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I recently spent some time with the Framework 13 laptop, evaluating it with the new Intel Core Ultra 7 processor and the AMD Ryzen 7 7480U. It felt like the perfect opportunity to test how a handful of games ran on Windows 11 and Fedora 40. I was genuinely surprised by the results!
…
The Framework 13 is perfectly capable of gaming even with its integrated graphics, provided you’re willing to compromise by lowering the resolution and quality presets for more demanding games. (It’s also a testament to how far AMD’s APUs have come in the past decade.)
Summary of results:
- Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Linux wins
- Total War: Warhammer III: Windows wins
- Cyberpunk 2077: Linux wins
- Forza Horizon 5: Windows wins
These results are an interesting slice of the Linux vs Windows gaming picture, but certainly not representative of the entire landscape. A few shorts years ago, however, I never would have dreamed I’d be writing an article where even two games on Linux are outperforming their Windows counterparts.
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I think it says a lot more about how much recent versions of Windows have bogged down the whole gaming experience.
Microsoft seems to have forgotten that people want an operating system that works, not something bloated with bullshit like telemetry, advertisements, tracking cookies and artificial intelligence. The only reason they even have a market lead in the desktop space is due to marketing and monopolistic practices.
Oh, they know what people want in an OS, the thing is that they don’t care. People who know better can complain all they want, normies and most corpos will get windows anyway
I wonder how Windows would perform against Linux with all bloatware removed and telemetry disabled.
I don’t see a problem with anonymozed telemetry. I see a problem with it when it’s used for other things than making your own software better directly though.
At this point Windows should be free of charge.
would there even be an OS left?
That’s not an OS, that’s three spywares in a trenchcoat!
Isn’t that just spyware with extra steps?
Suprised that forbes is reporting about linux
It’s their community blog. This specific person has been writing there about Linux gaming for a long time now.
ah alright, thank you
When I started using linux 15 years ago, my friend recommended to keep a windows partition for gaming. At least for me, I have deleted windows a few years ago and I’m not looking back.
My gaming PC was the last one I had running Windows. I couldn’t take it anymore and this year I switched that one too.
Now if only I could run (my perfectly legal copy of) SOLIDWORKS decently, it’d be great.
If you play DRMed AAA stuff, that’s still true unfornately (if you can’t do VM with PCIe passthrough).
Personally I just opt to not play these games. The market dicides in the end.
Some of the “anticheat” systems straight up decide not to work on VMs even with PCIE passthrough et. al. For example, I cannot run Elden Ring with its trash DRM because it says it cannot run under VM. I have PCIE passthrough, and the CPU id also passes through. Only the chipset reports anything VM, yet the “anticheat” decides not to run.
Fuck DRM. It has done nothing except push me to pirate more when I LITERALLY AM buying the games. Fuck those greedy actual morons (corporations who deploy DRM, not FromSoft specifically).
A little birdie told me there’s a fit girl on the internet who might be able to help
I will always upvote Amelie. She needs donations too
Elden Ring does run quite nicely on Linux via Proton, though.
Infind most AAA games to be such shit compared to indie games these days it’s almost laughable.
Ok cool now make a distro that handles my peripherals. Oh that’s not happening? Ok, fuck linux.
“I’m going to keep throwing exorbitant amount of many to companies that refuse to stop supporting Microsoft’s monopoly, and then blame the OSS community for not doing their job for them. Look, I’m smart!”
Last I tried a keyboard and a mouse work just on every Linux distro out there. It’s OK to bend over for companies over some stuff you’re personally attached to (we all do it to some degree) but you can go fuck yourself with your offensive comments about distro maintainers, who have nothing to do with your problem.
I have tried unsuccessfully to transition to linux as my daily driver more than five times now since the early 00s and every single time I run into a major failure that halts all progress, and then I go back to it a few years later hoping for something different and each time being left for days without being able to get it running. Never had this problem with windows.
And I’m a seasoned senior IT admin that has stood up and maintained dozens of linux servers in my lifetime.
Yet every time I share my terrible experiences with the software AND the community, there’s alway some rancid windowlicker rushing into the comments to tell me “Acktchsually it is commercial software that is wrong”, again reminding me of just how terrible you people are.
And now that I have someone of your ilk here, I’d also like to ask:
#Why the FUCK are you people wasting so many millions of hours of human effort by everyone and their brother making functionally identical distros with vanity tweaks, and getting into doxxing over stupid shit like over which U.I. to package.
Your software is shit, it will never be desktop ready because none of you can focus on the real issues. You can lie to yourself all you want but Windows is simply the superior desktop OS.
Keep in mind, I don’t really like Windows, but I fucking hate linux with a seething vitriol only matched by some racist homophome grandpas seeing their daughter kiss a black woman. And people like you are 30% of the reason.
