Even gamers nexus’ Steve today said that they’re about to start doing Linux games performance testing soon. It’s happening, y’all, the year of the Linux desktop is upon us. ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ
Edit: just wanted to clarify that Steve from GN didn’t precisely say they’re starting to test soon, he said they will start WHEN the steam OS releases and is adopted. Sorry about that.
I’ve been using Linux exclusively for ~14 years now. Heavily gaming on Linux only for the last ~8 years.
It was possible (though sometimes headache inducing) to play most games back then (Wine and soon Proton to thank) the biggest change IMHO came with SteamPlay since it turned the headache into one click on most games (thanks to the amazing work of wine/proton developers and the tinkering of the community).
When the SteamDeck released people seemed surprised at the breadth of games that were running on day one. To me it was not really a surprise since I had been Linux gaming with SteamPlay all the time and was almost expecting games to “just work” (though I still would and still am checking ProtonDB before purchase).
What the SteamDeck changed in my view was
- Showing “everyone” that Linux Gaming is a thing that’s happening and been happening for a while. So maybe check it out?
- That a Handheld that doesn’t have to work around Windows but uses a purpose built OS just makes a lot more sense
I feel that the SteamDeck with SteamOS has really put Linux, especially Linux gaming on the map. Even though I want to be like “Linux Gaming has been a thing forever, I was doing it before it was cool” ;) I have to recognize that fact. In the past years I’ve seen so many people setting up Linux especially by the way of SteamOS (using HoloISO, Chimera …) just to play/mess with it which is also why I think an Official SteamOS release will make a huge difference.
Tl;dr: Gaming on Linux was a thing before. But the SteamDeck/SteamOS 3 made a huge impact nonetheless.
I thought this had already happened?
I remember seeing ads on Steam for SteamOS years ago—wasn’t there a point at which you could download and run it on your own computer? What happened?
Old steam os was an Ubuntu derived OS. Ubuntu has issues relating to the organization that runs it. New steam os is basically a coat of paint on top of Arch which is community based. The old os is deprecated.
The version on steam deck is fantastic, but they have been polishing it for desktop use for a while now. I can’t wait to have it available.
Ah, ok—was it also immutable like the new one is?
The only bastion left is anticheat. Everything else are just (bad) old habits fueled by marketing.
…and VR. VR is already finicky on its own, gaming on Linux can be finicky in different ways, and the issues multiply if you have two things like that.
Tends to depend on the headset you own, some work perfectly. Also, Valve is very likely releasing a headset based on SteamOS, which should help.
Sure, the Index should work fine, but I’m not so sure about accessories, my Slimes, etc. Also on an nvidia GPU…
Really hope Valve does indeed release the new headset, because my Index is getting very dated.
Completely depends on the accessories, and an nvidia GPU is unlikely to have a major impact, I’ve used one for VR before. What are slimes?
Slimes as in SlimeVR, open source trackers.
I think it all should work, but I’m afraid of just having to solve issues in general with stuff I don’t have to solve any issues with now.
I assumed it was that. I saw explicit Linux support on their site, so wanted to confirm.
Nothing wrong with having that fear, just not super fair to assume it won’t work in that case. Both the devices you’ve mentioned have good Linux support, and would likely work pretty well out of the box.
Yeah, it’s also that “it just works” now, and one undisputable (though unfortunately self-fulfilling) advantage of Windows is that chances are if you do encounter an issue you’re not the first one and someone has already solved it.
Being an early(ish) adopter of anything like that is always a bit of a risk and pain.
the biggest wall imo is still getting companies with anticheat games on board.
IMO, no one should be playing games with kernel level anticheat. There is no way I would let any big gaming company have that level of control over my PC. It’s a security nightmare.
To anyone reading this thinking “once SteamOS comes out, I’ll switch”, you should know:
Gaming on Linux is already here. Pick a distro and game. You can take advantage of Proton right now. You don’t need to wait for one specific distro.
I’ve personally been gaming on Linux exclusively for about 3 years. Windows games, not Linux games.
Edit: based on other commenters’ suggestions, I’ll give you some.
I have gamed for those three years on PopOS. It is a distro based on Debian, ultimately, which means it’s also related to Ubuntu and Mint. Realistically, you can pick any of those 4 and you should have a nice experience.
Arch is popular with the übergeeks, and I do use it on my laptop, BTW, but you shouldn’t use it as a first distro.
The concept of “distro” doesn’t really exist for Windows, because you pretty much get one monolithic product. But basically, it is a specific mix of software that works together and relies on the Linux kernel. Imagine it as a “version” of Windows with specific goals, some of which are overlapping (e.g. Mint and Ubuntu tend to cater to the same audience).
If you get far enough into it, the freedom that Linux allows means that you can turn any distro into any other distro.
“Pick a distro” is why they’re waiting for steamos, presumably.
