Linux Gaming with Steam Play + Proton

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Starlith

208 posts

Master Geek

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#240261 29-Aug-2018 16:18

Hi all, has anyone tried the beta of Steam linux client?

It's so simple compared to using wine with playonlinux or lutris.

Now with Steam Play + Proton my whole library can play in Linux. The DirectX11 games use Vulkan/DXVK so you have to make sure your gpu can support Vulkan. My old AMD rig can play them perfectly with the mesa driver but my XPS15 with nvidia 960m won't as I'm running bumblebee drivers with no Vulkan support.

With the work valve, codeweavers and others have done this could get some more users over to the linux environment.

gzt

17160 posts

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Lifetime subscriber

#2081099 29-Aug-2018 20:51

Good to know thanks for the tip.

qwerty123

147 posts

Master Geek

#2081248 30-Aug-2018 10:36

Heard about that, but haven't tried yet. Just using the latest wine-staging with Battle.net games.

michaelmurfy

meow
13270 posts

Uber Geek

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#2081275 30-Aug-2018 11:03

Gave this a go last night and found it works incredibly well - thanks for the tip!

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cddt

1565 posts

Uber Geek

#2082410 1-Sep-2018 14:49

Starlith:

my XPS15 with nvidia 960m won't as I'm running bumblebee drivers

Have you tried the drivers from the nvidia site? There are people in the google doc using the 960m reporting success with driver 396.54 (i.e. latest).

reven

3743 posts

Uber Geek

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#2082446 1-Sep-2018 15:01

im hoping one day uplay games will work, i still buy/play their games. If that happens ill be formatting my steam windows 10 "console" and installing steamOS. Ive given up on origin games on PC. that client in BPM of steam is just a pita to work with. mass effect 4 wouldnt work with my PS4 controller very well.

And it would be nice if they implemented a "sleep" feature similar to PS4/xbone, something that you can easily do via BPM.

Starlith

208 posts

Master Geek

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#2083117 3-Sep-2018 11:59

cddt:

Have you tried the drivers from the nvidia site? There are people in the google doc using the 960m reporting success with driver 396.54 (i.e. latest).

If my laptop was solely for gaming I'd do it. My biggest issue is trying to get vulkan games (dx10/dx11) working with hybrid graphics in linux to play Skyrim SE or Human Revolution , everything else fine.

If I use the proprietary nvidia driver (which apparently supports vulkan) over the hybrid bumblebee (which doesn't doesn't support) it will consume more power on my laptop for most other applications.

In Windows nvidia optimus works very well, intel driver is used for low intensive stuff then when I load a game it switches on the nvidia card for the game to utilise, when i quit the game the intel card takes the load and the nvidia card is off.

nvidia are useless when it comes to linux support they expect other devs to the work for free without contributing to open source. Now that Proton is working hopefully it snaps at them to get more invested in linux but I highly doubt it.

Killerkiwi2005

374 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#2083200 3-Sep-2018 13:12

It seems to work pretty well, turned on the allow any game filter and have not yet found a game that will not run (these are all pretty low graphic games though), the only issue we have had is our 4 USB gamepads seem to register as only 2 gamepads in games (steam sees 4), works perfectly on windows which means the kids still need windows to play Brawlhalla

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fe31nz

1233 posts

Uber Geek

#2083486 3-Sep-2018 22:16

Starlith:

cddt:

Have you tried the drivers from the nvidia site? There are people in the google doc using the 960m reporting success with driver 396.54 (i.e. latest).

If my laptop was solely for gaming I'd do it. My biggest issue is trying to get vulkan games (dx10/dx11) working with hybrid graphics in linux to play Skyrim SE or Human Revolution , everything else fine.

If I use the proprietary nvidia driver (which apparently supports vulkan) over the hybrid bumblebee (which doesn't doesn't support) it will consume more power on my laptop for most other applications.

In Windows nvidia optimus works very well, intel driver is used for low intensive stuff then when I load a game it switches on the nvidia card for the game to utilise, when i quit the game the intel card takes the load and the nvidia card is off.

nvidia are useless when it comes to linux support they expect other devs to the work for free without contributing to open source. Now that Proton is working hopefully it snaps at them to get more invested in linux but I highly doubt it.

With the Nvidia drivers, you can switch manually between the Intel and Nvidia GPUs, using the nvidia-settings program "Prime Profiles" tab. But you do have to restart X (or logout and login again) to make it happen. On my Mythbuntu 16.04 laptop, that is easy enough to do - just "systemctl restart lightdm".