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Linux is now the best gaming system. ｜ fernvenue's Blog
blog.fernvenue.comWhen it comes to gaming on Linux, many many many people’s understanding stil remains in the Jurassic era. For the past few years, I’ve been using Linux as my main operating system for both work and gaming. From my personal experience, the gaming experience on Linux is far superior to that of macOS and Windows. I know I know…whenever I mention this, there are always some old-school individuals who come out to say that Linux’s driver configuration is complex, its game support is not rich enough, and its compatibility issues are significant, among other problems. In this article, I will directly address these issues and let everyone understand how much the gaming experience on Linux has developed by 2025.
I’ll just share how my latest bout with gaming on Linux looked like, compared to Windows.
Install Anno 1800 on Windows:
Install Anno 1800 on Linux:
Next day:
Next day:
As much as I want to like it, this experience makes me feel that Linux is not fully ready for the masses yet.
And if you play simulator games, especially any that use extra peripherals, it’s not even worth trying.
Steam is supposed to handle installing the Ubisoft launcher during the first-time setup, it sounds like for whatever reason it failed to do that. It’s very likely that verifying the game files would’ve fixed the issue easily, as it re-runs the first time setup. If that didn’t work, deleting the compatibility files would probably have been the next step. I’d be very surprised if one of these didn’t fix it.
The rest of the troubleshooting steps you took until the GPU stuff were unnecessary, as they were basically Windows troubleshooting steps, not Linux ones. It’s completely expected to have to relearn how to troubleshoot stuff on a different OS and I’d really recommend asking in a Linux gaming community when you run into issues like that, until you’ve gotten the troubleshooting steps down.
Wine/Proton games are run in their own individual “prefixes”, which are essentially individual Windows instances. Both of these steps just installed Ubisoft launcher in a different instance. This would be a fine fix on Windows, but this is a different OS. The correct fix isn’t necessarily harder either, just different.
“much larger” is relative, software is pretty small in general, especially compared to any modern games. It’s really not much space, and the flatpak runtimes will be reused for other flatpaks you install.
I don’t even entirely disagree, but also don’t think the issues you faced completely demonstrate that. The Ubisoft installation issue was most likely a Steam client bug. First-time installations failing is 100% something that has happened on Windows, that’s why verifying game files is often the first recommended step when troubleshooting a game. Most distros that get recommended now have features to easily install Nvidia drivers. My personal recommendation for gaming, Bazzite, has an Nvidia ISO, which would’ve had them set up from the beginning.
Do you mind sharing what distro you were using? It sounds like whatever it is has bad instructions for setting up Nvidia drivers, I’d like to avoid recommending it.
Edit: Just read this back and wanted to add that I wasn’t trying to be rude or condescending at any point, or blaming you for the issues. I don’t think gaming on Linux is difficult, but I think people do need to do a better job preparing new users when they recommend it. It isn’t, and never will or even should be, the exact same as Windows. You have to learn the differences to be able to troubleshoot effectively, which just takes some time. Nobody knows how to troubleshoot correctly the first time they use Windows either.
I’m a bit strapped for time, so I won’t be able to touch on everything you said. But here goes:
Of course I had to condense the experience a bit for readability and I don’t remember every step, but validating the game files, doing a reinstall and trying different Proton versions were parts of my troubleshooting steps. They absolutely didn’t work. I didn’t try removing the compatibility files afaik, but switching versions should basically have had the same result as that did trigger an first-time setup each time. The Ubisoft installer wasn’t part of that install for as far as I could see, or failed for each proton version without any visible signs.
Linux is far from new to me, but gaming is a whole different beast compared to what I usually do with it. The steps I took were the recommendations from Linux gaming communities I came across. Even though I already suspected that the whole ‘install the Ubisoft installer through Steam’ wouldn’t work, if it is suggested, I’m not one to ignore that.
The problem here is mostly that the information offered on various locations differs and it is a question of trial and error to find out what works and what not, especially if you’re still figuring out the gaming ecosystem.
From the top of my head it was 3 GB vs 160 MB. Which is quite the difference, especially if you’re working with a relatively small SSD. Flatpack is a mixed blessing in that regard, it’s not meant as criticism against Flatpack, it’s just a trade-off of having sandboxed applications.
It was Linux Mint, on an Nvidia Prime-based laptop. Drivers were included by default, no installation required, but couldn’t load due to not being signed. Hence the ‘turned off Secure Boot’. I could have MOK’ed around and signed them, but at that point I simply couldn’t be bothered anymore and just went for the simplest solution. Not sure it were official drivers or Nouveau.
No worries, even though I don’t fully agree with you on everything, I appreciate your response and the fact you are trying to help out. I already saw somebody else mentioning Bazzite, so my next attempt will be to try that distribution.
I also noticed some ‘Ubisoft is just shit’ remarks, which might be true, but telling aspiring Linux gamers “well, you shouldn’t play that part of your gaming library anyway” is simply off-putting and unhelpful. So thanks again for being constructive, that’s what this community needs.
As someone who just ditched them, apparently here was where you went wrong. Trying to get Nvidia drivers working on Mint for gaming is bad enough that some documentation for programs I’ve wanted to run has straight up said “Don’t even try this on Mint.”
Real shame because I liked a lot about Mint, but I would like to be able to run games like Warframe and Last Epoch more. I wish they were a lot more up front about the issues the distro seems to have with Nvidia.
Not denying you’ve had trouble, but my experience of Linux Mint gaming was
Only game that didn’t work first time was Star Wars: The Souls-like One With the Ginger Jedi. Tried a few months/updates later and it worked
lmao I thought that i was the only sisyphus here
Ubisoft isn’t ready for the masses yet. Linux works just fine
Huh… I just installed and played Anno 1800 on my Bazzite PC a month or two ago with no issue whatsoever. Played great.
Yeah, the secret here is Bazzite honestly. If a game will run on Linux, then it’ll run with minimal setup on Bazzite.
Nobara too.
I cant remember the last time I had to futz with anything to get a game to work, been well over a year. The games just work. Only extra step compared to windows is the one time effort upon installing steam to enable steam play and set the default proton version to experimental. Experimental has run everything for me, flawlessly, for like a year now.
I’m sure theres still the occasional, rare game that might need some tweaking/setup/patch/whatever to get going… but thats something you run into on windows from time to time as well, so its hardly a ding against linux.
I had no issue getting to run gr wildlands on lutris but even the 3 step setup was not worth it for how shit the game was.
Thanks, I’ll give Bazzite a try. Hadn’t heard of it before and it didn’t come up in my search results when trying to find out what gaming in Linux entails these days. Back in the days Linux gaming was done straight in Wine or, if you wanted to fork over some money, WineX (later Cedega).
I’m not just willing to never play another ubisoft game, I’m eager to. The games that don’t work are typically exploitative, corporate, designed by committee, investment vehicles.
Same. Bought a new gaming laptop sans OS with the intention of switching to Linux full time. After 3 weeks climbing the walls trying to get the thing to run properly, I submitted and installed windows. Everything is designed to work with windows, Linux is redesigned to run windows stuff, we are not the same. Once Linux has caught up I will make the leap, but today is not that day.
I had a similar experience but when i installed lutris everything worked so in total it only took like 20 mins to get everything up and running. Tho i do have a huge bias because i started using linux first(more than 10 years ago) and only started playing pc games a few months ago. Also if its a proper game without 20 launchers its really easy to get working, usually works outa the box.