Steam Deck and Linux officially hit over 12 000 games playable and verified

[SchumannFrequency]

I'd bet there are thousands of games like that playable but needing a few quirks .
Can't we now say that Linux has become a platform quite suitable for gaming?

To give a comparison with the successful PS4:

List of PlayStation 4 games (A–L) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

There are currently 3480 games on this list.

PS4 has sold more games than any other console in history.

On Linux, you have many more options than these 12 000 verified titles.
For example, you have many game emulators and cloud gaming that make many other titles playable.

Linux gaming has become totally viable.

 

[Solaris17]

Can't we now say that Linux has become a platform quite suitable for gaming

As great as an achievement as this is, and as much as I love Linux and steam. No not yet. Proton/wine and there respective configs and tweaking for games not part of the steam ecosystem is too difficult for people not versed in Linux to jump into.

for people that do like Linux, have experience or are otherwise primarily playing out of steam. Absolutely.

Edit:: mmmm I take that back. Gaming is one gateway into Linux but a gateway into Linux isn’t what is being discussed here.

Viable Linux gaming? Yeah for sure and the 6.3+ kernels are doing a lot to help if you have been watching. The Linux gaming experience since valve developers jumped in and the GPU driver changes since 6.0 hit are doing a ton. Linux gaming has tons of momentum right now.

 

[unwind-protect]

How do I see that list? Does DCS work?

 

[SchumannFrequency]

No not yet. Proton/wine and there respective configs and tweaking for games not part of the steam ecosystem is too difficult for people not versed in Linux to jump into.

That is not the full story I believe. There are a large number of games that require fewer tweaks under Linux than under windows.
I'm sure many games are easier to install and open than on windows. Take for example these games:

Games — Linux software in the Snap Store

Snaps are containerised software packages that are simple to create and install. They auto-update and are safe to run. And because they bundle their dependencies, they work on all major Linux systems without modification.

snapcraft.io

Flathub - Apps for Linux

Find and install hundreds of apps and games for Linux. Enjoy Firefox, Telegram, RetroArch, GIMP and many more!

flathub.org

Debian -- Software Packages in "bookworm", Subsection games

Or there are games for which it doesn't matter which platform you use:

Free Online Games on CrazyGames | Play Now!

Play free online games at CrazyGames, the best place to play high-quality browser games. We add new games every day. Have fun!

www.crazygames.com

This link has around 4800 games that can be accessed on Linux for free with one click.
It is a single website that contains more games than the total number of PS4 games.

You have Shadow.tech, Boosteroid.com, Amazon Luna, Nvidia GeForce Now, PlayStation Now, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Parsec, Vortex, Liquidsky, ...

In conclusion, there are tens of thousands of games that can simply be played on Linux with the very lowest difficulty.
No configs to adjust or tweak, just push play.

How do I see that list? Does DCS work?

Steam Deck :: Deck Verified

Available now.

www.steamdeck.com

Great on Deck

Great on Deck

store.steampowered.com

Viable Linux gaming? Yeah for sure and the 6.3+ kernels are doing a lot to help if you have been watching. The Linux gaming experience since valve developers jumped in and the GPU driver changes since 6.0 hit are doing a ton. Linux gaming has tons of momentum right now.

You have at least four performance advantages.

1. An advantage in terms of higher CPU/GPU performance:

Linux vs Windows tested in 10 games - Linux 17% faster on Average
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/17h1i7n
Star Citizen Linux 35% FASTER than windows?

2. The advantage of more efficient RAM usage. This enabled me five years ago, when I still had a weaker system than now, to run many games with 4GB of RAM that would stutter heavily in windows with the same RAM amount:

https://www.youtube.com/@nahum7995/videos

3. https://www.chillblast.com/blog/does-having-anti-virus-installed-slow-down-games

4. https://blenderartists.org/t/blende...rs-are-better-maintained-than-windows/1158359

 

[silentbogo]

1. An advantage in terms of higher CPU/GPU performance:

Linux vs Windows tested in 10 games - Linux 17% faster on Average
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/17h1i7n Star Citizen Linux 35% FASTER than windows?

Not really. Few years back I did few benchmarks of games on linux and I quickly learned that if I see Linux being significantly faster than Windows, then something's up under the hood. In some games it's Anti-Aliasing that doesn't work correctly (or at all), in some games you miss some post-processing effects etc. Some things arent that noticeable, but consume a ton of GPU resources. And some things are sacrificed in native ports in order to maintain performance baseline.

 

[Vayra86]

Linux gaming has become totally viable.

As a Steam Deck owner I can't disagree... Still need to spend some quality time in that Linux bit of it though.

That's really what Linux needs, devices like these to nudge people into the OS.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

There are currently 3480 games on this list

Yes in list that existed in Wikipedia. But...

5,366 on PlayStation 4

From here. Last update of article March 06.23

 

[SchumannFrequency]

Not really. Few years back I did few benchmarks of games on linux and I quickly learned that if I see Linux being significantly faster than Windows, then something's up under the hood. In some games it's Anti-Aliasing that doesn't work correctly (or at all), in some games you miss some post-processing effects etc. Some things arent that noticeable, but consume a ton of GPU resources. And some things are sacrificed in native ports in order to maintain performance baseline.

