Usually, my own thoughts are the only ones that matter to me. The exception is the rare occasion when I actually create a post or comment asking a question. That’s when I want to know about what you think. Otherwise, buzz off.
0 Posts
24 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 12th, 2023
You are not logged in. If you use a Fediverse account that is able to follow users, you can follow this user.
All you have to do to test this theory out is try a Grand Theft Auto game or just go for Halo. Classic bullshit signing up for shit, having to have a secondary launcher installed. blah blah blah, yadda fucking yadda. Take your friggin’ pick. Rockstar, Microsoft, and now Blizzard. Shit’s pretty much all bought up, doesn’t mean the companies don’t act like they always have with their brands.
wow. that’s what i’d call weird computer science. like, we could take that 80’s song and get all blinded by computer science. thanks for that. I always thought linux would be ahead. about time the evil was overcome. it’s been a huge war. we users of linux have had to suffer. we might not have had to bleed to death, but we didn’t spend a premium on a mac and just let everything work, except our games.
This means something that has been true since before OS X was invented (circa 1990-ish) that hasn’t changed. Wanna game on the puter? Mac ain’t it. Mac never been it. Apple actually provides hardware that is gaming able. They don’t want to cater to gamers. They could do this easily and sell so many heavy duty desktop towers now. Why won’t they? They’d have to UN-propriatary themselves.
but that’s awesome you figured it out and shared the solution here. There’s nothing about this out there that is searchable. Thanks for the learning lesson!
Yeah, the glaring “permissions denied” is right smack in the middle of all that. Then it just continues like that to the very end. One thing that makes no sense to me: manually changing the permissions on every single game. I’m a basic Linux boy and I do basic things, so don’t do what I’d do. What I’d try doing: changing the permissions in the .steam folder to the correct permissions, applying them to all the enclosed files and folders. I’d even have the stones to do it in the graphical UI left clicking on the .steam folder out of sheer basic laziness. My solution is totally basic and dumb, because it does not foresee new games being acquired through steam, which could revert back to the erroneous permissions. I searched for the error message to see what is relevant, nobody is reporting this problem, so, you’re unique. What a way to feel special, right? I’ll keep looking shit up like you’re doing. While we’re busy with that, someone more competent will come to your rescue, for sure.
If you could show an error message in the terminal either I or another person could help you. I’m guessing you’ve already searched the internet for a solution since you went through the painful process of re-installing the whole nine. What a marathon you’re running! Anyway, to run steam game in the terminal, you have to know the game id, which is a long number. If I’m correct (someone, if this is wrong, please correct me!), you would type something like this in the terminal: steam steam://rungameid/{YourGameID}
If you want to pay:
Anything by Adamvision Studios (Note: Force compatibility mode for these games on Steam, the linux versions are wonky)
Demon’s Tilt or Xenotilt
Free:
Neverball (this one is probably fits best what you’re most looking for) avail in Software store on most linux distros
PlayOnLinux is not maintained consistently and hasn’t been for a couple of years. I have Diablo 2 on Lutris. It works great. However, I’m on Fedora 38, so there’s that. I don’t think that makes much of a difference, though. Your problem is probably related to PlayOnLinux being behind the times.
You should definitely just use what you like. If you’re going with Debian, maybe go with stable instead of sid. Your games will work. Distros that are being labeled as “gaming” just have some things added for convenience, saving steps after installation. Hopping around is not necessarily a bad thing, either. I’ve used different ones over the years from different branches. It’s good to know how they work. I can pacman. I can apt. I can dnf. I even used to apt-get and yum.
