State of Linux Gaming 2021
I recently had the good fortune of being able to jump to Linux as a full-time desktop on a rather nice machine. Since it has a half-way decent graphics card, I dove in to see how things had progressed since I last was able to run Linux as a full-time desktop, probably over 10 years ago. Back then, every year was “The Year of the Linux Desktop”, yet somehow the dream never became a reality.
I’ve gotten past the idea of Linux desktops becoming mainstream, but I can see its popularity growing to the point of being well-supported by many vendors. Years ago, some small publishers took a chance and went into the Linux space. I recall, for example, a port of Heroes of Might and Magic 3 that made it to Linux. Mostly though, various forks and modifications to WINE were what Linux gamers relied upon. I can recall most notably that I spent a fair bit of time playing WoW on Linux.
Steam on Linux is rather shocking to someone who came from an era where Linux gaming was a potpourri of individual efforts, some of which were pretty good, but nowhere near the AAA quality that Windows users could play. I wrote WINE off as far too flaky to be usable. Valve has really made a substantial effort at supporting Mac and Linux platforms. I was reasonably happy with the variety of games with native Linux support, and actually quite surprised at some of the titles that made it (Total War Three Kingdoms!).
However, as I’d come to expect on Linux, some of my multiplayer titles were Windows-only. I filled this gap with GeForce Now (another good tool for Linux gamers), but GeForce Now doesn’t support any 21:9 resolutions. I figured that 1080p on my ultrawide was as good as I was going to get, but in my search for GeForce Now capabilities, I came across Proton and Steam Play.
These tools are built right into Steam, and can easily be enabled in the settings:
I installed my Windows titles and tried them out. They worked flawlessly! This is a world apart from where Windows emulation on Linux was buggy at best and unusable for the most part. So, the state of Linux gaming today?
I can’t even tell the difference any more. As a long-time Linux user, this pleases me to no end.