And that’s not like “oh, about 3/4 of my favorite old games work without too much trouble.” It’s more like opening steam and “holy crap, half of my old favorites have native Linux versions and everything else just works using proton.”
Remember, the Steam Deck and the general shittiness of Microsoft has directed a lot of Valve’s resources towards gaming on Linux.
If you want to play some brand new AAA multiplayer thing with rootkit type anti cheat, then maybe you’d be stuck dual booting into windows.
I’d argue that those games could be abandoned, because there is SO much choice out there that I am certain I already own copies of dozens of games that I will never play. But if it’s a matter of playing what your friends are into, then yeah make the computer adapt to the human needs and not the other way around.
Can’t wait to see the day when every game, or as close to 100% as possible, are made for Linux Native and Linux Compatible. We are getting there day by day
If someone, totally not me, were in possession of exe-files of games outside a platform like Steam, Epic or whatever, would it be possible to run them on a Linux distribution? Say something like a Steam rip or a GOG rip. Said someone has tried researching but didn’t find any conclusive answers
Yes. It’s very easy. There’s really two ways to do it. You can actually open Steam and add non-steam games to steam if you want it all in the same place. Otherwise you can use something like Lutris, which is what I do. That gives you a nice place for everything also and you can even load your Steam games on. But yes you can absolutely use GOG stuff and exe files.
What would adding the games to Steam accomplish? I assume I can’t just log on to my account and have the required files to download and install the games since they’re not originally from Steam. Or is it just a matter of being able to launch them once they’re added to the client? Or a convenience thing?
So, I don’t know off the top of my head, but I need to figure it out as well because I have plenty of game installers that I’ll want to use eventually. Lots in my GOG account, others from 20 years ago with sources lost to time, lol.
I would expect that Steam could be used as a launcher, but I know there is also an app called Lutris for managing games and compatibility layers and such.
I’m thinking about it, and yeah I may have not yet installed a windows version of a game outside of Steam at all. Honestly I have most often installed Linux native versions via steam.
I’m not sure there is a go-to, which is good. There are some gaming-focused ones to be sure, but i’m using Mint which is super mainstream focused and user friendly (and based on ubuntu and debian) and I’ve had a great experience.
Absolute truth. I haven’t run into a single game that doesn’t run on my second-from-top-of-the-line gaming PC I built last year under Linux. I know they exist because I see articles about a developer removing Proton support for odd reasons, but it hasn’t impacted me yet.
MS has largely made their own OS irrelevant by putting the Office Suite in the cloud. If you need Excel but don’t want Copilot throwing all your screengrabs to Redmond a box running Ubuntu or Mint or Bazzite or MacOS (a legit option for some people with niche applications that cater to the Apple crowd). MS is following the same playbook with the Xbox brand. If everything is an Xbox then why would you harness yourself to a crappy MS branded one?
It’s funny you mention the office side of things in addition to gaming, because I have remarked about the same thing.
Using Librewolf(firefox) on Linux, all of the M365 applications work fine in the browser. Probably even better, since I can actually close them when I want to. I use Teams the most, which is obviously a very connected thing. But for a word processor, which seems like the most local thing ever, the web app lets me share in MS format and accept comments and all that.
I could absolutely see Microsoft’s execs planning out the most efficient way to grind every bit of value out of the windows brand on their path to subscription everything.
Depending on the games you play, thanks to Valve with Proton and Steam Deck, most games are actually already playable on Linux. The only exception is newer multi-player online games with kernel-level anticheat. I haven’t done any gaming on Windows in years pretty much.
While there is quite the push thanks to Valve, they built upon the work of others, mostly Wine (which I think they fund nowadays) and DXVK (they hired the dev after a short while). So they’re definitely not freeloading, but the main lifting has been done by Codeweavers and Wine contributors through their massive work over the years, plus the quantum leap that was DXVK.
