I had thoughts when I did my latest reinstall of going xubuntu for speed, but decided to stick with the default experience instead.
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Gaming on Linux 2021 | A GNU Era of Gaming
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For backups, there are an absolute tonne of options. Rsync (or Grsync for a graphical version) is probably the most widely used, but I've heard good things about Timeshift. Timeshift basically gives you full incremental system restore points like you'd get on Windows.
Your PC is fine, but when using Proton that CPU might cause problems. I don't think it would be a 25% hit, but you might notice it.
I don't think the choice of desktop environment matters much, but KDE offers a pretty good balance between features and performance nowadays (akonadi aside).
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Rsync has a cool GUI tool called Grsync. I don't think it has all the features of rsync available, but it should be enough.
Lighter desktops mostly free up ram, the CPU hit is pretty tiny for the most part for most desktops.
Proton/Wine translates windows API calls to Linux ones, which AFAIK is mostly a CPU thing.
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Got it. I'll probably install one of the lighter distros, RAM is something I'll run out of fast.
Thank you for the suggestions. I'm thinking about dragging out my old 1tb HDD and going for a trial run first.
Any games that I'm running up against in CPU wise would be in trouble then.... I have a few later titles that could fit that bill for sure.
Time to break out the old HDD and run it til it dies!!!
Great!
There's a tool called gamemode that will help with a slower CPU if you're not overclocked already. It doesn't overclock it, it just makes sure to keep the clock at max while you're in a game. I posted about how to do it on the last page or maybe the one before that.
And make sure you install the latest Nvidia driver. ppa. Heroes will let you change to the latest stable one with a GUI, but you'll want the very latest for using proton.
To me it sounds like some problem with the graphics driver. You can press Esc (iirc?) during boot up in order to get a more verbose output of what's going on.
Could you give us an idea of which AMD GPU you're talking about? Ubuntu 18.04 ships with an older kernel release focusing on long-term stability which may not support your card as well if it's a Vega. I'd advise trying Ubuntu 18.10 if you have more recent hardware.
I'm in early stages of testing. Figured out some stuff with a soundcard driver. I decided to use Ubuntu 18.04 atm, as I'm framilar with it from work.
Thumper works great, Runner3 launches but I can't see any characters. Gonna have to play with this. Getting latest version of wine.
Thumper works great, Runner3 launches but I can't see any characters. Gonna have to play with this. Getting latest version of wine.
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I finally did it... well, sorta, anyway! I recently built a new desktop for my office so my gaming laptop has now been given the Linux treatment to serve as my testbed and everyday driver for Linux.
I had some issues with Kubuntu (it kept reverting to nouveau no matter what I did, could not get it to stay on proprietary) so I'm just using Ubuntu 18.10 but maybe I'll try out some of the others to see what I like.
The only thing I ended up "losing" on this laptop in the transition was my keyboard lighting and my screen brightness control. It's weird, the keys actually do seem to register on-screen (with the little indicators popping up), but nothing really happens when they are pressed.
I'm booting up Steam now and will test out some games to see how they play! Figure I should use this 1070 for something.
I had some issues with Kubuntu (it kept reverting to nouveau no matter what I did, could not get it to stay on proprietary) so I'm just using Ubuntu 18.10 but maybe I'll try out some of the others to see what I like.
The only thing I ended up "losing" on this laptop in the transition was my keyboard lighting and my screen brightness control. It's weird, the keys actually do seem to register on-screen (with the little indicators popping up), but nothing really happens when they are pressed.
I'm booting up Steam now and will test out some games to see how they play! Figure I should use this 1070 for something.
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Drivers reverting to nouveau sounds exactly like an issue I had once, which was caused by secureboot on my Acer laptop.
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Can't test it myself right now (at work), but people seem to have got it running: https://www.protondb.com/app/516130
If you are on 18.04 it might be because of an out of date MESA version. You can update Mesa by installing the Padoka PPA. I think mesa drivers are incorporated into the kernel, so using the Ubuntu Kernel Update Utility (Ukuu) might be an option too.
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Welcome!!!!
