Guide for gaming on Linux. Best distros for gaming, and for general use as well.

You've figured out linux gaming pretty fast, I'm impressed.....
thanks! I was used to the terminal of Linux, though I used the interface but scarcely, so some details werent that difficult to learn.

Aside from that, I was lucky that found someone to help me to get started and also 'cos then I found some great material afterwards on my own, like the Ultimate Gaming Guide on Linux by Chris Titus.

If I could turn back time, I'd have started with that, and then a Lutris vídeo and some other explanations.

In the end, I added all of that here, and edited the first post to make it shorter and to the point for anyone wanting to play on Linux and making the experience as straightforward as possible.
 
how to install Proton GE version -the one with universal FSR-, the easy way, to use on Steam

 
a very interesting video on how to set up "universal" FSR on Linux, and how to know when it's enabled.

He explains that you have to enable full screen and set a resolution according to the output you want -i.e. for 4k you set the game's resolution to 1440p and so on and so forth- It's worth the watch


Set any of these resolutions in game (for instance, on a 1440p monitor, to get 1440p Quality -and not Ultra Quality -, set the game internal's resolution to 1706x960) with the Steam command on Launch Options, WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR=1 %command%

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my first ever FSR Quality pictures, enabled from a base resolution of 1706x960 to native 1440p (my monitor's res). Dunno how to measure framerate on Linux for now, but the framerate is soooo good -which is what I wanted-. The slight loss of detail is well worth it! (it's hard to notice and the game still looks gorgeous)

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how would I set my game to run at eg: 1506x847 no game I have allows me to select that resolution
as long as your game has a internal menu from which to choose a resolution, Proton-GE takes the game into believing the monitor accepts said resolution. If the game has an external application to set the resolution, no luck there.

edit; @Davros this is how you set any game, which chooses from a list of resolutions.

eHqdUHa.png


In addition, I made a comparison here, native 1440p vs FSR Quality to 1440p (or 1706x960 to 1440p) https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/2220370/
 
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How to install the latest version of Proton-GE (the one with "universal" FSR for all your games) for Steam.

EASY MODE

1) You type this:

sudo pip3 install protonup

If the installation gives an error, install python with the following command (for Debian based OSes like Ubuntu)

sudo apt install python3-pip

Now you can install protonup with the aforementioned command

sudo pip3 install protonup

2) Now type the following command to automatically create the directory installation for Proton-GE releases, compatibilitytools.d , in .steam/root directory

protonup -d "~/.steam/root/compatibilitytools.d/"

3) Now just use this command to install the latest version of Proton-GE:

protonup

Just type it again whenever you want to update Proton-GE.

4) Set Steam in the Settings menu, under Steam Play, enabling this option to play games using Proton if you didnt already:

Enable Steam Play for all other titles

It is most recommended to play native Windows games on Linux, even if said game has a native Linux version, 'cos they are usually better ports and Proton works fine with them, plus with Proton-GE you get FSR for free on ALL your games.


4) REMEMBER TO SET THE COMPATIBILITY OPTIONS on Steam to use Proton-GE and use FSR for free in any game:

- Select your game on Steam.

- Right-click on it -> Properties

- Add this line to the LAUNCH OPTIONS text box

WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR=1 %command%

This enables "universal FSR" for all your games

- Go to Compatibility tab and check Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool then choose the version of Proton-GE you want to use (some versions work with certain games but not others)

Miscellanous)
To get a list of Proton-Ge releases that you have installed just type

protonup -l

If you want to delete a version you type

protonup -r nameoftheversionyouwanttodelete

If you want a list of protonup releases,...

protonup --releases

In case you want to install a specific version of Proton-GE, use -t "version tag"

protonup -t 6.5-GE-2

With this and The Ultimate Guide for Linux Gaming by Chris Titus (brief, but super brilliant stuff) https://christitus.com/ultimate-linux-gaming-guide/ , and an Ubuntu based OS, you will have a Linux ready for gaming in 5 minutes, maybe less.

Info taken from the official link of protonup and the video featured in a previous reply in this thread:

https://github.com/AUNaseef/protonup (Protonup webpage)

https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/2220354/ (link to a reply in this thread featuring a very informative video on Protonup and how to easily install Proton-GE)
 
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It's my first post on Reddit so I dont know why it is not published yet (awaiting moderation, I guess?), but well, here is the guide if they don't publish it. It sums up all the most important content and comments in this very thread for a smooth as possible Linux gaming experience.

