Linux Gaming

Eh... advantages = VERY lightweight, user control does exist, no bloatware.

Drawbacks = some games won't work and/or require some turbonerd tweaking in order to work

Thats pretty much it.

More drawbacks I can think of

• VR gaming is a much worse experience due to neglected linux drivers and SteamVR linux version
• Discord screen sharing is in a bad state still
• Variable refresh rate realistically requires wayland on a multi-monitor setup which comes with its own caveats

Despite these I think if you get a setup that works for you the experience will be better on Linux.

For distros I've always been of the opinion that Arch-based is the best choice for people switching due to the vastness of the AUR; for that I can recommend EndeavourOS.

A big one for me and the main reason I haven't started using Linux full time, and I'm sure it's in your points but not called out directly but anti cheat support is terrible on Linux. I own a steam deck and I used to play Fortnite with my wife and her brothers and it can technically run it (it worked on windows and install), and even if you use proton to run the windows version, I've heard their anticheat can straight up ban you because "Linux isn't a supported os at this time". It's not that their anticheat doesn't work on Linux or is missing a proton extension, but solely epic doesn't want to so they aren't supporting it. This is fairly common with big multiplayer games, like Fortnite, halo, call of duty, battlefield, and alot of others. It's a pain since proton is built as a "use at your own risk, may not work 100% but it works atleast" and some companies actively refuse to allow that. The only way I've been able to play any of those games is by either cloud gaming or in home streaming which isn't available sometimes. So until Linux doesn't have that limitation in gaming, where alot of major triple A titles actively refuse to work solely cause it's Linux, I can't switch my personal PC to Linux as I already got my steam deck for Linux gaming, and my windows desktop as a backup.

Firstly disclaimer, instance url. In my limited experience (on various flavours of Arch, including vanilla), most steam games I've tried have worked with minimal tweaking. FF XIV (running outside of steam) also runs with only minimal hickups (occasionally stays on a black screen and has to be restarted on my system).

I've had no issues so far from nvidia's proprietary drivers, I've yet to try the open source alternative.

At the end of the day, how much of a hassle it is, depends entirely on the games you intend to play. For me, I ended up setting up a windows VM with GPU passthrough for the more stubborn games, though so far I've only needed it for one.

TL;DR: YMMV, but it's far better than even a few years ago.

What finally drove me back to windows: some games just will not work all the time:

Especially the riot games (which I mainly play) are not made for Linux. Valorant doestn run at all (correct me if this changed) because of the anti cheat.

League will only run when the chads from the internet have written a working lutris script.

While the anti cheat of valorant needs kernel privileges and this is clearly some fckd up shit on riots side and not at all Linux fault, the result still is the same: it doesn't work.

Same goes for lutris league. While riot not supporting linux is clearly their fault and the people who provide the lutris whine scripts for free for everyone are the real MVPs, the result is a disadvantage in usabilitiy compared to windows. Sometimes it takes time for the community to come up with solutions to changes in the game, sometimes the installer scripts don't work at all because of some quirk with your specific distro/ your installed packages/your monitor format/etc.pp. Sure you could configure wine yourself, but you need an computer science degree for that which I don't have.

As far as I know Rockstar's luncher just works fine in Proton, no issues there.

DRM is not a problem anymore unless you pirate (anti-DRM modifications can break in Wine), but it is anti-cheats systems. Some games like Call of Duty Warzone, FIFa 23 and Destiny 2 don't work because of it. (The last two only because they are programmed to not work on Linux voluntarely, Destiny 2 will ban every Steam account that connect via Proton)

Most devices work out of the box now, tinkering has reduced by a lot especially with easier distros.

