miskGames run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds
mintiefreshWow, some of these are showing huge gains with Steam OS
candyman337I believe it, Windows bloat these days is so bad. I keep telling my friends Tarkov runs better on Linux if they’d just let me play the goddamn multiplayer I’d be golden
chiliedoggI’m really curious to see what kind of performance gains the Xbox-mode or whatever they’re calling it is going to provide. I don’t know if it’ll reach SteamOS levels, but it does legitimately look like they’re taking the bloat’s hit on gaming seriously with the Xbox-branded ROG Ally.
The reality is that mostly people aren’t going to leave Windows, so if Valve and Linux force Windows to improve it’s still a win.
I think we’re beginning to see a serious shift about how people view Linux. I do think valve being on Linux will significantly legitimizes it, and drivers will become much more accessible for it. In the next decade I think we will see a big migration of gamers to Linux. Being on Linux myself, the experience is even more streamlined and less glitchy than just a year ago, just because of the widespread adoption of OS’s like steamOS and bazzite.
Linux will never be mainstream while it’s controlled by nerds. I mean there is no uniform interface (there’s so many guitar options) and when people want to learn it, the support is from people who think “it just works”.
Windows was for nerds in its early days
Windows 95 launched like a rock concert and since computers came with Windows, everyone’s experience was the same so you did have KDE installed then go look for help and have people say “no no no. Install Gnome” like you get with Linux. You want linux to be mainstream, you need to appeal to the average dumb person which means ditch all but 1 interface.
The steamdeck a handheld gaming PC comes with Linux, and several handheld gaming PC’s are beginning to follow suit, some PC manufacturers already offer Linux as an option. Even so, most gamers, which is who I was talking about, build their own PC’s and pick their own OS’s to begin with.
The Steam Deck is an exception as it has a highly specialized OS with functionality and optimization limited to one thing: playing games.
Only there’s a desktop mode that is easily accessible and opens up the device for all manner of uses.
Many many features and functions missing. It’s made for games.
It may be made for games but it’s a more tolerable desktop experience than a fully fledged Windows PC.
Which features/functions are “missing”
Says you who do not represent everyone.
And you are an elected official?
Yeah, three is the limit on control panel flavors within an OS
Still more consistent out of the box than the dozens of GUIs of Linux.
This could be smart if the largest mobile OS, Android, didn’t have dozens of GUIs/Styles depending on the manufacturer’s whim
Android is still more consistent than PC Linux. Most Android interfaces are nearly identical. Give me and Android phone that I’ve never used before and I know how to perform the most common tasks without help. Not the same.
Ah so because your familiar with it it’s easier? Interesting
That is my point. With Linux as a PC OS people cannot become familiar with it because there are too many user interfaces. The Linux supporters as a whole need to pick one and push it and only it to be viable for the average Joe.
Why does it need to be dumbed down for the average joe?
Why does guis need to be designed for the person not using it? Why not design them for the people using it now and improve them for the actual users of the software instead of the persons NOT using the software?
Thats a stupid idea and that very line of thought is the brainrot that has led to the enshittification of so much the last couple of decades.
You don’t understand marketing and that people need a uniform experience. You need simplicity to get the average person. You’re thinking as a advanced computer user, not a basic or novice user.
Why do average users need to use linux. Let them stay in windows if that’s where they are happy. Making linux into a system just as shitty as windows will just replace shit with different shit.
But that’s the whole issue. Microsoft will continue to dictate how the internet and computers in general function if the regular users don’t adopt something else. The regular users won’t adopt Linux because the current users of Linux want to gatekeep Linux. You bitch and complain “why do people user shitty Windows?” Then when given an answer say “we don’t want them using Linux anyway.” You are showing exactly how fucking stupid you are.
It’s almost as if linux users are a group of many individuals with different reasonings behind their vastly different goals and priorities and not one homogenous group. Who would have thought?
