Nearly 90% of Windows Games Now Run on Linux, Latest Data Shows (tomshardware.com) 83
Nearly nine in ten Windows games can now run on Linux systems, according to data from ProtonDB compiled by Boiling Steam. The gains came through work by developers of WINE and Proton translation layers and through interest in hardware like the Steam Deck.
ProtonDB tracks games across five categories. Platinum-rated games run perfectly without adjustment. Gold titles need minor tweaks. Silver games are playable but imperfect. Bronze exists between silver and borked. Borked games refuse to launch. The proportion of new releases earning platinum ratings has grown. The red and dark red zones have thinned. Some popular titles remain incompatible, however. Boiling Steam noted that other developers appear averse to non-Windows gamers.
ProtonDB tracks games across five categories. Platinum-rated games run perfectly without adjustment. Gold titles need minor tweaks. Silver games are playable but imperfect. Bronze exists between silver and borked. Borked games refuse to launch. The proportion of new releases earning platinum ratings has grown. The red and dark red zones have thinned. Some popular titles remain incompatible, however. Boiling Steam noted that other developers appear averse to non-Windows gamers.
Using a very loose (Score:5, Informative)
...definition of "run".
Re:Using a very loose (Score:5, Informative)
Using a very loose definition of "run".
Not really. They have fairly clear definitions which are below. (I added the estimated percentages)
Platinum (Green): Games that run perfectly, out of the box. about 60%
Gold (Light Green): Games that work almost out of the box but need some tweaking or configuration. about 7%
Silver (Yellow): Games that do not work perfectly but are still playable. about 23%
Borked (Dark Red): Games that refuse to launch at all. about 1%
Bronze (Red) : Games for which ratings fall in between Silver and Borked on average about 9%
Borked and Bronze are now about 10% of games.
Here's the graph that shows the increase in compatibility. [boilingsteam.com]
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It could still run perfectly at 10% of Windows speed at get Platinum in your rating system.
Correction (Score:1)
(and get Platinum)
Re:Using a very loose (Score:4, Informative)
No, they couldn't because that would make them unplayable. Anything like that goes into the Borked category. But hey, feel free to prove me wrong.
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if it runs so slowly, it would not get that score, that is borked!, silver in best change
while there are some exceptions, speed is not a issue anymore in proton, many games even run faster in linux than in windows! most are within the +- 10%
important games even see special debug and optimizations, being common in the changelog to see "10% increase in performance for game X by solving some minor issue" (usually races, errors, game assuming some behaviour, etc)
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actually most big games actually run too... the problem in those are some companies that do not allow anti-cheat to run... so you can play single player, enter a multiplayer for some seconds and them kicked out due to the anti-cheat detecting something not allowed (ie: linux)
almost all anti-cheat do work in linux (some new kernel level ones do not, but they can also not enable that awful feature), companies have to choose to allow or not linux... and some actually choose to not allow it, for weird reasons
Ra
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while several of important multiplayer games fail to work due to the anti-cheat, saying that the most big games do not run is false, many big games do run fine
https://www.protondb.com/explo... [protondb.com]
top 50 played games in steam, 8 do not work in linux, at least 2 of them are actually windows apps to mess with the background
yes, the games that fail are big, but there are many other big games that work. play those instead and inform the owners of the games you failed to play their game because of the lack of linux
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Using a very loose definition of "run".
Not really. They have fairly clear definitions which are below. (I added the estimated percentages)
Platinum (Green): Games that run perfectly, out of the box. about 60%
Gold (Light Green): Games that work almost out of the box but need some tweaking or configuration. about 7%
Silver (Yellow): Games that do not work perfectly but are still playable. about 23%
Borked (Dark Red): Games that refuse to launch at all. about 1%
Bronze (Red) : Games for which ratings fall in between Silver and Borked on average about 9%
Borked and Bronze are now about 10% of games.
Here's the graph that shows the increase in compatibility. [boilingsteam.com]
That's the steam database I assume, whilst large is not exhaustive.
Amongst my collection there's probably more than 10% of games that don't run perfectly on Windows 10. Higher if we start to filter it by pre-XP SP2 games. Very soon we're going to encounter games that are less than a decade old but no longer working because they had a mandatory online component that couldn't be removed and the publisher got tired of paying for the server, which is why movements like Stop Killing Games is important.
That
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actually old games can usually work in wine/proton when then fail in windows, due to wine/proton allowing one to choose what version of windows to "emulate"
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60% of games work perfectly, but might break in future if they get patched. To be fair that can happen on Windows too, with driver updates as well.
Another 30% are okay for people willing to hack around a bit or live with bugs. Again, to be fair many games are buggy on Windows too, although to be extra fair these will be additional bugs on top of those bugs.
It's not terrible, especially if you get most of your games from Steam where support is better, but it's unlikely to convince anyone to switch.
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the "little hacks" to make a few games work are usually trivial. Gamers are quite used to tweaking a setting or two to make things run. There's a few titles that don't support DRM on linux, and may never run, but I don't think t
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Checks for sports games.... (Score:4, Informative)
Nope.
Checks for henrai visual novels (Score:2)
All of them apparently?