Well, with regard to the whole “Proton outside of Steam” controversy, it’s not hard to do it safely outside of Steam to avoid breaking things. As far as WineGE goes, I have a couple of games in Heroic that will not work with it, but they’ll run really well with Proton. So, there’s some little difference between them that is haunting my games library. Anyway, my point was to emphasize more the fact that there are options, which is the beauty of using Linux. You have a whole bunch of ways to do something. If you look up stuff, you can even figure out how to do things you’re not supposed to do safely. It’s your guide, and it’s darn good as it stands. I think my way of lowering expectations is different from yours, it’s all about life experience. I’m more like, “lower people’s expectations letting them know that they might have to try different things and spend time on it, things might not work on the first try with the first method they use.” I recall, a few years ago, fighting with a windows game for weeks to get it to work in Linux. Things have improved remarkably since then. If, in general, you’re noticing you have lower performance on your games, you can probably fix those issues. My system has zero performance problems with windows games, they all work the same or better than on Windows. I have old games, new games, brand-new games, and middle-aged games. They’re all smooth sailing or a little better. So, keep learning and keep up the good work on your blog! It’s a never-ending learning experience with this stuff. I’ve learned that I’m never going to buy a game from Epic ever again. I have four games on Heroic. That’s enough hassle for me! I don’t think I even want to bother with the free ones anymore.
This is a solid guide to help people who are not familiar with all the tools we use. I have some suggestions for you to perhaps improve (these are small details that, in my case, have been helpful to me):
You say this about compatibility layers: “Expect a minor performance hit as a result of running them through a compatibility layer.” According to what I’ve read about and experienced, using compatibility layers such as Wine and Proton can give you a wide variety of results, depending on the game. Sometimes you get a performance boost. Sometimes you get the same performance. If the compatibility layer is missing something the game might need - like a specific dll file - you can have a performance issue. Anyway, the benefit of using a compatibility layer over an emulator is that yes, indeed, sometimes the software works better in the compatibility layer.
Maybe make people a little less fearful of using Proton in Heroic Games Launcher? I would recommend, based on my experience, to give Proton a try before using a Wine prefix. I’ve had so much success with Proton in Heroic Games Launcher, especially using the Proton Experimental branch. You can always try Proton and see what happens (the Proton DB has user experiences from using Heroic Games Launcher, not just Steam). If it sucks, you can try something else. Also, there are ways to use Proton in Lutris and Bottles. There are plenty of instructions out there on how to do it. It’s actually very helpful to have this option. My point: make it clear to people that they have options. There is more than one way to make a Windows game work which is a good thing. Different Wine versions, different Proton versions, different ways to set them up for each individual game. If one way doesn’t get you the desired results, you can try a different method. There’s always hope and there are plenty of people online that might be able to help you if you can’t get something to work.
There are distros designed for gaming that come with lots of stuff already packaged with the installation. These include Garuda and Nobara. I’ve recently switched from Fedora to Nobara (which is essentially Fedora with modifications) and I’m very happy. I honestly believe these distros are very friendly to gamers who are not too familiar with Linux. For example, when I installed Nobara, there was nothing for me to do after. No installing launchers, etc. I did have to enable Proton on Steam, but that was about it. It’s really amazing how user-friendly Linux has become in some distros. Anyway, I also enjoy Arch Linux and I like having control over everything, doing things myself. Maybe you could change your text to explain that there are different distros to make a variety of people happy? If you like to tinker a lot, you can choose Arch. If you want an “out of the box” approach you can use a distro targeted at gamers. Maybe you’d prefer something in between, like Fedora, which needs some tinkering after installation.
Maybe add something about Steam and its offerings of native Linux games. People would be surprised if they payed more attention. Quite a few games that people usually play on their Windows machines are also available for Linux, which means those games don’t need Proton at all to run. You could get lucky, do you know what I mean? If your Steam library already has games in it for which there’s a native Linux version, you can assess whether or not you need a dual boot system at all. I’m one of the lucky ones. I no longer need to run Windows (recent development, I’m so happy). All my games work in a Linux environment now. It feels friggin’ great to get rid of Windows completely.
Anyway, sorry for the huge comment. Although I’m making suggestions for improvement, please know that my comment is this long because I’m very enthusiastic about your guide. A nice overview of everything a gamer needs to learn about is all there in your guide and this is something that people need if they’re migrating from Windows. You are very generous in taking the time to write this and I’m sure you’re going to help a lot of people who feel lost or don’t know where to start. Great job and thank you!
It’s not a console, exactly, and it isn’t a PC, either. It’s a hybrid you can connect to a TV or monitor and it will work with your old PC games. I’d see if anyone I knew had one to have a look. But, then again, nothing beats a hunk of junk that still works at a yard sale. I love finding stuff like that.
I’m so totally with you, buddy. Nice to find peeps on here who know about the Diablo.