THE GAMING ON LINUX GUIDE: How to play anything: Steam, Epic, Ubisoft, Origin, Battle.net, GoG...

hey everyone this is nick and linuxgaming has never been so popular okay well we started from the bottom i guess but still there are an estimated 1.6 million linux users and that's on steam alone and with the steam deck selling more and more we can only expect these numbers to grow but navigating the linux gaming world can be tricky with plenty of tools applications acronyms that are basically not existent on windows or other platforms so this here is your complete definitive guide on how to get started with gaming on linux and that includes steam epic games origin ubisoft we'll leave emulation aside for now because that's a big enough topic for an entire video so strap on and let's get started just like you can get started with your own gaming or linux server thanks to today's sponsor and a hundred dollars of free credit they're giving you thanks to linoad for sponsoring this video linode is my favorite solution to run a linux or gaming server it's what i use to run my own next cloud instance and my own only office server the interface is super easy to use they are affordable they have tons of documentation online and they have one-click deployable servers for a ton of applications or games like pyhol pyhol is a dns sinkhole that filters out requests to ads serving domains basically it lets you block ads and improve network performance it lets you actively monitor every dns request made on your network and block requests as they come in and you can deploy it in one click only nodes so you can ensure i stay poor and to get you started lynode is giving you a hundred dollars of free credit to get your own linux server or gaming server running to get access to that just click the link in the description below okay let's start with a quick recap of a few notions related to linux gaming linux has native versions of some games but it doesn't have that many fortunately it can also run windows games from any launcher thanks to something called proton what proton does is create for each game a lightweight fake windows install which the games talks to that fake install then translates what the game asks into instructions linux can understand proton uses a bunch of open source libraries like wine for the fake windows installations or dxvk and vk d3d to translate directx 9 10 11 and 12 instructions into vulcan instructions vulcan being the graphics api that linux uses instead of directx basically with proton or wine or anything that's based on proton or wine you can run windows games natively on linux just like if they were running on windows it's not emulation it's not a virtual machine they're running natively now some games don't run at all some games run worse than windows and some games run better than on windows but don't worry we'll cover how to check for compatibility a bit later in the video so proton is based on wine which does the exact same thing but isn't specifically made for running games and some people have made variants of proton the most notable being ge proton which enables more game support but might not be as stable also important to note while steam has a native client for linux other launchers don't but we have unofficial ones that kinda do a better job than the official launchers and we have simple ways to run the official launchers as well so don't worry you can play games from all your launchers on linux now that this is out of the way let's get to the basics as in which linux distribution should you use and how to get your graphics drivers if you already use linux you know that the distro you pick for gaming doesn't really matter all the popular distributions have a recent enough kernel and access to everything you need if this is your first look into linux though here's a general rule of thumb just pick whatever you want it really doesn't matter if you pick something based on ubuntu or something based on arch or just ubuntu and art you'll get the most recent kernel versions that you need for gaming you'll get all the drivers you need you'll get an easy to access store to install your programs there's basically no issue here just pick whatever looks right to you and whatever you like as per drivers all you need to know is that all the drivers you need are already in the linux kernel linux doesn't work like windows you don't download drivers separately everything is already in the kernel so when you update your kernel and your distribution you get newer drivers automatically it is just way easier than on windows except for nvidia because nvidia and linux have a complicated relationship since nvidia hasn't really made their drivers available as open source they are not in the linux kernel what the kernel gives you is the nuvo drivers which are an open source retro engineered version of their drivers and that will not give you the best performance if you have an nvidia gpu you're going to want to install the nvidia proprietary drivers but don't run to the nvidia website it's way easier than that on linux just open your software store in your linux distribution and search for nvidia some distributions handle drivers with a separate graphical tool like ubuntu so you might look for an app called additional drivers but in most cases it's in the software store what you'll want to install is the latest version so the one with the biggest version number this will support basically any nvidia gpu starting from the old gtx 745 up to the latest and greatest rtx if your card is older than that you'll have to look online to see which version of the driver you need but in most cases just install the latest and if you use an amd gpu or an intel gpu well these guys are pretty good at contributing to their open source drivers which means that you have nothing to do all the drivers are already in the kernel and you're good to go to start gaming okay now if you're like most pc gamers you'll want steam here again it's just lying there in your software center just search for steam and install it you might have multiple choices depending on your distribution but in my experience unless your steam setup is super complex with tons of external libraries on different drives and partitions you can just grab whichever one and then steams runs exactly as it would on windows but there are a few things you'll want to do to be able to play every game steam on linux by default only lets you install games that have a native linux version but it is in fact capable of playing a ton of windows games to enable that you'll need to open steam's settings and go to the steam play tab you'll want to take the