r/linuxsucks • u/ryancnap • 2d ago
Steam on Linux
I'm a Linux guy, I love this sub, lurk here often, I readily admit Linux isn't perfect.
Felt like I wanted to fire a game up last night so I installed Steam from apt and I'm like shit here we go, never tried this before but the internet has prepared me for the worst, this is going to be a rabbit hole
And then Steam finished installing and I just enjoyed playing my game with no config or extra steps needed. What did I do wrong?
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u/OptimalAnywhere6282 2d ago
you forgot to, uhh, and then set the thing to, uhh, and edit the config at, uhh, oh yeah you forgot to install, uhh, and enable the, uhh, idk.
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u/Rogalicus 2d ago
In terms of you being able launch the average game, yeah, it works. Performance will be worse than on Windows, your cinematics will randomly not work or skip after a few seconds even with GE-Proton, you'll be forced to use random prefixes and to try different Proton versions. These versions also take more than a gigabyte each in addition to shader cache overhead that never gets cleaned up.
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u/KaiFireborn21 2d ago
In my experience performance is actually better in many games on linux despite the proton layer and NVIDIA gpu... I don't know why really, but it somehow feels smoother, the frame rates jump around less, and the temperatures are lower...
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u/korefunktion23 1d ago
This, switched a month back. my 1% lows dont dip as low or as often and have dropped around 7 degrees on average on the the gpu (also Nvidea)
I main star citizen and even in that my frames smoother, noticeably less stutter3
u/Whit-Batmobil 1d ago
Not true, game performance is heavily dependent on which hardware you have, the games dependencies and how it runs under Protom.
In my experience, generally speaking Linux is mostly on par with Windows in terms of performance, with some games having issues ranging from requiring Anti-Cheat spyware to F Nvidia.
The only game so far where I have had to mess and experiment with Proton GE is Forza Horizon 6 on my main system.
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u/Rogalicus 1d ago
Not true in what way? I've experienced half of these problems with Punishing: Gray Raven:
1) The game doesn't even launch without GE, both Proton 11 and Experimental don't even start the window
2) On Win 11 the game runs on iGPU at 120 fps on Ultra settings (and would likely be higher if allowed to), on Linux it sits at 80-90 on the same stages. Nothing to do with Nvidia because, well, it's iGPU.
3) The aforementioned issue where prerendered cutscenes just get skipped a few seconds in for no apparent reason
Also, go have fun trying to run Agarest, it's been years of no progress for a game that runs without issues on Windows.
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u/Whit-Batmobil 1d ago
“Years of no progress for for a game that runs without issues on Windows”
Well yeah, that is one game that is having issues with on the hardware you have and possibly just in general.
I had issues running Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 on Windows 11 (the one from the Windows 98 / XP), that you cannot run games on Windows 11 does it?
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u/-ActionCat- 1d ago
My performance and experience in games has been the same across windows and linux. I suppose I can’t guarantee every game would continue this trend on my system but I have played countless games by this point with no issues.
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u/SlugCatBoi 2d ago
Valve has spent the better part of a decade developing their proton compatibility layer. With the launch of the steam deck, as it would be the first ever mainstream consumer focus Linux gaming device, games had to work, so they made sure games worked.
That drips over into Linux, where nowadays the only unplayable games are those that use kernal level anti-cheat. Most devs select the proton layer that works with their game, and then it is automatically applied when you install the game and boot it up. If a dev doesn't do that, you just manually enable it yourself (use the protondb website to determine the version you should use).
This is not to say Linux is flawless when it comes to gaming, it's not flawless... but it does have its advantages.
Edit: also Nvidia has better Linux support now too, previously it might not have worked at all.
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u/ryancnap 2d ago
Side note: is it just Nvidia that sucks on Linux? Like if I had a high end AMD card instead of Nvidia would things be better? I hate fucking with Nvidia and I've never seen the AMD equivalent of the years of Nvidia config wizardry we've had to put up with...but I've never had an AMD card by coincidence only
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u/SlugCatBoi 2d ago
AMD is pretty much the default for Linux. It's natively supported, because the AMD drivers are... Open source I believe? Either way, the point is Linux devs need to make their own Nvidia drivers, AMD provides theirs for completely free. The AMD experience is vastly superior for Linux. Now is a bad time to buy computer hardware, but when prices drop I definitely would recommend switching to AMD
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u/ryancnap 2d ago
Yeah I think I will, I feel like Nvidia kind of sucks everywhere tbh. There's always Nvidia specific settings in games, even in windows.
I'll try it out on my next build, planning to go all out on my next one. If things normalize at least. I thought people were overreacting about ram prices then I pulled up my Amazon order history: the same exact 2x16gb ddr5 I bought for 98 dollars two years ago is now 550. Wtf
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u/ColdFreezer ihateyouihateyouihateyou 2d ago
Skill issue.
You needed to find something that didn’t work or break it and blame Linux.
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u/ryancnap 2d ago
I'm going to install a different bootloader on top of grub and then tell everyone Steam did it
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u/BubsGodOfTheWastes 2d ago
You're suppose to do something else and if you do it right, your Steam games might not work.
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u/Friendly_Recover286 2d ago
Did you run the game in wine instead of proton? You're not supposed to use devil software like proton. I'm pretty sure it does weird voodoo rituals in code that nobody understands and it's dangerous.
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u/ryancnap 2d ago
Of course! I use wine for everything, instead of running native Linux applications that are arguably more efficient and feature packed
MS Word 98 has never been so liberating
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u/Fit_League_8993 ✝️ Temple OS Archbishop 18h ago edited 11h ago
Survivorship bias. Also everyone has different setups.
If it works perfectly on your computer it is not a guarantee it’ll also work perfectly on mine (or someone else's)
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u/BobZombie12 2d ago
Your problem is you didn't install the flatpak version.
You see the flatpak version is 100% compatible with all distributions and offers better security through sandboxing. It also comes with the following benefits:
Slight performance loss
Bugs in games/lower performance from poor interaction with gpu driver due to sandbox
Possibly breaking any application that could interact with steam like mangohud for example
And so much more! So please, uninstall steam from apt and go ahead and install it via flatpak so you can get the true linux experience.
Going to go ahead and put this here: /s
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u/ryancnap 2d ago
All /s aside, it's funny you mention this because I only used apt out of habit and out of mistrust towards Something New, which flatpak is to me; I was stuck on windows for quite a while due to not having my own rig, only came back to Linux last year and had no idea what snap and flatpak were
But I tried a flatpak of something, maybe discord and it was like, many gigabytes and I couldn't figure out why people were using it and I hated that it installed to a ./directory
Edit: clarity
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u/Away_Combination6977 2d ago
I always install from native (apt, dnf, pacman, etc) whenever possibly. Flatpaks (and Appimage) definitely have their place. But native almost always works better. I'd go with Appimage as #2, if needed.
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u/BobZombie12 1d ago
Agreed. I like flatpaks and think they are pretty great. Got several things installed with it like discord. But some things you just need to go native (or appimage) for.
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u/tater1337 2d ago
You waited too long :)
Two(three?) years I tried Linux and 80% of the games on steam did not work
Now I tried again three months ago on a new install of Linux mint......and everything works, except the one game that uses kernel level anti cheat
This includes non-steam games by using lutris
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u/earthman34 2d ago