Hi everyone!
I’m a Playstation gamer looking into moving to Linux gaming as the next Playstation might not be able to play physical games.
Here are my 2 computers:
MacBook Pro 2012 (upgraded) with Fedora 41
Surface Go 1 with Fedora 41
I bought Frostpunk on Steam after checking on Proton DB that it would normally run on the MacBook as I knew the Surface Go would probably be way too weak.
According to Proton DB it’s a Gold game.
In the end, no matter what version of Proton I use, it doesn’t launch on the MacBook. I have a black screen, some icy sounds and then it crashes at best…
I then thought, let’s give it a try on the Surface Go and it launched immediately without any tinkering using Proton experimental.
But, the game crashes when the firat cinematic starts, probably because it’s loading too many assets for the Surface.
If anyone has an idea about what to try too many get it working on the MacBook, I would be thankful.
In the meantime, I would want to know, how do you know if a game is gonna run on your machine?
Others have already answered the main question here, but I have a different question for you and a couple recommendations.
I’m a Playstation gamer looking into moving to Linux gaming as the next Playstation might not be able to play physical games.
While I’m happy to see more people flock over, you’re also not going to get physical games here, so not sure what’s the advantage for you.
As for recommendation, many have replied that your system doesn’t meet the minimum requirements, but there are other management games that you could play that would run okay on your system, my main recommendation is RimWorld it’s an amazing colony building game, and a lot more in-depth than Frostpunk, plus it should run on your machine.
Well, physical games are one of the things retaining me on Playstation as it gives me the ability to sell a game I don’t enjoy.
If you take this away, it only leaves the plug&play aspect and the power for your money aspect.
Thanks for the suggestion about Rimworld, I’ll check it out👍
That makes sense, I guess I haven’t thought of it that way. BTW for the plug&play feeling a Steam Deck is as console-like as it gets, I’ve had mine since launch and it’s by far one of the best purchases I’ve made.
I’ll preface this with the fact that I don’t know the game, but looking at the system requirements on steam, both of those systems are below minimum spec.
Also, it would probably help if the macbook actually was on fedora 41, it reads 40 in the screenshot - so maybe try upgrading that one, since the game runs on the system with actual fedora 41?
Oh sorry, the spec screenshot isn’t up to date. Both systems have been upgraded to Fedora 41 and both are now running the newest stock kernel.
Linux support for steam games has come a long way and I find the section on the steam page that says what works on the steam deck is pretty bang on for my debian based Linux gaming.
That said I feel your pain. You are running Linux on a MacBook and that is a very small fringe group in a little larger fringe group. If you want to play games on pc you need to get something with more gaming centered hardware. Gaming on a Macbook is never going to be a great process at this stage of the game. A 10 year old PC running linux with a 1050ti would provide a better experience than a MacBook.
Ivy Bridge doesn’t fully support vulkan
To add more context i also use an old 2012 MacBook as a retro rig
Most unreal engine games don’t even bother running. And of course you dont have CUDA support since no Nvidia hardware
Where did you buy Frostpunk and how are you installing it?
I bought it on Steam (flatpak), so I could clearly get a refund but I won’t do that as I still plan on playing this game one day.
You’re trying to use a laptop from a billion years ago. Of course it doesn’t work. Frostpunk is older, but not that old.
How do you know if a game is gonna run on your machine?
Read the system requirements. If you meet or exceed them, and Proton DB says silver or above, it will probably work.
because you are running integrated graphics that can barely run your OS’s UI, much less a game.
it has nothing to do with steam, or proton, or frostpunk.
You don’t meet the minimum system requirements.
Before you have a fit over another game, you ain’t playing anything made in the last 20 years on either of those. Or anything with 3d graphics.
Only thing you’re playing on those is old school games like original Fallout, and original baldurs gate, and those sort.
No info about “how to make sure game is gonna run”, that is actually one of the reason I switched to console so many years ago.