For the drawbacks:

1. I've never used those other launchers (I just buy from Steam), but I know at least Ubisoft works through Steam, so it should work reasonably well through WINE
2. This is essentially the same as 3, Gamepass is a huge pile of DRM
3. True, though more work than most expect
4. NVIDIA support is fine if you use the proprietary drivers, which are usually packaged on most distros; I used NVIDIA for gaming for ~10 years on Linux without issues, though I'm now on AMD for Wayland support
5. I haven't had any issues for the last 10 years out so, at least not any more than on Windows; that said, I make sure to only buy Intel network cards (eliminates most headaches) and tend to avoid bleeding edge tech (too expensive and buggy, even on Windows)
6. True, though look at Ratchet & Clank on Steam Deck, it's essentially Day 1 support; that has been the case more often than not lately, Valve is killing it
7. Not really; I don't tinker much because I just don't have the time for it anymore; I have three kids, a full-time job, and I only get a few hours each week to play games; if a game requires tinkering to work, I bail and tag it with "Technical Issues" in Steam; I think I have 5 games there, and at least one has moved out just by trying again a year or so later

To be fair, I'm coming at this from the perspective of a patient gamer. I generally play older SP games (rarely play MP), wait to upgrade hardware (recently bought a 5600 and 6650XT to upgrade my 1700 and 960GTX), and am pretty technically inclined (I'm a SW dev by day, and have used Linux exclusively for ~15 years).

For me, Windows is unacceptable, and macOS is too limiting for hardware choices (and I just don't like it; I've used macOS at work for 2 years and still dislike it).

So instead of discussing native advantages of Linux, I'll list things I'm glad I don't have to deal with on Windows:

• I control my updates, and can update my OS while using it
• the OS doesn't need a ton of disk space
• no licensing nonsense, so I can keep my same install going even if I drastically change hardware (I upgraded my CPU and mobo, and I didn't need to do anything but bring my old drive along)
• most software can be installed using the package manager or FlatPak, on Windows and macOS, there's very little consistency
• pretty much no viruses; Linux isn't a big target, so it's just not something I worry about; and installing through the package manager eliminates most threats
• no spying/telemetry in the OS, and no privacy settings I feel I need to tweak
• no bloatware, if a distro has stuff I don't like, I can pick one that doesn't
• full disk encryption is a thing, including the boot partition; on Windows, the boot partition isn't encrypted even with "full disk" encryption with bitlocker
• command line is really useful, but you don't need it for gaming
• lots of game servers run on Linux, so you can learn to self-host or run something for a local LAN if you want; not sure if that's a thing on Windows

For me, Linux solves my non-gaming problems much better than Windows, and I fundamentally disagree with how Windows works so I refuse to use it for gaming. But even for people who aren't like me, Linux is a pretty good option with few downsides, provided you don't need something specific to run (e.g. that one MP game you play all the time). If you can be a little flexible, Linux offers a ton of choice and even more freedom.

Edit: As for distro, just try stuff. I think Mint is decent, so I tend to recommend it, but I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed myself (also recommended). There's not a ton of difference when it comes to running games for most distros, so pick one that seems to have decent community support and have fun! You can always change later, I've used several (Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, OpenSUSE Leap, Debian, probably others).

@hydroel Two biggest drawbacks are certain games with anti-cheat not running (however some do), and peripheral support (my Thrustmaster racing wheel doesn't get force feedback).

Some games (Like Factorio) have a better native Linux version than the Native Windows version.

I use Arch Linux, but wouldn't recommend it to a novice. If you're only gaming ChimeraOS is a good place to start. If you're really new to Linux and scared to break things, an immutable OS like Vanilla may be better suited.

As others have mentioned, many multiplayer games have anti-cheat, which is more likely not to work in Proton than it is. This area may continue to improve. See http://areweanticheatyet.com

Personally, I play a lot of Japanese visual novels, which usually aren't released on Steam. Games encumbered with PlayDRM from DLsite will work in Wine, but all games from DMM are encumbered with DRM that doesn't work in Wine. Wine is a compatibility layer for Windows games that makes them work on GNU/Linux, in case you weren't aware.

On the other hand, many physical releases of visual novels aren't encumbered with DRM, so they work fine in Wine. AlphaROM can be worked around by inputting your serial key into the SETTEC website. More information here: https://wiki.comfysnug.space/doku.php?id=visualnovel:problems#drm_and_region_restrictions

Newer games might not be optimized for Linux in the first place

This is usually not true. There aren't many native GNU/Linux games today; most of them are played using Proton, Steam's compatibility layer for Windows games. There is no inherent penalty in translating Direct3D calls to Vulkan calls. Vulkan has the potential to be faster than Direct3D, actually. Native games may not be as optimized as the Windows counterpart, but as most of these are small indie games, performance is usually not an issue anyway.

