this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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Yes they can be. However, if you want to use a compatibility layer with them like proton the game files have to be stored in exFat (Linux file system format) format. If you have them on a drive formatted for NTFS (windows file system format) the game won’t start and wont tell you why. Games with native versions will run fine from a NTFS partition.
@beesterman @lightnsfw What?!? I run games using proton on an NTFS partition just fine...
If you do this it's safer to use lowntfs-3g so everything is forced to lower case... And yes using a proper linux filesystem is way safer.
I just recently switched to Linux and spent a couple of hours trying to figure out why I couldn’t launch any games with proton from my NTFS drive. From my windows install. Moving my games over to a Linux FS fixed everything. But it’s nice to know it’s possible.
You're not alone!! I just fought with it too for like a week and eventually gave up.. what os flavor are you runnin? I was trying manjaro but even after shifting all my games to exfat something seemed to be bork 🤔 I was considering popOS but I've heard mixed opinions on that one!
I’m running Linux mint. I’ve tried to switch to Linux a few times but after the steam deck/proton and with the approachability of Linux mint I’ve actually managed to fully switch to Linux for my daily driver/ gaming. I still have to dual boot for the rare application or game I can’t get to run but for the most part it worked OOB especially for nvidia users. Plus the Linux mint forms are typically great about supporting new users without alerting the “I use arch btw” Linux horde that will just give you some condescending response and downvote you into oblivion for having the audacity to be new.
Plus the GUI is great and offers an easy out for beginners if they are struggling with changing something via the CLI so you can learn or just say fuck it and use the GUI cause it’s easier. I’ve since tinkered with LM for a while and will likely move on eventually. But it provides the perfect foundation for switching from windows IMO.
As for steam I would say that the local installation using the .deb from steams website works best. But if you rly want to you can use the flatpak but you will run into some frustrating issues regularly and some devastating edge cases so proceed with caution lol.
Thanks for the response! I'll be giving mint a shot next for sure! 🙂
I'm guessing symlinking the compatdata folder to a Linux friendly filesystem, like Valve recommends here, would probably fix issues like that. I'm sure there must be edge cases but, in my admittedly not extensive experience, I haven't encountered any myself.
So currently my backups are on my media server which is ext4. These would be moved to my gaming system when I wanted to install them. I would just need to make sure that was formatted in exfat for this to work?
No, in that case you're fine. Exfat is really only good for shared drives. Just use the default of your distribution.
That makes sense. Thanks
Sometimes running applications from NTFS will have issues so I recommend doing rsync to a Linux FS before running