The fact that gaming on Linux went from "ha ha, very funny" to most games just work and only a few FPS games are not working at all (and most of them doing so on purpose by blocking Proton in anti-cheat rootkits rather than because of just not offically supporting Linux) is a real testement to both Linux rising as a legitimate computing plaform and Valve's work on making Linux a true gaming platform.
Also, thanks to Jason @killyourfm for this nice article BTW! https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2024/08/21/linux-scores-a-surprising-gaming-victory-against-windows-11/
Now we just need more good tools for video editing (DaVinci Resolve on Linux has to many holes and FOSS options aren't very complete especially with GPU timeline rendering missing completely) and more work on Wine for creative applications. Of course, I do want more native Linux applications, but getting to at least work is an important step! We have tools like @flathub and I hope that we see more propietary applications at least work on a Linux port or at the bare minimum support Wine.
I’ve been running my Asus G14 with Ryzen APU and Nvidia 3060 dGPU on Fedora 40 and KDE for months. The fact that I can just right click a game shortcut and say “use the dGPU” is such great quality of life compared to just a year or two ago. Don’t even need to use a custom kernel for the G14 anymore. I’ve found KDE to much friendlier for gaming as a whole though after trying Gnome for a bit too.
My Debian desktop has been similarly solid even using flatpak Steam though I’m all team Red on that machine.
@cameronbosch @killyourfm the rise of the penguin is inevitable
@cameronbosch @killyourfm What I did a few years ago is writing a script to plot progress in gaming via Proton from the official ProtonDB data that was put upstream openly on Github.
https://gitlab.com/TheJackiMonster/protondb-evalute
You can see from about 45% being playable in a decent way in 2019, we have come to around 73% of Windows games being playable now (in about 6 years).
I'm looking forward to the next 6 years if that's the speed we're going.
@thejackimonster @cameronbosch WHOA! At a glance, this is really valuable (and for me, actionable) data! I'm already picturing an article or two that could utilize this data to paint some very promising pictures of Linux gaming. Mainstream audiences need to see this.
Thank you for your work!
@killyourfm @thejackimonster I agree! That is impressive!
@killyourfm @cameronbosch I usually update the graphs every month the ProtonDB reports get commited upstream. But there's also the trend.csv file under resources which can be used to visualize own graphs.
The big change in gold ratings rather than platinum comes from the Steam Deck launch by the way. Since my scripts convert the new report scheme from ProtonDB to the old rating categories, more critical reports didn't achieve full platinum rating.
@killyourfm @thejackimonster @cameronbosch Jason, I also wonder how many old games have stopped working on modern Windows that keep working with Proton.
@TeamLinux01 @thejackimonster @cameronbosch That would be an interesting exploration, though probably a (fun) rabbit hole I don't personally have time for.
@cameronbosch @killyourfm @TeamLinux01 If there was an open database with games being reported to have issues on Windows and those reports include their Steam-appid, it would be possible to calculate an intersection with ProtonDB.
@cameronbosch @killyourfm I've been stunned, I threw Linux on my new gaming computer as a temporary solution while I figured out how to transfer my windows license from my old computer and I just haven't bothered to change, because the pain of getting games working on Linux is less than the pain of dealing with trying to get Windows to work how it did back in Windows 7