How much is the speed drop from translation using Proton? Is it so big or just small? Hows the performance of cartoonish Windows only games? And whats your hardware and how much is the price? I’m sorry but I cannot test it myself because I’m still on my mobile. Can you also tell about how many games are compatible with Proton? What about non-popular games?

  • Mexigore@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 day ago

    I see a lot of bazzite recommendations but I think that is an outdated take. IMO CatchOS is the better choice, ofc this is personal opinion.

  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    26·
    6 days ago

    How much is the speed drop from translation using Proton?

    The speed drop is negative. That is, it’s often actually faster.

    Yes, I know it doesn’t seem to make sense.

    • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
      4·
      6 days ago

      Someone explained it in laymans terms as “imagine it not as a virtual machine, but more like a translation program converting windows-specific code into linux.”

      I did not fact-check if they are just pulling the explanation out of their ass tho, so please correct me if inaccurate.

      • AnAmericanPotato@programming.devEnglish
        6·
        6 days ago

        That’s correct. Wine, which is what Proton is based on, is not a VM or emulator. It is a re-implementation of key windows APIs so Windows EXEs can run. Assuming you’re on a x64 PC, the code is executing natively.

  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
    34·
    6 days ago

    Some tips for you:

    • Check game compatibility using https://www.protondb.com/ this will let you know if the games you want to play run on Linux and how well they do so

    • Buy an AMD GPU, support for Linux is great on them, miles ahead of nVidia. If you already had an nVidia card it’s usable, but if you’re starting fresh 100% AMD.

    • Don’t fret too much on the distro of choice, not sure how familiar you are with Linux but because of the questions I assume not much. If this machine will also be used as a normal computer prefer a general use distro (my recommendation would be Mint), if you’ll plug it on the TV and use it as a console prefer a gaming distro (I’ve heard good stuff about Bazzite but never used it myself). You can have / and /home be different partitions, this means that you can distro hop and maintain your games, saves, and most configs from one distro to the other, or even when reinstalling the system, I strongly recommend people to do that.

    • Linux is not windows, things are done differently and that’s okay. A lot of the frustration of new users comes from trying to do things the windows way and failing miserably, e.g. trying to install programs/drivers by navigating to a random web page and downloading a binary.

    Good luck, and ask any more questions you might have.

    • Peasley@lemmy.world
      12·
      6 days ago

      Mint is a good suggestion for a new user. An underrated distro, but solid, simple, and works well for any purpose.

        • throwaway403@programming.dev
          4·
          6 days ago

          I don’t agree with the sentiment that Linux Mint is underrated either. As you note, it is quite popular and is mentioned a lot in the discourse.

          However, I don’t think that CachyOS and Linux Mint are the most popular distros; that undoubtedly goes to Ubuntu. And, if anything, I’d think that Linux Mint is more popular than CachyOS.

          Yet, if we’d limit it to the distros used by gamers, then CachyOS probably does take the crown for most used distro (aside from SteamOS). At least, there are metrics that suggest as such.

            • throwaway403@programming.dev
              2·
              5 days ago

              Ah okay, thanks for clarifying!

              FYI, DistroWatch isn’t a very reliable metric for gauging the user base of any given distro. Heck, strictly speaking, I’m unaware of any metric that does this any justice besides the opt-out DNF Count Me found on Fedora-based distros. And we will use exactly that to discredit DistroWatch!

              So, Fedora (1112[1]) has put out a number (relatively) recently; 961k users. And Bazzite (770) outright displays it on their website; 90.8k users. Like, Fedora is roughly 10 times as big as Bazzite. But their respective DistroWatch rankings don’t quite reflect that.

              1. As per DistroWatch’s 12 months, I’ll use the same table for Bazzite*. ↩︎

    • Corgana@startrek.website
      4·
      6 days ago

      I tried out Bazzite with an Nvidia 40-series card last year and performance was the same as Windows for everything I tested

      All things being equal I would go with AMD too, but if I was OP I certainly wouldn’t turn down a good deal on an Nvidia card if one presented itself.

  • Horsey@lemmy.world
    3·
    5 days ago

    AMD gfx cards cannot meet or exceed 5080/5090 cards. That said, I think a 9070xt is the best choice right now, because it’s probably going to be cheaper overall to just upgrade in 3-4 years rather than buy a 5090 and hold onto it for 10 years or whatever. You do you, but for me, I think upgrading early is the better choice since 2 flagship AMD cards should equal the price of the nvidia 5080.

  • Horsey@lemmy.world
    41·
    5 days ago

    As far as distros are concerned, Bazzite is a fantastic starting point because you almost certainly can’t go wrong. If you run into programs that need a kernel module or superuser permissions, just distro hop. It’s very likely that in your first time using Linux that you’ll not need those power user things, so Bazzite will be rock solid for you.

    Also, in Linux, best practice is to set your home folder to be a separate partition on your HD. You can point your distro to the existing home folder so if you distro hop and you won’t lose your desktop environment prefs/setup or your files.

    Here’s my notes on this for Fedora if you need a guide:

    Tap for spoiler

    Drive partitioning is highly variable between distros and even within distros that have received updates. The following shows the modern setup for all distros at this time. swap will depend on how much RAM the system has, and whether hibernation will be used. The proper /system partition size varies from distro to distro. Add a /home folder using the remainder of your drive space. In my case, I have an entire drive for my /home folder (the WD drive) that just doesn’t get reformatted ever if I distrohop.

