Did it though? I mean some people switched, it sold well, but is there like a huge shift in Linux gaming? I feel like things have been proceeding pretty smoothly since DXVK was released.
The original DXVK is mostly thanks to one guys obsession with nier automata, but after his initial work on it, it was valve who hired him and has funded it’s development.
So a lot of DXVK working as well as it does was in preparation for the Steam Deck.
I’ve been a Linux PC gamer for 10+ years now, and the months between the steam deck being announced and released saw a huge improvement in game compatibility.
I mean, it’s complicated yeah, but i would still maintain that DXVK was more of a watershed moment than Steam Deck.
Valve developed SteamOS way back during the first Steam Machine push, 2012-ish.
They moved quick adding DXVK into Proton and releasing it in 2018.
But I think that the core of the recent Linux Gaming story gets lost when people celebrate Valve or the Steam Deck since, like you said, it was a dedicated gamer who first developed DXVK which enabled all of this.
Linux gaming has accelerated in the last few years for sure, but I’m not sold on the premise that the impact belongs to the SD. That being said, I haven’t checked the release feature sets against the SD launch so I don’t have any hard numbers to back that up.
SD has done a lot to push Linux Gaming into the mainstream, but i don’t think the development efforts are a reflection of that, rather that SD was launched in the middle of an accelerated development curve caused by DXVK.
I just remember that when the steam deck was announced in 2021, I was excited for it, but I was extremely skeptical of their claims that most steam games would run on it. Linux game compatibility was really hit or miss at the time, and it didn’t seem possible that it would improve that much by the release date. I know the groundwork was already in place for a lot of the foundational projects, but those months before the release were absolutely incredible for seeing proton mature and actually start working on most everything.
Hopefully wine would have gotten here eventually, but I really think that valve funding the development of stuff like DXVK and proton was absolutely key for the fantastic state of Linux gaming now. The big question is how much of valve funding development of those projects was with the steam deck in mind, or if they had something else in mind.
It definitely changed things for me. With end of life for win 10 coming and not liking win 11, I bought a SteamDeck to see how good Linux gaming has become. It worked so well that I decided to make the switch and put Linux on my new gaming PC.
When my current laptop kicks the bucket, I’m seriously considering a frame.work with the GPU board as my main gaming machine - with Linux
And, they just released a mini pc that’s super cool!
Oh, neat, I remember borrowing money from friends to buy one shortly after release, and spending many months repaying it. My main thought process, besides it being a cool PC, was “the higher the statistics, the better the outlook for Linux adoption”. :D
Can barely believe it’s been three years already.
I also bought a few steam decks to “support” Linux. All the work steam did for Linux gaming was such an incredible great thing for the world!
Bought the 512gb for me, then bought the 64gb for my wife. She got my 512gb ssd when I upgraded to 1tb.
We are both happy with it, and soon after we upgraded our computers to Linux.
The only computer without Linux is an older intel MacBook with macOS and windows for when I really need it. (Running specific tools for modding, hacking, firmware updates, etc). I rarely use it but it comes in handy every few months.
This why I bought 3 of them. The 2 I gave to my family members is probably collecting dust but oh well.
hi, its me your family member
Seriously considering a switch to Bazzite on my actual gaming PC.
Me having a RTX3070 is holding me back, though. Maybe AMD will have a decent, not-too-stupidly-expensive card in the 9070XT. Really don’t want to spend more than $500-600 on a GPU. And I really don’t want to replace it until I can get something with at least twice the performance.
Nvidia GPUs work well on normal Linux distributions. Ubuntu, for example.
I literally started downloading the Bazzite installer on my PC just before heading out to work - will be installing it on a spare NVME and seeing how it goes tonight hopefully!
Bazzite does have a Nvidia-specific build, I’ll report back in a day or two how I go with my 3090.
I’m using a 3080 and I do seem to have the occasional problem that my ATI using friends don’t, nothing that has prevented me from playing.