Heres the instructions to make sure your drivers are up to date: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Requirements
It's interesting that the keyboard and brightness aren't working for you, those may be metapackages that aren't installed by default with Ubuntu.
Though the distros are somewhat unique from each other in their methodology, the Arch Linux wiki is always a good source of information for solving problems:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Backlight
This should at least help somewhat to get an idea of what to do. There's always the possibility of there being some proprietary thing involved with hardware (driver, firmware, a combination of the two, looking at you Broadcom!) that may or may not be doable, but I am hard-pressed to remember the last time I couldn't get something to Just Work.
Thanks! After switching from Kubuntu to Ubuntu I was able to update and set the Proprietary nVidia 415 driver to the default without any issue or lingering Nouveau difficulties.
Thanks! I think the issue is something proprietary with ASUS. I planned on going through to troubleshoot the issues sometime this week, so I appreciate the link. This is the Laptop I installed on, and everything except the brightness and backlight work correctly so I'm hoping it's a somewhat easy fix.
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Yeah, reading online it definitely seems like people are having problems with something ASUS related. I assume the screen brightness problem occurs both with Nouveau and Nvidia drivers?
I see this posted somewhere, apparently it works on another Asus laptop:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/104...tness-or-wake-from-sleep-on-asus-rog-lap?rq=1
the "vi" command just needs any text editor. You could just as easily use another text editor instead if that's easier for you.
It's unfortunate that this is your experience, but I guess this can happen with vendor specific things like this.
I see this posted somewhere, apparently it works on another Asus laptop:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/104...tness-or-wake-from-sleep-on-asus-rog-lap?rq=1
the "vi" command just needs any text editor. You could just as easily use another text editor instead if that's easier for you.
It's unfortunate that this is your experience, but I guess this can happen with vendor specific things like this.
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Also, in case anyone reading doesn't know: you'll have to elevate the privileges of the text editor to change some existing files. Launch it with "sudo gedit" for example. Otherwise, it may not let you save your changes.
You guys probably already know that. But I stumbled on it for a bit the first time and I'm sure there's other people reading who will do the same.
Edit: changed 'gksudo' to 'sudo' after correction below.
You guys probably already know that. But I stumbled on it for a bit the first time and I'm sure there's other people reading who will do the same.
Edit: changed 'gksudo' to 'sudo' after correction below.
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gksudo/gksu was removed in 18.04 IIRC. It was a shame because it was useful, but I think it was causing problems with Wayland so they decided to depreciate it.
For gedit, I now believe you use the admin command:
gedit admin:///etc/default/grub
Oh damn I haven't realized that. Maybe I've only used "sudo gedit" recently? That will work right? It'll just ask your password on the command line and then launch the graphical editor?
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sudo works just fine, but it's not recommended because using GUI programs with sudo can cause file corruption problems.
99% of the time it doesn't, it's just a little safer to avoid it.
It may not be the recommended method of installing drivers, but I found little choice but to install the Nvidia binaries on Debian Stable to be able to take advantage of the latest Proton and Vulkan advances. This mostly just means that I have to make sure to update the drivers anytime I update the kernel, or I could run into trouble. But this is mostly on me for choosing to use Debian Stable, which doesn't have the most up-to-date packages.
I know it's probably a bit less wanted, but if you're not willing to dive into using vim (and I don't blame those unfamiliar with it not wanting to) you can also use nano as your cli text editor. It's easily the most user friendly one without having to remember any odd tricks and you can sudo it all day without doing weird things like sudoing a GUI. If anything, I'd recommend against sudoing a GUI program because it may misbehave in a variety of ways (as Nappael has already said above).
So I tried adding a few GOG games on forced Proton and they failed to run, with either nothing happening or throwing a generic 'file not found' message. Turns out Steam doesn't complete the 'target' field in the shortcut properties if the path contains any whitespaces. So make sure your non-Steam game's folders and filenames don't have any spaces in the path to avoid this.
Oh, it's totally fine! I got it fixed easily. The keyboard backlight still doesn't work yet but I assume I just need to add another line or something somewhere. I barely use the keyboard backlight anyway, I find it kind of garish. So, not a big deal at all for the benefit of ditching Windows on this laptop. Thank you for the link!
