I’ve dabbled with Linux and I’ve finally decided to try and switch to it for real, mostly because I’m starting a new job soonish that will require more Linux knowledge, but also because I’m getting sick of all the Windows privacy issues.
I’m actually liking it better than I thought. Taking an attitude that I’m sticking with it is giving me more of a drive to actually fix the issues I’m having rather than moaning about them, and it’s a good opportunity to learn.
The one thing I’m struggling with though is gaming. I’ve got a 2060S which I need for CUDA, but I’ve got the drivers working. I’ve not exactly been through my whole Steam library but I’ve not had anything running acceptably yet. DEATHLOOP, for example, on Windows runs at smooth at near 4k. On Wayland the input latency is unplayable and it crashes out every few minutes anyway. I improved it by switching to X11 but I’m still only getting 10-15 FPS when it was smooth in Windows. Even Skyrim has input latency and it’s clearly not running as fast as it should be.
When I check on ProtonDB for help I see no consistency in the settings people are using. Most of the time they just say Experimental, and I figure that changes over time anyway so it’s no help to me anyway.
Is there any helpful advice online as most of the time I just get told to try every proton version and fork until I find something that works? I’ve not even gotten into figuring out what stuff like Lutris is.
I’m on Fedora in case that’s important.
With such low FPS, it sounds like you’re using nouveau and not the proprietary NVIDIA driver. How did you install your drivers?
Using a guide I read, done through the terminal. That’s all I remember. How could I tell if I’m using Nouveau?
Enter this command into your terminal:
lspci -k | grep -A 2 -E “(VGA|3D)”
The output will contain “NVIDIA Corporation” in the compatible controller and subsystem section and “nvidia” in the kernel driver in use section.
Some Distros come with Nvidia drivers preinstalled and I have heard people being succesful with them PopOS and Nobara come to mind. Nobara is very similar to Fedora, it is in fact based on it.
I had a GTX1660 on Fedora and I played with mostly the same performance as my Windows setup but was really awful to test if things were working correctly, I don’t know if the drivers work differently with RX but you could try different distros, Nobara is built using Fedora as a base and have the NVIDIA drivers bult-in.
I’m linking some tutorials to install and configure NVIDIA GPU on Fedora.
Honestly, just get an AMD, it’ll make your Linux life much more easier. You could still keep your nVidia card around for CUDA (just blacklist the nvidia/nouveau drivers and install only the CUDA part of the drivers, so it should still be available for compute tasks).
Your 2060S’s equivalent is the RX 6600, and you can buy one (or the XT version even) for just ~$172 on eBay (or $200 brand new), so there’s really no excuse to not get one (unless your mobo only has one PCIe slot).
It does actually only have two slots, and the other one can’t fit anything because the 2060 is too big.
edit: Correction, I only have one full sized slot.
You could get an angled extension cable, which should be able to slip under and past your 2060. Something like this: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002364461314.html
Nonetheless getting a new graphics card is kind of the nuclear option. Would it actually help that much. DEATHLOOP would still crash surely?
Kinda agree. New graphics card is deffo a nuclear option. I’m running pop os and haven’t come across a game I can’t run as it’s got the Nvidia drivers built it. I’d probably try swap distro before buying a new card just in case it’s that. That’s just time and effort rather than buying something that ‘might’ work.
Probably also worth noting that valve are updating the proton drivers all the time, they want the entire steam catalogue to work on steam deck so I would expect every game to work on proton over time. Might just be a waiting game tbh.
Are the built-in drivers somehow different to the ones you download?
Not sure if different or just tuned to work better with the distro or something else entirely.
Sounds like you’re not aware of how infamous nVidia is in the Linux circles. Check out this video for starters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPh-5P4XH6o
Buying a graphics card isn’t a nuclear option. First of all, the RX 6600/XT which I recommended is reasonably priced. Second, we’re taking about the future of your ENTIRE Linux desktop experience as a whole here - switching to AMD is a HUGE QoL improvement, which you may not appreciate now - but if you continue to use nVidia, you’ll realise how painful it is. I’m only afraid that you’ll blame your poor experience on “Linux”, when it’s really nVidia’s fault. With AMD, you don’t need to install any special drivers or anything, it just works. Even Wayland. Third, I’m not asking you to get rid of your nVidia card completely, you can still keep it for compute, so it’s not like it’s going away. So I disagree that this is a nuclear option.
The #1 mistake rookies make when switching to Linux is assuming that it’ll run on everything and work with every piece of hardware. Now that might be generally true, but how well it runs - and how painful it is to get it working, how well they function after a kernel upgrade etc - are big factors, so it’s important that you check your hardware compatibility and ensure you’ve got Linux-friendly haewafe first, before blindly switching. And nVidia isn’t what I’d label as “Linux-friendly”. Unfortunately nVidia is pretty hostile against opensource, which is also why we are hostile against nVidia and discourage people from buying any of their stuff. Fuck nVidia, why should we support a shitty company that doesn’t care about contributing to the opensouce community, when neither AMD nor Intel have any issues and behave well?
Also, I know you wouldn’t believe me that AMD would have no issues running Deathloop, so I went ahead and actually bought Deathloop just for testing (you’re welcome), and I’m happy to report that it’s running buttery smooth at 60FPS locked, on my old and very basic AMD desktop (Ryzen 5 3600 + RX 6600 XT), @ 1440p @ “Very High” settings, using FSR 2.0. This is on Bazzite, a gaming optimised distro based on Fedora Atomic, using Proton-GE 8-30 compatibility. The only thing I changed in the Steam settings was set it to use Proton-GE. As for the game settings, I enabled FSR because AMD’s FSR rocks (but it worked fine without it too).
Pictures of my setup:
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=xPh-5P4XH6o
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Thanks, I appreciate the reply and I read all of it. I do understand that nVidia are a bunch of fuckers and I’ll be looking elsewhere in the future but I simply needed CUDA at the time of buying. I took another look at my mobo and it only has one full sized PCI slot and it’s obviously got my nVidia card in it right now. Buying a new GPU plus mobo is simply too much when I can just dual-boot into Windows for now. I was planning on keeping Windows around for the sake of random bits of software I need and so my wife can occasionally use my computer (she won’t want to learn Linux). I’m not a serious gamer or anything, I’ll just have to live with it.