Example: Recently, gamescope hasn’t been working. So I’ve been using xwayland instead. Basically I don’t get HDR or VRR, but it’ll be fixed (it may already be fixed because I’m on a rolling release distro (Arch, btw)).
I haven’t, yet, run into a ‘This game doesn’t work because you have an NVIDIA card’. On the other hand, I can run local AI trivially easy because my card supports CUDA.
I have a 3070 ti, I am using Cachy Linux. How do you feel held back? I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m curious about your experience. My experience has been great and I’m confused what the fuss was about. Maybe it’s easier now that Nvidia drivers are open (or at least fauxpen)? Idk.
Edit: misread as you saying you’re on Linux right now and wanted to use Bazzite, but I think you’re on Windows. The switch from Windows to Linux has been substantially easier than I thought. Happy to answer any questions about it if you’re curious.
My concern is basically the usual “Nvidia hates Linux”.
Also:
https://docs.bazzite.gg/Gaming/Hardware_compatibility_for_gaming/
Nvidia GPUs are currently in beta with major caveats
I run Bazzite on a 3070 and it works well. The thing that is not supported yet is the gaming mode that basically turns your pc into steam deck mode as far as I understand it. It would be cool since I run my pc on TV only and mainly game with a controller. What I do is run Steam on startup and set it to start in big screen mode. Until a few weeks ago I used Linux mint and that was much more work with drivers for controllers and stuff. Bazzite is so good so far, seems to be exaxcly my use case for a TV Linux gaming pc.
That’s just Bazzite, CachyOS doesn’t have a similar clause.
Dude, I have an i5 8600k with a RTX 3070, using Arch. There is nothing to fear, yes I had issues some time ago when I had the GTX 1080 but not any more. I’m even using Hyprland. Give it a try on another with another disk.
Funnily enough I had precisely one issue out of a GTX-1080 running Linux Mint, and it had little to do with Linux.
I went from attaching two 1080p monitors by HDMI to one that attached by DisplayPort. The computer ran fine…until I rebooted it. The machine failed to POST. Turns out I could boot the machine with an HDMI monitor attached, attach the DP monitor, and it would run fine, but it would fail to POST with that monitor plugged in.
Turns out it was an issue with the card’s firmware that would cause the card to fail to initialize with a monitor running a recent version of DP attached, the BIOS would fail to find a video adapter and thus fail to POST. It wasn’t a driver issue, it was a firmware issue. And of course Nvidia provides no means of updating graphics card firmware in Linux, so the easiest solution was to rip the card out of the machine, carry it to a Windows computer, download and run the updater, and re-transplant the card.
I still game on that system; it’s my home theater PC now.
Steam deck changed gaming forever.
I dreamed of a handheld computer so long that just had the fucking screen and gamepad connected like the game boy. I thought shit why isn’t it done we have the technology! But it was because of the Linux system and valves own incredible work on making games work on Proton and it’s a truly monumental paradigm shift that I support in every way
I like that now games try to fitt within the capabilities of handhelds, which I see as a win-win situation. Games focused on gameplay rather than aesthetics and better optimization for games.
And my gaming PC is collecting dust since then. Dragon Age, BG 3, Avowed this thing still goes strong.
Can’t wait for the next version, already saving money for it.
I bought mine a few months ago despite never being a Steam user before and I love it. Sometimes I use it in handheld mode but it is too bulky for me, so most of the time I just have it hooked up to the TV and use a PS5 controller.
Only issue I have with it so far is that I couldn’t find the packages for Arabic keyboard support in SteamOS. I have been using Linux for over 15 years and had no issue with Arabic input on other distros (Red Hat and Debian based), I just couldn’t figure out where to look for them if they do exist. I never used Arch, so maybe that’s why? If anyone has a clue please let me know.
Generally in arch you can set Arabic keyboard layout with the command
setxkbmap ara,us. If you’re wanting to change the keyboard layout in game mode though that will probably require something else.That did it, thanks a lot!
Still my favorite piece of technology i have bought in the last decade, easily. This thing changed my life. I fucking love the steam deck.