Was it a game ported by Feral Interactive?
From them I know that they sometimes (sporadically) downgrade certain graphical settings in their ports. This is usually when they feel there is no visible impact in the graphical result, or when they think the performance impact is too great for the effect it has.

A few years ago DXVK was not quite finished, but now in late 2023, the graphics are almost 100% the same in most games.

Most games you run through Proton should look exactly the same visually as when you run it in windows, in some specific cases the result is even better.
By this I mean that Linux's graphics (Mesa) drivers have fewer bugs than the windows Intel/AMD drivers.

 

[R-T-B]

Few years back

Explains a lot of your experience frankly. So much had changed in just a few years.

 

[silentbogo]

Explains a lot of your experience frankly. So much had changed in just a few years.

I know that Proton is miles better than it used to be, and that by now about 99% of my steam library is playable, and that the performance gap is marginal in most cases. And that's awesome, but has nothing to do with the point I'm trying to make. What I mean, is that a huge discrepancy in performance usually means "sumpthin' ain't right". Could be a simple mistake in settings during measurements (like with LTT fiasco), or the dude from the abovementioned video didn't even test it and pulled numbers out of his sphincter(also quite possible). If Star Citizen really was better/faster on Linux, then I'm sure it would've been all over youtube by now, and at least someone would've been able to replicate the result.

 

[R-T-B]

I know that Proton is miles better than it used to be, and that by now about 99% of my steam library is playable, and that the performance gap is marginal in most cases. And that's awesome, but has nothing to do with the point I'm trying to make. What I mean, is that a huge discrepancy in performance usually means "sumpthin' ain't right". Could be a simple mistake in settings during measurements (like with LTT fiasco), or the dude from the abovementioned video didn't even test it and pulled numbers out of his sphincter(also quite possible). If Star Citizen really was better/faster on Linux, then I'm sure it would've been all over youtube by now, and at least someone would've been able to replicate the result.

Ah, I get your point now and agree.

 

[Aquinus]

I'm pretty sure I haven't turned my tower on in at least a year. Maybe I should start it up, bring everything up to date, and see how games are running these days. Proton was doing a pretty darn good job the last time I had used it. If the trend has continued, it's got to be more often than not working for games.

 

[Nordic]

Unfortunately Deck Verified really isn't that useful of a metric. Proton's database is more useful.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Is there a particular flavor of Linux that works best with Steam?

 

[Aquinus]

Is there a particular flavor of Linux that works best with Steam?

I can't speak for others, but I've had a pretty decent experience with Ubuntu and its various official derivatives. I'm pretty familiar with the debian-based eco-system and it seems to work more often than not. Just my 2¢ from my own experience, however I haven't daily driven my Ubuntu tower since I swapped to a Mac in mid 2020. My priorities sort of changed in the grand scheme of things.

Edit: I have put Kubuntu on my daughter's laptop for school recently and I've been more than happy with that, however I haven't tried putting Steam on it because Intel graphics on 8th gen chips have a lot to be desired.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

I can't speak for others, but I've had a pretty decent experience with Ubuntu and its various official derivatives. I'm pretty familiar with the debian-based eco-system and it seems to work more often than not. Just my 2¢ from my own experience, however I haven't daily driven my Ubuntu tower since I swapped to a Mac in mid 2020. My priorities sort of changed in the grand scheme of things.

Edit: I have put Kubuntu on my daughter's laptop for school recently and I've been more than happy with that, however I haven't tried putting Steam on it because Intel graphics on 8th gen chips have a lot to be desired.

Ubuntu or any of its derivatives are a good first stepping stone. If you have nvidia, they should play everything. If you have AMD, you will want a rolling release that has updated MESA frameworks installed. And the rolling releases are on the newer kernels with a ton of performance improvements over the 5.x branches. This depends on the distro, of course.

Overall you cant go wrong. Most distros will run steam without issue. The most you will need to do is run one terminal command to install it if their software store doesnt have it already. Debian/SUSE based distros can just download the installer straight from valve.

 

[Space Lynx]

Steam Deck and SteamOS have completely changed gaming for me. 10/10

 

[Aquinus]

Ubuntu or any of its derivatives are a good first stepping stone. If you have nvidia, they should play everything. If you have AMD, you will want a rolling release that has updated MESA frameworks installed. And the rolling releases are on the newer kernels with a ton of performance improvements over the 5.x branches. This depends on the distro, of course.

Overall you cant go wrong. Most distros will run steam without issue. The most you will need to do is run one terminal command to install it if their software store doesnt have it already. Debian/SUSE based distros can just download the installer straight from valve.

I'd go a little further and say that with any open source driver, going with something a little more bleeding edge than what ships with Ubuntu is probably a good idea. I've actually hit some weird stability issues with my Vega 64, so I'm even running a bleeding edge kernel to try and keep things stable along with a handful of kernel opts for enabling gpu reset and disabling some features that were recently switched on by default.

