from Mandy@sh.itjust.works to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world on 08 Sep 11:58
https://sh.itjust.works/post/24875355
Ill keep it as short as possible, apologies if i keep rambling(ill put my specs at the bottom)
Over the last yew years, i have used quite a lot of distros, from mint (currently my main again), to manjaro to solus to endeavouros and more i cant remember, one thing they all (minus solus) had in commong (for me) was the fact that pc gaming…was horrible on them.
Many hours where spend getting different games to work, or rather trying to get them to work at all, most of them had failed, steam, lutris, default wine, no matter what has been used)
As an example:
Anno 1404 history edition (best anno, fite me), i bought it on steam, tried launching it, didnt work, tried several proton versions, didnt work, lutris, didnt work, i downloaded a crack to see, didnt work either, using a different file format, nothing.
Sometimes i was able to make it work, once and than never again, solus was the only one where anno 1404 worked out of the box, i managed to make it work in endeavouros once by installing two packages i could never find again. (most recently, i bought space marine 2, didnt work and keeps crashing no matter what i do9
But this was the best case scenario, games really work.
Is it just my hardware?
Am i using linux just wrongly for years?
Is it my fault?
Am i missing something?
My specs:
prebuilt desktop: Acer Nitro N50-620
memory 64KiB BIOS
memory 32GiB System Memory
memory 16GiB DIMM DDR4 Synchronous 26
memory 8GiB DIMM DDR4 Synchronous 320
memory 8GiB DIMM DDR4 Synchronous 320
processor 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i5-
bridge Intel Corporation
display TU116 [GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER]
storage Micron_2210_MTFDHBA1T0QFD
bus Tiger Lake-H USB 3.2 Gen 2x1 x
network Tiger Lake PCH CNVi WiFi
bus Tiger Lake-H Serial IO I2C Con
#nostupidquestions
threaded - newest
I’ve been gaming on Linux for years. I do habitually avoid games that would be borked ootb by things like anti cheat. But typically I have very minor issues.
Do you check out protondb.com at all?
quite often actually, unfortunately:
i cant recall any tweaks people mention there ever working on any of the games i tried
Yeah, been on Linux a bit over a year now, and have yet to run into a game that I’ve wanted/bought that didn’t work just fine. Including some that steam call “unsupported” (Like Dark Souls Prepare to Die edition with DSFix).
Well, you aren’t really talking about gaming on Linux. You’re talking about running Windows games on Linux. Wine and Linux are absolutely amazing for gaming, but it’s mostly up to the developers at this point.
About waht you are saying about Anno; I have a feeling you’re not fully understanding Wine/Proton and how it works. By learning a bit about it you’ll probably start to understand what actually is not working. A good place to start is always the ProtonDB page.
Linux is beating Windows in some gaming benchmarks btw :)
whats the difference between gaming on linux and running windows games on linux? isnt both of them gaming on linux
protondb as good as a resource it may be, i tried it often, with anno 1404 too, but i honestly dont recall tweaks there ever working for me (for games rated to be running of course, i dont try games that are rated in the red naturally)
I see that linux is pretty good in benchmarks and i believe it so too, however, that is not the case for me and im at a point where im torn between “something is wrong with me and my setup” and “what voodoo is everyone else using that they arent telling me?”
There are games that are native to linux that run just fine
old.lemmy.world/c/linux_gaming@lemmy.ml be a good place to visit
i actually posted in there once, with anno 1404 even sh.itjust.works/post/9489662
im aware i wasnt the nicest person in it tho, i posted at the height of the annoyance meter at the time
First of all, what the hell is going on with your RAM configuration?
Your first stop should have been the protondb page for your game. Given that most other people report it as running out of the box, then the issue lies somewhere else.
Which proton versions have you tried? Since you have an Nvidia card, what is the driver revision? What desktop environment, and version of it are you using?
I hate to say it, but reinstalling your entire OS multiple times, without doing any troubleshooting, has been a waste of your time
whats going on with my ram configuration?
i tried using protondb several times, but it rarely if ever has worked with me, the tweaks people suggest i mean.
all between 9 to 5 on many games, sometimes proton ge too but i never noticed a difference when trying to use that one
whats a driver revision?