enable steam play for all other titles checkbox what does that do well it just lets you use proton the thing we already talked about to run every windows game as if it was native on linux so by ticking that checkbox you basically have the possibility to run every single game in your steam library on linux as long as it's compatible of course there are a few caveats as with all translation layers it's not perfect and some games run better than others and some don't run at all some games run well with a specific version of proton that translation layer and some require a few launch arguments okay if this sounds complicated don't worry it's really not there's a website online called protondb.com this website has a page for each single steam game and on these pages you'll find if the game is supported how well it runs and what you need to do to make it run properly so just head over to protondb.com search for the game you want and look at the rating platinum means native performance no issues and nothing to configure gold means it runs really well but you might have to select a specific proton version or add a launch argument silver means some stuff won't work like video cut scenes or the multiplayer component all the performance will be weird with graphical glitches bronze is the same but with more issues and borked means the game won't run at all just by looking at user reports that have similar hardware to yours so in general just the same kind of gpu if it's nvidia or amd you can get all the tweaks you might need to run the game if it's a launch argument you can just add it by right-clicking a game in your library going to properties and pasting that argument in the launch options line if it's a specific version of proton you can change that version in the compatibility tab by taking the force the use of a specific version checkbox some user reviews there might tell you they used a version of proton called ge proton or proton ge it's not an official version of proton it's made by an individual who's incredibly talented and it enables more games to be playable at the cost of stability sometimes so if your game already runs really well with the official valve provided version of proton keep using that if the game doesn't run you can try to use ge proton to install this you can head over to the ge proton github page the link is in the description there you click on the releases box and you can just download the version you need generally the latest is the best grab the file that ends in dotstar.gz it's an archive basically like a zip to install it quit steam then open your steam folder on linux it's a hidden folder called dot steam the dot is important in your file manager just press ctrl h to display hidden folders and go to the folder called dot steam if it's not there it will be in dot var slash app slash com.valvesoftware.steam dot steam in there open the folder called steam and then you'll want to create a new folder called compatibilitytools.d inside of this folder place the extracted ge proton version you want to install and now when you restart steam you'll see this new version in all drop down lists where you can select the version you want to use and that's basically it for steam either the game runs immediately because it has a native linux version or proton works well or you need to do some specific tweaks and then you head over to proton db to check the version and the tweaks you need that's it now what about the epic games store well we have an amazing solution here as well the best one on linux is using an unofficial client called heroic this thing lets you basically do the exact same thing steam does which is play each windows game as if it was native to linux thanks to proton now there are other options that lets you install the official epic game store client the problem is you'll run it with one single version of proton or wine which means that all the tweaks you apply will apply to all the games which means that some games that need specific tweaks won't run at all and some won't run as well as they can heroic lets you configure each game individually which means that you'll get the best experience possible for every one of your games to install heroic either search your software store or if it doesn't appear there head over to their website to grab one of the versions they offer i recommend the flat pack version which is a sandbox secure packaging format that works on every distribution except ubuntu well you'll have to install flatback support first look up online how to do this it's not the point of this guide once heroic is installed it will ask you to log in with your epic games account so just do that he then lets you navigate your library and install your games you can also navigate the epic game store and grab these three games or change a few settings like the place where your games will be installed each game has its own page where you have access to various tools like checking compatibility on proton db to see what you might need to get it running just like on steam heroic will also auto detect your installed proton versions from steam and lets you reuse them although they call it wind version instead of proton version wine being the tool proton is based on for each game you can set that proton version and you have access to a few more tools like fsr which we'll discuss later in the other tab you can enable a few things as well like using the dedicated gpu to run the game if you're on a hybrid graphics laptop or adding variables and game arguments just like we talked about on steam heroic is basically a better epic game store client than the official epic game store client and i highly recommend it if you want to start gaming on linux with your epic games games don't install the official epic game store client because heroic will let you configure a lot more stuff and the performance will be much better as a result now let's move on to origin and ubisoft connect these other launchers are best handled through lutrus lutrus is a game manager that can group in the same place your steam games your god games your ubisoft origin emulation basically every game you own in one launcher lutress might be in your software store and if it's not head over to thelutris.net download link to see how you install it on your distribution i left that link in the description to get started with adding your origin or ubisoft games just click the origin or ubisoft icon in the sidebar and then the small user icon next to it you'll get a login window and once you're signed in your list of games will appear in the main window click a game and then the install button in the bottom