Gaming On Linux – The Metagame

I’ve always been a big PC gamer. But my latest hobby combines that gaming passion with Linux. I’ve been watching Linux gaming from the sidelines for years but my assessment was always that Windows was for gaming, and Linux was for Getting Shit Done. The two worlds didn’t overlap and I was resigned to dual boot, or use two entirely separate machines.

This has all changed in a relatively short period of time, and the catalysts are the DXVK project and Proton which is a compatibility layer for Windows on Linux. It is a fork of WINE but really focuses on gaming compatibility. A really cool trick of DXVK is the ability to convert DirectX calls to Vulkan (DirectX to Vulkan) – a lower level of GPU instructions. This allows games to run very close to (if not even slightly better on some titles like RDR2) than their DirectX counterparts.

In addition to Proton (with DXVK) Two other initiatives have really propelled gaming into what I could call the realm of approach-ability: A native Steam client, and the Lutris project.

Steam

Steam, in case you have been living under a rock has a huge market share and influence on how games are distributed. There have been many imitators, but Steam still does it best – at least as far as Linux is concerned. A few titles have native Linux clients but most don’t. What Steam on Linux does is seamlessly integrate their compatibility tool Proton with their UI. You can click a game’s properties and check “Force the use of a specific Steam Play Compatibility Tool”. (Incidentally Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Pillars of Eternity, Age of Wonders III are all Linux native!)

Lutris

Lutris takes a more inclusive approach. While it can leverage DXVK WINE builds (and even Proton builds) it allows you to access games from all of the other game clients including Epic Games Launcher, Uplay, and Origin. The software operates as a database of scripts that are user maintained to configure WINE environments for maximum compatibility. It creates a bottle per game and when you uninstall it removes the entire bottle. No left over DLLs, or files – they exist in complete encapsulation. Even better because they are all encapsulated you can run one game as Windows XP, and another as Windows 10 – each one contains its own environment. Below you can see that I have Far Cry 5 (Uplay), Titanfall 2 (Origin) and Control (Epic Games Store), alongside standalone games (Return of the Obra Dinn is a standalone install).

I’ve been so thrilled with Lutris that I support them on Patreon.

Gaming Considerations

Emptor caveat! With all things Linux you need to be prepared to tinker. If you want to crack open a beer, boot a game, and jump right in then you’d best look elsewhere. That being said, I’d take a wild ass guess and say 80% just work, 10% work with minor tinkering, and the remainder either don’t work at all, or don’t work well enough to be enjoyable because of performance issues (looking at you Control, and Anno 1800). Most games run smooth as butter and its easy to forget its not running on Windows.

The biggest performance issue seems to be what I call microstutter. It is an jarring experience where ~5 or so frames drop. This usually happens while assets are loading. I can’t be sure it isn’t CPU overhead from my encrypted partition. Other people talk about caching shaders. This takes a bit of your disk to compile the shaders so they are ready to use and not being translated in real time.

Before purchasing a game I typically check these three things:

• Is there a native Linux client (the answer is usually no, but I’ve been surprised)

• Are there compatibility issues listed on ProtonDB?

• (Non-Steam titles only) Is there an installer on Lutris

Another big consideration is that aside from Steam, most of the gaming clients are bad. I don’t think this is a problem specific to Linux – they are just bad. Often times to fix a crash or performance you will need to disable all of the UI overlay garbage that these launchers try and throw overtop of your game. Often they tell you to put the client into offline mode. This likely means that multiplayer support is going to be limited on these titles. If you need multiplayer – Steam is probably your best bet. Linux is officially supported and the build is very stable, and I’ve played many hours of multiplayer games (Divinity 2, Tabletop Simulator, and others).

Utilities

A few other thoughts and tools to get you started – MangoHUD is a great FPS overlay. It not only shows FPS, but it goes into frametime, and shows CPU/GPU loads.

Gamemode is a utility that is supposed to improve game performance. It is supposed to change the nice / ionice levels of your games and manage your CPU governor (if on a laptop) to maximize performance. I’m not sure how much of a difference it makes – and these are changes you can make yourself but this tool does it automatically when a game is launched. Lutris and a few titles natively look for this executable and use it if available.

Of course you’ll want the latest nVidia or AMD GPU drivers. There are some useful tools in the nVidia control panel like forcing a composition pipeline which is a rather interesting way to deal with the frame tearing in a way different from V-sync.

Conclusions

Gaming on Linux has been something I never thought I’d see happen. I’m sure that cloud gaming (aka game streaming) has been propelling development in this area. After all, companies like Valve aren’t working on these projects out of the goodness of their hearts. And if you can get a Windows game to run in a DXVK environment you are making it cloud ready and can scale up Linux servers better than you probably could on Windows servers. That is my theory anyway.

It is also wonderful not having to switch operating systems when I want to work or game. I can do both. In fact – my workspace 3 is now the gaming workspace. I’m back to one machine, and one environment that is comprehensive for my needs.

If you’ve been on the sidelines looking on now is a great time to dive in. And with each release of Proton, and Lutris support gets better and better. And you are helping the chicken and the egg problem – developers are more likely to support Linux if there are more Linux gamers. So try the metagame of gaming on Linux – its quite rewarding!