DE: cinnamon 6.2.9
i have done so much troubleshooting over these years that reinstalling or installing another distro became easier and quicker to do
Usually people have only same size RAM, but other configurations can work too. (I have 20GB of RAM running fine, for example.)
do you think that may somehow be the cause of so many problems? or part of it?
Unlikely. It won’t run optimally but it shouldn’t be the cause of crashes or bugs. If you’re not sure you can run a ram test (memtest.org)
It’s unlikely to cause anything to outright fail, but it will certainly be creating bottlenecks and inefficiencies
Each nvidia card works better or worse with different version releases of nvidia drivers. Older cards usually need smaller version numbers. Since you are running mint, all versions you need to test should be in the default repos. Try different drivers and see if you can find the right one for your card.
should give you a list of options, which you can install with
apt-get install.ngl, id rather stick with what is recommended before i go through hundreds of slightly differently named drivers
There’s usually only like 5 tracks. “What’s recommended” is nouveau, which works but not for gaming. It’s recommended because it’s open source and can do most things that the proprietary nvidia drivers can do. Nvidia is really bad at maintaining their drivers, and different drivers work better for different cards.
Nvidia sucks. Switch to AMD and never have a problem again. Or spend an hour testing each of the proprietary options maintained in the debian repos, and most likely find that at least one of them works. Until an update to the drivers or kernel comes along, and breaks it again, so you have to play around with driver versions and kernel versions to find a combo that works. That’s less likely to happen if you stick with a debian-based distro vs a bleeding-edge distro like arch.
And buy AMD for your next machine to send a message to nvidia that their driver support sucks!
idk man, mints driver manager do be saying nvidia is recommended
<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/1a31e59c-2ea3-48ab-8414-14fbfb188c80.png">
but besides that, i tried asking for an equivalent card on lemmy once, ill leave it at: im not inclined to try again
henceforth, if amd, prebuilt only
and regarding driver and kernel version, the moment i have to fiddle with either to get something working to the extent you are describing, im burning my pc
Please try versions 535 and 470.
See if either fixes your issues.
You need to reboot after switching. It’ll take you 30 mins max, even if neither works and you have to switch back.
i switched to 550 yesterday, it was 535 before that
What motivated you to switch branches? Did it solve another issue? Why were you not on the latest branch yesterday, ie, why did you roll back originally? Does one driver work better for some games, and another driver works better for others?
Nvidia drivers are jank. I honestly haven’t touched them since 2017. I remember having to reboot and switch drivers to switch games I was playing with friends and finding the whole experience annoying as hell. I realized that Linus Torvalds was right, fuck nvidia, AMD is the way to go. Have not had to touch anything with my drivers since switching. All of my interactions with nvidia since have confirmed that they are not a company deserving of my patronage.
This thread made me look at it and see the newer driver
Is there an amd card/PC youd consider an equivalent or upgrade?
I searched “gtx 1660 vs amd” and saw that your card is usually compared to the rx 590 from amd on speed tests, with similar results. Price is also similar.
One example that includes the prices I was comparing. I have used neither card. I’m not familiar with that website. Do your own research before making a purchase,
Most reports for Anno 1440 History Edition on ProtonDB say that it works.
I use ProtonUp-QT to keep my Wine and Proton versions up to date. It has worked well for me, especially when I need to try different versions on a game.
EDIT: Space Marine 2 is too new. Give it a little time for the reports to come out and for GE to release a ProtonGE that supports it (if needed).
i think i used protonup twice perhaps? i dont think it really did anything for me
anno 1404 and space marine 2 are just two examples, the case of all games i tried not working, if i had to put it into % id give it a 6ß to 70% easily
The Anno games are notoriously hard to run on Linux. Protip: always check Protondb for Linux compatibility.
Also, if you find yourself missing Anno on Linux, check out Tropico or any number of city builders by Hooded Horse. There are lots of great resource production chain city builders out there that don’t force you to use Uplay
It has always been gaming ready, but you lose a lot of performance if you play non-native games.
Try some non-Steam native Linux games ideally coming with your distro. For example OpenAstroMenace, Warzone2100, OpenTyrian or nexuiz etc…
Also the older multiplatform Java MMO Spiral Knights should even run with Steam (and without) on high graphics settings, but maybe you will have to swap out its bundled Java for a 64bit one.