BTW you don’t have to worry about not being able to play physical games on PS, even if it doesn’t come with optical drive by default, they will always sell the attachment. At least for next 2 or so generations (if not more), too many people with physical games exist.
I had the same idea and bought an Xbox many years ago. Had to send it back twice for red rings and I had games that literally wouldn’t load properly. That’s when I realized the “consoles don’t have any problems” claim was a lie just like it is when people say it about windows or Mac.
They are machines, they can have any number of issues, but generally speaking, if a game is released on a console (and it works) then it will work for you too. No worrying about configs or system requirements.
The idea seems to be for most people that consoles are immune to problems. Which I saw counter examples to. I’d rather be able to at least troubleshoot if there’s issues, which the Xbox made impossible
No arguments there.
Yeah the plug and play advantage of consoles is a big one. You just know that it’ll always run fine.
Well I guess you’re right about an optical drive being sold for a while, but I’m sensing that more and more games are gonna have no physical edition.
Also, to be honest, Linux gaming and the ability to have your game on every computer while being on an open system is also attracting me.
I think my perfect setup would be:
- a Steam Deck with the ability to run Fedora workstation (I love Gnome) for a few games and my administration
- a Playstation for demanding games and racing simulations
If you don’t specifically need Fedora, you can certainly install Gnome on Steam Deck with SteamOS, it just comes with KDE as a default.
Is it difficult to get Gnome on Steam Os?
Wouldn’t I be able to have a gaming partition with Steam OS and its desktop mode and an administrative partition with Fedora workstation?
I know I would be wasting some space by doing this instead of just getting Bazzite, but I would be reassured to just keep the basic Steam Os…
Yeah, I agree. I just didn’t have any idea about your other question, and you didn’t have any responses then so thought I should at least help assuage your PlayStation fears 😀
Steam Deck with the ability to run Fedora workstation (I love Gnome)
Don’t be too focussed on needing to run Fedora for access to Gnome. The OS on the deck (Arch in this case) has the ability to run Gnome. It’ll just be getting it working “right” that’ll be a pain. I would have thought some people are already on it (even if just for a laugh). A cursory web search says it does work with some odd input issues.
That is the beauty of (and often the complexity of) the Linux ecosphere. You can change one thing, Fedora to Arch, and the other things “should” still work.
What do you think about having a Steam OS partition for gaming and a Fedora partition for admin? Would it be doable?
In a way I would prefer this instead of just getting Bazzite as I might miss on some improvements from Steam OS
I guess I don’t see the need to os switch on the steam deck. Unless playing and switching is what you want to do.
If what you want is gnome, there are easier ways than a whole new OS.
Just FYI, if you ever do get a steam deck maybe consider Bazzite instead of Fedora. It is based on Fedora atomic, offers a gnome version, is specifically optimized for a bunch of handhelds including steam deck and supports the game mode of steamOS.
I’m clearly gonna look deeply into this before eventually getting a Steam Deck. I was thinking about having a partition with Fedora Workstation and another one with Steam OS, but Bazzite might clearly be an option.
On some level … because it often doesn’t matter. Most people just buy the game and if it doesn’t run well enough for them refund it under steam’s 2 hour window. Even for Windows this is an issue because of the large variety of PC hardware; you might have a chip that’s new but weak (kind of like buying a new Kia and expecting it to compete with a new Corvette).
On another level … because you’re using hardware that’s over a decade old. What you really want for Linux gaming is either a Steam Deck or a desktop PC with an AMD GPU. If you have to go with a laptop, I’d probably look at the Framework 16; definitely no modern Macs because the ARM chips are pretty hostile to Linux and especially Linux gaming.
Clearly I’m using old hardware, but I think it should run on the MacBook as it’s also an old undemanding game. But Yeah, clearly a Steam Deck or something similar is probably gonna be on my buying list soon.
