How are people coping with games that just won’t run on Linux (aside from leaving them behind)? Do you dual boot Windows? Virtualize? What’s your strategy for this?
This will be extremely rare for me since I don’t play a lot of competitive stuff, but I’d love to find a solution. I have a large library, and it’s bound to happen from time to time.
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(aside from leaving them behind)
I do leave them behind. Same as with console exclusives or games for Macs (if they exist). If they don’t run on my system, I play some of the hundreds of thousands of games that do.
Nowadays I just play something else, so many games out there that work flawlessly (thanks to wine/proton). I also did virtualization successfully for some time but it can take a while to get it right. The best and simplest solution is to get a separate SSD just for windows and dual boot.
I don’t buy games that won’t run on linux.
aside from leaving them behind
Thats asking for an empty comment section.
This is the way
Dual boot, although I usually prefer to drop it rather than go to the trouble.
I wouldn’t recommend virtualization, not only do you lose performance when you need it most, but (depending on the devices and system) setting everything up properly can be very tedious.
this rarely happens, but when i run into a game that doesn’t work i - check protondb.com to see if someone else has already found a solution. trying different proton versions can sometimes help as well
Absolutely this. It is becoming increasingly rare to find a game that doesn’t work in linux (excluding stupid copy protection/anti-cheat implementations). We haven’t reached the works-out-of-the-box stage but the combination of proton-ge/wine-ge with lutris or heroic provides a solid alternative to games not on steam.
The PCGamingWiki is also another good resource especially for older or more obscure games. Most fixes are Windows specific but they can be used on Linux. For example here is the page for Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit where it links fan patches and an open source engine recreation.
If someone is really desperate there’s always the option of searching GitHub issue pages like dxvk to see if it has been documented, if there is a temporary fix, if a fix is on the way, or if it’s going to remain a constant issue (ex. FiveM).
I still have some games that I can only run on my PS3, but I don’t really use it much.
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It has been my experience that avoiding games with shitty features like microtransactions and whatnot, or where the studio treats its staff poorly, that kind of thing, also virtually guarantees Linux compatibility. Funny that.
I dual boot anyway to use some features on my scanner, so I might as well use that in case something doesn’t run. So far I’ve been able to move all games I play to Linux. Older games tend to run better than on Windows, in my experience.
Before going with dual boot I was considering running a VM, which seems way cooler but also very tricky to set up properly with passthrough and all that.
I use Proton Experimental to play my games and they all work without exception. I’m in my late 30s, so I no longer play competitive games that have a kernel rootkit, I mean kernel anti-cheat.
Basically, Linux gaming is like this: If you want to play competitive games with anti-cheat, stay or play in Windows. For all other games, play in Linux.
This has generally been my experience as well. The sole exception: Distant Worlds. I’ve never, ever gotten it to run with any version of Proton.
Are you me? I used to play some online multiplayer games, but switching to linux (some 3 years ago?) and being less competitive came hand in hand. Now I enjoy single players only (with sprinkle of Path of Exile and World of Tanks (well, not really anymore)) and can’t understand why should I even consider going back to those toxic waters of competitive play… Am I officially old?
Haha. we’re officially old. I was an extremely competitive gamer back then. I played Quake 3, UT 99, Tribes 2, America’s Army, etc. I was even in a Tribes 2 squad and we basically practiced for tournaments every day.
But now that life is stressful enough with the responsibilities I have, I just can’t play competitive games anymore. I just want to enjoy the story. I no longer have the stamina and the reflex for competitive games anymore.
Dualbooting is the easiest, IMO.
I had a shrunk down windows partition and a tiny portion of HDD space to install the couple games that only worked on windows.
I’ve since nuked both partitions, as some of the games now do work on Linux, and the rest were no longer enough to actually make be boot into windows to play.
A “ez” solution would be simply stay on Windows and leave Linux as a novelty. A somewhat complicated solution – double booting (apparently Windows can be a privacy nightmare even while dual-booting). A quite hard one would be installing Linux and running Windows on a VM with GPU passthrough. The “are you bleeping kidding me?” approach would be buying another PC just to run Linux while leaving your “main” PC for Windows.
“Is there a sane approach for this?” – yep, there is! Which is, buying a console and use it solely for gaming while leaving your main PC for daily browsing and everything else (i.e Linux).
To march into a thread asking about what they can do with their PC to play as many games as possible just to tell them to drop several hundred dollars on a console that will only be able to play games available on that console is a bold move
Tbf 80% of responses here are just “don’t play the games that don’t run” which is just as helpful.
When I had to worry about that,I dual-booted. It’s the simplest solution. I don’t really play multiplayer PC games anyway, and multiplayer anti-cheat is 90%+ of the reason games won’t run on Linux nowadays with the advancements made to Proton, so I don’t really have that problem anymore and I haven’t had any Windows on my system in a few years.
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I also have a dual-boot, with fresh install of Windows I debloated as much as possible, that I use for games that I can’t get to run even after trying protondb.com. However, it has only happened one or two times since I switched more than half a year ago, and I usually just give up on and refund games that I can’t get to work on Steam. I have a lot of other things to play, and usually I wasn’t that much dead set on playing that particular one. I do make sure to post on the forums of the game when that happens, though.
I’ve also recently stumbled upon https://windowsxlite.com/24H2ProV2/, which should be a debloated and minimized Windows (4Gb installed size is mindblowing, considering that all my Windows VMs have like 40Gb freshly installed). The site looks shady, but it was recommended to me by my coleague who works in cybersecurity, so I hope he knows what he’s doing. I haven’t got the time to test it yet, but it does mention that it should work for games, so who knows.
