Linux Gaming: My Experience
Originally posted on my Zonelets blog
Part 1: My history
I love to use Linux! I'm a Mac gal, I have been for decades, but I also like to toy around with Linux. First tried dual booting OSX and Linux on my PowerPC eMac, and I didn't really have any use for that, but it was fun to do!
I'm also a gamer! Getting my first Intel Mac, I was able to dual boot OSX and Windows and have my first machine capable of running stuff! It was great! Then there seemed to be a Valve push to get games on Linux, as we see now with SteamOS and the success of that. They ported Source games to Linux in 2013 I believe, which made me go "hell yeah" and I installed Ubuntu on my Macbook and got the special Tux item in Team Fortress 2, and I gotta say, the games that were available on Linux performed much better than they did on Windows (or OSX for that matter), though there weren't that many at the time. I remember playing Borderlands or something, I don't really know.
I enventually built my own PC. Again, Mac gal, but also gamer gal. That pushed me to go the Hackintosh route, that is, building a PC and unofficially getting OSX running on it. I built it to dual boot OSX and Windows, and it was a great success! I could use OSX for recording music and doing graphics stuff, and hopped over to Windows for a decent gaming experience. I was all set! I did get Ubuntu Studio on there after a few years to play around with audio and video stuff, but never really thought to do gaming on that. Oh well, didn't need to!
Part 2: My current gaming switch to just Linux
About a year ago, I got a new MacBook for Professional Theatre purposes, so I quickly got rid of the Macintosh part of my PC. Made it just a Windows gaming machine, and also streaming rig, because I've been streaming on Twitch on and off for the past handful of years. But as the PC ages, and as Windows becomes more bloated and soon Windows 10 won't be supported and my machine can't run Windows 11, and Microsoft is evil and I'm becming more aware of that, and they're shoving AI into everything, using Windows is insanely unappealing. It ain't working too well anymore!
There's a small movement to switch to Linux, and I've been wanting to for years, but I've held off because of Gaming. GTA IV is a Windows game, that's not running on Linux, duh! Oh but then I learned that actually yes, it IS running on Linux. Valve has developed Proton, a version of WINE that's integrated into Steam, and that's part of the success of the Steam Deck. I didn't even know!! There's built in support for running Windows games on Linux!! That's what pushed me over. If I can run my games on Linux, why would I even need Windows anymore? Also, I am a regular streamer at this point so I need all that stuff to work as well.
Enter: Bazzite. A Fedora-based distro optimized for gaming. Well, quick detour: I tried Mint, it didn't run shit. I probably could have tweaked stuff to make things run, but I wasn't interested. Went straight to the gaming OS instead. BAZZITE. Comes with Steam installed, comes with Lutris to run all sorts of games, from anything Windows to emulators and blah blah blah. Logged into Steam, downloaded GTA IV, and it runs PERFECTLY, getting a consistant 60fps with max graphics settings. Sure it's a nearly 20 year old game, but a month ago, running on Windows 10, that game was struggling. If I wanted to play it while streaming (streaming with OBS which is also rendering video simultaneously), I had to turn everything down and run it in 720p. But in Bazzite, even at max settings, it was perfect while streaming. Amazing!!!
I'm also installing some non-Steam games with Lutris, and it's pretty straightforward. It acts as a game library manager, so it's pulling in anything I'm installing manually, anything from Steam, anything from itch.io, it's such a smooth experience. Not everything is perfect though. It seems that Large Big Budget games are not doing so hot. Cyberpunk 2077 hardy runs. You have to go to 720p and turn down EVERYTHING and it's an unpleasantly ugly experience. Just Cause 3 does alright but the frame rate is not what I'd like. EA's new Skate game is not even supported and doesn't run. I think that's okay though, I'm not much of a big budget gamer, I'm way more interested in indie titles and things that aren't trying to be on the top level graphically. Let me run through a few games that I tried:
Just Cause 2: Great. Ran a benchmark, average 55fps max graphics. Insanely better than Windows
Grand Theft Auto IV: Perfect. 60fps, max graphics. Previously struggled under Windows
Once Upon a Katamari: Perfect in levels. World map gives me a ridiculously reduced framerate, and did crash my computer during a stream once.
Fall Guys: Perfect. Previously struggled on Windows
Baby Steps: Runs great. Better than Windows
Half Sword demo: Does good enough to play. Hope the actual release is better optimized.
Donut County: Perfect
Street UNI X: Perfect
Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom: Runs really well, not perfect but it does great
One last thing: My controllers! I use a Wii U Pro controller, and also a Wii Guitar Hero controller. Previously I had to use WiinUPro to connect and configure these controllers, and there was a modified version that I had to use for the Guitar Hero controller. However, I connected both of these via Bluetooth and they worked immediately. No problems, just supported out of the box. I was worried it wouldn't work but when I connected my Guitar Hero controller and it immediately worked with Clone Hero, that really sealed the deal for me.
In conclusion: I'm having a kick-ass time using Bazzite as my gaming/streaming machine, it's breathed new life into this mid budget PC I built ten years ago. I'm absolutely thrilled. I just had to sacrifice a few games to get it done, but the positives absolutely outweigh any negatives. I can't recommend this enough.
Edit: This is also my streaming machine, so here is a little bit of my stream experience! My biggest issue is plugins. This is probably more of a "I don't know what I'm doing in Linux" problem than it is anything else. Some plugins don't have a Linux version. Some plugins I can't figure out how to install. Nothing that's breaking the stream for me, I can still do everything I need, but there's just a little bit of a rub porting my whole setup from Windows to Linux. DroidCam worked immediately, that was the most important one, though the plugin does not detect my phone via USB, only WiFi, which gives me a less stable camera feed. That could be on the system level though idk. Also, the OBS browser plugin is weirdly busted, I have to go into the plugin folder and delete a few files to get it to work, and those files will regenerate so I gotta keep going in there. No idea what's happening with that. Oh well!