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The command line is very useful for sysadmin and troubleshooting, but very rarely required for standard use. Even then, I would say that the command line is nothing to be afraid of but I can see why it would turn people off.
The Ubuntu installation process is incredibly easy. What was your issue with it? The main stumbling block I see people have are dealing with uefi entries and that's hardly Linux's fault.
I had trouble figuring out I kept black screening during installation because I had to add some extra text in an out-of-the-way window, which would not be doable without finding a guide somewhere. And I'm having trouble even getting AMD GPU drivers installed. It doesn't seem very idiot-proof. I've been wondering if I should try SteamOS, because I only actual care about trying games through Steam play, but I don't know if that OS has its own issues as well. Ubuntu has left a bad first impression of Linux for me. Like things that are easy to do in Windows are made much more complicated.
It's definitely (well actually not all the time) tougher when you run into a problem. Too bad you had an issue right from the go. Its alright. Try again later!
Wouldn't recommend steamos, tho. :x It's had very annoying glitches lately and you wil be right back into that terminal trying to turn on steamplay because they don't present the option in big picture mode. :<
If you want to take another whack at it sometime, maybe try xubuntu or mint and see if the install goes smoother.
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Yeah, you don't need to install AMD's drivers, although a couple distributions don't come with the Mesa Vulkan drivers preinstalled. Perhaps Belmonkey was talking about updating the drivers using the Padoka PPA or something? Otherwise, whatever drivers they're trying to install could actually be the problem. AMD's Pro driver is practically useless outside of Vulkan and OpenCL and the AMDVLK driver has its own weird bugs. The stuff already included in Mesa and the kernel is the best option for general use.
Well all I know is I selected the option to download graphics drivers when installing Ubuntu 18.10. But my Firefox browser was immediately glitchy from the start. Would take seconds to register inputs and mouse Scrolls, along with different browser pages overlapping each other when loading new pages. It seemed like a display driver issue.
I got it to work pretty good by switching the third part NVIDIA drivers to 415.
So apparently Paladins works almost out of the box on the latest game update with Proton 3.16-6. But the number one recommended step is to manually install .NET 4.0 using protontricks. Anyone done this before? I can't seem to find the right command to do that.
You're gonna' have to wait for the next version of Proton since the demo required DXVK 0.95 and it hasn't been rolled into Proton yet. Even then, apparently it can't play video files in certain situations including cutscenes which is a pretty big problem. It sounds like the same old mfplat problem which isn't going away for a while, and unfortunately it's unreasonable to expect this to change with the full release.
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Deng, that sucks, thanks for the in depth response.
Looks like it's back to my Windows partition for this one.
So I've been poking around the Proton Github and found this post about inserting the apparently Proton-compatible Easy Anticheat dlls included with Paladins into other games that use EAC to get them running on Proton. Dragon Ball FighterZ seems mostly functional in offline mode, but it should be possible to do this for other games as well.
Perhaps this means EAC won't be too much of a problem for Proton in the future?
Perhaps this means EAC won't be too much of a problem for Proton in the future?
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You know, as unfortunate as it is that some great games can't be played with Proton, it's interesting that in most cases the reasons they don't work are cut and dry. Throughout WINE's development, the reasons things didn't work were often vague and mysterious, so to know that the issues today essentially come down to .NET, mfplat, DRM, and anticheat is almost comforting in a way.
Of course, FAudio still needs a little bit of work and there are still a handful of weird 'who knows' situations, but for the most part the way forward is clear. If the .NET and mfplat stuff get solved this year along with a few more gradual improvements in DXVK and the Vulkan drivers, we could be looking at a very different situation in 2020. If enough players come over and request less invasive DRM and more Proton-friendly anticheat solutions in tandem with these improvements, Linux is going to become much harder to ignore for gaming.
