Gaming with Linux

Originally Posted by Lysander666 It really depends how important gaming is to you. If you're a hardcore gamer, it's probably best to stick to Windows.{...}

But it is ridicilous marketing strategy for Distrowatch OS'es. When will Linux be gamer friendly OS without wine? Sure games don't have to be better than windows games but still, or they can be but not free.

https://appdb.winehq.org/

can help with getting things running under wine

Wine has improved quite a bit, largely since the d3dX to vulkan wrappers
but like people say, it is hit and miss

Steam might be your best bet
Proton is based on wine + the vulkan stuff
Steams aim is to make it seamless
I have not used it myself, but from what I have read most people are +ve about it
Not perfect but heading in the right direction.

I am a hardcore Linux gamer and by that I don't mean I run out and buy the latest AAA game titles because I despise dropping a bunch of cash just for pretty graphics. I demand solid gameplay and that takes time to discover if a game will hold up. Really good games are still good a decade or two later. I played Quake 3 Arena for eleven (11) years after it was introduced and 9 of those in Linux and once battled F8tality in a 1 on 1 and lived for longer than a few minutes LOL. I still play World of Warcraft WOTLK and Half Life 2 with thousands of hours in each. I also have played every version of Deus Ex within a month of each versions release, whether in Wine, Steam, or the latest as a native Linux port on Steam.

The major difficulties with what people perceive as "hit or miss" depends largely on the game companies. EA recently banned Linux players using DXVK from at least one of their online multi-player games so I am in turn banning EA on my boxen. Rockstar can be "iffy" on Linux, or at least have been until recently as the Linux gaming community has grown. Some people have reported success with Red Dead Redemption 2 and anybody who cares is breathlessly awaiting Redemption 3 to see if Rockstar is going to be friendlier with their launcher.

The bottom line though is that unless you're locked into a specific game that is known to not run or run badly in Linux almost everyone can find satisfaction with the thousands of games that run just fine in Linux.

I disagree that WINE or WINE implementation through Steam is "polluting a Linux environment". There is just no requirement for the most offensive M$ junk like IE (now Edge) or Office. If you setup WINE just for gaming well all I can say is that in over 20 years of using WINE I've never had any sort of compromise and WINE just keeps getting better and better. I am having some minor glitchiness with Wine-Staging v5.0-rc5 but the 4 versions run really great and the final full release of WINE 5.0.x promises to be awesome especially now that D9VK has been implemented within the overall DXVK. Seriously if you haven't tried DXVK you REALLY need to. It's quite amazing having many Windows games actually perform measurably better on Linux than natively in Windows. Gaming on Linux is finally living up to the potential it has had all along with superior latency, better memory management, CPU utilization and superior TCP/IP stack.

Game On! Brothers (and Sisters)

Perhaps I am alone in enjoying modern games on Linux? Yes, Steam is very constrained but the games work well. Yes, WINE-type solutions are somewhat pandering to M$.
However, I am now able to play more recent games and explore their worlds without having to resort to Windows.
I am a very bad gamer, though, so am having trouble completing SOMA at present.

I mostly only play Apex Legends. So I'm not using Windows at the moment.

I was surprised at how well the proton technology in Steam works. I have had great luck with some GoG games on wine, and after discovering proton in steam, am now playing things I haven’t played in years: Dragon Age Origins, Borderlands, DeusEx Revision, many more.

I don’t play anything new because there are so many games available and I love older games. I also am running on-chip graphics so an Intel HD630 will only do so much.

I also think that Wine is not polluting Linux, and instead see it as cleaning up Windows :P
Wine is not proprietary after all, only the games (and applications) usually are.

Furthermore, it seems that Wine runs older Windows games often better than contemporary Windows itself.
In other words, wine offers better backwards compatibility for old Windows games (or so it seems) than Windows.

Also, I haven't done it myself (and I doubt I'll ever find the potential hassle to be worth it) but I think if you have two GPUs (one of them being a resource friendly, not really gaming focused one) and a CPU with native virtualization (or whatever the proper terminology is), then you can use KVM (or something similar) to virtualize Windows almost as well as directly on the metal, so to speak.

The host doesn't do anything fancy and claims the lesser graphics card and only acts as a kiosk like launcher for a virtualized Windows or *nix session that will then use the beefy card.

That's what I've gotten from some very cursory glances, anyway. I'd almost be tempted but I really don't play that many games anymore, especially not AAAs.

Edit:
Of course you'd also virtualize your 'everyday Linux' distro from this 'kiosk'. Not just windows.
This solution is merely there to get rid of having to dual boot. Which is a pain.

Originally Posted by Carolyn Denton Thanks this looks like a good option for me. And thanks to everyone in this thread for sharing your ideas

I believe that with the development of cloud gaming (everything indicates that we are at the beginning of it) Linux users will be able to play any game without the need to install Windows as the second OS.