I’m not trying to shame Valve here, they definitely go beyond what they’d be required to by license, but I feel it’s also not fair to call them the reason most games work under Linux when others have poured literal years of work into making it possible.
I assumed you knew I was talking about the DXVK dev given that he’s literally an employee of Valve, as you mentioned. Either way, I’ll now be more detailed with my comment.
Of course all the contributors to Wine deserve credit too, and I do have an active Crossover license, but Valve are the ones who explicitly made a push for gaming on Linux and focused specifically on the gaming aspect. Wine covers everything, not just gaming, Proton is specifically for gaming. It’s doubly true given that they want to sell more units of the Steam Deck so they can get more people into the Linux and Valve ecosystem. Not that you don’t know that, but it’s worth pointing out regardless.
I’ve been daily driving Linux since before Proton was even a thing, and the difference between gaming then versus now is not even comparable, it is infinitely better now and keeps improving. I no longer have to hope that a new game will work or that I can somehow manage to get the right set of libraries and flags to get it to run, if a new game comes out and it doesn’t have a kernel-level anti-cheat, I can expect that it will work out of the box just fine without any tweaking because I have seen this happen multiple times now. I’ve even started getting into Mac gaming to get some of that tweaking and configuring thrill back that I used to get from Linux gaming, having to tweak and configure things to get them to work properly or to work even better.
Steam has a native Linux client and every game I bought on Windows runs just fine on Linux.
All my older, non-steam games, like “Deus Ex” or “Giants: Citizen Kabuto” run great under Wine, using the default settings. Also, there are Linux versions of DOSBox, for older games.
There is also the Lutris project. I play Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online with no issue. AND they have install scripts for many games on their site.
yay! hi mint!
I am also newly minty fresh.
Although up graded anyway because the games I play aren’t an Linux.
The only downside is gaming.
I made a portable flashdrive for Linux for anything I want to keep privet and left windows for exclusively gaming.
Games work great in Linux!
And that’s not like “oh, about 3/4 of my favorite old games work without too much trouble.” It’s more like opening steam and “holy crap, half of my old favorites have native Linux versions and everything else just works using proton.”
Remember, the Steam Deck and the general shittiness of Microsoft has directed a lot of Valve’s resources towards gaming on Linux.
If you want to play some brand new AAA multiplayer thing with rootkit type anti cheat, then maybe you’d be stuck dual booting into windows.
I’d argue that those games could be abandoned, because there is SO much choice out there that I am certain I already own copies of dozens of games that I will never play. But if it’s a matter of playing what your friends are into, then yeah make the computer adapt to the human needs and not the other way around.
Can’t wait to see the day when every game, or as close to 100% as possible, are made for Linux Native and Linux Compatible. We are getting there day by day
If someone, totally not me, were in possession of exe-files of games outside a platform like Steam, Epic or whatever, would it be possible to run them on a Linux distribution? Say something like a Steam rip or a GOG rip. Said someone has tried researching but didn’t find any conclusive answers
Yes. It’s very easy. There’s really two ways to do it. You can actually open Steam and add non-steam games to steam if you want it all in the same place. Otherwise you can use something like Lutris, which is what I do. That gives you a nice place for everything also and you can even load your Steam games on. But yes you can absolutely use GOG stuff and exe files.
What would adding the games to Steam accomplish? I assume I can’t just log on to my account and have the required files to download and install the games since they’re not originally from Steam. Or is it just a matter of being able to launch them once they’re added to the client? Or a convenience thing?
If it’s a new release sometimes it takes a minor fiddle but zero issues more than not.
So, I don’t know off the top of my head, but I need to figure it out as well because I have plenty of game installers that I’ll want to use eventually. Lots in my GOG account, others from 20 years ago with sources lost to time, lol.
I would expect that Steam could be used as a launcher, but I know there is also an app called Lutris for managing games and compatibility layers and such.
I’m thinking about it, and yeah I may have not yet installed a windows version of a game outside of Steam at all. Honestly I have most often installed Linux native versions via steam.