Some games are trickier than others for sure. Are you using protondb as a reference?
Anno 1404 is a 15 year old game with aggressive DRM so I could tell right away that it would be one of the more tricky titles.
i actually did try using protondb in several gaming cases, i recall tweaks there working maybe once? if at all?
and i tried quite a few games, some where i went to protondb of course to check, but for me, it sadly never helped
It is not your hardware
Not really
Not really
The main issue from what I can tell is you are trying to play older windows games which can be pretty hit or miss. More recent pc games often support the steam deck which is usually a good sign for compatibility.
Gaming on Linux has greatly improved over the last couple years (especially thanks to proton/steam deck) but if you are trying to run older games that were never designed to run to it or you want to play online games with aggressive anti-cheat it is still going to be a bit of a struggle.
I would recommend sticking to an Arch based distro like EndeavourOS (as it is similar to the SteamOS) or a Debain based distro and not swap around too much so you can get a feel for it without having a bunch of things change on you all the time like package names and the like.
All that said if your jam is older windows games and you have access to windows and are tired of messing with the OS and just want to play games just use windows, try linux another day.
Worked ootb and smoothly for the 50ish hours I’ve put into in while on Linux. OP is defo cursed somehow
I had a dual boot for six weeks this summer with Linux Mint. Approximately 2/3 of my games worked fine on Linux.
I had to troubleshoot it almost every time I booted up, though, which is why I reverted to Windows setup. I plan to go back when I get a new PC and I can run linux only on a machine, but I think it’s fair to say that there are some hardware incompatibilities sometimes. I’ve also read that there are distros other than Mint that play nice with NVidia chips, so I’ll probably go with one of those when I switch back to Linux.
Still, you can blunt most of the negative aspects of Windows by running O&O ShutUp.
before i went to linux that was one of the several tools i used
but im such a paranoid woman now that i just cant really bring myself to go back to windows
linux also just feels nicer to use to me you know?
Don’t get me wrong, I loved Linux.
I just hated having to troubleshoot almost every time I booted up my PC. It was abundantly clear there were hardware incompatibilities in my case.
is the old shutup method still good to go for win 10?
while i am always paranoid i am considering the switch fairly often recently
Shutup still works but I wouldn’t trust it to prevent all telemetry. I wouldn’t trust Microsoft not to have other telemetry that’s not part of their services that can be turned off.
Just my 2 cents: I dual boot Windows and Linux. I only start up Windows when I want to play a game, use Linux Mint for everything else. Some games run perfectly fine under Linux (I play a lot of Factorio for example. No Mans Sky I’ve had no issues etc.) but some are just a pain. For those I switch to Windows and then immediately switch back when I’m done playing.
It’s not ideal but this way Windows has next to no information about me at least. And as times goes on I’m seeing more and more games running just fine under Linux. Maybe one day I’ll be able to drop Windows completely.
i never tried dualbooting ebfore
two reasons mainly:
i simply find it too bothersome
im 100% certain ill screw something up
It’s simpler than you think. Watch a few YT tutorials on it and see if it’s a good fit.
This is the way to go if you’re a gamer. It just didn’t work in my specific case.
Running Steam (Windows) games on Linux (Fedora) has always been finicky for me. Sometimes requiring digging into logs to figure out what’s going on
i tried to install fedora a few times, but it was borked at a system level the 3 times i did
im not the smartest woman around the blog, but when i tried to see what the terminal says sometimes with borked games, i dont think it ever helped me get a game to run, i chalk it up to simply not being knowledgeable enough
It’s better today than it was a year ago, and WAY better than it was 3 years ago, and is still improving. There are a few categories of games where you are likely to have problems though.
I would say whether linux is ready for (windows) gaming depends on is different per person predicated on:
For me, I tend to play some older games, and there are a few that don’t work well. I don’t want to boot windows, so I just decide I can wait for it to get there for them.