And finally, let’s say I make the switch. What Linux distro should I use?

It's a good idea to use a rolling release distribution. This is mostly to get the latest drivers; Steam and Lutris both ship a runtime with most of the dependencies you need to play games otherwise, though installing Wine on Ubuntu and Debian is harder, for example. Fedora and openSUSE are good choices. openSUSE in particular has robust graphical tools for package management and other activities which other distributions might force you to use the command line for.

I think a rolling release distribution is a good choice for a general desktop anyway. You're running the latest software, which means the latest bug fixes and security fixes.

I think the biggest challenge is anti-cheat. I don't know if there is any solution instead of waiting for native release (like Dota2 and CSGO). Also, although I don't like Microsoft GamePass, lacking the support of it means we may need to pay extra to try various games.

I think Wine/Proton works really great nowadays (well I've repeated it at different places). As 2023-07-28, ProtonDB shows that in the top 1000 games, 75% are rated gold or better.

When it comes to distro, I think most popular ones are good enough if they meet to conditions (1) packages are not too out-dated (2) Not difficult to install some non-free dependencies (like rpmfusion)

I know you dissed cloud gaming, but Xbox cloud gaming has actually worked fairly well for me personally on my steam deck, and for the most part (after some config), runs nearly as good as inhome streaming, which 99% of the time I can't even tell isn't running on device. I've also messed with Nvidia gforcenow and Amazon luma and those could fill a pretty big Linux compatibility gap if I solely gamed on Linux (probably using a controller or steam deck due to xcloud gaming not supporting mouse or keyboard input yet but it's progress). I even figured some interesting things you can do with steam regarding that, in addition to Microsoft's instructions on adding xcloud gaming to steam deck, like setting up different launch options to handle different users under different Microsoft accounts, directly linking a game (having a non steam game called Fortnite with a custom icon that launches xcloud gaming 's url for that game and boots right into it) and some others to make it more enjoyable but just like everything on Linux you gotta tinker with it. The "no native gamepass" is a big deal to me lately, it's actually a pretty nice service and I remember seeing posts a few years ago talking about windows store format version of proton which would allow gamepass to run natively on Linux but I think we're still awhile form that happening.

A lot of the game launchers you mentioned work really well through an app called bottles (you can get this on flathub or the aur) this works really well as they have one click deployments of battle.net etc. You can also add your own executables if you have a game that doesn’t use a launcher or you’ve got a drm free game from GOG for example.

Arch Linux and its derivatives (EndeavourOS, Garuda etc) will have the latest drivers which will help boost performance. These tend to be harder to use than most though as there’s less online guides for them compared to Ubuntu and its derivatives and they require more time in the terminal.

PopOS (ignoring the bug that ltt came across) is a really user friendly distro that a lot of people use and they have an nvidia iso you can download so you don’t have to download drivers yourself.

Another distro worth mentioning is nobara linux. This is made by gloriousEggRoll and is based on Fedora. This has had a lot of gaming related patches applied to it and will have the GE versions of proton installed by default.

Speaking of protonup-qt is a really good app for managing the GE versions of proton that tend to work better than the official steam versions. This can be installed through flathub or is available on most distros

There will still be some games that straight up don’t work due to drm like rainbow six siege (as far as i know). ProtonDB has a really extensive list of games that do and don’t work on linux from the steam store. And for non-steam games lutris has a rating of how well games work.

Also for games made for windows performance will always be worse on linux than windows. Especially when running through wine/proton. The performance isn't a massive difference but if you're someone who's really into maximising framerates you might suffer a bit.

Another caveat is that although raytracing does work on linux native games like doom eternal, currently raytracing does not work on windows games running through proton/wine.

For me the biggest issue is always FMV playback.