You are completely missing my point. Linux will not be adopted by the masses which it needs to do to kill
Microsoft’s stranglehold on the industry while there is no uniformity to it. The idea of hating Microsoft but not wanting to make it easier for current Microsoft users to switch to Linux isn’t coming from 2 sides of the Linux group. It coming from the same individuals. It’s the worst type of gatekeeping.
I mean, DOS was a base OS that had several frontend GUIs. Windows 3.1 I think? Wasn’t even made by Microsoft. It got adopted by Microsoft and then of course they close sourced it like big companies do.
Most Linux versions come with the frontend preconfigured unless you get specifically the server version of the OS.
What’s going to happen is one of the Linux front ends is going to see widespread adoption/support, and it’s looking like it’s going to be KDE Plasma. Hopefully the others aren’t just abandoned and left to rot. The situation is a little different with how open source software is licensed though. So that give me hope that the open source nature of Linux won’t be compromised as much.
You statement is invalidate immediately by saying DOS was a GUI. It was text based and the text commands were consistent across most versions of DOS.
I said DOS had GUIs, not that it was one
They’ve promised that exact same thing for like at least three major windows versions.
And Windows 10 was clearly faster.
Than Windows 11, that is.
I think this time actually does have the potential to be different. They’re co-launching an Xbox-branded handheld PC designed to go head-to-head with the Steam Deck while downplaying the future of dedicated consoles.
Microsoft’s gaming division is going all-in on PC, so it matters more than ever.
They said all those exact corporate blowhard promises when the introduced the gamebar and the Xbox windows store and a “gaming mode” lol.
Yeah, but they were also still making new standalone gaming boxes with a dedicated OS, and they didn’t have the Xbox division take the lead on game mode.
Linux and Mac gaming also weren’t a threat, and the solution to a bloated Windows installation was more horsepower, which was relatively cheap.
Now the market is completely changed. The Xbox Series S and X have had their lunch eaten by Playstion and Switch. Linux gaming is exploding because of the Steam Deck, while more-powerful Windows handhelds are performing worse with worse batteries than the Deck because of Windows bloat.
Mid-range GPUs cost more than an entire high-end gaming rig from 5 years ago, so high-end gaming PCs are rarer than ever.
Microsoft has to do something. And what they’ve chosen, for now, is to partner with Asus to launch a true Xbox-branded competitor to the Deck. To do that, they have to actually be competitive. There’s 2 keys to that. One is Gamepass, and the other is moving Windows out of the way of the game experience.
The reality is that mostly people aren’t going to leave Windows, so if Valve and Linux force Windows to improve it’s still a win.
While I mostly agree with this, every time I see this mentioned it reminds me that MS-DOS was not very popular, until a Microsoft employee offered to port Doom to DOS, because he saw that if games ran on a platform people would use it and migrate naturally, that employee was called Gabe Newell. So I do have some hope that there’s some bigger migration, and in fact we’ve seen the numbers steadily rising, and these sort of things tend to be exponential, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it picks up speed.
DOS was the most popular OS for gaming at the time and Doom was released first on DOS by id.
Gabe Newell and team ported it to Windows 95.
Oops, thanks for the correction I’ll update the post
I did not realize Gaben worked for Microsoft. So he knows wtf he’s doing with the steam deck. I think he is 100% trying to recreate that OS migration of the 90s
Windows was wildly popular prior to Doom. Doom for Windows 95 was a showcase for DirectX, not Windows.
Doom was on more systems than Windows 95, yes, but that’s a little misleading. First off, it was released several years before Window’s 95. Secondly, people upgraded computers less often back then, and Windows 95 wasn’t packaged with most systems and wasn’t distributed online. You had to actively decide to go to a store and buy it.
Third, the vast majority of Doom copies were the shareware version of the first campaign. It was tiny and free. People would bring their floppy to a friend’s house, or they’d post it on a bbs for download.
The port to Windows 95 was a technical showcase of the advantages of using DirectX. It showed that Windows had integrated features that could be used to enhance games with minimal development cost, and that games could be run without having to exit Windows to DOS, which was a huge hassle required for most games at the time.
