lug's linux gaming log

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So the intention of this list is as a way to keep track of which games work just fine and which games explode while being run under Linux. This isn’t intended to be a very scientific overview, instead it is more of like, me trying out a bunch of games, and then commenting on how they feel to play on Linux.

All the games mentioned here were tested on my computer, which is this one here.

games

left 4 dead 2

windows build on proton

The Windows build running on Proton is probably the best way to play it, because it’ll give you the best experience. However, it also does not support playing on servers (at least those that have VAC anticheat enabled) with add-ons enabled. I think it is funny that Valve is trying to make Linux gaming into a thing, yet force us players to use the inferior Linux version. if they cared, they would funnel some money into fixing up the Linux version of Left 4 Dead, but they don’t, so there’s that. Aside from that, I guess you could play by yourself, or exclusively play on non-VAC secured servers.

native linux build

The native Linux build is weird. It seems at times undercooked in places, which significantly worse frame rate on Linux. Performance tends to get better with time, eventually getting close to the usual FPS on Windows (with vsync enabled).

The Linux build of L4D2 is crummy but workable. The FPS is at least consistent, and while not as high as on Windows (or Proton), it is decent enough to play some games. If you want to get a more consistent experience, there is this hack here, which consists of swapping out certain files, which allows (from what I can tell) the game to run using Vulkan instead, and with that patched, the game runs as well as it does on Windows.

slime rancher 2

medium settings across the board.

performance has improved significantly (compared to the last time I tried the game), to the point i think it is toe to toe to windows, however I haven’t tried the game in a while, and it is possible that it has improved a lot while i was away from the game.

traditionally, the conservatory area often had lower frame rates compared to the surrounding areas, but honestly it isn’t as bad as it used to be. In the surrounding areas of the game, frame rate tends to stick around 90 to 130 FPS, with it dipping sometimes, but overall it is pretty playable.

deep rock galactic

Medium settings across the board. I had no major issues on DRG. The game ran as smooth as you’d expect, except some stutter at the beginning of the game, when all the assets are loading in. The game runs as well as it does on Windows.

peak (the game)

I played this game a long time ago when it was still more popular, from what I remember, the performance was acceptable, with some hiccups, and on high settings, the game stays running on 80 to 90 FPS, so to get better frame rates, I had to switch to medium graphics across the board. Sadly, this gives the side effect of low quality textures (more than what would be expected from medium quality textures), so there’s that. The game never crashed when playing a game, so that is another point for Linux. On a side tangent, my friend, who was joining the game from her Windows system, was having issues with the game crashing, if it was set to a custom run. IDK if this is a PEAK specific issue, or something on her end, but if I ever encounter said issue, I’ll let y’all know.

addendum: I played a larger game with multiple players, up to six players (the host had a mod which allowed that). The FPS this time stuck around the usual 80 to 90 FPS, however I wish I was able to get a higher FPS in certain areas. And sure, I could lower the graphics quality, but for some reason the graphics take a dive from okay to abysmal bullshit.

ultrakill

Ultrakill is a game that I have been playing for a long time, and honestly, it is fun. The issue is that my wrists hate playing this game, which is expected because this game is the wrist destroyer 9000. The FPS in this game is pretty acceptable, with an average of 242 FPS, however this would vary during gameplay. The places with the worst FPS are probably the newer levels (aka: Layer 8), in which the new update uses some special effects which look cool but destroy your FPS. The FPS issues aren’t exclusive to Linux, with this computer having some really rough FPS on those levels on Windows too.

epic games store games

“‘free on the epic games store’ is not the same as free. the cost is the epic games store” - some random person on tumblr.

I really do not like EGS. But for whatever reason, past Lug made the mistake of getting dozens of games on this wretched platform. All because these games were free. We all wonder why Steam has such a chokehold on PC gaming, it is because the competition is just so fucking ass. The Epic Games Store is a perfect example of everything wrong with these launchers, it is not fast, it feels like it was designed for a touch screen, it lacks achievements, it lacks actual social features, or a community section where you can have discussions on guides or random game things. Epic Games is also Linux hostile, so there’s that.

