Linux Gaming

I’ve been an enthusiastic Linux user since encountering it at Uni; so, how about some gaming?

It’s always been possible to run some games on Linux. After switching it was nice to be encouraged to try some, shall we say, older games, like NetHack; various open source games; and all the different emulator and not-emulator options.

I seem to remember that Doom 3 ran particularly well.

I was away from Linux gaming for quite some years, but recently returned to it with a brand new gaming PC and considerable enthusiasm. And what did I find?

Well, it turns out there is now this thing called a Steam Deck:

The Steam Deck

And while I can’t buy one yet—it’s not launched in my country—I don’t need to. Because it means there is now a real, commercial interest in PC game Linux compatibility. You can look any game up in the Proton DB

Proton DB

to see how well it works, and/or if there are ways to make it work.

It’s a better outcome for Linux PC gaming than I could have imagined—a real joy to return to.

Here is some anecdata on how well it works:

Due to late shipment of my Linux PC I was making do with an old Windows laptop for trying No Man’s Sky, and I discovered that Windows 10 does not really support USB microphones. At all.

The problem is that the built-in driver does not offer the “gain boost” checkbox you need in order to make the volume level usable, and the only way I could get it working—after an hour—was to install two third-party utilities; one to hook into the driver and another to configure the mixer.

On Linux it worked immediately out of the box.

My inner twenty-year old is ecstatic.

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