Comment by pclmulqdq
2 years ago
If you're going to be a Linux gamer, you have to be a fan of the game of Linux. Most games are going to need some tweaking or a weird package in order to work. Arch makes a lot of sense for that crowd.
2 years ago
If you're going to be a Linux gamer, you have to be a fan of the game of Linux. Most games are going to need some tweaking or a weird package in order to work. Arch makes a lot of sense for that crowd.
This was the situation 5+ years ago.
Most games work without extra steps nowadays (as long as steam is involved).
I remember wasteland 2 (from steam/wine) crashing on Linux when you finally entered the rangers headquarters. Luckily a linux kernel developer played the game and figured out what was going on. He told everyone how to fix the game with some arcane commands, increasing max counts, etc. Was pretty wild.
This is honestly one of the things that IMHO gives so much value to SteamOS. The Valve engineers find out about these things and apply them at the base. I've had a pretty good overall experience with gaming on my Fedora machine, but I've had to learn a couple of those things the hard way (mmap settings in the kernel, missing 32-bit libc (even though it's there), etc)
It is still very much true today in my experience. I have tried to be a linux gamer occasionally, and there are almost always things that need to be done for compatibility. Few games live up to Steam's promise, even when Steam is involved, unless you are playing on one of Steam's 2-3 anointed distros.
>unless you are playing on one of Steam's 2-3 anointed distros.
For sure. That is a pretty good state to be in---most games work in a few well known distros. If you use something else, you have to DIY some compatibility steps once in a while.
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The most hacking I've done to get a Steam game working on openSUSE Tumbleweed is some copypasta sed magic to bypass the Private Division launcher app for Kerbal Space Program 2. Other than that, setting a command line parameter to ensure my eGPU gets used (which should be a relatively uncommon scenario), and forcing a few games to run through Proton, everything just works.