Ummm… Yes, Proton was already mentioned in this thread so I won’t repeat it. But I’m curious which problems you have with games on Linux or did you just repeat what was true 5 (?) years ago.
Don’t get me wrong: I tried gaming on linux when proton wasn’t even remotely in the pipeline and it was horrible impossible. When I first heard about proton I tried again and ran into issues with the first game I tried (Europa Universalis 4, the new Paradox launcher was broken at the time) so I jumped ship again. Then I tried again in early 2025 and haven’t looked back since then. There hasn’t been a single game I tried that didn’t work (although some games needed some tinkering but that’s where protondb comes to rescue). There is one game I’d like to play (The Crew 2) that doesn’t work because of it’s anti cheat. But apart from that: Great experience!
You see, I get where you might be coming from but maybe don’t way until 2032 and give it a try again?
I’ve been gaming exclusively on Linux for a few years now, and I can say Bethesda games, and specifically modding Bethesda games. That shit works a well as can be expected on windows, and if you keep the mod list light, can actually run better than vanilla.
I will say, the free Fallout 4 creation club content good enough as far as light modding goes, and runs extremely well.
Skyrim on the other hand, would honestly probably be fine if their creation club had half the mods that I want to play with.
Well Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 has weird distorted music. Apparently it’s due to .wma files and possible to convert them to MP3 (or use some weird fan patch of Proton) but that sounds like a lot of effort for something I was hoping would just work out of the box.
I’m sure there’s a cli program to just do batch audio conversion, but in favor of simple and least amount of hassle, it wouldn’t be that much work with fre:ac. You should be able to just open up the game’s directory in your file browser by going to the game properties in Steam, clicking “Installed Files”, and then clicking the browse button in the top right. Drag the wma files into an open window of fre:ac, make sure mp3 is selected for the output in your preferences and click convert. Or if you installed it in Wine, just browse to where you installed it, then continue the same once you have the wma files. Then just replace the wma files with your new mp3s, and you’re done. Honestly, you’ll probably spend more time waiting for your package manager to install fre:ac than you’ll spend on everything else in this process. Not as easy as just running out of the box, but really not as bad as it might sound at first.
Not who you originally asked, but I am aware of an example where Windows is still better than Linux for a specific game: Guild Wars 2. Not because of anything directly in the game, but there is an insanely useful overlay program called BlishHUD that runs as a separate process. On Windows it just works; on Linux it is a pain to get it to mostly work.
But overall things have clearly shifted from gaming on Linux being a joke, to being possible but a huge pain, to being ok-ish but a bit clumsy, to finally being sometimes even better and on average equal. There will always be differences, and Windows currently still has the benefit of being the default. Maybe that too will change one day.
GW2 gamer here too, I’ve been switching over to Linux over the past few months and this is on one of my to-do lists(figure out HUD/overlay software for GW2).
Another hurdle I’ve had is getting mod support. For example, Tale of Two Wastelands. The standard installer is exe only and it runs via proton but it doesn’t use all CPU threads to decompile the game assets. Takes over a hour to do. Luckily someone was able to build something that fixes this for Linux, takes 10 minutes or so depending on your CPU: https://github.com/SulfurNitride/TTW_Linux_Installer
Ummm… Yes, Proton was already mentioned in this thread so I won’t repeat it. But I’m curious which problems you have with games on Linux or did you just repeat what was true 5 (?) years ago.
Don’t get me wrong: I tried gaming on linux when proton wasn’t even remotely in the pipeline and it was
horribleimpossible. When I first heard about proton I tried again and ran into issues with the first game I tried (Europa Universalis 4, the new Paradox launcher was broken at the time) so I jumped ship again. Then I tried again in early 2025 and haven’t looked back since then. There hasn’t been a single game I tried that didn’t work (although some games needed some tinkering but that’s where protondb comes to rescue). There is one game I’d like to play (The Crew 2) that doesn’t work because of it’s anti cheat. But apart from that: Great experience!You see, I get where you might be coming from but maybe don’t way until 2032 and give it a try again?
I’ve been gaming exclusively on Linux for a few years now, and I can say Bethesda games, and specifically modding Bethesda games. That shit works a well as can be expected on windows, and if you keep the mod list light, can actually run better than vanilla.
I will say, the free Fallout 4 creation club content good enough as far as light modding goes, and runs extremely well.
Skyrim on the other hand, would honestly probably be fine if their creation club had half the mods that I want to play with.
Well Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 has weird distorted music. Apparently it’s due to .wma files and possible to convert them to MP3 (or use some weird fan patch of Proton) but that sounds like a lot of effort for something I was hoping would just work out of the box.
I’m sure there’s a cli program to just do batch audio conversion, but in favor of simple and least amount of hassle, it wouldn’t be that much work with fre:ac. You should be able to just open up the game’s directory in your file browser by going to the game properties in Steam, clicking “Installed Files”, and then clicking the browse button in the top right. Drag the wma files into an open window of fre:ac, make sure mp3 is selected for the output in your preferences and click convert. Or if you installed it in Wine, just browse to where you installed it, then continue the same once you have the wma files. Then just replace the wma files with your new mp3s, and you’re done. Honestly, you’ll probably spend more time waiting for your package manager to install fre:ac than you’ll spend on everything else in this process. Not as easy as just running out of the box, but really not as bad as it might sound at first.
Not who you originally asked, but I am aware of an example where Windows is still better than Linux for a specific game: Guild Wars 2. Not because of anything directly in the game, but there is an insanely useful overlay program called BlishHUD that runs as a separate process. On Windows it just works; on Linux it is a pain to get it to mostly work.
But overall things have clearly shifted from gaming on Linux being a joke, to being possible but a huge pain, to being ok-ish but a bit clumsy, to finally being sometimes even better and on average equal. There will always be differences, and Windows currently still has the benefit of being the default. Maybe that too will change one day.
GW2 gamer here too, I’ve been switching over to Linux over the past few months and this is on one of my to-do lists(figure out HUD/overlay software for GW2).
Another hurdle I’ve had is getting mod support. For example, Tale of Two Wastelands. The standard installer is exe only and it runs via proton but it doesn’t use all CPU threads to decompile the game assets. Takes over a hour to do. Luckily someone was able to build something that fixes this for Linux, takes 10 minutes or so depending on your CPU: https://github.com/SulfurNitride/TTW_Linux_Installer
So I’m sure something is also available for GW2