I used linux in the past, both privately and work-related, but the last time was over 10 years ago, so I’m a bit out of touch. I am in need of a new PC, but it’ll be a good year before I have the funds, so for now I am making due with an i5 7500 and a gtx 1660. I do have 32 GB so there’s that. I finally feel confident enough to make the permanent switch to linux from windows as all of the programs I use are either available on linux or have a good/better equivalent. The only thing I fear will hold me back is games. I know Steam has Proton now which will run most games, but how does it compare? The games I play most are Skyrim (heavily modded) , RDR2, Witcher 3, Transport fever, Civilization, Crusader kings 3 and Cities Skylines (uninstalled atm waiting for 2). I’m on the fence to either wait until I can afford a new PC and dual boot or make the switch now and deal with a few gaming problems. Thing is, what kind of problems may I expect? Anyone able and knowledgeable to give me some advice?
EDIT: Wow, those are a lot of replies; thank you everyone! You really helped me. I will make the switch sooner rather than later.
I’ve played most of those on Linux and they work just fine. Some notes:
I’ve played exclusively on Linux for the last decade, and I’ve played tons of popular games that all work well. There are only a handful of games that don’t work well, and they are either super old (e.g. almost DOS days), multiplayer (mostly anti-cheat), or less popular.
RDR2 runs fantastically on my 6650XT @ 1440p, and I’m guessing it would run acceptably well on your 1660.
So yeah, try it out! Most of my games just work, and the rest only required very minor tweaks (e.g. launch options in Steam or a specific Proton version).
Ironically, I’ve had more issues with CK3 natively than running through Valves Wine flavour.
When running natively, using the Vulkan renderer it gets stuck initializing, and when using OpenGL it stutters. Using Proton and DXVK it is butter smooth.
Huh, that’s pretty lame. I’ll have to try it out and see if I have the same experience.
I have noticed that issue on other games though, where DX11 worked better than native.
The same is true for some Feral Interactive games.
For Crusader Kings 3 on my desktop the issue does not exist. Native Vulkan is silky smooth there. On my laptop it only works with native OpenGL or Proton.
Both are AMD machines because fuck Nvidia drivers.
Ah, I wonder if it’s an issue switching from integrated graphics to the dGPU then. I have been avoiding dGPUs on laptops for years now because I just didn’t want to deal with it on Linux. I ended up getting an AMD laptop for my last laptop (E495) so I could do light gaming, and it’s a fantastic Minecraft box now for my kids.
I haven’t had major issues when I had an NVIDIA card (had one for ~10 years), but I did recently switch to AMD for my desktop this year and I can finally use Wayland now so my monitors refresh properly.
Vulkan is MUCH better at multi GPU systems btw. Most games default to the dGPU without hacks like DRI_PRIME, or allow you to select one in video settings