My guess is the VRAM. These older integrated GPUs just don’t have enough memory.
As others said, Frostpunk is actually fairly demanding game in my experience. That is, it won’t run on a potato.
This doesn’t get talked about much but in my experience gaming on a Mac is often worse than on Linux despite the market share.
It could be the VRAM like others said, but it could also be that the DirectX -> Vulkan translation fails because your Mac’s CPU doesn’t have support for the necessary parts of Vulkan.
Not to link to “that site”, but that seems to be the issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/sd7yup/how_can_i_fully_install_vulkan_in_my_intel_hd_4000/
I did not bother to look into exactly why, but that can be a mix of what the Linux drivers for the integrated GPU support and what operations the hardware actually physically supports.
minimum gpu requirement there is gtx 660, which is still like 5 times more powerful than yours. you can’t really run anything more demanding than solitaire.
Buy it and get a refund if it doesn’t
Frostpunk minimum requirements page says you need a dedicated GPU with 2 GB VRAM. So an Intel HD Graphics GPU won’t cut it. You can only do light gaming with it.
I’m sure there are gaming benchmark videos for it, or for at least CPU+GPU combination. You can get idea about what you should expect. Even Age of Empires II DE would have a hard time with it.
For Linux gaming, you need a relatively new system with a dedicated GPU. For example you can still do low to mid end gaming with GTX 1060 3GB, with a relatively new CPU.
Though for Linux gaming, AMD systems are suggested for more seamless experience. You can also get a Steam Deck if you live in one of those countries.
Edit: Also apparently Intel HD Graphics 4000 doesn’t support Vulkan, so’ll you need this launch option for every non-native game:
PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command%I’m gonna try the launch option you gave me before giving up, thanks.
No problem, and good luck!
Please let us know how it goes.
Without Vulkan, many games will not run well, if they run at all.
Pre-Vulkan era games are fine if the minimum system requirements are met. Native games are also fine. I have an old laptop with the first gen Intel HD GPU and I can play FTL, Mindustry and Sid Meier’s Railroads (on low settings).
the 2008 Mirror’s Edge might run with 30 fps
https://store.steampowered.com/app/17410/Mirrors_Edge/
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 or better
1GB RAM or more
The GeForce 6800 has a Passmark score of 113 and he’s fine on memory, so, yeah, I’d give decent odds that it’d probably run well on his system.
great game, i can recommend it. Altrough it is very short, almost anybody can finish it in 3 hours or less. All early Fallout games (1-2-3, maybe even New Vegas with compromises) would run. Far Cry 3 on 720p low, Far Cry 1 and 2 would run well. Crysis 1, 2 too. Sleeping Dogs 720p low. Minecraft too if opengl 4.5 is aviable. Resident Evil 5, Half Life 1-2, Alien Isolation 720p low, CS Source, CS 1.6, Tomb Raider 720p low. maybe these would work and worth trying. Generally, most games made before 2010 should run. The weakest part is the gpu, the strongest is the RAM
Fallout: New Vegas lists an ATI X1300XT as the minimum and 2GB of RAM. That card has a Passmark score of 69. I’d guess that he’d probably be more than fine.
IIRC, New Vegas was really CPU-constrained, too, not GPU-constrained, and the systems he’s using are probably pretty comparable to any other system from the time CPU-wise – it’s just that they don’t have discrete 3D hardware.
btw it is pretty hard to launch on modern systems, as it was made with Windows Vista and 7 in mind
I mean, he’s using Linux, so it’d run on Proton. I’m pretty sure that it just fires right up. I don’t think that I did anything special myself.
Getting Mod Organizer 2 set up to mod it or something like that might be more-obnoxious on Linux, but honestly, I’d say that Linux plus Proton might compare favorably against current Windows when it comes to backwards compatibility on older games. I’ve read a bunch of Steam descriptions where there are a bunch of upset reviews from people saying that they can’t get a game working on current Windows, and it just runs on Proton without problems or configuration for me.
these computers with linux are good as lightweight servers, not really for gaming
I’ve run it without issues, on a much newer system.
