the16bitgamer

Pokémon Emerald, and PixelJunk monsters.

I prefer GOG but not enough to not buy from Steam. And each store has its pros and cons.

As a single player gamer, I love the DRM free nature of GOG, especially for classic games like Rollercoaster Tycoon or SimCity 3000. I have older PCs lying around and being able to play my games on them is very very nice.

On the other hand, updating my game is a chore and GOG Galaxy while cool isn't polished, and very buggy especially only Linux via Wine. I wouldn't even consider online multiplayer games unless it had its own server.

Compared to Steam which works with Linux by default, no Lutris or Bottles configuring to get games to work. Updates are seamless and online multiplayer is built into the client. Let alone remote play, steam families, big picture, and all the other features it does.

My only gripe with Steam is the GIANT question mark on what happens to my games when they pull support. I mean I can't even play my older games any more on my old Windows 7 machine, and its not like Fallout 3 is getting updates.

So my priority is thus: GOG then Steam, if its single player and the price is similar (+-$10). Steam then GOG if it makes sense or I need steam features (I.e. I got Stardew Valley on Steam since my SO has it there too and we can play together). Finally if the game is around $5 get it on either, or maybe both if I like the game.

Bill Bill Bill Bill

I wouldn't worry too much about not knowing this. The steam deck is still relatively new and proton/dxvk is improving at such a blinding pace compared to the rest of Linux that my head is still spinning.

From my limited understanding, because of Arch's rolling releases and Valve basing the steam deck on Arch. DXVK the compatibility layer for DX games to vulkan is managed by the distro. How this works is magic is still magic to me. I also think graphic drivers gets pushed on arch early too, since it's a rolling release.

However I am in complete agreement, Arch isn't beginner friendly, I personally like Manjaro and find it friendlier, but that's like having a pet cat, and it's a Bob cat. Sure it's not a Lion, but it's not a Kitty.

Have you not heard of the Steam Deck and Proton? Running MS APIs through a compatibility layer is the main goal for Linux gaming for the past few years, as it allows legacy games that had no hope in getting a Linux native port (or a terrible Linux port) to run in Linux, through the Proton Compatibility layer.

The apps I was using were running with DXVK, but due to a bug with intel iGPU driver which affects both Windows and Linux users, it didn't work. A Intel Mesa update patched the bug, and my game worked better. When I moved back I was on an older driver and had to wait for it to be added in.

This comes from personal testing of games. There was a DX11 bug intel igpus where UE4 games crash instantly on boot. I was able to work around this by forcing dx12 in arch, but when I moved to fedora it wasn’t working, that was until about 2 months later after an update. Since I don’t know exactly how far behind fedora is in terms of graphics drivers I said it in ambiguous terms.

From my personal experience Arch is several months ahead of other distros and depending on the package and sometimes has everything you need already included for gaming.

I believe this is due to the Steam Deck.

However for ease of use, I agree there are other better distros. Fedora is only 2ish months behind arch in terms of graphics drivers and Ubuntu… has the latest proton from steam and lutris since proton isn’t installed from the local app stores.

I was more going for ease of use. If you are playing the latest and greatest then I agree you’d probably want Arch based or at the minimum Fedora based distributions. However if you are playing some more stable games, or I do titles and Ubuntu is fine. The updates will come.

My SO enjoys Zorin. Based on Ubuntu (like pop os) but had built in themes that makes the desktop environment easily customizable.

They found it easy to use and set up.

Many reasons. Many of which is down to how Google as a company is reaching between the proverbial couch cushions to get at the loose change to make a profit. Default opt-in tracking, breaking ad-blockers, and probably more which I forgot about since I abandoned Chrome years ago.

I've tried Linux on my Surface Go. It was awful but not in the way you'd think it would be.

Pros: Honestly Linux made the anemic processor on it feel snappy again. I couldn't play the newest games, linux is not a miracle worker. But compared to the bloated experience its better than Windows 10.

Cons: The smallest features didn't work. SD reader never worked. Needed the Surface firmware to get the webcam to work and even then it was worse than it was on Windows. No good on screen keyboard software, and from my testing no DE had a good tablet mode.

Plus the giant red "unsecured" bar on boot was an eye sore.

I know Linux is has more compatibility on different Surface models so maybe it was just my Go. Or perhaps it was Manjaro. Either way if you don't have a machine yet maybe look at other laptop/tablets

Is it the Dacia Sandero?