So in our previous video,
we discussed the rabbit hole method of gaming on Linux,
showing off some of the, well,
more involved methods to get your game on penguin style.
And in a massive surprise to no one,
we got a bunch of angry comments from Linux people,
but their actually outrage wasn't entirely misplaced.
I can actually definitely see how the average viewer
might watch that video and think,
wow, gaming on Linux is really hard,
when actually many games run on Linux right out of the box.
So that is what today's video is all about,
simple gaming on Linux.
So we pretty much took it for granted
that because many of them are on Steam,
native Linux games don't really need a how-to.
You point and click and Bob's your uncle.
But,
that was before Valve unveiled
some very cool new tech under the hood
that has the potential to change the gaming industry forever.
I'm not even exaggerating.
It's called the Proton API.
And as it turns out,
you know that arcane stuff
that we were showing off in part one?
Well, Valve has been, very quietly,
actively supporting developers of software like Wine
and DXVK in order to improve
gaming on Linux.
And Proton actually includes a number of gaming-related fixes
and performance improvements over Vanilla Wine,
plus full controller support.
So what we wanna do today is see if it lives up to the hype.
Step one is obviously to install Linux on your computer.
Now, we're not really gonna go into a ton of detail here
beyond to say that we have gone with Ubuntu.
Now, you might not like Ubuntu, but quite frankly,
I don't care.
If you don't like Ubuntu,
then go ahead and use whatever you want,
as long as it can run the Steam client,
which actually isn't even necessary
since you could just compile Proton for yourself
and run it on whatever distro is your personal jam.
Step number two is to make sure
that your graphics drivers are up to date.
Now, for some distributions,
you may need to download the driver from NVIDIA's website,
like on Windows.
But on Ubuntu, all we need to do is load up a terminal,
then type in sudo or sudo Ubuntu drivers,
auto install, enter our password,
and wait for the tuxedoed magic to happen.
Can I get like a magic sound effect from the editor?
Now, using the NVIDIA X server settings program,
we can see that we've got driver 390.48, which is perfect.
And then a quick note here is
if Secure Boot is enabled on your computer,
you will need to follow the prompts to make sure that,
that everything works afterwards.
If you don't care about that,
then you can just disable it in the BIOS.
Step three then is to install Steam.
For Ubuntu, that's as easy as clicking download,
just like you would on Windows,
then running the .DEB package that you get.
Once we're done, we can go ahead and launch Steam,
log in, and get a list of all the games
we have available to play.
Step four is to just play your games.
So in the case of Deus Ex Mankind Divided
and other Steam play titles,
we actually don't need to do anything
with Proton.
We can just fire it up and run it just like on Windows,
albeit with usually a significant performance hit.
Like, I don't wanna oversell the Linux experience.
I just wanna make it clear that Linux is not to blame
for a lot of these shortcomings.
It's typically down to poor driver optimization
from the video card manufacturers.
This TV's leg's not bad.
Like, especially with the G603.
So we're completely wireless.
Not bad at all, actually.
Blah, blah, you're dead.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
How is he not dead?
How many bullets do you have to put in these people?
It's like they're made out of the same
bullet-resistant flesh that I am.
Hit markers are so fun.
Oops, oops, oops, oops, oops.
Yeah, so the gaming experience then is just like on Windows.
Okay then, so far so good.
But now we're gonna go a little deeper.
Step five is to install a non...
A non-Linux game.
So why don't we go with Doom,
which actually needs an update here before we can start it.
It's running really well.
I mean, it's a 1080 TI, so like...
And like, it's very responsive.
I haven't seen...
I saw maybe one thing that I could describe as a hiccup.
Other than that, it's butter smooth.
That really is incredible.
This is a Windows game,
and I'm just running it like Bob's your uncle.
Hey, Bob.
Bam!
Look at the face.
Space Marine style.
Now, the current list of so-called whitelisted titles
is pretty short,
but you can expect anything on it
to basically just work like that.
And that's not even as far as we can go
with the new Proton API,
which I guess brings us to step six, experimentation.
So if we go to the settings menu in Steam,
we can actually see that we've got this Steam Play,
Steam Play section here,
where we can enable Steam Play for all titles.