Guide to gaming on Linux. VERY EASY MODE! Best distros, set your Linux OS for gaming in a few minutes. Universal FSR for all your games.
renderTimingPixel.png

STEP BY STEP GUIDE
Recommended distros: Ubuntu or Pop OS. Most recommended: Ubuntu.

THE BEST GUIDE TO START PLAYING GAMES ON LINUX
The Ultimate Linux Gaming Guide by Chris Titus. (very brief and really good, use the terminal like explained and you're good to go in a matter of minutes)

https://christitus.com/ultimate-linux-gaming-guide/

HOW TO FORCE THE USE OF THE WINDOWS VERSION IN GAMES WHICH HAVE A NATIVE LINUX VERSION ON STEAM
It is most recommended to play native Windows games on Linux, even if said game has a native Linux version, 'cos they are usually better ports and Proton works fine with them, plus with Proton-GE you get FSR for free on ALL your games.

More info here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamPlay/comments/dt4hha/force_the_windows_version_in_linux/

PROTON-GE and universal FSR for your entire games library
How to install the latest version of Proton-GE (the one with "universal" FSR for all your games) for Steam.

EASY MODE

  1. You type this:
sudo pip3 install protonup

If the installation gives an error, install python with the following command (for Debian based OSes like Ubuntu)

sudo apt install python3-pip

Now you can install protonup with the aforementioned command

sudo pip3 install protonup

2) Now type the following command to automatically create the directory installation for Proton-GE releases, compatibilitytools.d , in .steam/root directory

protonup -d "~/.steam/root/compatibilitytools.d/"

3) Now just use this command to install the latest version of Proton-GE:

protonup

Just type it again whenever you want to update Proton-GE.

4) Set Steam in the Settings menu, under Steam Play, enabling this option to play games using Proton if you didnt already:

Enable Steam Play for all other titles

It is most recommended to play native Windows games on Linux, even if said game has a native Linux version, 'cos they are usually better ports and Proton works fine with them, plus with Proton-GE you get FSR for free on ALL your games.

4) REMEMBER TO SET THE COMPATIBILITY OPTIONS on Steam to use Proton-GE and use FSR for free in any game:

- Select your game on Steam.

- Right-click on it -> Properties

- Add this line to the LAUNCH OPTIONS text box

WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR=1 %command%

This enables "universal FSR" for all your games

- Go to Compatibility tab and check Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool then choose the version of Proton-GE you want to use (some versions work with certain games but not others)

Miscellanous

To get a list of Proton-Ge releases that you have installed just type

protonup -l

If you want to delete a version you type

protonup -r nameoftheversionyouwanttodelete

If you want a list of protonup releases,...

protonup --releases

In case you want to install a specific version of Proton-GE, use -t "version tag"

protonup -t 6.5-GE-2

With this and The Ultimate Guide for Linux Gaming by Chris Titus (brief, but super brilliant stuff) https://christitus.com/ultimate-linux-gaming-guide/ , and an Ubuntu based OS, you will have a Linux ready for gaming in 5 minutes, maybe less.

Info on Protonup taken from the official link of protonup and the video featured in a previous reply in this thread:

https://github.com/AUNaseef/protonup (Protonup webpage)

Set your resolution in game for FSR Ultra Quality, Quality, Balanced, Performance...
Set any of these resolutions in game (for instance, on a 1440p monitor, to get 1440p Quality FSR -and not Ultra Quality -, set the game's internal resolution to 1706x960)


Example of Resident Evil 2 Remake graphics options menu set to 1706x960 (FSR Quality on a 1440p monitor):


Setting Lutris to play games using other game libraries -GoG, Origin, Humble Bundle, even Steam, emulators, etc- and of course glorious FSR
With Lutris it not advised to use Proton, but the Wine version which is maintained by Glorious Egg Roll.

https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/wine-ge-custom

(thx to Zummerman for the screengrabs)

On the main menu, open "Manage Runners"


Look for the Wine runner in the list of runners. Click on the green button to install.


Several versions will appear. Those compatible with FSR shall say "fshack".


Environment variables are added in their own section. And there is the possibility of adding them globally or game by game, being the latter the most recommended procedure since a variable can be good or bad depending on the game.

To add variables you just have to right click on the game and select "Configure". From there you go to the "System options" tab and scroll down to find the Environment Variables section.

https://i.imgur.com/Fqq6uE1.png

There you have the "Add" button. To add the variables there are 2 columns, one for the variable name, and the second to add a value.

To enable FSR you must add a variable...

In the the first column the variable is:

WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR

Having the following value in the second column:

1

If we want to use a variable to adjust the quality level of FSR we add another one.