of the app to install it lutress uses user contributed scripts to grab the best version of wine or proton to grab the best configurations the best libraries and install all of that automatically for you that's why you might see multiple install options in a list when installing a game there are multiple install scripts from different people just read the description for each and pick the one that seems the most relevant to your game or your use of the game lutress will start by installing the windows launcher for origin or ubisoft first and then we'll let you install the game it might display installers and require you to click a few buttons to install everything and then it will open the windows client for origin or ubisoft connect to run the game note that lootrisk can also do that for your epic game store games but i personally prefer to use heroic as i find the interface better and the performance is also a bit better on heroic in my experience and since it's linux gaming you also get a ton of options to configure your games there you can change the wine or proton version you can enable support for anti-cheat if that's needed you can enable fsr or launch arguments i'll address some of these later in the video note that lootrisk can also be used to install a lot of games that aren't using any launcher just click the main menu then add games then search lutress and look up the name of your game you might be able to find an install script there that lets you play it then we have battle.net this one doesn't have an unofficial client and doesn't have easy integrations like what lutherus offers but you can still install it easily through lutrus itself just click the main menu and then add game click search lutress and then type battle.net and then click install and follow the prompts once lutrus is done installing you'll be able to start the battle.net launcher from it just like any other game and install and run your blizzard titles from it just like on windows now here you can't configure every single one of your games individually but in my experience playing starcraft 2 diablo 2 remastered diablo 3 they all ran extremely well with the default looters settings i didn't need to change anything for gog you can just use the heroic games launcher i already mentioned it supports using your gog account by clicking on the manage accounts button in the sidebar and works just like you would expect with your library showing up and the ability to install native linux games as well as windows ones using proton just like for the epic game store now here you get the exact same options and tweaks that heroic also has for the epic game store so i won't spend too much time on this just remember you install the game you check for compatibility on proton db you apply any tweaks that are needed and you play okay now let's take a look at a simple tool you might want to use to improve your linux gaming experience it's called fsr this is a tool from amd but you can use it on any gpu nvidia intel whatever and it lets you render a game at a lower resolution and upscale it to the native resolution of your display so you're saving some gpu and cpu power but the end result looks pretty close to the real thing for example you could play a tomb raider game rendering it at 720p but it would be upscaled to 1080p to match your monitor with linux you can add fsr support to basically every game even the ones that don't support it natively yes linux gaming can be better than windows gaming sometimes windows can't do that so for steam you'll need to use ge proton that we already talked about as this support isn't in the main proton versions so download and install ge proton as i detailed earlier and then switch the proton version the game is using to ge proton you'll then need to add this argument wine underscore full screen underscore fsr equals 1 space percentage command percentage you can just add it in the games properties in the launch options box for heroic you'll also need to select ge proton in the wind version drop down you can access it by clicking on the game then on its settings button and in the wine tab and once that's done you need to check the enable fsr hack box on lutrus you do not need to add an argument just check the enable amd fidelity fx super resolution switch in the runner options which you can access by right again and clicking configure now when you start your game just select a lower resolution than the one your display uses and the game will automatically use fsr to upscale itself and look much better while keeping a good fps and there are tons of other tools exclusive to linux to make the gaming experience even better there's game mode which basically tells your cpu to bring all the cycles and all the power it can to the window in the front of the screen so basically your game there's mango hud which lets you get super detailed statistics about fps frame timing power usage basically it's the same overlay that the steam deck has or you have vk baselt which is a post-processing layer which can be applied as the game runs to improve a game's graphics even though you might have maxed out everything in the game's graphic options so hopefully this video will have given you all the basics and all the knowledge you need to get started on linux without scaring you off too much it might look like a lot of things but honestly it's basically just look for a program install it and then install your game inside of the program it's super easy super simple it's not as install and play as on windows but it's really not far off and the experience in the end can be customized so much more than on windows that is really really awesome awesome just like today's sponsor tuxedo is a company based in germany and they make laptops and desktops that run linux out of the box and they have models for every price point and everyone from the smallest nox and ultrabooks to the biggest gaming laptops or gaming towers if you want to get started with gaming on linux their devices are probably among the best you could find and they have tons of configuration options for the keyboard layout for the cpu the gpu the ram the ssd additional hard drives you can even get your own logo engraved on the back of your laptop their products are really really cool and you can install any linux distribution you want they provide a choice of some very popular one but if you want to try something else it's gonna work because the hardware just supports linux well so if you need a new device and you want to use linux and make sure that your device can 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Channel: The Linux Experiment