Pretty cool.
This opens up the entire library for us to install,
though it's worth saying that here be dragons.
While many games may work out of the box
on your particular hardware,
only games on the whitelist are guaranteed to work.
You can actually tell Valve, which is cool,
which games you want them to work on,
or if you have issues,
or if they work fine
by using their newish platform-specific wishlist function.
For now, let's experiment
and see what we can get running, shall we?
Why don't we start with a PC building simulator?
This just trips me the crap out,
just seeing a Windows game run on Linux.
Ooh, okay, this one doesn't run very well.
Okay, well, I said could, I didn't say has already.
Give them time, Ed.
Let's try something else.
And I didn't try it in OpenGL yet.
Actually, I'm gonna try it in OpenGL.
This is Linus Tech Tips, not Linux Tech Tips, okay?
We are separate.
The spinning fan looks like it's running a little smoother,
but no guarantees yet.
Okay, that's a lot better.
Okay, let's shut this one down
and try something totally different.
And now for something completely different.
Some of the kids will get the reference.
The old kids.
Log out!
I thought force quitting stuff, you know what I mean?
Force quitting stuff is supposed to be easy in Linux.
Terminal.
Do it in the, no, I can't even get the terminal up.
I'll control alt function F2.
Oh, and she's locked up.
She's done, she's done.
Is that a reset button?
There it is.
We did say here be dragons.
Okay, Grand Theft Auto 5 is taking a little while here.
Should this one launch?
No, oh, okay.
So you knew this was gonna happen,
you're just messing with me.
Okay, so much for that.
Why don't we try duck game?
Duck game, I've never heard of it.
This one doesn't work either?
You're just messing with me.
Oh, you're trying to show different ways of it failing.
So it could have a launcher come up and then fail.
It could just do absolutely nothing.
Or we could move on to Skyrim.
Failed to extract plugin file.
Okay.
Speaking of here be dragons, Skyrim might be working.
That actually even seems like it's running
at an okay frame rate.
Dang.
Skyrim works.
I'm gonna bloody my fist on this rock.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And you're dead, blah.
I'm probably screwing up whoever save game this is.
Whatever, I'm probably a loser anyway.
That's okay, I'll fight it with this ax.
Well, let's see if it takes out this guy.
Whatever, this guy sucks, let's take his clothes.
All right, that's probably enough of that.
Not everything works that well.
Crisis is a DRM fail.
It's probably the DRM crap that won't run,
not necessarily the game itself.
And then PUBG is a similar story.
In this case, it's the easy anti-cheat that fails to install.
Wait, Witcher 3, isn't that a Steam game?
This one is running pretty pretty though.
It should be noted that this particular game
supports Hairworks in Windows, but not in Linux.
And that was true of DXVK too.
But does Hairworks really enhance the experience that much?
I mean, I guess it depends who you ask
and what they're a fan boy of.
So there you have it.
I guess the real takeaway here is that we wanna give
the less Linux savvy folks out there
a little bit more of a push to give this a try
because it really is simpler now.
For the power users out there,
by the way, you're probably gonna ask,
Proton doesn't yet support running games outside of Steam
like Wine does.
But for the enormous library of games on Steam,
you are completely,
TM, covered.
So then is the year of the Linux desktop upon us?
In my opinion, not yet,
but it does feel a little different this time.
Linux driver support, for example,
actually seems to be becoming a priority
for AMD and NVIDIA for once.
So to use like a train analogy,
the train might not be here yet,
but I also wouldn't throw on my noise canceling headphones
and take a walk along the track that it's approaching on.
So thanks for watching guys.
If you disliked this video, sorry, Mr. Balmer,
you don't even work there anymore, man.
Why are you bothering to run around
hitting thumbs down on my videos?
For those of you who liked it though,
hit the like button, get subscribed,
or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff
we featured at the link in the video description.
JK, it's free.
Also down there is our merch store,
which has cool shirts like this one
and our community forum, which you should definitely join.
Maybe we'll put links to buy like game controllers
or something.
Sure, what the hay?
Or this wireless mouse, which rocks, V603.
Man, that feels good.