Mark Tyson Social Links Navigation News Editor Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
Math Geek i think to most users, the more relevant number would be how many of the newer games coming out are supported. that 90% really does not explain what games are working and what are not. is there some specific sub group that struggles ( like maybe unreal engine based or some other niche) while another one works great every time? a catalog of 2 mil 10 year old games is nice, but in the end how is the new AAA gaming world doing with linux compatibility? a title of "90% of games from this year work on Linux out of the box !!" would be worth cheering over. Reply
Gravy405 Pop os. I have not found any newer games that do not work, except for the kernel level anti cheat games. What ever will work on steam deck and then some. Just saying. Hardcore gamer for last 40 years. Ditched windows 5 years ago and not looking back. I dont even dual boot anymore. Reply
TerryLaze Math Geek said: i think to most users, the more relevant number would be how many of the newer games coming out are supported. that 90% really does not explain what games are working and what are not. is there some specific sub group that struggles ( like maybe unreal engine based or some other niche) while another one works great every time? a catalog of 2 mil 10 year old games is nice, but in the end how is the new AAA gaming world doing with linux compatibility? a title of "90% of games from this year work on Linux out of the box !!" would be worth cheering over. All of this gets addressed in the original article which is linked. The 90% is the amount of games that boot up and do something, 10% is not even loading. Reply
ezst036 As a Linux user of some over 20 years and now on my phone…………. One thing that I think is funny is the shifting naysayers. Way back when it used to be "Linux can't be used by anybody its all command line!" (even though 20 years ago there were solid desktops like GNOME and KDE) More than 10 years ago it was "Linux can't be installed by anybody, all of the installers are so hard to use and terminal based!" Even though the mainstream was by that time point and click GUI installers. Around the time the first Steam Machines appeared, it was "Linux can't be mainstream desktop, it can't play any games nor all of these name name name name name name programs!" Now it's "Linux can't play Fortnite! That one program, just that one! Oh noes! Never going anywhere" The island just keeps getting smaller, and smaller, and smaller. Linux is now so pervasive on average desktops I'm starting to see the decline of the "security by obscurity" argument and we are on the cusp of Linux desktops having to have antivirus programs. There's enough desktops out there now that the virus scene is starting to diversify. And its all starting over with the Linux phones. Linux will never go mainstream on phones! Its all command line! The installers are all hard to use and terminal based! Sigh. The naysayers will never learn First They Ignore You, Then They Laugh at You, Then They Attack You, Then You Win – attributed falsely to Gandhi Reply
das_stig The day when Linux is the default gaming platform may about to be born and those that control the code should simply turn around to game developers and say "Take Your Buggy DRM And Cheat Code And Fork Off!". Microsoft should be worried, without gaming, Windows will be a business OS and revenue will tank ! Reply
mitch074 Math Geek said: i think to most users, the more relevant number would be how many of the newer games coming out are supported. that 90% really does not explain what games are working and what are not. is there some specific sub group that struggles ( like maybe unreal engine based or some other niche) while another one works great every time? a catalog of 2 mil 10 year old games is nice, but in the end how is the new AAA gaming world doing with linux compatibility? a title of "90% of games from this year work on Linux out of the box !!" would be worth cheering over. You can have a look at Protondb's dashboard (https://www.protondb.com/dashboard), select 'Popular games' (or 'Top 100') and select ProtonDB medals. As of today, 88% of (Steam) games have a Silver rating or above, 83% Gold or above. Silver may mean non-playing videos at boot, requirement to use a command line switch (e.g. %command% -dx11 ) or some performance troubles that force you to lower settings but they don't prevent the game from running a playthrough. Gold usually means that it runs unmodified on most systems, but may require a command line switch for some, a driver version more recent than shipped by mainstream distros or even an experimental/third-party build of Proton (GloriousEggroll comes to mind) for now. Reply
ekio A few years ago I remember the Phoronix article that got us Linux users exited because L4D got ported and we were like wow a real game native on Linux! Here we go a few years later and we have thousand of Windows binaries running faster than on Windows itsef. The mesa drivers are getting so good AMD ditched their own private driver and joined the mesa team because radv was superior. Nvidia now helps opensource devs with partial nda doc. I think game devs should start thinking about compiling for native linux soon because the trend is going the Linux direction more and more (steam deck is more popular than windows handheld) and if gamers can run 1.5x more fps under Steam OS, there will be a switch someday. Especially when modern DEs are so good. Not even mentioning my little new fav cosmic that is so promising. Anyway, this is what happens when freedom and talent are unleashed with limited money vs Microsoft with all the money in the world. Reply
waltc3 Subtract the Windows games running on an emulator under a linux distro, and recalculate…;) IMO, native is better, doesn't matter the OS. Reply
luissantos ekio said: Here we go a few years later and we have thousand of Windows binaries running faster than on Windows itsef. Really? Because my "independent research" (i.e. prompting ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok) still returns a 5-8% performance penalty on Bazzite / Nobara and 3-5% penalty on CachyOS, arguably the most optimized distros available. This drops to 1-2% on titles running Vulkan, but never outperforms Windows 11 – which is itself 3-5% faster than Windows 10, despite all the clamors of "poor optimization". My main concern isn't so much "how many run", but exclusively "how many run without issue" and "which ones are those". If the games I play don't run faster on Linux, may require extra steps to run smoothly, or if some may not run at all, then why would I change to a worse gaming platform? Reply
mitch074 luissantos said: Really? Because my "independent research" (i.e. prompting ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok) still returns a 5-8% performance penalty on Bazzite / Nobara and 3-5% penalty on CachyOS, arguably the most optimized distros available. This drops to 1-2% on titles running Vulkan, but never outperforms Windows 11 – which is itself 3-5% faster than Windows 10, despite all the clamors of "poor optimization". My main concern isn't so much "how many run", but exclusively "how many run without issue" and "which ones are those". If the games I play don't run faster on Linux, may require extra steps to run smoothly, or if some may not run at all, then why would I change to a worse gaming platform? So, you asked AI chatbots trained on 3 years old data to give you a 'current' view of things, and you disregard an up to date maintained reports site ? You do know AI LLMs are NOT to be taken as a definitive source for data, right ? Reply
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/nearly-90-percent-of-windows-games-now-run-on-linux-latest-data-shows-as-windows-10-dies-gaming-on-linux-is-more-viable-than-ever#main
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