I don’t know why it wouldn’t run at all, but as you point out, you’re running it on a pair of pretty low-end systems. One is from six years prior to the game’s release without discrete video, and the other came out in the same year, but is a very low-end system with no discrete video card; those things aren’t really aimed at playing 3d games. I don’t think that you’d likely be happy with performance even if it ran.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/323190/Frostpunk/
Windows:
Minimum:
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce GTX 660, Radeon R7 370 or equivalent with 2 GB of video RAMRecommended:
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce 970, Radeon RX 580 or equivalent with 4GB of video RAMMac:
Minimum:
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics: 4GB AMD Radeon Pro 5300M, Radeon Pro 560X or betterMy experience is that minimum requirements tend to be kind of optimistic.
The minimum system requirements specify a discrete video card.
You’ve got an 8GB RAM Surface Go with a non-discrete GPU and no VRAM, and a 16GB RAM Macbook also with a non-discrete GPU that had been around for six years prior to the game’s release.
I’ve never returned a game, but IIRC Steam does have a refund policy for a short period of time after purchase, so if you buy a game and it doesn’t run, you can refund it.
goes looking
https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/
You can request a refund for nearly any purchase on Steam—for any reason. Maybe your PC doesn’t meet the hardware requirements; maybe you bought a game by mistake; maybe you played the title for an hour and just didn’t like it.
It doesn’t matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within the required return period, and, in the case of games, if the title has been played for less than two hours.
The Steam refund offer, within two weeks of purchase and with less than two hours of playtime, applies to games and software applications on the Steam store.
EDIT: Here’s a Passmark comparison of your two Intel integrated video things and the lowest-end video card they list in their system requirements, a Geforce GTX 660. This gives a score to give a rough idea of how they’d compare in relative terms:
GeForce GTX 660: 4013
Intel HD 4000: 348
Intel HD 615: 705I mean, you might get it running, but I’m skeptical that you’d have a good experience with it.
EDIT2:
Their “recommended” card is a GeForce GTX 970. Adding that:
GeForce GTX 970: 9634
EDIT3: Hmm. I’ve never really thought about it, but you’d think that Valve could get minimum requirements plonked into a database, and then have the Steam client, which can see your hardware – assuming that you’re shopping from the Steam client – warn you on the game page if your system doesn’t meet them.
Thanks for the precise and detailed answer.
Yeah I guess I clearly have to give up on playing games less than 10 years old, even on the more powerful MacBook.
FWIW I think the Surface is the more powerful machine.
I wouldn’t bother with any 3D AAA that came out after ~2010 on the Mac and even then you’re looking at 720p 30FPS
The Surface looks like it might be a solid light indie game machine. I doubt it’ll struggle too much with anything 2D and may even be able to run late PS3/super early PS4 era (before 2015) 3D games at reasonable framerates.
I guess I clearly overstimated the graphical power of the MacBook because it feels so snappy for admin work. The Surface too, but a fraction slower.
If I want to get into Linux gaming, I’ll have to work on my benchmarking skills😅
That extra 8GB of RAM is probably doing a lot of the heavy lifting to make general use smoother. More RAM = less swapping to the drive when memory fills up (which on 8GB means ~5 tabs in a browser before it starts slowing down haha).
Well, it depends. I mean, I play rather newer games that I suspect either can handle fine, but they’re light on 3D rendering.
Nova Drift is one favorite.
That exited Early Access this year. I play it regularly. But…it just uses 3D hardware for some lightweight effects.
goes to see what minimum system requirements are
Yeah, that actually lists your older Intel integrated GPU, the one on the MacBook, as being the minimum requirement.
CPUs haven’t advanced all that rapidly for quite some years, so games that are CPU-bound are also less of an issue than those GPU-bound.
