From Hardlimit
I don’t think the issue is performance though. The unspoken part of this comparison is in bold:
“Linux vs Windows tested in 10 games. In the games we could find that work on linux, the performance was 17% faster on average. In all the rest of the games, Windows worked 100% better.”
Fortunately majority of games work on linux. The major pain point now is the anticheat used by multiplayer games. Single player games more or less work out of the box
I really want to switch to Linux, but I’ve been told this before and then ended up spending hours trying to get everything to work, and usually give up … but it’s been a couple of years since I tried the last time, so is this the right time?
I have zero interest in the technical parts of Linux or setting things up. I want things to work out if the box. I may have to dual boot because of WoW and MS Flight Sim, but if everything else works it may be worth it.
Edit: wow thanks for the answers. You may have convinced me to try again.
Check out protondb to see how your game collection fares on linux. I personally just buy games without checking these days and play on linux but then again I buy older games. Although AAA games also tend to work these days within days of release
I can’t speak for both games you listed, however for WoW - Blizzard games tend to have a good reputation for running on Linux (one of the few good things I like about Blizzard). Sometimes there are a few bugs here and there (OW had a mouse cursor locking problem) but generally they’re pretty good.
I have been playing Diablo 3 on Linux for as long as I can remember, even before the massive rise of Linux gaming from the introduction of VKD3D/DXVK/Proton. I know D4 was working in Linux even during the betas, and I’ve heard StarCraft players who’ve said the same.
Of course, the system requirements never mention Linux as an officially supported platform, but I can’t say I’ve ever heard of a Blizzard game that doesn’t work on Linux (games they develop - games like CoD and originally Destiny 2 where they were only the publisher/launcher host is a different story) so I’d be very surprised if WoW doesn’t work.
IIRC Blizzard’s anti cheat (“Warden” I believe) is mostly server side which makes things way easier - I mean hell I know a lot of their games even supported Mac OS.
And as the others have linked, for MSFS you can check Proton but I hear the reception is good there too since it’s rated as Silver on there.
These days I’m usually just playing the Diablo games from them, and I just use the Bottles app which makes it really easy to play non-Steam games. It even has an option to install the Battle.net client for you, then you login, install the game, and click play - it’s super simple.
I’d argue that the idea that most games don’t work on Linux is a flat-out misconception in 2023.
It’s hard to quantify, but Valve’s own Steam Deck (=running on Linux) verification stats have 70% of games either Verified or Playable (Playable generally means that it runs but text is small on the Deck screen, or it needs a lot of keyboard input – nothing that matters on the desktop). Crucially, “Unsupported” doesn’t mean it doesn’t run – it means untested, and in my experience at least, many of those just work too.
Protondb shows 80% of its catalog with a Platinum, Gold, or Silver rating – 70% are Gold. Silver generally corresponds to e.g. switching to Proton Experimental, which is a single-click process.
Anecdotally, after being gaming only on Linux for more than a year, with a catalog of 500+ games, I’ve had one (1) that gave me any more trouble than that Proton Experimental switch (Assetto Corsa, first one).
So there is no “unspoken part” here. The experience running Windows games on Linux isn’t what it was even 2 years ago. It is, for many people, an entirely seamless experience now.
PS: seeing Windows games running better on Linux isn’t a new observation either. Elden Ring was a great example where Proton shader precaching eliminated the stutter that plagued that game at launch, so it didn’t happen on Linux.
“gave me any more trouble than that Proton Experimental switch (Assetto Corsa, first one).”
Oh great, the only game I have any interest in playing…
17% faster than the majority of other players out there is kind of cheating, if you think about it.
So then buying a brand new 560hz monitor must be cheating to you as well then? I’d say mayyyybe 2% of players, at most, are running 560hz monitors right now.
Are they cheating because some people are still using 60hz hardware?
I found these comparisons not useful. Nobody play on Linux for searching for performance, but to avoid switch os only for playing.
It’s rather important to understand the performance characteristics for people to know what to expect if they want to switch to Linux.
If games ran at half the FPS on Linux as they would have on Windows, then pretty much no one would be gaming on linux.
If you got 90% performance on Linux, only Linux enthusiasts would take the performance hit.
At 100% performance the choice is completely free, people that got fed up with windows could just switch.
When Linux outperforms Windows, this puts us in very interesting territory, as this might even entice a bunch of people to give Linux a try to see whether the switch is worth the performance. I’m personally quite interested in seeing whether this could be the tipping point for Linux on desktop and laptop to really start taking off.
I do. Windows 11 is just a bunch of bloatware and ads stuffed in a trenchcoat. I want to be able to use all those rams and GBs I downloaded, without half them being tied up in tracking.