Holy sense of entitlement Batman. What as asshole. If it doesn’t work for you, fine, don’t use it. But no need to be a prick about it. Free software doesn’t owe you anything at all.
I’m less angry about the terrible software and moreso about it’s terrible community.
Driver support is down to the manufacturer. Distros can’t give you things that don’t exist.
Do you honestly think linux will be desktop ready if people can’t just install it and go?
It doesn’t matter who’s fault it is, it only matters if a solution is forthcoming.
If the manufacturers don’t make it, then one of you has to. But you are all too busy working on your fuckdamn vanity distros to actually unify and do something to forward the OS.
That changes nothing for the user, most of us aren’t gonna write out own driver or convince a company to support something they have no interest in.
You’re not wrong but I don’t see what that has to do with my point, which was - don’t blame distros for this. They can influence the conversation but not control it. If you find what you want isn’t supported then pick something that supports most things like Ubuntu, or Nobara.
I’m more surprised by the ease of use than the performance, honestly.
Btw, anyone got the newest reshade to work? Even with the reshade-linux script, they just don’t load, no matter which game. I had 4.something working for the longest time but since 5, nothing.
Im so glad I fully switched to Linux. I was amazed how good the gaming performance have come nowadays. I tried out Ubuntu back in 2007 and have tried some other distros too during the years, but always went back to Windows because of games. Not anymore.
Fun fact: With those 4 games it looks like a tie, but weighed by Steam scores, Linux wins. (Warhammer has like 3/5).
(Disclaimer: I have never played any of those 4 games and don’t plan to in a forseeable future. I also realize full well how ridiculously insignificant a sample of 4 is.)
But you still can’t play Roblox on it.
Or a ton of indie games on Steam.
Roblox not working is annoying. I play a bunch of stupid Roblox games with my kids and switching back to Windows just for that is a pain.
Sober works very well, and if their devices are low-end sober has been proven to improve FPS by a few
Which indie games don’t work with wine or proton?
Roblox works, look up Sober.
I just wish many of the multiplayer games I play worked on Linux (invasive anti-cheat).
Slightly off-topic, but when I stopped playing multiplayer games with anti-cheats (competitive FPS mostly), I’ve got more time to explore more productive hobbies, and my mental health improved. Might be worth trying 🙂
Yeah, could be worth a shot!
What I’m still missing unfortunately is how seemingly all modern online games require stupid kernel level anti-cheats that don’t work on Linux.
All? It’s just Riot, right? I haven’t had issues playing anything else, but I also don’t play most AAA games so idk. What other companies are doing it?
I think battleeye too?
I don’t think so. This is from three years ago. https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/3104663180636096966
Oh right, neat!
I guess I’m just thinking of a couple games with BE who have not bothered to reach out for this.
I think EA and Activision also have newish, bespoke anti-cheat for Battlefield and call of duty respectively. I don’t believe either of those work on Linux but I could be mistaken.
Yeah, it looks like EA’s launcher/anti-cheat explicitly do not allow wine. Oh well. EA hasn’t published an interesting game in many years.
You’re not wrong. I have no idea about the call of duty one either. I’m guessing it similarly doesn’t work.
It sort of highlights another issue; even though a game technically leverages an AC system that can work in Steam, individual developers may not bother getting it running on Linux.
I’m no fan of Fortnite, but you can’t deny it’s massively popular. I hope the steam deck sees continued success in order to sway developers. Broadening SteamOS to other HW platforms may also help to an extent.
Yea, but honestly that’s not a Linux problem imo. Invasive anti-cheat has been a deal breaker for me since its inception. It started as “I don’t want to deal with your shitty software always running in the background eating up my CPU cycles, need maximum performance baby” and then quickly became “I’m not giving your shitty software kernal access to my entire machine, I don’t trust you”.
It’s made so much worse when you realize it doesnt even actually stop cheaters…
It’s extremely invasive, but I won’t give up playing something that my friends all enjoy once in a while. The best hope is that companies realize that Steam Deck and other efforts make companies consider other markets.
Also, it sounds more like you’re advocating for kernal level anti-cheat being created for Linux by game devs as opposed to being against the horrible and invasive practice regardless of OS.
It’s all about where to draw the line, and what you are able to tolerate, I guess. The biggest problem with that though is continuing to support a game / Dev / publisher that is consistently doing these awful things.
If you aren’t able to tell your friends “no, I’m not playing that game, and here’s why” then the industry will just slide deeper into these terrible practices and the entire games industry gets worse. Some people don’t even understand what anti-cheat is doing (and think it works), and if those of us that do, that they trust, don’t explain it to them, they won’t have the opportunity to make an informed decision of whether to support it or not.
I must admit that my evil self impatiently waits for a crowdstrike-like event, but with a kernel-level anti-cheat instead. On the more serious side, it baffles me how much the vast majority of people don’t care about privacy or security problematics. They literally don’t give a f**k.
