Yeah but squinting at a pdf on your monitor pales in comparison to whipping out the glossy colour print instruction booklet. I remember playing Morrowind and it came with an actual map. It was so much fun I forgot the game itself had that feature. More games should come with maps, man. Where’s my BOTW map?

Oh yes that’s right, you awakened a traumatic repressed memory where I keep all my games on a secondary SSD and because I installed either snap or flatpak (can’t remember), it just shit itself and failed to work properly. Took me ages to figure that out.

It would be nice if there was actually good native Linux games. Imagine how buttery smooth they would run. Valve games one of the reasons they’re so enjoyable is they run perfectly on Linux, chef’s kiss. But they made the steam deck so it would be silly if they didn’t

I kind of feel like MM2 is designed around playing multiplayer with people next to you rather than on the other side of the planet

I don’t get noticeable FPS hits or graphical issues with Proton. In fact, in many cases Proton actually outperforms Windows in FPS.

I don’t think many people are willing to mess with that symlink stuff to be honest, I know I’d only do it if I had a really good reason to. But I’m not a Linux expert, I don’t really understand that kind of stuff and would probably fuck up my game or system if I tried. I know enough to read and mostly comprehend commands that I’m copy pasting into terminal

This joke makes me feel uncomfortable

Yeah that’s a good point. There’s a huge difference between Cities: Skylines and OpenTTD. I feel like those kinds of older style PC games are especially suited to native Linux builds.

Yeah exactly. At first glance native = better; probably because we have had so much experience with non-native stuff being garbage, like Electron apps and such. But Proton Is Not an Emulator, it actually is much more clever than that.

You end up with the opposite of what you initially expected, where you’re asking each individual developer to target an environment they’re not familiar with, probably can’t easily test, and for very little renumeration. If anything it’s surprising some developers even manage to make good native Linux versions at all.

It’s much better IMO to rely on the very smart people working on WINE / Proton to handle the compatibility layer, where all that Linux specific knowledge can be put to the most efficient use. Especially because Linux isn’t just one thing, it’s like a billion things, so it’s really not an easy task at all.

In my mind the only thing that could be done is to make Proton’s job easier in some way. Like if more games used Vulkan instead of DX11, that would probably help compatibility between all OS’, right? Maybe or maybe not, I’m not particularly knowledgeable about the details of that kind of stuff.

I see, that’s very confusing and interesting, thank you.

Generally I just try to install things “normally” if possible, like for Steam I just went to their website and downloaded the installer. I often get weird file system and audio and other problems with flatpak and snap, so I just decided one day to avoid those sources if possible lol

In Factorio I’m big pussy and play in peaceful mode lol. I don’t play it for the alien combat

Yeah that’s true as well. Nothing is perfect, I was just sharing my experience because even today I ran into this issue multiple times and got annoyed.

I noticed people here seem to attribute a lot more meaning to downvotes than other websites, and it’s even a bit taboo to downvote too often. Personally I don’t really think about it that deeply, there’s always people who will disagree with you. Also I noticed hyperbole isn’t appreciated either. Like to me if I read “Linux native is buggy and never works right” that doesn’t mean literally never, it’s more like the emotional never.

Bro that’s not a small tip, that’s an epic tip. Makes it so much easier to see what’s actually happening. Ideally there would be that information visible at all times and also in Big Picture Mode, instead of hidden behind a button click in desktop only, but I’ll primarily use it to quickly check compatibility at the time of install. Thanks mate!

I don’t think Steam ships flatpaks does it? At least I’ve never seen it.

It’s an extremely difficult game, yes. I lost to the first mission, then 90% of my team died in the second mission, and I’m like, I’m not particularly strategically gifted, maybe this game isn’t for me _^😂^

Yeah in my experience, if it has a Linux native build, it is bad. 90% of the time at least. Of course there’s exceptions, but mostly I try and manually set the Proton version when I play a game the first time. Never have issues with Proton, it’s great.

Though sometimes I forget and run into frustrating issues. Like today actually, I tried to play Magicka 2 with my kid. We only had 30 minutes, and the controllers just weren’t working no matter what I did… It thought every controller was a “steam controller”, so most of the buttons didn’t work at all, because I didn’t have them lol. Couldn’t get past the tutorial. Press the Steam button to use Life energy. Hello, we are using Xbox and Nintendo Switch Pro controllers? Spent the whole time troubleshooting.

Just now when I was writing my list, I was like, no way… Checked the store page. Yep it forget my Compatibility setting between distros, and the Linux native version was the whole problem. Changed it manually to Proton 10 for next time :/. Works fine now…

Ultra deluxe works great as well on Proton. Only problem is that the jump button doesn’t work :P. Surprisingly my kid likes that game too, which I wasn’t expecting at all.

I don’t mind people downvoting. To me that means the games they play don’t have that issues. Maybe I’m just unlucky but I’m also a “variety gamer” so my exposure surface is very high as well

I couldn’t get a full list because I was relying on having set a flag forcing a specific version of Proton to identify which games were problematic to jog my memory… Unfortunately this data is local only and was not synced between computers, so it was lost when I changed distro. Just from my limited memory though, I can list some that I distinctly remembered when writing up my post, though it’s many more in reality. It’s also surprisingly hard to see whether a game even has a Linux native version, you usually have to wait for the store page to load and scroll down to compatibility, which is just annoying.

Games that worked well:

• Factorio
• Stardew Valley
• Baba Is You
• All Valve games (TF2, DotA2, etc)

Games that had issues:

• 1001 Spikes
• The Case of the Golden Idol
• Broforce
• Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition
• The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe
• Cook, Serve, Delicious
• Valheim
• A Game About Feeding A Black Hole
• Audiosurf 2
• Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
• Slay the Princess
• TIS-100
• Cassette Beasts
• Brotato
• Bit.Trip runner
• Don’t starve together
• Unpacking
• While True: Learn
• Fez
• Magicka 2 (controllers not working)
• One Shot (critical gameplay bug right at the end. Had to watch a let’s play to finish it. I messaged the dev who left me on Read)
• Just Shapes & Beats (no sound)
• Tiny Bookshop (no sound)
• HiveSwap (critical gameplay bug right at the end, and savefile bricked, had to watch a let’s play and the dev ignored me) (I’m not a “fan” I swear, please don’t lynch me)

I’m getting tired and I’m sure you get the point. Almost every game in my experience has been unplayable on Linux runtime. I’m glad it’s working well for you though.

I have issues even with new games. They’re just not made well in most cases.

I’ll compile a list but it’ll take a while because I don’t remember off the top of my head and I don’t have my library in front of me right now

For now. After the stunts Sony pulled I wouldn’t trust them at all. Imagine if Steam silently removed even some tools or soundtracks you purchased but never listened to? Instantly all the trust is completely gone. Even if a game is never deleted, it feels like a threat, because it is

You’re the only other person I’ve met with the same issue. I even made a bug report and forum post and complained everywhere, everyone said I was crazy lol