Fortunately, there are ways to avoid the EGS store for the most part. Heroic is a decent option because it can completely bypass the need for EGS for most games, which I think is awesome actually.

hitman 2016 (epic games version)

Hitman 2016 is a game I remember being pretty tricky to get running smoothly even on Windows. So I decided to see how well this would run on Linux. Since EGS is a pile of dogshit that no one wants or needs, I decided to use Heroic launcher for this. What I found out is that this game runs as well as you’d expect. The game likes to run between 80 and 110 FPS for most of the time, only rarely reaching the screen’s refresh rate in areas where there isn’t much to render. Honestly, this is a similar experience on Windows, and similarly to Windows, there are some levels where there is a lot going on where the game does slow down considerably (for example, the Marrakesh level, where there are hundreds of NPCs in a pretty small area).

I think the bigger issue here is that IOI constantly try their hardest to make purchasing the game as difficult as possible. They replaced all the previous games with Hitman WOA, which I guess is fine, but my god is it ever fucking expensive. Piracy may be necessary here because holy fuck.

other games

gta the original trilogy

So I recently found a “totally legit” copy of the GTA original trilogy, which I been meaning to play but never got around to it. I honestly been wanting to play this game but never seem to find the necesary motivation to do so. Anyways, I decided to get the extracted files from Windows to install them here, and surprisingly it works just fine, after I made some modifications (from what I remember, I think I made Lutris use the system Winetricks instead of the built in ones and that got the game running). FPS is as high as you’d expect from a game this age, going up to 500 FPS in certain areas. Honestly I wasn’t expecting this game to run this well, but I was very pleasantly surprised.

The way I got this running was with Lutris, which in turn used Proton in order to get the game working. Lutris is a launcher I haven’t heard recently, mostly because there are some better ones you can get your hands on (like Heroic), but for locally installed games, Lutris I think is still the way to go. It has worked pretty well every time I had to use it. So there’s that.

I think the issues that I have with this game is with the frame rate itself. When you get to that 500 FPS range in GTA SA, stuff like the physics start to break down, and while you can prevent this with the frame limiter, playing games at 30 FPS is rough.

Another thing that I have forgotten about this game is that a lot of things are dependant on that framerate. Swimming seems to impossible to do with the frame limiter off, because instead of swimming, you simply sink into the water. After turning on the frame limiter, I was finally able to swim.

minecraft (java)

Minecraft, to the surprise of absolutely no one, runs perfectly on Linux. I think it was among the few games that had a Linux native version back in the day, and I even managed to run it back in 2015 when I had that government issue laptop that had Linux on it. However, recently Minecraft had an update where they added Vulkan graphics support, and holy shit does that ever improved the update to my game, and now I see averages of 600 FPS which is honestly crazy to see.

other game related activities

(discord) streaming.

Discord streaming on Linux can be a real pain in the ass, because of stuff like Pipewire and Wayland not really working at all. There is also the fact that Discord itself has essentially been forgotten on Linux, with Discord only recently working on the Linux build after 3 million years.

For the most part, using Vesktop seems to solve a big chunk of the usability issues with Discord streaming, but there always are some issues with stuff like audio. Especially with the transition to Pipewire and Wayland, stuff can be pretty jank at times. Streaming is a thing you can do with no issues on Linux, but the issue here arises when you are constantly starting and stopping streams. You end up in this interesting situation where Desktop can get mixed up, and suddenly the people who are with you in VC are now hearing your voice in the stream, which can be very annoying.

clip recording with gpu screen recorder

A thing that I always had problems with, either on Windows or on Linux, was clip recording. Even NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience often had issues with recording in-game voice chats, and honestly it was more trouble than it was worth. On Linux meanwhile, I knew about GPU Screen Recorder but never actually tried it seriously, because the computer I had this program on was never really used for gaming at all.

I found out that actually, GSR is actually very good. It is so good that it captures key inputs and responds pretty fast to my request to record or take a clip. I was expecting the replay function would be more jank, but honestly it was pretty painless. There was a familiar issue however: GSR didn’t record my microphone, and I guess this could be because I was in a voice chat, or because the game I was playing (PEAK) was not collaborating, but at the end the solution was pretty simple (at least for me).

I known about qpwgraph for a while, which is a patch panel that allows you to route audio around a system that has Pipewire installed on it. It is a pretty neat solution for playing audio from program A to program B, and in this case, I decided to route my microphone directly into the input for GSR, and that seemed to do the trick. However, I am now confronted with the issue with the microphone being more quieter than I would like it to be, but for simple gaming clips intended to be shared around with friends, it should be fine.

addendum: it turns out that the reason why I wasn’t hearing myself, was because the tool was recording on two seperate audio tracks. One for the system, and the other track for the microphone. I eventually found this out when I was editing them up with Kdenlive.

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