I’ve dabbled with Linux and I’ve finally decided to try and switch to it for real, mostly because I’m starting a new job soonish that will require more Linux knowledge, but also because I’m getting sick of all the Windows privacy issues.

I’m actually liking it better than I thought. Taking an attitude that I’m sticking with it is giving me more of a drive to actually fix the issues I’m having rather than moaning about them, and it’s a good opportunity to learn.

The one thing I’m struggling with though is gaming. I’ve got a 2060S which I need for CUDA, but I’ve got the drivers working. I’ve not exactly been through my whole Steam library but I’ve not had anything running acceptably yet. DEATHLOOP, for example, on Windows runs at smooth at near 4k. On Wayland the input latency is unplayable and it crashes out every few minutes anyway. I improved it by switching to X11 but I’m still only getting 10-15 FPS when it was smooth in Windows. Even Skyrim has input latency and it’s clearly not running as fast as it should be.

When I check on ProtonDB for help I see no consistency in the settings people are using. Most of the time they just say Experimental, and I figure that changes over time anyway so it’s no help to me anyway.

Is there any helpful advice online as most of the time I just get told to try every proton version and fork until I find something that works? I’ve not even gotten into figuring out what stuff like Lutris is.

I’m on Fedora in case that’s important.

  • twinnie@feddit.ukOP
    0·
    9 months ago

    Nonetheless getting a new graphics card is kind of the nuclear option. Would it actually help that much. DEATHLOOP would still crash surely?

    • d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz
      0·
      9 months ago

      You clearly don’t know how infamous nVidia is in the Linux circles. Watch this video for starters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPh-5P4XH6o

      Buying a graphics card isn’t a nuclear option. First of all, the RX 6600/XT which I recommended is reasonably priced. Second, we’re taking about the future of your ENTIRE Linux desktop experience as a whole here - switching to AMD is a HUGE QoL improvement, which you may not appreciate now - but if you continue it use nVidia, you’ll realise how painful it is. With AMD, you don’t need to install any special drivers or anything, it just works. Even Wayland. Third, I’m not asking you to get rid of your nVidia card completely, you can still keep it for compute, so it’s not like it’s going away. So I disagree that this is a nuclear option.

      The #1 mistake rookies make when switching to Linux is assuming that it’ll run on everything and work with every piece of hardware. That might be mostly true, but how well it runs is a big factor, so it’s important that you check your hardware compatibility first before blindly switching.

      Make no mistake, Linux is a completely different OS to Windows, and it requires either support from hardware manufacturers, or community effort, for a piece of hardware to work. Unfortunately nVidia is pretty hostile against opensource, which is also why we are hostile against nVidia and discourage people from buying any of their stuff. Fuck nVidia, why should we support a shitty company that doesn’t care about contributing to the opensouce community, when neither AMD nor Intel have any issues and behave well?

      Also, I know you wouldn’t believe me that AMD would have no issues running Deathloop, so I went ahead and actually bought Deathloop just for testing (you’re welcome), and I’m happy to report that it’s running buttery smooth at 60FPS locked, on my old and very basic AMD desktop (Ryzen 5 3600 + RX 6600 XT), @ 1440p @ “Very High” settings, using FSR 2.0. This is on Bazzite, a gaming optimised distro based on Fedora Atomic, using Proton-GE 8-30 compatibility. The only thing I changed in the Steam settings was set it to use Proton-GE. As for the game settings, I enabled FSR because AMD’s FSR rocks (but it worked fine without it too).

      Pictures of my setup:

    • LifeCoffeeGaming@lemmy.world
      0·
      9 months ago

      Kinda agree. New graphics card is deffo a nuclear option. I’m running pop os and haven’t come across a game I can’t run as it’s got the Nvidia drivers built it. I’d probably try swap distro before buying a new card just in case it’s that. That’s just time and effort rather than buying something that ‘might’ work.

      Probably also worth noting that valve are updating the proton drivers all the time, they want the entire steam catalogue to work on steam deck so I would expect every game to work on proton over time. Might just be a waiting game tbh.