Views: 214,055

Keywords: linux, open source, distribution, linux distro, linux help, linux tutorial, linux 2022, opensource, free software, linux tips, ubuntu, distro, how to game on linux, how to play games on linux, gaming on linux tutorial, gaming on linux guide, how to steam on linux, how to epic games on linux, how to gog on linux, how to battle.net on linux, how to origin on linux, how to ubisoft on linux, play diablo immortal on linux, play fortnite on linux, play apex legends on linux

Id: v9tb1gTTbJE

Length: 21min 42sec (1302 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 21 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/waldelb]

I like the channel, but I don't think this guide is well made.

1. The distribution matters. Saying it wouldn't matter what distro you (as a beginner) choose, is simply wrong. It does matter. If you start with Debian or Arch, you will probably hate your life and go back to Windows, while Nobara or Pop!_OS would give you a much easier start.
2. Installing BattleNet from Lutris is not the best option. You should choose the install script for the game you want to play, for example Overwatch, or StarCraft II. That way you can tweak each game individually, and you get sane presets.
3. Starting to explain Proton as the thing that makes Linux gaming possible leads to many people think that you should use Proton in Lutris, too. Which is bad. I get the idea here, though, and he kind of explains that Lutris uses something else, but it might get lost for a new user who has no clue what is going on.
4. The title suggests that he's explaining everything that you need to know, but that's not the case. There are very important things a new user should know in order to have a good experience, for example disabling composition and similar things. Fast games, especially games in first person mode are a pain if you don't disable composition. At least if you're not on Gnome or Wayland. But Wayland without FreeSync gives you high input lagg ... etc. You get my point. But that's the same point as "any distro is fine".
5. Proton-GE does more than only fixes. For example it enables raw mouse input. This is very important for competitive shooters like Apex Legends. My recommendation would be to use Proton-GE by default, and only switch to another version if you have stability issues.

[u/Nokeruhm]

A black t shirt? Who is that guy, and what he did to Nick?

The video is a briefing guide on the basics, in that scope I think is OK. Anyway Lutris should be more explained, or just metion as more complex and complete tool, and maybe a mention to ProtonUpQT as a time-saver tool to manage compatibility tools for Steam, Heroic and Lutris.