Re:Checks for sports games.... (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the big modern multiplayer games use kernel mode drivers to run their anti cheat software.
Naturally that doesn't work under Linux and very few of them can be bothered writing custom anti cheat.
Oddly enough marvel rivals does.
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
And how about staying on topic instead of digging up dirt on people for no good reason, I didn't realize that Slashdot was that toxic.
His point is relevant. Cheating is a problem recognized by gamers and the industry alike, to the point of driving people away from PC gaming. As a result many people see intrusive anti-cheats as a necessary evil.
And one of the ways for cheaters to work around anti-cheat systems is to run Linux, because anti-cheat systems are either absent or easier to bypass there. And when c
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And how about staying on topic instead of digging up dirt on people for no good reason, I didn't realize that Slashdot was that toxic.
LOL. How long have you been here? Because personal stalkers have been a tradition here as a long as Natalie Portman's hot grits, Stephen King dying, and Netcraft confirming that FreeBSD is dead.
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I am impressed how sophisticated the bot has gotten. It's a hell of a lot of effort to take pot shots at little old me and I'm assuming that the person question is trying to build a business as a right-wing bot Network. There's good money to be made in it I think Pakistan has recently gotten big into it and have Russia as their biggest client.
Re: stop fucking around (Score:2)
Re: stop fucking around (Score:2)
Is Windows the right OS for any job? Seems like a way to install ransomware with extra steps.
Therapy session needed? (Score:5, Funny)
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Can you point to the doll where Linux hurt you?
Yes, right there. ---> SystemD
Not for old games (Score:1)
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>While you nerds spin your wheels going to nowhere, I'm already playing.
not you are not, you are installing updates and rebooting due random issues... and have to endure tracking and ads
for me, i click on play in steam and start playing
It is pretty amazing! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It is pretty amazing! (Score:5, Interesting)
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I found the same surprise a few years ago when I really started looking into how far wine and proton have come. I migrated to Linux full time about 6 months before Win 7 EOL'ed. I lost some games but a surprisingly large amount ran in wine or even had a Linux port (which was jaw dropping to me). There are a lot of games on steam that are native linux.
My two main ones are Wurm Unlimited (I imagine Wurm Online works as well, it did years ago), and Mount and Blade: Warband. Another one is X3, though it's been
Re: It is pretty amazing! (Score:2)
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So, happily 100% of my Steam Library is now running under Proton and I've not needed to boot into Windows - for any reason - since about August.
A lot of people likely think of their attempt last year and the failures, things have come a long way. For people with past bad experiences,
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I was quite surprised by how much games i can actually run and play without any issues at all on my computer running linux after migrating from windows last year
What kind of performance hit did you notice? I'm considering giving it a try, as some older games are the only thing really keeping me on Windows at home. I've been steadily moving non-gaming family members to Linux Mint and Chrome OS Flex with the Win11 hardware apocalypse. I'm very interested in first hand reports on how well these games work in the real world with the translation layer factor. I'm assuming there has to be at least some kind of performance hit, so I'd like know your experiences with it.
Re: It is pretty amazing! (Score:2)
i'd review that number down (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember, when I played portal prelude on mac, some of the puzzles could not be solved. the gravity and friction were a wee bit high, or the speed and jump were a wee bit low, and some puzzles went the wrong way of the fence.
and this all was with an official port.
the fact that the game launches and plays (tweaking or not) in a translation environment (because wine is not an emulator) does not means that it plays correctly/100% faithfully.
having said that, i am glad wine/proton/linux gaming is improving. come 2028, when i ditch my intel mac, I may go to linux (instead of windows) for my gaming needs. so, keep it up y'all!!!
Re: i'd review that number down (Score:5, Interesting)
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really, only 1? I've run into many "gold" games that should be bronze at best (with pages of people saying how bad it runs in linux), or other more minor annoyances like hell-divers2 not keeping my mouse in the window. Or v-rising that doesnt scale the window right.
Most games I've had to do some tweaks. Some of them having to do with the anti cheat or launcher workaround. Even so much as getting temp banned by attempting to launch the game in linux...(vermintide 2 or was that back4blood....)
but when it co
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But yes, it's amazing how much the games do work under win(when you remove distro wine/mesa/etc and install latest stables) or proton. When steam stops supporting win10 like they F* overed win7, then my kids PC's will have mint xfce or possible popos or Manjaro Linux. Will let the kids pic I suppose.
Valve depends in great measure on google, as steam is an electron app, and therefore, dependant on chromium. Ditto for Epic store
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sure, but they could have still allowed it to work, they chose to make it stop working.
No new features, or bug fixes fine. But to remove windows 7 games from running on windows 7. (or even win xp games)
Re: i'd review that number down (Score:2)
The ARM Macs are really impressive and even more impressive when you see how well Windows games can run in CrossOver. Unfortunately they are impacted by the same kernel level anti-cheats as Linux is, so for many multiplayer games they are a no-go.
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The modern WINE / Proton experience on Linux is not at all comparable to a badly done Mac port.
Are you insinuating that the portal port done by valve themselves to mac, and which became the basis of their port of portal to linux was a bad port?