For some people, “ready” means will run every windows program as if running on windows. We’re still a ways off from that, if we ever get there (it’s a moving target, as windows is still being developed…)
I havent played much of any multiplayers games in years actually (does honkai star rial count?
for old games, most vividly i can remember having some trouble with dawn of war so i used soulstorm and a mod to play the og campaign in it
i tend to stay away from triple a games, one of which is because they dont play nice with linux, space marine 2 is a different case for me cause, well, i really like the universe (boltgun worked for the msot part so that was nice)
game categories: well, i dont have too many category i stay away from, but
favourite older games: advance wars series, age of mythology (retold i tried but doesnt work for me either), castlevania aria of sorrow/SOTN, elite beat agents, pepsiman, orcs and elves, punch out wii, katamari series, ace attorney trilogy, dawn of war
favourite never/ish games: hyrule warriors, lego lord of the rings, boltgun, kingdom hearts BBS, patapon
Have you enabled Steam Play in the game options? Might be an easy step to miss/forget. Usually if a game won’t run for me it ends up being something simple like that!
i can see why, i always make sure its activated before i force a specific proton version to try, just to be sure
Ahh gotcha. The Anno series is great (same with Linux!) so keep at it - best of luck!
I’ve been doing a majority of my gaming on a steam deck lately, running Linux. Check my deck says that anno 1404 is not supported on the deck though. In general, I’d say that Linux gaming has gotten a LOT better, but it is not yet perfect.
I usually recommend zorin as a windows replacement as it emulates windows as much as can be and comes with a lot out of box, however, if the goal is gaming I think I would try steamos. I mean its what is on the steam deck and has a company actively working to make it work.
I never seen that weirdest ram configuration ever. Its probably cursed. I never had any game that did not play at all, either i had to change some minor settings but it worked good. ( I am on Linux Mint Cinamon too )
I would guess the memory just freaks out some games that use more than 8gb ?
protondb is showing you if it is compatible with linux. If it isnt working on yours BUT it shows Gold or platinum on protondb its a YOU issue.
protondb is showing if it works at all yes, btu it also has a bunch of epople and possible tweaks showing it
neither protondb own ratings nor these tweaks did much to make any of the games i tried work (i dont recall any of them being native to linux)
my rig is a pretty common stock build (minus the increased ram)
so if it isnt a hardware issue, and i dont tinker with system files, or any funky stuff like that
why would it be a “me” issues?
Because if its gold then it says A LOT of people have no issues ( small issues ). Many people recommend to use GEProton.
The ram is not common, it is not recommended and could lead to crashes or incompatibilities.
Best try to use 1 stick ( 16 GiB )
if a bit more ram (and no other hardware changes) actually causes so much issues with gaming, is it really a me problem?
that just sound like a rather trivial change
if you say that its truly that funky, i can remove the extra ram and make it a simple and ncie 16gb
Yeah please do that.
yee, 16gb is plenty enough as it is anyway
Yes because again it’s the mismatched ram sizes and the different clock speeds. IMHO the clock speed issue is way more likely to throw things off than the different stick sizes, although neither are ideal.
The mobo should just be downclocking thmn all to the same speed. Should be, but who knows
Its not about memory size its about the asymmetric sticks. It was a classic problem with OS memory management in the past. Modern OS are better at dealing with it but it is not the optimal set up.
You’re running windows game which use proton/wine that manage memory for the game and use linux for access to RAM. The asymmetry could conceivably cause issues you wouldn’t notice with native apps.
I’d try removing the 16gb stick (or the two 8gb sticks and keeo the 16gb stick; all that matters is whatever ram isnleft is the uniform) and see what happens with the games you’ve been trying. It might not he the issue but the only way to know is to test it, rather than dismiss it because its not what you expected.
i dont think i ever needed the extra ram anyway since i put it in, will remove them real quick
How did it go
i didnt exactly stress test with a couple dozen games, the one game i tried had the same error message as before
Rip, good luck
the only other difference so far: when playing one single game: it makes the entire system sometimes freeze up and force me to reboot
a game that worked perfectly before
I’ve had good luck using Pop!_OS to game on Nvidia systems. Can’t speak specifically for those two games, but several other games that gave me trouble on other distros worked smoothly on Pop.
i tried it once actually, i dont know what it was but it never really stuck with me, probably cause of gnome
i do love my “old school” menu bar
I’m not a fan of Gnome either but Pop was the most stable distro I found for an Nvidia card.
This Gnome extension let’s you move everything down to the bottom panel.
extensions.gnome.org/extension/…/dash-to-panel/
If a game doesn’t run on Linux, I just don’t play it.