UPDATE: Apparently there's some kind of mfplat.dll 'hack' available, but I can't seem to find any more details. I get the feeling it's using stuff from Microsoft so it's probably not a long-term solution, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some Lutris scripts crop up in the near future. Hopefully it's as easy as just putting a .dll in the game's directory like that EAC solution so people who were waiting for this game can still play it on Linux without much hassle.
ANOTHER UPDATE: It looks like the solution was posted here on a DXVK bug, even though it's entirely unrelated. The solution was originally posted back in September but it doesn't appear to work for every game having mfplat issues.
Of course, FAudio still needs a little bit of work and there are still a handful of weird 'who knows' situations, but for the most part the way forward is clear. If the .NET and mfplat stuff get solved this year along with a few more gradual improvements in DXVK and the Vulkan drivers, we could be looking at a very different situation in 2020. If enough players come over and request less invasive DRM and more Proton-friendly anticheat solutions in tandem with these improvements, Linux is going to become much harder to ignore for gaming.
UPDATE: Apparently there's some kind of mfplat.dll 'hack' available, but I can't seem to find any more details. I get the feeling it's using stuff from Microsoft so it's probably not a long-term solution, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some Lutris scripts crop up in the near future. Hopefully it's as easy as just putting a .dll in the game's directory like that EAC solution so people who were waiting for this game can still play it on Linux without much hassle.
ANOTHER UPDATE: It looks like the solution was posted here on a DXVK bug, even though it's entirely unrelated. The solution was originally posted back in September but it doesn't appear to work for every game having mfplat issues.
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I've got to try this mfplat workaround at some point.
I don't think these could ever be distributed legally though. Microsoft .DLL's would be licensed I'm sure. A different solution is needed long term.
I don't think these could ever be distributed legally though. Microsoft .DLL's would be licensed I'm sure. A different solution is needed long term.
The solution is simple: Black box reimplementation of said DLLs functionality, just like how the rest of Wine came to be.
Here's the relevant bug upstream. It looks like they're not really moving on this, although someone in the bug's thread mentioned ofxWMFVideoPlayer which might be a suitable mfplat replacement much like FAudio was for XAudio. It's unclear whether it encompasses everything necessary to replace mfplat, but I guess all we really need it to do is get those videos playing. No developers have commented on that or any other possible solutions, but it may be worth bringing up to Proton devs since they would probably be more likely to integrate something like this sooner. I'd happily contribute to some bounties to get this .NET and mfplat stuff sorted out sometime in the near future.
EDIT: Upon closer inspection, it looks like that project actually relies on software exclusive to Windows to run, as well as combining Direct3D with OpenGL which may not work well in this scenario. Writing a new solution tailored to WINE might be the best option.
EDIT: Upon closer inspection, it looks like that project actually relies on software exclusive to Windows to run, as well as combining Direct3D with OpenGL which may not work well in this scenario. Writing a new solution tailored to WINE might be the best option.
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John Carmack was right; Asking developers to make their games Wine/Proton friendly is much better than begging for native ports.
I think I know what you mean about the obstacles being clear cut. Now that I think about it, that's how it's been. One problem after another is solved. It's reassuring.
It's amazing. I'm hoping for a community of a few million users one day. Heavy with power users and enthusiasts. That would be fun and everyone could be realistically supported by just making games more or less proton-friendly.
I think more people are seeing it now that its happening. I think it was alot more divisive before proton. When i very first got into linux i thought native ports where very important but after getting to know more, i changed my mind.
Everything we run is on to of a fat stack of software anyhow. An extra translator for windows format software is really not a big deal. And our stack is all open source so it's better than those other stacks anyhow. 😗
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I have a question for you guys. My cpu is too dinky and im looking to plug in something hotter very soon. I have a ryzen 3 1300X. I guess i need much better single core performance for aaa(heavy) games on proton.
I'm seein
ryzen 5 1600X
ryzen 7 1700
ryzen 5 1500X
Each for $116.00. That's 101eur.
∆∆∆ edit: these prices are horse shit. These cpus are more like ~$180
What do you think? This is not that much money for me and i want really good boost Now. Pronto.
You guys think any of these will do the job or should i spend a more? $200 (175eur) is about the most i would spend.
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