Lutris and one other program is used for that, I seem to remember. I’ll probably have to do some research. What’s the current go-to distro for gaming?
I’m not sure there is a go-to, which is good. There are some gaming-focused ones to be sure, but i’m using Mint which is super mainstream focused and user friendly (and based on ubuntu and debian) and I’ve had a great experience.
Even some Windows rootkits work well with proton. For example Helldiver 2 with nProtect work perfectly since release.
Absolute truth. I haven’t run into a single game that doesn’t run on my second-from-top-of-the-line gaming PC I built last year under Linux. I know they exist because I see articles about a developer removing Proton support for odd reasons, but it hasn’t impacted me yet.
MS has largely made their own OS irrelevant by putting the Office Suite in the cloud. If you need Excel but don’t want Copilot throwing all your screengrabs to Redmond a box running Ubuntu or Mint or Bazzite or MacOS (a legit option for some people with niche applications that cater to the Apple crowd). MS is following the same playbook with the Xbox brand. If everything is an Xbox then why would you harness yourself to a crappy MS branded one?
It’s funny you mention the office side of things in addition to gaming, because I have remarked about the same thing.
Using Librewolf(firefox) on Linux, all of the M365 applications work fine in the browser. Probably even better, since I can actually close them when I want to. I use Teams the most, which is obviously a very connected thing. But for a word processor, which seems like the most local thing ever, the web app lets me share in MS format and accept comments and all that.
I could absolutely see Microsoft’s execs planning out the most efficient way to grind every bit of value out of the windows brand on their path to subscription everything.
Depending on the games you play, thanks to Valve with Proton and Steam Deck, most games are actually already playable on Linux. The only exception is newer multi-player online games with kernel-level anticheat. I haven’t done any gaming on Windows in years pretty much.
While there is quite the push thanks to Valve, they built upon the work of others, mostly Wine (which I think they fund nowadays) and DXVK (they hired the dev after a short while). So they’re definitely not freeloading, but the main lifting has been done by Codeweavers and Wine contributors through their massive work over the years, plus the quantum leap that was DXVK.
I’m not trying to shame Valve here, they definitely go beyond what they’d be required to by license, but I feel it’s also not fair to call them the reason most games work under Linux when others have poured literal years of work into making it possible.
I assumed you knew I was talking about the DXVK dev given that he’s literally an employee of Valve, as you mentioned. Either way, I’ll now be more detailed with my comment.
Of course all the contributors to Wine deserve credit too, and I do have an active Crossover license, but Valve are the ones who explicitly made a push for gaming on Linux and focused specifically on the gaming aspect. Wine covers everything, not just gaming, Proton is specifically for gaming. It’s doubly true given that they want to sell more units of the Steam Deck so they can get more people into the Linux and Valve ecosystem. Not that you don’t know that, but it’s worth pointing out regardless.
I’ve been daily driving Linux since before Proton was even a thing, and the difference between gaming then versus now is not even comparable, it is infinitely better now and keeps improving. I no longer have to hope that a new game will work or that I can somehow manage to get the right set of libraries and flags to get it to run, if a new game comes out and it doesn’t have a kernel-level anti-cheat, I can expect that it will work out of the box just fine without any tweaking because I have seen this happen multiple times now. I’ve even started getting into Mac gaming to get some of that tweaking and configuring thrill back that I used to get from Linux gaming, having to tweak and configure things to get them to work properly or to work even better.
Steam has a native Linux client and every game I bought on Windows runs just fine on Linux.
All my older, non-steam games, like “Deus Ex” or “Giants: Citizen Kabuto” run great under Wine, using the default settings. Also, there are Linux versions of DOSBox, for older games.
There is also the Lutris project. I play Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online with no issue. AND they have install scripts for many games on their site.
https://lutris.net/
basically my current setup too. it took me just a couple of months on Win11 to straight up give up on Windows because it’s just not very good