Life is too short, I don’t care anymore.
I need Linux for work and I have no interest in paying for an OS that doesn’t let me have privacy.
So fuck it, if companies don’t write there software well enough… I’ll live.
I’d rather spend time in a bar anyway.
Is it ready for primetime supporting everybody’s random hardware and everyone’s software without crashes, stutters and slow downs or be free of the requirement for weird configuration tweaks?
Probably not.
Can it work perfectly well with a lot of hardware and a lot of situations for a lot of games Yes.
Is it ready for primetime on a steam deck? Yes.
Last OS change I threw bookworm on a random laptop asked it to install steam, enabled proton for my games and everything just worked. But that doesn’t mean it will work for everyone and for every game.
Mixing ram is one of those no-nos that a lot of us do anyway. Ideally everything just slows down to the slowest piece of RAM and everything runs fine. And you wouldn’t think that the board would care if you have 16s in one side and eights and the other. But if you’re having problems with your stability that’s absolutely the first place to look. Even if all the RAM is perfectly matched, from a stability standpoint it’s better to run two sticks than four. I’d pull it back to 16 and see if it stops crashing. If it stops doing that so all your RAM and get two 16gb sticks.
“Synchronous 26” and “Synchronous 320” sounds super weird. Are you combining RAM with different clock frequencies / timings? that can and often will cause problems like instabilities and crashes. i would take out the one you added and try the games again.
The common denominator in your issues would be your PC. If games are working according to protonDB and you’re unable to get them to work on multiple distros that suggests its your PC.
There are two candidates in your specs - your RAM and your Graphics card.
As others have said, asymmetric RAM is unusual and it certainly was warned against in the past as it caused system issues. While OSs may be much better at managing RAM now, that doesn’t mean all scenarios can tolerate it. Given what Proton is doing is complex (running Wine, which is essentially a windows layer) I would not be surprised if the memory configuration is just a step too far - you have windows software using a windows compatibility layer for memory asking a linuxn system for memory access.
An obvious way to test this is to remove the 16gb stick from your machine and see what happens.
The other side is your graphics card - are you using the latest nvidia drivers?
for linux mint, i do the suggested driver (probably not the latest)
for others like endeavouros it was always the latest nvidia driver
Why didnt you just to fucking try removed the wacky ram and adding one by one to see if it changes anything? Its like 30 minutes max
having differently sized ram sounded like something so trivial and inconsequential of a thing it didnt exactly cross my mind that it would problems to begin with
and some games do work so it isnt consistent enough of a thing to be noticed to me
im also not a computer wiz grandmaster
Bro above got an attitude but he does make a valid point re RAM matching.
Trying use a proper paid. Also maybe as other have pointed out more gaming focused distros
Nobara, bazzite and popos come to mind. Although popos is not gaming per se
As with most things in life, it’s probably a combination of factors. But please don’t beat yourself up over it.
There’s a lot of good advice already in this thread; no reason to repeat it. One thing you might look at the Proton Github issues list. Occasionally, when a game otherwise has a gold rating but I have problems with it, I can find some interesting corner-case details here. Here’s a link that you could use to find Anno 1404 issue, as an example: github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues?q=is%3Aiss…
The other thing I would suggest is that you be more verbose when describing problems. You did a great job sharing the high-level issue and your system’s details, but what do you mean by “didn’t work”? Does it fail to launch? Does it launch but not do X? Those details can go a long way towards troubleshooting (though I do understand that your post was meant to not be game-specific).
Oh, and stay away from Cracks. Unless you’re VERY sure about what you’re doing, it’s just inviting trouble.
thank you for your own detailed response
when i say didnt work, it usually means two things, it either:
didnt launch at all, no window, no nothing no error message
window does open and it shows a error message/only shows an error message
When either of those things happen it is a good idea to run steam (lutris, bottles) from terminal to see what it’s trying to do while “not working”. Helped me couple times.
Linux gaming was always slightly buggy for me for a while. Then I tried Nobara, and since then everything has been more or less plug and play.
AC Odyssey was a bit more work to get going but that was because I had bought it through Ubisoft Connect. But even that just needed me to install it in Lutris which comes preinstalled and made the setup nice and easy.