EDIT: And some games won’t use 3D hardware at all. I also regularly play Rule the Waves 3, which is a 2023 naval warfare military simulator that doesn’t use 3D hardware at all.
EDIT2: I’ve also played Balatro recently, and that just uses the barest of 3D hardware to do stuff like stick rotated sprites on the screen. They just say “integrated graphics” on their system requirements. That’s a 2024 release.
Not having fully functional Vulkan is going to make gaming on Linux a real pain. WINED3D (DX to OpenGL) works well enough nowadays, but DXVK and vkd3d-proton (DX to Vulkan) is where the real magic is.
With Vulkan, very low level programming is possible, which means translation layers and HLE emulators benefit a lot in terms of accuracy and speed.
I would strongly recommend upgrading your hardware if at all possible, not just because of performance, but because of up-to-date Vulkan driver support. AMD GPUs work best on Linux. Avoid Nvidia if you can, but if you literally can’t get anything else, it will also work. Modern Intel should also be fine, but not as mature as AMD.
If you really want to run games on these computers, you will need to force enable WINED3D via an environment variable, either in Steam, or in whatever launcher you’re using.
There is a fork of Proton designed specifically for old GPUs. I would use this if you absolutely cannot upgrade: https://github.com/pythonlover02/Proton-Sarek
I’ll try Proton-Sarek when I get to go in front of the MacBook. Thanks
Note that even with this it’ll be quite likely that games don’t work. WineD3D is much less compatible than DXVK.
You need a device that can do Vulkan properly. The best for that are AMDGPUs and Nvidia ones but I wouldn’t recommend the latter. Newer Xe Intel GPUs should also work but they’re quite a bit behind anything AMD has to offer in terms of performance.
The newer of your GPUs meanwhile is a design from ~2015. Vulkan released in 2016. Just to get you an idea.
The issue here is not Linux, it’s that neither of your GPUs was made for modern gaming. On windows that might sometimes work, especially with games targetting older graphics APIs that your GPUs were made with in mind but on Linux everything is Vulkan (a very modern graphics API), even games that only use older APIs.
A modern Vulkan-capable card is a requirement for painless gaming on Linux.
Left a comment as a reply to one of yours about the laptops themselves.
The way I can tell if a game does/should run on my PC is kind of a multi-prong approach
- System requirements page
- DigitalFoundry does really good performance analysis videos on new games (REALLY good if you have a rough idea of how your components compare to others)
- Determining what console my PC compares to in terms of performance and going off that. Specific examples:
- First laptop had an i7 3610HQ and a GT 740M - a bit more powerful than PS3/Xbox 360. If a game runs on those consoles (720p with inconsistent 30FPS) I should be able to run it on this laptop at slightly lower (trash port) or slightly better (good port) resolution or fps.
- Second laptop had an i5 7300HQ and a GTX 1050Ti - performance between a PS4 and PS4 Pro
- If it gets 30FPS on base PS4, this laptop can easily run it at 45 unless it’s a bad port (FPS can be higher if I lower settings)
- It’s also comparable to a desktop GTX 970 (although 970 is still a bit better) so If I see 970 as the minimum, I know I can tweak stuff to get it running.
- Current laptop has an i7 11800HQ with a GTX 3070 - quite a bit better than PS5, not sure how it compares to PS5 Pro yet. It’s new enough and supports DLSS so I expect a locked 60FPS at 1440p on everything with some tweaking. Right now, until a new console generation comes out, if I can’t lock 60 on a game, it’s probably really poorly made and not worth my time.
- Once you’ve seen how different games run on your hardware, you sorta get a sense of how certain types of graphics should perform
And then check protondb to see if it can run on linux (most likely will)
Integrated graphics may have some gotchas but the general rule I follow is “if it came out within a console generation, it can’t run that console’s games. Last gen can be serviceable. 2 generations back run pretty well.”