They probably don’t even know it’s happening.
You’re right it’s not a Linux problem but it is a problem more to the point it’s our problem and anyone who would want to switch
Cold hard fact is that people just do not care what causes the problem and people do not care if something is %1 worse or %1000 worse they will always pick the one slightly better that’s why monopoly’s are an inherent part of nature eventually competition is unviable.
The only hope is that either Linux crosses the critical threshold of being slightly better than Windows or windows gets so invasive and counterintuitive that even normies can’t use it for productivity
I use Linux all the time I have three physical servers running probably 20 or 30 VM’s and containers but even I am hesitant to switch my gaming Pc because even though I can play everything I want now what if tomorrow something comes out I really want to play but it’s locked down to windows?
I just don’t agree. First, I don’t think a monopoly is an inherent part of nature, and further I disagree that monopolies exist because some company just makes the absolute best product and people end up always choosing it. A monopoly’s key feature is not giving the consumer a real choice through shady and unfair business practices.
Also, windows is not the better product. They don’t make the best OS. Arguments could be made that they have a better OS for gaming, but for almost everything else they are worse than basically every alternative (not just Linux) but still dominate market share due to lack of consumer choice. At the retailer, hardware is tied to an OS - if you want macos you have to buy Mac hardware. If you want chromeos you have to by an underwhelming netbook.
IMO, keeping windows around just in case a company does some underhanded shit like kernal anti-cheat or invasive DRM so you can give your support to the company doing the underhanded shit is a detriment to progress.
I’d rather struggle to learn freecad than keep windows around even though fusion360 is easier (for me) to understand, because I don’t want to reward bad behavior. If those of us that can switch don’t, then things don’t get better. I couldn’t have made the switch if thousands of people more knowledgeable and talented before me hadn’t taken the first steps. It’s soapboxy, I know, but I also feel it’s important.
I won’t waste to much time on a generated question but businesses become monopolies by being better than others or one of the ones would have became the monopoly then when they have no competition they can get as bad as they like(NOTE: better doesn’t necessarily mean better for you it could mean better at collecting payments or better at logistics but better nonetheless)
And the fact of the matter is nobody likes competition so they all try too work around it.
Only a few of them. Many just work.
If Microsoft makes good on their threats to cut off all kernel-level access to third party applications, that might help with that
They said that?
I think it might have come about from the Crowdstrike thing?
Sometimes i feel weird and impressed with Microsoft that allow third party to create windows emulation system that beat original windows in many ways
It is mostly a translation layer – WINE is Not an Emulator (WINE). The reason Microsoft ‘allows’ this is because they have no choice. WINE hasn’t broken any laws or violated any copyright or trademarks. Same goes for Proton with DXVK of course.
Although i never fully understand how wine works, how WINE doesn’t break any lawsuit ? It’s clearly mimicking windows itself with windows library (like VC Library, DotNet, DirectX, etc) as add-ons
Now i hope linux community can do the same with Nintendo Emulator or Sony PS emulator without triggering lawsuitTo add a more technical explanation, the main point is about the expectation on how it behaves and not what it really does. To get windows to do something, you read the specification (interface) and make a call against it. Windows interprets your request and does what you wanted. You do not care how it works but just that it works. As a developer, you can also switch to the other side and make your own program that interprets these calls and translates, them for linux.
Legally (I am not a lawyer), the specification is a fair game. The spicy part is how it is done and copying that gets you in trouble.
Of course, this is also extremely simplified since linux and windows differ wildly in many regards. Also a “specification” is often incomplete or the implementaion bleeds into the real world use. This makes it not reliable to look at it alone and so, often the “original” implementation has to be observed on how it behaves.
As a more relatable example, think about websites. On the one hand, it does not matter which browser you use. It “just” has to display the page and act accordingly. On the other side, it does not matter what server sends you the page. It could be a pre-computed static page, served via a proxy server or dynamically generated by any of the different programming languages.
Edit: grammar
If I remember correctly, the only thing WINE has “copied” are the function calls and signatures (which are the adaptors as mentioned in the other response). The function implementation is completely original.
In a highly simplified way:
- Think of Windows as an electricity provider with their own specially shaped wall socket.
- Linux is also an electricity provider with a differently shaped wall socket.
- In this metaphor Wine is just some guys providing an adaptor that makes the electricity of the Linux electricity provider available in a wall socket that has the same shape as the Windows provider’s.
Wine isn’t breaking Windows copyright because it doesn’t copy any of the Windows internals: instead it provides the contact points with the right “shape” for programs which were made to work in Windows to connect to to get their needs fullfilled, and then internally Wine does its own thing which is mainly using the Linux under it to do the heavy lifting.