Either way, it's still 10x better than my experience with the 390. My only grip right now is that my GPU's hwmon number keeps changing between restarts. Sometimes it is 4, or 5, or 6. So I'm having to update my undervolt script almost on every reboot which is annoying. Also depending on what output I'm looking at, I'm getting different current clock speeds for the GPU, so I'm not exactly sure how fast my GPU is running. I just know that with the undervolt, it's pretty steadily on the top power state. However, it reports something like 1400-1450Mhz when the PP table calls for 1600Mhz at 1.05v on p7. At least that's what freq0_input is reporting under load.

All in all, I'd say that most of the time, latest mesa probably isn't necessary unless you're running niche hardware. It's been my experience that most of the instability is in the kernel and I think that's because they have a limited set of hardware that they can test with. It's entirely possible that they don't have a reference vega 64 to do regression testing on, nor would they think the investment is worth it given the number of people with this hardware.

All in all, the tl;dr is that the fewer people that have your hardware, the more likely you're going to hit problems. For example, the Intel graphics on my daughters laptop can't play games worth crap, but even when I was using it for dev work, I never had an issue with it driving two thunderbolt displays. So depending on your hardware, it might just work perfectly fine OOTB. There are probably more people with HP Spectres than people with Vega 64s running Linux.

 

[Nordic]

Star Citizen Linux 35% FASTER than windows?

I play Star Citizen. I know it plays faster on Linux. I do not think this is a fair comparison for other games. Star Citizen is a poorly optimized alpha game that is severely limited by client side single threaded performance. Most AAA games are more dependent on graphics performance which is measurably worse on Linux. Phoronix has demonstrated that both Nvidia and AMD Graphics perform approximately 10% worse on Linux.

The only games that should perform better on Linux are those that need more cpu performance.

If Star Citizen really was better/faster on Linux, then I'm sure it would've been all over youtube by now, and at least someone would've been able to replicate the result.

Star Citizen is faster on Linux. The Star Citizen LUG community has this well documented. I do not expect very many other games to have as much performance gains as Star Citizen.

 

[R-T-B]

Phoronix has demonstrated that both Nvidia and AMD Graphics perform approximately 10% worse on Linux.

I thought the amdgpu OSS stack was considered faster than the closed stack in windows? Nvidia you are right about though.

 

[Nordic]

I thought the amdgpu OSS stack was considered faster than the closed stack in windows? Nvidia you are right about though.

I read a phorinix review that showed amd slower than on windows for both amd and Nvidia in their test suite. If other reviews show different I would be happy to see it.

 

[R-T-B]

I read a phorinix review that showed amd slower than on windows for both amd and Nvidia in their test suite. If other reviews show different I would be happy to see it.

I looked over the reviews and unless a game is straight native it seems you are right.

Wine/proton probably still has a fair bit of overhead. Understandable frankly.

 

[SchumannFrequency]

I read a phorinix review that showed amd slower than on windows for both amd and Nvidia in their test suite. If other reviews show different I would be happy to see it.

Open-Source AMD Radeon Linux Graphics In Great Shape For Workstations, Handily Beating Proprietary Driver

Open-Source AMD Radeon Linux Graphics In Great Shape For Workstations, Handily Beating Proprietary Driver - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

For at least recent GPUs, the RadeonSI OpenGL (and open-source Vulkan drivers) are in great shape compared to the proprietary driver code. The proprietary OpenGL driver code seems to become more and more "legacy" with the continued open-source successes seen by AMD. However, we'll presumably see the proprietary OpenGL driver continue to be offered for those with select workstation/legacy applications where there may be some performance advantages and if still needing to maintain largely the same OpenGL driver code-base for Windows.

Linux vs Windows 11 Comparison: 20 AAA Games Benchmarked [5K]

And Clear Linux continues to have graphics performance advantage over Ubuntu, Arch and Fedora.

If you really do it optimally, in the sense of selecting fastest Linux system out there, and selecting the fastest window manager for gaming (bspwm) then you should easily outperform windows if you use the Mesa driver.

 

[R-T-B]

I mean yeah you can cherry pick and say "if you do this and that" but it's kind of dishonest to the average user. Most users linux experience won't be with a stripped down wm, and phoronix was pretty clear that the average user experience lags in their benchmarks, as stated.

 

[Nordic]

I looked over the reviews and unless a game is straight native it seems you are right.

Wine/proton probably still has a fair bit of overhead. Understandable frankly.

Lots of native linux games are so under-developed that the windows version with Proton is more stable.

And Clear Linux continues to have graphics performance advantage over Ubuntu, Arch and Fedora.

If you really do it optimally, in the sense of selecting fastest Linux system out there, and selecting the fastest window manager for gaming (bspwm) then you should easily outperform windows if you use the Mesa driver.

I don't think that has anything to do with Clear Linux beyond it having a more optimal default config. Any linux can be equally as performance if using the latest kernel and mesa driver with minimal bloat installed. Sure, Clear Linux may be more performant than default Ubuntu but that doesn't tell the whole story.

I do agree with the OP that linux gaming has become totally viable. I have been planning to transition to linux for awhile now. I haven't put words into action yet.