting some serious reply: no, it’s not a meme. It’s quite fast and playable. All the games that I tried were very playable.

When you but an nvme bcache on your spinning rust (something Windows can't do) and add fast LZO block compression (something Windows sucks at), games legitimately load much faster. You also get about 30% more games on the drive.

Then the system boots and about 1GB RAM is used by the OS and desktop. The rest is free for your game.

When Linux idles, it really idles. No background garbage. No periodic network activity. No antivirus scans. Pure computing silence.

Fire up a game, and all the hardware becomes yours. The WINE implementation has been optomised to do Windows things faster than Windows can.

At this point, the graphics drivers don't even need to be as good to run faster.

It's not even limited to old or crappy games. Helldivers 2 and Arc Raiders run flawlessly.

But maybe you use a high-end gaming PC? No?

Actually I had Windows games running smoother on Linux. Windows has become so extremely bloated, and the translation layer has become more optimized.

If you are looking to leave Windows and try Linux for gaming, the Proton situation is not bad at all, as long as you don't play games with invasive kernel-level anticheat because most of them don't work.
Some games run worse on Proton tho, but it mostly depends on what GPU driver you have and what brand it is

Maybe it became faster because you installed a lightweight distro like Arch? What about on Fedora?

You have a point but I have to test it first to the PCs available in my local stores. Hopefully what you're saying are all true.

I’ve got a cheap old ten years old low-end laptop and didn’t know what to do about it. I installed Steam and played Half-Life 2 and Dota 2 (both aren’t very new, I know). They were very snappy. Also, I tried WarCraft 3 via Wine, and it was very good also. I didn’t know what else to test, but for the record Windows itself wasn’t very snappy with it.

Check out the steam hardware survey when filtered for Linux.

It's only true when you buy AMD.

Gaming on linux is not a meme, you have to brainwashed by Microsoft to think that.
I'm gaming on my desktop(dual boot win/fedo), Fedora 43, and as the time passes I find less and less errors, which means gaming on linux has evolved to the better.

Don't feed the troll.

This user has a history of bad faith arguments. Don't take the bait, no matter how delicious it looks.

How powerful was the laptop's processor? Did you mean game like Dota 2 run smooth on a laptop? I think that's for a desktop PC.

How did you know my account 's history?

By looking.

Lightweight distro mainly means it uses less Ram, which should not be the limiting resource in this case.

"cheap old ten years old low-end laptop"

Fedora works ok. Some games require burst optimization, am using cachy kernel, works better. Some games run better on win some on lin. They are equal, for casual gaming.

The people constantly talking about gaming on Linux are the meme.

In actual reality you just play your games without yapping about invented problems or imaginary benefits.

love it.

thats some good ol' trolling like 20 years ago.

It’s some low-end Intel i3 processor. Let’s say it’s something about 2 GHz, each core, with 2 or 4 cores. Sorry, I need to check it if you want the precise specs, but they don’t really matter.

It was super smooth, and considering that laptop basically a garbage (Nvidia GPU, which is not used in Linux, I use the integrated Intel one), it played quite well for me. It looks like the difference with Windows is not in its favour. It’s really easy to try it, especially if you have a spare hardware. Eg Dota 2 is free to play, so all you need is to install Steam and download the game. I use Fedora Silverblue, which I can recommend for an average user. (I use Arch on my primary laptop and PC.) Also, I’ve heard good things about Bazzitte, but I personally don’t like Linux distros based on other distros.

Also, I recommend avoiding Nvidia GPUs, unless it’s a high end very new card. (I have heard them being good.) Apart from that, Linux gaming is quite easy, especially if all your games are in Steam. It allows easy installation of things like Proton and is perfectly manageable by a non-pro user via graphical interface.

Sorry, I fed the troll, but I expect others might find the discussion valuable then.

I’ve heard Vulkan really shines, but I had no chance to actually compare it apples to apples with Windows. (As I don’t use one.)

By definition it is a meme.

meme
/miːm/
noun
noun: meme; plural noun: memes
1.
an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations.
"celebrity gossip and memes often originate on the site"
2.
an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means.

I will note that in my limited testing, I've generally found my VR gaming experience to be lacking compared to my Win10 install/dual boot (which is the whole reason I keep the damn thing around). But that's been genuinely my only performance hit daily driving Linux for the past 4-6 months

There are legitimate problems. I had the most issues with Nvidia drivers, just go with AMD on linux

The performance is still notably worse than native Windows, but are you familiar with WiVRn/Monado? You can read more on it here, Discord server linked there has a lot of helpful people when it comes to VR on Linux.

Why would I? They haven't broken any rules, and we haven't had a good troll post since Madthumbs left.

Nope, works really well for me. From all the games i tried pretty much only anti-cheat games and quest 2 vr stuff gave me troubles, but it has been years since i tried vr and i've heard it has improved a lot. Recently the hdmi 2.1 situation with amd bit me in the ass when i bought a tv as a gaming display, but i ended up buying an adapter and accepting that atleast for the time being, vrr isn't gonna work, cause i tried going back to windows instead but at this point it just feels like torture to use now that i'm used to linux. I'd rather lose vrr if it means i get to be free of windows. I also decided to just give up on any game that uses anti-cheat, cause i found myself not really enjoying them anymore anyway.

I mean I have a water-cooled Ryzen 9950X, Radeon 7900 XTX, 64 GB DDR5, 4 TB nvme, and 5120x1440 HDR monitor.

Plays borderlands 4, Rocket League, Horizon Zero Dawn, Horizon Forbidden West, Jedi survivor, elite dangerous, Sifu, star wars outlaws, god of war, cyber punk, and Elden Ring. And most of those run better for me on Linux than they did on Windows. For one, the various launchers(Ubisoft, epic, etc) actually stop when you stop playing the games, but fps is better too.

Have you had issues playing games on Linux? I can help if you need it. Highly recommend Nobara. It is based on fedora, a fairly well known and reliable version of Linux. The main difference is instead of the fedora kernel, it uses the kernel built by CachyOS. This optimized kernel results in roughly 10+ fps in games.

Idk why your switching off of Windows, but for me it is all the Microslop spyware they've been installing. Good God, I just installed Windows 11 home(instead of pro) on a PC for the first time and they literally showed ads during the installation. Plus the AI nonsense... ugh... Why do I need notepad to send my data to an AI? That's stupid, I want my data to be local and never leave my computer without my permission.

Regardless, good luck on your gaming journey! XD

linux sucks. it bloats everyone arse with it's with cockpilots.
Even if you could load up a game in it, it'd insert its own joystick right into your face without asking.

Trolling aside, Sometimes windows games run faster than Linux games... On Linux.

I remember switching from win10 and trying to continue playing Deus Ex MD and the native version had framedrops and a lower fps than what I was used to. I forced proton compatibility in steam to make it use the windows version and it ran significantly better. The real kicker is that when I compared the benchmarks, it was performing better than the windows version on windows.

And I was one of those crazy powerusers who micro-managed services and did policy & registry tweaks to get improved and more consistent performance... Yet Linux kicked its ass out of the box and through a compatibility layer...

But that's just an anecdote of one case. Some run better, some run worse. Depends on how much effort the devs put in, and dumb luck.

With things like Heroic Launcher, Proton support on Steam, easy Linux export on Godot... the idea that you can't play games on Linux is the real "meme".