    Apps

    1. LocalSend
      1. Remember to use Flatseal to grant filesystem access to the Flatpak so dragging and dropping work outside of ~Downloads folder (Flatpaks by default are sandboxed)
    2. Steam
      1. install from package manager, NOT Flatpak or Snap version to include controller dependencies all together
    3. Zen Browser
    4. Geekbench
      1. run in terminal after installing Flatpak; otherwise will close terminal window without showing link to view score
    /usr/bin/flatpak run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=geekbench6 com.geekbench.Geekben
ch6

    1. Discord

      <aside>
      💡

      1. install from RPM Fusion else rich presence won’t work
      2. set autostart args so app opens minimized in system tray
        </aside>
      sudo dnf install <https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$>(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
sudo dnf install discord

      system settings > autostart > add new, > application > select discord

      see properties > application tab > Arguments > enter --start-minimized

    2. CEMU (from Discover/Flatpak store)

    3. Retroarch

  • actionjbone@sh.itjust.works
    5·
    6 days ago

    I get better performance on Linux than Windows.

    The significantly lower system overhead more than makes up for the translation layer.

    I mostly game on Steam, occasionally Lutris. The only thing that just plain wouldn’t work was Control from Gog - I probably could have gotten it to work if I played with the configuration. But I didn’t really care that much.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
    4·
    6 days ago

    Games that run on Linux are about as fast on Linux as on Windows. In fact they tend to run a little faster on Linux.

    Use AMD CPU and AMD GPU for the smoothest experience.
    AMD CPU is more reliable, and Radeon graphics have the best support for Linux.

    It is estimated that around 12000 Games work on Linux, or about 90%. For specific game compatibility you can always check protondb. Notice though that some games that have native Linux versions are also on ProtonDB, so you should check on the steam client first if there is a native Linux version.

    https://www.protondb.com/

    PS ProtonDB state the number of games that are verified to work as almost 9,900, and playable as almost 30,000 😎
    But Platinum or Gold rated games are only 60%.

    Personally I generally check ProtonDB before buying a game, but it’s been quite a while since there was something that didn’t work.

  • siravious@lemmy.world
    2·
    6 days ago

    I’m not enough of an expert to provide advice, but I can share what works well for me. I have tried games released across a 30 year span from multiple publishers using multiple types of engines using multiple launchers. I’ve had no issues with 240 Hz, an ultra wide display, or HDR. The one problem I’ve had is that the sound card doesn’t wake up properly after a long period of sleep, and so I double click an icon to wake it up. When I do, the Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound works perfectly.

    OS: CachyOS Mobo: Rog strix x870e CPU: Ryzen 9950X3D RAM: 64 GB DDR5 6000 MT/s (don’t remember brand) GPU: Asus Tuf 5090 SSD: 1x Samsung 9100 2TB 1x Samsung 9100 4TB both PCIe5 Power: Seasonic 1200W 80 gold modular

  • strawberry_enjoyer42@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    51·
    6 days ago

    Not sure if you’ve chosen a distro, but I can vouch for CachyOS being pretty decent. There are more stable (i.e. non-rolling) gaming distros, but CachyOS doesn’t take a huge amount of tinkering, and most things truly just work (I’ve actually had some games be less buggy on Proton than native Windows).

      • strawberry_enjoyer42@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        3·
        6 days ago

        I went to pure Arch because I’m a computer masochist I prefer it’s minimality. Now, I’ve migrated to Artix, and I’m considering NetBSD.

        I am speedrunning Unix-like OSes.

    • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
      32·
      6 days ago

      I’m very weary of recommending Arch distros to new users, Arch expects you to read the news and breaks stuff. 99% of the time for experienced users it’s fine, but new users tend to touch random configs when exploring which prevents pacman from upgrading them, and they won’t read the news to know about possible issues.

      And before someone says Cachy is not Arch, it is, for this purpose it is, it suffers from the same thing by reason of being a rolling release that uses the same package manager. Just because YOU haven’t experienced a problem doesn’t mean it’s not there, I also have never experienced a similar problem with over a decade of Arch as my main distro, but it happens and you have to be blind to say otherwise.

      • strawberry_enjoyer42@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        I agree wholeheartedly. I only recommended it because it’s the only gaming-centric disto that I’ve used, and I wasn’t sure what OP’s technical skills were like.

    • CarlLandry357@lemmy.worldOP
      11·
      6 days ago

      Can you afford CachyOS? I’ve heard you must be always up to date with Arch, its base distro, so it’s like Windows 11.

  • Peasley@lemmy.world
    1·
    6 days ago

    Go with an AMD graphics card over Nvidia, even if it costs significantly more. with Nvidia you will need to deal with shitty drivers (similar to Windows) and eventually your GPU will stop being supported. Also niche distros may have extra steps required to get everything working.

    With AMD your card just works great no matter the distro, no matter how old the card gets. I never think about my GPU because it works at full performance every time with zero setup

    CPU matters less: Intel and AMD are both solid on Linux

    Linux can live with less RAM than Windows and work fine, but with more RAM Linux will intelligently cache frequently accessed files to speed up pretty much every program. Linux looks like it’s using more resources but it’s actually using them for something useful, and Linux will still back off if something you are doing actually needs more RAM

    • tabular@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      When do you see Linux using more resources?

      Just watched a rescent video comparing Mint and Windows loading some games and it looked like Linux was always lower as Windows starts the race allocating more.

      • Peasley@lemmy.world
        1·
        6 days ago

        unused RAM is wasted RAM. Just idle desktop browsing it can look like Linux is using more than the same task on Windows, but Linux does a better job actually feeling fast.

        Just my experience but i’m not the first person to notice this. Could definitely vary by distro or setup, but comparing memory usage between Windows and Linux is very “Apples and Oranges”