First column:

WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR_STRENGTH

Second column:

A value from 1 to 5

Some working examples of games running using FSR
This means a LOT more frames por second, and a LOT less power consumption!

RESIDENT EVIL 2 REMAKE COMPARISON

NATIVE 1440p

https://i.imgur.com/rkU5XTr.png

FSR QUALITY (1706x960 INTERNAL TO 1440p)

https://i.imgur.com/KrT2RZB.jpg

NATIVE 1440p

https://i.imgur.com/5QDGMPj.png

FSR QUALITY (1706x960 INTERNAL TO 1440p)

https://i.imgur.com/JVoEuSq.jpg

NATIVE 1440p

https://i.imgur.com/aYvQyBh.png

FSR QUALITY (1706x960 INTERNAL TO 1440p)

https://i.imgur.com/ZYFOLH7.jpg

SMOOTS WORLS CUP TENNIS comparison

NATIVE 1440p

https://i.imgur.com/L1CYGaq.png

FSR QUALITY (1706x960 INTERNAL TO 1440p)

https://i.imgur.com/dUX1TB8.png

Set up your gamepad in Linux
Most of your gamepads are automatically detected and tuned by the OS, but for those who want some extra tuning, here you have this brief guide on how to install certain apps to calibrate or configure your gamepad.

https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/how-to-configure-your-gamepad-on-ubuntu/

Hope you find this guide helpful. Cheers!
 
solving some issues in certain games.

DIVINITY ORIGINAL SIN 2

I had a problem when launching the game. A SupportTool.exe error message appear.

Solution:

In Steam, under Settings -> Steam Play, check "Enable Steam Play for supported titles"

Install the game normally

Once the game is installed, right-click on the game entry and choose Properties -> Local Files

Note the path to the game files and open a terminal here (In Ubuntu, you can right-click in an empty space to get an option to 'Open in Terminal')

Rename your ./bin folder to ./bin.bak:

mv ./bin ./bin.bak

Symlink ./DefEd/bin to ./bin:

ln -s DefEd/bin bin

Change directory to ./bin:

cd bin

Rename SupportTool.exe to SupportTool.bak:

mv SupportTool.exe SupportTool.bak

Symlink EoCApp.exe to SupportTool.exe:

ln -s EoCApp.exe SupportTool.exe

Launch the game (after it installs some runtimes)

I found the solution from a comment in this video.

 
AGE OF WONDERS

186MB only but a difficult game to install with Lutris. In addition GoG does not have Linux version, and Minigalaxy does not find the game in my list of GoG games.

I found the solution here, although the author of the website warns that the web is active but it's not under maintenance anymore.

https://www.dotslashplay.it/en/games/age-of-wonders-1

I rather prefer to keep the content just in case the web goes down some day so I copy and paste the solution here.

Set in a classic medieval-fantastic universe, populated by races such as Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Undead, Humans, etc., the game consists of two distinct parts: a strategic part, in which the player manages the map, cities and armies, and a tactical part, which is triggered when a player’s army encounters an opposing army.

Category Strategy, Fantasy, Turn-based
This game runs thanks to WINE.
If you get a black screen during the intro movie, see this documentation page describing how to fix this: No image in intro movie
Informations
Usage
Jump to instructions for your distribution:

Arch Linux
The following instructions apply to Arch Linux derivatives as well, like Manjaro or Parabola.
  1. Install ./play.it dependencies:
    # pacman -S icoutils imagemagick innoextract
  2. Download in a same directory ./play.it library (libplayit2.sh) and Age of Wonders script (play-age-of-wonders-1.sh);
  3. Start the building process from this directory, by calling the script and giving it the path to the game installer:
    $ sh ./play-age-of-wonders-1.sh ~/Downloads/setup_age_of_wonders_1.36.0053_(22161).exe
  4. Wait a couple minutes, the building will end by giving you the command to launch as root to install the game. It should be something similar to:
    # pacman -U /some/path/to/game.pkg.tar /some/path/to/game-data.pkg.tar
Debian
The following instructions apply to Debian derivatives as well, like Ubuntu or Linux Mint.
  1. Install ./play.it dependencies:
    # apt-get install fakeroot icoutils imagemagick innoextract
  2. Download in a same directory ./play.it library (libplayit2.sh) and Age of Wonders script (play-age-of-wonders-1.sh);
  3. Start the building process from this directory, by calling the script and giving it the path to the game installer:
    $ sh ./play-age-of-wonders-1.sh ~/Downloads/setup_age_of_wonders_1.36.0053_(22161).exe
  4. Wait a couple minutes, the building will end by giving you the command to launch as root to install the game. It should be something similar to:
    # apt install /some/path/to/game.deb /some/path/to/game-data.deb
 
