Introduction to gaming on Linux

Wine

Wine is a Linux program with open-source reimplementations of some portions of Windows in order to make it possible to run some Windows applications on Linux.

Proton

Proton is a fork of Wine created by Valve, designed to make it easier to run Windows games on Linux. It is bundled out-of-the-box with gaming-related compatibility fixes including:

• d8vk: Vulkan-based translation layer for DirectX 8, in newer versions of Wine this is bundled into dxvk, in older versions you need to set PROTON_ENABLE_D8VK=1
• dxvk: Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 9/10/11, also DirectX 8 in newer versions
• vkd3d: Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 12

Proton is provided as part of a Steam feature called "Steam Play" and is only intended to run Steam games.

Stable versions of Proton are provided as numbered releases. The test/development build is called Proton Experimental. Sometimes games work can better with Proton Experimental than with the stable build, it seems to depend on the game.

GE-Proton

GE-Proton is a customized fork of Proton developed by a Red Hat engineer named Thomas Crider (aka GloriousEggroll). It is tailored towards running non-Steam Windows games on Linux. It includes various fixes and patches that are not part of the official version of Proton.

Gamescope

Gamescope is a micro-compositor created by Valve for the Steam Deck. It essentially provides a virtual screen for games to render into. The virtual screen can be configured with various settings such as custom resolutions, refresh rates, support for HDR, FSR, etc. The virtual screen is then presented to the user in a dedicated window.

See also Run a game using gamescope.

MangoHUD

MangoHUD is a performance overlay which you can enable with an environment variable. It shows you information such as CPU, GPU and RAM usage.

See also Run game with mangohud.

Lutris

Lutris is a game launcher that lets you configure presets for running non-Steam games with customizable settings. I don't consider it to be that useful.

ProtonPlus

https://protonplus.vysp3r.com/

Flatpak which lets you download various Wine and Proton versions and installs them into Steam and Lutris automatically, very useful!

dxwrapper

https://github.com/elishacloud/dxwrapper

Useful tool to fix some compatibility issues by converting older DirectX versions into newer ones where they might run better with dxvk. This is particularly useful for some DirectX 8 games that don't seem to run properly under Proton out of the box, you can get them to run using Direct3D 9 instead which is apparently much better supported by Proton.

Kernel level anti-cheat

Some games use kernel-level anti-cheat. These games don't work on Linux. There is nothing you can do about this except bitch at the developers.

Useful websites

• ProtonDB (compatibility ratings for Steam games): https://www.protondb.com/
• Are We Anti-Cheat Yet? (shows you whether a game's anti-cheat solution is compatible with Linux): https://areweanticheatyet.com/