Nobara is developed by the guy who makes ProtonGE, as a side note.
nobaraproject.org
i tried nobara, i dont remember why but for one reason or another the install was kinda borked
When I switched I had to use Windows (gross) to make the boot disk. Turns out that was my mistake, Windows fucks with the drive just a tad and made the verification fail on the installer.
Using a live usb Linux stick I was able to download the ISO and write a new install disk. Worked flawlessly from there.
I switched from PopOs to Nobara, and it worked great but after a while my sound quit and I missed how switching workspaces worked in PopOs. I tried Mint and surprisingly I had a hell of time trying to get gaming working like it did, so I back to PopOs and I have zero complaints. Everything just works. I have a bunch of games that say no on the steam deck but they work great. I’ve been told the kernal is outdated but honestly, I don’t care, everything works. In my household we have 5 pc’s. My wifes is the only one left on Windows and she has more issues than me.
What kind of gaming?
Single player or some older multiplayer games without anti-cheat programs running?
Probably ready for a lot of those.
Triple-A major games with anti-cheat?
Not so much.
I moved my Steam library over…or at least the games I could actually play. There’s a lot of games that just won’t work despite the Linux crowd constantly saying gaming is great on Linux. VR? Not a chance.
The thing with trying different distros drives me a bit nuts. If you’re getting consistently bad results across so many different ones, then you can see how distros don’t matter all that much after all. What really matters is your hw config combined with software config. Stop trying different distros expecting that some of them will maybe do something differently, stick to one and try to figure out the problem or ask for help. Only resort to other distro if you know that it will make something easier (eg provide more up to date packages).
You said what’s your hw configuration, but not much about how you handle NVIDIA drivers. By default, your GPU will run on open drivers built in Linux kernel called Nouveau, combined with OpenGL (and for your GPU that’s it for now) implemented in Mesa. This is enough for basic things to work, such as the desktop, video playback, office applications, but not necessarily games. For that you need the proprietary NVIDIA drivers. Check manual of your currently used distro for how to get those drivers in place. For your GPU even the newest drivers are available (560), so it’s good if your distro offers that. For drivers older than 555 series, use X11 session instead of Wayland.
It is not. It has gotten better but it still has ways to go. Unless you want to game while huffing copium, after spending a good chunk of your gaming time troubleshooting.
That setup is cursed and I wouldn’t recommend it for Linux gaming personally
Tbh I can recommend nobara linux. For gaming especially it’s often nice to have access to recent drivers / proton versions. But maybe that’s not even relevant in your case.
You can actually get the terminal output from your game by setting the launch options to
%command% 2>&1 > /tmp/log.txtWhich will write the terminal output of the game to the file /tmp/log.txtUsing workarounds to attempt to get foreign software running on an operating system for which is was never built is always going to be fraught with problems.
If the game isn’t distributed compiled for your platform, then you are a second class citizen and no amount of API wrappers, translation layers, VMs or whatever will ever address the core issue.
Running a game in Proton (Wine) is not playing on Linux. It is your linux environment contorting itself and doing miraculous back flips in the hope of convincingly coaxing the Windows binary game into thinking that it is running on an actual Windows host.
Soft solution: Purchase games that are properly developed and released targeting your platform natively.
Hard solution: Graduate from playing games and move on with your life. (btw mine improved a lot after putting gaming behind me for good. + I can now use whatever computer hardware and software I damn well please)
oh, you are one of those kinds of people thinking that gaming is not for adults
you had me at the first half ngl
I’ve been gaming on EndeavourOS for over a year now and have had the opposite experience. All my games work great in Steam with Proton. Granted I don’t play modern AAA shooters or League of Legends which goes out of their way to use bad anticheat that doesn’t support Linux. Only one time I had a game not start right away and all I had to do was install .Net for it or something which was also very easy.
Arch linux user here. Gaming totally works. Sometimes even better than Windows when playing native games. Even Proton works good most of the time. Sometimes I play Brawlhalla with Proton Experimental and it runs better and less laggy in Linux than Windows despite Windows having a native build. Check ProtonDB to find out how well games work on Linux. Linux gamers review games there.
Thanks to Valve, the Steam Deck is getting Linux popular and basically makes devs build their games for Linux as well.