Heres how I'd deal with age of wonders.
Install the game in windows, boot into linux double click on the games exe file
 
Heres how I'd deal with age of wonders.
Install the game in windows, boot into linux double click on the games exe file
:mrgreen: great idea! Actually it should work like a charm for me, compared to the hellish steps I had to go through to make it work (not without some caveats like either a too small 480p window to play the game or having the game setting the entire Linux OS to a 480p resolution, super big fonts and extremely difficult to navigate UI). I purchased the game at GoG store years ago and it's DRM free so yeah, it's all about copying and pasting it.

On a different note, after more than a month a some distro hopping I finally settled with Ubuntu. Well, more precisely, Kubuntu. Kubuntu's desktop is really really good and has some nice ideas that would be great to have in Windows. I installed 95% of the software from the terminal, imho, it's much better, faster and the most reliable way, despite the neat graphical UIs current Linux distributions have.
 
MINI GUIDE TO LOCK FRAMERATE ON LINUX AND USE MORE THAN A SINGLE COMMANDS IN STEAM LAUNCH OPTIONS

To use several commands in the Steam Launch Options you simply have to separate them by a space and when you must end up with a %command%.

For example, this is how I have the Launch Options of Ryse: Son of Rome to both lock the framerate at 60fps (with FSR I get from 120t to 180fps and prefer to play in total silence) and enable FSR:

WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR=1 DXVK_FRAME_RATE=60 %command%

To block the framerate in Linux there is this thread, if you can not use DXVK_FRAME_RATE=xx, there are other options:

 
VERY IMPORTANT

If you're going to use Proton-GE to get "universal" FSR in your games, FIRST launch those games with official Steam's Proton, whether it's Proton Experimental, Proton 6.3, etc etc.

I have a very slow connection, and since I have been doing the same things for almost 2 months with different distros, what I have done lately to not spend my whole life trying stuff, is backing up the downloaded games and apps, on another disk, and even the versions of Proton-GE in a compatibilitytools.d directory

When trying a new distro, the games that I added to the library from a backup and that I really wanted to play, did not run!

After Steam recovered the installation files and everything was fine, when starting the game, Ryse: Son of Rome or Bioshock or literally ANY game, would spend hours trying to boot.

In the end after looking for solutions that did not fix anything, I realized that this was because I started the games with Proton-GE, in the first installation.

The issue was that the games were stuck adding VCRedist and DirectX files but never did! However, using "normal" Proton on Steam, did the trick.

If you ever experience this, and don't want to reinstall Linux or the distro you love the must, just purge Steam from Linux and install again. (works like a charm)

sudo apt-get remove steam steam-launcher

sudo apt-get purge steam steam-launcher

rm -rf ~/.local/share/Steam && rm -rf ~/.steam

sudo apt-get clean

sudo apt-get autoremove

aptitude search '~i' | grep steam
(to make sure that there are no residual steam files, if you dont have aptitude, you install it with the command below)

sudo apt install aptitude

sudo apt-get remove --purge steam* (with this, you delete anything starting with steam, works wonders)

Reinstall. Enjoy.
 
some screengrabs of Ryse: Son of Rome running with FSR at internal 1706x960 (FSR Quality for 1440p screens) using FSR on Linux (Ubuntu) with Proton-GE 6.16-GE-1 version, and my game settings.

With this I achieve between 120 to 180fps on a Ryzen 3700X and a GTX 1060 3GB, though I lock the framerate to 60fps to play in total silence.

Can only dream with this game running with RT on, maybe someday Crytek is going to create a remake.

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Winetricks is very important, to use certain libraries and stuff from Windows in Linux. Protontricks tries to automate things a bit more, 'cos it is a process that require to create a prefix and tell the runner which libraries, APIs, etc, a game needs to use in order to function properly in Proton within Linux.

This video might be very helpful to learn using Protontricks when you truly want to play a game that doesn't want to launch -not very atypical when it comes to games based on Windows that run on Linux with Proton-

 
Pretty happy ritght now. Most of my games are working -not all, but there is not much to complain about taking into account the circumsntances-.

One of my favourite games, Divinity Original Sin 2 is working fine, and even managed to add essential tools for my favourite mods using this command in the Steam's launch options for Divinity Original Sin 2:

WINEDLLOVERRIDES="DXGI.dll=n,b" PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 %command%
 
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