Tarkov runs on Linux!? I thought they had kernel anticheat that didn’t work
Pvp doesn’t work yeah, everything else does
dang i couldn’t even get the launcher to work when i tried with lutris the other day
That’s odd, my best guess is the version of proton lutris is trying to use is installed incorrectly. I had that issue in my laptop for awhile.
it’s possible i tried several proton and ge-proton versions and was getting a dotnet error that it couldn’t ensure a single process iirc
Ah, there’s a special installer on the lutris site that should install all that, did you use that?
i will look into that thanks!
MisterFrogI’m thinking of keeping timer next to me for all the time I waste literally waiting for Windows 11 to load the bloody right click menu (and other things) at work.
Games run faster on SteamOS with proton than Windows 11, Ars testing finds
FTFY. I hate all these articles that downplay the heavy lifting proton (and all the tools that make it up) are doing. But “Proton makes games run better” doesn’t get the same attention.
Proton is amazing, but it’s entirely overhead translating library/system calls to Linux. It’s accurate to say they run better on SteamOS, not to say Proton is making it run better.
Now maybe Proton makes them run better than a janky but native Linux port, but that’s a separate statement about games being better optimized on Windows.
Proton is amazing, but it’s entirely overhead translating library/system calls to Linux.
That is not at all true.
but that’s a separate statement about games being better optimized on Windows.
Is that though? You can’t say X is better than Y when you’re changing multiple variables. If windows had a proton equivalent and both games ran through it then yes that would be a direct comparison. But you can’t say X + Y is better than Z (by itself)
DXVK is a part of proton that also is available on windows. DXVK alone can get you double digit performance improvements on games. And that’s not getting into all the one off tweaks users can do to proton to optimize the game. Enabling pre compiled shaders gave a huge performance boost for Elden Ring.
Pierre-Loup Griffais (@Plagman2) on X
The graphics team has been hard at work on optimizing ELDEN RING for Steam Deck. Fixes for heavy stutter during background streaming of assets will be available in a Proton release next week, but are available to test now on the bleeding-edge branch of Experimental.
How is running an extra compatibility layer not overhead?
Shh just let him wear himself out.
entirely
It’s not just overhead.
FubarberryThe compatibility layer is overhead, but the key difference for many games is that DXVK swaps directX for Vulkan, and Vulkan often gets better performance.
The performance gains of using steamOS are twofold, there’s less OS load (this is particularly noticeable in low performance games, windows will consume much more battery on a game like Dead Cells than SteamOS will), and there’s also a vulkan performance increase for some games. My understanding is if you see a big performance increase in a demanding game, that’s usually thanks to vulkan.
Vulkan isn’t magic, its power comes from the flexibility it gives developers in its API. If developers are using DirectX, especially older versions, then they’re not utilizing that flexibility.
If DirectX code performs better through a Vulkan translation layer than on Windows, it means the driver implementations or OS bloat are what’s causing it.
With your theory, you could run a DirectX to Vulkan translation layer on Windows and also get increased performance. Which may be true, but once again points the finger at bad drivers.
With your theory, you could run a DirectX to Vulkan translation layer on Windows and also get increased performance. Which may be true, but once again points the finger at bad drivers.
Yes, from what I’ve been told that actually does improve performance in many games.
In the same way that talking to a presidential translator is faster for a diplomat than talking to Trump. The translation layer can communicate more concisely and effectively.
despoticruinThere is overhead but Vulkan allows you to batch draw calls in a far more efficient manner. It can also generally use multi threading to feed a GPU even if the game isn’t coded with that in mind. Basically Vulkan offers so many improvements to efficiency and parallelization that the overhead is a drop in the bucket compared to the overall speedup in draw call optimization alone.
But you can’t say X + Y is better than Z (by itself)
I mean, yeah, you absolutely can. Especially when X + Y and Z are both common configurations, and using X or Y by themselves is uncommon or a known bad setup.
Sure, you can’t be certain which of X or Y is making the differences in the comparison, but the comparison can absolutely be made.
Hogwarts legacy, which is a exe, runs on proton but not on windows 10. I’d say proton runs better than windows.