TechAltarJust installed Bazzite on a monster of a Lenovo Legion 7i review unit for an upcoming video. Had to jump through a few hoops, but it's been remakably smooth since!
What are your thoughts on / experiences with Linux gaming?
Also, I never really paid attention to gaming laptops my first encounter with them a decade ago was that they were terrible, heavy monstrosities that were seldom worth the trade-offs.
But good god is this Legion machine nice. *Incredible* OLED screen, rock solid build, great keyboard and trackpad and even the battery lasts a solid 2-3 hours :P
Jokes aside, tech quietly getting 20-30% better every year feels boring short term but does incredible things long term to every category.
maru@Techaltar Lenovo gaming laptops are one of the least gamer-aesthetic ones, which is a plus in my book. Got myself a second hand y540 and it's still going strong, good enough for 3d rendering, lightweight enough to put in backpack and carry on train (I'm afraid the 16:10 screen ones wouldn't fit), only the power supply is large and heavy like a brick
Koen 🇺🇦@Techaltar Ive got a steam deck which works perfectly - I even use it as a PC sometimes. I also have a laptop with Kubuntu - using steam and epic (Heroic) - I'm playing all kinds of stuff - F US Big Tech, never I'l use NSA spying fascist pedophile Windows, Trump doesn't need to know which games I play
Linh Pham@Techaltar I've been on Fedora Linux for almost 1.5 years now, but gaming hasn't been quite a priority for me. I've installed and played a few games that I have in my GOG and Steam library, as well as a number of games from Itch-io that have Linux versions.
Most of my other gaming has been on the Switch/Switch 2, Steam Deck and either Android or Batocera-based Linux handhelds for emulating NES through Game Boy Advance games.
@Techaltar While the integrated GPU in the first gen Framework Laptop 16 is better than a lot of Intel's integrated GPUs up until their latest Xe/Arc series, I wouldn't call it powerful enough for higher-end games released in the past 5 years (if not a bit longer).
Winston Smith@Techaltar I'm very curious about how it will handle HDR content. Plain Ubuntu (i.e. Gnome) is unusable currently, but the Steam Deck is said to work flawlessly.
@Techaltar I would try out some YouTube's The HDR Channel videos (not on Firefox though), and check if suitable games actually detect that your system is in HDR mode and use it.
@Techaltar oh, and common smartphone HDR shoot videos should also show clearly visible improvement when the OS is in HDR mode.
scunning@Techaltar
My experiences with Linux gaming consist almost entirely of old browser-based Flash games that I downloaded and use with Ruffle to fill my offline time with nostalgia.
The nostalgia is nice.
Christopher Himes@Techaltar there are a few games that are not possible to play (Valorant, Supervive) but most I’ve tried work really well. I get better performance as Linux appears to have fewer things running. I’m on Pop_OS for a couple of years and I’m not going back. I like https://protondb.com for help troubleshooting.
Ren@Techaltar Absolutely fantastic. I think I've had 1.5 games that weren't online anticheat games that didn't work
I say 1.5 because one didn't work, but another just wouldn't work right with a controller but was fine with KB+M
Nup@Techaltar its great! I have it on my htpc system and it's all good. Makes for a much better contrôler experience than windows. Allow switched my laptop over to bluefin - bazzites cousin, and it works well too. Some hardware limitations (bios sleep states and no fingerprint reader open driver). Looking forward to the video or some thoughts on Linux Bazzite!
Feng Lengshun@Techaltar I have been a Linux gamer since 2019. It's actually insane how good it's got since that day. Obv there are still rough edges, but the community and the tools has progressed so far.
Nowadays, the expectation is that everything just works - as long as no weird anti-tamper/anti-cheat is involved. I haven't needed to post to ProtonDB in a while. At most, just switch to Proton-GE and everything works.
Also, Flatpak more or less "winning" helps with app availability.
yomimono, still on land@Techaltar I’ve been gaming on Linux since the late ‘90s and it’s unbelievable how good the current situation is. The pickings used to be extremely slim and now you can pretty much just play most games that are released, often without much (or any!) work beyond acquiring them.
Cory Carson@Techaltar Do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior, Steam Deck?
@corycarson yes I got one for the video :)
SemmelstulleLinux gaming is my Gen 9 console replacement. I'm doing it since 2023. all the games I care about run smooth thanks to Valve. I built a custom gaming rig for that purpose though, so every part was picked with Linux gaming in mind. Absolutely no issues. Pairs exceptionally well with the tracks of the DualSense controller.
I maybe love it a bit too much.
Vori 
@Techaltar What hoops did you have to jump? ( Just so others will know what to expect 
)
As for gaming on Linux - It's been years since I played anything on Windows now, so I guess that speaks for itself 
olbotta@Techaltar it just works
noodlejetski 
@Techaltar I've been using Linux exclusively for over 9 years now, and gaming experience has only been getting better in that time. been using my current gaming laptop for the past 4 years with great success, and the biggest disappointment was when Apex Legends pulled their Linux anticheat support after I clocked in over 1k hours. other than that it's recently been smooth sailing, I quite enjoy ARC Raiders with some friends these days. single player titles are pretty much a non-issue.
Jacob Scharmberg@Techaltar I've been gaming on bazzite for a few years now (with AMD GPU). Stram works pretty much flawlessly, tried heroic for a few things as well and didn't have major hiccups. Bit of Lutris for old games. That can be quite fiddly but mostly because the games are so old. This would be fiddly on Windows too. In fact, getting retro games to work on Linux is often even easier than on Windows in my experience.
papinto@Techaltar have been gaming solely on Linux since 2022, first in a shitty laptop and later in a proper gaming PC, and besides some *very* minor hurdles (figuring out heroic, lutris, proton experimental versions) it was so great that I had a dual boot that only ever launched Windows to play games that required spyware (aka kernel anticheat).
I've since moved on to the steam deck, which I currently regard as the best console I've ever laid my hands upon.
FloppyPanda@Techaltar I've been on-and-off with Linux (and gaming on Linux) for the past few years, but this year I moved permanently. Before, it was Pop!_OS, then I started using Mint for quite a while, before some performance issues made me move over to Bazzite, and I've been quite happy with it.
If you don't play Destiny, Fortnite, or any other bigger PvP titles, you'll have a great time. (And some PvP titles, like OW2, work just fine without an issue)
Jan@Techaltar Looking forward to the video! I am very interested in Linux gaming and Linux in general. I installed Linux mint on like 8 devices of family members and friends that had a terrible performance with windows (older hardware) and are running smoothly now. If I wouldn’t own a PS5 for gaming, I would probably get a steam machine
mnemonic@Techaltar My experiences with gaming on Linux has been pretty painless in the last years. Single-player games have a high chance to just work, multi-player games are more hit-n-miss, mostly due to anti cheat.
Performance with a modern AMD GPU on the desktop has been great and I found it really convenient not to have to think about additional driver installations.
Recent updates to the plasma desktop also delivered nice features like HDR support, although support in games is still spotty.
Lucas@Techaltar been gaming The Finals, CS2 and Rocket League on Fedora for a year now and it feels completely normal; as if that’s how it’s always been. I must admit I have a little fomo about BF6 and really hope that becomes playable on Linux one day.
Anton@Techaltar Obvious performance trade-offs aside, Steam Deck works great for single player games. About a month ago, I got rid of Windows in favor of Ubuntu. VR gaming is a bit meh and requires some tinkering. I expect this to change once Steam Frame is out, though.
Other than VR, it was a smooth sailing so far. I don't play too many multiplayer games, but Guild Wars 2 runs without issues for me.