Mind you, this simplification seriously understates just how complicate it is to implement what was implemented in Wine because the Windows interface is a lot more that just the shape of a wall socket.
To add to your explanation
- most people have the specialized Windows plug. Microsoft has invested a lot of money in making sure people ONLY have access to the Windows plug
- Linux provides the same electricity signal that people need (maybe even better) but since people’s Windows plug don’t work on Linux’s wall socket, they get the impression that Linux doesn’t supply electricity.
- WINE is just the adaptor which people put on their Window’s plug. Now it easily fits on the Linux wall socket.
I’m gonna get specific here, but show me WoW on Linux or GTFO. It’s the only game I really play (wz2100 and zero-k too but no more shooters), and while I’m just a casual scrub the old folks and the kids get together for some chatter and splatter and it’s really great.
I don’t want my account blocked for false-positive on the cheat detector or something, so that’s really my blocker for going fedora on the desktop.
Edit: -18? Guess us casual wow people don’t count? :-. I just wanna ride dragons, man.
Okay, challenge accepted.
I removed Windows from my machine and have been playing WoW on Garuda Linux since April. I installed via Lutris and use GE-proton with umu-launcher (simply using GE-Proton within latest Lutris uses umu) and it works every time without fail.
First, for WoW there is no separate cheat detector that somehow figures out “oh they’re on Linux, we must ban them”.
Second, WoW plays considerably better on Linux for me (based on the framerates I’m seeing in various locations in Azeroth). Granted, I decided to dump NVIDIA so I didn’t have to deal with their closed platform garbage.
Lastly, yes, anti-cheat is an issue, but not because of you running Linux — it’s because of game companies fundamentally misunderstanding operating systems. There is no easier method of cheating on Linux than there is on Windows especially if the game company properly supports Linux. So if a company were to ban you, either you are doing something ban-worthy (and running Linux objectively is not), or the company is garbage because they don’t understand what they’re doing.
I have seen no evidence to support Blizzard banning people for playing WoW on Linux. Show me a preponderance of evidence of this that isn’t possibly some other ban-worthy issue, and I will happily change my mind.
WoW has been running well on Linux since before Proton existed. Here’s the WineHQ application page for it: https://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iAppId=1922
Yeah, blizzard games have pretty much always worked for me on Linux, they were among the first games to “just work” on Linux without a lot of hassle for me.
I remember Overwatch was one of the first DirectX 11 games to run really well when DXVK was new too.
WoW works fine for me with Lutris. CurseForge works too.
Like everyone else is saying, WoW ran just fine for me on linux. So I guess you’re a fedora user now.
I’ve been running wow on linux via lutris since BFA.
Aw, I can’t get cyberpunk to run on my mint install - it gets the logos and stops responding.
Some people read about performance, sometimes I’m just motivated knowing someone on the internet did get a game running in the first instance! :)
I will say though, Baldurs Gate 3 works perfectly, as does anything else I throw at it! :)
A couple of months ago I had the same problem on Debian Unstable. Then I tried it on Fedora 40 and it worked flawlessly.
Oh no! I’m so cosy on mint, but now I’m eyeing Fedora and it looks snazzy, and maybe cyberpunk is a fun prospect too! :)
Cyberpunk worked out of the box for me, but senua 2 absolutely refuses to start no matter what kind of voodoo I try (“fatal error”). I seem to always be on the opposite spectrum of protondb mint users I swear.
It wouldn’t run for me until I got the Steam version (in Tumbleweed). Works great now.
It would have been better if it had worked with just one copy though. At least I got it on sale.
How odd! I must admit with cyberpunk, I was reading ProtonDB and had a “that’s one fine game… why doesn’t mine look like that!” Simpsons moment. 😅
Mine runs in Fedora. Are you accessing via steam?
I am indeed! I tried popping in the skip launcher commands from a few people on ProtonDB, and it seems to be rather grumpy with me 😅 I’ve read it could be the Phantom Liberty DLC being DRM’d, but not sure :)
You could test that by disabling the DLC temporarily. Click on the game in your list and scroll down on the game page until you see the DLC widget on the right side. Click “manage my DLC” and uncheck Phantom Liberty. Then run the game. You can re-enable the DLC again the same way.
Thank you! This is going to sound daft, but I had forgotten steam allows you to uncheck DLC like that! :) it’s so rare that I’d opt-out (in fact this might be the only time I have needed to!) :) thank you again
Oh that might be possible. I do not have the DLC which could do it. I run it on Proton 9 and it seems fine.
I managed to get it running on EndeavorOS!
Nice! Consider me doubly motivated to give it another go this weekend :)
Oh, the article is written by Jason Evanghelo. Of course, he’s a giant Linux shill working at Forbes :D
Still great to see such press
I recognized that name… he’s working at Thunderbird!
