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I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

iliana.fyi

151–160 of 258 posts

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#151
post #4

I was totally blown away by how good Proton is in the post Steam Deck world. I now play Steam games on my Linux laptop almost daily because they “just work” even when the only listed supported platform is Windows

I’ll dissent. After hearing people be ecstatic, I thought I’d go full-in on Linux gaming. I have a pretty bog-standard gaming PC that is very Linux-compatible (Intel i5 + Radeon 6800XT) and on there Apex Legends has horrid frame pacing issues, Mirror’s Edge doesn’t work with wireless Xbox controllers. You lose out on a lot of GPU suite features that Windows has. Gnome doesn’t support VRR. Etc etc. There’s so many sma…

> After hearing people be ecstatic, I thought I’d go full-in on Linux gaming. I have a pretty bog-standard gaming PC that is very Linux-compatible (Intel i5 + Radeon 6800XT) and on there Apex Legends has horrid frame pacing issues

Apex Legends run flawlessly for me, but only on KDE/X11 with Nvidia reflex enabled[0].

If you are on Radeon though, I bet the problem is your window manager. I have the frame pacing issues on:

- hyprland/wayland (even with no_direct_scanout = true; and floating game windows) - KDE/wayland

I also had a weird issue using gamescope as my DM where apex got resized into a tiny frame in the top left that was like 200 pixels or so wide.

> That said, these things work flawlessly on the Deck.

Likely due to running into these graphics driver -> WM and similar compatibility issues and fixing them. The other performance improvements from kernel changes probably don't hurt either.

0: Requires unreleased proton-ge build: https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom/pull/104...

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#152
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's untrue though. Linux has a disk utility (I use gparted personally). And you can surely do it on the command line in a single command. On Linux you could automate that task. How would you propose automating "open disk utility and click a few buttons" on Windows? This is less of a "Linux can't" issue and more of a "I quickly know how to do it on Windows after years of experience and I don't know how to do it on…

When I Googled how to complete this task I came across multiple results all of which suggesting to use a string of CLI commands. GParted was suggested in some of the results but it wasn’t installed by default on the distro I was recommended (Lubuntu) so I had to punch in even more commands to get it installed. Then after creating the partition it was still unusable until I mounted the drive (which wasn’t clear until…

> GParted was suggested in some of the results but it wasn’t installed by default on the distro I was recommended (Lubuntu

You got a less than stellar recommendation based on your desire for parity with ease of use with windows. Lubuntu is a more niche distro aimed at lower resource usage at the expense of the ease of use you are looking for.

If you had installed KDE, you'd likely have explored the start menu and found gparted or typed 'disk' into search and found gparted.

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You bounced quickly then without trying very hard. Gnome comes with a GUI disk utility tool pre-installed that is easy enough for a Windows user ;-)

I was recommended a distro that doesn’t use Gnome (Lubuntu). The system I was working with is very old and some light research made it seem like Gnome is pretty resource heavy.

I think a lot of times recommending Lubuntu or other niche distros to first-time linux users is a mistake.

Instead one should recommend using KDE or Gnome and turning down all of the graphical settings if needed to improve performance.

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#154
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, except I prefer the cleanliness of Gnome over how scattershot and buggy KDE feels, so I’m SoL. I’ve even looked into launching games into their own little Gamescope instance, but if you don’t run Gamescope as your main window manager, you lose most of its benefits. > For Mirror's Edge, were you using Steam Input? Yes. The problem lies in the fact that only the Xone driver properly supports the Xbox wireless ada…

May I ask what "SoL" stands for? (Not a native English speaker.)

I've always heard it as "short on luck".

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#155
post #116
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/1154 You can install it upon Arch from AUR. Putting that aside: Windows users always find a reason not to switch to Linux because some missing feature . In two years? There will be another new feature or game on Windows. I remember people insisting on using Windows because it support their „3D-Shutter glasses“ or their card from Nvidia. Either you want use Linux…

You're using the phrase "MBA thinking" to mean "making decisions based on your personal use case and identifying solutions which match". I'm not sure how this is a bad thing. I don't run Linux to run games because Windows is a better supported platform for running games. I'm not "looking at past numbers", I'm looking at the situation in front of me as it exists, setting aside my personal feeling on what might have be…

„Today“…MBA-Thinking.

I don’t want a huge problem tomorrow.

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those games with anti-cheats are anti-player garbage anyway. You don't lose much without them.

Do you mean the presence of anti-cheat software makes them anti-player? Because I’d disagree. It’s a lot of work and expense to combat cheats, but is very much appreciated by many players (when it works)

I personally would far rather have the occasional cheater than have the game install literal rootkits. It's absolutely bonkers that people are willing to accept that.

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#157
post #70
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/1154 You can install it upon Arch from AUR. Putting that aside: Windows users always find a reason not to switch to Linux because some missing feature . In two years? There will be another new feature or game on Windows. I remember people insisting on using Windows because it support their „3D-Shutter glasses“ or their card from Nvidia. Either you want use Linux…

I don’t want to tweak stuff for a week to get a comparable experience playing games to a fresh W11 install.

I want tweak stuff to make it fit better for me. I don’t want tweak stuff to get it initial usable.

Likewise the rationale why people buy the Steamdeck. Other than Windows it just works. And it is tweakable.

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was recommended a distro that doesn’t use Gnome (Lubuntu). The system I was working with is very old and some light research made it seem like Gnome is pretty resource heavy.

I think a lot of times recommending Lubuntu or other niche distros to first-time linux users is a mistake. Instead one should recommend using KDE or Gnome and turning down all of the graphical settings if needed to improve performance.

I think it comes from the idea that you should install Linux to get more time out of aging hardware.

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#159
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of times recommending Lubuntu or other niche distros to first-time linux users is a mistake. Instead one should recommend using KDE or Gnome and turning down all of the graphical settings if needed to improve performance.

I think it comes from the idea that you should install Linux to get more time out of aging hardware.

Yeah, but for first time users I maintain it'd be better to risk potential slowness than "fast but unacceptable user experience".

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#160
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* depending on the anti-cheat or DRM This is true for at least EAC/EasyAntiCheat. This covers a lot, sure, but not everything!

It depends on both. Anti-cheat used by Destiny 2 is supported, but Bungie needs to allow it first.

Indeed. I meant to imply both if I managed otherwise. This is just a casual warning - Linux gaming is great [as much as the industry allows]

I didn't really want to start itemizing things. Most competitive Counter-Strike anti-cheat isn't supported.

I've had some luck with the Windows VM approach instead. One may have to disable quite a lot (ie: Hyper-V enhancements) to truly trick them.

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