THE GAMING ON LINUX GUIDE: How to play anything: Steam, Epic, Ubisoft, Origin, Battle.net, GoG...

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#linux #gaming #steam

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00:00 Intro
00:56 Sponsor: 100$ free credit to start your own Gaming or Linux server
01:53 Basic Notions for Linux Gaming
03:41 Choosing a distribution and installing drivers
06:08 Steam, Proton, and custom Proton versions
10:32 Epic Games Store
12:56 Ubisoft Connect and Origin / EA
15:54 GoG
16:28 FSR: Same quality, better FPS
19:34 Sponsor: Get a laptop or desktop that runs Linux perfectly
20:32 Support the channel

Steam is in your software center, just install it from there. You'll want to tick the "Enable steamplay for all other titles" checkbox in the settings, Steamplay tab.

To check for compatibility, just go to protonDB.com, search for the game you want, and look at the rating.
Just by looking at user reports that have similar hardware to yours, so in general the same kind of GPU, you can get all the tweaks you might need to run the game.

If it's a launch argument, you can just add it by right clicking a game in your library, going to Properties, and pasting that argument in the launch options line.

If it's a specific version of Proton, you can change that version in the "COmpatibiity" tab, by ticking the "force the use of a specific version" checkbox.

To install Proton GE, you can head over to the GE Proton Github page.

There, you click on the releases box, and you can just download the version you need.
Extract it in your .steam/steam/compatibilitytools.d folder (create it if needed)

What about the Epic Games Store? Well, we have an amazing solution here as well. The best one on Linux is using an unofficial client called Heroic.

TO install Heroic, either search your software store, or, if it doesn't appear there, head over to their website to grab one of the versions they offer.

Now, let's move on to Origin, and Ubisoft connect. These other launchers are best handled through Lutris.

To get started with adding your Origin or Ubisoft games, just click the Origin, or Ubisoft icon in the sidebar, and then the small "user" icon next to it. You'll get a login window, and once you're singed in, your list of games will appear in the main window.

Click a game, and then the install button in the bottom of the app to install it.

For GoG, you can just use the Heroic Games Launcher I already mentioned. It supports using your GoG account, by clicking on the Manage Accounts button in the sidebar.

And then, there's FSR. This is a tool from AMD, but you can use it on any GPU, and it lets you render a game at a lower resolution, and upscale it to the native resolution of your display, so you're saving some GPU and CPU power, but the end result looks pretty close to the real thing. For example, you could play a Tomb Raider game, rendering it at 720p, but it would be upscaled to 1080p to mach your monitor.

With Linux, you can add FSR support to basically every game, even the ones that don't support it natively.

FOr Steam, you'll need to use GE Proton, and add this argument:

WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR=1 %command%

You can just add it in the game's properties, in the launch options box

For Heroic, use GE Proton, and check the "Enable FSR" box in the game's settings, in the Other tab.

On Lutris, just check the "Enable AMD FidelityFX super resolution" switch in the Runner Options.

[sourcastic]

This is great. Wish more Linux YouTubers did this kind of user focused stuff and less elitist things. Not that that's bad. Just wish that there were more Nicks in the world.

[R-Tech_Gaming]

Linux is where most of us are heading when Windows becomes a subscription as opposed to an operating system, so any instructional tips to help us get better familiar with it is definitely helpful.

[IgnoreMyChan]

My compliments, Nick! I'm no newbe to Linux and gaming so I was mainly watching critically but you did an absolutely brilliant job explaining everything very clearly without cutting corners or generalizing too much. That's a huge accomplishment as this material can be a rabbit hole very quickly. Great work!!

[Tubaluc]

Thanks for this very informative video on gaming with Linux. Just switched from Win10 to Linux Mint and this was very helpful. Keep up the good work!

[tacothunder]

Something i've never seen people mentioning on videos, if you want to install a steam game on a secondary drive, that secondary drive must be formatted as a Linux format (ext4, etc). Games don't open if the drive is NTFS. I always forget about this.

[MindbendStudios]

I had tried a handful of times to switch from Windows to Linux over the past 20 or so years but always ran into some big hurdles with gaming, and had to switch back. It's not perfect, but the advances shown in this video are simply incredible! Thanks for putting all this together.

[thingsiplay]

ProtonUp is also worth mentioning, which makes it incredible easy to update Proton GE versions in example.

[miroslavstankov]

Even after gaming on Linux for a full year, this video was super informative. Thanks a lot, man!

[gwgux]

Good coverage! I liked how you covered everything without telling anyone to pull up a terminal and start running commands. That is still what so many people assume they need to do to game on Linux thanks to a lot of older guides out there as well as new guides that that keep referring to it. Your approach should make it much more accessible to those gaming enthusiasts that will not pull up a terminal no matter what we tell them.

[spectralcanvasimages]

I've been EXTREMELY hesitant to try any form of Linux, but after I hearing about Pop OS and watching a couple of TLE's videos, not to mention the direction Microsoft is continuing to take with Windows... I'm thinking that I'm sold on the idea of trying out Linux on a future PC build.

[mirage]

This is a super helpful guide to getting started. Easy to follow along and gets right to the point, which is getting us gaming on Linux. The amount of progress that has been made on the Linux gaming front is mind boggling. Proton, Heroic and DXVK are all projects that only got started a few years ago.

I do believe that you can also get FSR going through Valve's Gamescope compositor, which is a really cool piece of code as well. It basically spoofs a virtual monitor inside a window, allowing you all manner of trickery, such as forcing borderless mode even in games that don't support such a feature. It's based on Wayland however, which can act a little funky with gaming at times.

[PDD]

You're an angel. There aren't many tutorials out there as informative and easy to follow as this one. You just straight up told to my face that I shouldn't worry about the distribution, while I've been looking for months for a gaming one

[harunrashidrubel]

Brilliant! A Linux gaming guide after a long time. I mean from not just you, from any Linux YouTuber. A very good one - detailed and not scaring with complicated stuffs. This uptodate guide is gonna help many new users.

[rasaskitchen]

Overviews like this really help the newcomers with settling with Linux. Thank you!

[xX_Erik_Xx]

Finally! I've been playing with the idea of switching to Linux for a while now. But every time I look in forums for starting points to begin my journey with Linux gaming, I quickly feel put off again and again. The sheer amount of abbreviations, technical terms and intricacies as well as the abundance of applications/software to choose from is staggering. It always gives me the impression that it would be better for me to stay away from Linux gaming (or from Linux in general) as a mere mortal.

Thank you, Nick, for this Video!

[jcugnoni]

Thanks a lot! This is the best video I have ever seen to help new Linux users have fun gaming in their new OS.

[igorristeski]

This is wonderful. Just what I was searching for a long time. Short all-in-one presentation of "how to enter into linux gaming". Very informative and not confusing. Thanks.

[silentgameplays]

Thank you for this detailed tutorial video, gaming on Linux has improved at a gigantic pace in the last few years, it will improve even more in the long run, currently running Arch Linux with all of these tweaks applied and can say than in many cases games run better under Linux then under Windows.

[Kana_Starmaker]

I have nothing but gratitude for the people who have created these tools to let us play Windows games on Linux.

Although some games just won't run (Anti-cheat problems, etc.), I have been able to play some of my favorite games, and even the games I've wanted to play.

Just a big, big thank you. 😀

[TheTimeCrust]

I've been waiting for YOU specifically to make a guide about this. Great at explaining this stuff finally I have a video to send to my friends whenever they wanna do this👍🏼