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Feral's Linux port of Tomb Raider 2013 translates DX11 to OpenGL, and it's not much more efficient than vanilla WiNE. It's a pretty big hit compared to native DX11.
DXVK is much faster. This is the case with nearly all pre-vulkan Linux ports, unless the original game used OpenGL.
tl;dr windows games on linux generally work well (Score:3)
Pretty much any game that doesn't use Windows kernel-level anti-cheat will run pretty well. In some cases, a game might run faster on Linux/Proton. In come cases, a game might run a bit slower on Linux/Proton.
Seems to be a misinterpretation of the data (Score:2)
Does prontodb contain ALL Windows games? I doubt it.
When are games added to protondb? Either when somebody knows that it is working on Linux, or when they with that it would be working.
So protondb is biased towards games that are working on Linux, and does not actually represent the Linux-playability of all Windows games.
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ProtonDB is skewed towards games that are sold on Steam mostly because it's easy to get updates via the steam API. But for the odd game not on Steam, it can be added especially if it doesn'
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Not at all. If we take ALL the games - even those designed for Windows, more of them run on Linux without issues.
This is because old Windows games (designed for win95, 98, XP) no longer run on Windows.
The good games play fine... (Score:5, Insightful)
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And the piles of shit that require kernel anti-cheat software don't. Win-win situation!
one person's trash is another person's treasure.
I do not play games that require anti-cheat, you do not play games that require anticheat...
but plenty of peple do play those games, and they will not stop doing so just for the priviledge of running linux as their os. the os is there to enable you to do what you want to do, and not interfere.
Mac has frameworks/API calls that allow anticheats to work without residing on the kernel. windows is moving in that direction too.
for the sake of linux gaming, hope tha
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the os is there to enable you to do what you want to do, and not interfere.
Someone should explain that sometime to Microsoft, Apple, Red Hat, and Canonical.
Too bad (Score:2)
That I don't have the time to play video games anymore.
Apartheid the Problem, Not the Solution (Score:1)
Now only a decently designed desktop for Linux (Score:1)
I'm still amazed how the Linux Desktop looks like this GIMP editor UI from the '90s.
And I don't mean that in a positive way.
Why is it so hard to make something pretty looking?
Re: Now only a decently designed desktop for Linux (Score:2)
The Linux community is quite capable of designing a decent desktop environment. But as far as I can tell the developers working on it aren't capable of recognizing a decent desktop. Occasionalou they get close to a good desktop, only to throw it all away in a redesign that is demonstrably worse.
We Linux users suspect we don't deserve a good desktop, and for the most part have accepted our lot. It's not nearly as extreme as the psychological conditioning that a Windows user must have to accept the level of a
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It's called XFCE. What else does your desktop have to do?
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About once a month I update my laptop's Windows 11, and each time I think it looks absolutely hideous. A desktop plastered with icons that look like they were drawn by a five-year-old, most of which have a stupid arrow at the bottom to tell me they're a shortcut (like why do I care about that). The Windows desktop seems to me a cheap rip-off of KDE :-)
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Why is it so hard to make something pretty looking?
Why is it so hard for you to detect any of the many attractive themes for Linux DEs? IMO KDE looks better now than any version of Windows ever has. Maybe the problem is you.
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YOU choose how it should look, select a better distro for you, or finetune your current one
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I take KDE over Windows 10 or 11 any time. You can discuss if Windows 7 was near peak UI (just as the themes of KDE at that time), but with 10 Microsoft got bad taste with its UI that looks like drawn in Paint. Windows 11 then added bad UX with the new context menus, weird icon placement in the taskbar, etc. to the bad design of 10.
how far back are we talking about? (Score:2)
Re: how far back are we talking about? (Score:2)
I really liked Castle of the Winds. I think it might have been a win16s API app?
Re: how far back are we talking about? (Score:4, Informative)
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Those games don't work on Windows sometimes either. I've run into that ironic problem of an OLD windows game working better on Linux then it would on Win10. Even trying to use windows built-in compatibility thing. It's been a long time, so maybe that works better. I haven't used Windows in the home as my primary desktop/work station since Win7.
Quite happy over here. The drawbacks are fewer and fewer every year and Windows just keeps getting worse from all accounts.
"all games" is a lie (Score:2)
they mean 90% of the games that run on Steam, as other games are not in that database, therefore not counted.
Even when they do, steam still ... (Score:2)
... does not advocate it through their store. Eg. an annotation that the game will work on steam linux at the informational tab of games. So that will hold me back .... but I am very much interested to switch alltogether to Linux.
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go read the first posts, they actually define the run!!
and yes, platinum is really just click and play, you don't even notice that is running in proton/wine
Then there's the purposely broken ones..... (Score:2)
When companies like Rockstar refuse to do basic actions like tick a checkbox to allow linux and steamdeck players to play GTA V online, there's the complete malicious angle as well...
How many will never run on Linux? (Score:2)
How many games will never run on Linux because the publishers are too scared of piracy and/or cheating to enable Linux support? (even though the DRM and/or anti-cheat solutions absolutely have full linux support and there would be basically no work required to enable it)