Comment by umbra07
5 months ago
> Anyway, just my anecdotal experience. Those with dedicated gaming rigs will be more than fine with Linux, but those of us on underpowered hardware still seem better off with Windows, unfortunately.
On the other hand, Linux (or more accurately, the Linux desktop ecosystem) doesn't support a lot of high-end PC gaming features well: HDR, Nvidia GPUs, VR, etc.
To the extent that Linux doesn’t support nvidia gpu it is actually Nvidia not supporting Linux and keeping their drivers proprietary.
But that doesn't matter. If the feature isn't there, Linux is non-viable if you want/rely on said feature. It doesn't matter whose 'fault' it is.
It does to me. I don't buy their products, simple as that.
It does matter, because people will then go on to blame the linux developers for the lack of the feature, when they should instead be blaming Nvidia's antagonistic stance and stop supporting them.
> On the other hand, Linux (or more accurately, the Linux desktop ecosystem) doesn't support a lot of high-end PC gaming features well: HDR, Nvidia GPUs, VR, etc.
> HDR
Already supported
> Nvidia GPUs
You have it the wrong way around. NVIDIA had issues supporting Linux, not Linux supporting NVIDIA. AMD drivers work fine, so its not a linux specific issue.
> VR
SteamVR works though?
> > HDR > Already supported
Is it though? I confess I haven’t tried in a few weeks but until last time I did, to get HDR in games you had to start a session with `gamescope` rather than a DE, and still had to set a bunch of flags - and in some ways have a very subpar experience with problems with mouse movements and other issues I can’t recall.
I exclusively game on Linux and I find the experience far superior than doing anything on the other OS, but last I checked HDR was not actually supported.
GNOME and KDE support HDR now too, so if you use those DEs you dont need gamescope anymore.
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It works on the Deck.
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For gaming and general desktop on Linux AMD is best if you want a dedicated GPU.
If you want a laptop with good battery life Intel is generally the way to go.
A lot of this is due to the enormous amount of effort Valve put into improving the open source AMD drivers, which is what is used on their Steam platform.
Of course if you want CUDA you need Nvidia, but if you use Nvidia to drive your Linux desktop expect some suffering to go along with it.
For what it’s worth I’ve been using an RTX 3090 and it’s been mostly smooth sailing for a couple years now.
Running NixOS with a pretty vanilla configuration and it has been hassle free.
I did have to disable power management at the system level because framerate suffers severely if the system sleeps and wakes back up, but I shut the system down when I’m not using it, so this was a non factor for me.
An AMD APU without a separate graphics chip is a much better option on laptops these days than Intel.
> SteamVR works though?
Not at a level where the experience is more fun than frustation.
It's getting there though. I own a high-end PC with nvidia GPU and I play VR on my Linux setup via ALVR (I own Quest 3) It's not straightforward and full of workarounds I have to do, but once you're in the game it works great
By the time it gets there there will be tons of other new features that Linux won't support.
Doubtful but ok.
It's not lacking features for me, it's lacking polish
Feature-wise the main missing feature is kernel level anticheat which I personally don't care about
AFAICT HDR is supported, like on the Steam Deck
HDR on Nvidia with Linux is still very glitchy, I've had the driver crash a few times trying to use it.
Ah good to know.
I think Windows isn’t that different, just that there's more motivation for NVIDIA or Microsoft to fix those things. I recall not that long ago a combination of Windows 11, my NVIDIA RTX 40xx, my previous Dell Alienware monitor also had some issues with switching between SDR and HDR (and later Dolby Vision brought even more of a mess).
Meanwhile Android and iOS phones have been able to do it flawlessly for a while now…
Doesn't support NVIDIA GPU's!? Is this a display or gaming specific thing?
All the ML people are using NVIDIA GPU's on Linux.
There are indeed nvidia drivers for Linux and they're reasonably good for gaming, but the feature set sometimes lags far behind windows. There is no DLSS 3 for Linux, for instance. (as of a few months ago anyway - I haven't checked recently)
There is though. I'm playing Hitman 3 with all RTX options enabled, DLSS and frame generation
Ahh rightio. That's a shame.
Nvidia support across the desktop ecosystem is poor, for example practically nonfunctional in Sway. And just buggy in other Wayland based desktop environments (kde seems to be the best in my experience).
WRT Nvidia+Sway this was certainly true not so long ago. But since the latest Ubuntu release and with a recent driver I am running this combo and it works flawlessly.
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I'm doing PCI passthrough of a 1080 to an archaic tiling X11 window manager and so far it Just Works with noeveau. XFCE also worked fine before I decided I don't want a full DE. Rock stable. I will move dists before I move to Wayland by the looks of it.
i3 should be pretty easy switch from sway if you haven't tried.
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I have Debian with KDE Plasma 6 and I have enabled HDR
Can you even watch decent Netflix on Linux yet?
Up to full HD, depending on what Netflix streams out. But this has nothing to do with graphics drivers or GPU performance.
Yeah, but it does have to do with graphics in the linux desktop ecosystem and is particularly relevant to those without a dedicated gaming machine.
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